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Kirkers Read: How We Got the Bible

Ben Zornes on December 11, 2018

Be sure to check out a free resource + book discount provided by Canon Press at the end of this post!

As a diligent Bible reader, at some point you’ve likely wondered, “Gee, I wonder how we got the Bible?” This really is a bedrock question, and how we answer it can send us in either the right direction, or in dangerously wrong directions. We should remember that God has two books by which He speaks to us. The book of the World, and the book of His Word. In the World we have natural revelation, which is sufficient to reveal God to us, and tell us we should seek Him and give worship unto Him, and to leave us without excuse for not doing so (cf. Rom 1).

However, God in His grace deigned to give special revelation by speaking to mankind. He spoke in the Old Testament in diverse ways (dreams, Law, prophets), all of which was carried along by the Holy Spirit’s inspiration (Heb. 1:1, 2 Pt. 1:21). When Christ came, the fullness of God’s glory was revealed in the Son of Man who was the exact image of the one True God (Heb. 1:2-3). The Gospels and other writings of the New Testament are all a revelation of Christ, written by men who were eye-witnesses to the Lord Jesus.

Often, people ask a version of the “who made the Bible the Bible?” question. The reality is that Scripture is God’s Word, and, being such, is powerful and effective. A Dutch theologian, Wilhelmus á Brakel, offers an insightful story about an acquaintance of his who had never heard of the church, but found a Bible, read it, was converted and began living in accordance with God’s Word. This anecdote shows that it isn’t the Church that gives authority to Scripture, it is God’s Word that begets the Church. God made the Bible.

Without going into a long survey of how all the texts of Scripture, written by various authors, over millennia, came together, suffice it to say that it is nothing short of astonishing. God committed His Word unto the Jews, then the Apostles proclaimed the Gospels and epistles, and all of it reveals the only authoritative and infallible rule for how God intends us to live our life. Remember, as you read, it isn’t man that stitched a bunch of disparate documents together. God is the One who declared His Word, oversaw it as it was committed to writing, and has preserved it over the ages. Receiving the Word of God as the authoritative rule for life should compel us to search it diligently, and conform our lives according to it.

Our friends at Canon Press have graciously provided a free chapter from Douglas Wilson’s classic Mother Kirk for you to read this week. And as a special Bible Reading Challenge gift, they are offering Mother Kirk at 40% off through Dec. 19, 2018.

“Mother Kirk Chapter 3: Receive the Word” [Read more…]

Grace & Peace: Lord’s Prayer 4

Douglas Wilson on December 4, 2018

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen (Matt. 6:9-13).

The prayer began by addressing our Father, and reminding ourselves that He is the Most High. He dwells in the highest heaven and, more than this, the highest of all the heavens cannot contain Him (2 Chron. 2:6). This next element of the Lord’s Prayer continues with this theme of magnifying God in the first instance, taking it as our first priority.

When we pray to Him, we must not rush to our requests. God knows what we need, and He wants us to pray for them. But He wants us to remember who we are before we come to the petitions. So we begin by exalting the name of God (hallowed be), we continue by interceding for the work of God (His kingdom), and we then proceed to lift up our own little portion of that kingdom work (daily bread, temptations, etc.).

The verb rendered here as hallowed is hagiazo, meaning to sanctify or set apart, or treat as holy. We set God’s name apart as holy in two ways. One is when we formally acknowledge that it is holy. We have to remind ourselves of this by what we say—and it is important that we say it. The second way we hallow His name is by doing what it says elsewhere in the prayer, specifically when we confess our sins.

The third commandment says that we are not to take the name of the Lord our God in vain (Ex. 20:7). This is commonly applied simply to false swearing or cussing, and although speech is certain a part of it, the word there means to lift, or to carry, or to bear. The principle way we bear the name of God is through our identity with Him as His people. This was true of the Jews in the Old Testament, and it is true of Christians in the New.

“And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the Lord; and they shall be afraid of thee” (Deut. 28:10).

“And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch” (Acts 11:26).

As Christians, we bear the name of God, and we must not bear it in vain. We hallow the Father’s name in how we address Him in the prayer, but we also hallow His name by not bearing around unconfessed sin in our lives. We must pray for forgiveness.

The use of Father to address God is an invitation into a profound familial intimacy. He is not ashamed to own us as members of His family. But that familial intimacy must never be allowed to degrade into a flippant or casual use. We are taught to use the name Father, and in the next breath we are required to hallow that same name.

Kirkers Read: Dark Moments with Bright Promises

Ben Zornes on November 27, 2018

As you read the accounts of the Judges you can’t help but be saddened by what happens when God’s people descend into apathy, compromise the covenant which God gave, and delight in evil. While Judges is one of the saddest portions of Scripture, we should look for how God is behind even the darkest chapters, bringing about the happy endings. Notice that God never leaves His people long in their sins without raising up a judge. It is striking that when God sets about to reform His people He raises up servants who bring judgment. Judgement is one of the ways which God brings a people to cry out for His mercy. The promise in the book of judges is that God would one day send a Judge who would judge His people in righteousness and truth (Ps. 96:13).

