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How Can I Know Which Bible Promises Apply to Me?

Because of two recent posts on wrongly applying biblical promises to ourselves (Jeremiah 29:11 and Exodus 14:14), we’ve been receiving questions about how to determine which promises do apply to us.

The most basic place to start is to look at what is said to New Covenant believers versus those who were under the specific terms of the Mosaic Covenant with its promised blessings and curses. If a promise was made as a term of the Mosaic Covenant (for example, that they would have good crops if they obeyed the Covenant’s commands), then that is not part of our Covenant. However, we can learn much about who God is from how He dealt with people in the Mosaic Covenant, and His character does not change. From His dealings with people in the Old Testament, we learn that He is just, that He is gracious, that He loves undeservedly, that He’s trustworthy and faithful to those He’s covenanted with, that He has their ultimate good in mind, that He’s working everything together for His plan to glorify Himself and redeem the world. God doesn’t change, so what we learn about Him in the Old Testament is still true of Him today. The only question is about how He promises to act today on those characteristics of love, grace, etc.

When we get to the New Covenant, we see these same characteristics of God play out in terms of the New Covenant. For example, “because of His great love with which He loved us,” and by His grace, we’re reconciled to God through Christ’s death on the cross and are made alive with Him; we are given the Holy Spirit as a secure pledge of God’s faithful covenant with us (Ephesians 1–2). (All who are united to Christ are also heirs of the promises made by grace to Abraham—Galatians 3:15–29.) The particular promises and commands of this Covenant may be different, but His character is the same. We know specifically that His love, grace, wisdom, and purpose are directed towards making His people like Christ (Romans 8:29), and that everything in our lives is working towards that end good (Romans 8:28). It’s the trustworthy character of God that we cling to throughout this difficult life, regardless of whether He heals us or increases our “crops.”

So when reading the Old Testament, we look to see what we can learn about God in any given passage. Who is He? What is He like? How does He treat His people? In terms of promises, the biggest promise of the Bible is the promise of who God is. This is the promise we depend on. We find we have cancer? We trust the promise that God is good, that He’s sovereign over history, that He loves us, and that He seeks the good of His people. We can’t trust that He’ll heal us (that isn’t always the greatest good for us and for God’s kingdom), but we can trust that God is good and sovereign, and that our suffering has a purpose.

Always look for what you can learn about God through His dealings with human beings throughout the Bible. When God makes promises about who He is, that always applies. When God promises to give something specific, look more closely at the context to see if He’s promising it in a unique situation (or under the terms of the Mosaic Covenant).

Here’s how I would apply that approach in the case of Jeremiah 29:11. In Jeremiah 29:11, we learn that God cares for His people and doesn’t abandon them, and that He hasn’t abandoned them even if it seems everything has gone wrong in their lives. We see that His good purposes are still moving forward, even when everything looks grim. This, we can cling to, because it’s an understanding of God’s character, which doesn’t change. What we can’t cling to is the specific outworking of God’s character in that unique biblical situation. That is, in that particular situation, God’s goodness and wisdom decreed that He would bring back those who were exiled to Babylon, saying, “I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations.” But in a different situation, God’s goodness and wisdom may decree something different. John the Baptist was beheaded, not released from jail (Matthew 14:1–12). Stephen was stoned, not saved (Acts 7:54–60).

We can’t trust that things will work out the way we hope they will. However, throughout any and every situation, we trust in God—that He is loving, powerful, wise, and committed to the good of His people—and we trust His promise that everything is working towards the good of making us more like Christ. For these reasons, we take whatever comes our way, and we depend on Him when we go through suffering.

If you’d like to learn more about how to read and interpret the Bible, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth and Playing with Fire: How the Bible Ignites Change in Your Soul are great places to start.

 

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You’ll Never Outgrow Your Need to Meet with God

This article by Donald Whitney on the danger of drifting away from a daily time of communion with God through Bible reading and prayer is true and scary, but also strangely motivating and encouraging. It’s a reminder that something real is happening when you meet with God daily. An excerpt from “Spiritual Disciplines and the Sinkhole Syndrome”:

As the pressures of life increase and more deadlines loom, it becomes harder to maintain time for the devotional life. And herein is where the erosion begins.

