Fall is fading, winter is approaching

It snowed yesterday and last night, not much, but some. Debbie and I went for a walk in the snow late last night; it was crisp and beautiful on the fields and trees. We saw deer tracks crossing the road at several spots. As we were walking, the clouds broke and the stars and moon came out, lighting the woods around us and turning them into a winter wonderland. It is easy to worship God when it is so beautiful.

This morning, the temperature was at 19 F, with a crisp north wind. It was a bit cool riding the bike, but my main concern was the ice that had formed when the slushy snow froze as the temperature dropped during the night. But, by noon the sun had melted most of the snow :(

I wish I had taken the camera home last night to get a picture out my study window. It really is a lovely sight down the road there.

The provision is already there

Finney was a firm believer in holiness. Not legalistic holiness, but heart holiness:

A precept requiring us to consider ourselves “dead indeed to sin, but alive to God” would be utterly impossible if no provision were made for us to have such relationships to sin on the one hand, and to God through Christ on the other...Who does not see that the very command implies that there is a foundation laid and adequate provision made for the state required?—Charles Finney, God's Call, page 208

Yes! We depend on God's provision; it can't be our works, in fact, Finney goes on to say:

We cannot begin to receive by grace until we renounce all expectation of attaining by natural works. It is only when we are empty of self that we begin to be filled with Christ.—Charles Finney, God's Call, page 209

<idle musing>
Yes! It has to be all God, or it is rotten to the core. Dead to self, but alive in Christ. That is the core of Christianity. Anything else is window dressing. All “good works” that we might do have to spring from Christ within us or they are simply dung/garbage/σκυβαλα.
</idle musing>

Apples, again!

I followed Renee's advice and cooked down some of the applesauce over the weekend to make apple butter.

Unfortunately, we only have a small crockpot, so I could only cook down 2 quarts at a time. You have to cook it down for a good 5-6 hours to get it thick enough, so it took most of the day. I didn't follow the recipe she linked to, but instead just added 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves, and 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg per batch. I don't add sugar to my applesauce or apple butter. It turned out great!

So, now I have 14 pints of apple butter (do the math on how long it took, if you want). I think I'll find a faster way to cook it down next year. Maybe a 9 x 13 inch pan in the oven? Do you think that will work?

It's already here

“...if you want to be saved, you must accept a prepared salvation, on already prepared and full and present. You must be wiling to give up al your sins and be saved from them—now and forever. Until you agree to this, you cannot be save at all. Many people would be willing to be saved in heave, if they could hold on to some sins while on earth—or rather they think they would like heaven on such terms. But the fact is, they would dislike a pure heart and a holy life in heaven as much as they do on earth, and they utterly deceive themselves in supposing that they are ready or even willing to go to the heaven that God has prepared for His people. No, there can be no heaven except for those who accept a salvation from all sin in this wold. They must take the Gospel as a system that hold no compromise with sin—a system that intends full deliverance from sin even now, and makes provisions accordingly. Any other gospel is not the true one, and to accept Christ's Gospel in any other sense is not to accept it at all. Its first and its last condition is sworn and eternal renunciation of all sin.—Charles Finney, God's Call, pages 170-171

Eisenbrauns monthly sale for November

I forgot to mention this, and it is already the middle of the month! Eisenbrauns is offering a 15% discount on all used books through the entire month of November!

The danger of riches (long)

The other day Debbie and I were discussing the prosperity “gospel” and how it ignores certain scriptures, especially I Timothy 6:9: “But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction.” RSV

Interestingly enough, John Wesley wrote a sermon entitled “The Danger of Riches.” Here is a few lines from it:

The Apostle does not here speak of gaining riches unjustly, but of quite another thing: His words are to be taken in their plain obvious sense, without any restriction or qualification whatsoever. St. Paul does not say, “They that will be rich by evil means, by theft, robbery, oppression, or extortion; “they that will be rich by fraud; or dishonest art;” but simply, “They that will be rich:” These, allowing, supposing the means they use to be ever so innocent, “fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful desires, which drown men in destruction and perdition.”

But who believes that? Who receives it as the truth of God? Who is deeply convinced of it? Who preaches this; Great is the company of preachers at this day, regular and irregular; but who of them all, openly and explicitly, preaches this strange doctrine?

He goes on to explain a bit more:

First, let us consider, what it is to be rich. What does the Apostle mean by this expression?

The preceding verse fixes the meaning of that: “Having food and raiment,” (literally coverings; for the word includes lodging as well as clothes,) “let us be there with content.” “But they that will be rich;” that is, who will have more than these; more than food and coverings. It plainly follows, what ever is more than these is, in the sense of the Apostle, riches; whatever is above the plain necessaries, or at most conveniences, of life. Whoever has sufficient food to eat, and raiment to put on, with a place where to lay his head, and something over, is rich.

Let us consider, Secondly, What is implied in that expression, “They that will be rich?” And does not this imply, First, they that desire to be rich, to have more than food and coverings; they that seriously and deliberately desire more than food to eat, and raiment to put on, and a place where to lay their head, more than the plain necessaries and conveniences of life? All, at least, who allow themselves in this desire, who see no harm in it, desire to be rich.

And so do, Secondly, all those that calmly, deliberately, and of set purpose, endeavor after more than food and coverings; that aim at and endeavor after, not only so much worldly substance as will procure them the necessaries and conveniences of life, but more than this, whether to lay it up, or lay it out in superfluities. All these undeniably prove their “desire to be rich,” by their endeavors after it.

So what is the result of this desire? Wesley examines that next:

This seems to mean much more than simply, they are tempted. They enter into the temptation: They fall plump down into it. The waves of it compass them about, and cover them all over. Of those who thus enter into temptation, very few escape out of it. And the few that do are sorely scorched by it, though not utterly consumed. If they escape at all, it is with the skin of their teeth, and with deep wounds that are not easily healed.

They fall, Secondly, into “a snare,” the snare of the devil, which he hath purposely set in their way. I believe the Greek word properly means a gin, a steel trap, which shows no appearance of danger. But as soon as any creature touches the spring, it suddenly closes; and either crushes its bones in pieces, or consigns it to inevitable ruin.

Not a good place to be, is it? And the ultimate end is:

Riches, either desired or possessed, naturally lead to some or other of these foolish and hurtful desires; and, by affording the means of gratifying them all, naturally tend to increase them. And there is a near connection between unholy desires, and every other unholy passion and temper. We easily pass from these to pride, anger, bitterness, envy, malice, revengefulness; to an headstrong, unadvisable, unreprovable spirit: Indeed, to every temper that is earthly, sensual, or devilish. All these, the desire or possession of riches naturally tends to create, strengthen, and increase.

Sounds like the U.S., doesn't it? Don't agree with us? We'll invade/bomb/kill you until you do!

But, what is the remedy? Wesley had a 3-fold plan:

You may gain all you can, without hurting either your soul or body; you may save all you can, by carefully avoiding every needless expense; and yet never lay up treasures on earth, nor either desire or endeavor so to do.

Permit me to speak as freely of myself as I would of any other man. I gain all I can (namely, by writing) without hurting, either my soul or body. I save all I can, not willingly wasting anything, not a sheet of paper, not a cup of water, I do not lay out anything, not a shilling, unless as a sacrifice to God. Yet by giving all I can, I am effectually secured from “laying up treasures upon earth.” Yea, and I am secure from either desiring or endeavoring, it, as long as I give all I can.

I highly recommend that you read the whole sermon; it is available on-line here. A sound word for a time like this.

Say it isn't so!

Yikes! This is tragic. I was over in the shipping warehouse receiving books and I noticed an ICC volume that looked like it had been crunched. I picked it off the shelving cart and took a closer look.

NO!!! It can't be. But, it was and is. The ICC volume, The Gospel according to Matthew, volume 1, the cloth bound version, is Print on Demand! That's right, they want $156.00 for a non-signatured, perfect bound, hardcover book that is print-on-demand.

What a bummer :(

Christianity and war

I am posting this a day late, but Peter Kirk has a good post on Christianity and Veterans/Armistice Day:

If military people wish to have their own parades to mark their fallen comrades, they are welcome to do so. But please can they do so well away from the churches, whose fundamental attitudes are, or should be, completely at odds with theirs. And please can churches stop pandering to the expectations of those in the world outside, and of those among their own numbers, who hold anti-Christian militaristic views and expect the church to hold ceremonies for them, and disrupt its own regular programmes to do so.

<idle musing>
Amen! Preach it! The church should be working for peace among all, not promoting a nationalistic agenda.

By the way, I saw a wonderful bumper sticker the other day: Real Patriots Question Their Government. Nationalism and patriotism have gotten confused lately, as has civil religion and true Christianity.

OK, go ahead and fire away. [as I put on my flame suit and duck]
</idle musing>

The Yoke

“Their [some Christians] real feeling is that Christ's service is an iron collar—an insufferably hard yoke. Hence, they work so hard to throw off some of this burden. They try to say that Christ does not require much, if any, self-denial; they say that Christ does not require much, if any, deviation from the course of worldliness and sin. Oh, if they could only get the standard of Christian duty quite down to a level with the fashions and customs of the world! How much easier it would then be to live a Christian lfe and to wear Christ's yoke!

“But Christ's yoke as it really is, in their view, becomes an iron collar. doing the will of Chris, instead of their own, is a hard business for them. Because doing His will is religion, they groan under the idea that they must be religious. Of these people I ask, “How much religion of this kind would it take to make hell?” Surely not much! When it give you no joy to do God's pleasure, and yet you are required to do His pleasure in order to be saved, then you are perpetually forced into doing what you hate as the only means of escaping hell. Would not this be itself a hell? Can you not see that in this state of mind you are not saved and cannot be?”—Charles Finney, God's Call, page 165

Where's the fire?

<idle musing>
I was talking to Ryan, our son, the other day and one of the topics that came up was the Ephesians in Acts 19, where they burn their sorcery scrolls. The text says that the value was around 50,000 drachmas, but what does that mean to the average reader? Not much. So, to help Ryan get a better idea of what the value was, I decided to make a few assumptions and calculate the value in dollars, so here we go...

The average income in the U.S. right now is around $30,000.00 per year. That works out to about $15.00 per hour. Assuming that a person works 8 hours per day, that means they make about $120.00 per day, before taxes. The average income for a day worker in New Testament times was a drachma. So, let's extrapolate and get an approximate market value for the scrolls. $120.00 x 50,000 = $6,000,000.00! Yep, that is the correct number of zeroes. $6 million! Don't like that number? Think that I should allow for 30% in taxes? OK, but that still comes to $4.2 million!

And, this wasn't any mega-church, either. Let's suppose that there were 120 members, a very large church for the time. That means that each person burned $50,000 worth of books! No wonder “the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.” These people put their money where their mouth was—almost 2 years' worth of wages, up in smoke! How many people in today's church would be willing to do that? More importantly, would I be willing to do it?

Hmmm, let's bring that a bit closer to home. I currently have a little over 1,000 books (I have been cutting down my library for several years now), and I would estimate that the value per volume is around $18.00—some are worth much more, some much less. That means my library is only worth $18,000, at most $20,000. Better add some more stuff on the pile. My bike is worth about $1800; Debbie's is worth about $800; our car is worth less than $1,000. The lawn tractor is worth about $300. And I can't forget the trailer for the bike, $300.00; and the Yakima™ rack is worth a couple of hundred. That still doesn't even bring me to half what they got rid of. I'm running out of stuff to throw on the fire...

You get the idea? They got rid of anything that stood between them and God. It wasn't the cost that mattered, it was whether it got in the way of serving God with their whole hearts.
</idle musing>

True Riches

“Sinners act as if they were afraid to be saved. Often they seem to be trying to make their salvation as difficult as possible. For example, many of them know what Christ has said about the danger of riches and the difficulty of saving rich men. They have read from His lips, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!” (Mark 10:23), and “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (v. 25). This they know, and yet how many of them are in a mad rush to be rich! For this end, some are ready to sacrifice their consciences—some their health—and all seem deliberately ready to sacrifice even their souls! How could they more certainly ensure their own damnation?

“Thus they regard damnation as if it were salvation, and salvation as if it were damnation. They rush toward damnation as if it were heaven, and flee salvation as if it were hell.”—Charles Finney, God's Call, page 132

Apples, apples everywhere...

No, not the computer kind!

We live fairly close to an abandoned apple orchard. We love apples, so all summer we have been watching the apples ripen and wondering if we could get some. Finally, I contacted the owner and got his permission to pick some. Because of all kinds of other things going on (AAR being one of them), we were unable to get to them until last Tuesday. Even then, it was getting dark by the time we got there.

It had frozen several times, so some of the apples that were hanging on the trees were just mush. But, some were very good. We also managed to get a good number of windfallen ones. All told, in about 45 minutes we got about 1.5 bushels. That's a lot of apples, but we love apples, so we figured we would use them all.

Since many of them were windfalls, we needed to process them right away. So, last Tuesday and Wednesday night, we made apple sauce—lots of it. Tuesday night I made 10 quarts, Wednesday night we made pints—21 of them, but we love apples. I add it to my home made yogurt for a sweetener.

I wanted to make apple butter, but it would have taken too long for the apples to cook down enough. Maybe next year...

We still love apples, but that was a little much for the middle of the week. I don't want to handle another apple for a while. Next year I think we'll pick them on a Friday night or Saturday.

Finally

“If we say “I believe in Jesus” but it doesn't effect[sic] the way we live, the answer is not that now we need to add hard work to our faith so much as that we haven't truly understood or believed in Jesus after all.”—Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God, page 126

<idle musing>
That is the last quote from The Prodigal God. I hope you have learned a good bit about grace from the brief quotes I have been giving.

I finished the book back in September, but had been unable to get these sections that I had marked typed up until now. Reviewing them has been good; I re-learned some things that I thought I had already learned, but apparently hadn't.

The grace of God is more vast and deeper than we realize. What we have in Christ is far greater than we can begin to understand. We stand at the edge of the beach, seeing the ocean stretched before us and think we understand it. But we haven't even touched the water, let alone begun to plumb its depths...
</idle musing>

Lingamish is right

Go! Now! Read it! All of it!

Grace is dangerous

“You knew you had to obey God because if you didn't he wouldn't answer your prayers or take you to heaven. But if you remove this fear and talk so much about free grace and unmerited acceptance—what incentive will you have to live a good life? It seems like this gospel way of living won't produce people who are as faithful and diligent to obey God's will without question.

“But if, when you have lost all fear of punishment you also lose incentive to live an obedient life, then what was your motivation in the first place It could only have been fear. What other incentive is there? Awed, grateful love.”—Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God, page 122

<idle musing>
Wow! That last paragraph hit hard. What was/is my motivation? Is it love of God, or fear of the consequences. It is so easy to lapse into the elder brother mentality; no wonder we need grace on a moment-by-moment basis! Otherwise we lapse back into performance based religion instead of grace-based Christianity.
</idle musing>

News

Since Joel and Renee have announced it on their blog, I guess it is OK to publish it here, too: Debbie and I are going to be grandparents again! And, not just once, but twice. Ryan and Emily are also expecting a baby, although theirs it due in May.

Guess where Debbie and I will be next Spring?

Transforming Love

“Pharisees are being good but out of a fearful need to control God. They don't really trust him or love him. To them God is an exacting boss, not a loving father. Christians have seen something that has transformed their hearts toward God so they can finally love and rest in the father...

Jesus Christ, who had all the power in the world, saw us enslaved by the very things we thought would free us. So he emptied himself of his glory and became a servant (Philippians 2). He laid aside the infinities and immensities of his being and, at the cost of his life paid the debt for our sins, purchasing us the only place our hearts can rest, in his Father's house.

Knowing he did this will transform us from the inside out...Why wouldn't you want to offer yourself to someone like this? Selfless love destroys the mistrust in our hearts toward God that makes us either younger orelder brothers.”—Timothy Keller,The Prodigal God, pages 86-88

<idle musing>
From the inside out! That is the only kind of transformation that counts! All other is simply surface and makes us nothing more than white-washed tombs.
</idle musing>

The cure

“It is only when you see the desire to be your own Savior and Lord—lying beneath both your sins and your moral goodness—that you are on the verge of understanding the gospel and becoming a Christian indeed. When you realize that the antidote to being bad is not just being good, you are on the brink. If you follow through, it will change everything—how you relate to God, self, others, the world, your work, your sins, your virtue. It's called the new birth because its so radical.

“This, however, only brings us to the brink of Jesus' message, not to its heart. This tells us what we must turn from, not what, or who[m], we must turn to.”—Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God>, pages 78-79

<idle musing>
To the edge of the message. But so often that's where we stop...
</idle musing>

AAR Day 3

This post is going to be a stream of consciousness post, as I compose it throughout the day.

I got to the exhibit hall early to use the computers in the Cyber Cafe, a little after 7:30. Wow, they must have just disinfected something, because the ammonia smell was really strong. It dissipated in about 5 minutes, but it was sure strong for those few minutes.

I wish I were the one running the Cyber Cafe. They are the only place with lines! The shortest it has been is 1 person waiting, and they have about 10 computers.

I just found out that Barack Obama is going to be staying at this hotel tonight. They are shutting everything down tomorrow morning and no freight is leaving the hotel until Thursday. They are allowing individuals to take their boxes out to vans, but that is all. I hope I don't have a problem getting out of here tonight, but I do feel sorry for all the people who have to catch a plane tomorrow. They will probably have to allow an extra hour or two to get to the airport.

Well, at 3:00 PM I heard the tape guns start; that means people are tearing down and packing up. By 4:00 about 50% of the back section were gone, but the front section seemed to be holding on. By 4:30, about two-thirds to three-quarters of the back were packed up, or packing up. The front section caught the bug. I took some pictures of what it looked like, but they are too depressing to post. At 5:10, the official announcement came over the loudspeaker: “Due to popular demand, the exhibit hall is closed.”

How depressing. The people who promised to come by on Monday didn't. I think I can safely say that I speak for all the publishers in saying that it was a depressing conference with disappointing to non-existent sales...I hope SBL isn't like this!

More elder brother activity

“Elder-brother obedience only leads to a slavish, begrudging compliance to the letter of the law. It is one thing to be honest and avoid lies for your sake, but it is another to do so for God's sake, for truth's sake, and for the love of the people around us. A person motivated by love rather than fear will not only obey the letter of the law, but will eagerly seek out new ways to carry out business with transparency and integrity.

“Honesty born of fear does nothing to root out the fundamental cause of evil in the world—the radical self-centeredness of the human heart. If anything, fear-based morality strengthens it, since ultimately elder brothers are being moral only for their own benefit. They may be kind to other and helpful to the poor, but at a deeper level they are doing it either so God will bless them, in the religious version of elder brotherness, or so they can think of themselves as virtuous, charitable persons, in the secular version of it...

Elder brothers may do good to others, but not out of delight in the deeds themselves or for the love of people or the pleasure of God. They are not really feeding the hungry and clothing the poor, they are feeding and clothing themselves. The heart's fundamental self-centeredness is not only intact but also nurtured by fear-based moralism and this can and does erupt in shocking ways. That is why so many churches are plagued with gossip and fighting. Or why so many moral people live apparently chaste lives and then suddenly fall int othe maost scandalous sins. Underneath the seeming unselfishness is great self-centeredness.

Religious and moral duties are a great burden, often a crushing one. Emotional frustration and inner boredom with life is repressed and denied. Elder brothers are under great pressure to appear, even to themselves, happy and content. This is the reason that sometimes highly moral elder brothers will blow up their lives and, to the shock of all who know them, throw off the chains of their obligations and begin living like younger brothers.”—Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God, pages 60-61, 63

<idle musing>
Interesting take on it, isn't it? Maybe that is why we have seen so many high-profile people crash and burn of late. The pressure to perform must be enormous.
</idle musing>