Author Archives: Stephen Rodgers

He Shall Give You Another Comforter…

by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

From John 14:16

Great Father revealed Himself to believers of old before the coming of His Son, and was known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as the God Almighty. Then Jesus came, and the ever-blessed Son in His own proper person, was the delight of His people’s eyes. At the time of the Redeemer’s ascension, the Holy Spirit became the head of the present dispensation, and His power was gloriously manifested in and after Pentecost. He remains at this hour the present Immanuel-God with us, dwelling in and with His people, quickening, guiding, and ruling in their midst.

Is His presence recognized as it ought to be? We cannot control His working; He is most sovereign in all His operations, but are we sufficiently anxious to obtain His help, or sufficiently watchful lest we provoke Him to withdraw His aid? Without Him we can do nothing, but by His almighty energy the most extraordinary results can be produced: everything depends upon his manifesting or concealing His power. Do we always look up to Him both for our inner life and our outward service with the respectful dependence which is fitting? Do we not too often run before His call and act independently of His aid? Let us humble ourselves this evening for past neglects, and now entreat the heavenly dew to rest upon us, the sacred oil to anoint us, the celestial flame to burn within us.

The Holy Ghost is no temporary gift, He abides with the saints. We have but to seek Him aright, and He will be found of us. He is jealous, but He is pitiful; if He leaves in anger, He returns in mercy. Condescending and tender, He does not weary of us, but awaits to be gracious still.

Sin has been hammering my heart
Unto a hardness, void of love,
Let supplying grace to cross his art
Drop from above.

2.12p

LBC Weekly SPARK – February 9, 2012

by Pastor Patrick Cho

Dear LBC family and friends!

Many of you know that this past weekend, LBC San Jose celebrated its one year anniversary. It was a wonderful time of rejoicing in the Lord’s faithfulness to the church. Our family had the honor and privilege of being able to go up to minister to the San Jose church family and it was tremendously encouraging! It was particularly great to hear testimonies of those who even recently came to know the Lord Jesus through the work of ministry there. It was a refreshing time of fellowship over a very busy weekend. We came back tired but deeply encouraged.

As the sending church of LBCSJ, we also have great reason to celebrate together with the church family up north. We have seen great returns on the investment made to send a team to San Jose. The church is vibrant and thriving. Certainly not everything has been easy. There have been some great challenges and trials with the work, but the members of LBCSJ persevere and remain faithful to the MVP and Peacemaker Pledge. God certainly has been answering prayers and many lives are being affected through this church.

Please continue to pray for Pastor John and Angela Kim, Pastor JR and Kathy Cuevas, and the rest of the leadership of LBCSJ. Pray that the members would be passionate for the vision of the church and would be active participants in the work of ministry to the glory of God. Pray that the light of the gospel would shine brightly through that ministry and that God would use them as a bright beacon of His truth and love. There still is a lot of work to be done, but we are thankful for all that the Lord has already accomplished.

Together as one voice, we want to wish LBC San Jose a very happy anniversary!

Dying to know Him,

Pastor Patrick

Here are the ministry opportunities for this week:

  1. Friday Night Bible Studies – Don’t forget that the college and youth groups have Bible study this Friday evening at 7:00pm at the church. Bring a Bible, notebook, and pen and be prepared to study God’s Word together. Invite a friend!
  2. College/Singles Broomball – Friday night at 11:30pm, the college and singles ministries will be having a special broomball event. This is a great opportunity to spend some time together to get to know each other a little better over a fun event! The cost is $5/person and the event will be held at the San Diego Ice Arena in Mira Mesa. If you have any questions about this event, please contact Eugene Park (e1park@gmail.com).
  3. Men’s Breakfast – We will be having our long awaited next men’s breakfast this Saturday, February11, at 8:00am. All men are invited to attend! Please bring a breakfast item to share. Juice will be provided. These times have really been a great chance to fellowship together and grow as men of God.
  4. Membership Class – Our next membership class will be this weekend. It is a two-part class on Saturday, February11 from 10:00-1:00pm, and Sunday, February12 from 1:00-4:00pm. Both sessions are required for membership. If you are interested in coming out, please email Pastor Patrick for an application.
  5. Single Life Retreat – Our annual singles retreat will be on March 16-18 at Pine Valley Bible Conference Center. This year, Pastor John Kim of LBC San Jose will be our speaker and will be addressing the theme of Christian contentment. The cost for the retreat is only $140/person. You can sign up with Brian Song.
  6. Flocks – Each month, we take a break from our regularly scheduled midweek fellowships and meet instead in regional flocks throughout the community. This month, flocks will meet from February 29 to March 3. More information about flocks can be found at the church website.
  7. Sunday School – Our new session of Sunday School classes will begin this weekend! Sunday School classes are provided to help equip the body for the work of ministry. Your attendance is encouraged so that you can better understand biblical truths and work to apply them to your lives. The classes offered this term are:

Introduction to Biblical Counseling (Instructor: Josh Liu) – This class will present a biblical approach to address life’s problems and to provide a solid foundation from which to offer sound counsel to others.

Fundamentals of the Faith (Instructors: Min Kim and Steve Preslar) – This ongoing class walks through the basics of the Christian faith. It is a required class for members of Lighthouse Bible Church.

Grace Life Ministry – This is a ministry for our married couples and parents. In this class, we look at biblical principles to strengthen the home. Currently, we are walking through a book by Dr. John Barnett called Word Filled Families Walk in Truth.

BOB – Esther

by Stephen Rodgers

ESTHER IN 10 WORDS OR LESS

“Beautiful Jewish girl becomes queen, saves fellow Jews from slaughter.”

TITLE

Invariably this book has held the title of “Esther;” unlike other books of the Bible, it has never been known by any other name. With the exception of Ruth, Esther is the only book of the Bible named after a woman, in this case one of the central characters of the book.

The name “Esther” itself is somewhat problematic: the Hebrew word (Hadassah) means “myrtle,” and derived either from the Persian word for “star” or the name of the Babylonian love goddess Ishtar. (This itself is potentially alarming since names have great significance in Scripture, and character with foreign names such as “Esther” and “Mordecai” would have set off warning bells in the minds of ancient Jewish readers).

AUTHOR & AUDIENCE

Jewish tradition holds that Mordecai was the author of Esther, although Ezra and Nehemiah have also been suggested.  Ultimately the author is unknown, although the following characteristics of the author are known:

  • The author had a detailed knowledge of Persian customs, etiquette, and history (along with particular familiarity with the palace at Shushan).
  • The author had intimate knowledge of the Hebrew calendar and customs.
  • The author had a strong sense of Jewish nationalism.
The original audience of Esther would have been Israelites familiar with the events described in the book, along with contemporary Jews living in other regions.

DATE

The events described in Esther occurred between 483 BC and 473 BC (the year Ahasuerus was assassinated).

The date that Esther was written is a bit more difficult to pin down, but it can be confined to a range of approximately 450 BC to 331 BC (the year that Greece conquered Persia).

BACKGROUND & SETTING

Understanding the context of Esther requires first placing it within the appropriate historical period: the Persian period of ca. 539 BC to 331 BC.  Second, it requires placing it within the appropriate location of Biblical chronology, which is between the first return of the Jews under Zerubbabel ( ca. 538 BC) and the second return under Ezra (ca. 458 BC). The third return under Nehemiah (ca. 445 BC) would not occur until later.

A number of discrepancies in the book of Esther (the lack of direct mention of God, prayer, significant elements of Jewish identity) than have long alarmed readers and theologians (both ancient and modern) are best explained and understood as deliberate. After all, this is not a story of the Jews who were eager to return to their native land and practices; this is the story of the Jews who wanted to stay. While many Jews were eager to shake the dust of their exile from their feet and return home, others had adapted to their life in foreign lands and seemed quite comfortable and acclimated there.

As a result, we have a window into God’s sovereign care and protection of a people who have largely abandoned certain elements of their heritage (such as names, religious practices and devotion, etc.).

HISTORICAL & THEOLOGICAL THEMES

There are four significant themes that are on display in the book of Esther.

