On the Air June 8 and June 9

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expository preaching, Justice for George Floyd

I am looking forward to being on the air this afternoon, 5.30 EST/4.30 CST, with Mark Eckel of The Cornelius Institute to discuss Say It!  and expository preaching. I suspect we will get into a little bit about the current expression of the pandemic of racial injustice.

I also am excited about speaking tomorrow morning, June 9, across multiple Moody Radio stations on real solutions to the racial injustice pandemic that does not seem to end:

All Times Central

5:30am WCRF Brian and Jannelle Mornings

6:00am WMBI Karl and Crew Mornings

6:30am WFCM Dawn and Steve Mornings

7:00am WMBW Mornings with Tabi

7:30am WRMB Mornings with Eric and Brigitte

Join me and invite others to listen!

Pro-life Dignity

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#MLK, #ProLife, #sanctityoflife, Genesis 9, Genesis 9:1-17, Human Dignity, Image of God in Man, Imago Dei, Sanctity of Life

Yesterday, in my sermon on the sanctity of life from Genesis 9:1-17, I said these words:

Sometimes it can be difficult to see that treating all people with dignity matters. But remembering what it is like to feel undignified helps. Think of how undignified you felt under the care of an overbearing parent or coach, or in comparison to your prettier or smarter sibling or cousin or child of your parents’ best friends. Think of how humiliating living in the broken middle-class home felt, then take away the middle-class part.

Think of the uncertainty you felt in an alcoholic or abusive home and how you wished for someone to see your family’s need for help. That wish was a silent cry to be treated with dignity. Or maybe think of how coming from a Christian home didn’t shield you from mistreatment as you tried to live as your parents prescribed while your friends from Christian homes were not doing the same. Just take away the “Christian” part of feeling mistreatment; it is mistreatment because your dignity as a person was being trumped by your friends’ despising of the Christian faith. You wanted them to see you as a person who should not be the object of ridicule. Everyone else wants that too.

“Dignity” extends beyond the womb. It extends to the impetus behind the #MeToo movement and #BlackLivesMatter. Dignity is a key issue with every unprocessed rape kit, every child in a foster care system in need of a home, every person over fifty who should still be considered a valued member of a company even though a senior-citizen in the eyes of society, and every Middle-Easterner wrongly ethnically profiled. Dignity – the image of God in humans – is at stake in our treatment of every student who under-performs academically in school, every person standing in court who cannot afford legal counsel but needs just legal representation and due process as much as those with lawyers on retainers, every person trying to cross our border illegally, every refugee risking life in a raft to get to a country that is safe, every person holding a sign that says, “I’m hungry.”

#MLKJrDay #thankyouMLK

2 Chronicles in March Edition of Today in the Word

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2 Chronicles

Experiencing teaching and preaching through 2 Chronicles as a series is not common for many believers. I polled one of my classes of 240 students from all over the US and the world and not one of them had sat under a sermon series through 2 Chronicles. Yet some of the richest stories breathed out by God’s mouth are found therein–stories equally as important as the rest of Scripture for us to live out the whole counsel of God.

Kindly, Today in the Word invited me to contribute to their May 2019 devotional readings for 2 Chronicles. I tried to center the readings around the unifying subject for each passage. I am grateful for opportunities like this that come by being part of the team and family at Moody Bible Institute.

You can read a digital copy of the issue at the link above.

Call for Papers – ETS Midwest Region 2019

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Gerald Hiestand, Moody Bible Institute, Moody Distance Learning, Moody Theological Seminary, Todd Wilson, Willie James Jennings

Also: The 2019 ETS Midwest Region Overview

Standing Firm: The Doctrinal Commitment of the Moody Bible Institute

I am excited to see my colleagues’ publication of, Standing Firm: The Doctrinal Commitment of the Moody Bible Institute (Moody Publishers, 2019). I hope that readers will find that at Moody we still align ourselves with orthodox truth. Contrary to rumors published this past spring, we have not made any sort of doctrinal slide. All of our professors fully embrace the inerrancy of the Scriptures of the OT and NT and live out the truth of the gospel contained therein.

Standing Firm also is a good text for personal or group study of the truths Christians believe from Scripture. It is a good, easy-to-read work for firming or reaffirming your understanding of Christian doctrine.

Pre-order your copy today from Moody Publishers or Amazon (Kindle).

My Suggested Books for A Biblical Studies Major to Read before Graduating from MBI

In yesterday’s MBI Bible Department chapel, Dr. John Goodrich asked me what books would I recommend a student majoring in Biblical Studies read before graduating. In the shortness of time, I mentioned this list:

1. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, because Hirsch used to believe meaning is stable.
2. Johnson, Expository Hermeneutics, because Johnson built a model for interpreting Scripture based on Hirsch’s theory.
3. Ward, Planet Narnia (also Kindle), and both the Narnia series and the Space Trilogy series by Lewis, because Planet Narnia is a great piece of literary criticism that also will help one learn to discern meaning in texts.
4. Ellison, The Invisible Man, because it is apropos for the divided American society in which many Biblical Studies majors will serve. (Kindle)
5. Meade, Teaching Hearts, Training Minds or Comforting Hearts, Training Minds, because many of them will begin families of their own one day and need a resource to help disciple their children, and in discipling their children they also will see a good text and method for discipling church members in theological truth.
6. As many Christian classics as one can (including those in the Catholic tradition), because we should know our own classics and interact with their enduring ideas.

