TEXT
4. The authority of the Holy Scriptures obligates belief in them. This authority does not depend on the testimony of any person or church but on God the author alone, who is truth itself. Therefore, the Scriptures are to be received because they are the Word of God.
~Second London Baptist Confession (1689), 1.4
Series: The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith
Church: South Caraway Baptist Church, Jonesboro, AR
Date: September 20, 2023
TEXT
2. The Holy Scriptures, or the Word of God written, consist of all the books of the Old and New Testaments. These are:
THE OLD TESTAMENT: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.
THE NEW TESTAMENT: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, Revelation.
All of these are given by the inspiration of God to be the standard of faith and life.
3. The books commonly called the Apocrypha were not given by divine inspiration and so are not part of the canon or standard of the Scriptures. Therefore, they have no authority for the church of God and are not to be recognized or used in any way different from other human writings.
~Second London Baptist Confession (1689), 1.2 & 1.3
Series: The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith
Church: South Caraway Baptist Church, Jonesboro, AR
Date: September 6, 2023
Navigating the eschatological frenzy can sometimes be quite daunting and intimidating. There are many questions, and to the dismay of many earnest students of the Bible, not many answers. Because of this, eschatological discussions among Christians often end up resulting in more confusion than clarity. This is especially true when those who affirm a particular position begin to misrepresent and/or caricature those who hold different conclusions than their own. We have seen this dynamic play out most recently in some social media forums, where some who hold the post-millennial position have begun to criticize the pre-millennial position as having a fundamentally pessimistic and defeatist outlook on the future, or even an essentially negative assessment of the power of the Gospel to save people and transform lives.
For those who are not aware, the post-millennial position holds that the millennial reign of Christ is the gradual result of the church’s mission. Through making disciples of all nations, the mission of the church will eventually result in a time when millennial conditions will characterize the whole earth. Christ is reigning at the right hand of the Father, and He reigns on earth through the ministry of His church. After an extended period of time of such conditions, Christ will return to judge the world, and the final state will begin. This, they suggest, is an essentially optimistic and hopeful assessment of the success of the Gospel, because it expects the gospel to be so effective in transforming lives, that it will organically result in a kind of utopian experience of the Kingdom of God on earth before Jesus comes again.
Consequently, they charge that the pre-millennial position expects conditions across the world to continue to deteriorate until Jesus comes again to establish His Kingdom on earth. Over time, sin will abound more and more, persecution of the righteous will become ever more intense, and things will progressively get worse until they reach their climax in the events of the Great Tribulation. Scripturally, this point of view might be based on verses like Second Timothy 3.1-5, which reads in part, “But know this: Hard times will come in the last days.” (See also Matthew 24.4-14) However, the question must be asked whether this is an accurate representation of the pre-millennial view. As someone who holds to the position in question, I would suggest that this portrayal of the pre-millennial view is partial at best and a dishonest caricature at worst. So, in the space that follows, I would like to offer two considerations that might help to bring clarity to this discussion.
First, every eschatological position must affirm that sin will remain present and active in the world until Jesus comes again to defeat it once and for all. The devil continues to prowl around like a lion seeking whom he might devour (1 Peter 5.8); spiritual warfare continues to be an ever present reality in the lives of followers of Jesus (Ephesians 6.10-18). The created order continues to groan under the burden of the curse even as it waits for the day of redemption (Romans 8.18-25). This is not some kind of pessimistic defeatism; no, this is simply theological realism. This is the tension that is the already and not yet. Yes, the death of Jesus on the cross made full and complete atonement for sin, and He cried out from the cross, “It is finished.” Those who trust in Him can be forgiven; in Christ, we have been saved from the punishment of sin. But we are not yet saved from the presence of sin, and we won’t be until Jesus comes again in glory and victory. But, a day is coming, a glorious day, when sin and death, pain and sorrow, brokenness and loss will be done away with once and for all (1 Corinthians 15.51-57, Revelation 21.3-4); a day is coming when the enemy will be finally and completely defeated and thrown into the lake of fire for eternity to torment the people of God no longer. (Revelation 20.7-10). And what a day that will be!
