John Piper has been preaching a series on marriage and has been covering the role of the husband in a sermon titled Lionhearted and Lamblike: The Christian Husband as Head, Part 2.

I’ve been following along with the various video excerpts posted on the Desiring God blog, and it’s been pretty brutal. I must admit, painfully, that it has convicted me on multiple counts.

So here you go, men. Watch them, and share in my pain:

• Part 1:
  • How should a man spiritually provide for his family?
  • How should a man physically provide for his family?
• Part 2: How should a man spiritually protect his family?
• Part 3: Why is a daughter’s modesty a dad’s responsibility?
• Part 4: Why is initiating reconciliation always the responsibility of a husband and father?
• Part 5: How should a man physically protect his wife and family

(Updated 3/30 to add Part 5.)

As part of Phil Johnson’s series at Pulpit Magazine, Why I Am a Calvinist (Part 5), the following question has come up in the comments: If some are elected to salvation, are others elected to damnation?

Specifically, one commenter, Jerry M, has asked the question this way: “As a 4 point Calvinist I am thoroughly comfortable with monergistic language in reference to salvation – but does monergism apply to damnation?”

While I do not intend to answer the question directly in this post, I will point the interested reader to some resources available in this discussion:

• Curt Daniel’s History and Theology of Calvinism, linked from part 3 of Phil’s series as a Microsoft Word document, contains a series of chapters on this very subject:
  • Chapter 47, The Doctrine of Reprobation
  • Chapter 48, The Hardening of the Reprobate
  • Chapter 49, The Destiny of the Reprobate
  • Chapter 50, The Relation of Election and Reprobation
• The audio of the source lectures for Daniel’s work are also available, including parts 47, 48, 49, and 50, corresponding to the above chapters.
• Desiring God contains an essay titled What does Piper mean when he says he’s a seven-point Calvinist? which discusses, among other things, John Piper’s view of “double predestination” (as this is sometimes called)
• R. C. Sproul’s book on election, Chosen by God, contains a chapter titled Double, Double, Toil and Trouble: Is Predestination Double?

I hope this collection of resources will be of some help to those examining this question.

In his book, How to Help People Change, Jay Adams uses the term “radical amputation” to describe what Jesus taught in passages such as Matthew 5:29-30:

Matthew 5:29-30

29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (ESV)

The basic point of the teaching is this: take radical measures to safeguard against sin. And given that the stakes are so high, we ought to be willing to do anything to avoid eternal punishment.

As John Piper writes in What Jesus Demands of the World:

The point is not that inward desires can be controlled by external maiming. The point is how enormous the stakes are. They are so great, we must do what we have to do to defeat the bondage of sinful desire. It is astonishing how many people deal with their sin casually. Jesus demands otherwise.

Our desire to deal with sin must be so strong that “radical amputation” is not out of the question. Whether we are amputating ourselves from the desires of the flesh, or amputating ourselves from our worldly riches, like the rich young man of Matthew 19:16-26, we ought to be so willing to follow Christ that we will give up anything that draws us toward sin and away from Him.

Don’t misunderstand – it is not sinful to have two eyes, two hands, or even money and possessions. These things are sinful when they prevent us from following Him.

So how are we doing? Are we taking extreme measures to purge sin from our life? Are we radically amputating the temptations of flesh and worldliness?

• Must Read: Phil Johnson on Epistemological Humility, followed by Spurgeon (of course) on the same subject
• John Piper talks about the place of application in preaching
• Phil Ryken shares a quote (sort of) from Martin Lloyd-Jones about the importance of not only the content of the two greatest commandments, but their order
• Phil Johnson is now on part 5 of his series about why he’s a Calvinist. Part 3 had some very good book recommendations, as well.
• Matt’s Idea Blog has an intriguing post about how to read a lot of books in a short period of time (I haven’t tried his method yet, but I vaguely remember “SQ3R” from high school) (HT: The Evangelical Outpost)
• When it was announced that Tony Dungy was getting an award from a family group that opposes same-sex marriage, a lot of people were worried that it would look like he agrees with their position on that issue. Well, everybody can stop worrying. (HT: Sharper Iron)
• Irish Calvinist gives us something to think about next time we’re about to wish someone good luck.
• And finally, may I simply say haha.

Yep, I sit around reading VeggieTales, too…

This article is simply wonderful – moving, insightful, convicting, powerful. Read it.

A friend emailed me the other day about something he’d seen in the Bible, something he thought was completely fascinating. He went through the explanation, and then concluded with something along the lines of, “Anyways, I am sure you have seen that before, but I just thought it was cool.”

It was, indeed, something I’d seen before, but it reminded me of something I find myself doing a lot. That is, not sharing my joy in God or His Word with others, because of the fear of being mundane.

Let me explain.

How many times have you done this?

1. You run across something when you’re studying Scripture, and think “wow, that is so amazing!” (Or glorious, uplifting, encouraging, convicting, fill in the adjective.)

2. Your natural reaction is to go tell someone about it, to share it… “Hey, did you ever notice…? Amazing, huh?” (Or glorious, etc.)

