Let us test our godliness by this touch-stone: Do we love God? Is he our treasure and centre? Can we, with David, call God our ‘joy,’ yes, our ‘exceeding joy’ (Psa. 43:4)? Do we delight in drawing near to him and ‘come before his presence with singing’ (Psa. 100:2)? Do we love him for his beauty more than his jewels?

- The Godly Man’s Picture, 31.

Today’s Scripture reading was in Matthew 3-4. The two main areas of interest to me in these chapters were the ministry of John the Baptist and the temptation of Jesus after his fasting in the wilderness. John’s ministry has always struck me as unique and hard to reconcile with Jesus’ ministry. This is not to say I think that there is some inconsistency here but simply that John and Jesus are like night and day. John says this (Matthew 3:11) as does Jesus (Matthew 11:18-19) so I’m not completely off base.

One more thing to comment on is the imperative “repent” that comes from Jesus’ lips (Matthew 4:17). How often we would like to think that turning from sin to God is not necessary to enjoy fellowship with God. But the fact of the matter is that imperatives are not optional and Jesus’ command to repent is to be obeyed or we will never see God.

Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?

What do David Barton, Gary Demar, Tim Lahaye, A Beka Books, Bob Jones University, and Peter Marshall all have in common? They all are pushing this idea of America being founded as a Christian nation. Fea’s book has proved invaluable and his chapter on these defenders of a “Christian” America has shown the lengths many go to defend their position. Fea even quotes one of my history professors back at PCC which I thought was cool.

Reasonable Faith

William Lane Craig is a master writer and I’ve just begun his first chapter on God’s existence. He summarizes the position and history of the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, and the moral argument.

Today’s Scripture reading had me in Matthew 1-2 which includes the genealogy of Christ, the infancy narrative, the story of the Magi, and the return to Nazareth. The genealogy was of particular interest to me for a couple of reasons. First, there are a number of Gentiles in the mix like Rahab and Ruth. Second, though the genealogy is sectioned out into three fourteen generation segments, this is clearly either a tool for memorization or an example of gematria, the Hebrew language phenomenon where each letter has a numeric value associated with it. In this case, as David is the fourteenth name on the list and the name for David in Hebrew adds up to fourteen, the genealogy is emphasizing Jesus’ Davidic descent.

Another observation I made came out of Matthew 2 and the implications of the warning of the wise men. Matthew 2:16 says that “when Herod realized he had been tricked by the wise men, he became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under.” But the wise men were told not to go back to Herod “in a dream” (Matthew 2:12) which came, presumably, from an angel of God (see Matthew 2:13). This would mean that God orchestrated the events that caused what has come to be known as the Slaughter of the Innocents for God must have known that by not permitting the wise men to return to Herod, Herod would have become furious and slaughtered those children. I need to do some more thinking about all the implications of this section.

Reasonable Faith

William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith (3rd edition) is one of the textbooks for an Apologetics class I’m taking for my M.Div. program. Though classes haven’t started yet, I wanted to get a head start so-to-speak on it. So far it’s been an incredible read. I am currently in chapter two, “The Absurdity of Life Without God,” and have learned about men like Blaise Pascal, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Soren Kierkegaard, and Francis Schaeffer. (Of course, I was already familiar with these men but Craig discusses their apologetic framework for Christian faith.) Craig also discusses his own thoughts on the matter and says, “If there is no God, then life becomes meaningless. Man and the universe are without ultimate significance.” (Craig, 74) I look forward to finishing this chapter tomorrow.

Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?

John Fea, associate professor of American History and Chair of the History Department at Messiah College, has written an engaging book answering that question. Today I devoured the first three chapters and learned about the religious history of our nation from the Revolutionary era to the days of Ronald Reagan. What a push there has been to define our nation’s founding as a Christian one! And while Fea does not doubt the religious and even Christian nature of of the American people from the beginning, he does demonstrate well the highly political motives of many of the ardent supporters of the belief in a “Christian” nation. It has been an excellent and informative read.

“The Gift of the Magi”

I am reading through a collection of famous short stories and finished O. Henry’s brief story called “The Gift of the Magi.” Though pointedly ironic, the stories message about giving and love make the story a timeless classic. If you haven’t read it, you should.

The best harmonious synthesis of the special revelation of the Bible, of the general revelation of human nature that distinguishes between right and wrong and consciously or unconsciously craves God, and of science is the theory of theistic evolution. By “theory” I mean here “a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for the origin of species, especially [humanity],” not “a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural.” By “theistic evolution” I mean that the God of Israel, to bring glory to himself, (1) created all the things that are out of nothing and sustains them; (2) incredibly, against the laws of probability, finely tuned the essential properties of the universe to produce [humanity], who is capable of reflecting upon their origins; (3) within his providence allowed the process of natural selection and of cataclysmic interventions – such as the meteor that extinguished the dinosaurs, enabling mammals to dominate the earth – to produce awe-inspiring creatures, especially [humanity]; (4) by direction creation made [humanity] a spiritual being, an image of divine beings, for fellowship with himself by faith; (5) allowed [humanity] to freely choose to follow their primitive animal nature and to usurp the rule of God instead of living by faith in God, losing fellowship with their physical and spiritual Creator; [6) and in his mercy chose from fallen [humanity] the Israel of God, whom he regenerated by the Holy Spirit, in connection with their faith in Jesus Christ, the Second Adam, for fellowship with himself.

The impulses of a natural conscience drive men only to easier duties of religion, in which the heart is less exercised, like perfunctory reading or praying. But the motions of the Spirit in the godly go further, causing them to do the most irksome duties, like self-reflection, self-humbling; yes, perilous duties, like confessing Christ’s name in times of danger. Divine motions in the heart are like new wine which seeks vent. When God’s Spirit possesses a man, he carries him full sail through all difficulties.

The Godly Man’s Picture, 69.