At the outset it’s likely that very few will know when the hidden part of your spiritual life begins crumbling. Just as imperceptible movements of water underground can carry away the earth beneath long before anyone on the surface perceives it, so the pressures of life can secretly displace the soil of our private spiritual disciplines long before the impact of their absence is visible to others. The more public parts of a Christian’s life, such as church involvement and various forms of ministry, can often continue with little observable change right up until the awful moment of collapse and the hypocrisy is revealed….

Never be deceived by the temptation to think that with the increasing spiritual maturity you expect to come with age, the less you will need to feast your soul on Christ through the Bible and prayer. What Jesus prayed in John 17:17 for all His followers—“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth”—applies to us all throughout our lives.

I just finished Matt Papa’s Look and Live, and I recommend it to you if you need a jump start for your devotional time.

Challenge: There Is No Evidence for God

This week’s challenge comes from an email I received:

Atheists do have reason on our side because there is no evidence that God exists…. We deny God for the same exact reasons you deny the existence of fairies: No evidence. In fact, God is just a really powerful fairy: An invisible being that wields magic powers. The fact that I don't believe in such a being should go without saying…. The only thing God has going for him is that he was grandfathered in. Fairies, leprechauns and other invisible creatures are dismissed out of hand. There is no more evidence that God exists than there is for Zeus.

How would you respond to this assertion that there’s “no evidence” for God? Try to think about how you would narrow down a response (because I don’t think the kind of person who says this is likely to sit through a long list of arguments). What would you focus on in your answer? How would you counter-challenge him? Let us know in the comments below, and then come back to the blog on Thursday to hear Alan’s response.

[Update: View Alan's video response. Explore past challenges here and here.]

Be Prepared to Give Up Whatever Contradicts God and the Gospel

In Impossible People, Os Guinness calls us to the kind of love and allegiance to God and the Gospel that will give us the courage we’re going to need in the future:

Such is the character and record of the gospel of Jesus that we may trust it absolutely however dark the times and however bleak the challenge….

The gospel of Jesus may be trusted to be the transforming power that it is. It is, after all, the very power of God for the saving of humanity, and the record of its impact in history is glorious and undeniable. Our allegiance to it is the concern today. We have to rise to the challenge that the gospel raises to all who say that they believe it—we must demonstrate our confidence in the gospel by a courage that is prepared to break with all that contradicts with what God says. In short, by faith we must be prepared to wager our comfort, our livelihood, our honor and our very lives on God and his Word against all other claims and authorities. We must therefore live as we have been called to live: to take up our crosses and to count the cost of living lives that are true to the gospel and to the lordship of Jesus, regardless of the cost and the consequences in our day—and so be worthy of the great cloud of witnesses behind us in history and around us in the world today.

You can hear Greg’s recent interview with Os Guinness on Impossible People here and read about the prequel to the book, Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times, here.

Sometimes We Suffer Like Lazarus, Not Job

Author and apologist Nabeel Qureshi asked for our prayers when he announced this week that he has advanced stomach cancer. This is difficult news. Soon after I heard, I came across “Waiting to Die,” a deeply honest post written by Michael Patton of Credo House when it seemed his own death was imminent, reminding us that sometimes we suffer like Lazarus (the one in Jesus’ parable), not Job, without restoration or any humanly discernible good resulting. As he says, “God sometimes does kill us.”

So many times we see our suffering through the lens of Job and not Lazarus. Job lost everything but eventually got it all back, and more. We think to ourselves that what God has taken he will restore or use it mightily for his kingdom. We have seen it a thousand times. God turns so much water into wine. He takes our lives of anguish and uses it to lift others up (2 Cor. 1:4). I don’t know how many times that I have turned to the suffering of Job to be encouraged. David’s time in the mire of doubt, lifts me out of the mire. John the Baptist asking if Jesus was really the Christ lets me know I am not alone. I have always gravitated toward other Christians who spoke about their dark side with openness. It brings purpose to their pain. That is the Job story. It is very real. God does often bring us through trials so that we can, once restored, display the fortitude and resilience of our faith to others.

