Election and Grace All Over Scripture

 

After preaching through Heb. 2:10-18 this past Sunday, a friend from our congregation said encouragingly, “You manage to see election in every passage.” In the message, I mentioned that “the offspring of Abraham” did not refer to ethnic Jewish believers only, but to those who are Abraham’s offspring by faith. The blessings in this passage come to the offspring of Abraham uniquely.

I replied to my friend by saying, “That’s because election is everywhere in Scripture. It is important to see election because election is about the grace of God. If we do not embrace election, we embrace doing salvation by our own work.” My friend agreed enthusiastically. 

I am grateful to Pastor Gerald Hiestand for providing me opportunities to stand in his stead at Calvary Memorial Church. I am grateful for a people who respond to the word in meekness.

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The De-Condensation of Humanity

I found this interesting enough to re-blog:

via The De-Condensation of Humanity

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.

#Charlottesville: Some Gospel Thinking on White Supremacy, in Themelios

Themelios 42.3 posted today, and it includes the article, “#Charlottesville: Some Gospel Thinking on White Supremacy,” co-written by Walter J. Redmond, Jr. (my father), Charis A. M. Redmond (my daughter), and me. I am grateful to the editors of Themelios for their kind inclusion. I hope that an article in an evangelical journal co-written by an evangelical who works for two evangelicals institutions might gain a hearing among evangelicals.

On Making the Abnormal Good

Source: On Making the Abnormal Good

October 10, 2017

This morning on NPR, I learned of a documentary about a pioneer in the transgender movement. When the interviewer asked about her life, the documentarist calmly replied that for a time she worked in “the sex industry” in Times Square. She then took a twelve-year-old, lesbian runaway “under her wing.”

Leaving aside what rights transgender people should have, think about these descriptions. “Sex industry” makes normal prostitution and all its degradation–the scaring of intimacy, the reduction of intercourse to commerce, the diseases that plague the promiscuous, and the chains the pimps put on the prostitutes, the abortions the pimps demand. “Sex industry” indeed–remove the stigma, the sin, the pain; it makes normal the abnormal and wrong.

What does it mean to take a twelve-year-old girl “under her wing.” I’d rather not think of it. Perhaps this woman helped this girl in some ways, but not in the best ways.

This world of woe is abnormal because of the fall. We are all damaged goods, but goods we are. Prostitution and gender dysfunction are the sad effects of the fall, not things to celebrate. Without the norm of heterosexual monogamy, there would be no Western Civilization. But now, the pillars shake, threatening an old foundation (See Psalm 11). Gender is divorced from biology and the abnormal becomes normal and even preferable to many. The healing balm of Jesus Christ is denied since the bleeding wound is ignored.

Transgender people have rights because they are human beings, created in God’s own image. We should love them and anyone who cannot seem to find a home in their biology. As Francis Schaeffer wrote in The God Who is There, “We should have compassion for the homophile,” using a word no longer in the cultural currency. Love, as the Apostle Paul wrote, “rejoices in the truth” (I Corinthians 13). We should speak “the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15) in the power of the Holy Spirit. We should not speak lies in love, thinking the abnormal to be normal and good. We should not speak the truth in hate, thinking that our correctness justifies bitterness. We should weep, but not let the tear corrode our Christian conscience.

Book Note at WTSbooks: The Institutes, even more readable

At WTSbooks.com, they write about Calvin’s Everyman Edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion–a book I commend to all as a classic of Christian history and of Western Literature:

Also available at Amazon.

 

Word-Centered Church, Jonathan Leeman

I am excited to see Jonathan Leeman’s, Word-Centered Church (Moody Publishers), in print as a repacking of a very good earlier work, Reverberation. Leeman especially does a great job of helping the church member understand how God uses the preached word to conform our lives into the image of Christ. His work is a good place to start in order to see a case for enjoying Scripture daily as a joyous love exchange between the believer and our Lord. (“Is that in the book?” Yes, if you read it prayerfully and with discernment.)

I also am excited to see O Palmer Robertson’s, The Christ of Wisdom. Reading Robertson’s understanding of the literary structure of the Psalter and individual psalms was so rich that I am eager to see how he complements that study as he goes through the rest of the major books of biblical poetry.

US Debut of the Africa Study Bible

This week I have enjoyed greatly the events of the US debut of the Africa Study Bible (ASB). The ASB is the first study Bible written by Africans for Africans. The study notes, artwork, articles, stories, African proverbs, and illustrations within the ASB offer a means of contextualizing the truth of Scripture in African ideas and for African concerns.

The ASB was a major undertaking, involving over 350 biblical and theological scholars from the more than 50 countries on the continent of Africa. The ASB includes a large section of notes given to a narrative timeline of God’s work in Africa.

The representative contributing scholars who came to Moody Bible Institute spoke of the joy of having the ASB as a tool for discipleship. While rejoicing with them, I also am grateful for the ASB’s ability to increase our sensitivity to the concerns of our sisters and brothers in African nations, and to raise our cultural awareness toward non-Western issues the biblical text addresses. For example, an “African Touch Point” on Ex. 22:18 teaches that “witches” should not be equated with “foreigners, widows, and orphans–the vulnerable in society.”