3. You then realize that you haven’t discovered anything new, nor are you likely to ever discover anything new. Men have been studying the Bible closely for 2000+ years. Chances are, you’re not going to find anything revolutionary.

4. So, you forget about it. You don’t want to be pointing out the obvious. You don’t want to be mundane. So you skip it.

I myself do this all the time, and it’s a shame. It’s a shame that we don’t share our joy more with each other. It’s a shame that we don’t share the obvious. Yes, the other person may very well have read the same passage 100 times. They might have it memorized. But the power of the Word of God is that it is always fresh, always profitable for instruction.

That’s one of the reasons I enjoy blogging on what I’ve read lately in the Word. It may be common knowledge, it may be the simplest thing. But I enjoy the sharing, and perhaps someone out there in the ether will be blessed by something they read here.

Dwight Moody once wrote:

And if you are talking to a man instead of talking about your neighbors, just talk about the Bible, and when Christian men come together just compare notes, and ask one another, “What have you found new in the Word of God since I saw you last?” Some men come to me and ask me if I have picked up anything new, and I give them what I have, and they give me what they have.¹

So come, brothers and sisters, and ask me if I have picked up anything new. Ask me, and I shall ask you as well. And we shall, as the psalmist says, sharpen each other…

Proverbs 27:17

17 Iron sharpens iron,
and one man sharpens another. (ESV)

1. Heritage of great evangelical teaching : Featuring the best of Martin Luther, John Wesley, Dwight L. Moody, C.H. Spurgeon and others. 1997, c1996. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.[back]

Stuff I’ve been reading around the blogosphere…

• Kevin Bauder blogs on the use (and necessity) of Scripture in theology. He also outlines some faulty ways to use it, too.
• Sam Storms talks about the Gift of God from Ephesians 2:8-9 at Reformation Theology.
• I was going to blog about this ridiculous story but the man who never sleeps beat me to it, and of course, says it far better than I ever could.
• Phil Johnson starts a series from the 2007 Shepherd’s Conference about why he’s a Calvinist, why he’s moderate, and how we can be, too. How we can be moderate, that is.
• Good quote from Joel Beeke about a problem with modern evangelism.
• And lastly, a good posting from Tony Reinke on the dangers and allure of legalism, with help from John Brown of Haddington.

Genesis 3:8

8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. (ESV)

As soon as Adam and Eve committed the first earthly sin against God, one of the first things they did was hide. They hid because they were ashamed of their sin. And this is, first of all, redundant. It’s redundant because they hid from God to be apart from Him in their shame. But they had already separated themselves from God by their very sin.

Not only is it redundant, but it’s futile. It’s futile because hiding from God is impossible. There is nowhere to go where you can be apart from His presence. This is exactly what omnipresence means. He’s everywhere. As the saying goes, you can run, but you can’t hide. Anywhere. At all.

Psalm 139:7-8

7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! (ESV)

The sad thing is that we actually manage to convince ourselves that if we hide, God won’t see our sin. And this is the real reason people try to hide from God, because God is light and He exposes our sin, so in our sin, we want to get as far away as possible from that light lest anyone, even God Himself, sees our sin.

John 3:19

19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. (ESV)

That’s why Adam and Eve hid. After their taste of sin, they thought they could hide their shame in the darkness, away from the presence of the Lord. But it just doesn’t work that way…

Psalm 139:11-12

11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you. (ESV)

I was recently reading through Genesis 11 and I was puzzled somewhat by this verse:

Genesis 11:31

31 Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there. (ESV)

I was puzzled because it’s not until chapter 12, in this account, that God calls Abram out of his land, to go into Canaan, and promises it to him:

Genesis 12:1-4

12:1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. (ESV)

From these passages we see two things:

1. In Genesis 12, God called Abram out of Haran, but…
2. In Genesis 11:31, Abram and his family were already on their way to Canaan from Ur of the Chaldeans when they got to Haran

Hm. I thought Abram was called out of Ur of the Chaldeans, not out of Haran? That’s the way I always remember reading it…

Ah yes, here it is:

Genesis 15:7

7 And he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” (ESV)

Nehemiah 9:7 also references God calling Abram out of Ur. So, which is it? Was he called out of Ur, or out of Haran? Stephen, through the Spirit, testifies to the complete history in his great final sermon in Acts 7:

Acts 7:2-4

2 And Stephen said:

“Brothers and fathers, hear me. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, 3 and said to him, ‘Go out from your land and from your kindred and go into the land that I will show you.’ 4 Then he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran. And after his father died, God removed him from there into this land in which you are now living. (ESV)

So, following the whole counsel of God, we see the sequence of events was as follows:

1. God appeared to Abram in Mesopotamia (Ur) and called him to go to another land
2. Terah, Abram, Lot, and Sarai left Ur and went to Haran, and settled there.
3. Terah died in Haran.
4. God appeared to Abram again (Genesis 12:1-4) and told him to go to Canaan.

(Note: The text is not clear whether the Lord specified Canaan as the destination when He first appeared to Abram in Ur. Therefore, I have left it the vague “another land” in my own chronology, above.)

See? By applying a little elbow grease and Strong’s (or a good search engine), the Bible is not so mysterious after all. But more on that subject later…