However, there is also pitiful Lazarus. He was thrown at the gate of the rich man (probably because his friends did not know what else to do with him), begging for food, and watching as the dogs lick his sores. In the eyes of the Jewish people of the day, he was one who God had abandoned. He was never healed. He was not restored. We find nothing in the story about him using his pain to help others. He wrote no books about how to deal with suffering. He did not blog daily about how he was keeping the faith. He just died. He was waiting to die and then died. Alone, with the dogs licking his sores, he assumed room temperature. And most shocking of all, his name (a rhetorical device in the parable) means “God helps.” The rich man (at whose gate he was thrown) had everything: money, honor, and respect. And he was even a splendidly happy guy. He was the one everyone thought God was helping, but he remains unnamed (another rhetorical device). “God helps” died at the gate without ever preaching one sermon….

[S]ometimes we do suffer, endure, go through trials and then we simply die. This does not mean our suffering was gratuitous in any way. God holds closely his secret council in which he allows for pain and kills for his sake his children. We don’t have to know the reason why. We just keep the faith.

We keep the faith because of the cross. On the cross, God showed His great love for us—the Father by giving His son, the Son by sacrificing His life and suffering the Father’s wrath, the Spirit by graciously applying this work to us, turning God’s undeserving, rebellious enemies into His children. God showed His wisdom and sovereignty by bringing history to that intended point. He showed His power by raising Jesus from the dead.

He had a purpose for the evil Jesus suffered at the hands of men. He has a purpose for all that you suffer, even if, like Lazarus, you suffer and then die without restoration in this life, without understanding why.

We keep the faith through suffering because of all that God revealed of Himself on the cross. Look to the cross.

Discussing “17 Points of the True Church” with Mormons

If you’ve ever spent time speaking with a Mormon missionary before, you may have been handed a card listing the “17 Points of the True Church.” Here are the points many Mormons think ought to determine for us which church is the true one:

1. Christ organized the Church. (Eph 4:11–14)
2. The true church must bear the name of Jesus Christ. (Eph 5:23)
3. The true church must have a foundation of Apostles and Prophets. (Eph 2:19–20)
4. The true church must have the same organization as Christ’s Church. (Eph 4:11–14)
5. The true church must claim divine authority. (Heb 5:4–10)
6. The true church must have no paid ministry. (Acts 20:33–34, John 10:11–13)
7. The true church must baptize by immersion. (Matt 3:13–16)
8. The true church must bestow the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands. (Acts 8:14–17)
9. The true church must practice divine healing. (Mark 3:14–15)
10. The true church must teach that God and Jesus are separate and distinct individuals. (John 17:11, 20:17)
11. The true church must teach that God and Jesus have bodies of flesh and bone. (Luke 23:36–39, Acts 1:9–11, Heb 1:1–3)
12. The officers must be called by God. (Heb 5:4, Ex 28:1, 40:13–16)
13. The true church must claim revelation from God. (Amos 3:7)
14. The true church must be a missionary church. (Matt 28:19–20)
15. The true church must be a restored church. (Acts 3:19–20)
16. The true church must practice baptism for the dead. (1Cor 15:16, 29)
17. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” (Matt 7:20)

To help people use this LDS list as a starting point for discussions, I created a second list of 17 points. Some of the points are direct responses to their numerical counterparts on the LDS list, and some bring in ideas not mentioned on the LDS list that are unique to Christianity and not shared by Mormons. Since each list includes aspects of the unique theology of its group, by going through their list and ours and examining the context of the verses cited, you can quickly move into deep and meaningful conversations with your LDS friends. (Download a card-sized version to print and cut out here.)

