Advocate Holiness

Psalm 119:46 I will speak of Your testimonies also before kings, and will not be ashamed.

"When piety is calumniated in the world, the saints will stand up in its defense; they will wipe the dust of a reproach off the face of religion. Holiness defends the godly, and they will defend holiness; it defends them from danger, and they will defend it from disgrace."                        —Thomas Watson

In this verse, the psalmist is using the testimonies of God in a practical way: he is speaking them. It is important to read the Bible, to study it and to memorize, but we also have an obligation to speak of it. We cannot keep it to ourselves.

To whom are we to speak these words? All lost sinners need to hear it, but here there is a specific audience: "before kings". This can be expanded to anyone in authority over us—whether a President, a governor, or someone like a boss or a teacher. The Bible has a lot to say about how we should interact with authorities. Certainly, we cannot shout at them, and wave our Bibles in their faces. (In fact, this is hardly the best course of action with anyone, let alone someone in a position of authority.) We need to be respectful, and obedient, but when it comes to God's words, we cannot back down.

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear. 1 Peter 3:15

We are blessed, in this country, with remarkable freedom to speak of our faith. It is not surprising that governments through the ages have sought to reign in Christianity; governments by their very nature are trying to organize and control people, and ideas—especially a Big Idea like Christianity—make people difficult to control.

However, kings and rulers still need the gospel. Just like all men, they are sinners and separated from God. As leaders and teachers of the people they rule, they are even under a stricter judgment for their decisions and actions (James 3:1). God is the One who gave rulers their power, and if they are wise they will be careful to exercise it according to His will.

He who rules over men must be just,  Ruling in the fear of God. 2 Sam 23:3

By me kings reign,  And rulers decree justice. Proverbs 8:15

We know, then that we should speak God's testimonies before kings, and the author also addresses what our attitude should be as we do so: we should not be ashamed. It is far too easy to feel uncomfortable or ashamed when our convictions are made evident in unsympathetic company, but we should not be! God's testimonies are nothing to be ashamed of. 

Instead we should be proud of God and His word: it is true, and lovely, more noble by far than any person on earth. Let us pray that if we are ever called to uphold God's truth, He will give us the words to speak, as Jesus promised in Matthew 10:19-20. 

Remember also that, "the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord" (Prov. 21:1). Man can do nothing to us unless it is God's will.

Christ All in All: Christ is the Root

I'm reading a series of sermons by Philip Henry (Matthew Henry the Bible Commentator's father), and thought I would share some quotes as I go along. Using the book "Christ All in All" as a devotional, I'm reading just one sermon a day, but each one is full of rich doctrine!

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Jesus Christ and true believers make one great tree, whereof He is the root and they are the branches.

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None but [true believers] bring for fruit in Him. To bring forth fruit is to do that which is for the matter of it good, either toward men in works of justice, mercy, charity, or award God in praying, hearing, sanctifying the Sabbath. Now all this a hypocrite may do...but nothing of it in Christ. Here they part. They [true believers] do it by virtue of strength received from Him. They bring forth fruit, aiming with a single eye at pleasing Him, to show forth His virtues and praises. And also, it is done trusting to His merit and mediation alone for acceptance. (emphasis added) 

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The church is a great tree inverted. Its root is in heaven; its branches, here on earth, multitudes of them. It is true there are branches in heaven with their root.

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The sap of this great tree that keeps it green and flourishing is the Spirit, the Spirit of Grace. Now Christ the root had the Spirit without measure, according to the promise. ...The sap which the root has, it has not for itself but for the branches. The branches suck and draw from it and so are maintained in their greenness and fruitfulness. Though the root have it, yet if it do not communicate it, the tree is none the better. The Lord Jesus Christ is a communicative root. What He has of the Spirit He has for us.