While in the English Bible, as well as historically, the story of Ruth is nestled in the time of the judges, the Hebrew Bible arranges things a bit differently. Ruth follows Proverbs, and precedes the Song of Solomon. This produces an interesting rhetorical narrative arc. Proverbs warns against the strange woman, and ends with an admonition to King Lemuel to find a virtuous woman (Pro. 31). The story of Ruth uses this contrast to highlight the faithfulness of Ruth. Ruth is a “stranger” (Ruth 2:10), and thus every good Hebrew boy, Boaz included, should be wary. But at the climax of the story Boaz declares that she is a virtuous woman (Ruth 3:11). In fact, Ruth’s faith in the God of Israel leads her to lay claim to the promises and laws which God afforded a woman in her position: a redeemer to marry her and care for her. Because of her faith and persistence to cling to the God of Israel and His promises, she is joined to the lineage of the Messiah.

As always, when you commit to reading God’s word daily, don’t be surprised if you miss a day or two here or there. Business happens. However, always jump back in. As you read through the dark moments of Scripture, always remember that the brightest part of the story is actually the brightest: when Jesus died for our sins.

Grace & Peace: Lord’s Prayer 3

Douglas Wilson on November 13, 2018

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen (Matt. 6:9-13).

So we are invited to pray to God our Father, and we have noted that this is a distinct shift in emphasis. The idea of God as Father comes front and center in the New Testament.

We now come to the next phrase, which is worthy of more meditation than we might want to give it. Of course God is in heaven. Isn’t that where God lives?

Well, yes and no. But the Lord wants us to pray this way for a reason, but before we get to that reason we have to remember two foundational truths about God. The first is that He dwells in eternity (Is. 57:15), and that this is “outside” even the highest heaven. The heavens, along with the rest of the material universe, are created, and God is “higher” than that, or “outside” of that, or “beneath” all of that. The second foundational truth is that God the Father is omnipresent throughout the entire created order. We can see this in the fact that Jesus invites us to pray (here, on earth) to our Father, who is in heaven. As we do this, there is no suggestion that we need to yell. This means that our God in heaven is also here with us, and knows what we need before we ask—as Jesus reminds us just a few verses later (v. 32). In this sense, He is “on earth” every bit as much as He is in heaven.

And yet, the Lord tells us to pray to our Father, who is in the heavens. I say heavens because the phrase is en tois ouranois, in the plural. When we pray to God our Father we are therefore not praying in the direction where He is located (for He is everywhere), but like the ancient Jews we are facing the place where He has determined to establish His throne, where He decided to settle His name.

“The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s: But the earth hath he given to the children of men” (Psalm 115:16).

So when we think of God, He wants us to think “up.” When we pray to Him, we are called to think away from the subterranean caverns. This is not rendered ludicrous by the fact that Australians are praying in a different “direction.” That doesn’t matter. What matters is that we (and the Aussies) understand that God our Father must be given glory, as the Christmas angels did, “in the highest” (Luke 2:14).

Kirkers Read: Invading the Land

Ben Zornes on November 13, 2018

One of the benefits of reading the Old Testament alongside of the New Testament is illustrated in this week’s reading. As you work through Joshua in the Old and Acts in the New, a few similar threads should come up. First, while Israel is commissioned to go in and take possession of Canaan, the early Church is commission to go take possession of the ends of the whole world starting at Jerusalem and going out to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). Where Joshua led God’s people in a victorious military conquest, Jesus leads His people in a victorious Gospel conquest.

What reading the two testaments in parallel does is highlight that God’s redemptive purposes have not altered throughout all of human history. The early chapters of the story lead us to the “aha!” moments of the later chapters. Joshua routes pagan enemy armies; but Jesus routes the enemy within us and sends us to conquer the world with the good news of His Gospel. Jesus is a fiercer conqueror, for all who refuse to submit to His Kingdom will, in the end, feel the full wrath of almighty God.

But while some question how a good God could send His people to kill and slaughter enemy nations, we shouldn’t forget one of the key hinges of the story of Joshua. Right in the thick of the first conquest we have a pagan woman, Rahab, who by faith saw that the God of Israel was the One True God, and because of that faith is joined to God’s covenant people. Rahab, who should have been destroyed, is shown mercy. Not only is she shown mercy, but she becomes an ancestor to King David, and ultimately to “great David’s greater son.” The conquest of Canaan shows us that God’s mission was always one of reconciling fallen man––His enemy––unto Himself. Those who refused to surrender to the armies of the living God felt the edge of His sword. But those who fled to His arms, found salvation.