Indescribable Descriptives
Talented songwriters can do better. It is not as if we don’t have an inspired songbook to show us how it’s done. Let’s mine the Word of God and the world of God for analogies that will fire and inspire the Christian imagination to rightly know and encounter our infinite God.
Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”: make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”
C. S. Lewis
Lewis helps us to recognize a flaw in much modern Christian songwriting. No doubt, many contemporary songs are vast improvements on the gospel-song cliché-mill. The re-commitment to theological clarity and depth in many contemporary hymns is something to rejoice over, and any serious Christian will be thankful for an injection of sound theological ideas into the gelatinous world of modern evangelical conviction.
With all that said, I find Lewis’s sentiment played out before me in not a few modern songs. These songs seem to try to gather as many superlative adjectives as possible that will fit the meter of the song. These are then piled on top of one another, and the result is a rapid-fire of high-concentrate adjectives. The resulting lyrics are something like: “Indescribable majesty, incomparable glory, unbounded mercy, immeasurable beauty…”
Yet for all this verbal altitude, the effect is palpably flat. Instead of soaring into the heights of praising God as the ultimate Being, we sing these super-hero adjectives with a sense of incomplete affection. It is as if we are hoping that these superlative adjectives will kick-start our delight in God. Some worshippers succeed, others don’t. Likely, most content themselves with the thought that ascribing superlative adjectives to God is surely the right way to go, even if little moral excitement is raised in response to them.
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Good Guys, Bad Guys, and a Missing Category
Written by R. Scott Clark |
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
The point of having confessions is to establish boundaries of what is acceptable teaching and preaching within a communion…the Standards are the Reformed theological framework within which the denomination and her ministers are to carry their service.The largest NAPARC denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) is in the throes of an identity crisis. Founded by Southern Presbyterians and emerging out of the old PCUS (the Southern version of the Presbyterian mainline) it has always been more more broadly evangelical than the other members of NAPARC. It became even more broadly evangelical when it merged with the Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod (RPCES). It is in crisis just now because in part because of the relatively decentralized character of the PCA and a relatively lax approach to confessional subscription, which has developed over the last twenty years. In that time an influential and organized progressive movement has developed in the PCA. It has allowed them to adapt and adopt pragmatic church-growth principles, to take significant exceptions to confessional standards, turn a blind eye to the Federal Vision movement in the church courts, create functionally female deacons and elders, and to promote the so-called Side-B approach to homosexuality. When the progressive or perhaps better, latitudinarian wing of the PCA is challenged on these things the response has been consistent. See the PCA resource page below for the evidence. The rhetoric is remarkably consistent. It is, in effect, “when I joined the PCA it was predominantly influenced (insert list of good guys and heroes) but now the PCA is threatened by (anonymous) fundamentalists. We must resist this movement and return to the good old days.” David Cassidy’s essay of September 21, 2021 is the latest example in this genre.
The Contested History of the PCA
One of the difficulties in analyzing the PCA is that there is no agreed historical narrative. The wing of the PCA represented by Cassidy’s essay tells one story about the identity of the PCA and other wings have their own narratives.
The sociological reality of the PCA is that it is probably actually multiple denominations formally connected by presbyteries and general assembly but actually divided from one another by their varying approaches to the Westminster Standards, to worship, and to polity at the congregational level. The PCA in urban cities (e.g., New York and St Louis) is starkly different from the PCA in Greenville, SC and Jackson, MS.
In a confessional Presbyterian denomination, the churches would be united around the theology, piety, and practice confessed in an envisioned by the Westminster Standards. As much as I have been able to tell, the PCA has probably never been a confessional Presbyterian denomination thus defined. Parts of the PCA have always been socially and theologically conservative. It is probably the case that the PCA was more socially and theologically conservative and cohesive at its founding but the joining with and receiving of the Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod moved the PCA in a more broadly evangelical direction theologically and practically. The adoption of “Good Faith Subscription” around the turn of the century was another watershed moment further pushing the PCA away from confessional Presbyterianism. There are as many ways to subscribe the Standards in the PCA as there are presbyteries. In some presbyteries. The adoption of the strategic plan (2010) was another watershed moment. The vote at General Assembly (2007) against the Federal Vision has turned out to be a largely symbolic but hollow victory. In practice, at presbytery, the PCA has been quite reluctant to discipline actual living and breathing Federal Visionists.
Since the adoption of the Strategic Plan, those who favor a more progressive and latitudinarian presbyterianism have carried the day in the PCA. In that light the Sturm und Drang communicated in the the laments by the reigning latitudinarians is puzzling. They have largely dominated the more conservative elements in the PCA. The confessionalist wing is a minority party in the PCA with some outstanding voices but probably relatively little actual influence.
The Missing Category
The bête noir of the latitudinarian party are the alleged “fundamentalists.” This passage in Cassidy’s essay is striking:
Looking back, men like Kennedy Smartt, Frank Barker, Francis Schaeffer, James Kennedy, David Nicholas, Cortez Cooper, RC Sproul, Steve Brown, and many others were not only deeply Reformed but also broadly evangelical, and resistant to fundamentalist impulses. They showed the way ahead on many critical issues while embracing authentic confessional integrity.
These are his good guys, those of the “majority…who favored a Good Faith approach [to confessional subscription]” as opposed the fundamentalists, whom he seems to regard as equivalent to those who favor “a more strict approach to the Confession…”. Francis Schaeffer certainly had deep roots in American fundamentalism. His early career was arguably fundamentalist as was his later career, when he returned to form to became something of a right-wing culture warrior. D. James Kennedy was hardly a model of progressive tolerance. In the same building that housed the seminary was a floor dedicated to taking back America for Christ. Coming out of the old PCUS, Kennedy was perhaps a little latitudinarian doctrinally but he did not agree with the National Partnership ethos regarding the Federal Vision, which he attacked from the pulpit quite forcefully. R. C. Sproul was hardly a doctrinal latitudinarian. Again, during the General Assembly of 2007, when the latitudinarians were calling for toleration of the Federal Vision, Sproul stood up and called the denomination to reject the FV categorically. So, this list would not seem to serve Cassidy’s argument very well.
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Omniscience
I’d like to talk about omniscience.
What would you do if you knew absolutely everything, even things that hadn’t yet happened? I imagine many people would pop into their nearest 7-Eleven and choose the winning lottery numbers. But for me—honestly, just once in my life, I’d like to join the fastest-moving line at my local branch of Target.
Unfortunately for my plan to triumphantly reach the checkout before other people, omniscience is one of God’s so-called “incommunicable” attributes, meaning that it’s an attribute that we do not share with Him. (We looked at two other incommunicable attributes in two earlier episodes of Simply Put when we thought about God’s omnipotence and His omnipresence.)
The word omniscience comes from the Latin omnis meaning “all” and scientia meaning “knowledge.” So literally, omniscience refers to the fact that God has all knowledge. There’s nothing hidden from Him—past, present or future—so there’s nothing that would surprise or confuse Him. And as well as knowing everything about the world and everything about Himself, He also, unlike us, knows how everything appears from every possible point of view.
Psalm 139 says:
O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways…Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.
The Lord searches every heart and understands every desire and every thought (1 Chron. 28:9).
Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account (Heb. 4:13).
What difference does this make? How does knowing that God knows everything make a radical difference to a person’s life?
Let me suggest three ways that’s God’s omniscience changes our lives for the better.
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Two Kinds of Sermons that Seem Expositional but Really Aren’t
Written by Matthew T. Martens and Theodore D. Martens |
Friday, August 11, 2023
Study the text. Understand its words. Observe the relationship of the words to one another. Consider the structure. But do all of this not as an end itself. Do it in order to get to the point of the text. Only then can you deliver a truly expository sermon that makes the point of the text the point of your sermon in a way that will thoroughly furnish your congregation unto all good works (2 Tim 3:17).Common in conservative evangelical circles today—certainly among the readers of ministries like 9Marks—is a professed commitment to expository preaching. We say “professed” commitment because our experience over decades as both a pastor and faithful church member, having either delivered or listened to thousands of sermons, has led us to the conclusion that much “expository preaching” does not in fact meet the definition.
Too many sermons focus on the biblical text, but fail to exposit the main point of the scriptural passage under consideration. To be clear, this critique isn’t merely an academic or definitional one. If a sermon fails to unpack the main point of the text at hand, the pastor is failing to preach the whole counsel of God regardless of how throughly the speaker examines the scriptural passage. Such a sermon fails to communicate what God intended to communicate by inspiring that text.
Let’s be more specific. Two kinds of preaching are often confused with expository preaching because of a superficial resemblance: “sequential preaching” and “observational preaching.” We’ll discuss them below. We pray that this discussion will be edifying to preachers as you seek to feed your flocks.
1. Sequential preaching is not necessarily expository preaching.
Many preachers believe they’re engaged in expository preaching simply because they sequentially preach through a particular book of the Bible. While there’s much to commend about this approach, it doesn’t necessarily equate to expository preaching.
For example, a pastor may preach a 16-week series through the book of Romans. That fact by itself would cause many preachers to think they’re doing expository preaching. But it’s not. Whether the sequential preacher is delivering an expository sermon in any given week depends on two things:whether the preacher has rightly identified the main point of the week’s assigned passage,
and whether the sermon then keeps as its focus the main point of the passage.An example may clarify this point. If, in the third week of the series, the preacher delivers a sermon on Romans 3 that centers on and rightly explains the doctrine of inspiration, then the preacher would not be preaching an expository sermon. Why do we say that? Because the main point of Romans 3 is not the doctrine of inspiration, but rather the fallenness of man. The entire chapter builds to man’s fallenness; Paul surveys the Old Testament and concludes that “all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory” (3:23).
To be sure, the doctrine of inspiration is mentioned, but only in passing in verse 2 (“the very words of God,” NIV). Simply put, inspiration is not the main point of Romans 3. Rather, the inspiration of the Old Testament is invoked by Paul to give authoritative weight to his recitation of passages that make his main point.
Furthermore, the main point of Romans 3 is not the unbelief of Israel (vs. 3), the faithfulness of God (vs. 3), the righteousness of God (vs. 5), the coming judgment of the world (vs. 6), or the ways men demonstrate depravity (vs. 13–18). All of those concepts appear in Romans 3 not as ends in themselves, but rather as elements of an argument toward Paul’s main point: we all, Jew and Gentile alike, have a sin problem that we cannot solve.
What distinguishes an expository sermon is not simply that what the preacher is saying is biblically accurate, but that it draws its main truth from the main point of the passage. An expository sermon on Romans 3 requires that the main point of the sermon is the main point—not a sub-point, not peripheral to the main point—of Romans 3.
Of course, there’s value in sequentially preaching through books of the Bible. It helps to ensure that the whole counsel of God is preached and you have “kept nothing back that was profitable for” the congregation (Acts 20:20 KJV). Furthermore, by taking an entire book under study, the preacher is forced to grapple with the flow of the author’s argument throughout. This increases the likelihood that the preacher is rightly identifying the main point of a particular sermon’s text.
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