1. The true church must base its doctrine on what the Bible teaches. (2 Tim 3:16–17, 2 Pet 1:21, Ps 12:6)
2. The true church must teach there is only one God. (Isa 43:10, Isa 44:6, Isa 44:8)
3. The true church must teach that God has been God from all eternity. (Ps 90:2, Mal 3:6, Jas 1:17)
4. The true church must worship only one God (the LORD, Jehovah). (Ex 34:14)
5. The true church must teach that God does not have a physical body. (John 4:24, Luke 24:39, 1 Kings 8:27, John 1:18, 1 Tim 1:17)
6. The church must teach that within the one being of God there are three Persons. (Matt 3:16–17, Matt 28:19–20)
7. The true church must teach that the eternal, fully divine person of Jesus took on a human nature when He came to Earth. (Phil 2:5–8, John 1:14)
8. The true church must worship Jesus. (Matt 28:9, Matt 2:11)
9. The true church teaches that the Gospel is: Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again on the third day. (1 Cor 15:1–4)
10. The true church teaches that when you believe the Gospel, you receive the Holy Spirit, you are born again, and He makes you into a new creation. (Acts 10:36–45, John 3:1–8, 2 Cor 5:17)
11. The true church teaches that a trusting belief in Christ is all one needs to be saved to eternal life with God. (Acts 16:30–31, John 6:28–29, 1 John 5:11–12)
12. The true church must not teach that eternal life with the Father can be reached only after doing certain works. (Eph 2:8–9, Rom 11:6, Gal 3:2–3)
13. The true church must not make the issue of what we eat or drink a requirement of the Gospel. (Mark 7:18–20, Rom 14:14–18, Col 2:13–17)
14. The true chruch must teach that we are forgiven of our sins when we confess them. (1 John 1:9, Heb 10:10, 14–18)
15. The LORD commands his people to financially support those devoted to ministry. (Num 18:8–24, Luke 10:2–7, 1 Cor 9:7–14, 1 Tim 5:17–18)
16. The true Church was established by Jesus, has never been overcome, but has existed on the earth throughout all generations since Jesus. (Matt 16:18, Eph 3:21)
17. The true church must compare all new revelation with the Bible and reject whatever disagrees. (Deut 13:1–3, Gal 1:8, Isa 8:19–20, 1 Thes 5:21, Acts 17:11)

For more discussion of the LDS 17 points, see Alpha and Omega Ministries and Mormonism Research Ministry. See also these related articles on the differences between LDS and Christian doctrine:

• LDS View of Atonement Clarified
• Is God an Exalted Man?
• LDS Test Is Necessary, Not Sufficient
• Is Mormonism Just Another Christian Denomination?
• “Mormons Aren't Christians” Is Not an Epithet

New Report Examines Scientific Studies on Sexuality and Gender

The journal The New Atlantis has published “a careful summary and an up-to-date explanation of research—from the biological, psychological, and social sciences—related to sexual orientation and gender identity.”

From Ryan Anderson:

A major new report, published today in the journal The New Atlantis, challenges the leading narratives that the media has pushed regarding sexual orientation and gender identity.

Co-authored by two of the nation’s leading scholars on mental health and sexuality, the 143-page report discusses over 200 peer-reviewed studies in the biological, psychological, and social sciences, painstakingly documenting what scientific research shows and does not show about sexuality and gender.

The major takeaway, as the editor of the journal explains, is that “some of the most frequently heard claims about sexuality and gender are not supported by scientific evidence.”

Read Anderson’s summary of four major conclusions of the study, or read the report’s executive summary (or the full report) here. We will surely see pushback against this study. Watch to see if those arguing against it refute its analysis of the available evidence or merely attack its writers. Anything that falls into the first category should be carefully considered.

We’re Seeing a Clash of Worldviews, Not an Inevitable Force of Progress

In his analysis of David Gushee’s recent article exhorting Christians to not be “left behind” by all of the other American people and institutions on the issue of homosexuality and same-sex marriage, Jake Meador calls attention to (and argues against) the idea that this revolutionary change in our society is the result of some kind of inevitable force:

To read Gushee is to be told that we aren’t seeing a fight between two fundamentally different visions of reality with competing claims about the nature of human beings, sexuality, and family life. We’re simply seeing a fight between the inevitable forces of progress objectively understood and those backwards people who would oppose it.

