President Reagan here was making use of the figure of speech known as litotes – understatement, sometimes utilizing irony, sometimes not.

And this leads me to an observation about my God, the King, an observation to keep in mind as you read His Word or simply live before Him: God (I would say as a general rule) understates. In His communication He frequently employs litotes.

Occasionally, very occasionally, you meet someone and after three months discover that he’s fluent in French. Then six months later you’ll happen to call him at work and the secretary will answer ‘Dr. ____________________’s office.’ (Ph.D. – Who knew!) Then five years later you find out that he’s an accomplished violinist; 15 years later you happen upon the fact that he’s a hobbyist furniture maker, but his creations would stand out on the floor of an Ethan Allen showroom.

You get the picture. There is the unusual creature who is content to allow admirable information about himself to be disclosed gradually, if at all. My point in this pastor’s notes is that this quality is God-like.

Take, for instance, the first chapter of the Bible, which is a narrative of the creation. I find in the 16th verse a line that at first reading sounds like a throwaway: “and the stars.”

That, my friends, is litotes! I know that because I have my browser open to a page that includes these two sentences: “How many stars? There are between 10 sextillion and 1 septillion in the Universe. [Then the deadpan:] That’s a large number of stars.”

So if I’m breathing out the writing of Genesis chapter 1, I’m including this sentence: ‘And God, in a staggering, mind-blowing display of strength and awesomeness, simply by a word, brought 1 septillion stars into existence.’ I would include Hubble images into the text. I would highlight the reader’s earth-bound-ness and finiteness in view of the cosmos’ massiveness.

And then I’d move on to the 20000 species of butterflies and force the reader’s attention to the marvel of their complexity, their individuality, their intricate design, the miracle that is metamorphosis, and so on.

I’d rhapsodize on the cell. I’d boast in photosynthesis. I’d revel in the detail and design and bounty of creation…

But God and I are different that way. Here’s (again) how He puts things: “and the stars.”

Need your God to be flamboyant? Won’t pay attention unless the information He sends comes in neon lights? Well then- move on people, nothing to see here.

That is, unless you’re willing, over time, to keep looking at Him and study where He is pointing, to keep hearing His understatements and grapple to take them seriously and fill them out. And then! Then you’ll pass through an ongoing cycle which will regularly include declaiming with God’s servant Job, “Now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”

I’m phenomenal.  My writing is phenomenal.  I play phenomenal basketball.  But lest you think I’m boasting, let me explain phenomenal: that which is subject to observation.  That which can be measured and sniffed and placed under a microscope and seen through a telescope.

Carpenters live a phenomenal life.  They cut the trim piece at “two-and three eighths” and it squeezes exactly in the space they’ve measured.  So the phenomenal world is all about precision and technicalities, accuracies and inaccuracies.

What about God?  What about theology?  What about faith?  Alack, all these Kant banished to the realm of the noumenal, and that turned out a disastrous move.

Because by definition the noumenal world cannot be observed but rather can only be apprehended, the tendency since Kant has been to approach God and theology and faith mystically and anti-intellectually.  In matters of faith, intellectual precision became gauche; sloppiness ruled.

Kant’s dastardly deed is, all the way up to 7 Oct ’11, harming the church:

“The growth of ignorance in the church, the growth of  indifference with regard to the simple facts recorded in the Bible, all goes back to a great spiritual movement, really skeptical in its tendency, which has been going forward during the last one hundred years – a movement which appears not only in philosophers and theologians such as Kant and Schleiermacher and Ritschl, but also in a widespread attitude of plain men and women throughout the world.  The depreciation of the intellect, with the exaltation in the place of it of the feelings or the will, is, we think, a basic fact in modern life, which is rapidly leading to a condition in which men neither know anything nor care anything about the doctrinal content of the Christian religion.” (J. Gresham Machen)

How can we then avoid the trap of the noumenalization of our faith?  Six principles:

1. 1446 BC – what is that?  That’s a date you should know, the probable date of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt.  The point is that, in your faith love and gain dates, facts and other solid things.
2. Memorize passages in Scripture.  Among other things, you’ll begin to associate growth in the faith with labor as it commonly feels in the “phenomenal” world.
3. Beware of the practical monkey.  That’s the monkey running throughout society that says, “If its not practical [by which the monkey means, ‘If I don’t immediately feel this truth can be practiced in my everyday life as I now know it’] I don’t want to hear it.”  Imagine the chemist being bored by learning the minutia of the periodic table!  Think of the foreign language student who wants to be done with all this vocabulary and just get out there and talk with people!
4. Spit out the lofty spiritual phrases that aren’t true or that, upon closer inspection, don’t mean anything at all.  For example, the words “bless” and “grace” are often spoken without any concern for what they actually mean.  They’re being used connotatively and emotively, as the noise of the cello gives the feel of profundity, whether the music is profound or not.  Practice precision in your theological thoughts and statements.
5. Tie your beliefs to the statements of Scripture, whether they be minor or major.  Here’s the challenge in that:  Sometimes, or perhaps most times, our emotions don’t respond to the truth.  And so because Kant said our faith is in the noumenal world, and because we’re not emotionally apprehending a statement of Scripture, we unconsciously conclude that the statement just isn’t important.  Not so – we have to learn the truth by rote and then train our feelings to respond appropriately.
6. Warning- think carefully of warnings against “cold, dead theology.”  If the warning is actually against disobedience or becoming blase to the truth or doctrinal confusion, then heed it!  But if the spirit of the warning is rather against the “elitism” of doctrinal precision, long study, a doctrine of hard facts, the taking of words seriously, kindly ignore it.

Let’s give Chesterton the last word here:

“Last and most important, it is exactly this which explains what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics of the history of Christianity. I mean the monstrous wars about small points of theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word. It was only a matter of an inch; but an inch is everything when you are balancing. The Church could not afford to swerve a hair’s breadth on some things if she was to continue her great and daring experiment of the irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea become less powerful and some other idea would become too powerful. It was no flock of sheep the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers, of terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong enough to turn to false religion and lay waste the world. Remember that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas; she was a lion tamer. The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of a divine being, of the forgiveness of sins, or the fulfillment of prophecies, are ideas which, any one can see, need but touch to turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious. The smallest link was let drop by the artificers of the Mediterranean, and the lion of ancestral pessimism burst this chain in the forgotten forests of the north. … If some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness. A sentence phrased wrong about the nature of symbolism would have broken all the best statues in Europe. A slip in the definitions might stop all the dances; might wither all the Christmas trees or break all the Easter eggs. Doctrine had to be defined within strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general human liberties. The Church had to be careful, if only that the world might be careless.”

What is God’s solution to our discontent?  Well, I’ll give you three but all are less pill than regimen.  In other words, these are ideas to train into your thinking, a way to contentment that has to be learned.

First, Paul knew only the cross, and Christ crucified.  To wit: Paul took from the cross all his lessons and expectations and authentications for a good, true-to-form religion.  He kept remembering: “The look” of God’s moving forward in the world was a crucifixion.

It’s the old lesson that God was teaching as far back as Job: If my life doesn’t have certain trappings, that could be ok.  God’s done His greatest work in dismal conditions.  Take it easy!  There is no “look”!

Secondly, on our way toward contentment, we are told the extent of God’s oversight.  Which is, um…total.  How many times in this letter does Paul refer to God’s call?  (Many.)  Just the word conveys that we’re working off of God’s initiatives.

And how often in “To the Corinthians” do we hear of God’s assignments?  (Over and over.)  God appoints.  No one lands where he is on his own.

Paul often refers to teachers, even the slickest, as table-servers.  “No, I want my original waiter” is a sentence not often uttered.  And it doesn’t make sense in regard to our teachers, either.   Quietly now!  You don’t have to stand out, because God has placed you.

And finally, in the Corinthian letter we’re forced to accept that any changes in my life – marital, vocational, yes, even spiritual and behavioral – are relatively slight.  Ours is an inferior existence; we wait for something better.  As of now, we “see through a glass, darkly.”

There is an interesting phrase in the opening sentences of the letter that will do you some good to ponder: “as you wait.”  There’s one true summary of our life right now.

