Gospel Yoda

In a heart-strengthening interview of Scotty Smith, Darryl Dash asks about the influence of Jack Miller in Scotty's life. Jack is someone I cannot wait to meet in heaven.

Jack Miller had a marked influence on your life. What are some of the ways you've been shaped by him?

Jack’s influence on my life was (is) immeasurable. I first met him as my advisor at Westminster Theological Seminary in 1975, and for the next 21 years he became my professor, spiritual father, mentor and gospel Yoda. His life of humility and boldness, joy and laughter, love for grace and commitment to prayer are ever before me. I never knew a freer man, a more welcoming soul, a more caring evangelist or a more playful saint than Jack. Selfishly for me, I hate the fact God took him to heaven when he was just 64 and I was just beginning to move into one of the more difficult seasons of my life as a pastor and man. But Jack married my heart to Jesus, more than to his own.

Zeal: Necessary, Dangerous

Lukewarmness in religion is abominable, and zeal an excellent grace; yet above all other Christian virtues, it needs to be strictly watched and searched; for 'tis that with which corruption, and particularly pride and human passion, is exceeding apt to mix unobserved. 

--Jonathan Edwards, The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, in Works, Yale edition, 4:243

Does Genesis 2 Contradict Genesis 1?

Lots to say on this of course, but it's hard to imagine a better, wiser, more concise note on the relationship between the two creation accounts than what is offered in the ESV Study Bible:

Gen. 2:4–25 The Man and Woman in the Sanctuary of Eden. The panoramic view of creation in ch. 1 is immediately followed by a complementary account of the sixth day that zooms in on the creation of the human couple, who are placed in the garden of Eden. In style and content this section differs significantly from the previous one; it does not contradict anything in ch. 1, but as a literary flashback it supplies more detail about what was recorded in 1:27. The picture of a sovereign, transcendent deity is complemented by that of a God who is both immanent and personal. The two portrayals of God balance each other, together providing a truer and richer description of his nature than either does on its own. In a similar way, whereas ch. 1 emphasizes the regal character of human beings, ch. 2 highlights their priestly status.

The Struggle

The new Tenth Avenue North record looks solid: their typical exaltation of a robust gospel, injected in this album with an awareness of the despair and feelings of futility that are a regular part of any Christian's ongoing walk with the Lord. Here are a few tracks.

The Struggle:



Worn:



Grace:



HT: Wade Urig

Glorifying God Is Seeing Him Truly

In August 1949 C. S. Lewis wrote a letter to Dr. Warfield Firor (right, top). Firor was a famous American surgeon at Johns Hopkins who supplied Lewis with an endless stream of hams and other gifts in the late 1940s, when post-war Britain was limping along economically. It is amusing, reading through his letters from this period, to see Lewis try to express appropriate gratitude every time yet another ham shows up at the Kilns. He shared most of them with others.

Following up on Firor's only visit to Britain to meet Lewis earlier in 1949, Lewis explores a theme raised also in Reflections on the Psalms.

When you were here you started the subject of Praise as Worship, which has led me to some bewilderment. Take the traditional language: glorifying, i.e. literally 'making glorious' what is already not only glorious but Glory itself and the source of all other glory--magnifying what is already infinite--exalting what is already highest.

At first it is hard to see what all this means. It sounds like the most famous flunkeyism, like telling a rich man that he is rich: and I am sure that this impression has a powerful and repellent effect on modern people, especially in democracies. I take it the truth is that in so far as a creature sees God it cannot help in some way (not of course necessarily by words) telling Him what it sees (silence might be one way). Its 'praise' is a necessary reaction: the divine light sent back to its Source from the creature which has become its mirror. The sun is not brighter because a mirror reflects it: but the mirror is brighter because it reflects the sun.

On a lower level this necessity of telling the object what it is has been experienced by every man in love. True, he may tell the girl she is pretty in order to please her: but he'd have to tell her anyway. Thus 'exalting the Lord' is in reality indistinguishable from seeing Him. There's no question of flattery or even courtesy about it: the moment the Creator-Creature relation is normal (in the proper sense of the word normal) praise or worship is there automatically. The picture of Heaven as perpetual worship, a place, in the hideous words of the hymn

Where congregations ne'er break up
And Sabbaths have no end

which has tormented many a luckless child (finding one Sabbath per week a ration only too liberal!) comes alright when one sees the real meaning: the perpetual worship is the perpetual vision, the perfect exercise of all one's faculties on the perfect Object. Of that, one could never have too much.

--The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 2 (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 970-71; italics original