The trouble here is that this completely misrepresents what is actually happening. What we are witnessing is the triumph of one understanding of reality over another. As I noted last week, market-enabled, government-backed individualism is ascendant; Christianity is in decline….

And here’s the thing: If we’re honest about the fact of the conflict playing out in front of us, we can be honest about the stakes of the debate, which are enormous: Either we are completely autonomous, self-defining human individuals and the government has an obligation to protect our right to self-definition or we enter into a world given to us in a certain condition, shaped by certain factors outside our control, and filled with norms, rules, and laws we are powerless to change and can only submit to. Gushee’s attempts to obscure this fact do nothing to change it….

The fact that a huge number of people, including Gushee and his friends, absolutely refuse to see this point doesn’t change the facts of the debate. We either have a right to define our own concept of existence—in which case we should just be done with Christianity altogether—or we do not. There can be no attempt to pretend that our current social revolution is simply the natural progression of history happily moving toward climax as those awful, backwards bigots die off in its wake. Such claims are not only dishonest; they are cowardly.

Meador explains how distorting the conflict in this way damages our society:

Here’s the truly awful thing about all this: This sort of framing makes both real debate and real pluralism impossible. If we recognize the radical nature of our dispute, we might also be able to recognize ways of living together peaceably in the midst of those differences. Consider the many examples of close friends who are fierce ideological opposites. But as long as we insist on this absurd idea that one side is simply going along with history and the other is bitterly clinging to their bigoted religious beliefs, there can be no understanding of the other. And where there is no understanding, there can be no functioning polis.

Meador’s whole piece is worth reading. I’ve been pointing for a while to the fact that this societal conflict comes down to our opposing views on what it means to be human (see here, here, and here). This is yet another reminder that, as Christians, we need to be rock solid on basic worldview issues. The existence of the Christian God, the Creator of reality, affects our understanding of every aspect of that reality, so think deeply and carefully about the implications of being created by and for our good God. Otherwise, our secular culture will be happy to do your thinking for you.

The Romans 12:2 Approach to Knowing God's Will

The Kindle version of Garry Friesen’s Decision Making and the Will of God is only $1.99 today, and it’s worth getting. (You don't need a Kindle to read it.) It’s an in-depth biblical defense of the wisdom model for making decisions (as opposed to the model where we learn to hear special messages from God as to what we should do in any given situation).

John Piper describes this approach in his sermon on Romans 12:1–2, the passage that instructs us to “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”

If you want to know the future details of God’s will of decree, you don’t want a renewed mind, you want a crystal ball. This is not called transformation and obedience; it’s called divination, soothsaying….

The Bible does not tell you which person to marry, or which car to drive, or whether to own a home, where you take your vacation, what cell phone plan to buy, or which brand of orange juice to drink. Or a thousand other choices you must make.

What is necessary is that we have a renewed mind, that is so shaped and so governed by the revealed will of God in the Bible, that we see and assess all relevant factors with the mind of Christ, and discern what God is calling us to do. This is very different from constantly trying to hear God’s voice saying do this and do that. People who try to lead their lives by hearing voices are not in sync with Romans 12:2.

There is a world of difference between praying and laboring for a renewed mind that discerns how to apply God’s Word, on the one hand, and the habit of asking God to give you new revelation of what to do, on the other hand. Divination does not require transformation. God’s aim is a new mind, a new way of thinking and judging, not just new information. His aim is that we be transformed, sanctified, freed by the truth of his revealed Word (John 8:32; 17:17). So the second stage of God’s will of command is the discerning application of the Scriptures to new situations in life by means of a renewed mind.

If you’re unfamiliar with this understanding of decision making, I recommend starting with Greg’s “Does God Whisper?” Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.