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7 Characteristics of Good Bible Teachers

By Doug Eaton — 3 years ago

Several things come into play that impacts the quality of teaching. The sound of your voice, your cadence, and even the way you dress. There are even more important aspects to teaching scripture than what I will cover below, such as having a clear understanding of the Bible, studying your topic diligently, and most importantly, being faithful to the text. If we do everything I will cover below but misrepresent the Bible passage we are teaching, we have only done a better job of leading people astray.

Teaching scripture is a spiritual gift, but it is also a skill. This means that not everyone is called to be a teacher; it also means just because someone is gifted does not mean they do not need to improve their skills. Several things come into play that impacts the quality of teaching. The sound of your voice, your cadence, and even the way you dress. There are even more important aspects to teaching scripture than what I will cover below, such as having a clear understanding of the Bible, studying your topic diligently, and most importantly, being faithful to the text. If we do everything I will cover below but misrepresent the Bible passage we are teaching, we have only done a better job of leading people astray.
Assuming all the foundations of biblical understanding are in place, and the teacher has studied with diligence, here are seven things to keep in mind as you prepare to teach.
A good teacher is concerned about wasting their student’s time.
If you are teaching scripture, you tend to have a captive audience. If you work for an academic institution, your students must be there to pass the class. For the rest of us, we tend to teach in a church setting. What this means is the faithful will tend to show up whether we are good teachers or not. Never use this as an excuse to phone it in. Be sure to respect their time by delivering the truth to them. Do not buy into the temptation that if you fill your lesson with funny stories, you have used their time wisely because they had a good time. Learn to use illustrations to further the truth you are speaking, not to entertain.
A good teacher is more concerned with clarity than appearing highbrow.
The goal of teaching is for the student to have a better understanding of the topic. Know your student’s level of theological training and speak to them on their level. Avoid the temptation to impress them with your knowledge by using terms and concepts that will not resonate with them. Sometimes learning new words and ideas is part of the lesson. In that case, use the appropriate terms, but explain it to them using what they already understand. Remember, clarity is an apologetic. Students will retain and adhere to what makes sense; the muddled and confused will blow away like chaff.
A good teacher explains why what they are teaching is important.
Sometimes, it is not apparent why what we are teaching matters. If that is the case, make sure the topic’s significance is part of your lesson. For example, if you teach the census counts in the book of Numbers, do not simply tell them how many tribes there were and how many people were in each tribe. Be sure to let them know how this shows God’s faithfulness, how he fulfills his promises.
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Restore Us to Yourself That We May Be Restored

By Ryan Higginbottom — 3 years ago

The Israelites wondered whether God had rejected them. We may wonder the same. But in Jesus we have an emphatic, definitive answer. No. Because Jesus bore our sin, we are no longer subject to that same awful judgment that he suffered. Though we groan, we can look to Jesus, the Man of Sorrows. Because of him, our true, final restoration is secure.

Most Christians know that sin is bad. But, how bad is it, really?
Sin is a tornado, and the final chapter of Lamentations helps us see the extent of the damage. The consequences of breaking covenant with the Lord are dire. And yet, there is still hope for restoration.
See Our Disgrace
The first verse in this chapter frames much of what follows.
Remember, O Lord, what has befallen us;look, and see our disgrace! (Lamentations 5:1)
The author is asking God to remember, to bring to mind for the purpose of action. Asking God to see and remember is a key part of all lament; those who lament are pleading that God would not forget them in their circumstances.
However, this is an unnatural request, that God would see or notice our disgrace. We usually like to hide those qualities and circumstances that are shameful. But in this situation, those embarrassments are exactly the reason for the lament!
Verses 2–18 provide a list of many disgraces of the people still living in Jerusalem. These disgraces range from the horrifying (deaths of fathers in Lam 5:3, rape of women in Lam 5:11) to the seemingly mundane (the people now have to pay for water and wood, Lam 5:4). To be sure, far more disgraces fall in the first category than the second, but the mingling of the two makes a profound point: Sin has brought judgment which has overturned every aspect of life. Even the loss of music and dancing (Lam 5:14–15) can be considered a tragedy.
One other disgrace is worth mentioning. In Lam 5:16, we read: “The crown has fallen from our head; woe to us, for we have sinned!” This is both a confession of sin and a lament about Judah’s inability to rule themselves. They are now in the hands of Babylon. This confession about leadership also sets the stage for verse 19 (see below).
On the whole, this first portion of Lamentations 5 (verses 1–18) shows us that the consequences of sin are real and heartbreaking. There is a direct line between the rebellion of the people and the desolation of Zion, and the present grief and loss are a result of earlier decisions to turn away from God.
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Does the Bible Limit Gender to Just Male and Female?

