And now there’s a small but very encouraging project underway that I think many of you will want to know about: The Robert Morrison Project.

(Morrison was the first Protestant missionary to China, arriving in 1807 and laboring for 27 years.)

The Robert Morrison Project is “a non-profit, non-denominational organization dedicated to legally translating and publishing reformed literature in China and other South East Asian countries.”

The White Horse Inn recently interviewed them about the Project.

Doing this legally is a long, painstaking process, requiring much patience. The Project is quite young, and in need of funding. If you want to make a strategic investment in the church of China, this would be a great place to start!

I don’t know the date of the following video (20 years ago?), but it’s well worth the 20 minutes to watch:

The Holiness Of God – R.C. Sproul from LuMeL on Vimeo.

You can also listen to Sproul’s recent talks from the Desiring God Pastors Conference from 2007:

1. The Holiness of God

2. The Holiness of Christ

3. Holiness and Justice

(You can download the files here.)

His latest review is quite lengthy: 20,000+ words (!) on R. Scott Clark’s Recovering the Reformed Confession (P&R, 2008). It’s worth the time to read for at least two reasons: First, as Frame mentions, “Clark presents here a view of what it is to be ‘Reformed’ that is very different from mine, and it may be good for the two of us, and other readers, to have the differences set forth and analyzed.” It’s an important discussion worth having. Secondly, it affords an author the opportunity to point out in some detail when his positions are being misunderstood and misrepresented, and therefore can be a service to all of us in a quest to become more careful readers. An excerpt:

Clark, as often in this book, is appalled by my conclusions, but he seems quite unable to describe them accurately, and he is completely unaware of my arguments for them, and of the problems that have led me to rethink these issues. In contrast, I have tried in this review to consider carefully, not only Clark’s conclusions, but his arguments. I will not let myself reject any of his conclusions without considering and evaluating his arguments. Criticizing an author’s conclusions without considering his arguments is a very common error in theology, and it is especially common among those who, like Clark, develop their theology out of history, rather than seeking to apply (!) biblical principles to our present questions and situations.

Again, the whole long thing is worth the read.

Update: I should add one qualifier as a general principle: when you read a negative book review, it’s good to treat the analysis as provisional subject to your own review of the book. After all, perhaps it is the reviewer who is misunderstanding things. (E.g., that’s what Walton claims in this recent response to Poythress.) Reviews can be helpful in guiding our reading and helping us to think through arguments, but they are no substitute for reading the book for ourselves.

Update2: Clark offers a very brief response.

You can download the messages here, or listen to them below.

Talk #1: Marriage and Sin

PDF lecture notes.

Talk #2: Marriage and Mercy

PDF lecture notes.

Talk #3: Marriage and Grace

PDF lecture notes.

You can also listen to a talk he gave that weekend, Parenting in Weakness:

PDF lecture notes.

HT: Todd Augustine

You can download it here.

They took a bit about his most recent book, A Better Freedom: Finding Life As Slaves of Christt (IVP, 2009). You can read the Introduction and chapter 1, My Master, online for free.

One of things he talked about is how his father never learned the lesson in life that “you are not your gift.”

Russell Moore, affected by the story of Card’s father, gave a recent sermon called “You Are Not Your Gift: Finding the Freedom to Fail in Ministry,” which you can listen to below:

You can download the file here.

For more sermons by Gamache—pastor of Sovereign Grace Fellowship—go here.

The LA Times reports that the president of the National Organization for Women is still outrageously outraged over the incredibly tame Focus on the Family/Tebow ad last night:

NOW president Terry O’Neill said [the Tebow ad] glorified violence against women. “I am blown away at the celebration of the violence against women in it,” she said. “That’s what comes across to me even more strongly than the anti-abortion message. I myself am a survivor of domestic violence, and I don’t find it charming. I think CBS should be ashamed of itself.”

The “violence against women” O’Neill refers to occurs when Tim Tebow tackles his mom Pam in an attempt at slapstick.

