The Mission of God’s People

  • June 30, 2015
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  • Park Forum

June30

*The Summer Reading Series is designed to equip our growing community with curated book recommendations that can shape faith and sharpen cultural insight.

The Mission of God’s People | Summer Reading Series

Excerpt from Part Two: God and The Public Square.

By stressing human choices as well as God’s ultimate control, the bible avoids slipping into fatalism or determinism. It affirms both sides of the paradox: humans are morally responsible for their choices and actions and their public consequences; yet God retains sovereign control over final outcomes and destinies.

The Bible presents the public square — human life lived in society and the marketplace — as riddled with sin, corruption, greed, injustice, and violence. That can be seen at local and global dimensions, from sharp practices at the market stall or corner shop, to the massive distortions and inequities of international trade.

As Christians, we need a radical understanding of sin in its public dimensions, and we need to see part of our mission as being called to confront that prophetically in the name of Christ. For God, the corruption of the public square is not a reason to vaporize it, but to purge and redeem it.

Isaiah 65:17–25 is a glorious portrayal of the new creation — a new heavens and a new earth. It looks forward to human life that is no longer subject to weariness and decay, in which there will be fulfillment in family and work, in which the curses of frustration and injustice will be gone forever, in which there will be close and joyful fellowship with God, and in which there will be environmental harmony and safety.

The New Testament carries this vision forward in the light of the redemption achieved by Christ through the cross, and especially in the light of the resurrection. Paul comprehensively and repeatedly includes “all things” not only in what God created through Christ, but what he plans to redeem through Christ. 

The final vision of the whole Bible is not of our escaping from the world to some ethereal paradise. What will be brought into the great city of God in the new creation will be the vast accumulated output of human work through the ages. All this will be purged, redeemed and laid at the feet of Christ, for the enhancement of the life of eternity in the new creation.

Does that not transform our perspective on a Monday morning?

Summer Reading Series
The Mission of God’s People
Christopher Wright
Zondervan, 2010

Today’s Readings
Joshua 2 (Listen – 3:49)
Psalms 123-125 (Listen – 1:52)

Find devotionals and more reading suggestions on TheParkForum.org.

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A Free People’s Suicide

  • June 29, 2015
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  • Park Forum

June29

*The Summer Reading Series is designed to equip our growing community with curated book recommendations that can shape faith and sharpen cultural insight.

A Free People’s Suicide | Summer Reading Series
Excerpt from Chapter Four: The Golden Triangle of Freedom

Two things have consistently surprised me in my years in the United States: that the sole American answer to how freedom can be sustained is the Constitution and its separation of powers and that the rest of the founders’ solution is now almost completely ignored.

It was not always so. Historians point out that the modern elevation of the Constitution as the sole foundation and bulwark of American freedom reached its present height in the 1930s. That was no accident. Significantly, it came right on the heels of a general secularization of American law that has led in turn to a general legislation of American life. 

The framers also held that, though the Constitution’s barriers against the abuse of power are indispensable, they were only “parchment barriers” and therefore could never be more than part of the answer. And in some ways they were the secondary part at that. 

The U.S. Constitution was never meant to be the sole bulwark of freedom, let alone a self-perpetuating machine that would go by itself. The American founders were not, in Joseph de Maistre’s words, “poor men who imagine that nations can be constituted with ink.”

Many educated people who scorn religious fundamentalism are hard at work creating a constitutional fundamentalism, though with lawyers and judges instead of rabbis, priests and pastors. Constitutional and unconstitutional have replaced orthodox and heretical. But unlike the better angels of religious fundamentalism, constitutional fundamentalism has no recourse to a divine spirit to rescue it from power games, casuistry legalism, litigiousness—and, eventually, calcification and death.

Sustainable freedom depends on the character of the rulers and the ruled alike, and on the vital trust between them—both of which are far more than a matter of law. The Constitution, which is the foundational law of the land, should be supported and sustained by the faith, character and virtue of the entire citizenry, which comprises its moral constitution, or habits of the heart. 

Together with the Constitution, these habits of the heart are the real, complete and essential bulwark of American liberty. A republic grounded only in a consensus forged of calculation and competing self-interests can never last.

Summer Reading Series
A Free People’s Suicide
Os Guinness
IVP Books, 2012

You can also watch Dr. Guinness present on this topic at Socrates in the City.

Today’s Readings
Joshua 1 (Listen – 3:11)
Psalm 120-122 (Listen – 2:12)

Find devotionals and more reading suggestions on TheParkForum.org.

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A Bible That Confronts

  • June 26, 2015
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  • Bethany Jenkins

June26

Psalm 119.97
Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.

“Americans may love the Bible or loathe it,” wrote Ann Monroe in Mother Jones. “But for the most part, they read it the same (when they read it at all): as the manifesto of a God who has a lot of laws and a definite inclination to punish those who don’t follow them.” 

We may think that an authoritative text precludes intimacy, but a personal relationship requires someone who talks back. A one-sided relationship is exploitive, not personal. How can we pursue a relationship with God in which our will is crossed and our thoughts are contradicted?

The Psalmist celebrated the Word for its authority and ability to cross and contradict us. For the Lord’s wisdom transcends the wisdom of those from whom we traditionally seek it: “I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts.”

In Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, Donald Whitney writes, “No Spiritual Discipline is more important than the intake of God’s Word. Nothing can substitute for it. There is simply no healthy Christian life apart from a diet of the milk and meat of Scripture. The reasons for this are obvious. In the Bible God tells us about Himself, and especially about Jesus Christ, the incarnation of God. 