Understanding for the Simple

The entrance of Your word gives light, It gives understanding to the simple. Psalm 119:130

Have you ever read a passage of scripture and thought, I don't get this? I think most people have, especially those who read their Bible often! But have you ever thought Hebrews is too confusing, I will never understand it? Or I'm just not smart enough to figure out what Paul means here? I hope not, because the Bible is for everyone, not just for geniuses! There is no need to have a Bible degree, or to study Greek and Hebrew, to understand the Bible.

"But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, 

and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty. 

1 Corinthians 1:27

Think about the disciples. Not only were they humble fishermen rather than learned priests and scribes, at times they were a bit dull. I have no desire to run down the disciples—much of their confusion was perfectly legitimate, thanks to the cryptic way Jesus liked to say things. However, consider the feeding of the four thousand: they have already seen the feeding of the five thousand, and yet they have the same question for Jesus again—"How can one satisfy these people with bread here in the wilderness?" Or when Jesus straight up tells them that Judas is going to betray Him, and they thought he was leaving to give something to the poor?

So if you're not naturally academic, or if you find abstract arguments hard to follow, be encouraged by the example of the disciples. Remember, they did not stay confused forever! Not only did they begin to heal people in Jesus' name, they started preaching eloquent sermons, and even writing books. They were also able to stand before the highest scholars of their day and clearly articulate their beliefs: "Now when they [the Sanhedrin] saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus." (Acts 4:13)

That's right, the disciples were changed by spending time with Jesus. Today, we have the words of God in the Bible, and when we spend time studying them we will be changed too! The more time we devote to reading the Bible, the more our brains will have to work to understand, and the harder the brain works, the stronger it gets.

This means that even young children can learn to understand the Bible. Indeed, their simple approach to spiritual things is praised by Jesus: "Of such is the Kingdom of God", he says. "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it." Just as children must come to a point when their faith becomes their own, rather than something imposed by their parents, so also they must be taught to read the Bible for themselves, and to try to understand it with their own minds!

In this effort, each of us, whether child or adult, has a powerful Helper:

"But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things...When He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth;" Jn. 14:26; 16:13


Never be afraid to ask the Holy Spirit to help you understand as you read. Remember, however, that the Holy Spirit does not speak on His own authority: He will not help you to interpret a verse in such a way that it contradicts another teaching of Scripture.

The Bible can be understood by anyone. It is not inherently bad to seek the counsel of other men concerning the Bible (commentaries, devotionals, Pastors, speakers, sermons, blog posts, and so on), but make sure you always check back up with scripture. Believe no man implicitly, not even your pastor or your parents—they will sometimes be wrong. Be like the Bereans: when you hear a certain teaching, search the scriptures. Be fair-minded—willing to be taught—but find out from the Bible whether it is actually so!

Unstable men will always try to twist the Word and make it fit their own purposes, but if you have saturated yourself in the Word itself, their smooth pitch will not deceive you. The more familiar you are with the original, the quicker you will be able to spot a counterfeit.

Christ All in All: Christ is our Food

I'm reading a series of sermons by Philip Henry (Matthew Henry the Bible Commentator's father), and thought I would share some quotes as I go along. Using the book "Christ All in All" as a devotional, I'm reading just one sermon a day, but each one is full of rich doctrine!

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"Everything that has life must have food to support that life. It cannot live without food. So it is with our souls. They can no more live without food than our bodies can. Take the food away, and you take the life away."

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"This bread is given by the Son himself. It was His own act and deed to give Himself to be bread for us...And should not we then readily and cheerfully give ourselves to Him—all we are, have, or can do? Can we bestow ourselves better?"

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"This is the excellency of spiritual dainties: that the more a man feeds on them, the more he would have, and yet he has a kind of satisfaction in what he has, such as causes him to say, 'Return unto they rest, O my soul'"

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"It is our duty to eat of this rare bread...If we do not eat of it, we are like to be never the better for it. It will do us no good to hear of it only. We have heard a great deal of Christ, but what will that avail us, except we believe what we hear? It will do us no good to look on it only. Will looking on meat nourish us? No, we must eat if we will be nourished. Will looking on Christ and seeing others feed on Him feed and nourish you? No, though it is the best fare in the world."