By Alan Shlemon — 3 years ago

When God chose to remake the world, he only preserved males and females because those two exhausted the gender categories of both humans and animals. The reason behind this decision seems consistent with the reason found in the initial creation of Genesis: The gender binary was directly tied to procreation. Only a male and female (no more and no less) are needed to be fruitful and multiply.

There’s a trendy new idea that denies God created only two genders (male and female). What’s the proof? Frogs. That’s right. Proponents of this view claim frogs are evidence that the gender binary of the Bible is a myth. If you’re puzzled by this, that’s understandable. Here’s how the argument works.
Defenders of this position point out that in Genesis 1, Scripture says God made creatures that live on the land and creatures that swim in the water. Frogs, however, are amphibians and aren’t exclusively land or water creatures. They don’t fit neatly in either of those creature classifications. So, although Genesis describes the creation of land and water creatures, it does not account for every kind of animal that God made.
In the same way, so the argument goes, even though Scripture says that God made humans “male and female” (Gen. 1:27), those two categories can’t account for every kind of human. God also created non-binary people—those who aren’t either male or female.
Now, there is some truth to what is being said. Many of the binary categories mentioned in the Genesis narrative don’t fully account for everything that’s created. For example, the Bible says God made day and night—allegedly the only two categories during a 24-hour period—but there’s also sunrise, sunset, dusk, and dawn that are neither day nor night.
Notice, however, in those cases (land/sea creatures, night/day), Scripture later references some of the natural variations between these binary extremes. For example, the Bible mentions frogs over a dozen times, acknowledging the existence of animals that are neither land nor sea creatures. Scripture also references dawn and twilight, even though they don’t fit the binary category of day and night.
This, however, is not the case with the binary category of male and female described in Genesis. There is never a later scriptural reference to another kind of human that falls outside the binary male-female gender category. If humans were made that were neither male nor female, why doesn’t Scripture say so?
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Prayers That Work

By John Piper — 3 years ago

Audio Transcript

We all want our prayers to work. So what prayers are guaranteed to work? In discovering which prayers are effective, we can start with Jesus’s astonishing promise to all of us in John 15:7. Here’s his pledge to his followers: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” Ask whatever you wish! What an astonishing, open-ended promise to boost our prayer lives. But it’s given parameters by what makes for an effective prayer life. Did you catch that? “If my word abides in you.” John Piper preached a sermon on this text back in the early weeks of 1993, in a sermon fitly titled “Ask Whatever You Wish.” It led to this great clip where he explained the key to an effective prayer life. Here’s Pastor John, from about thirty years ago.

Prayer is for granting us the joy of seeing God’s will executed through us as it becomes our will. The only joy in life that lasts is when our desires are drawn from his desires, and those desires are the ones that have the promise made to them: “Ask . . . and it will be done for you.” Here is the way John put it: “Whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him” (1 John 3:22).

Prayer Is for Spiritual Desires

Prayer is not for gratifying natural desires. Prayer is given as a gift for the joy and the satisfaction of those people whose heart is so in tune with God that they keep his commandments and do what is pleasing to him. If you have no interest in obeying God, in bringing the whole of your life — your attitude from morning to night — into conformity to his values, and in getting your desires from his desires, prayer is not your business. James put it like this: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (James 4:3). And then he calls them adulteresses in the next verse (James 4:4). Do you know why? He’s picturing the church as the wife, God as the husband, and prayer as asking the husband for money to pay the paramour down the hall with whom she sleeps. That’s a pretty ugly view of prayer, isn’t it?