“The Bible unfolds the Law of God to us and shows us how we’ve all broken it. There we learn how Christ died as a sinless, willing Substitute for breakers of God’s Law and how we must repent and believe in Him to be right with God. In the Bible we learn the ways and will of the Lord. We find in Scripture how to live in a way that is pleasing to God as well as best and most fulfilling for ourselves. None of this eternally essential information can be found anywhere else except the Bible. Therefore if we would know God and be Godly, we must know the Word of God – intimately.”

Prayer
Lord, We need more than just words to survive. We need the Word himself. Since the Bible is the essential place to find him, we turn to it and long for a more disciplined intake of it. Make it our meditation all the day. Amen.

Today’s Readings
Deuteronomy 31 (Listen – 4:57)
Psalm 119.97-120 (Listen)

Ancient Word in Modern Life
Part 5 of 5, read more on TheParkForum.org

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TBT: Prevailing Prayer in Times of National Trouble

  • June 25, 2015
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  • Park Forum

June25


Psalm 119.90
Your faithfulness endures to all generations; you have established the earth, and it stands fast. 

TBT: Prevailing Prayer in Times of National Trouble | by John Collins (c. 1632–1687)

Human strength and human wisdom may be able to do little; the power and policy of enemies may be too hard for the wisdom and strength of the godly: but when you can do least yourselves, you may engage God, by prayer, to do most. “He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength.”

Think, how many times have the prayers of the saints prevailed with God in the like cases. Moses’s prayers prevailed to deliver Israel, when the Egyptians so closely pursued them: “Why do you cry to me?” and at other times. Asa’s prayer prevailed against Zerah and his Ethiopian army, and Jehoshaphat’s against the Ammonites.

And if prayer has been so prevalent, why may it not be so still? It is an old, tried means, which has not failed: do not say that these were more eminent saints, and so could do more with God by prayer than you can. You have the same God to pray to that they had, and he delights as much in prayer now as then he did, and can do as much for us as he could for them.

You pray with the same kind of faith that they did. Your faith is grounded on the same promises; they are still the same. The Mediator, who is to present your petitions to God, is still the same. His interest in those that fear him, and his concern for them, is still the same as it was. Then why wouldn’t prayer prevail as much now as formerly?

If you do prevail, it will be both your honor and comfort, to have been instrumental in keeping off public judgments, and procuring public mercies. So far as your prayers have been of use for the obtaining such mercies, so far they are your mercies, and you will have comfort in them. Any mercy is sweet, when obtained by prayer; much more, such as are of advantage to others as well as yourselves. 

If you should not prevail for public deliverance your prayers shall not be lost. They shall “return into your own bosom,” in deliverance for yourselves. It will be no small comfort to have done your duty and to suffer without the guilt of negligence. 

If you that are godly do not prevail in prayer, none else are likely to do it.

Today’s Readings
Deuteronomy 30 (Listen – 3:12)
Psalm 119.73-96 (Listen)

*Today’s devotional is abridged, with updated language, from, “How The Religious Of A Nation Are The Strength Of It.”

Ancient Word in Modern Life
Part 4 of 5, read more on TheParkForum.org

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Experiencing the Greatest Things

  • June 24, 2015
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  • Park Forum

June24

Psalm 119.72
The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. 

Near the peak of the late-night ratings battle last December The Tonight Show hosted Jerry Seinfeld. Just prior to the comedy legend’s five minute set, the show had announced that everyone in the audience would receive a television as a prize for attending the taping.

Seinfeld began his set laughing that the audience was so happy about receiving a TV — it is likely everyone had one and absolute that every TV would, one day, end up in the trash. “All things on earth only exist in different stages of becoming garbage,” Seinfeld quipped.

He then challenged the audience to think about the journey nearly every object we buy takes. Most things start 

in a visible place then move to a closet or drawer, and before becoming trash many things make a stop in our garage or storage unit. He joked, “That’s why we have those, so we don’t have to see the huge mistakes that we’ve made.”

If we stop and think about the areas we’ve succeeded — whether money, possessions, accomplishment, or accolade — they almost always let us down. There is a “this is it?” moment when we realize that which we set our hearts upon is really just dust. 

“David had a great deal of gold and silver, far more than any of us have; but yet he thought very little of it in comparison with God’s law,” Charles Spurgeon notes in his commentary Psalm 119. “Many people despise gold and silver because they have not got any. The fox said the grapes were sour because they were beyond his reach. But here is a case, in which a man had as much gold and silver as he could ever want.” 

Success and riches are lovely things — how wonderful is it that God created us to experience them? But David also knew they were insufficient for the greater things God created our hearts to know. 

Seinfeld, in jest, suggests our solution is to become a “thrower-outer.” Adding, “I wish there was a store where I could buy something, pivot and just throw it down the incinerator.”

The Psalmist solution, in earnest, is that we love God more than our prize possessions and accomplishments. For, as Spurgeon concludes, “Riches often take to themselves wings, and fly away; even great wealth may soon be spent and gone; but God’s law never leaves those who love it, nor lets them lose it.”

Today’s Readings
Deuteronomy 29 (Listen – 4:14)
Psalm 119.49-72 (Listen)

Ancient Word in Modern Life
Part 3 of 5, read more on TheParkForum.org

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