Christ was the Great Unlike
We have a natural tendency to attempt to understand what we don’t know by extrapolating from what we do. This works well in much of life, but not so much when it comes to theology, for God comes before comparisons and supersedes them all. When it comes to Christ, he is more unlike than like what we know. This quote from the old preacher De Witt Talmage celebrates how Christ was “the great unlike.”
All good men have for centuries been trying to tell whom this Substitute was like, but every comparison, inspired and uninspired, evangelistic, prophetic, apostolic, and human falls short, for Christ was the Great Unlike.
- Adam a type of Christ, because he came directly from God;
- Noah a type of Christ, because he delivered his own family from the deluge;
- Melchizedek a type of Christ, because he had no predecessor or successor;
- Joseph a type of Christ, because he was cast out by his brethren;
- Moses a type of Christ, because he was a deliverer from bondage;
- Joshua a type of Christ, because he was a conqueror;
- Samson a type of Christ, because of his strength to slay the lions and carry off the iron gates of impossibility;
- Solomon a type of Christ, in the affluence of his dominion;
- Jonah a type of Christ, because of the stormy sea in which he threw himself for the rescue of others.
But put together Adam and Noah and Melchizedek and Joseph and Moses and Joshua and Samson and Solomon and Jonah, and they would not make a fragment of a Christ, a quarter of a Christ, the half of a Christ, or the millionth part of a Christ.
He forsook a throne and sat down on His own footstool. He came from the top of glory to the bottom of humiliation, and exchanged a circumference seraphic, for a circumference diabolic. Once waited on by angels, now hissed at by brigands.
From afar and high up He came down; a-past meteors, swifter than they; by starry thrones, Himself more lustrous; past larger worlds to smaller worlds; downstairs of firmaments, and from cloud to cloud, and through the treetops and into the camel’s stall, to thrust His shoulder under our burdens and take the lances of pain through His vitals, and to wrap Himself in all the agonies which we deserve for our misdoings, and stood on the splitting decks of a foundering vessel, amid the drenching surf of the sea, and passed midnights on the mountains amid wild beasts of prey, and stood at the point where all earthly and infernal hostilities charged on Him at once with their keen sabres—our Substitute!
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A La Carte (November 5)
The Lord be with you and bless you today
Lessons From the Reformation’s Pamphlet War
Carl Trueman: “What made the Reformation a popular success in so many places? There is no simple answer to this, but a key element was the pamphlet war: the production of short, cheap, polemical publications, often illustrated with woodcuts, that served to shape the mind of the populace. Both Protestants and Catholics engaged in this pamphlet war, which was perhaps the first battle for the popular mind in Western history.”
Drinking From the Jug of Suffering: The Steadfast Faith of Sheshi Kaniki
I was really moved by reading this account of a life well-lived. “Sheshi Kaniki loved to dance. Anyone visiting God’s Tribe Church in Tanzania witnessed this pastor engaging in delighted exultation, full-body worship. Always in the front row, next to his wife Trudie, Sheshi danced in praise — that same joy then radiating through his preaching.”
Why Will A Loving God Send People To Hell? (Video)
This video from TGC Africa deals well with a common question.
Bashing Babies on Boulders
“How could a group of people unflinchingly state, ‘Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock’ and then have the audacity to write such a statement down? More to the point, how does a psalm that celebrates little ones dashed against rocks (Ps. 137:9) belong in the same Bible where Jesus says, ‘Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven’ (Matt. 19:14)?”
2 Reasons Why ‘Jehovah’ Should Not Appear in English Bibles
“One of the more surprising truths of the Christian religion is that we don’t know for sure how to pronounce the name of our own God. Good evidence suggests it should be Yahweh, but good evidence is all God has chosen to leave us—not certainty. There is one thing we do know, though: God’s name is not Jehovah. That word is a colossal, unrepealable, European mistake.” Mark Ward answers.
Christian Living Reoriented
“There is a well-worn path in evangelical Christianity. It begins with the presentation of wonderful news – that God has done everything necessary, in Christ’s death on the cross, to make it possible for us to receive salvation. All we have to do is trust in Christ and we are saved. To put it another way, we don’t have to do anything, because Christ has done it for us. The path then makes a surprising turn.”
3 Reasons for Hope in the Face of Grief and Worry
Alistair Begg: “Most of us are a mixture of emotions and experiences. The good, the bad, and the ugly wash over us regularly. The key issue is what we do with these feelings and experiences. How does being a believer shape the way in which we view our world, especially when we’re faced with worries and grief?”
