The ESV blog linked to an interesting post today on a man’s encounter with J.I. Packer. Packer was signing various books for folks when a man asked Packer to sign a copy of his bible. Packer responded, “Son, this is God’s book. If you want it signed you will need to ask him.”

So, I’ll ask the obvious question. How would you go about asking God this? What kind of answer would you expect?

When you ask an author to sign their book, you are showing them how much you appreciate their work. Obviously the author has already poured himself into the book. He didn’t give you half his work, he gave you his full work, so you are not asking him to add anything more to it by autographing it, you are not looking for additional information on the subject. Asking for a signature also shows your recognition of the author’s authority on the subject he wrote about. You realize that the author is more knowledgeable in a particular subject and has more experience with it than you do, if not, you would have wrote the book in the first place. Asking for an autograph is a great complement to an author, it’s something you go out of your way to do.

How then would we ask for God’s autograph? How would we should him how much we appreciate his work?

1. ‘You have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel’ Col 1:5 - this may seem obvious but God wants you to believe his word as truth. The author didn’t mix truth with lies, his whole book is true, not just parts of it.
2. ‘But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves’ James 1:22 - any teacher would say they greatest complement they get on their teaching is seeing it have its effect in their students’ lives. You ask God for his autograph when you show him that you are living out his word.
3. ‘Be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love just as Christ also loved you’ Eph 5:1-2 - how else can we imitate God unless we know what it is we are to imitate? This knowledge is found by Spirit-led study of his word, which brings up the next point…
4. ‘These words…you shall teach them to your sons and shall talk of them and write the on your doorposts’ Deut 6:6-9 - an author’s delight is to know people are talking about their book and putting it on their “coffee table” for others to read through.
5. ‘I have hidden your word in my heart’ Ps 119:11 - but an author’s joy is to know that his book has been memorized and taken to heart. That it is meditated on day and night and touches every area of life.

I think this is how we show God we want his autograph, when we worship him. ‘May all the kings of the earth praise you, O LORD, when they hear the words of your mouth.’ Ps 138:4

Please add to this list, how else do we ask for God’s autograph? Or maybe answer the question: what kind of answer do we get from God when we ask for this?

I stumbled on a neat way to look-up Bible verses (for those of us who don’t have the whole Bible memorized). Have a look at OpenBible.info to see it in action.

Also, there is a way to visually analyze the frequency of a word used in the Bible, for example, “love” is used a lot more in the epistles than in the gospels, but it looks like Psalm has them both beat. Yet another website that makes good use of the ESV’s online presence. Enjoy!

A few days ago I posted a reference to an article by John Piper titled Signs and Wonders, Heresy, and Love for God. I wanted to think about it for a few days and write some more.

The basis of Piper’s article is that great signs and wonders have always and will always happen and that God uses them to test us. I thought about what kinds of false signs and wonders we might witness today. At first I thought about, honestly, dinosaurs. Maybe the fossils we have today could be one of these false signs because it does lead the people astray to follow after the god of science. I quickly talked myself out of this because it does not fit with the text. Both the Matt. 24 and Deut.13 passage imply some kind of miracle that is performed by a false prophet, either a prophecy of future events or a miracle performed in front of their eyes.

The only thing I could come up with was healings and fortune tellers. These are definitely miraculous (when they work) and would be very convincing to those who witness them that the person performing them has some kind of supernatural power. But the Bible tells us that true prophets can do the same things. So then the question is, how can we distinguish the false from the true? Thankfully, God never leaves us to fend for ourselves, He gives us a spirit of truth and tells us to test the spirits. Here is our test:

By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God…They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world - 1 John 4:2-5

This passage tells us that we can know false spirits from true spirits by their doctrine. What they say and what they preach. Their acts may appear loving and compassionate but their teachings will not. Their doctrine will tell of a different Christ than then one we believed in. False doctrine goes right for the cross and tries to skirt around it; preaching a Jesus that did not join in humanity, taking on the flesh and all its temptations, and suffer on our behalf only to be killed as an atoning sacrifice and rise up again to life on the third day.