The offending ad is below. No word yet on whether or not NOW is equally outraged by the hyper-sexualized objectification of women in many of the other Super Bowl ads. Or whether or not they are bothered by the actual violence that is done to women who are just being born.

Congratulations to Drew Brees and the Saints!

I did a little digging and found a high school picture of Brees (above right).

Can anyone guess the guy on the left? It’s Brees’s all-state wide receiver from Westlake High School in Austin, Texas, where they won the state championship together.

Update: It’s Ben Peays, executive director of the Gospel Coalition.

HT: Jeff Brewer

Another frequent feature of acknowledgements—again, this seems to occur more often when the writer is an academic—is the apology to thos who have been inconvenienced by the writing of the book. I think the saddest one I ever read was from a handbook on interpreting a particular book of the Bible. The acknowledgments ended like this:

I have seen more than one author’s preface include apologies to children who frequently asked during the writing of the book, “When is Daddy going to be finished?” This book has taken so long from start to finish that my children have all grown up and moved away during that time. Maybe they asked about it in former days, but they gave up long ago if they did. My apology is aimed at others—at those editors, colleagues, family members, employers, students, and ultimately readers whose lives have been made at least somewhat uncomfortable by the book’s delay. At least it finally got done.

Wow. Leaving the reader depressed by the misery this book has caused is not exactly the best way to start said book!

But sometimes a writer breaks the mold and decides to have a bit of fun with the acknowledgements. Matt Labash, the enormously talented and entertaining long-form journalist for the Weekly Standard, has a new book out this week: Fly Fishing with Darth Vader: And Other Adventures with Evangelical Wrestlers, Political Hitmen, and Jewish Cowboys—a collection of his published profiles.*

I’m not, generally speaking, in the habit of acknowledging others’ contribution to my work. Not that I have anything against it in principle. It’s just that doing so takes away from valuable time in which I could be talking about myself. Still, in the interest of maintaining cordial relations with my family, friends, colleagues, supporters, and saboteurs, some thanks are owed:

I should start by thanking those whom I won’t be thanking by name down to space, time, and national security concerns. . . . You never know where the next idea will come from or how the current idea will be fertilized. But often as not, it comes by accident through interaction with you, the unsung heroes. I suppose I could recite everyone, but then you’d lose your special unsung-hero status and would be just like the sung-hero riffraff. Personally, I think you’re better than that.

He goes on later to thank the man who wrote the foreword:

There is only one man I ever considered to write the foreword to this book, but I figured Tom Wolfe was probably busy, so I asked my great friend Tucker Carlson to instead.

He also thanks his “trusty, gimlet-eyed editors”:

You develop an attachment to people who unsplit your infinitives and untangle your participles. I owe each of them in different ways for guarding my flank and making my pieces better. Still, whatever mistakes are in this book, go ahead and blame them. They’re the editors, the last line of defense. I’m just a lowly, undisciplined writer. They really should’ve been more careful.

[Fair warning to evangelical readers who may be interested in Labash's book: some colorful language is used in the various pieces.]

Paul again and again hits on the theme that the weakness of his frame is designed to magnify the power of God’s name. Perhaps the most powerful section of the letter is in chapter 4 (vv. 8-12) where he talks about the purpose of his suffering:

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.

Do you see what Paul’s saying? His being beaten and beleagured is a picture of Jesus’ dying; his endurance and perseverance is a picture of the resurrection reality of Jesus’ life. Paul’s suffering and sanctification are designed to be walking advertisements for Good Friday and Easter Sunday:

Paul saw the purpose of his suffering as a means to mediate, manifest, and magnify the resurrection power of his Savior.

We can see Paul’s radical other-centeredness in 2 Cor. 4:15, as he talks about why he endures such pain:

It is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

Paul is willing to endure incredible hardship as long as it means more grace leading to more gratitude leading to more glory for God.