Large Family Idiosyncrasy #9: Restricting Books (Part Two)

Last week, I intended to cover several more book restrictions that were enforced over the years, but my reminiscences about Narnia got away from me, and I ran out of time. I present them now, therefore, as "Part 2":

1. No Fiction Before Breakfast

As book lovers, we are easily absorbed by a good story, and tend to lose track of time. Of all my siblings, I am perhaps the most guilty in this regard, and have often come to myself, after flipping over the final page, to discover that I can scarcely move, having sat in the same position for hours without shifting. When in the throes of an exciting book, there is a temptation to read until the last possible second before bedtime, and to pick the story back up as soon as my eyes open in the morning, having quite possibly dreamed about the characters in between.

However, we have always been encouraged, and sometimes required, to start our day off with personal Bible time, and too often when we started our day instead with reading a fictional adventure, we would forget to read our Bibles at all—not to mention neglecting our physical breakfast as well, which combined to negatively affect the whole morning. To curb this tendency, fiction was forbidden before breakfast.

2. No Reading in the Bathroom

Another temptation for great readers is to squeeze in a few extra pages during any spare moments in the day—and some not-so-spare moments. With only two bathrooms shared between up to twelve people, we cannot afford to have a child lingering longer than necessary to finish up the paragraph...the page...the chapter.

Exceptions were occasionally made for responsible siblings who were overseeing little ones' baths, however even this concession sometimes resulted in inordinately long baths, the water turning tepid, and the bathing children's fingers and toes becoming wrinkled, as the "responsible" (cough) sibling was herself immersed in a different reality.

3. Three Book Max Per Person on Road Trips

You can't see everyone's books, but there are at least seven people reading in this picture.

For those who have the stomach for it, road trips are fruitful reading times. Any time our family embarks on a trip, all of us kids stock up on books—more than enough to get us There and Back Again, wherever that happens to be. 

Once the van is full of children, however, there is only a limited amount of space for our baggage. Books, as you will be aware if you have ever traveled with them, take up space and weight, and for many years we were strictly limited to three books per person. 

Really, this was generously sufficient for any trip we made, since they were never longer than a week, but in our paranoia lest we should run out of reading material, we would coordinate our reading with one of our siblings, each bringing books that neither had read, thus practically increasing our stock of reading to six books rather than three.

There ought to be a word for "fear of running out of books to read while away from home". Whatever the Latin term, our family has this condition to an acute degree. We bring books with us to church. To the grocery store. To the doctor's office. To friends' houses for supper. Even when we're just walking to the end of the driveway to check the mail! 

As more and more children joined the ranks of readers, this phobia began to slow down our loading process, as people ran about the house searching for their book instead of getting straight into the van when they were told. Kids also tended to leave books in the car between trips, which was detrimental to their (the books') health, as they were often stepped on or kicked under the seats. In order to get us about town in a timely manner, and to save our books from abuse, our parents created another reading rule:

4. No Reading in the Car, Unless Traveling at Least 15 Minutes from Home

The distance from home was not originally such a neat time designation, rather it was fixed practically, by a certain friends' house where we had Bible study every week. They lived on the outskirts of town, and if we were driving there, or anywhere further afield, we were allowed to bring books to read on the way. If, however, we were merely going to church, or to spend the afternoon at our grandparents' house, we were supposed to leave our own books at home, and hang our hopes on our destination supplying any necessary reading material. 

A certain amount of smuggling occurred, of course, especially in the back rows of the van, which were less strictly supervised, but there was always the risk of confiscation, with its accompanying agony of not finding out how the story ended for an indeterminate length of time. 

Christ All in All: Christ is the Foundation

I'm reading a series of sermons by Philip Henry (Matthew Henry the Bible Commentator's father), and thought I would share some quotes as I go along. Using the book "Christ All in All" as a devotional, I'm reading just one sermon a day, but each one is full of rich doctrine!