  • God’s Sovereignty. While Esther and Mordecai are unquestionably important to the narrative, the central character is clearly God (who is notably never named directly). Instead, a series of orchestrated “coincidences” demonstrate His control over history even when He is not seen directly.
  • Service. Esther and Mordecai were providentially placed in their respective positions to serve God’s ends (Esther 4:14). They perform key actions throughout the book, but they do so (perhaps unwittingly) in service to God.
  • Obedience. The book of Esther clearly shows that to be obedient to one authority often requires disobedience to another. Esther obeyed Mordecai (Esther 2:10,20; 4:8-16) but stood against Persian law in the process (Esther 4:11,16; 5:1-2). Mordecai defied the king (Esther 3:2-8) but obeyed Esther (Esther 4:17). In similar fashion, obeying God takes precedence over human law and concerns (Acts 4:19-20; 5:29).
  • Pride. Haman is a prototypical arrogant individual (Esther 3:5; 5:9-14; 7:8-10) who is contrasted with Mordecai who sought no status for himself, and was elevated by the LORD (using king as an instrument) (Esther 6:1-13; 8:9-15; James 4:10).

I want to briefly expand on the first point, by elaborating that God’s sovereignty in Esther is clearly exemplified in his invisible hand of providence.  MacArthur explains it in this way:

Esther could be compared to a chess game. God and Satan (as invisible players) moved real kings, queens, and nobles. When Satan put Haman into place, it was as if he announced “Check.” God then positioned Esther and Mordecai in order to put Satan into “Checkmate!” … While God was not mentioned in Esther, He was everywhere apparent as the One who opposed and foiled Satan’s diabolical schemes by providential intervention.

INTERPRETIVE CHALLENGES

The primary interpretive challenge found in the book of Esther is the lack of any direct mention of God. While I address this at some length in the OBJECTIONS section below from the perspective of one outside the faith, I believe MacArthur does an excellent job of addressing it from an insider’s perspective:

It seems satisfying to respond that if God desired to be mentioned, He could just as sovereignly have moved the author to write of Him as He acted to save Israel. This situation seems to be more of a problem at the human level than the divine, because Esther is the classic illustration of God’s providence as He, the unseen power, controls everything for His purpose. There are no miracles in Esther, but the preservation of Israel through providential control of every event and person reveals the omniscience and omnipotence of Jehovah. Whether He is named is not the issue. He is clearly the main character in the drama.

LITERARY FEATURES

The literary form of Esther is a hero story; I like to think of it as the book of the Bible most likely to become a Disney movie. Think about it:

“…there’s an explicitly beautiful heroine, a romantic love thread, a dire threat to the good characters, a thoroughly evil villain, suspense, dramatic irony, evocative descriptions of exotic places, sudden reversal of action, poetic justice, and a happy ending.” (ESV Study Bible)

OBJECTIONS

The NET Bible notes does an excellent job of outlining the most common objection to the book of Esther,which ironically enough are theological in character:

“In the English Bible Esther appears adjacent to Ezra-Nehemiah with the historical books, but in the Hebrew Bible it is one of five short books (the so-called Megillot) that appear toward the end of the biblical writings. The canonicity of the book was questioned by some in ancient Judaism and early Christianity. It is one of five OT books that were at one time regarded as antilegomena (i.e., books ‘spoken against’). The problem with Esther was the absence of any direct mention of God. Some questioned whether a book that did not mention God could be considered sacred scripture. Attempts to resolve this by discovering the tetragrammaton (YHWH) encoded in the Hebrew text (e.g., in the initial letters of four consecutive words in the Hebrew text of Esth 5:4) are unconvincing, although they do illustrate how keenly the problem was felt by some. Although no copy of Esther was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, this does not necessarily mean that the Qumran community did not regard it as canonical. More recently, Martin Luther questioned the canonicity of this book. Although the book does not directly mention God it would be difficult to read it without sensing the providence of God working in powerful, though at times subtle, ways to rescue his people from danger and possible extermination.”

Additionally, there are two additional types of objections that are raised against Esther, albeit less often: historical and textual.

Historically, some scholars have argued that Esther is not reliable. This objection has been severely undermined by recent work by D. Clines who points to a number of details in Esther that are confirmed by extra-Biblical sources: 1) the extent of the empire under Ahasuerus (Esther 1:1), 2) the council of seven nobles (Esther 1:14), 3) the postal system (Esther 3:13; 8:10), 4) the keeping of official diaries (Esther 2:23), 5) the use of gallows (which is likely a misnomer) (Esther 2:23; 5:14; 7:10), 6) the practice of obeisance to kings and nobles (Esther 3:2), 7) the belief in lucky days (Esther 3:7), 8) crowns on horses (Esther 6:8), and 9) reclining on couches at meals (Esther 7:8).

