For someone who reads theology all year round, it’s nice to have a light, non-note-taking summer read that gets the heart racing and strains the eyeballs in afternoon-long episodes of reading on the porch. And thanks to C.J. Mahaney’s recommendations, I found a book for that exact purpose.  

Riveting, sorrowful, and well-worth the time, James L. Swanson’s book takes an historical, hour-by-hour look at the events following Lincoln’s assassination. There’s so much I didn’t know, like the fact that John Wilkes Booth’s team of conspirators also targeted William Seward and Andrew Johnson. 

This quote, from Boston Corbett, the man who shot Booth, fascinated me (I hope it doesn’t give away too much):

“While Booth’s body lay before me, yet alive, but wounded, and when I saw that the bullet had struck him just back of the ear, about the same spot that his bullet hit Mr. Lincoln, I said within myself, ‘what a fearful God we serve’” (pp. 340-41).

While the world continues on its kick about self-autonomy, independence, and self-reliant living, Jesus turns the world upside down. Instead, it’s those who realize their desperate need and who go to Jesus that are truly happy. 

The two blind men in Matthew 20, fully aware of their desperate need of Christ, cry out more and more in the face of a taunting, rebuking crowd. 

“Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!” The crowd rebuked them, telling them to be silent, but they cried out all the more” (vv. 30-31).

The men’s plea for mercy shows that they knew that God didn’t owe them anything, but rather, that they could only ask on the ground of His generosity. They are aware of their need, and they are aware of Christ’s power.  

The question is, what makes a person bold in approach to Christ in the face of ridicule—fearless of what man may say or think or do to him? 

The answer is desperate need coupled with knowledge of one’s own wretchedness before God and confidence in the gracious character of God (Ps. 145:8-9). The blind men were fearless about the crowd because they knew how helplessly sick and diseased they were, and they knew that Jesus could heal them. 

Men dying of cancer don’t delay in going to the doctor, no matter what others say. 

So, turning the world on its head, Jesus blesses those who know they are needy, who know that they can’t merit God’s salvation, and who trust that God is gracious to give them abundantly all that they desire. 

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3).

Needy is the best place to be before a generous and loving God whose blessing we can never earn.

There are those times when, despite the use of God-appointed means, joy seems to tarry. Darkness hovers all about us, and there is a serious threat to our souls that we stop doing what is clearly our duty to do. 

How do we press on when joy escapes us? We think and pray like the psalmist: 

“Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like streams in the Negeb! Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him” (Psalm 126:4-6). 

The real question in view is, ‘How do we plow and sow the seed of the Word in our hearts in seasons when heart work is tremendously hard work?’ Clearly our hearts need the work, for without breaking up the fallow ground or planting the seeds of the Word, there will be no rich harvest of joy in God. But what do we do when that work doesn’t seem to be producing any fruit? 

We listen to Scripture in faith. We keep sowing, and we keep plowing through the fields of our hearts, all the while with tears streaming down our brokenhearted faces, knowing that God has promised: as you keep laboring over your heart according to Scripturally appointed means, God will bring joy. 

Yes, there are times when it seems like all the work we do in our hearts is coming to nothing. But, ultimately, God who dwells richly in us through His Spirit will produce a harvest of righteousness through sanctification. So we don’t hide our sorrow. Instead, we keep on sowing, trusting in God’s promise: He who goes out weeping and sowing will come home with shouts of joy. 

There is a dark night, but there is always the light of the morning. 

What could be better, after a long day of meetings, than coming home, enjoying some time in the Word and with Bishop Ryle, and then being delightfully amused by my son?

Thanks to the grandparents’ book purchase, he is learning animal noises. And the one he has down pat?

“What sound does a lion make?”

“RAHHHHHHH!”

I think that might have been one of the best moments of my day. Thank God for unexpected smiles, from unexpected things.   

Jesus said that he was not honored in his home town, among his closest family and friends. 

“A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household” (Matt. 13:57). 

What struck me about this passage is that those who are often times most familiar with Jesus are most prone to unbelief. But why? 

It’s because they see Him all the time, and instead of responding in awe and faith, they merely say, “Yeah, there goes Jesus again, doing another miracle.” They have become so acquainted with Jesus that He doesn’t awe them anymore. 

I am reminded in my own life that, especially in the ministry, it is easy to become so familiar with the holy things of God that they no longer become awesome, faith-inspiring, joy-producing works of God. So what do we do? 

The same thing Jesus did—not because He was bored with Himself, but because He had weighty things going on in His life, like the death of his friend John the Baptist: 

“Now when Jesus heard [that John was beheaded], he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself” (Matt. 14:13). 

And, when we meet Jesus in a desolate place, just like the crowd that followed Him there, we are fed in abundance: 

“And they all ate and were satisfied” (Matt. 14:20). 

