Highlander

“The Lord gets His best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.”

Spurgeon

What pastors should learn from Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards was a pastor/theologian. Piper argues that this is an essential combination that our church needs today and for the future! These are the main points he feels pastors should digest from Edwards' life.

1) Be radically single-minded in you commitment to know God

2) Labour earnestly to know the Scriptures (Get your vision of God primarily from the bible, not theologians, blogs, God-TV or Desiringgod.com)

3) Redeem the time and do what our hands find to do with all our might (be disciplined)

4) Study for the sake of heart felt worship and practical obedience (Cultivate a passion AND knowledge of God)

5) In all your study and in all your pastoral labour, seek to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.

Download the audio which is worth listening to again and again.

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Biographies/1458_The_Pastor_as_Theologian/

Seek not to grow in knowledge chiefly for the sake of applause and to enable you to dispute with others, seek it for the benefit of your souls and in order to practice with what knowledge you have!

Why I trust the bible: part 1

In our world we are faced with many claims to truth, both religious and secular. Being a Christian in this world has forced me to think about why I believe that the bible reveals absolute truth. In this series of posts, I aim to share some of my journey to believing that the scriptures in the bible are in fact the truth. This series will have various parts that form my argument for why I trust the bible as divine and authoritative. I hope that as you see the path that I have travelled in coming to trust the bible, you too will be deepened in your confidence that it is the very word of God. Please feel free to ask questions if you have.

Part 1: the cornerstone of my confidence

Before coming to any sort of confidence in the inspiration and reliability of scripture, I met a person, Jesus. I didn't have a physical encounter. No angels, bright light or epiphany. Rather, I was told about him. People at various times and places told me different things about the man called Jesus (things that were admittedly from the bible). As the personality of Jesus became more formed in my mind, I began to think that he may not just be a mythical or legendary figure, as I had previously suspected. The things he had reportedly said were too real, too inappropriate, too loving, too harsh, too insightful, too novel, too timeless. In essence, too truth-like.

Then there was the testimony of history (both biblical and secular). His existence could not be denied. He was real and the notion of him as merely as a legend began to fade. The person of Jesus started to become real, and as I looked at what he said and did, he became increasingly credible and compelling. His teaching pierced to the heart of issues that we still face today. His humility, love and compassion drew me to him. His harshness showed me that he was not trying to curry the favour of men, but rather he stood for truth, and the glory of another. His effect on the world, considering that he was a simple carpenter that had no social status or rank, is totally unmatched (yet obvious for everyone to see if human history is studied). All these aspects of the person of Jesus led me to begin to place my confidence in him for an explanation of our world and for reality.

More than anything, however, his mission to die in the place of sinners as their substitute addressed one of the greatest needs and questions I had. How can I be justly reconciled to a God that must, by the constrains of his own just character, punish offenders (I had come to acknowledge that I was one of them). Jesus answered that question for me with an answer that didn't just teach me facts but revealed to me the holiness and love of God. That answer was the cross, and this was the ultimate aspect of Jesus that won my confidence. A God who is dies a humiliating, brutal death at the hands of men whom he prays for. This is what Jesus said he would do. On the cross he followed through.

I have come to trust him. I trust his words and claims, even his claims to divinity. Jesus to me is such an incredibly credible combination of qualities, teachings and deeds, that he must be divine. If he is merely the product of someone's imagination, then that someone must be divine. So, before I came to trust the scriptures, I came to trust a person whom I met through my personal reading of the biblical accounts, teaching of other people I trusted and my understanding of the world in which I live.

Before relying on the evidence of archaeology, history or textual analysis (helpful means to determining reliability of documents), I encountered a person portrayed in the gospel writings. This person stood out to me as real and glorious and he is the cornerstone of why I trust the bible.

Next: Why I trust the Old Testament writings with all their weird events and claims
Future topics:

• What about the New testament?
• Isn't this all a circular argument?
• What does history tell us about the assembly of the cannon (books in the bible)? how was each book chosen?
  
• Aren't there loads of errors in the bible?
• How believing in the sovereignty of God helps?
  
• What can I read to learn more about this?
  

HEAT AND LIGHT

Our people don't so much need to have their heads stored as to have their hearts touched and they stand in the greatest need of that sort of preaching that has the greatest tendency to do this.

Jonathan Edwards

great quote!