Yesterday I was in the Boston Public Library looking at some old documents, among which a letter from John Cotton to Increase Mather.  In the letter Pastor Cotton refers to some mutual acquaintance, who is dying.  “He is not yet dead, but told me last week he expected his great change before our day of Thanksgiving (which is on the morrow).”

That’s it.  We’re waiting for our “great change.”

You can fidget, anticipate, whistle, rustle the paper, chafe under, pretend you’ve arrived.  But the simple fact is that you are waiting, and you still haven’t greatly changed. Settle down!  You don’t have to put on airs!

Corinthians is written to people who are in over their heads.  They might not feel it as such; but the truth is they’ve taken upon themselves a lot of unnecessary stress and are paying for it.  As Paul will say to them at another time: “they’ve lost the simplicity of Christ.”

How did this complication present itself?  First, they thought they had to take a noisy, obvious position, or they might just cease to exist!  So they engaged in unending criticism, aligned themselves with a teacher (and his insightful adherents) and pitted themselves against the others (and their naïve followers).

It happens: there are Christians who, if they aren’t raising their eyebrows, exposing subtle dangers of the opposition, pointing out this problem , this slippery slope feeling either wounded or incensed by differing opinions – they don’t know what to do with themselves!

But too, the Corinthians failed at the big picture and thus couldn’t accurately express their situation.  They didn’t know the relief of understanding that their entire situation arose from God.  Really, “What do you have that you did not receive?”

Being blind to God’s favor is, among other things, stressful.  If you can only see that it’s your ingenuity and diligence that have thus far “made things happen,”, the pressure’s on for the rest of your life.  How stressful is that?

Thirdly, the Corinthians believers craved authentication.  Please make it crystal clear that my choice worked, my life is valuable.  The world requires that their way to have the show of wisdom and power, to be confirmed.  Without these certifiers the world gets desperate, or despairs.

And, Paul implies, this hunger for some external validation had been retained by the Corinthian church.  If my religion does not result in some look akin to a smashing success, a slam dunk, a home run – I’ll panic.

Or I’ll point: Look at my house!  Kids!  I’m relocating, something significant must be happening.  God is with me: how else could I make this grand gesture?  I’m spending this money: surely that’s a step forward.

And finally, the Corinthians were restless, hoping their faith might excuse them from a boring marriage or a stressful profession.  Some were unreasonably unhappy and so were bailing out in the name of Christ.  Surely Messiah’s salvation is from turpitude and lassitude!  From envy and ennui!  Out from my bore-dom into Christ’s king-dom.

Let’s sketch an image of ‘sub-Christian Bill.’  Bill has grown up in an understanding of Christianity that is (the kindest word for it) diminished.  He is truly joined to God through Christ, but has not heard the grandeur of God, the true freedom of Christ, the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.

He regularly reads the Bible, but has never related its parts to the grand narrative.  He has specific, unthoughtful ideas of what a believer does and doesn’t do.  His aesthetic is underdeveloped, falling squarely in that category of ‘evangelical kitsch.’  His theological conclusions, or better assumptions, are (irritatingly) reflections of the republican doctrine du jour.

Two more steps: First, round out Bill by noticing his simplistic ideas of who’s on the good team and who the evil others.  Second, multiply Bill by 20.

Now Ted.  Ted is glad to live in the church’s neighborhood, a nice guy, has to this point not taken God or His Word seriously.  Ted is your run-of-the-mill, unromanticized unbeliever.  Let’s multiply him by 20 too.

Enter young X. Cellant into Ted’s neighborhood as Bill’s new pastor.  Who will Pastor Cellant choose to save, Bill or Ted?

He’s tempted, for a few reasons, to save Bill.  For one, Ted is intimidating!  The other.  Secondly, Bill’s positions really are irritating.

But there’s more pulls to save Bill.  Pastor X is a Protestant, and the narrative of protest and reform he has inculcated for some time, especially in seminary.  If X isn’t traducing the establishment, isolating himself from the old ways, forging a new way forward, leading others to freedom, he just doesn’t feel right.  X vaguely holds the idea that disestablishment is tantamount to salvation.