Textually, Esther has a bit of a muddled pedigree, with three competing texts: the Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT), the Greek Text (LXX), and another Greek Text known as the “alternative Alpha Text” (AT). They are probably best understood as relating to one another as follows:

  • The AT is a Greek translation of the earliest form of the Hebrew text (possibly the letters of Mordecai mentioned in Esther 9:20)
  • The MT is the Hebrew version of the final form of the text
  • The LXX is a translation of the MT, with a number of non-canonical additions

NOTABLE QUOTABLES

  • Esther 2:15
  • Esther 4:14

DID YOU KNOW?

  • God’s name is never mentioned in the book of Esther, a fact that caused considerable distress for a number of people (see OBJECTIONS)
  • Esther is never quoted directly in the OT or the NT
  • Prayer is never mentioned in Esther, although fasting is (Esther 4:16)

Other Works Referenced

  • Apologetics Study Bible, “Esther Introduction”
  • Archaeological Study Bible, “Introduction to Esther”
  • ESV Study Bible, “Introduction to Esther”
  • MacArthur Study Bible, “Esther”
  • NET Bible, Esther
  • NIV Study Bible, Esther
  • Reformation Study Bible, “The Book of Esther”
  • The Baker Illustrated Bible Handbook, “Esther”
  • Know Your Bible
  • Driscoll, A Book You’ll Actually Read On the Old Testament
  • Knight, The Layman’s Bible Handbook

Dying to Know Him

by Pastor Patrick Cho

In living the Christian life and pursuing greater growth in faith, it can be easy to lose sight of why we do what we do. Many Christians adopt a performance-based mentality where spiritual maturity is gauged by how many ministries they are involved with or how often they are at church. This is like a person gauging their physical health solely by how much they are exercising. I want to be careful to make sure we understand that ministry is necessary and there should always be activity in the church, just as with the physical body it is important to exercise in order to be healthy. But activity alone doesn’t guarantee that a body is healthy. You can run all you want, but if something’s wrong inside, you need to see a doctor.

When someone is measuring spiritual health with a performance-based mentality, things get complicated when it comes to assessing a person’s spiritual growth. One’s opinion on how they are doing may vary greatly from week to week depending how much they were able to do or be involved with. “I didn’t have a good week because I missed small group.” “Spiritually things are great because we had a chance to go feed the homeless.” “I must be spiritually mature because I haven’t missed a Sunday for years.” Once again, I don’t want us to make the mistake of swinging the pendulum the opposite extreme and to say that none of this matters. Certainly it is helpful to attend small groups. It is great to feed the homeless. Church involvement and attendance is vital for personal growth.

The problem is that spiritual health is not only determined by how much we are exercising our gifts or getting involved in Christian ministry. This is most definitely a crucial part of growing spiritually and something all believers should remain committed to, but it isn’t the only thing. The church at Ephesus was buzzing with all sorts of spiritual activity. From the outside, it looked as though they were a solid church and very healthy. But God, who sees past the external and views the heart, understood that the church at Ephesus was sorely lacking one thing – their first love (Rev. 2:1-4). The church was so busy in all its spiritual activity that it failed to do it all in love. They began well and had love at first, but somehow in the busyness of ministry, they lost it.

A huge factor in determining spiritual health is your love for Christ. Do you love Jesus and do you desire to know Him? Again, it goes back to determining why we do what we do. The Apostle Paul got a taste of what it meant to know Jesus, and he determined that nothing else compared (Phil. 3:7-11). He was willing to give up everything and even consider it loss in order to gain Christ. Wherever Jesus was, that’s where Paul desired to be, even if it meant identifying with Jesus’ suffering and cross. It was all because of his love for Christ.

This love we have for Christ trickles down and fuels the love we have for one another (1 John 4:19). Our ministry must be motivated and driven by this love. This was the commandment of Christ that we love one another as He loved us (John 13:34). This love would serve as the great testimony of God’s work in our lives (John 13:35). The Apostle Paul goes so far as to say that without love, everything we do is nothing and pointless (1 Cor. 13:1-3).

