As we reread familiar portions of Scripture, it's a real danger for us to pass over words quickly and not to meditate on them as we ought, not to sink our roots down into them (Psalm 1) and not to gnaw on them. At the 2009 Gospel Coalition Conference, Don Carson explained that John Piper took Scripture and gnawed on it like a bone. A couple years ago, based on that, I exhorted my readers to Get gnawing, put your nose down in the Book to feed the white-hot flame of God's gift. Here's a little excerpt from that post:

I had recently read through Isaiah 50 and 51, and part of Isaiah 52. The fourth Servant Song, that portion of Isaiah 52 beginning in verse 13 and continuing through all of chapter 53, is all too familiar to many of us, myself included. As I sat in the library, and began reading, the Holy Spirit impressed upon me the word MANY in verse 15:

According to Strong's Concordance, the word many is the Greek word rab rab – abundant (in quantity, size, age, number, rank, quality):--(in) abound(-undance, -ant, -antly), captain, elder, enough, exceedingly, full, great(-ly, man, one), increase, long (enough, (time)), (do, have) many(-ifold, things, a time), ((ship-))master, mighty, more, (too, very) much, multiply(-tude), officer, often(-times), plenteous, populous, prince, process (of time), suffice(-lent).

Solomon expresses it this way:

And Isaac Watts like this:

At the time, I wrote the verse in my journal, capitalizing, circling, and double underlining the word many. (I can't do exactly the same here, but I think you get the idea.)

And then I wrote beneath the verse:

My dear Christian brothers and sisters who live along with me in the United States, as we celebrate our country's 236th birthday today, let us beware of becoming hard-hearted and spiritually blinded, so we succumb to the sin of spiritual pride, much as what happened to the Old Testament nation of Israel. God's plan is not first and foremost for our political nation, the United States of America, but rather, His plan is and has always been to gather a holy nation out of all the nations (ethnic groups) scattered throughout all the earth.

For example...

On several occasions, the LORD Himself declared to Abraham that he was being blessed to be a blessing to many nations, including these words in Genesis 22:17-18:

And again to Isaac in Genesis 26:4:

Throughout the Old Testament, we see that truth that the Gentiles (all the nations) were going to be brought in to God's Kingdom, yet until the coming of Christ, it was a hidden mystery (Eph. 3:7-11). I'd encourage you to do a search for the word "nations" in the book of Isaiah (as well as throughout the whole of the Old Testament); you'll find a treasure trove there. For example:

And, please indulge me, a little plug for the wonderfully rich and full, but often-overlooked book of Zechariah:

If this doesn't thrill you, if it doesn't humble you that we are involved in God's grand scheme Gospel proclamation to bring dead souls to life, to pluck firebrands from the fire, and to bring glory to His holy name, if it doesn't make you long for the day that all the ransomed will be gathered around the throne in worship to the Lamb to the glory of God the Father – then pray that God's Spirit might baptize you afresh with His reviving fire, so it might exhilarate you! (I am saddened to say I had very little passion for missions for many years, and only in the past few years, but all praise, glory and thanksgiving to God, God Himself has begun growing that in me.)

In stark contrast to that gathering described in the book of Revelation, according to the Joshua Project, at the current time, there remain billions of souls who have not yet been reached with the Gospel of Jesus Christ:

As John Piper has said, "Missions exists because worship doesn't."

God is all about Himself being worshiped and adored! That's our chief purpose as Christians.

For the Christian, our true citizenship is in heaven. Yes, we are all citizens in nations on the earth; however, we have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, and we have been born again of incorruptible seed by the Holy Spirit into a holy nation, the family of God. Our primary prayer ought to be that our Father's Kingdom might come, that the glory of the LORD would cover the earth as the waters cover the sea – not that our form of democratic government might cover the earth. We have been entrusted with the everlasting gospel, the power of God unto salvation to all nations; therefore our commission is to export the Good News of great joy to all the nations, so they might join us in worshiping our God, to the glory of God.

In John 10, Jesus Himself declared:

That phrase "I must" is known as the divine imperative, meaning Jesus had a holy compulsion to bring others to Himself who were not of this fold. By "this fold," Jesus meant the Jews. So, Jesus was emphatically saying, "I must bring sheep from all the nations because I am the Good Shepherd not only to the Jews but also to the Gentiles."

Do you have such a holy zeal, compulsion, and jealousy for all the nations to be brought into Christ's fold? If you have the Spirit of Christ indwelling you, if you are being conformed into the image of Christ, you ought to.

Question:  How then does Jesus fulfill that divine imperative, how does He gather and bring sheep from all the nations since He has ascended and now dwells in heaven at the right hand of His Father?