Prayer is to bring our lives into conformity with the desires of our husband, God, not to ask him for the wherewithal to consort with the world. Prayer is not for the satisfying and gratifying of natural desires — until those natural desires come into the service of the hallowing of God’s name, the seeking of God’s kingdom, and the doing of God’s will.

“The major challenge in prayer is becoming the kind of people who are not dominated by natural desires.”

The words of Jesus abiding in us prepare us for fruit-bearing prayer. The words of Jesus abiding in us prepare us for fruit-bearing. If prayer is not for the gratifying of our natural desires, but for fruit-bearing for God, then the major challenge before us at the beginning of 1993 in prayer is becoming the kind of people who are not dominated by natural desires. That is the major challenge in prayer: becoming the kind of people who are not dominated by natural desires, but who are dominated by spiritual desires.

This is what Paul calls ceasing to be a natural person and becoming a spiritual person, or growing beyond being carnal people to being spiritual people. Of course, we want to eat. Of course, we’d like to succeed. Of course, we want clothes on our back, and a roof over our head, and education for our children. But if those things are not subordinate in our lives to the big issues that make us tick, then we’re not going to pray with success. We’re not. Prayer is going to be so worldly, so earthly, so unspiritual, God will wonder what it has to do with him. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you,” you will become that kind of person: “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7).

Six Ways Jesus’s Words Prepare Us to Pray

Let me give you some examples of how the word of Jesus abiding within makes you that kind of person, in order that you might pray.

1. The word humbles us.

First John 1:10: “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” — meaning, if his word were in us, we’d know ourselves aright. The key to a humble, proper assessment of who we are before God comes one way: by the word of God dwelling within. And without that proper self-assessment, we will not be in tune with God and know how to pray according to his will.

2. The word exalts Jesus.

John 17:8: Jesus says, “They have received [my words] and have come to know in truth that I came from you.” In other words, the word received and abiding is the key to unlock not only a true knowledge of ourselves in humility, but an exalted knowledge of God and his Son, Jesus, coming from him. We cannot pray aright until we know Jesus as he is. We can’t pray aright until we have an exalted view of the meaning of the coming of the Son into the world.

3. The word defeats Satan.

First John 2:14 says, “I write to you, young men, because the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.” Unless the word of God is abiding in us, Satan will dominate, he will control, and he will deceive and bring us into odds with God rather than being in tune with God. In order to pray in tune with God, Satan must be defeated, and he was defeated in the young men in Ephesus and the other churches by the abiding of the word of God.

4. The word bears love.

John 14:24: “Whoever does not love me does not keep my words” — which means that the words of Jesus define the path of love. We cannot pray fruit-bearing prayers until we know the path on which the fruit is born, and the fruit is always born in the path of love and not outside that path. If you want to know the path of love along which prayers are answered — namely, the path of love — you must have the word of God abiding within you. You can’t know what love is any other way than by the word of God. John says, “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments” (1 John 5:2).

“The key to a humble, proper assessment of who we are before God comes one way: by the word of God dwelling within.”

You may think you’re loving God by not checking into the Bible at all. How many articles, how many books do I read today where the concepts of mercy, compassion, and love are used as criteria with no defense that that’s the way God sees things at all? There’s no defense that this is God’s view of love, God’s view of mercy, God’s view of compassion. You just take the word right out of context, and since it’s a politically correct word, it works. It doesn’t really matter whether it comes from God. If you want to know the path of love, you must have the word of God abiding in you, because many things look loving that are not loving.

5. The word assures.

John 8:47: “Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” What that means is that if you hear God, receive the words of God and have his word abiding in you, it is evidence that you are of God — that is, chosen of God, born of God, elect. In other words, the whole issue of assurance is riding on this word. When you go to pray, one of the great hindrances to prayer and faith and hope in prayer is, Am I of God? Am I born of God? Am I in the family? How do I know I’m in the family? This text says you know you’re in the family if you hear the word of God, if you receive the word of God, if the word of God comes home and finds a place in you. The word receives affirmation and a yes and an amen.