There is a time to minister. But there is also a time to go away, to a desolate place, and be fed spiritually by Jesus and renewed in the things of God. 

The inadequacies pastors feel have, up until now, been a somewhat distant (yet real) theme for me. But now, after preaching and laboring amidst God’s people, I understand Paul’s cry: 

“For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Cor. 2:15-16). 

Who is sufficient to be the aroma of God? Who is sufficient to proclaim God’s perfect and wondrous Word to the church and to the world? Who is sufficient even to have a part, though but a means, to the spread of the aroma of God’s glory in Christ throughout the world? Not me.

But, Sunday afternoon, the soul cries out for the living God (Psalm 42:1, ff.), and these words are like a stream of cool, refreshing water on a parched land:

“[The knowledge of God's providence] cannot but bring strong security to the soul, to know that in all variety of changes and intercourse of good and bad events, God, and our God, [has] such a disposing hand. Whatsoever befalls us, all serves to bring God’s electing love, and our glorification together, God’s providence [serves] this purpose to save us…God [often] [disposes] little occasions to great purposes” (Soul’s Conflict, Sibbes, p. 206).   

Not in our sufficiency or strength, nor in our wisdom, but in the wisdom and power of God do we draw the courage to speak oracles of God, for His glory. And what hope this is, that even in the weakest, smallest effort to do justice to God’s Word, He is often pleased to do His bidding. 

Ever feel like it’s no use to keep fighting the fight of faith? John Piper had some encouraging thoughts today on the Desiring God blog about God’s deliverance in the last hour, and the importance of hoping till the end. 

Welcome home. After nine months away from Colorado, we finally made it back—1170 miles, one smiley baby, and a year of seminary in the books. It feels like we never left, and yet it feels like we’ve been gone for years.

If there was a passage of Scripture that hangs as a banner over the last year, it is Isaiah 46:

“Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save” (vv. 3-4). 

God has carried us. In Colorado, He carried us. To Kentucky, He carried us. And now He has carried us back again. If anything it speaks of the covenant faithfulness of the Lord, and His sovereign rule over the events of our lives in every state, city, and country. God sets the times and periods of our dwelling (Acts 17:26), and He carries His people, for His glory.

And, being in Colorado, what do you do but go for a walk in the wide-open, blue-skied, far-as-you-can-see, awe-inspiring nature of God’s creation? Even the little boy enjoyed a first-time trip in a backpack. 

And he conquered his first set of stairs with ease at the grandparent’s house—his first Colorado adventure. 

Finally, as we make a temporary stop to a temporary home, I can’t help but ache in my heart for my final home with Christ, when I shall see His glory face to face. Ultimately we walk into suffering, because we seek not the gain of Louisville, nor Boulder, but the city that is to come. 

“Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:13-14). 

After a long, smooth day of travel, our son was about to fall asleep in the car. He was rubbing his eyes like crazy as Daddy put him in his seat. And then he started screaming like a banshee. He wouldn’t open his right eye, and I thought he might have got something spicy in it from dinner. 

And then I tried to open the eye, only to find that his eyelid had curled in on itself and was restricting him from opening his eye. It was freaky. My biggest mistake was in showing my wife, who let out a loud yelp and took 10 steps back from the car in anguish and horror, her hands clasping her mouth. The next thing I heard was a lady’s voice from the car a few spaces over, “Ma’am, is everything alright?” 

With my wife in hysteria, I did all I could do—I peeled the eye back to its normal position, wiped the stream of tears from my son’s face, and tried to get my wife to calm down and get into the car. Priceless.

Second Best

The other priceless moment of the trip came somewhere in Kansas City, when we were listening to a message by C.J. Mahaney, a pastor from Maryland, ask a group of pastors, “Are you a joyful pastor?” My wife turned to my son, then screaming, and said, rather therapeutically, “Son, are you joyfully sitting in your car seat?” Priceless moment number two. 

After the removal of Ward Churchill from the University of Colorado, Boulder, I couldn’t help but notice an article in the Denver Post today about how the university is trying to pursue “intellectual diversity.” Most interesting, however, is not the political malay, but the evidence about where “tolerance theory” leads.

For a college that champions diversity, it’s interesting that the actual makeup of the student body and faculty is remarkably uniform in composition. Read the article for yourself. Ask yourself this question: why is it that those who promote diversity apart from the gospel of Jesus Christ actually get farthest from it? It seems those who pursue tolerance as an end in itself never reach it. 

The ultimate “diversity” is only possible through the coming kingdom of Jesus Christ, which is described in the Book of Revelation—a kingdom in which one truth is embraced by a redeemed people and everyone bows the knee in praise and song forever to Jesus Christ: 

Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth (Rev. 5:9-10).