I encourage you to get your own copy of the African Study Bible and utilize its notes in your personal study. Pray for the ASB project to have great reach around the world. Also, an ASB 30-day devotional is available. Below is an example of the devotional reading from Day 1.

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Africa, a Cradle of Christianity: a Devotion on Africa’s Legacy

Matthew 2:13-15

¹³ After the wise men were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up! Flee to Egypt with the child and his mother,” the angel said. “Stay there until I tell you to return, because Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

¹⁴ That night Joseph left for Egypt with the child and Mary, his mother, ¹⁵ and they stayed there until Herod’s death. This fulfilled what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: “I called my Son out of Egypt.” (NLT) 

From an Africa Study Bible Article titled “Christianity’s African Roots”:

Sankofa is an Akan word from Ghana meaning “returning to your roots, recapturing what you’ve lost, and moving forward.” What are some of the African roots of Christianity?

Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus became refugees in Africa when Herod ordered the slaughter of young boys in Bethlehem. Simon, an African Jew from Cyrene, was forced by the Romans to carry the cross of Jesus on the way to Golgotha where the Lord was crucified. The earliest of the four Gospels was written by an African. John Mark was born in Cyrene in modern Libya to a Jewish family of the tribe of Levi.

The influence of the early African church was great and was concentrated in three areas. First, Alexandria, Egypt, was the intellectual capital of the Mediterranean world. John Mark, Alexandria’s first bishop, was martyred there in ad 68, but the church thrived and expanded its roots in Africa and beyond. Second, the largest Christian community in the Maghreb (an area from modern Libya to Morocco) was Carthage, in modern Tunisia. Three early popes were African from this region. Third, Coptic Christianity flourished in Egypt and Sudan. In the early fourth century, Christianity was declared the state religion of the Kingdom of Aksum, part of modern Ethiopia.

We are heirs to a rich history of ancient Christianity. But the question is: Do we know this history? Do we tell these stories to our children and grandchildren? May the knowledge and legacy of such African giants ignite our own devotion to the Lord!

Today:

Search for your country on the Dictionary of African Christian Biography (www.dacb.org), and tell your church and family about what you discover. Begin to learn early African Christian stories of faith, martyrdom, and intellectual life that you can tell to your children and your grandchildren.

This Africa Study Bible Daily Devotional is provided as a free blessing from Oasis International. To find out more about the Africa Study Bible and where you can find it in your country, visit africastudybible.com.

THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION’S DECISION TO INVESTIGATE RUSSELL MOORE HAS HUGE IMPLICATIONS FOR BLACK SBC CHURCHES

(Below I have reblogged Pastor McKissic’s excellent post because of its importance to SBC life, and to greater kingdom work around the world. It is difficult to see how some, like Dr. Jack Graham, cannot understand that the ability for the SBC to gain a hearing in the culture — even at the level of the personal proclamation of the Gospel by local church members –is effected by the perception that some SBC churches’ criticism of Russell Moore and withholding of funding to the ERLC is a move that demonstrates power politics is more important than moral reasoning–moral reasoning that does not align itself with a GOP platform. It would be wonderful for predominantly white, mega-church congregations within the SBC to speak with boldness equal to Graham’s and even greater courage in support of the direction of the ERLC under Russell Moore, and thus for Moore himself. McKissic’s voice should be part of a grand movement of voices within and without the SBC that continues to work to separate the Gospel from American political positions. At this time in history, it would be a shame for the SBC to witness a diminishing of SBC support by its ethnic minority congregations and less successful outreach to an increasingly ethnically diverse culture because it takes a vocal stand against Russell Moore–a Christian champion of righteousness on racial justice, fair immigration policy, and just treatment of people of all faiths. The opposition to Moore is using a standard of accountability seemingly that was not used when former ERLC President Richard Land made greatly insensitive comments about Treyvon Martin and followed the comments with a non-apologetic apology. I guess the opposition thinks Jesus is smiling down from glory and saying, “Way to go! Way to use your financial power to force Moore to stop criticizing Donald Trump and those who have attempted to morally justify support of President Trump.” [Clap, clap, clap.])

Wm. Dwight McKissic, Sr.

THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION’S DECISION TO INVESTIGATE RUSSELL MOORE HAS HUGE IMPLICATIONS FOR BLACK SBC CHURCHES

By William Dwight McKissic, Sr.

The Prestonwood Baptist Church of Plano, TX, (a Dallas suburb) led by Dr. Jack Graham, a former President of the Southern Baptist Convention, has determined to escrow funds totaling $1 million, that were previously designated for the Cooperative Program—the premier funding mechanism of the Southern Baptist Convention’s agencies— because of positions and policies taken by Dr. Russell Moore, President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Other predominantly White Southern Baptist Churches are also threatening to withhold Cooperative Program funds surrounding public positions taken by Russell Moore and the ERLC.

Consequently, the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention has decided to investigate and explore the depths of why some churches aren’t giving and the best way to address the whole matter. They want…

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4 Suggestions for Post-Election Listening

The Gospel Coalition kindly posted my article, “4 Suggestions for Post-Election Listening.”