6. The word sanctifies.

John 15:3: “Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.” And John 17:17: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” So, we have cleanness and we have sanctification coming to us through the word.

Praying in Tune

There are a lot of other examples of how the word abiding in us fits us to pray, but here are six:

a humble view of ourselves
an exalted view of the Savior
triumph over the devil
knowledge of the path of love
assurance of our election
the power of holiness

Those six and many more come to us by having the word of God abide with us, abide in us, and therefore fit us for being the kind of people who will pray in tune with God and hear the promise: “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”

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The Rest Beyond Our Reach: Finding Refreshment in a Burnout Culture

By Kathryn Butler — 3 years ago

At the end of his life, my friend David leaned into Christ’s promise of rest. The hope he drew from that promise so comforted him that he spent his last moments witnessing to others.

He’d endured a long, arduous struggle with end-stage emphysema. For months he ricocheted back and forth between the hospital and rehab, and wrestled with fear, doubt, and exhaustion as the simple act of breathing became a burden. “I’m so tired,” he would say, between gasps of air. “I just wish I knew what God is doing.”

Yet even when David could barely breathe, he felt an urgency to share the hope and peace he gleaned from the gospel, so he diligently planned a funeral that would offer Christian hope to all in attendance. When my kids and I visited him the day before he died, we found him sitting at a table with his laptop open to a letter he wanted read during the service. He passed into Jesus’s arms a little over 24 hours later.

I was privileged to read the passages he chose for his funeral, and tears sprang to my eyes when I saw his most cherished verse among them. It was a verse that had offered him a cool cup of water in arid times, and he now ensured that it would be offered to the gathered mourners so that they too might find comfort: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28–29).

Seeking a Hidden Rest

In our world that prizes productivity over stillness, rest seems an alluring but ever-elusive gift. A startling number of Americans struggle with sleep deprivation, and more than half of American employees report symptoms of workplace burnout.

The tourism industry in the United States generates over one trillion dollars in revenue each year, as we flee our hometowns with the hope that ocean breezes, mountain air, or a change in scenery might finally calm our frayed nerves. Inevitably, when the vacation weeks fly by, and we return home sunburned, weary, and deflated, we wonder how the refreshment we sought has escaped us yet again. While our Lord calls us to “be still” and know he is God (Psalm 46:10), we never seem to find the time.

Meanwhile, the travails of life exhaust us. Businesses fail. Disasters strike. Loved ones fall ill, and some die. Our bodies wither and break, and our hopes along with them. Pain and loneliness, grief and worry weigh down our souls, and we find ourselves broken, parched, exhausted, and yearning for stillness. For relief. For rest — that cool cup of water that never seems to come.

Fallen from Rest

We yearn for rest because God made us in his image, and he set apart a day of rest during creation (Genesis 1:26; 2:2). As reflections of him, we too must pause from our labors and revel in his goodness. Sadly, no matter how diligently we strive, or how ardently we yearn, such rest slips from our grasp over and over, because although we’re made to rest, we’re also fallen in sin.

“Wrenched from fellowship with our loving Father, weary in our sins, we toil and ache for rest.”

God provided rest from the first, walking with Adam and Eve “in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3:8). Yet in their rebellion, our first parents unleashed sin into the world, and in so doing, tore us from the respite with the Lord for which we were made. Since the fall, sin has tainted our work, and dragged down our efforts with weariness: “Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. . . . By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground” (Genesis 3:17, 19).

Wrenched from fellowship with our loving Father, weary in our sins, we toil and ache for rest. We pine for relief, but find we are “like the tossing sea, for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up mire and dirt” (Isaiah 57:20).

Since the fall, mankind has secretly yearned for the peace that comes not from the toil of our own hands, but from communion with the loving, sovereign Creator who gives us life and breath and everything else (Acts 17:25). And over millennia, the prophets have clung to God’s promise that while we can’t usher in that rest ourselves, he would pave a path for us. He would save us.