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"Had the apostles and prophets been asked, one by one, "Who is your foundation? On whom do you build for life and happiness, they would have said, "Jesus Christ." He was their all in all and therefore should be ours."

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"There is no rearing a building without a foundation. We have each of us a building to rear, and what foundation have we? None in ourselves—no righteousness of our own to commend us to God, no strength or ability to anything that is good."

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"The Church is a living building. No other is so...All the materials in this building are men and women made spiritually alive—quickened with divine quickening, such as once were dead in trespasses and sins but are now otherwise, alive to God."

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"It is a great privilege to be of that building whereof Christ is the foundation."

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Large Family Idiosyncrasy #9: Restricting Books (Part One)

I think anyone who knows our family knows we love books. We use them to cover our walls, and we carry them everywhere: outside, on trips, to church, to bed...but there are times when Mom and Dad had to restrict our reading. If they had not, we would have "read our lives away", as Mom so eloquently put it.

The first "book restriction rule" that I recall was definitely provoked. You see, all of us were obsessed with The Chronicles of Narnia at the time, and we literally read the books to pieces. The Magician's Nephew was the first to fall apart, and so if I wanted to read it, I would sit on the couch, with pages spread around me, intending to put them in order, but usually getting distracted and starting to read before I was finished.

As well as reading the physical copies we owned an audio version of all seven books, and we loved listening to them as we did our chores—especially while cleaning the bathrooms, for some reason. We were not, however, allowed to listen to them at night before falling asleep, as the stories were so exciting that they kept us awake too late into the night! A rare and cherished treat was watching the BBC TV version, produced in the late eighties. Our grandparents on Mom's side had VHS tapes of Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe, and Prince Caspian/Dawn Treader, and we were so enamored with the stories we didn't care that Aslan looked like a stuffed animal, and the beavers were full-sized grownups in a costume.

We not only read them over and over, listened to them, and watched them at every opportunity, we also acted them out, both in the living room and in the back yard. Andrew was Peter Pevensie, Margaret was Susan, I was Edmund, and Rebekah was Lucy. (Margaret was often Lucy as well, since Reba was really too little to play. Sometimes Rebekah was the D.L.F. [narnia points if you catch that reference].) Since we had three girls and only one boy (Maxwell being a newborn at this time), I was always the second boy character. If it was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe we were acting out, I was Edmund. If it was The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I was either Edmund or Eustace, and Andrew was Caspian. I was quite a tomboy when I was little, so I did not mind in the least!

Sticks became swords, blankets became cloaks, twisted handkerchiefs became crowns. There was an old cherry tree in the middle of the yard, gnarly and dying, which in our imaginations was the terrible White Witch. We would hurl spears at it, and hack at it with our swords (which may possibly have contributed to the dying process!). Even when we were doing household chores, our minds were in Narnia. Making the bed became a death-defying fantasy adventure, and I still clearly remember dreaming about Narnia!

Unfortunately, we were occasionally required in the real world, and to pull us back from our imaginations, at some point one of our parents (identity withheld) actually had to BAN Narnia! We were not allowed to play it, or read it for a certain period of time. In my young mind, it seems like we were banned for about a year, but I'm guessing it was only a couple months one summer—or perhaps when the school year started, so we could focus. Of course, we were horrified and woebegone, and I'm afraid we only partially obeyed, viewing our normally beloved parent as a veritable King Miraz for a time, (the tyrant was not  able to control our dreams!) but eventually we learned some balance, and the restriction was gradually lifted.

Speak the Word

Psalm 119:172 My tongue shall speak of Your word, For all Your commandments are righteousness.

Most Christians realize that they ought to know Scripture. Many have even memorized certain passages—perhaps the Roman Road, or the Sermon on the Mount. Some, however, are unsure what to do with this knowledge once they have gained it. Is it enough to only use scripture to inform our own lives? This is like filling a hose with water, but keeping your thumb on the end, so that no water escapes—very nice for the hose, but not much practical help! If we believe that the Bible is the Word of God, it ought to spill out of us, onto those around us. Sometimes our lives speak to others, true, but sometimes we need to use our mouths! Part of our love for the Bible should involve speaking it, not just learning it.

Ezekiel 3:10-11:
"Son of man, receive into your heart all my words that I speak to you, and hear with your ears. And go, get to the captives, to the children of your people and speak to them, and tell them, 'Thus says the Lord GOD.'" (Emphasis added)

Are Old Testament prophets then the only ones who can speak of the word? The apostles, who received divine revelation? Or is this the responsibility of our pastors? It is their job, after all. Pastors certainly ought to be speaking God's word, especially when they are preaching, but it is by no means confined to them!
"He who has my word, let him speak my word faithfully." Jeremiah 23:28
All christians have access to God's word, in the Bible, and therefore all of us ought to be speaking it.

We speak of God's word because it is righteousness, just as God is righteousness. By doing this, we bring glory to God, which is always our aim in every circumstance.

When is it a good time to discuss the words of the Lord? The Bible has a few suggestions:

• when you sit in your house
• when you walk by the way
• when you lie down
• when you rise up

That sounds like anytime is a good time, doesn't it?

We should talk about the word of God with believers. I can tell you from personal experience it is a great encouragement. Fellow believers who just naturally slide into discussing the scriptures anytime I have a conversation with them are some of the most wonderful people I know of to be around.

On the other hand, there are times we will need to speak the word when it is NOT welcome. Paul tells Timothy to "be ready in season and out of season", and we must also be willing to speak the truth to unbelievers, or to straying believers, even though they may be offended, or cut us off. Always, of course, this must be in love. (Ephesians 4:15)

The Bible is eternal. Therefore, it will still be around even after this world has perished, and we are all in heaven. Just as we speak of it here on earth, so we will do in the kingdom, through endless ages. Can you imagine discussing Romans with Paul? Or maybe with Peter: "Yeah, Paul is sometimes hard to understand!" To me, this is a fascinating and exciting thought. Though we will know many things then that we do not know now, the topic of scripture will still be profitable and delightful to discuss.

Knowing that we ought to be talking about the Bible, it is still sometimes frustrating to consider the how. Where do we start? We can't just start every conversation by asking "What did you read in the Bible this morning?" (although that is one way to start talking about the Bible!) I have a few ideas for you, based on my own experience. (Here I'm not talking about rebuking or convicting, just adding the Bible to your general conversation.)

• Use verses, phrases, and stories from the Bible as examples to illustrate your point. The conversation doesn't have to just be about the Bible. We could be talking about the afternoon traffic: "There was this one guy who drove like Jehu!" At which point the guy referred to might remark, "Take the plank out of your own eye!" If you're with people who know the Bible well, this can add a layer of fun, and even make the conversation rather like a game.
• Talk about the sermon. If you're at church, it is natural to talk about the service. You've all just gone through a common experience, there is plenty of subject for conversation! Different people will get different things out of any sermon, so if you comment on something you especially appreciated, or that added a new perspective, chances are you will add to the other person's understanding as well.
• Talk about what you read. We already mentioned the tactic of asking someone what they read in the Bible recently. Better, though, is to start by volunteering something you learned: "I was writing a blog post this week, about Psalm 119, and as I was thinking about when and where we should discuss the Bible, I suddenly realized we're still going to be talking about it in heaven! Isn't that cool? I'd never really thought about it before."
• Ask what it means and share what it means. Rather than just saying, "Hey, I was reading James this morning", it will be easier to get a conversation going if you have something specific. "What do you think this means?" or "I think this means ______. What do you think?"

"The subject gives us plenty of sea-room; we may speak on for ever: the tale is for ever telling, yet untold." — Charles Haddon Spurgeon