Secondly, we must affirm that Christians should be neither overly pessimistic nor naively optimistic; these emotions have zero connection to the idea of Christian hope. Christians should be a people of unshakable hope, but our hope is not some vague well wish that things might eventually get better. No, Christian hope is the firm conviction that what God has promised He will most certainly do. He has promised that He will come again to receive us to himself, that where He is we may be also; He has promised that He will come again to right every wrong, to heal every pain, to put a final and eternal end to sin and death. And it is because of this promise that we can face the difficulties and the ugliness of the world with honesty and compassion and perseverance. As the Apostle Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, verses 8-10, “We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair; we are persecuted but not abandoned; we are struck down but not destroyed.” He goes on to explain in verse 14 of that text, “For we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you.” This is Christian hope; it is neither a defeated pessimism nor a naïve optimism. Rather, it is a resolute conviction of future glory in the face of difficulty and hardship. It understand the reality of sin; it does not turn away from the ugliness and brokenness of this world. Instead, it holds onto the promise and power of the Gospel that Christ is our only hope, our only rescue, from the penalty, the power, and one day even the presence of sin.
Eschatology is the doctrine of hope; it is the biblical vision of the victory that we have in Christ. It should not be a source of conflict or consternation among Bible believing Christians. Of course, there are interpretive details over which we may continue to disagree, and “iron sharpens iron,
and one person sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27.17) And there are other interpretations out there that must be recognized and dismissed as the rank heresy that they are. This is why we must redouble and retriple our commitment to the tutelage of the Word of God. It is the Bible that defines the contours of our eschatological expectation, not our emotional perception of its outlook on the future, whether we consider that be optimistic or pessimistic. Christians should be people of firm and committed hope, because we know that Christ has promised to return bodily. As He said, “Look, I am coming soon, and my reward is with me to repay each person according to his work.” (Revelation 22.12) He is our hope, and this is something all Christians can agree on.
For further study, see also:
On Three Views on the Millennium
On Christian Hope: Heaven or Resurrection
On the Problem of Eschatological Imminence
On Three Views for Interpreting the Olivet Discourse
On Eschatology and the Gospel
On the Ground of Christian Hope
On Grief and Hope
Despite the claims of postmodern literary critics, it is reasonably certain that the meaning of any given document or literary work is grounded in and governed by its author. To put it another way, the meaning of the text is limited by the message that the writer of that text intended to communicate. This principle has been the foundation of biblical interpretation for most of the modern period, and rightly so. The Word of God comes to us through human authors who were writing to historical audiences, so we must work within the boundaries of literary and historical context in order to understand it. The problem, however, is that an overemphasis on authorial intent could relegate our interpretive efforts to nothing more than an exercise in historical investigation. But, the Word of God is more than a historical artifact; it is living and active, and its truths are just as relevant today as they were when they were first written. Over the last twenty years or so, more and more emphasis has been given to the intent of the divine author in an attempt to arrive at a more robustly theological interpretation.
However, this too has led to certain hermeneutical problems, particularly when the supposed divine intent in a given text is set in competition with or in contradiction to the human intent. This appears to be the underlying assumption of a question that was posed on Twitter a few days ago (pictured above). A pastor on Twitter recently asked, “Did the human authors have perfect/sinless intentions while writing Scripture?” Of course, Twitter polls are probably not the best resource for scholarly research, but the results are nevertheless concerning. Some 73% of respondents answered the question in the negative, meaning that almost three quarters of those who answered the poll believe that the human authors of the Bible had sinful intentions when they wrote the words of Holy Scripture. While the relationship between the human and the divine in the writing of Holy Scripture may be complex, we must conclude that this answer is out of bounds for those who believe that the Bible is the Word of God. How can sinful words be received as the Word of a sinless and righteous God? This is a contradiction in terms. As we read in Second Peter, chapter 1, verse 21, “instead men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
Based on this text, we must affirm that there is no divine intent apart from the words of the human author. In other words, our interpretive efforts must deal directly with the words of Holy Scripture; we must labor to understand the genre, the syntax, the vocabulary, the grammatical relationships, and the literary flow of thought of the documents themselves. This is the fundamental work of biblical interpretation. There is no such thing as meaning that is separate from the text; there is no mystical or hidden Word that may be sought apart from the words on the page. Whatever the timeless supernatural theological implications of the text may be, these truths must be grounded in and derived from the actual words of Holy Scripture. In theology, this doctrine is known as verbal plenary inspiration, meaning that the quality of inspiration extends to very words that comprise the text and not just the ideas that stand behind those words. In the act of inspiration, God so worked in through and with the human authors of Holy Scripture, such that their words are His very words, thus they are without error in every way.