In 2 Cor. 11:23-28 Paul reluctantly recounts his resume of suffering, which included imprisonments, countless beatings, and near-death experiences:

• whipped with 39 lashes (5 different times)
• beaten with rods (3 different times)
• pummeled with stones (1 time)
• shipwrecked (3 times)
• adrift at sea (one night, one day)
• journeys (frequent)
• danger from rivers
• danger from robbers
• danger from his own people
• danger from Gentiles
• danger in the city
• danger in the wilderness
• danger at sea
• danger from false brothers
• toil and hardship
• sleepless nights (many)
• hungry and thirsty (often)
• cold and exposed
• the pressure of anxiety for all the churches (daily)

And yet given his radically God-centered worldview, Paul calls such suffering “light” and “momentary”!

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Cor. 4:17-18)

Paul knew that no matter how much it hurt in the hear-and-now, it was as nothing compared to the hope and healing that he would experience for eternity in the presence of his Savior. We “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7), knowing that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). So from Paul’s perspective, the comparison and contrast of now and then—here and there—looks like this:

May God give all of us grace to suffer well, as living advertisements for the death of Christ and the life of Christ, as we live in light of eternity.

Who doesn’t want to be taken out of the boredom or sameness or pain of the present at any given moment? That’s what drugs are for, and that’s why people become addicted to them. . . . Twitter is crack for media addicts. It scares me, not because I’m morally superior to it, but because I don’t think I could handle it. I’m afraid I’d end up letting my son go hungry.

More:

Just about everyone I know complains about the same thing when they’re being honest–including, maybe especially, people whose business is reading and writing. They mourn the loss of books and the loss of time for books. It’s no less true of me, which is why I’m trying to place a few limits on the flood of information that I allow into my head.

God helped me through books like William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith and J. P. Moreland’s Scaling the Secular City. My own approach to apologetics has ended up being a bit different (for an introduction, see John Frame’s excellent book Apologetics to the Glory of God, but there is still tremendous value in the works of philosophers like Craig and Moreland.

Craig has a new, 30-page essay online, which you can read in PDF or HTML. He interacts with Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion. Craig makes five arguments for God’s existence: (1) the cosmological argument (from contingency); (2) the kalam cosmological argument (based on the beginning of the universe); (3) the moral argument (based upon objective moral values and duties); (4) the teleological argument (from fine-tuning); (5) the ontological argument (from the possibility of God’s existence to his actuality). So if you’re looking for a concise introduction to these arguments from a first-rate philosopher, this is a great place to start.

Here’s a word from J. P. Moreland about William Lane Craig and his significance:

It is hard to overstate the impact that William Lane Craig has had for the cause of Christ. He is simply the finest Christian apologist of the last half century and his academic work justifies ranking him among the top 1 percent of practicing philosophers in the Western world. Besides that, he is a winsome ambassador for Christ, an exceptional debater, and a man with the heart of an evangelist. I know him well and can say that he lives a life of integrity and lives out what he believes. I do not know of a single thinker who has done more to raise the bar of Christian scholarship in our generation than Craig. He is one of a kind and I thank God for his life and work.

Five Arguments For God

Below is an outline of Clowney’s essay:

I. PRAYER ADDRESSES THE PERSONAL GOD

A. God’s glory is personally revealed

1. In his works

2. In his name

3. In his presence

B. The response of prayer is personal

1. Prayer by persons in God’s image

2. Prayer by the whole person

C. The response of prayer is effective

II. PRAYER ADDRESSES THE COVENANT GOD

A. Prayer in the bond of the covenant relation

1. Prayer is grounded in God’s covenant

2. Prayer pleads the covenant relation

3. Prayer and the ceremonies of covenant worship

4. Prayer in the community of the covenant

B. God’s covenant Lordship shapes prayer

1. God’s zeal for pure worship

2. Our zeal for our Lord

a. Expressed in submission to his will

b. Expressed in confession seeking forgiveness

c. Petitions

d. Thanksgiving, praise, and hope

C. The renewal of the covenant restores and renews prayer

III. PRAYER ADDRESSES THE TRIUNE GOD

A. The renewal and fulfillment of prayer in Christ

1. Fulfillment of the petition of the faithful remnant

2. Fulfillment in Christ transforms prayer

a. Christ comes as Lord to receive prayer

b. Christ comes as Servant to offer prayer

3. Christ’s teaching renews prayer

a. Prayer to the Father

b. The prayer of trust

c. Prayer in the name of Jesus

4. Christ the Mediator of Prayer

a. The Mediator foreshadowed

b. His mediatorial office

c. His mediatorial sacrificed.

d. His mediatorial ministry

B. Prayer in the Spirit

1. The presence of the Spirit

2. The gifts of the Spirit

3. Union with Christ in the Spirit

C. Prayer to the Father

1. Prayer to the First Person of the Trinity

2. Prayer to the Father in the Son through the Spirit

1. It’s derivative and unoriginal. It was lame when Billy Sunday was doing it 100 years ago.
2. It makes the gospel man-centered. Coming to Jesus isn’t a way for you to deal with your daddy issues. I get it, your dad didn’t hug you when you were little and you want to be a different kind of man. How about you go hug your kid then? Jesus didn’t come to help you get in touch with your inner MMA fighter.
3. Like it or not, the gospel is at least in part about weakness. It’s about the almighty becoming weak to save us. It’s about us being helpless and unable in our sins. There’s no way to Christ that doesn’t start with brokenness and an admission of impotence. Yes, Jesus is the strong man who binds the adversary, but he bound him by suffering, humiliation, and weakness.
4. It discourages and mocks godly men who aren’t macho. There is an undercurrent of disdain in all of this. Proponents of this testosterone Christianity can’t help but take shots at guys who wear pastels and drink cappuccino. You might not like guys with manicures, but there’s absolutely nothing morally wrong with it. A reserved, quiet, well-groomed man can be a good Christian. Believe it or not.

Here’s an excerpt of Kevin’s evaluation:

The lofty prose makes for tricky reading, but I think this is the super-smart way of saying “God is playful and creative, and in heaven we will glorify God with our bodies. Play sports as a reflection of these realities.” If that’s what Hoffman means, I’m all for it. But honestly, the whole argument feels overblown, like a lot of fancy words trying to infuse sports with heavenly typology. Hoffman, it seems, wants sports to be in the realm of special grace, where I am happy to have them in the world of common grace. Sports are games. They’re fun. They can bring out the best in us and the worst, just like everything else in life. They are blessings. And they can be idols. If Hoffman had talked about that, I would be all over it. God knows we need conviction for deifying sports teams and sports stars.

But in the end, I don’t think a theology of sports needs to be terribly complicated. Sports is yet another avenue to live out rebellion or another way to glorify God. But the glory is not because the perfect backstroke gives us a glimpse of heavenly play and heavenly bodies. Rather, because the backstroker, or point guard, or slot receiver, is humble, honest, and works hard unto the Lord. Let’s not make things more difficult than they have to be. Sports can be a waste of time, a wasteland of vice, or an oasis of God-glorifying people and principles. It depends on what you make it.

And if there are winners and losers, that’s ok. Because, you know what, that’s sort of what life is like too.

If you’re looking for some good resources on how to think about sports from a Christian perspective, see Stephen Altrogge’s Game Day for the Glory of God: A Guide for Athletes, Fans, and Wannabes (Crossway, 2008), Ted Kluck’s The Reason For Sports: A Christian Fanifesto (Moody, 2009), and C.J. Mahaney’s sermon, “Don’t Waste Your Sports.”

In an op-ed in today’s NYT a former VP seeks to answer that question. One of the reasons: “the company routinely manages to frustrate the efforts of its visionary thinkers.”

