BURIED TREASURE

 

In the year 2000 a builder friend in Scotland was commissioned to construct a millennium cairn for a small town. The villagers placed a time capsule inside this finely crafted stone memorial marker before it was sealed. I don’t know what’s in the capsule, but if it were opened in, say, a few hundred years from now, would posterity find anything of real and lasting value in it? Perhaps, there’s a small sample of currency in it. However, we tend not to think of time capsules as buried treasure; just ask Long John Silver. Yet one is reminded of the old adage ‘One man’s trash is another’s treasure’.

There was a buried treasure of sorts discovered during the rebuilding of King Solomon’s Temple in 621 BC. It was ‘the Book of the Law’. Some scholars believe that this Book, (also known as ‘the Book of the Covenant’) was the complete Pentateuch, i.e., the first five books of the Bible. Very possibly it was the original written by Moses’ own hand some seven or more hundred years before. How much would something like this fetch today? But let’s not get too carried away. The reality was that those who found the Book became far more interested in its inner contents than its outer casing. The Pentateuch contains not only God’s Moral Law for all mankind, but also, for example, the History of Creation and the Fall of Mankind, not forgetting the Gospel Promise of Salvation.

It excites the Christian when he reflects on the fact that this Book rescued that society at that time from its state of moral corruption. They looked again to God and re-implemented His teaching as laid out in the Pentateuch. This teaching is summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments; summed up again in that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind; and our neighbour as ourselves.

Now, as Christians we know that the Old Testament Temple beautifully represented Jesus Christ who was the Promised Messiah to come. He is the true Temple of God. He said of His own body, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days’. His ‘Temple’ was destroyed on a cross but was rebuilt in the miracle of His resurrection. Hence it’s in the destruction and rebuilding of Christ our Temple that we discover the ‘buried treasure’ of everlasting life. And it’s in Him that we rediscover God’s Law and re-implement it in our lives with the knowledge that it all is completely fulfilled in Jesus Christ. For Jesus is our ‘Book of the Covenant’, God’s new covenant (e.g., Isaiah 42:6).

Also, we discover that we too are being rebuilt as part of ‘the Temple of God’ on account of His Spirit who indwells us (1 Cor. 3:17). And finally in the temple of our body, we discover that His new covenant law has been written upon our hearts (e.g., Jer. 31:31-34; Heb. 8:8-12; 10:16).

Therefore I believe that every time capsule ought to contain the Holy Bible so that future generations might continue discovering the buried treasure found only in Jesus Christ our Lord.

CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE

                                                                Christian Influence

Christianity influences nations primarily from the pulpit, i.e., from preaching to the church congregation. The Bible is expounded from cover to cover, which is to say that the Gospel is proclaimed while the Law is explained (and the congregation members take what they are taught and gradually disseminate it in their respective communities). The Gospel brings liberty to the nation, by setting the individuals in it free from bondage to sin, self and Satan, and the Law, properly understood and properly applied, enables the Christianised (i.e., the Gospelised) nation to retain that liberty. Healthy pulpit: Healthy nation.

Where the Gospel is stifled, God’s Law is flouted. By Gospel, we mean the Good News that Jesus Christ died for sinners, i.e., for breakers of God’s Law. By Law, we mean the Ten Commandments that show that all of us are sinners, and therefore that we need the Saviour of sinners, Jesus Christ. Not only does the preaching of God’s Law expose us as sinners in need of salvation in Christ, but, as well as showing Christians how to live their lives in demonstration of their gratitude to God for saving them, it also shows us how to restrain evil in our nation. Christianity helps us to see the nation as God sees it and helps to free that nation from many a blunder!

Many pulpits in the West preach another gospel, which is not the Gospel. They preach what is known as the Social Gospel. This message of the Social Gospel has more to do with Marxism than the salvation of the individual by grace through faith in the saving work of Jesus Christ.

Others preach a gospel that is devoid of God’s Law. Indeed they preach against the Law as if the Ten Commandments were something evil, something to be rejected! Either way, the Gospel is robbed of its power. In this limp condition, it cannot transform the individual and certainly not the nation!

Christians ought to pray that God will raise up gifted preachers; preachers able to proclaim and explain the Gospel with the Law, so that the lives of its hearers will be transformed by its power so that they will transform the nations in which they live so that their culture will be a Christian culture. Yes, God redeems individuals, but by an individual at a time, He eventually redeems whole nations! May your culture be Christian! Bottom line: Healthy pulpit: Healthy nation!

Excerpted from: ON THE CHURCH : McKinlay, Neil Cullan: Amazon.com.au: Books

MYTH & LEGEND

 (Both photos below are from the Web)

I have a love for Scottish myth and legend, much of which are shared with the other Celtic people. Fionn Mac Cumhail (Finn McCool) appears in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Felix Mendelssohn raises a baton to Finn McCool in his Hebrides Overture known also as Fingal’s Cave – after a cave on the Island of Staffa. The cave’s Gaelic name is Uamh-Binn meaning ‘cave of melody.’ Beautiful! But did Finn McCool ever visit this cave and listen to its eerie water music?

Finn McCool was the leader of an ancient warrior band known as the Fianna. There’s a legend that the mighty Finn McCool and his army of warriors sleep in a great rock and will all awaken again at some future point.

Many myths and legends are built around actual people and real events. Though there is usually a core of truth to them, the tales tend to get embellished so much that they morph into mere fantasy. Fact yields to fiction. Some people view some of the stories recorded in the Bible in this way – as myth and legend. But real Christians view the Bible, as the Word of God Who does not lie. Which is to say that God supervised everything that was written in the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures; accurate copies of which are extant today.

To be sure everything in the sixty-six books of the Bible must be read in its own proper context, which includes its historical and literary genre contexts. For example, when Jesus refers to Himself as a ‘door’ He is speaking metaphorically, but when He refers to Adam He is referring to a real historical human being who lived in a real geographical Garden east of Eden.

At present there are some who reject Biblical cosmology, favouring instead a speculative and ultimately unprovable ‘Big Bang Theory.’ The Bible says that the eternal God spoke and things that were not became things that are. Therefore some see the Creator God as the initiator of the ‘Big Bang.’ Does this mean that there is a core of truth at the heart of Materialistic Cosmology, which, by its very nature, denies the existence of the Creator?

In the Bible the eternal Triune God is the One who created out of nothing the heavens and the earth and everything that is in them. This He did in six special or God days. Some Christians hold that each of these days of formation were of twenty-four hour duration, while others maintain that the Bible teaches that they were of longer duration. Indeed the original seventh or God’s Sabbath Day is never ending! Be that as it may, all true Christians believe God created everything; and that He constantly and personally sustains and maintains His creation.

All true Christians have a personal relationship with God through His only begotten Son Jesus Christ. This is where the Bible comes in, for God speaks to His adopted children by His Spirit working with His Word. The Bible teaches us who God is, and what He requires of us. All the stories contained in the Bible are lessons to the Christian on these two things.

Among many other things, the Bible speaks of Creation, the Fall, the Promise of Redemption, the Flood, Christ’s Cross of Redemption, His Resurrection, the coming of the Holy Spirit for the expansion of Christ’s Kingdom, the Day of our Resurrection, the coming Judgment, and the final New Heavens and the new Earth. So, we see then that according to the Bible Finn McCool and his warriors will indeed rise again, along with the rest of mankind on the Last Day, i.e., the Day of Judgment.

Christ’s resurrection two thousand years ago is the heart and soul of Christianity. If Jesus did not actually physically rise from the dead then we will not rise. The Apostle says, ‘Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found to be false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up – if in fact the dead do not rise. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable. But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.’ 1 Corinthians 15:12-20.

The Bible is not about myth and legend, but about the fact of eternal life.

THE TRINITY AND THE COVENANT OF REDEMPTION (Review)

The Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption (Review)

Christian Focus Publications Ltd; Revised ed. edition (20 May 2016), 436 pages.

J.V. Fesko has done the Lord’s church a big favour by writing this book. In a clear and concise manner, Fesko shows from Scripture how and when the triune God planned in eternity the salvation of His elect in time. It is such a shame that the mere mention of that word “elect” will have already put off many of those readers who sadly have been inoculated against covenant theology and anything Reformed. More’s the pity!

In an easy-to-follow way, Fesko exegetes and applies the Scriptures that reveal what the Westminster divines referred to as, “the Covenant of Redemption, made and agreed upon between God the Father and God the Son, in the council of the Trinity, before the world began.”[1]

Though a little academic in places, the reader with a general knowledge of theology should not have too much trouble following the flow and discussion of this book. The overall position of the covenant of redemption is clearly stated, while its detractors of it and any of its component parts, are discussed and refuted. E.g., the novel views of N.T. Wright against the orthodox understanding of the doctrine of imputation are refuted as is Karl Barth’s denials and misunderstandings of the covenant of redemption. Hegel’s faulty view of the Trinity and his three-stage process of dialectical reasoning and its resultant dialectical materialism are discussed.

Fesko presents a solid case for the covenant of redemption. My hope is that this book will in no small way serve to popularise covenant theology. Says Fesko,     

“Reformed Orthodoxy and classic covenant theology still have much to offer. The threefold covenant scheme (redemption, works, and grace) offers the best explanation of the biblical data.”[2] p. 141.

---

[1] The Confession of Faith, The Larger and Shorter Catechisms, with the Scripture Proofs at Large: together with The Sum of saving Knowledge, Free Presbyterian Publication, Glasgow, Fourth reprint 1985, 324.

[2] Fesko, JV, The Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption, Mentor Imprint by Christian Focus Publications Ltd., Geanies House, Fearn, Ross-shire, 2016, 141. 

LOVE

                                                                               Love

Love is one of those things that everyone and their dog has an opinion on. But what is love? A feeling? For, as if on a deep-space mission to the nether reaches, innumerable songs and poems, some as beautiful as the sparkling stars, have tried to explore and artfully express the meaning of love. Have any succeeded in bringing love back to earth from the highest heavens? Is love an abstract noun, like the sound of a plane soaring above the clouds? Is love an adjective, a honeybee searching for a rose? Is love a verb, fluttering, flapping, and flitting from flower to flower? Is love from above?

Is love an attraction? Like a walk along a lonely beach on a moonlit night? Is love the moon in June? Does love ebb and flow like the sea-tinkle on shingle, or the jingle of windchimes on a summer’s breeze? Is love like breathing, something spiritual? Does it come and go, and you don’t know you have until it’s lost? “If you love something, let it go. If it comes back, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.” I first heard this at high school when young couples were trying out relationships. Is love, then, something that must be free, like leaving a singing canary’s cage door open? Well, it seems clear that love is something that needs an object on which to alight itself.

The Bible says that God is love (1 John 4:8). God is Father and Son and Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19). Therefore, love is eternal as each Person in the Godhead loves the Others in a, without beginning or end, triquetra. God is all-powerful yet paradoxically is as gentle as a dove. ‘And John bore witness, saying, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and He remained upon Him”’ John 1:32. Love, then, is not some abstract hard-to-explain thing. Love begins and ends with God. Like the human spirit, like every breath you take, God gives it, and God takes it away. After your very last breath leaves you, Scripture says, ‘Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it’ Ecclesiastes 12:7.

It’s not Cupid’s arrow to the heart that brings us love. Rather it was when our Creator poked His tender finger into our heart and wrote His law of love upon it when He made us. We are to love God and our neighbour as ourselves. Love, therefore, is a heart-thing, gently put there by God.

The place where we express this love for God and neighbour best is in God’s institution of marriage. Marriage, like God, is triune: the man, his bride, and God as witness. Different versions of the following piece of Scripture are often read out at weddings: ‘Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends’ 1 Corinthians 13:4-8b. Again, love is a heart-thing. That’s why God says, ‘Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it’ Proverbs 4:23. How many marriages take their eyes off God only to get dashed on the rocky shores of the self-seekers? Love therefore is honouring God in all things, including and especially marriage. For marriage is a picture of God’s love. It is a picture of Jesus seeking and finding His bride. Like the Spirit, the Son came down from heaven to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). Who sent Him? His Father: ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life’ John 3:16. Now that’s what love is! And how could anyone not love God’s Son?

The Gospel Simple yet Profound (Review by D. Rudi Schwartz)

The story of God's love

Kate Hankey wrote the hymn, Tell me the old, old story.

“Tell me the old, old story,

Of unseen things above,

Of Jesus and His glory,

Of Jesus and His love.

Tell me the story simply,

As to a little child.”

The hymn goes on:

“Tell me the same old story

When you have cause to fear

That this world's empty glory

Is costing me too dear.”

McKinlay’s book tells that story. Not only is the Gospel simple yet profound; the author has the ability to tell it simply with profound impact.

Every Christian needs to read this book regularly to get a fresh grasp on the basics of what they believe. The Gospel for seasoned Christians can easily become old hat. “The Gospel, Simple, yet Profound” will help to keep God’s grace in Christ Jesus where it belongs: at the centre.

I also recommend the book as a gift to a friend who is still not so sure what the Gospel is about.
McKinlay skilfully throws in applicable illustrations.

Get a copy or two. Could you read it and pass it on to a friend?

The conclusions at the end of each chapter contain pastorally sensitive appeals to help the reader examine his walk in the Lord.

D. Rudi Schwartz, author of The Lord's Day: Does it Really Still Matter?

Gospel, The: Simple Yet Profound by Neil Cullan McKinlay (reformers.com.au)

 The Lord's Day – Ark House (arkhousepress.com)