Quotes to Note 3: Luther’s Fear of God

~ Bob Hayton ~ 4 Comments

I have one final quote to share from The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul. I recommend the book as a great God-focused book on what God’s holiness really is and how it should impact us.

Sproul spends some time discussing Martin Luther, and highlights an instance when he was to offer his first Mass. This is before Luther was converted, but it shows how clearly Luther was aware of God’s holiness and the true terror that this holiness should work in man. Luther was unable to give the mass, and could not speak. He was paralyzed when he got to the point when he was supposed to say the words, “We offer unto thee, the living, the true, the eternal God.” Luther explains why this caused him to be speechless in the following few lines. Would we all were so keenly aware of God’s majesty and our sin.

At these words I was utterly stupefied and terror-stricken. I thought to myself, “With what tongue shall I address such majesty, seeing that all men ought to tremble in the presence of even an earthly prince? Who am I, that I should lift up mine eyes or raise my hands to the divine Majesty? The angels surround him. At his nod the earth trembles. And shall I, a miserable litle pygmy, say ‘I want this, I ask for that’? For I am dust and ashes and full of sin and I am speaking to the living, eternal and the true God.” [Holiness of God, pg. 107 (Wheaton: 1985); quote was taken from (Roland Bainton, Here I Stand (NAL, 1978)]

Praise God that we have a mediator, one Jesus Christ to take our place and allow us to approach the great and Mighty God. How truly amazing is God’s grace.

R.C. Sproul on Why Innocent People Suffer

~ Bob Hayton ~ 6 Comments

After quoting Luke 13:1-5 in his book The Holiness of God, R.C. Sproul addresses the question “Why do innocent people suffer?” In light of the death of my friend Larry, and of Steven Curtis Chapman’s 5-year-old daughter, I thought perhaps now would be a good time to give an excerpt from this great book I’ve recently finished reading.

…The question is raised, “What about… the innocent people killed by the falling of the tower? Where was God in these events?” The question under discussion was: “How could God allow these things to happen?” The question is actually a thinly veiled accusation. The issue was, as always, how can God allow innocent people to suffer?

We can hear the implied protest in the question. The eighteen innocent people were walking down the street minding their own business. They were not engaged in playing “sidewalk superintendent.” They were not heckling the construction workers. They were not running away after robbing a bank. They just were “there,” at the wrong time and tin the wrong place. They suffered the consequences of a fatal accident.

We might have expected Jesus to explain it like this: “I am very sorry to hear about this tragedy. These things happen and there is not much we can do about it. It was fate. An accident. As good Christians you have to learn to accept the bad with the good. Keep a stiff upper lip. Be good Stoics! I know I taught you that the One who keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps. But that was a poetic statement, a bit of hyperbole. Do you realize what a difficult task it is for My Father to run the universe? It gets tiring. Every now and then He must take a nap. On the afternoon in question He was very weary and grabbed forty winks. While He was nodding the tower fell. I am sorry about that and I will report your grievance to Him. I will ask Him to be a bit more careful in the future.”

Jesus might have said: “I know I told you that My Father notices the landing of every sparrow and that He numbers the hairs on your head. Do you realize how many sparrows there are flying around? And the hairs on the heads! The afternoon the tower fell my Father was busy counting the hairs on the head of a particularly bushy-haired fellow. He was concentrating so hard on the fellow’s head that He overlooked the falling tower. I will suggest that he get His priorities in order and not spend so much time with sparrows and hair.”

That is not what Jesus said. What He said was, “Unless you repent, you too will all perish.” In effect what Jesus was saying was this: “You people are asking the wrong question. you should be asking me, ‘Why didn’t that tower fall on my head?'” Jesus rebuked the people for putting their amazement in the wrong place. In two decades of teaching theology I have had countless students ask me why God doesn’t save everybody. Only once did a student come to me and say, “There is something I just can’t figure out. Why did God redeem me?”

We are not really surprised that God has redeemed us. Somewhere deep inside, in the secret chambers of our hearts we harbor the notion that God owes us His mercy…. What amazes us is justice, not grace….

…We have come to expect God to be merciful. From there the next step is easy: we demand it. When it is not forthcoming, our first response is anger against God, coupled with the protest: “It isn’t fair.” We soon forget that with our first sin we have forfeited all rights to the gift of life. That I am drawing breath this morning is an act of divine mercy. God owes me nothing. I owe Him everything. If He allows a tower to fall on my head this afternoon I cannot claim injustice….