God’s Promised Rest

Lamech hoped God would bring this relief through his son, Noah: “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands” (Genesis 5:29). Moses and Joshua hoped for respite in Canaan.

Yet even after the floodwaters receded, or the walls of Jericho crumbled to the ground, mankind largely remained sinful, restless, and alienated from the God of rest. Hundreds of years later, God describes Israel as “a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways. Therefore I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest’” (Psalm 95:10–11).

Still, through his prophets God promised an eternal jubilee, an ultimate Sabbath, when those who mourn would be comforted, and righteousness and praise would “sprout up before all nations” (Isaiah 61:11). He promised freedom from sin and the sweet relief of communion, at last, with our holy God, “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6).

He promised rest in Christ.

Rest for Our Souls

Jesus invites those who are weary, burdened, and heavy laden to savor the rest he offers (Matthew 11:28-30). Relief from the yoke of the law and from our toilsome labors. Rest for the soul. The restoration of God with his children, to abide together in his rest for all eternity.

Right now, we live on in a sin-stricken world. But when Christ returns, God will dwell among us, and “he will wipe away every tear, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

“Jesus invites those who are weary, burdened, and heavy laden to savor the rest he offers.”

Although we stoop with weariness, when we place our faith in Christ, we have assurance. Jesus will return. He has overcome (John 16:33). “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:9–10).

During his walk upon the earth, my friend David endured homelessness, drug addiction, breathlessness, and the despair of a life whittled away by disease. Yet, ultimately none of these hardships overcame the promise God gave him in Christ: rest for his weary soul. The world wore him down, but Christ promised an easy yoke. A light burden. A heart, mind, and body made new by God’s grace, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

The effects of sin strangle us. The woes we carry crush us. But in Christ, we who labor and are heavy laden find rest for our souls. And in him, we have hope.

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The Ministry of Being a Little Bit Further Along

By Tim Challies — 3 years ago

No church can survive solely upon the labors of its pastors. No church can thrive when the expectation is that all ministry must be formal and must originate from the front of the room. No church can remain healthy when it falls to the elders to give and the members to consume. Rather, the work of ministry within a local church is the privilege and responsibility of each of the people who makes that church their own.

One of the most important ministries that any Christian can engage in is also one of the most unheralded. One of the ministries that is key to the functioning of the local church and to advancement in the Christian life is also one of the most overlooked. It is the simplest of all ministries and the least formal, a ministry that each of us is equipped to carry out. It is the ministry of being just a little bit further along.
There is a place in the church and a place in life for expertise and formal training. But there is a much wider place for simple commitment and involvement. The great majority of the help people need as they navigate life’s trials, the great bulk of the counsel people seek as they encounter life’s questions, does not require the input of experts, but merely the attention of someone who knows God and who knows his Word. They do not need someone who has access to the original languages or who exposits Scripture at a post-graduate level. They do not need someone who holds credentials from a Christian counseling organization or who has dedicated a whole lifetime to studying theology. These things are good and have their place, but they are not often truly necessary.
What most people need and long for as they face trials and encounter questions is simply the dedicated attention of someone who is a little bit further along, the listening ear and gentle voice of someone who is a few steps ahead on the path of life, or the path of ministry, or the path of suffering, or the path of parenting. Most are merely seeking someone who will informally mentor them from the perspective of their own successes and failures, their own experiences of good and bad, the godly wisdom they have accumulated along the way.
What’s so wonderful about this ministry is that we can all take it up, for each of us is just a little bit further along than someone else. The father with toddlers is a little bit further along than the father with an infant, the mother who lost a child ten years ago to the one whose child has only just been laid in the grave. The Christian teen has taken a few more steps along the path of life than the child, the Christian senior than the one in her forties. Each of them can prayerfully look back and extend a helping hand, a word of advice, a prayer of intercession, to a person following along behind. Each of them can take up this ministry of blessing and encouragement, of Word and prayer, of time and attention. For they have the one key credential: they are a little bit further along.