All this is sort of what this year’s theme for Lighthouse is all about. It is about counting everything as loss for the sake of knowing Jesus (Phil. 3:7-8). My great desire for LBC is that as we walk through God’s Word together, as we participate in ministry, as we serve one another and invest in each other, we would not lose sight of why we do all this in the first place. We run the race so that in the end we would gain the prize. We run hard always keeping our eyes on Jesus (Heb. 12:1-2). We are not supposed to just stay busy and fill our lives with activity. While we seek to be obedient to the commands of Scripture and to grow in faith through our involvement in ministry, at the same time we must remember to keep our hearts in the right place pointed in the right direction.

Weekly Links (2/6/2012)

With such a contradiction hanging over his head in a Damoclean fashion, it seemed to me that Mr. Hitchens was ever at risk of being waylaid by the grace he rejected. For while we know from the Apostle John that Heaven rejoices in the just punishment of the guilty, we also know from the Lord Jesus Christ that it rejoices in the salvation of the lost. And while we often associate God’s patience with a forestalling of judgment, it occurs to me that salvation could also be framed (at least poetically), as a divine unwillingness to forestall grace. And as I note elsewhere in this essay, one takeaway from the book of Job is that any attempt to dictate terms to God falls into a category that theologians have historically referred to as “really stupid ideas.” (Stephen Rodgers, “The New Atheism, Fast Company, and the Integrity of Doubt”)

by Stephen Rodgers

I intended to let this pass without comment, but Peter Lim had other ideas.

As someone at our church noticed (Cesar), the most recent issue of the apologetics journal In Antithesis featured a familiar article by yours truly. It’s especially fun to note that the article actually originated here on the Beacon.

  • The original article can be found here.
  • The issue of In Antithesis containing the re-worked article can be found here. (Also, I would recommend to you a previous issue found here).
  • While I have the highest respect for the work that the CH crew does, I thought their formatting left a bit to be desired. If you’re really interested, a .pdf version formatted according to my personal preferences can be downloaded here.

Coram Deo

For as the Sufferings of Christ Abound in Us, so Our Consolation Also Aboundeth by Christ

by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

From 2 Corinthians 1:5

There is a blessed proportion. The Ruler of Providence bears a pair of scales-in this side He puts His people’s trials, and in that He puts their consolations. When the scale of trial is nearly empty, you will always find the scale of consolation in nearly the same condition; and when the scale of trials is full, you will find the scale of consolation just as heavy. When the black clouds gather most, the light is the more brightly revealed to us. When the night lowers and the tempest is coming on, the Heavenly Captain is always closest to His crew. It is a blessed thing, that when we are most cast down, then it is that we are most lifted up by the consolations of the Spirit.

One reason is, because trials make more room for consolation. Great hearts can only be made by great troubles. The spade of trouble digs the reservoir of comfort deeper, and makes more room for consolation. God comes into our heart-He finds it full-He begins to break our comforts and to make it empty; then there is more room for grace. The humbler a man lies, the more comfort he will always have, because he will be more fitted to receive it.

Another reason why we are often most happy in our troubles, is this-then we have the closest dealings with God. When the barn is full, man can live without God: when the purse is bursting with gold, we try to do without so much prayer. But once take our gourds away, and we want our God; once cleanse the idols out of the house, then we are compelled to honour Jehovah. ‘Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. ‘There is no cry so good as that which comes from the bottom of the mountains; no prayer half so hearty as that which comes up from the depths of the soul, through deep trials and afflictions. Hence they bring us to God, and we are happier; for nearness to God is happiness.

Come, troubled believer, fret not over your heavy troubles, for they are the heralds of weighty mercies.

2.12a

Weekly Links (2/3/2012)

By this rejection of God, agnosticism has embraced complete relativism. Yet this relativism must furnish a basis for the rejection of the absolute. Accordingly, the standard of self-contradiction taken for granted by antitheistic thought presupposes the absolute for its operation. Antitheism presupposes theism. One must stand upon the solid ground of theism to be an effective antitheist. (Cornelius Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology)

by Stephen Rodgers

Hey everyone!  Welcome to Friday; we’ve got a bunch of really good stuff for you this week as you head into the weekend.

