Reading the Bible Supernaturally - from John Piper

At the recommendation of my friend Michael Daily, I have been reading John Piper's book, Reading the Bible Supernaturally. This is certainly in the Great Tradition in that Jesus Christ and the glory of God is everything to Piper. There is a link below to the Desiring God website, and by the way, you can download this book for free - how refreshing, what a servant's heart for others to know Christ. 

Today I was captured by what is below, and I think I will introduce it to my congregation. It is worth meditating upon, knowing, sharing, and practicing. Who knows, the Holy Spirit may use these words to help deliver us from our narcissistic way of reading the Bible and attempting to force the Word of God to submit to us.

"Our ultimate goal in reading the Bible is that God’s infinite worth and beauty would be exalted in the everlasting, white-hot worship of the blood-bought bride of Christ from every people, language, tribe, and nation. This implies:

1. that the infinite worth and beauty of God are the ultimate value and excellence of the universe; 

2. that the supremely authentic and intense worship of God’s worth and beauty is the ultimate aim of all his work and word; 

3. that we should always read his word in order to see this supreme worth and beauty;

4. that we should aim in all our seeing to savor his excellence above all things; 

5. that we should aim to be transformed by this seeing and savoring into the likeness of his beauty, 

6. so that more and more people would be drawn into the worshiping family of God until the bride of Christ— across all centuries and cultures— is complete in number and beauty." John Piper.


https://www.desiringgod.org/books/all

Ponderings on 1 Corinthians Chapters 1 – 4 (11)

“And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” 1 Corinthians 2:1 – 5.

My how I wish we had engaged this passage when I was in seminary, both in exegesis classes and in preaching classes. How I wish we had explored the inherent tension in these verses, indeed, in this entire section of 1 Corinthians. On the one hand we are to “rightly divide the Word of Truth” (2 Timothy 2:15) and are to speak wisdom and mature teaching from God (1 Corinthians 2:6; Hebrews 5:11 – 6:2); on the other hand we must not confuse the wisdom, and even the communication methods, of the present age with the wisdom and communication patterns of God.

Are we likely to invite a speaker who will walk up on the platform in “weakness and in fear and much trembling”? Are we not rather going to invite someone who will communicate according to current trendy communication patterns? If the answer to the former question is “no” and the answer to the latter question is “yes”, then ought we not to engage in some soul-searching as we submit to the Word of God?

The Church Fathers, and many since their time, believed that a pastor’s or teacher’s relationship with God strongly influenced their insight into Holy Scripture. They believed that a right relationship with God, along with diligent study and meditation, was necessary to receive illumination in the Word of God. I never heard this discussed in seminary – and I was at what I consider a pretty good seminary. It was never suggested that we could not do godly exegesis unless we were devoted to Jesus Christ, unless we submitted to God’s Word. It was never suggested that we could not preach effectively unless we were abiding in the Vine. I think this way of teaching and discipling would have been foreign to the Church Fathers, I know it would have been foreign to the Apostles.

But then I have never picked up a commentary that addressed this, in fact, in this day of “scientific” commentaries it is no wonder that it is not addressed – we think we can do it ourselves.

To be sure, there are likely exceptions to the above mentality, and I sense that there are Bible training environments that emphasize a holy relationship with God and devotion and worship and obedience to His Word – but they are not likely to be closely associated with the broader “academy”, indeed, they may even be considered second-rate institutions.

I see the same cancer in Sunday school and small group material – we are therapists and sociologists before we are anything, and that means the Gospel is an afterthought, if that. The Nicene Creed has gone the way of the manual typewriter, “Isn’t that quaint?”

And what about this idea of the “power of God”? This “demonstration of the Spirit and power”? Don’t we like to make excuses for not seeing this in a palpable fashion? “Times have changed” we say. “God has changed” we think. We manufacture some of the most implausible “Biblical” excuses for why the power of God seems to have departed from the Western Church; rationalizing away our lack of prayer, our lack of obedience, our stark disobedience, our anemic faith, our worldly hedonism. We have reason upon reason why these words of Paul are as remote to us as the sometimes planet Pluto. Little wonder we run to sociology and therapy and business and marketing models – all in an effort to hide ourselves from the conviction of the Word of God.

What have we come to? What, please tell me, is a theological education worth if it is not steeped in the “demonstration of the Spirit and of power”? What is a commentary worth? A sermon worth? A gathering of God’s people worth?

Just perhaps the “demonstration of the Spirit and of power” is inextricably associated with “knowing nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified”? Now there is a thought. Not a thought likely to gain currency in the narcissistic Western Church, but nevertheless a thought.

You know, of course, that if we preach “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” that we must also preach ourselves and our listeners crucified with Christ (Mark 8:34 – 38; Galatians 2:20) – do you think that is likely to happen?