Answer:  Jesus commissions His disciples, and He equips them with His Holy Spirit to do that work.

Earlier in Isaiah 52, we read this commendation of those who take the good news to the ends of the earth:

And the apostle Paul references that verse in Romans 10:

Are your feet beautiful?

We have three options...

In his message, Pursuing the Glory of God in the Gladness of the Nations in God (which I blogged on here), John Piper tells us we have three options regarding missions:

God forbid we put ourselves in the position of Jonah, and balk at going to our "Ninevehs," and instead we get on our boats to go to "Tarshish."

God forbid we stay at home and waste our lives and our energy and our resources day after day after, year after year after year, on matters that have no impact on eternity.

God's commandments are not burdensome. He has promised to give us all we need to serve Him. As we ask our Father in heaven, will He not give us His Holy Spirit? (Luke 11:13). As we ask, we will be given a zeal for the glory of God; a desire to embrace the cause of Christ in the world; God's compassionate heart of mercy to love and long for souls from all nations, including our enemies – so we might pray for all the nations, and go and preach to them, or else to be engaged in sending others to preach to them – with an eye to the glorious day that we will be gathered around the throne with all the saints from all the nations whom the Lord Jesus Christ has sprinkled!

Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Holy Bible.

Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ede_ethnic_groups.jpg  / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Public Domain

I've previously blogged about a couple preachers who have had a huge impact on my life:  the late Martyn Lloyd-Jones and John Piper (for more info., please see the links at the end of this post). Because there is a lot of harmful teaching and preaching running rampant, we need to be on constant guard and to test all things. But let's remember, there is nothing new under the sun. The very same thing was happening in the days of the early Church – hence all the warnings in the New Testament for us to guard the Gospel and to be rightly rooted in doctrine, and so on. The devil is constantly prowling; he is seeking to steal, kill, and destroy, and one of his most insidious means of doing so is through deceitful preaching within the visible church. He doesn't come in with a pitchfork and horns, but he comes as an angel of light, taking the truth of God's Word and subtly twisting it, with the intent that we might not enter into and enjoy the life abundantly that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, came to give to His sheep. Remember: Satan is Christ's adversary and the adversary of all who are Christ's. The devil is a wily schemer, and he is a murderer and a liar and the father of lies. The apostle Paul warned us that fierce wolves would rise up within the church, and they would not spare the flock (see Acts 20:29-30). We must take heed to our souls, and we must remember if we are taking garbage in, garbage will inevitably come out! GIGO! Our eternal souls are at stake! Doctrine is not optional, or a throw-away, it is vital to our soul's well-being! We only have so many hours in a day, and we must be wise in what we read, watch, and listen to. We should be seeking to feed our souls with profitable preaching. Throughout the book of Jeremiah, there was a continued lamentation and rebuke that Israel had gone after that worthless things which did not profit (e.g. - Jer. 2:8, 7:8, 12:13, 14:14, 16:19, 23:32), and because of her turning away from the Word of the LORD, Israel ended up in exile for 70 years in Babylon.

Both Dr. Lloyd-Jones and Dr. Piper (as well as all the preachers and teachers I'm drawn to, and whom I recommend to others) preach a felt Christ. Dr. Lloyd-Jones' preaching was spoken of as "logic on fire." These men preach of an experiential/experimental religion (please see here for more on that). By experimental religion I mean religion of the sort where, as God's Holy Spirit sovereignly moves, the doctrines of the Bible are imparted in power to the soul, such as what happened to the disciples on the Emmaus road: "Did not our heart burn within us... ?" Or, consider David's description about the Word of God in this way: that it was sweeter than honey and the honeycomb! There are certain times, as God's sovereign Spirit blows, when religion becomes more than notion, as Joseph Hart penned:

These men also both preach from a Reformed perspective, i.e. - Calvinism, or the doctrines of grace, or TULIP (see here). In Calvinism there is a high view of God: the glory and majesty and holiness and sovereignty and beauty of God is emphasized, and along with it, the total depravity and inability of men. Consequently, the most excellent glory of God's love, mercy, and grace in providing salvation – from beginning to ending (foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and glorified! ~ Romans 8:29-30) – to helpless, hopeless, dead, powerless, vile, and worthless sinners through the Lord Jesus Christ is most wonderfully displayed and highly exalted.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Calvinism, in  "A Defense of Calvinism," Charles Spurgeon wrote:

I've mentioned this to a couple of my friends here – @AmyDoo and @stephensmustang – that for quite a while now, I've been wanting to give you a list of some of the preachers to whom I've been listening (Ah! the iPod – it's a beautiful thing!) – and now, having set forth some of what I value in preaching, tonight I'd like to introduce you to the preaching of Kenneth Stewart, currently the pastor at Glasgow Reformed Presbyterian Church in Glasgow, Scotland.