If their words are His words, then we may conclude that their intent is His intent as well. The difficulty, however, lies in the reality that the God of the Bible is infinite in His understanding, that He sees more and knows more than the human authors could possibly comprehend when they were writing. So, there is a sense in which the divine intent is so much more than what the human authors could understand; some have referred to this as the sensus plenior, or the fuller sense of the text. In their book Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, Klein, Blomberg, and Hubbard identify the problem with this idea, namely that “we have no objective criteria to posit the existence of a sensus, or to determine where it might exist, or how one might proceed to unravel its significance. In other words, if the human author of a text did not intend and was unaware of a deeper level of meaning, how can we be confident today that we can detect it?” To put it another way, if we understand textual meaning as something that is grounded in authorial intent, then we must assume a certain amount of similitude, if not even near identity, between the intent of both the Divine and the human author. Otherwise, we would never be able to understand what God is saying to us in any real or meaningful way.
In the final analysis, we must conclude that there is no competition or contradiction between the intent of the human the divine authors of Holy Scripture. While it is possible that the Spirit intended more than human authors, He certainly did not intend less than what they intended to communicate to their audiences through the words that they wrote. In other words, authorial intent in the Bible must be viewed as finely woven tapestry in which the human and divine is so interlaced and knitted together, such that any attempts to divide or separate them would in effect destroy its beauty and grandeur. As interpreters, we must hold these facets of the text in harmony and proceed with conviction the Bible is the very Word of God. B.B. Warfield puts it this way in his book The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, “The Scriptures, in other words, are conceived by the writers of the New Testament as through and through God’s book, in every part expressive of His mind, given through men after a fashion which does no violence to their nature as men, and constitutes the book also men’s book as well as God’s, in every part expressive of the mind of its human authors.”
For further study, see:
Warfield, B.B. “The Divine and the Human in the Bible.” Pages 542-548 in Selected Shorter Writings, 2 Vols.
TEXT
3 Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in love before him. 5 He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace that he lavished on us in the Beloved One.
~Ephesians 1.3-6
Title: On the Blessings of Election and Predestination in Christ
Text: Ephesians 1.3-6
Series: The Letter to the Ephesians
Church: South Caraway Baptist Church, Jonesboro, AR
Date: May 8, 2023
It is commonplace in American Christianity to hear people talk about going to heaven when they die. For most people, this is the promise of the Gospel, that if you believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of sin and live a morally good and ethical life for the most part, then you will get to go to heaven when you die. This is usually conceptualized as a kind of purely spiritual (nonmaterial, nonphysical) existence of some kind (think halos, harps, and clouds). However, this is a far cry from the biblical picture of eternal life. First, eternal life is not simply a limitless quantity of life that we experience when we die, though it certainly includes this; rather is a certain quality of life, i.e. the life of the messianic age, that we begin to experience even now in part on this side of glory. But, more importantly, the Christian vision for life after death is for a resurrected embodied life. This is a crucial aspect of the biblical understanding of salvation, but it is so often neglected, ignored, or outright denied. And so, since this is the week in which we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus, I would like to use the space that follows to explore the biblical foundation of the biblical hope for resurrection.
First, we must affirm that human beings were created as composite wholes, that is with a body and a soul. Some theologians would argue for a tripartite division, i.e. body, soul, and spirit, but the point remains the same, namely that the body is essential for what it means to be human. In Genesis, chapter 2, verse 7, we read, “Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.” In other words, when the “spirit of life” (the Hebrew word for “breath” can also be translated as “spirit”) entered into the body made of dust, the first man became a living being. Both components were necessary to complete the first man; therefore, to exist as spirit only would be an incomplete, non-human existence. This is why the incarnation was necessary; as the author of Hebrews argues in chapter 10, verse 5 (quoting Psalm 40.6 LXX), “Therefore, as he was coming into the world, he said: You did not desire sacrifice and offering, but you prepared a body for me.” In order to redeem humanity, it was necessary that the Son of God should become fully human, body and soul, and if He was anything less than fully human, then the redemption He secured would be incomplete. Or to put it another way, that which He did not assume, He cannot redeem. And the only way that the body can be redeemed from death is through resurrection.
