Ever struggle with fearing the opinions or power of others? Perhaps these paragraphs from Ed Welch’s book will help you to see that fearing God is the solution to your struggles.
Edward T. Welch. When People Are Big and God is Small. Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 1997.
“If you have ever walked among giant redwoods, you will never be overwhelmed by the size of a dogwood tree. Or if you have been through a hurricane, a spring rain is nothing to fear. If you have been in the presence of the almighty God, everything that once controlled you suddenly has less power” (119).
All these biblical examples point to the same conclusions: The triune God delights in showing us his grandeur and holiness, and we should never be satisfied with our present knowledge of him. So aspire to the fear of the Lord. Such a desire will certainly be satisfied as we pray, Lord, teach your church to fear you. Your grace is not always amazing to us. We are slow to hate our sin. We are more concerned with what someone thinks about our appearance than we are about reverential obedience before you. We want to delight in fear. We want to treasure it and give it to the next generation. Amen. (133)
Mark Driscoll’s Book, Doctrine – A Review
Theology matters, and greatly so. Churches that have lost their hold on the truths of the faith are destined to drift into destructive errors or to simply become social clubs with a religious overtone. This is why books like Mark Driscoll’s Doctrine are so important.
What I Liked
Perhaps the best thing about Doctrine is that Driscoll took the time to write it. It is good for churches to see their leadership caring about the teaching of the Scripture in more than a simplistic or superstitious sense. Driscoll does his best to address important issues of the faith in a serious way—his trademark sarcasm is simply not present in this work.
Many of the chapters of this book are worthy of applause. Driscoll handles some heavy topics such as the trinity (chapter 1), the cross and atonement (chapter 8), and the church (chapter 11) with a great deal of insight. In most of these chapters, Driscoll addresses the issues with a nice balance of complexity on the one hand and explanation, simplicity, and application on the other.
What I Did Not Like
There are a few places where discerning Christians will have some questions for Driscoll as they work their way through Doctrine. In some of these cases, the issues may be quite secondary. In others, however, it appears that Driscoll makes some fairly dangerous statements.
The most serious error in this book comes early, in the chapter on divine Revelation (chapter 2). In explaining that general revelation will not bring a person enough knowledge of God to save their souls, Driscoll asserts that in countries closed to missionaries, God might send dreams, visions, or even angels to the lost to bring them the good news of Jesus Christ. Though I have no doubt that such stories have indeed been told, and perhaps by those whom Driscoll trusts, this is a direct contradiction of Romans 10:13-ff. In that passage of perfectly-inspired holy Scripture, God tells us that people will not be saved without a preacher, and the clear understanding of that passage is that the preacher will be one of God’s children, a human preacher or missionary, not an angelic messenger. Besides coming from outside of the Scripture, this issue matters, because if Christians believe that God might save others without human contact through personal communication or written word (including the Bible), this will do harm to the missionary Endeavour.
There are at least two other areas where I found myself concerned about the content of this work. I found myself uncomfortable with Driscoll’s openness to an old-earth creation story in chapter 3. I believe in a literal six day creation, and while I will not make this a first-level issue, I fear that old earth theories play fast and loose with the interpretation of Scripture. Also, again in chapter 2, Driscoll leans in a more charismatic understanding of revelation than I am comfortable with. I believe that a closed cannon of Scripture does not leave the door open to divine revelation in the form of predictive prophecy; Driscoll disagrees.
Conclusion and Recommendation
Overall, I am grateful to Mark Driscoll for the work that he has done in writing this very accessible systematic theology. Works like this need to be written, and well-known figures in evangelicalism need to show that such things are important. There are certainly areas where I could caution readers to read with discernment and even to reject Driscoll’s conclusions, but such areas are not enough to make me recommend not reading the book as a whole. I have no doubt that my own point-of-view still needs much work before I understand all of what God wants me to grasp doctrinally, and thus I have much grace for a brother in Christ who is doing the work in a far more expansive way than I. So, my recommendation: Read Doctrine, but read it carefully—as you should any book you pick up or download.
Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears. Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe. Wheaton: Crossway, 2010. 464 pp.
[For this review, I read the excellent audio book from ChristianAudio.com.]
Right Response to Ugly authority (1 Samuel 26:8-11)
1 Samuel 26:8-11
8 Then said Abishai to David, “God has given your enemy into your hand this day. Now please let me pin him to the earth with one stroke of the spear, and I will not strike him twice.” 9 But David said to Abishai, “Do not destroy him, for who can put out his hand against the Lord’s anointed and be guiltless?” 10 And David said, “As the Lord lives, the Lord will strike him, or his day will come to die, or he will go down into battle and perish. 11 The Lord forbid that I should put out my hand against the Lord’s anointed. But take now the spear that is at his head and the jar of water, and let us go.”
1 Samuel 26:21-22
21 Then Saul said, “I have sinned. Return, my son David, for I will no more do you harm, because my life was precious in your eyes this day. Behold, I have acted foolishly, and have made a great mistake.” 22 And David answered and said, “Here is the spear, O king! Let one of the young men come over and take it.
All of us, at one time or another, have been under leadership that we did not particularly enjoy. Perhaps you have been less-than-pleased with the results of a local or national election. Perhaps you have worked for a boss who is just a tyrant. Perhaps you are in a class with a teacher who is simply impossible to please. How should you respond?
Though God chose to anoint David as King of Israel, King Saul kept occupying that position for several years. Saul mistreated David, falsely accusing David of ambition and trying to kill him on more than one occasion. In two instances, as Saul was hunting David down in the wilderness, David found himself with the advantage over Saul. David could have killed King Saul, but chose not to do so.
Why did David not destroy Saul? David was not averse to killing an enemy. As a soldier, David had shed much blood. However, David refused to stretch out his hand against Saul, because Saul, so long as he lived, was the Lord’s anointed king over Israel. David, though Saul was not at all sane, would not destroy the man whom God had placed on Israel’s throne.
Now, it is also interesting, looking at verses 21 and 22 above, that David did not put himself in a position to be harmed by Saul. When Saul wept before David in much the same way an abusive husband often weeps after an outburst, David did not trust Saul or put himself back under Saul’s roof. Nor did David lash out at Saul or otherwise try to harm him. Instead, David merely pointed out that he was not going to harm Saul, and went on his way.
So, what about you and me in our world? Perhaps God would remind us today that he has indeed anointed those who are in authority over us. Whether these be our pastors, our governors, our bosses, or our president, God has, for God’s own reasons, given these individuals their positions of power. Perhaps we love what they do. Perhaps we do not like them at all. But God would teach us from David’s example never to lash out to do these men or women harm. No one can stretch out his hand against the Lord’s anointed and find himself blameless in the process. This does not mean that we have to trust these people. Nor does it mean that we give them carte blanche to break the commands of our Lord. It certainly does not mean that we allow ourselves to be abused by them. However, like David, we must learn to live within the system if possible, to prayerfully ask God to change what needs to be changed, and to trust that our Lord will accomplish his will for his glory in and through our leadership.
Obviously, there can arise a thousand moral questions from this little pondering of our response to authorities. I cannot address every possibility here. But I think it is good for the people of God to consider if we respond to our authorities—good or bad—in the way that would honor God as David did? Do we show them the respect that is commanded in Romans 13; or how about the prayer? If we trust that God is sovereign and if we believe his word is true, we are to respond to the men and women he places in authority over us with the kind of humility we see in David and which Paul spells out in Romans 13.
Pithy Platitudes , Doctrinal Disaster (Mark 12:24)
Mark 12:24
Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?”
One of the most common and most dangerous things that happens in churches all over the world is something we see in Mark 12. A group of men from the Sadducees comes to confront Jesus with a riddle they themselves cannot solve. Because those men did not believe in the resurrection from the dead, they assume they have Jesus backed into a corner with their question about a woman who was married to seven different men in her lifetime. Sneering, they ask, “whose wife will this lady be in the resurrection?” Jesus responds with the words we see above, condemning their lack of understanding of the Scripture and of the power and plan of God.
While we may not run into many who claim Christ without believing in the resurrection of the saints, we do have many people in our churches who assume that they have doctrine figured out. Without resorting to the hard work of genuine study of the Bible, people in our churches often take for granted theological and moral positions that are in direct contradiction to the word of God and its teaching. Often, these folks have heard a pithy saying or oft repeated phrase, and have digested it as biblical doctrine without any look for themselves at the word of God.
What is a fair example? How about some of the legalistic positions of days gone by? Let’s pick something as simple as playing cards. Because card playing in years gone by was connected with both fortune-telling and gambling, some Christians decided to declare any playing of any card game to be sinful. The problem was, while those believers wanted to protect themselves from evil, they actually developed a standard of righteousness that was beyond the clear teaching of God’s word. In a word, they became legalists.
Take another example. How about the question of going to a restaurant or doing yard work on a Sunday. To some believers, any activity that can be construed as work in any way on a Sunday is sin. How did they come to this conclusion? These believers came to their conclusion by applying the Sabbath regulations of the Old Testament to Christian behavior on Sundays. However, they fail to see that Christ has fulfilled the law of the Sabbath, that the Sabbath rest is a rest from any attempt to work one’s way to God, and that the Lord’s Day, while similar, is not the Jewish Sabbath. Finally, they fail to recognize the regulation of Romans 14 which calls Christians to be convinced in their own minds about how to treat the days of the week, but to not judge others who differ from them in their views.
The point here is not to call Christians to give up all their beliefs about gambling or Sabbaths. The point is to call believers to truly examine the Scriptures for what they believe. The reason we are sometimes wrong about our beliefs is that, as Jesus said, we neither know the Scriptures nor the power of our God. When we know the Scriptures, truly examining the word of God for all our beliefs, we will walk away from legalism and toward a zeal for good works that will honor God. Some of our standards we will keep, because those standards are upheld in the word. Some of our standards, we will throw away, as we realize that our beliefs have not been recorded in God’s word, but have merely been man-made regulations passed down from generation to generation without biblical warrant.
Christians, we will honor God more when everything we believe is based on first-hand knowledge of the scripture. We will please God more when we believe right doctrine from experience with the word, and not from believing platitudes that have endured for generations without Scriptural support.
Who Wins, the Word or My Emotions? (2 Corinthians 7:14-16)
2 Corinthians 7:14-16
14 Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15 What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,
“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
I once had a strange encounter with a church’s pastor search committee. I had been working in Korea for only 1 year, and was home for a vacation. I got a call from a man who asked me to have lunch with him. It turned out that he brought his entire search committee with him even though I told him quite clearly that I was not interested in a move.
During our conversation, one of the committee members asked me this question: “Would you perform a wedding for a Christian and a non-Christian?” I told him that, according to 2 Corinthians 7, God forbids his children from intermarrying with the lost. The man then replied to me, “Well, you wouldn’t’ have married me and my wife.” His experience was that he was not a believer when his supposedly Christian wife married him. At the time of the meeting, they had both become believers. I responded by telling him that, though God graciously sometimes allows our decisions not to lead us to disaster, to choose to disobey god’s direct command is still sin. The man’s response to me: “You know, I often hear that answer from you guys who are just out of seminary, but as you get older, your tone will change.”
What the search committee member was trying to tell me was that his personal experience—his wife married a non-Christian with positive results—actually trumped the strict command of the Bible. How common is this view? Look around your church. How many ladies do you see in church without their husbands who are not saved? For some reason, it has been the practice of the church for years to ignore God’s command for his children only to marry other Christians, and this with devastatingly sad consequences.
Of course, from this passage, we should learn that Christians must only marry Christians. But we can also learn from how this command is so often disobeyed. Refusing to follow God’s commands is deadly. To read the word of God, see the command, and then turn from it with a shrug and assume it does not apply to you is very dangerous.
What has God’s word called you to do? What has God’s word called you to be? Are you shrugging off any commands of god for the sake of your emotions? Are you assuming that what you have experienced is more solid and trustworthy than God’s word? O Christians, be careful. Honor God by following his commands as they are written in his word.
Almost Obeying (1 Samuel 15:8-9)
1 Samuel 15:8-9
8 And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive and devoted to destruction all the people with the edge of the sword. 9 But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless they devoted to destruction.
Have you ever found yourself almost willing to obey? Have you ever thought that you were going to follow God to a point, but not to go too far? Have you ever wanted to tell God that you would do one thing, but not another? If so, you were disobedient.
1 Samuel 15 is the account of King Saul’s final disobedience before God told him through Samuel that he would lose the kingdom. God had charged Saul with destroying an enemy people completely. Saul was willing to obey to a point. He was willing to destroy the things he wanted to destroy. But, when it came to destroying treasures and spoils that Saul wanted to keep, he turned up his nose at the command of God.
You know, it is very easy to think like King Saul. It is easy to obey God when you want to. It is hard to obey in areas where, well, obeying is hard. It’s sort of like a child who finds eating chocolate cake easy, but broccoli hard. However, to be obedient to God, we must be determined to follow him when following is easy and when following is not.
This would be a good place for you and me to take time to think pretty clearly about how we obey. Where is obedience easy? Great, keep that up. Where is obedience hard? Where are you tempted to tell God, “I won’t give you that much?” In those places, remember what disobedience cost Saul. Remember that partial obedience is disobedience. Ask God to grant you the heart and character to follow him all the way.
Gospel Smells (2 Corinthians 2:14-16)
2 Corinthians 2:14-16
14 But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. 15 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?
For many years of my life, I went to New Orleans to share the gospel with revelers during mardi Gras. This was always a fascinating time of ministry. We were not, by the way, the harsh guys with the bullhorns and cruelly worded signs. Instead, we often had our most productive conversations with people who were walking away from those guys.
One year, in New Orleans, I remember thinking to myself, “What possible good am I doing here?” People were not responding very positively to our presentations of the gospel. No one was being radically saved on the Bourbon Street sidewalks. Instead, everything we did seemed to meet with as much apathy as anything.
At some point in thinking this issue through with other brothers in Christ on the street, we stumbled upon the truth of the verses above. We first worded it this way: “We are being a witness, either to someone’ salvation or their condemnation.” What we meant was that our sharing of the gospel to the inebriated masses in the Crescent City was not empty. Either a person would be saved, eventually, and look back and perhaps remember that they had heard the gospel truth in New Orleans as one step on their path to conversion. Otherwise, a person would not be saved, and as they eventually would stand before God, they would remember that they did hear the true gospel at least once on the streets of New Orleans. Either way, that gospel witness would be recalled in their story of salvation or condemnation.
It was interesting, then, to happen across the same sentiment in the life of Paul in 2 Corinthians 2. Paul talked of his gospel witness as a smell. To some, the message of the cross stinks. To others, it is glorious. To some, the cross will lead them to death, as the cross is the center of their rejection of God and is love. To others, the cross is beautiful, as it is the place where they find God’s mercy and become his child.
Christians, right now, you are a smell. So, make as much smell as you can. Tell people about Jesus. Share the gospel. You might see people saved. You might not. Either way, it is your job to be faithful. Perhaps your presentation of the cross and the risen Savior will stink to them and be one more charge against them on judgment day. Perhaps your witness will only be one more way in which the Lord will tell them that he put his grace in front of them to receive. Or, perhaps your presentation of the cross will smell sweet. Perhaps your gospel presentation will be one part of what God uses to plant a seed, water it, or harvest a saved soul. Either way, you are used by God to accomplish his will for his glory.
Greg Gilbert on "What Is the Gospel"
Greg Gilbert. “Addendum: WHAT IS THE GOSPEL?” in Proclaiming a Cross Centered Theology. Wheaton: Crossway, 2009.
to proclaim the inauguration of the kingdom and the new creation and all the rest without proclaiming how people can enter it—by repenting and being forgiven of their sins through faith in Christ and his atoning death—is to preach a non-gospel. Indeed, it is to preach bad news, since you give people no hope of being included in that new creation. The gospel of the kingdom is not merely the proclamation of the kingdom. It is the proclamation of the kingdom together with the proclamation that people may enter it by repentance and faith in Christ. (126-127)
I believe it is wrong ever to say that non-Christians are doing “kingdom work.” A non-Christian working for human reconciliation or justice is doing a good thing, but that is not kingdom work, because it is not done in the name of the King. C. S. Lewis was wrong; you cannot do good things in the name of Tash and expect Aslan to be happy about it. (129)
As I’ve argued before, I believe that many in the so-called emergent church—for all their insistence about how astonishing and surprising their gospel is—have missed entirely what really is astonishing about the gospel. That Jesus is king and has inaugurated a kingdom of love and compassion is not really all that astonishing. Every Jew knew that was going to happen someday. What is truly astonishing about the gospel is that the messianic King dies to save his people—that the divine Son of Man in Daniel, the Davidic Messiah, and the suffering servant in Isaiah turn out to be the same man. That, moreover, is ultimately how we tie together the gospel of the kingdom and the gospel of the cross. Jesus is not just King, but crucified King. Next to that, what many in the emergent church are holding out as an astonishing gospel is not astonishing at all. It’s just boring. (130)
There is only one command that is actually included in the gospel itself (whether broad or narrow): repent and believe. That is the primary obligation on human beings in this age, and therefore it must be our primary emphasis in our preaching, too. (130)
Mark Dever on Improving the Gospel
Mark Dever “Improving the Gospel: Exercises in Unbiblical Theology (or) Questioning Five Common Deceits” in Proclaiming a Cross Centered Theology. Wheaton: Crossway, 2009.
“People often try to improve the gospel, but in “improving” it, they always end up losing it” (99).
“This gospel we have received is itself full and lacks nothing. Thus, to add to it is only to detract from it—and from God’s glory” (119).
“Rising generation of ministers, hear this call. I don’t know how long in God’s kindness he will even suffer for such an admonition to be given out to you. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not about temporary structures; it is about immortal beings made in God’s image. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not about pressing issues of passing policy; it is about the death of Jesus Christ on the cross once for all time. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not about connecting with the questions the non-Christian has; it is about communicating the answer God has given. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not about me experiencing immediate joy with my friends; it is about my ever-lasting joy in God, and it leads me into a local church with people as sinful and as inconvenient to love as I am. And the gospel of Jesus Christ is not about the number of sinners saved; it is about the glory of the God who saves anyone at all” (120).
Ebenezer (1 Samuel 7:12)
1 Samuel 7:12
Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer; for he said, “Till now the Lord has helped us.”
“Here I raise mine Ebenezer;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.”
Have you ever sung the above verse of “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” and caught yourself thinking more of Ebenezer Scrooge than of the word of God? This is a gorgeous line of poetry, but it only has weight in our lives if we remember what the hymn writer is saying.
In 1 Samuel 7:12, Samuel has just seen God bring great deliverance to his people. After a particular victory over their Philistine foes, Samuel sets up a stone in memory of the fact that God has faithfully protected his people. The point of the stone was to remind the people, every time they saw it, that God has always been faithful in the past and surely will continue to be faithful in the future.
What about you? Do you have an Ebenezer? Can you look back to a point in your life where you have seen God be faithful to you? Have you marked down that place and said, “I know God has been faithful to me here, and I will trust him with my future?” If so, great. If not, think back over your life. Think of a time when God has taken care of you. Mark it down. Remember it. Then, when you find yourself tempted to despair, look back at your marker stone, your Ebenezer, and sing out those glorious lines: “Hither by Thy help I’m come, and I hope, by Thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.”
Pastor Travis Peterson 