News

Resources

  •  It’s a new month, and so christianaudio.com has a new free audio book for you!  This month it’s Trusting God by Jerry Bridges.  You definitely don’t want to miss this one.
  • Truth for Life (the publisher) is now offering a number of resources at wholesale.
  • There’s a new issue of Tabletalk entitled Love Never Fails. I’ve updated the archive.  You do know about the archive right?
  • AIG has been making articles from some of their collections available for free. Given one of my past articles I’m especially excited to see that Contradictions and Contradictions 2 are part of that offering.
  • Also, you should know that Desiring God has made John Piper’s book Bloodlines available for free.

That should keep you busy!

Well, as Frank Turk often says, enjoy the digital delights, but make sure that you’re in the Lord’s house with the Lord’s people on the Lord’s day.

See you there.

BOB – Resources, References, and Links

by Stephen Rodgers

There’s an old expression about God closing doors and opening windows. I always thought that was both odd and awesome, since it seemed to call upon Christians to execute maneuvers most often associated with catburglers and second-story men. Except in this case, instead of metaphorical doors and windows we’re going to be dealing with actual hyperlinks on the internet.

CLOSED DOOR

At some point last week, Crossway decided to remove the links to most of the content from the ESV Study Bible that was previously available online.  Following the example of other publishers (Thomas Nelson, Zondervon, etc.) they had previously exposed their book introductions (which was fairly standard) as well as their articles and essays (which was exceedingly generous of them).

They have since decided to remove that content.  It hasn’t been deleted, it’s simply been moved behind their paywall.  So if you’ve registered your ESV Study Bible on their website, you can still view the material by logging in to esvbible.org. (Note: I believe that you still get a free code for this with the purchase of any new ESV Study Bible. They also allow you to purchase a digital version of all the content from the MacArthur Study Bible and integrate that as well, which results in you owning a seriously powerful tool for Bible study that can be accessed from any internet connection).

By the way, since I’m about to say some less-than-complimentary things about the results of that decision, let me take a moment to make one thing clear: it was absolutely their right to make that choice.  They paid to develop the material, and if they wish to be more aggressive in monetizing it, they are well within their prerogative as a publisher. Nonetheless, exercising that right several years after it’s been freely available is a bit odd.

Unfortunately, since I can’t hyperlink to your physical book, and since their bible study web interface is fairly non-standard, it’s a pretty big blow to referencing their material online.  (In other words, while the material is there and at least nominally searchable, the techniques and technology that apply to searching, storing, referencing, and indexing a web document are now useless). And as a result of this, quite a few links from previous BOB articles are now broken. So, since I’m going to have to take the time to touch every article to remove those links, I might as well take the opportunity to add quite a few resources that have come to my attention since then.

OPEN WINDOW

As of the publishing of this article, all previous articles in the BOB series have been updated with new and improved reference material.

Briefly, here is a list of the study Bible resources I commonly use that have some corresponding availability online:

  • Apologetics Study Bible – Surprisingly, this Bible is indexed and available on Google Books; you can jump to various books of the Bible by using the pull-down menu
  • Archaeological Study Bible – Very little of this material is available online, but you can poke around their website and see what you can find (for example, they have a .pdf version of Genesis that is worth the download)
  • ESV Study Bible – As mentioned above, most of this content is no longer freely available, however a few features can still be downloaded. The free version is still available at esvbible.org.
  • MacArthur Study Bible – GTY actually makes all their Bible Introductions available online
  • NET Bible – I’ve previously mentioned the NET Bible, so I won’t go into much detail.  Suffice to say this is my go-to reference for translation notes.
  • NIV Study Bible – Biblica.com makes all the book introductions and selected articles available online
  • Reformation Study Bible – Very little of this material is available for free online, but Ligonier recently made the introduction to all four of the Gospels available, and have announced they will be doing the same with the books of the Pentateuch (which will be linked as they become available). (UPDATE: a few sample pages are also available)

I also own and use the Chronological Study Bible, but I haven’t found it particular useful for this series.  I highly recommend having a chronological understanding of the events of the Bible however: which were sequential, which were concurrent, which are disputed, etc. For understanding that, a chronological Bible is a fantastic resource, or you can simply avail yourself to a chronological reading plan (esv.org has a list; the .pdf version of the chronological plan is particularly good).

If anyone wants to talk about Bibles in general or study Bibles in particular, I’d be happy to chat with you; either find me at church or email me directly. Perhaps later in the series we can discuss some other resources as well.