…We must not take His grace for granted. We must never lose our capacity to be amazed by grace…. [The Holiness of God, by R.C. Sproul [Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1985], quoted from pages 159-161, 164, 167]

The excerpt above was not intended to solace or comfort the grieving, but rather to orient all of our minds around a Godly response to such suffering in this world. We should always “weep with those who weep” and extend God’s comfort to those who are sorrowing. But we must never give in to the temptation to blame God or claim he is unloving in what He allows.

More Sadness

~ Bob Hayton ~ 2 Comments

Having just posted about the deaths of my wife’s grandmother, and my online friend Larry Lawton, I am heartbroken for the Chapman family today. Click here, for the news of Steven Curtis Chapman’s 5-year-old daughter Maria’s tragic death.

And of course, pray for the family. And remember our sure hope.

In fact, after the funeral we attended Saturday, I was blessed again by a song Steven Curtis Chapman wrote several years ago, commemorating the death of a friend’s child. The song’s lyrics are below.

With Hope

by Steven Curtis Chapman

This is not at all how
We thought it was supposed to be
We had so many plans for you
We had so many dreams
And now you’ve gone away
And left us with the memories of your smile
And nothing we can say
And nothing we can do
Can take away the pain
The pain of losing you, but …

Chorus:
We can cry with hope
We can say goodbye with hope
‘Cause we know our goodbye is not the end, oh no
And we can grieve with hope
‘Cause we believe with hope
(There’s a place by God’s grace)
There’s a place where we’ll see your face again
We’ll see your face again

And never have I known
Anything so hard to understand
And never have I questioned more
The wisdom of God’s plan
But through the cloud of tears
I see the Father’s smile and say well done
And I imagine you
Where you wanted most to be
Seeing all your dreams come true
‘Cause now you’re home
And now you’re free, and …

Chorus

We have this hope as an anchor
‘Cause we believe that everything
God promised us is true, so …

Chorus

So we can cry with hope
And say goodbye with hope

We wait with hope
And we ache with hope
We hold on with hope
We let go with hope

Listen to the song for free with Rhapsody.com here.

Update: You can leave comments for the family at a memorial blog for Maria, here.

Our Time is Short

~ fundyreformed ~ 5 Comments

I just found out that, Larry Lawton, a regular commenter on my blog, passed away this Sunday. He was a close blogging acquaintance and online friend. He frequently commented over at Sharper Iron.

He leaves behind a wife and young son (2 years old, or so, I think). His obituary is here. From this Sharper Iron discussion, I learned he died of an infection coupled with his having no spleen. He was just 37 years old.

I know Larry loved Jesus and loved studying the Bible. He was a good father and cared for his family, even as he pursued theological education. He will be missed.

Larry’s death reminds us that our time is short. It also calls us to face the realities of life and death. It argues that we should all live with eternity in view, as we have no sure bet that we will be here tomorrow, next week or next year.

Recently, my oldest daughter, has been learning about death. Her friends’ grandfather died a few weeks ago, and then on Saturday we attended the funeral of her great grandmother. She’s been growing through all of this and her simple faith is encouraging. As we drove away from the funeral, Saturday, she made up a song, and the words go something like this:

When someone dies, I won’t be afraid.

I won’t worry. I won’t be sad, I’ll be happy.

I’ll just trust in God.

In the face of death — and I can only imagine how hard this must be for Larry’s wife and family — we all can do no better than follow the advice of my daughter’s song. Since Larry knew Christ, let’s not worry or fear, let’s trust in our God!

An Update, Another Update, and More Updating

~ fundyreformed ~ 2 Comments

Update 1 — I’ll be traveling a lot the next few weeks and so posting will be infrequent, however I’m taking my laptop with me.

Update 2 — I am not forsaking the blog. I transitioned to another job within my company that has a different schedule, which makes blogging a little harder for me. But I believe I can keep at it, even if my time for reading other blogs goes down, hopefully I’ll be able to focus on some of my own blog projects which need completing.

More Updating — With the new schedule, I am updating some other blogs of mine.

I’m changing Kingdom Surge to focus more on linking to good articles on missions, and in the process I’m converting the blog over to tumblr.com, which should make updating that blog a whole lot simpler. The conversion process will take a while (since I have to manually import each old post), but I’m adding new posts to the blog in the meantime. This deletes my old Huckabee blog, by the way.

And I plan to not forget totally about my KJV Research blog. I recently posted to it for the first time in a while. Speaking of “a while”, it’s been an eternity since I updated my family photo blog. We’ll see about that one…

Well now that you’re up to speed, you can eagerly await my next post. Maybe you can guess when it will appear? I don’t know. Thanks for reading, in any case!