Too X is new to the church, and eager to make a difference.  The quickest way to make a splash but w/o angering many is to subvert.  Hint at new, better readings of Scripture; caricature the Man of the old decaying Christianities; rally the disenchanted to…well, to you, X.  You in the name of the theologians en vogue.

“For so long churches have…but God’s word says…”  You could spend a lifetime forming these types of sentences, saving Bill and the multiplied Bills.  Settling into the wide groove of identifying your version of the Life vis-a-vis others.  Saving the unenlightened (Christians), the uptight, hedged-in (Christians), the thoughtlessly conservative (Christians).

This version of salvation is so wide-spread that a pastor will have to deliberately turn away from it.  But he should.  He should do the work of an evangelist, and go after Ted, and not aspire to the work of reformer.

Yes, Bill needs to be taught; and Pastor X Cellant should go about that.  But it is unhelpful for Bill to see his previous Christian experience debunked by his newly minted, intellectual, passionate pastor.  What does it profit him to be drawn into the paradigm: “All my Christian life I’ve been told ____________ but now I have the truth”?

Save the salvation rhetoric and mood – for the unsaved!  And reserve the Messianic posturing for the Messiah!

We are not sure of the exact problem.  One thing jumps out: He’s stuck with his own thoughts, and deeply regrets it.  He’s “listened to his heart” and seeks more trustworthy direction.

Notice that the psalmist isn’t just trying to get the verse of the day downloaded to him.  No, things are a little more desperate.  If he doesn’t get the divine counsel soon, he falls into the sleep of death.

There are enemies too.  And one of the incentives for God to consider and answer is to quiet these rowdies.  The assumption is that the psalmist’s enemies are God’s enemies too.  When they are on top, both God and the psalmist appear at a loss.

So “how long?”

I want to be careful here because I observe that we fall into the trap of heading right for the dramatic and secretly loving the tragic.  But if the Psalter is (among other things) a guidebook to the life of faith, we know that it’s very possible we’ll sometimes sense that God has forgotten us.

We can also allow that this sense of abandonment might settle down on us, over lengthy periods.  Then, as we study our situation, examine our life from every aspect, it will seem incredible that God has left us in such weakness and befuddlement.

We who have been chosen by God from before the foundation of the world?  We the commissioned with such important directives?  We who have listened in to God’s disclosures on the invisible world and the future and the ancient past?  We united to the Savior who has borne the judgment of sin, who has passed through the shades, and come up into resurrection life?  We His younger siblings?

All those claims taunt me now.  Who did I suppose I was?  Well I know now what I am: sorrowful, fading, beaten—shaken.

Full Disclosure: More than I like, I fall into these dark thoughts of abandonment; taking Winston Churchill’s lead I call them “the black dog.”  Then let me alone;  leave me and the dog to enter Dunkin Donuts: to eat Boston Cremes and repine!

Why can’t I get on track?  Where is the saving from sin?  “I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.”  I’m not asking for pity, God!  I simply want You to protect and improve what You said You’ve purchased…well, me!  I’m looking, but You’re hiding from me.

Hand me another donut!  How long?

If God would just turn the lights on for just a second—that I could get a little perspective!  Then I would know that something is happening in the background…that I’m being prepped or at least something is being staged…that there’s a point—even if it’s not me.  Just give me a clue as to what should I pray for?

Well, there’s the frustration.  But the prayer ends a little cheerfully.  Compared with the rest of the psalm, a lot cheerfully.  How does this happen?

Well, in prayer.  Prayer often clarifies things.  Dear People: Just.  Get.  To.  Praying.

Here after venting before God, the lights turn on, albeit dimly.  As he gets off his knees a thousand questions remain.  But the psalmist himself is able to put his distress in perspective by remembering a couple of things:

1. In the past he knew that God had rescued him on the way to some enduring, good plan for him.  If he experiences that deliverance, and that plan, one way before, and another way now—let it be.  The fact is, he is being saved.

2. God had in the past been generous to him; what makes this searing moment more real or defining than those moments?  And wouldn’t it make sense to believe that those generous moments, those moments of prosperity, betokened the big picture, since God is a loyal Savior?

I will sing to the LORD.