Of course, this leads right into the second biblical foundation of our resurrection, namely that Jesus Christ was resurrected bodily from the dead. A cursory reading of the Gospel accounts of our Lord’s passion leads to the inescapable conclusion that Jesus died bodily, He was raised bodily, He ascended bodily, and He will return bodily. He was no mere apparition or ghost; He was not some kind of spirit only being that appeared at random. In the Gospel of Luke, we read that Jesus ate with the disciples after His resurrection, both on the road to Emmaus and in the upper room, and in the Gospel of John, we read that He invited Thomas to touch the holes in His hands and in His side. So, while His resurrected body was different in many ways, there was still a corporeal continuity to His bodily existence both before and after His resurrection. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, the Apostle Paul argues that the physical bodily resurrection of Jesus is the lynchpin of the Gospel. “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.” (1 Corinthians 15.17) In other words, the bodily resurrection of Jesus was necessary for our salvation to be complete. It was not only necessary for Him to die physically for our sin, but it was also necessary for Him to be raised physically to new life. The bodily resurrection makes His work of redemption complete, and because He has been raised, He is able to offer resurrection life to those who trust in Him.
Consequently, this is the third biblical foundation for the Christian hope of resurrection, namely that the bodily resurrection of Jesus is the ground and promise for the bodily resurrection of those who have trusted in Him. Because He has been raised bodily, we who have trusted in Him will also be raised bodily. This is the inescapable logic of our union with Christ. As the Apostle Paul argues in the Letter to the Romans, chapter 6, verse 5, “For if we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be in the likeness of his resurrection.” Or again, in 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 20, “But as it is, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” The fact that He is the “first fruit” necessarily implies that there will be more fruit to come, and it is clear that the fruit Paul is envisioning in this context is the bodily resurrection of those who have been united with Jesus by faith. So, the promise of the Gospel, the Christian hope, is not merely going to heaven when we die; it is nothing less than resurrection from the dead. “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, in the same way, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.” (1 Thessalonians 4.14)
So, while the idea of going to heaven when we die sounds nice and comforting, the truth of the matter is that those who ignore or deny the future resurrection of the body really have no hope at all. All they really have is a vague notion of something resembling hope, which is really no better than an empty wish. It has no substance, no grounding in biblical realities at all. Disembodied existence as spirit only is not true life, at least not life the way that God intended it for humanity. God alone is spirit, and we are His creatures. The desire to shed the flesh and exist as pure spirit is a desire that comes from pagan philosophy and not from the Bible. The true biblical Christian hope is far better. It is nothing less than the fullness of embodied life that God always intended for humanity. It is eternal life, resurrected life, in the presence of God forever. In other words, the promise of the Gospel is not so much that we will get to go up to heaven when we die, but that heaven will come down to us when Jesus comes again to establish His kingdom on earth once and for all. This is the blessed hope, the Christian hope.
See also:
Chase, Mitchell L. Resurrection Hope and the Death of Death. Short Studies in Biblical Theology. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022.
Wright, N.T. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. New York, NY: HarperOne, 2008.
TEXT
25 I don’t want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you will not be conceited: A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. 26 And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written,
The Deliverer will come from Zion;
he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.
27 And this will be my covenant with them
when I take away their sins.
28 Regarding the gospel, they are enemies for your advantage, but regarding election, they are loved because of the patriarchs, 29 since God’s gracious gifts and calling are irrevocable. 30 As you once disobeyed God but now have received mercy through their disobedience, 31 so they too have now disobeyed, resulting in mercy to you, so that they also may now receive mercy. 32 For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may have mercy on all.
~Romans 11.25-32
Text: Romans 9-11, et al.
Series: Eschatology: A Study of the End Times
Church: South Caraway Baptist Church, Jonesboro, AR
Date: October 12, 2022
65 Lord, you have treated your servant well,
just as you promised.
66 Teach me good judgment and discernment,
for I rely on your commands.
67 Before I was afflicted I went astray,
but now I keep your word.
68 You are good, and you do what is good;
teach me your statutes.
69 The arrogant have smeared me with lies,
but I obey your precepts with all my heart.
70 Their hearts are hard and insensitive,
but I delight in your instruction.
71 It was good for me to be afflicted
so that I could learn your statutes.
72 Instruction from your lips is better for me
than thousands of gold and silver pieces.
The ninth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is teth (ט), and in this ninth stanza of Psalm 119, the psalmist repeatedly affirms the essential goodness of God. Five out of the eight verses in this stanza begin with the Hebrew word tov (טוב) which means good, pleasant. It is a seemingly small and insignificant word, but it is perhaps one of richest words in all of the Hebrew language. This is especially so when it is used to describe God, because goodness is a primary attribute of His character. For our psalmist, however, it would seem to be much than this; in his view, God’s goodness is the sum total of all that He is. As our psalmist puts it in verse 69, “You are good, and you do what is good.” Or as we often say in the Bible Belt, “God is good! All the time!”
In other words, goodness is who and what He is; He is the source and standard of all that is good. There is no one and nothing that is good outside of Him. As Jesus says in the Gospels, “No one is good except God alone.” (Mark 10.18) This is why our psalmist prays, “Teach me good judgment and discernment, for I rely on your commands.” (verse 66) Literally translated, it reads “goodness of taste”, where the word taste refers to moral and ethical discernment. The law of God is a reflection of His perfect goodness, and when we live according to its precepts, we enjoy the goodness that God intends for us. This is why the Apostle Paul affirms that the law is good, holy, and just. (c.f. Romans 7.12, 1 Timothy 1.8) It is also why our psalmist affirms, “Instruction from you lips is better for me than thousands of gold and silver pieces.” (verse 72)
The reality, however, is that Christians are often so quick to doubt their conviction that God is fundamentally good. In fact, this is a point of weakness where we regularly come under the enemy’s attacks. Satan is incredibly adept at getting believers to doubt their belief in God’s thoroughgoing goodness. It is a strategy of his that goes all the way back to the garden, when he tempted Eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The clear implication of his words in Genesis 3.5 is that God is not good, that God is holding out on Adam and Eve by restricting them from eating of the tree. And his strategy hasn’t changed since that first sin; he still continually attacks the Christian belief that God is ever and always good in every way. This is why the Apostle Paul tells us, “In every situation take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.” (Ephesians 6.16) The shield of faith is the firm and steadfast conviction that God is good and trustworthy.
This is why our psalmist says here in verse 65, “Lord, you have treated your servant well, just as you promised.” When we hold fast to the conviction that God is good, then we will rest by faith in the promises is God’s Word, and no matter what obstacles or difficulties or challenges may come against us, we will continue to walk in faithful obedience. (c.f. verses 69-70) In fact, it is in the trials of life that we are forced to rely on God and His goodness even more; as our psalmist puts it in verse 71, “It was good for me to be afflicted so that I could learn your statutes.” Literally, it was tov, not that the affliction was tov, but that what resulted from the affliction was tov. Or as it says in the Letter to the Romans, chapter 8, verse 28, “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”
The perspective of the psalmist in this stanza, especially in verse 71, is so radical and counter to the prevailing sentiments of our culture. The culture would have us believe that good, or the “good life”, is the absence of difficulty, trial, or trouble, that it is a life of ease and comfort and prosperity. However, this is not the perspective of our psalmist, nor is it the perspective of the Bible more generally. In this stanza, the psalmist wants us not only to know but to believe with conviction that God is the ultimate and highest good, that He is the source of all good, and that He is working out every detail and every circumstance for our good. But, of course, the good He is working in us is not our ease or our comfort; on the contrary, it is our growth into Christlikeness. And according to our psalmist, the good of Christian maturity is more effectively cultivated in our lives during times of testing and trial. As our psalmist says in verse 67, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.” Or as the Apostle James puts it,
Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.
~James 1.2-4
For further study:
Introduction
Psalm 119.1-8
Psalm 119.9-16
Psalm 119.17-24
Psalm 119.25-32
Psalm 119.33-40
Psalm 119.41-48
Psalm 119.49-56
Psalm 119.57-64
TEXT
20 Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven holding the key to the abyss and a great chain in his hand. 2 He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. 3 He threw him into the abyss, closed it, and put a seal on it so that he would no longer deceive the nations until the thousand years were completed. After that, he must be released for a short time.
4 Then I saw thrones, and people seated on them who were given authority to judge. I also saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus and because of the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and who had not accepted the mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. 5 The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were completed.
This is the first resurrection. 6 Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.
7 When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison 8 and will go out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle. Their number is like the sand of the sea. 9 They came up across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the encampment of the saints, the beloved city. Then fire came down from heaven and consumed them. 10 The devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet are, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
Text: Revelation 20.1-10
Series: Eschatology: A Study of the End Times
Church: South Caraway Baptist Church, Jonesboro, AR
Date: October 5, 2022
Question: How do we apply the promises of Israel to the church?
Series: Wednesday Night Bible Study – Q & A
Church: South Caraway Baptist Church, Jonesboro, AR
Date: July 20, 2022
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