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A La Carte (September 15)

By Tim Challies — 3 years ago

May the Lord bless and keep you today.

This week Westminster Books is offering a discount on a book that will interest pastors, scholars, and serious students of the Bible.
Talitha Cumi
This is a sweet bit of writing. “With the quiet of the room and the mourning of the parents… With Peter and James and John looking on… With a twelve year old girl lying dead in her bed… With all the wailing outside and the mockery of Jesus…  With the words of her death spreading around the small town… Jesus, the precious savior, takes this little girl by the hand and whispers in Aramaic: Talitha cumi.”
The Deconversion Stories That Go Unnoticed
Here is something to consider the next time you hear of a deconversion story. “I won’t speculate on the reasons for such celebrity deconversions as I am poorly qualified to speak on any of it. What is striking to me though is that for every high-profile professed Christian that turns his back on the faith, there are 100s overseas that make the same stated professions, walk away from the faith….and it goes largely unnoticed.”
Sometimes People Just Ain’t That Grateful
Stephen Kneale points out that some people just aren’t all that grateful and says, “We can’t live and die on whether people are grateful for what we do.”
The Insidious, Fake Intimacy of Algorithms
Yikes! “Many of us have deeper relationships with the algorithms than with the people in our churches. This is not surprising. When we spend more time tapping on our screens than we do talking with our friends, our algorithms will know us better than our loved ones do.”
Are Pro-Lifers Just “Pro-Forced Birth?”
“Abortion advocates are brilliant at playing word games. Using clever rhetorical moves, they are able to make protecting preborn children look bad and killing preborn children look good.” Tim Barnett provides an example.
How Do We Know We Can Trust the Bible? (Video)
I’m very glad that RTS’s “Wisdom Wednesday” videos are back. In this new one, Dr. Zachary Cole talks about why we can trust the Bible.
Does This Really Matter?
Gretchen Saffles: “How we spend our days isn’t just how we spend our lives. It’s how we become who we are and who we will be. It’s not just about what we’re doing, but the heart behind how and why we’re doing it. ”
Flashback: A Failure of Worship
The addict is not merely following deeply-ingrained habits and physical desires, but seeking the escstasy of worship. The problem is not the desire to worship—we are created to be worshippers—but the idolatrous object of that worship.

Waste no time in defending your Bible; preach it and let it defend itself! —Theodore Cuyler

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One Spectacular Person

By David Mathis — 3 years ago

All the fullness of God is found in this man Jesus. Full humanity and the fullness of deity. We marvel at his bigness and might and omni-relevance, and we melt at his grace and mercy and meekness, and all that comes together in one spectacular person.

Not only do books change lives, but paragraphs do. And not only paragraphs, but even single sentences. “Paragraphs find their way to us through books,” John Piper writes, “and they often gain their peculiar power because of the context they have in the book. But the point remains: One sentence or paragraph may lodge itself so powerfully in our mind that its effect is enormous when all else is forgotten.”
In fact, we might even take it a step further, to particular phrases. That’s my story. It’s been a loaded phrase, but a single phrase nonetheless, penned by Jonathan Edwards and printed in a book by Piper, that has proved life-changing: “admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies.”
Lionlike Lamb

As a sophomore in college (and with the help of some older students), I was becoming wise to the bigness and sovereignty of God, but I was still naïve about how it all related to Jesus. Help came when Piper published Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ.
At first, I read it too fast, and benefited little. But when I came back to it, and read each chapter devotionally (thirteen chapters plus the intro, so a reading a day for two weeks), it awakened in me a new love for and focus on Jesus.
The most transformative section of the book was chapter 3. The chapter begins like this, landing on the phrase from Edwards that lodged itself so powerfully in my mind:
A lion is admirable for its ferocious strength and imperial appearance. A lamb is admirable for its meekness and servant-like provision of wool for our clothing. But even more admirable is a lionlike lamb and a lamblike lion. What makes Christ glorious, as Jonathan Edwards observed over 250 years ago, is “an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies.” (29)
No One Like Him

The life-changing phrase first appears in a sermon, “The Excellency of Christ,” preached under the banner of Revelation 5:5–6. Edwards says,
There is an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies in Jesus Christ. The lion and the lamb, though very diverse kinds of creatures, yet have each their peculiar excellencies. The lion excels in strength, and in the majesty of his appearance and voice: the lamb excels in meekness and patience, besides the excellent nature of the creature as good for food, and yielding that which is fit for our clothing and being suitable to be offered in sacrifice to God. But we see that Christ is in the text compared to both, because the diverse excellencies of both wonderfully meet in him.
I was captured by the thought, and reality, that Jesus brings together in one person what no other men or angels — or even the Father or the Spirit — unite in one person. Lionlike strength and lamblike gentleness.
What I began to see for myself in those days is that Jesus isn’t just the means for humans to get right with the Father. Christ, the God-man, is also the great end. He is the fullest and deepest revelation of God to mankind. To see him is to see the Father. And the Father means for us to see, and savor, his Son as the great treasure of surpassing value, as the pearl of greatest price.
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God Scares Me to Death

By Ed Welch — 3 years ago

Keep turning toward him, whether that process is clumsy, awkward, brief, or a bit chilly. Your soul is close to the breaking point already. The one who now strikes fear in your heart is the only one who can assuage your fears and mend a soul in pieces.

God is sovereign. He does as he pleases. This comforts some people—and terrifies others.
If you have lost a child or a spouse, especially in a sudden or unexpected way, “God scares me to death” might sound familiar. If you have had any close brush with death, this might sound familiar too. You are vulnerable. Images of God as protector are now meaningless. Instead, at any moment, the worst possible event could befall you, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. It might seem that you have already endured his worst and there is nothing of value left to take, but you know there could be other worsts that you cannot even conceive of. God terrifies you.
You are not only terrified of God. You also continue to believe he loves you and is with you by the Spirit. You still believe that nothing will separate you from him. But there is this new place in your heart: God terrifies you. And it has taken up residence. Meanwhile, the people around you do not seem to be particularly terrified of God. If they are, no one is saying so.
For friends. Let’s acknowledge that we are substandard comforters of those who grieve. We might be attentive for the first week after someone we know well has lost a child, but we assume that everyone then moves on. So, today, reach out and say, “my heart still breaks over the loss of your child.” Men, of which I am one, are especially unskilled at this care, both giving it and receiving it.
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Pastors, Fight Against Fear of Man by Fighting for the Fear of the Lord

By Dave Cook — 3 years ago

Future pastor, local churches need unwavering leaders who fear the Lord. They don’t need you to meet their expectations, but they do need to see your hand tremble when you hold up your Bible. They need to know that you would rather have the whole room turn on you than utter one word that displeases the Spirit.

When I began pastoral ministry, I didn’t realize it would be my job to disappoint people. I had to tell a young man he wasn’t ready for ministry. I had to counsel a couple that they shouldn’t get married. I had to inform the church that Sunday’s text means exactly what they don’t want it to mean. Pastoral ministry is full of no-win decisions. Because of this, ministry is a miserable place for a pastor who needs everyone’s approval.
If we knew that before 2020, we know it even more now.
Fear of Man & Pastoral Ministry
This sinful desire for the approval of others is often called “the fear of man.” We were made to desire loving relationships, acceptance into a community, and the favor of those in authority over us. But the fear of man multiplies and warps these desires into an insatiable hunger for applause, honor, and status.
In pastoral leadership, this wrongly placed fear surfaces in many ways. It makes a pastor perform in the pulpit, but never quite preach from it. It makes him hide in his study with the light off, afraid the bully member might swing by. It fixates him on what would make his favorite professor proud, so much that he forgets to ask what his people need. It addicts him to fame or internet attention. It makes him easily manipulated by those who know how to hand out honor, shame, and pressure.
Every pastor struggles against this in different ways, but their hearts all say the same thing: “I need approval to be happy.” Young pastor, learn to overcome the fear of man now.
That’s easy to say. But how?
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