Our Lord contends that His followers will be at an advantage once He leaves because He will send “the Helper” to them.  At least in this lesson, the advantage of the Spirit is connected with the ministry of Jesus’ followers toward the world. Why exactly the Spirit is preferred over Jesus Himself is not explained, but is probably due to the fact that the Spirit will cover more ground (through Jesus’ disciples) than Jesus could in His flesh.

I’ll let Carson, whose interpretation of John 16 I am following here, provide us the right way to hear “the Helper”:

The Greek term parakletos, rendered ‘Counselor’ in the NIV, is the verbal adjective of parakaleo, lit. ‘to call alongside,’ and hence ‘to encourage,’ ‘to exhort.’  The verbal adjective has passive force, and is roughly equivalent to ho parakeklemenos, ‘one who is called alongside.’  In secular Greek, parakletos primarily means ‘legal assistant, advocate’…i.e. someone who helps another in court, whether as an advocate, a witness, or representative.  With this legal force it was transliterated into Hebrew and Aramaic.  In Greek, however, the term never had the restrictively technical force that Latin advocatus (‘a legal advocate’) had.  Moreover, the passive form does not rule out the possibility that the Paraclete may be an active speaker on behalf of someone before someone else.

In John’s usage, the legal overtones are sharpest in 16:7-11, but there the Paraclete serves rather more as a prosecuting attorney than as counsel for the defense.  NIV’s ‘Counselor’ is not wrong, so long as ‘legal counselor’ is understood, not ‘camp counselor’ or ‘marriage counselor’—and even so, the Paraclete’s ministry extends beyond the legal sphere.  The same limitation afflicts ‘Advocate.’  AV’s ‘Comforter’ was not bad in Elizabethan English, when the verb ‘to comfort’ meant ‘to strengthen, give succor to, to encourage, to aid’) from Latin confortare, ‘to strengthen’).  In today’s ears, ‘Comforter’ sounds either like a quilt or like a do-gooder at a wake, and for most speakers of English should be abandoned.  ‘Helper’ (GNB) is not bad, but has overtones of being subordinate or inferior, overtones clearly absent from John 14-16. – Carson, The Gospel According to John, p. 499

But what will the Spirit do through believers in the world?  He will convict the world of its sin, righteousness, and judgment.  That word ‘convict’ (elencho) means to expose wrongdoing, produce appropriate shame, and convince of guilt.  That, according to Jesus, is what we should expect of the Spirit after He is sent.

Specifically, the Spirit will expose the world’s sin, righteousness, and judgment.  The world’s sin is summed up in the fact that they have not believed Jesus, and thus haven’t accepted either God’s diagnosis of their problem or His way out of their ruined condition.

In the middle of their sinful unbelief, the Spirit is testifying the truth about Jesus.

Because the world, in John, designates the order that is in rebellion against its Creator, we should understand that the sin, righteousness, and judgment mentioned here are each expressions of that rebellion.  Of course the world’s sin is a problem; but so, says Jesus, is its righteousness and judgment.

Which means, there is a righteousness of the world but it’s a sham righteousness.  Read the Gospels and you’ll discover that the vocation of Jesus included His going behind the current religious posturing and pulling back the curtain of hypocrisy.  But He has gone to the Father.

The Spirit, though, will continue the assault against the laziness that excuses itself in pious terms, the vague spirituality that ignores the problem of the individual heart, the platitudes empty of good deeds, the adopting religious labels in lieu of worship—in short, the “righteousness” which the prophet Isaiah says is to God as so many menstrual cloths.

The world’s judgment is its deeply flawed evaluation of itself and its Creator.  It is the secular assessment that never takes into account the opinions of the invisible God.  It is the state of mind that trivializes sin, shrivels the concept of guilt to merely annoying feeling, has no patience for a textual faith.

Behind this mindset is the prince of this world who churns out lies—humongous systemic lies that underpin a false worldview and small lies that rationalize and minimize one’s failings before God.  But the Spirit, Jesus says, can expose the world’s defective evaluations because the prince of the world has been judged.

In the Messiah’s cross, sin and rebellion and all the works of the devil have been condemned in His body.  In the resurrection of the Messiah God began a new creation that leaves behind the ancient curse and the old devil and everything that fades away outside of the will of God.