The following is an excerpt from the latter part of Kenneth Stewart's sermon "Gains and Losses (2)" <http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=319121440382> on Philippians 3:7.

⁷ But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. ⁸ Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; ¹⁰ that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, ¹¹ if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

God saved Saul of Tarsus, as he calls himself a chief of sinners. He did that just to show that can be yours too. Yours! That can be your experience. This man was what? Somewhere in his thirties perhaps... but his life was turned upside-down for God, and so can yours be.

Will you not start to live like that, friend? Will you not confess your brokenness and your sin and your hopelessness and helplessness, and come to Christ – that this new life may begin in yourself too. He finds a righteousness.

But the righteousness isn't all he finds. He finds a life as well. He doesn't just get a ticket to heaven – he gets a new type of life to live. That's the point of justification after all. That's the point of being put legally right.... Once we're put legally right, everything else can be sorted out.

The whole purpose of our justification is that sanctification can begin. We start to know God. We just start – and we go on – to know Him better. After all, he says, first of all in verse 9, he wants to be found. This is a reference, I think, to the judgment seat. He wants to be found there, not having his own righteousness, no – which is from the law – but that which is from faith in Christ – the righteousness which is from God by faith.

"That I may know Him," he says. "I don't just want to be set free by Him, I want to know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death."

What's he's saying there?

Well, Christ isn't just giving him an inheritance, He's giving him a new life.

What is eternal life? Well, Jesus answers that question in John 17, verse 5: It's to know God, to know the Father, to know the Son – through the Spirit. That is life. That's when life begins. They say life begins at 40, or whatever. It begins when you know God. When you call Him your father in heaven. When a relationship is struck between your Creator and you. That's when life starts. Anything else you live, friend, I don't care how racy it is, how adventurous it is, how exciting it is, it's not life!

Life begins when you know your Creator, and you enter into a relationship with Him. Anything less than that is not life at all.

That I may know Him. He says, "Yes, that's what I want. . .

What is it to mean to know? Well, to know is not just to know intellectually, but to know in the heart. He wants to know Christ as a person. He wants to know more and more of who Christ is and what He has done for him. A righteousness and a life.

And you'll notice that he describes that especially in verse 10 in these terms:  knowing Christ consists in knowing the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings.

That I may know Him. "Yes," he says, "that's what I want."  You know that's what I want too. I hope I want it enough. I hope I want it as passionately as Paul wanted it: to know Christ. Do you? Do you want to know Christ better, deeper? If you do, you'll want to know the power of His resurrection. What is that?

Well, simply the power He gives by virtue of His resurrection. It doesn't mean the power that actually raised Him from the dead, but the power He possesses as the resurrected Lord, a power that He sends into your life by the Holy Spirit. It doesn't feel like electricity. It doesn't crackle like that. It's not that kind of power. It's not that kind of dynamism. It's a spiritual power, it's a spiritual power that carries with it all things needful for life and godliness (Second Peter, chapter 1). That's what you want. In other words, you want what He gives you in terms of knowledge, understanding, judgment, peace, love, joy, discernment. You want that kind of spiritual power coursing through your spiritual veins. You want that. The power of His resurrection. It's a way of saying that God has so much to give. That Christ has so much to give you. He can give you so much of that love for others. So much of that compassion for a fallen world. So much desire to make a difference. He can give you so much love that you will overflow with that love, and so much joy and peace. You want it!

I want to know that Christ, and I want to know that resurrection power in me, filling me through His Holy Spirit . Yes, he says, that's what I want to know. I want to know that Christ, and I want to know Him with that fullness.

Some of you tonight want this, not because you've never had it, but because you've tasted some of it. And when you taste a bit of it, and you remember what the taste is like, you really want it. Sometimes in our foolishness, we do forget it. But just like life, you know, sometimes a smell takes you back. Sometimes just a word takes you back. Sometimes something is said and done, and you'll remember, "Yes, yes, that's what a Christ-centered life was like."

Where have you left that behind, friend?

Where? When? Why?

For what husks did you exchange it?

For what rubbish did you let it go?

What was it amongst the things that you cast away ages ago, what was it that you suddenly rediscovered and polished down and was so worth it?

Do you remember the day when every magazine was trash, every newspaper was a waste of time?

Is it not something of that you need back, and something of that I need back too?