For those of you studying along at home, I hope you find this helpful.

Real Christian Parenting

by Elder Peter Lim

Sometimes, Christians oversimplify the role of parenting as if all parenting problems/concerns can be resolved if only one is spirtual enough or walking right with God or if they did their quiet times that day. Or perhaps if they just knew all the secrets and wisdom contained in Scripture they ought to be able to be the super-parent who is capable of responding perfectly through every twist and turn on the road of life. With sufficient Biblical knowledge, shouldn’t we know how to live adequately and buy a house and feed our children with delicious and nutritious food that’s optimized to be nutritionally balanced at every meal on only $20/week? Let’s be real here. Yes, the Bible contains all the wisdom and principles we need in order to glorify God in our parenting. Yes, God is good and He will take care of us. Yes, we are to be filled with His Spirit as He guides our footsteps. However, the specific way we may desire to be cared for and guided may not be His sovereign will. In reality, God continues to refine us and build our character through various circumstances as we are given opportunities to exercise wisdom-filled decisions and to be patient and even learn through our failures. Children have a way of bringing our weaknesses to light. This is a good thing because it causes us to fall on our knees in prayer because we don’t know what to do. We need to admit that to ourselves and sometimes even to our children. They need to learn that parents are dependent on God as much as they are.

As I teach the parenting class at our church, it soon becomes apparent that the Bible deals more with how we as parents are to be than what methods we are to use to get the desired behavior from our kids. That’s why I appreciate Tedd Tripp’s “Shepherding a Child’s Heart.” The whole emphasis of this book is to make sure that we are dealing with being a real Christian parent who is concerned more about our children’s hearts than their external behavior. It’s easy to slip into a mode where we want to be able to measure their obedience and implement a system of rewarding good behavior and penalizing bad behavior. We must not fall into this trap! This ignores the heart out of which evil thoughts and deeds come. (Mark 7:14-23) Parents, don’t lose hope. It’s amazing how fast children grow and come to understand their own sinfulness. When these moments come, we need to be ready to reiterate the message of hope that comes only through the gospel of Christ which you have been teaching them all along. This is particularly true when our children get older into their teen years. The world would say that these years are hard because their kids turn into rebellious monsters. As Christian parents, we need to take these opportunities to relate the gospel back into their lives, how although they just messed up, forgiveness and the grace of God is their only hope.

At our church, many of you are young and many of you have parents who have struggled to raise you up in these ways. Often they have failed to treat you like the young adult that you are, overreacted or underreacted to your failures, and misunderstood you. But I’m sure that they have also loved you and cared for you, however misguided they may have been. No matter your upbringing, you have an opportunity to learn from them and make Biblical changes if necessary in your parenting skills in order to raise up the next Godly generation. If you never marry or have children, you will still have opportunities to affect the next generation through discipling the younger members of the church.

Abortion – Hub Post

by Stephen Rodgers

This is the hub post for var­i­ous arti­cles and ser­mons on the sub­ject of abortion.

Our church recently took a Sunday to consider what the Bible has to say on the topic of abortion. For anyone who missed it, both the sermon and the follow-up article are still available.

Considering the magnitude of the issue, I was asked to create a repository on the subject, much like we’ve already done with several other topics (such as DTR or Church Discipline). Periodically we may update this page to introduce links to new resources.

All posts in the Abortion series:

All ser­mons in the Abortion series:

In addition, there are a number of excellent books that deal with the topic.

In the interest of keeping this list relatively short, here are four that approach the topic (directly or indirectly) from a variety of angles:

  • The ESV Study Bible contains a series of essays on the subject of Biblical ethics, one of which specifically addresses the issue of abortion
  • The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture by Scott Klusendorf
  • Abortion: A Rational Look at an Emotional Issue by RC Sproul
  • Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Questions by Randy Alcorn
  • Safe in the Arms of God by John MacArthur

There are also a great many resources that are freely available on the internet. Given the sheer breadth of those resources, I will initially present a number of topical indexes (please be warned, some are quite large) that you can review and search yourself, and then conclude with a few particular articles of note.

Here are the topical indexes:

And here are the specific articles and series:

Additionally, there have been some relatively recent developments in the field of medical ethics that have begun to examine the question of post-birth abortions as well: