Tag: Christianity

Contemplating the Cross: He Set His Face to Go to Jerusalem

~ Bob Hayton ~ 2 Comments

For the next few days, I’ll be posting excerpts from Nancy Guthrie’s Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross: Experiencing the Passion and Power of Easter (Crossway). Join me as I aim to contemplate the cross this passion week.

Today’s meditation is by John Piper, from chapter 2 “He Set His Face to Go to Jerusalem” (pg. 17-18 of Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross, edited by Nancy Guthrie).

In Luke 9:51 we read, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”…When Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem, he set his face to die….

If we were to look at Jesus’ death merely as a result of a betrayer’s deceit and the Sanhedrin’s envy and Pilate’s spinelessness and the soldiers’ nails and spear, it might seem very involuntary. And the benefit of salvation that comes to us who believe from this death might be viewed as God’s way of making a virtue out of a necessity. But once you read Luke 9:51 all such thoughts vanish. Jesus was not accidentally entangled in a web of injustice. The saving benefits of his death for sinners were not an afterthought. God planned it all out of infinite love to sinners like us and appointed a time. Jesus, who was the very embodiment of his Father’s love for sinners, saw that the time had come and set his face to fulfill his mission: to die in Jerusalem for our sake. “No one takes [my life] from me [he said], but I lay it down of my own accord…” (John 10:18)….

Praise God, Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem for us! May we be filled with joy in the sovereignty of our God who planned out the glory of our salvation down to its smallest detail.

More on the ESV Study Bible

~ Bob Hayton ~ 9 Comments

I just learned that in honor of the ESV Study Bible being named the 2008 ECPA Book of the Year, Crossway is offering a 35% discount on all editions, now through April 8th. They are also selling access to the online edition as a separate product for $19.95 (this comes free with the purchase of a print copy).

I’m also going to reproduce my thoughts on the ESV Study Bible from the comment section of yesterday’s post for the benefit of my readers.

Reader Question: The ESV is my preferred version, but I’ve held off on the study bible because I don’t know the theological bent of the notes. Do they reflect Reformed understanding? I have the Reformation Study Bible in ESV, which I enjoy, but I’ve had a couple of people recommend the ESV Study Bible. However, they haven’t all been from folks who have what I would consider an informed understanding.

My Answer:

I had the Reformation Study Bible in ESV before the ESV Study Bible, and the ESV Study Bible far outshines it. I’m thoroughly reformed, too.

The contributors to the ESV Study Bible tend to be reformed and the notes tend that direction, but they try to be fair and balanced and give the other view in certain passages (like Revelation, for intstance). But the quality of all the maps and diagrams is quite first class, with color, and more. The fact that its so popular is a good thing, really. The contributors are all conservative, so no egalitarian views on women and ministry, and no playing loosey-goosey with inerrancy.

They include notes by Vern Poythress on a history of salvation overview for each OT book. It includes notes by Leeland Ryken on the literary features of each book. They include a mini systematic theology. Mark Dever gives the plan of salvation, John Piper speaks to prayer and Bible study.

I could go on and on, but I think you’ll find this study Bible superior to anything you’ve ever seen. Personally, I was a little let down with the Reformation Study Bible. The notes were good and all, but I was hoping for more. The ESV Study Bible gives me more. Not that it’s perfect, I would like to see Vern Poythress’ History of Salvation notes (not the book overviews) in the text rather than in the back of the Bible as an appendix. One can’t have everything, I guess.

ECPA Book of the Year: The ESV Study Bible

~ Bob Hayton ~ 8 Comments

ESV Study Bible - This is the edition I own.Congratulations to the ESV Study Bible, and Crossway, who produced it. They won the 2008 Book of the Year award from the Evangelical Christian Publishers’ Association. I am enjoying my copy immensely. (I got the brown trutone version, that you see to your right.)

My pastor, John Piper, also won top honors in the Christian Life category for his Spectacular Sins: And Their Global Purpose in the Glory of Christ (also from Crossway).

Justin Taylor, editor of the ESV Study Bible, and blogger at Between Two Worlds, has details on the ECPA awards, given out at the recent Christian Book Expo in Dallas.

UPDATE: Comment #2 under this post, includes a mini review of the ESV Study Bible that I quickly threw together in response to a reader’s comment.

A Christ-Centered Perspective of King James Onlyism

~ fundyreformed ~ 16 Comments

Damien over at Return to Biblicism, just completed a three part series on “Christ and the Scriptures“. He gives me hope: there are other people out there who write longer blog posts than I do!!!

His series focuses on why we believe the Bible, and he argues convincingly that we should believe in Christ first, and the Bible because of what Christ believes about the Bible. Today’s post is where the rubber hits the road for the King James Only debate. He illustrates how Jesus uses the LXX, and what that should mean for our views of Bible versions today.

I’m going to steal a chart he used in today’s post, but I want you all to go over and read his post too, now. In Luke 4, Jesus is specifically said to pick up a scroll in the synagogue and read what was written there. See how what was written compares to the Hebrew Old Testament (as translated by the KJV) and the LXX Greek Old Testament. Click chart below to expand.

click to expand

This argument, coupled with a comparison of how Scripture quotes Scripture (OT quoting the OT, NT quoting the OT or the NT), and then seeing how Scripture records single events in multiple passages (in the OT and NT), is the knock-out blow to the KJV Only argument. If we treat Scripture and think about it in a way similar to Jesus and the apostles/prophets, how can we go wrong?

For more on this line of reasoning, read Damien’s post, or check out this article by Brian Tegart entitled “Jesus is not KJV-only“.

Quotes to Note 7: The Church Spiritually Fulfills OT Penal Execution Laws

~ Bob Hayton ~ 4 Comments

I’ve been enjoying the book Him We Proclaim: Preaching Christ from All the Scriptures by Dennis Johnson (P&R), lately. I hope to finish the book and have a review up by next week.

This morning I came across a section that I’ll share in a quote below. I had never thought of the connection between the penal execution laws in the OT legal code and the church’s responsibility to discipline and excommunicate its erring members. May this quote stir you up to thinking more about the marvelous unity of Scripture and the glorious privilege we have as members of Christ’s church.

… Leviticus 20:11 required that Israel put to death a man who had sexual relations with his father’s wife. The apostle Paul, addressing the same situation in 1 Corinthians 5:1-13, instructs the church to exercise ecclesiastical excommunication, not physical execution. This formal expulsion of the unrepentant sinner is a sobering and severe sanction, since it is “to deliver this man to Satan.” Yet, excommunication also envisions the possibility that God’s mercy will soften the offender’s hardened heart through the church’s discipline, to the end “that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord” (vs. 5). By closing his discussion with a citation from another text from the Mosaic law dealing with penalties for sexual sins (“Purge the evil person from among you,” Deut. 22:22, 24), Paul identifies the church as the fulfillment of Israel and the spiritual discipline by which the church protects its communal purity as the fulfillment of the penal sanctions by which Israel was to maintain its corporate holiness…. [Him We Proclaim, Dennis Johnson (P&R Publishing, 2007) pg. 281]