To this list immediately I would add Carson’s, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, The Gagging of God, Exegetical Fallacies, The Intolerance of Tolerance, and The Gospel of John  , because Carson is all about rightly reading Scripture and engaging culture with the gospel, and Packer’s, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, because personal evangelism should be one of the ends of teaching and learning Scripture and we should do it in the truth of God’s grace.

An exhaustive list would be too long for a blog post.

Dr. Eric Mason, Sermon: “Seeing Through the Lens of the End” (Rev. 7:9-12)

Dr. Eric Mason’s Founder’s Week sermon, “Seeing Through the Lens of the End,” is powerful, bold, and poignant for this time in American society. He preaches the gospel of grace, and courageously applies it to the American Dilemma.

I hope Pastor Mason will gain other opportunities for evangelicals in every corner of the country to hear this message. I was blessed tremendously by this word.

Engaging Scripture Deeply: Spring MDL/SLA Course Registration Open

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Ephesians Study, going deeper in Scripture, Moody Distance Learning, Studying the Bible Deeply

Spring Registration is OPEN for the Spiritual Leadership Academy Course, Engaging Scripture Deeply. If you live in Chicagoland, join us!

I encourage you to invite and bring your Sunday School Class, Bible study group, small group, and/or ministry leadership team too. This course is for everyone!

Texts for the course: Ephesians (Stott) and Ephesians (Redmond). I selected Stott’s commentary because I want to demonstrate the role of using a tool in studying deeper, not because Stott offers an exegetical commentary (which he does not). But going deeper does not require the use of an exegetical commentary, if deeper involves more than intellectual inquiry. Leave the Greek exegetical work for the course professor to explain. Stott is sufficient for our learning together. I will be providing elections from Ephesians in the ESV Study Bible too.

The Mariners’ Prayer, and Mercy and Judgment Toward Jonah

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Jonah's Death

In hermeneutics class at MBI yesterday, one of my students proposed that Jonah received mercy via the fish appointed by God as God’s response to the prayers of the mariners:

Therefore they called out to the LORD, “O LORD, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O LORD, have done as it pleased you.”

By rescuing Jonah, the Lord answered the prayers of the mariners–that they would be free from the blood of Jonah. I agree with this proposal by the student.

The mariners, who have called on the Lord—who was revealed to them by the prophet, themselves receive mercy through throwing the prophet to his death in the waters. Therefore, their prayers are answered as part of their response to the gospel (in cryptic form in the OT). The Lord is answering the one prayer of unbelievers he has bound himself to answer.

Resource: Exalting Jesus in Jonah, Micah, Nahum, and Habakkuk

Declared Righteous

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Romans Seminar, Salem Baptist Church

I so enjoyed my time today with the teachers of Salem Baptist Church! What an exciting group of teachers! The people of Salem are blessed richly to have so many people interested in becoming better expositors of the word of God.

As we worked our way through Romans, I was reminded of just how significant Christ’s work of justification is for us, especially in 3:21-26.

Justification is the forensic act by which a sinner comes to stand before God as righteous both actually and declaratively. The righteousness God provides is an alien righteousness—it comes from outside of the sinner rather than from within. By “actually,” we mean the Scriptures teach that the sinner is constituted righteous by having Christ’s righteousness imputed to him. By “declaratively,” we mean that Scripture teaches that the sinner is declared righteous before God as a judge in a courtroom declares the status of a criminal.

In declarative justification, the Judge makes a declaration: The sinner is declared righteous although the sinner is guilty.

Declared righteousness differs from judgment in the Western judicial system in the following: It is not simply an (1) acquittal (to rule not guilty), (2) a pardon (to forgive someone of an offense), (3) an exoneration (to free someone from accusation, blame, or responsibility), and that (4) it is based upon absolute truth. This stands in contrast to the Roman Catholic view, in which justification includes the expulsion of indwelling sin, the positive infusion of divine grace, and the forgiveness of sin. For Rome, justification is the infusion of new virtues after the pollution of sin has been removed in baptism. In Catholic teaching, the grace of justification can be lost, but also can be regained by the sacrament of penance.

Imagine walking into a courtroom in an orange jumpsuit with your hands and feet shackled, and with two Federal Marshals flanking you, because you are guilty of crimes. There is fingerprint and video surveillance evidence, eyewitness and your possession of tools used to commit crimes, and you have made an uncoerced confession. You are guilty. Yet, with all of the evidence stacked against you, the judge renders a verdict: “I declare you righteous [even though you are guilty.]” God, the Judge of all the earth, makes this declaration for sinners on the basis of the righteousness of his Son alone. This is the work of justification; this is mercy; this is reason to shout and to praise our Savior.

Resources

1. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, God’s Sovereign Purpose (Banner of Truth)
2. Kent Hughes, Romans: God’s Saving Righteousness (Crossway)
3. Douglas Moo, Romans: The NIV Application Commentary (Zondervan)