God will use Jesus’ followers to convey all this to the world He loves.

Jesus says to the Samaritan woman that it is the time in history when true worshipers will be distinguished by one trait: there are those who worship in spirit and in truth and everyone else.  Is this how you worship God?

“God is seeking worshipers.”  Let that statement sink into you.  We can easily slip into careless frames of mind and assume that God is looking for Baptists or Catholics, Reformed Christians, evangelistically minded people, or fiscal/political conservatives.  Perhaps God is after a certain look, a certain demographic!  No, God is seeking worshipers.

To worship God means, at the least, to attend to Him.  The psalmist captures the opposite of worship as he describes the wicked: “God is in none of his thoughts.”  That denunciation could be true of Baptists, Catholics and fiscal/political conservatives.  In fact, sometimes the scandal of a God-less mind is made tolerable just by means of these religious or demographic identifiers.

The other day I invited someone to Christianity Explored, to investigate the Christ.  “I’m a ____________________ “ (insert tribal marker here), he snarled.  Behold! Here was someone letting his quasi religious, quasi-ethnic marker stand in for a God-attentiveness.

But not so the worshiper.  The worshiper has sanctified God in his thoughts; meaning that there is a well-worn trail between his thoughts on everything else and his thoughts on God.  He keeps going back to God.  The worshiper has taken some trouble, quite a lot of trouble, to understand Him. He moves when God tells him to move.  He admires God and, if that admiration just isn’t coming—he’ll work to get to the place where he admires again.  To put it in a pithy phrase, in the worshiper, God’s name is hallowed.

“God is seeking worshipers.”  We need to fear the lazy mood that imagines as long as we’re still using the right slogans and finding ourselves in the right group, we’ll be fine.  Not so!  Truth is not a vessel, where, once on board, we can settle in for the journey.  No, we walk in the truth.  Attentively.  God is seeking worshipers; not ‘those who once worshiped.’

But not just worshiping God.  Worshiping Him under certain qualifications, “in spirit and truth.”  Not in spirit and in truth, as if these qualities could be separated and owned one at a time (i.e., Spirit?  Check.  Truth?  Check).   But how does one worship “in spirit and truth”?

Well, the qualifiers here do not signify that in our worship we must have enthusiasm + orthodox doctrine.  Both of these are appropriate but not exactly what Jesus is after here.  In fact, Jesus is not giving instructions on how to worship properly, but rather stating how true worship will be rendered from this time forward.  Not prescription but description.

He says, God must be, by definition, worshiped this way—“in spirit and truth”—just because “God is spirit.”  The quality of God defines the worship; but what is this quality, ‘spirit?’

To say that “God is spirit” entails that He is invisible and omnipresent and thus cannot be tied to a place.  He moves freely and will not be administered or contained.  He is divine and heavenly and above—far above!—flesh.  He is not dependent on others to keep him alive but rather life giving!  He moves, but is Himself not able to be moved.  He is not out of reach, hidden, until He presents Himself.

So to worship the God Who is spirit means that we cannot worship God on our own, without heaven’s help.  To worship the God Who is spirit requires that our worship be spiritually derived: You can’t cart God around and call the scene a religious festival.  You can’t confine Him to one place and get by with calling the area ‘sacred.’  You can’t glue Him to a demographic or religious marker.

God is spirit: He is not wringing His hands hoping that the stuff-of-flesh, the earth-bound, will remember to keep Him alive.  He is not at our beck and won’t respond to incantation.

God is spirit: He initiates worship!

God is spirit: A statement not only telling us about Him, but also telling us what we need Him for.  “Spirit gives birth to spirit.”

Once more: God must present Himself if flesh is to know spirit.  And so He has, in the true account of the Word becoming flesh, the One and Only Son revealing the Father whom no one has seen.  God has appeared in Jesus.  You cannot worship the One God without the knowledge of Jesus.  Jesus is what is true about God.

To worship God properly, then, is possible only through a lively gift from heaven that always takes a certain look: a studied attentiveness to Jesus!

… And maybe you’ll be Baptist, too!

To summarize: The worshipers whom God seeks worship him out of the fullness of the supernatural life they enjoy (‘in spirit’), and on the basis of God’s incarnate Self-Expression, Christ Jesus himself, through whom God’s person and will are finally and ultimately disclosed (‘in truth’); and these two characteristics form one matrix, indivisible. – Carson, John 225

I said almost: we still have a few things to do.  1) place bookplates in the books, 2) place labels on the shelves that will help you navigate properly through the sections 3) alphabetize the topical books and 4) adjust some shelves and add some bookends (does anybody have such?).

Following are the sections of the library:

• New Testament Commentaries
• Old Testament Commentaries
• Systematic Theologies (both comprehensive volumes and individual treatments: i.e., soteriology, ecclesiology etc)
• Topical books (by author) – Really anything that doesn’t fall into any other category (e.g., Andrew Murray books)
• Church History
• Biography
• Christian Counseling (i.e., advice on marriage, child-rearing, life skills)
• Apologetics
• Books on Prayer
• Evangelism Helps

Books that are purportedly Christian should follow John the Baptizer’s lead.  In John 3 the Baptizer referred to himself as akin to the “friend of the bridegroom.”  In 1^st century Judean culture, this friend would do much to plan the wedding ceremony and to generally put forward the groom as the appropriate headliner of the ceremony.

In short, the Baptizer said, “[Christ] must increase; I must decrease.”  He says, If everything goes according to God’s plan, you’ll notice less of me and more of Christ.

The proper effect of Christian books, and especially commentaries, is also that they should decrease, and Christ increase.  Does this book prepare you to receive Christ’s words more clearly?  Does it move your thoughts to Him?  Does it encourage you in your obedience to Him?  Does it exhibit something of His majesty?

The author of the commentary should fade in the background and the text (which after all exegetes Christ who exegetes God!) must come into the light.  Must.

Sometimes the commentary author inadvertently cuts into the limelight and the effect is distressing.  We are burdened by his weighty erudition.  His cleverness leaves us thirsty.  Hey, leave off a few of those footnotes, won’t you?

Sometimes we see the author dancing, whirling… but always around our question and the point of the text!

Sometimes—and even though I love the old guys, this can be their fatal defect—we see the author tripping over himself with affectation and tremulous pietisms.

You don’t have to (I mean it’s not necessary), but I commend the use of a commentary in your daily Bible reading.  But use a commentary that puts Christ forward, instead of obfuscating, or dancing, or anything else that distracts.

Here are some guidelines for selecting commentaries to help you in your daily Bible reading:

• A painful truth: Generally new commentaries are better than old ones.
• Use a commentary that does not call itself devotional. Most of the time devotional commentaries tend toward the mawkish and don’t bring your understanding forward.  So convinced I am of this that I profit more from a commentary by a liberal author who deals seriously with the text (e.g., Robert Alter) than your typical devotional volume.

Of course the best of commentaries are sprinkled with insights that could be called devotional or inspirational.  But they’re not constantly straining for them, that’s the difference.

• Waltke, Carson, Fee, Longman, Moo, Hughes, Kidner – names to look for when selecting a commentary.  Read 1 Corinthians with Gordon Fee.  Read John’s Gospel with D.A. Carson.  Read Genesis with Bruce Waltke.  Read Song of Solomon with Tremper Longman (and your wife!)
• I highly recommend the Pillar New Testament Commentary series.  Also, the Tyndale OT and NT set.  One more: The New American Commentary series.
• Of course, some helpful commentaries are jewels among not-so-valuable sets.  Look at Philippians in the Anchor Bible.  Hey, Wright’s Commentary on Romans even in the New Interpreters set has been helpful.  If you’re looking for recommendations for commentaries on individual books, I’m glad to give you some.
• Read the text first, then read the commentary, then pray from your reading.  Day by day by day…

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Sovereign Lord, let us diligently seek you in your Word daily.  Give us thoughts that spur us on to find answers to questions from your Word, and so to pursue you.  Let your Word come to us in understanding.  Keep us from foolish men, cunning and deceitful doctrine; instead lead us into faith that is at once knowledgeable and obedient.  And we would see Jesus.

-Amen

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.