Aw, it's all right to come out with the arguments that says these things are lawful. Ahhh... You can be killed off by lawful things. Your life can be destroyed by a multitude of lawful things.

Do you understand that? The cake remains the same size. There are 24 hours in day. You cram it up with as much lawful stuff as you like, and you've got nothing left for Christ. Not a thing. And your soul will be a damp squib, and you'll do next to nothing for the Lord. But what you could do – if you started to be a bit more severe on yourself like that.

And it's not as though it's torture. That's no hair shirt. No! That's no hair shirt, and that's no whip, and that's no lash. Because you'll discover that to give yourself back to Christ will bring you the joy and the love and peace and the exhilaration  and the sense of accomplishing something for Himself. That' s life. That's life: that I may know Him, he says, and the power of His resurrection - pray for that power, and he says, the fellowship of HIs sufferings, I want that too.

Now, to be honest, I've wrestled with this expression quite often, "I want to know the fellowship of His sufferings." But after thinking about it, I still feel what I've essentially always felt about it. It's just means that there is a special fellowship with Christ, even in the midst of suffering. There's always fellowship with Christ, but in suffering for Him, He'll see to it that you'll get it too. In fact, He'll see that you'll don't just get it also, you'll get it especially in the midst of sufferings. Don't be afraid of them. Walk into them for Christ's sake, and you'll be lifted up in the midst of them.

From the Christians who suffered in the Roman catacombs, in the amphitheaters, right down to the Christians who have suffered in China recently, and elsewhere, across the Muslim world; right through the martyrs of the Reformation, and Scotland itself, you'll discover that if you suffer for Christ, He won't be far away from you. Paul says, "I want that," he says. "I don't choose suffering, I'm not gonna to walk into them," he says, "but I've discovered that in the midst of them, there's a sweetness in the presence of Christ."

. . .

Get Christ, friend. Get Christ for your soul, because nothing's to be compared with Him.

While most modern squibs used by professionals are insulated from moisture, older uninsulated squibs needed to be kept dry in order to ignite, thus a "damp squib" was literally one that failed to perform because it got wet. Often misheard as "damp squid", the phrase "damp squib" has since come into general use to mean anything that fails to meet expectations. The word "squib" has come to take on a similar meaning even when used alone, as a synonym for dud.

More about Kenneth Stewart:

More about Martyn Lloyd-Jones:

More about John Piper:

More about my credo for blogging and doctrine...

Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission.

Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Prodigal_Son_tending_the_Swine.jpg  / CC BY-SA 3.0 / {{PD-Art|PD-old-100}}

Information about squib and damp squib found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squib_(explosive)  / CC BY-SA 3.0

Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Box_of_squibs.jpg  / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Public Domain

Steve Saint is the son of Nate Saint, one of five missionaries who were martyred in Ecuador in 1956. You may or may not have heard that Steve Saint was seriously injured in a test flight last week. I thought his testimony was a fitting follow-up to my Father's Day post, To take whatever thy Father's pleasure | "May adversities uninterrupted be my lot" ~ Edward Griffin...

Luke 9:51  And it came to pass, when the time was come that he [Jesus] should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem...

And it came to pass, that, as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. 58  And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. 59  And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. 60  Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God. 61  And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house. 62  And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.

My posts tagged "Don't waste your life" including ...

• Resurrection Day: Don't Waste Your Life (Lecrae) | Whose Life is it anyhow?
• every brand snatched is a brand dispatched ~ Reflections on 9/11, Redemption & God's Mission
• Is your ambition holy? / What are you living for? (Louis Paul Lehman) | The Christian's Aim
• Are you robbing God? Where is God telling you to "Rise and go!" for the joy of others?
• adopting God's purpose for the nations is for your joy & His glory
• the infinite significance of the eternal Kingdom
• our yearnings & desires & God's Mission (Isaiah 26:9)
• Don't Waste Your Singleness | Single one ... be single-eyed
• 200 years ago ... Adoniram & Ann Judson ~ Don't waste YOUR marriage
• Father's Day ~ William Carey & his son | duty, risk & the obedient Son
• Then Abigail made haste (complacency & devotion)
• The Dangerous Tendency of Delay (Andrew Fuller)
• "Call to Me and I will answer you" (thoughts on holy ambition)
• Thoughts on necessity (Richard Baxter, myself)
• Are You Working on the Wall? (redemption, spiritual gifts, the glory of God, joy & holy ambition)

Scripture quotations are taken from King James Version of the Holy Bible.

Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_Plowing_-_Anton_Mauve_-_overall.jpg  / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Public Domain