Jason VanDorsten, pastoral intern at Reston Bible Church (where my family attends), has joined Matthew Wireman’s Off The Wire blog. I’m looking forward to some great material from Jason. Read his first post on why pastors should allow the people they minister to see all sides of their lives, even the messy ones. Enjoy!

Here is an article from Ken Connor titled “Disposing of the Disabled” (HT: kerux noemata). My heart sunk when I read that, according to the New York Times, 90% of babies are murdered once the parent(s) finds out it has Down syndrome.

90%. Let that number sink in.

I appreciated the author’s relating the problem of abortion to the period of time when blacks where not treated as equals in America and his hope that abortion would, in the future, become as equally shameful to us as a horrible period of American history:

There were times in America’s past when neither blacks nor women were regarded as full fledged members of the human family. As a result, they too were deprived of the full panoply of rights endowed by the Creator to those created in his image. Those were not the best of times in America’s history. Thankfully, however, there were other times when Americans were willing to pay the price to see to it that both blacks and women received the protections they were entitled to by virtue of their humanity. Will we be willing to pay such a price for the unborn and the handicapped in our time? Again, only time will tell.

Unfortunately, the main difference between these two time periods is that one group had a leader emerge from its own ranks to fight for justice and reform and the other group’s leaders are taken out before they even emerge. O Lord, forgive us.

Here is a great article from John Piper that I am still pondering.

In it, Piper opens with a verse from Matthew 24:24:

For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.

And explains that these signs and wonders are supernatural but that they aim to deceive. So, if these things are supernatural, what is God’s purpose in them happening? Piper brings up Deuteronomy 13:1-3

“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

And then spells out five things to notice from this passage, mainly that God is testing us by it. There are a few things I want to think about with this passage, but I’d like to hear from you if you have any stories of witnessing one of these signs/wonders? The passage in Deuteronomy says the sign will come true, meaning the sign was some kind of future-telling event or miraculous performance as opposed to teaching some kind of false doctrine to try and lead the church astray. So, has anyone ever seen something like this? What was it?

Well, it appears bloggers were up all night coming up with these so here they are in order of magnitude of hilarity:

10. Happy (?) Atheists’ Day - not funny per say but an April Fool’s Day post in any case

9.  Did Jesus Ever Laugh? - R.C. Sproul tackles the question that has plagued theologians for centuries

8. Did the President Lie? (April fooled you!) - Denny Burk jumps the gun a day early

7. The Most Hilarious April Fool’s Post Ever -a bold title for number 7 on this list…but I think he made up for it

6. We’re Done, thanks for the memories! - These guys went so far as to throw in the towel on their blog

5. Virgle - Earth has issues, and it’s time humanity got started on a Plan B.

4. Tuesdays are Usually for Reviews - Only funny because it could just happen to Challies!

3. Custom email timestamps in Gmail - ah, nerd humor, I can’t resist thee: “Gmail utilizes an e-flux capacitor to resolve issues of causality (see Grandfather Paradox).”

2. Sea of Galilee Discovered - Hands down, the winner! (HT: JT)

1. You’ll just have to click to find out

Do you ever think about how much it delighted Jesus to serve us? Do you ever consider that Jesus rejoiced at the idea of becoming like us and suffering as he did? Listen to what John Owen said:

As then we lay under the eye of Christ in our misery, we were the objects of his pity and compassion; but as he looketh on us as recoverable out of that state, his love worketh in and by delight. It was an inconceivable delight unto him, to take a prospect of the deliverance of mankind unto the glory of God; which is also an act of love. See this divinely expressed, Prov. viii. 30, 31, as that place has been elsewhere explained.