Flashback: Rejoice in the Wife of Your Youth (and Not-So-Youth)
Whether you are a young man, or a not-so-young man, you have the same calling from God: Rejoice in the wife God has given you. Rejoice in his precious gift.It is quite time we should learn that worrying is neither a grace nor a duty, but rather a most unlovely blemish in a life—a sin that hurts the soul and grieves God. —J.R. Miller
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Exactly the Purpose God Intended
General revelation serves exactly the purpose God intended for it—it reveals his power and divine nature. But, its message, while important, is insufficient—insufficient by design. Though general revelation tells us about the existence of God, it does not tell us about how to be reconciled to God. As Sam Stephen says, “While general revelation is indeed important, it is not sufficient in itself. It is through scripture, not nature alone, that we come to know and articulate the particulars of the gospel message and are called to uniquely respond to it.”
To know the message of the gospel, the good news of salvation for sinners, we must have more. Thankfully, God has provided not only general revelation but also special and specific revelation in the Bible. It is in the Bible that we learn more about God and more about ourselves. It is in the Bible that we learn how God has intervened in this world to save us from our rebellion.
Ultimately, the Bible is the revelation of Jesus Christ as the Savior of humanity and the King of the world. Where nature is insufficient, the Bible is fully sufficient—it tells us everything we must know if we are to respond to God in repentance and faith. -
What We’ll Discover about God in Heaven
This article is written by Andrew M. Davis and is sponsored by Baker Books. In his new book, The Glory Now Revealed, Andrew paints a dynamic, scripturally-based picture of heaven as a place where we continually discover new aspects of God’s glory displayed in his past works throughout the history of the world.
Who can fully appraise the treasures of God’s glory woven into even a single day of history? We all underestimate the value of those treasures! The Bible makes this amazing assertion about time: “With the Lord one day is as a thousand years” (2 Pet. 3:8). It is as though God sees every single second of history in extreme slow motion. The activity of any single day is utterly mindboggling: all over the world, human beings are speaking, acting, making choices, creating. And God is there, watching and recording everything.
But Scripture goes beyond a simple assertion of God’s presence and awareness. The doctrine of providence teaches that God is acting decisively through the greatest and smallest events to bring about his sovereign purposes. He controls the casting of a lot (Prov. 16:33) and the decisions of a king (21:1). He oversees the death of a sparrow (Matt. 10:29) and the birth of a mountain goat (Job 39:1). He chooses the time and circumstances of our birth as well as our death, numbering all the days in between (Ps. 139:16). He acts in ways that are incomprehensible to us, and his footsteps cannot be tracked (Rom. 11:33). The daily actions of God are immeasurable and worthy of praise: secretly restraining tyrants, directing the complex flow of international commerce, answering the prayers of a child, protecting persecuted house church leaders, convicting Christians of secret sin, orchestrating the initial meeting of a man and woman who will someday be married.
The sovereign salvation plan of God was crafted before the foundation of the world, bought at infinite cost by the blood of his Son, and applied by the Holy Spirit to individuals in every generation and in every corner of the world. Every day, that plan generates unique treasures . . . thousands of years of thousands of years.
But most details of that plan are hidden from human view, forgotten by succeeding generations, lost through the death of eyewitnesses, and buried under the rise and rubble of nations. God is temporarily deprived of the glory he deserves for both his mighty and minute deeds.
The vast majority of God’s glorious deeds in history have never been recorded in any book and never will be. They were performed in the obscure lives of people the world would consider unremarkable. These ranks of the redeemed received amazing grace poured on them, and their stories are well worth learning to the glory of God. Yet not only are those stories lost to posterity but the full dimensions of God’s activities in saving their souls were often veiled from them as well. They never fully realized how God orchestrated providential occurrences in space and time to bring them to faith in Christ and to help them grow in grace after that. But why should God be robbed of his glory by having those works hidden forever, lost in the dust of the past?
Increased heavenly understanding of earthly history will in turn increase our heavenly joy. This eternal education in history will be glorious! We will be so free from selfish concerns for our reputations that we will finally see God at the glorious center of it all—the Redeemer, Protector, Warrior, Ruler, Healer, Feeder, Author, Perfecter—in a word, the Savior worthy of all praise.