What happened? Unlike other companies, Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation. Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation. Despite having one of the largest and best corporate laboratories in the world, and the luxury of not one but three chief technology officers, the company routinely manages to frustrate the efforts of its visionary thinkers.”

There are lessens to be learned here for all organizations. Here’s the closing paragraph:

Internal competition is common at great companies. It can be wisely encouraged to force ideas to compete. The problem comes when the competition becomes uncontrolled and destructive. At Microsoft, it has created a dysfunctional corporate culture in which the big established groups are allowed to prey upon emerging teams, belittle their efforts, compete unfairly against them for resources, and over time hector them out of existence

You can read the whole thing here.

Crossway has set up a deal where the first 1500 people to order through them will receive a signed copy of the hardcover book for 35% off, as well as a free e-Book copy. Go here for more info.

I’ll have more to say about the book in future posts, but here’s one quote from the book (recently highlighted by Chris Brauns):

There is no doubt about it: too many of us are trying to have hundred dollar conversations in dime moments. Too many of us have left little time in our schedules for meaningful conversations, tender connection, and focused problem solving. Too many of us have little time for relational reflection and introspection in our marriages. Too many of us are doing marriage on the fly. Marriage, too often, is what we do in between all the other things we are doing that really determine the content and pace of our schedules. But marriage doesn’t function very well as an in-between thing, and marriages surely don’t tend to thrive when we leave them alone and ask them to grow on their own. A marriage that is going to grow, change, and become increasingly healthy needs cultivation. Like a garden, it doesn’t do well when it is being neglected.

There was just one problem. Watch the video:

From more details see Yahoo Sports.

HT: Stephen Altrogge

Update: Thankfully, he did end up getting a comp trip and tickets to the Final Four!

He defines “anxiety” as “the loss of confident security in God owing to feelings of uneasiness or foreboding that something harmful is going to happen.”

Here’s an outline of verses that can be used as weapons to combat the lies and false promises of the Evil One in contrast to believing the great promises of God:

Battling Anxiety in General

Lamentations 3:22-23; 1 Corinthians 10:13; Deuteronomy 33:25; Psalm 56:3; 1 Peter 5:7; Philippians 4:6-7

Battling Anxiety About Being Useless

1 Corinthians 15:58; Isaiah 55:9-11

Battling Anxiety about Feeling Weak

2 Corinthians 12:9-10

Battling Anxiety about Difficult Decisions

Psalm 32:8; Psalm 25:8-9

Battling Anxiety about Opponents

Romans 8:31

Battling Anxiety about Afflictions

Psalm 34:19; Romans 5:3-5

Battling Anxiety about Aging

Isaiah 46:3-4

Battling Anxiety about Not Persevering to the End in Faith

Philippians 1:6; Hebrews 7:25; Jeremiah 32:40

Battling Anxiety about Death

Romans 14:7-9

Philippians 4:5-6: “The Lord is at hand; [therefore] do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

2. God cares for me.

1 Peter 5:7: “. . . casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”

3. My Father in heaven  knows all my needs and will supply all my needs.

Matthew 6:31-33: “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

4. God values me more than birds and grass, which he richly provides for and adorns; how much more will he provide for all my needs!

Matthew 6:26-30: “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”

5. What can man do to me?

Matthew 6:25: “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” [I.e., you still have eternal life even if you have no food; you will still have a resurrection body even if you are physically deprived.]

Luke 12:4: “Do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do.”

Luke 21:16, 18: “Some of you they will put to death. . . . But not a hair of your head will perish.”

Romans 8:31-32, 35, 38-39: “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? . . . Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? . . . For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

6. Anxiety is pointless.

Matthew 6:27: “Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” [Answer: no one.]

7. Anxiety is worldly.

Matthew 6:31-32: “Do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things. . . .”

James 4:4: “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

8. Tomorrow doesn’t need my anxiety.

Matthew 6:34: “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

Lamentations 3:23: “[God's mercies] are new every morning.”