Don’t miss what’s being said here, Christ delighted in his life, death, and resurrection. In the gospel, we see that he did not leave his father begrudgingly with an attitude of annoyance at having to come down from his throne; he came because it was his joy to do it. He finds his pleasure in us! Jesus said he did not come to be served, but to serve. God serves us? The maker serves the created? The only explanation for this is love. God loves us with such a passion that he was not only willing, but excited, to come and take on our sins so that he could restore our relationship with him.

“And there they continued to preach the gospel” - Acts 14:7

Each Tuesday a different reflection on the gospel and its continual effect on our lives

I realized yesterday that after posting my nifty little diagram, I didn’t actually say anything about the passage…

As Paul does fairly often in his letters, he opens up Ephesians with a doctrinal explanation before exhorting his readers towards godly living. This passage in Ephesians 1:3-14 seems to be Paul praising God for what He has done. He starts off by saying, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has…” A friend of mine made the point that all praise comes from doctrine; you praise God because of what you know about Him through His revelation to us and you praise Him because of what He’s done knowing that doctrine teaches you what God does and does not do. For example, you praise God for His creation but doctrine teaches you that He was the one that created it.

Paul then explains what God has done for us in Jesus. He:

• chose/elected us (v4)
• predestined us for adoption (v5)
• redeemed us and forgave our sins (v7)
• gave us an inheritance (v11)
• sealed us with the Holy Spirit (v13)

And this seems to be the main point of this passage, that we praise God for giving us every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus.

But along the way, Paul makes these great little sidetracks that dig deeper into what Christ has done for us. In v11 Paul says that we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the council of His will. Whatever your view of predestination is, these passages make us thankful that God is sovereign because His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are perfect and therefore we can trust in His will for our lives. It reminds me of Christ telling us not to worry about anything in Matthew 6:25-34.

Even with these sidetracks, which we could get lost in thoughts about God’s sovereignty for hours from, Paul always ends up praising God by saying that all things are to the praise of His glory. This seems to be what Paul wanted his readers to see, that we are so blessed in Christ and that it was all done to the praise of His everlasting glory.

The first section of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians has always been confusing to me. This is classic Paul-authorship; lots of commas and run-on sentences that provide so much good stuff that your brain can’t stay with Paul’s train of thought. Here is the text from the ESV (I’m really thankful for the folks at Crossway for making the ESV so web-friendly and providing us with a great API):

Ephesians 1:3-14 - 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

11In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, 12so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. 13In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

Try and read it very quickly and you’ll know what I mean about being confused. While I was studying this passage, it was helpful for me to break it up into smaller chunks so I could try and get a feel for what the flow of Paul’s thoughts were. I started doing this in PowerPoint by adding indentations to the breaks and italics where Paul’s mind seems to wander a bit and I realized that arrows and highlights were needed so I switched to Microsoft Visio to help me out with that. Here is what I came up with (click on the picture for a larger version):

Click here for a smaller version that might fit better on your screen so you don’t have to scroll all over the place to read it.

I found this helpful for myself to diagram what Paul was trying to say here. If you read from top to bottom, left to right, you’ll see how I broke the passage up into sections. I tried using highlighted blocks to denote similar passages, the blueish color denotes the blessings that Paul mentions we have in Christ in v3, the clouds represent tangents that Paul takes that, while theologically are topics all in themselves, makes it difficult to get a grasp of the whole passage when you get caught up praising God for what He’s done while you read them.

I would like to learn more about diagramming sentences (I will admit I did not pay close enough attention in grammar school to this). If anyone knows of any good resources, please post them in the comment sections. These don’t have to be “Christian” references either, I know there are a lot of fine English grammar books that deal with this topic that would be helpful to me. I found BibleArc to be a good place with a pretty good interface for “arcing” passages, does anyone have others? Thanks!

EDIT: I found this post from Challies blog. On it, there is what looks to be a good, free book from Desiring God Ministries and a few chapters of a book from Thomas R. Schreiner.