John 3:30

He Must Increase, I Must Decrease

Creation

Romans 5:12

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Romans 5:12 KJV: Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, so that death passed upon all men for that all have sinned.

What a great verse to hold in your heart! What does Paul mean by “one man sin entered into the world?” This is a reference to Adam’s sin in Genesis 3:6-7. Adam’s sin in Genesis 3 provides the foundation for the reason we live in a sin cursed world and need a redeemer in a first place. Dear Christian, do not throw this away! In the spirit of “modernity,” many have found it necessary to avoid drawing on and trusting the supernatural, particularly creation. Some will say, “It doesn’t matter what I believe about creation, if I have Jesus, that’s all that matters.” God forbid. It does matter. Your view of creation is a reflection of, or rather a manifestation of, your view of scripture itself. And the same author who said “In the beginning,” (Gen 1:1, John 1:1) also said “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6). That author is the Holy Spirit; and His authority is absolute and trustworthy. If you don’t believe Genesis 1-3, tell me, at what point do you start believing?

Here in Romans, Paul confirms that in Adam we all sinned. We all have had a death sentence passed up on us. We all are sinners, and we’ve all sinned. (Rom 3:23) None can stand righteous before God. (Rom 3:10-12) This is important to understand! Hold this verse in your heart to remind you that scripture is sufficient: from beginning to end. Your cleverness is unnecessary; in fact, it will destroy the message. No human author would have conceived of a curse like this, nor redemption in Christ alone, by His righteousness alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, for His glory alone. Read Romans 5:6-19 during your devotion …and see the hope that we can offer others, hope that holds no meaning except that it is declared by the Word…the Word to which we must hold fast!

Isaiah 64:6

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Isaiah 64:6

But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. And we are all do fade as a leaf and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

Wow, this verse it tough to remember.  I think it is because I have heard so many translations of it…and for a long time I thought it ended at the word “rags!”

Let’s take a look at it and see if that helps us memorize it!  Many evangelists will tell you that this verse should be a memory verse for evangelizing.  The first half basically calls us unclean, and compares our righteousness to filthy rags.  What this is saying is that in God’s eyes, even the things we do which seem to be “right” (or quite possibly do, in a literal sense meet the requirements of the law) are nothing more than a filthy rag to him.  Why is this?  Because our hearts are deceitful and wicked, (Jer 17:9).  Even the things we do that seem “right” are not done out of a pure heart and a love for God.  Our righteousness, when it comes from ourselves is abominable to Him.  Any self-sufficiency we have is downright insulting to the One who holds all things together and provides all.  To believe that we have anything inherent in ourselves to impress God with is unreasonable and, in fact, punishable by death…for it is sin.

Think of the folly of this line of thinking: Do you ever think God looks down at a large skyscraper or a strong weightlifter, or billions of dollars in a bank account and thinks, “Wow, that is impressive!”  Certainly not!  It’s absurd to believe that the Creator of all would be impressed with anything at all that creatures do!  The God that accepts human offerings of sacrifice or religion is an idol, created by the minds of men who deny truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18).  Reason with me, please!  If there is a god, he could not be coerced or moved by human will, else he would not be God!  And there is a God – and He is not compeled by men!  He wills and does as he pleases!  (Eph 1:4-5)

How about the second half, maybe that tempers the previous haunting thought a bit…we all do fade as a leaf?  What?  This sounds like we are considered weak, and dying vessels.  Our iniquities (sin, lawlessness) take us away like the wind takes away a leaf.  Think about this, leaves don’t even FIGHT against the wind.  I don’t think I am taking the analogy too far by saying we are no different when it comes to SIN before coming to a relationship with God through Christ.  How powerless we are!  Keep in mind who controls the wind and has power over weather! (Luke 8:24).  Even in Job 1:12,19, you can see that it is the Lord who grants that power to Satan if He sees fit to bring Him glory that way.

What a pride-crushing concept!  How can a man ever please God then?  By being brought In Christ, by the Holy Spirit.  When His righteousness is what shines through us (Mt 5:16, 2 Cor 4:6-7) we cannot help but please Him, because He is perfect, and He is always pleased with Christ, and only with Christ.

Genesis 1:31

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Genesis 1:31

And God saw every thing that He had made and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

What a simple verse, truly! But as always, God’s text is packed with meaning, and in this case, utterly under attack for centuries now. Sadly, it is professing Christians who have likely done the most damage with attempts to put meaning here that is not inherent in the text. Notice I did not call those attempts “well-intentioned,” as a truly well-intentioned attempt at interpreting the Bible will start with a biblical worldview and a belief that scripture is the ultimate authority.

This verse follows a pattern of verses in Genesis 1. Once on the first day, twice on the third day, and once on both the fourth and fifth days, God looked upon His creation and calls it (or some aspect of it) “good.” (Gen 1:4,10,12,18,21) During the sixth day, God refers to His creation again as “good,” before He made man (Gen 1:25). But when God declares creation very good, He declares it “complete.” The word used for very has a slightly different connotation than we are used to in English where it is comparative. It is more a description of completeness, or done-ness, to be understood as superlative, exhibiting without reservation the idea of “wholly” or “exceedingly” good, in this case. It is now that we apply proper hermeneutics to infer that sin could not have existed at this point in creation. For creation to be wholly good, by God’s standard of Goodness, sin could not have tainted creation. Since death is the result of sin, we also can know with certainty that no death had occurred, based on properly and reasonably interpreting the Bible.

Secondly, the other pattern that was followed for this chapter was the “evening and the morning were the nth day” phrase. One of the favorite arguments of people who want to reconcile (or compromise) the Bible with evolution and an old age for the Earth is that the Hebrew word Yom, used for day, can also mean a long age. But when have you ever referred to an evening and a morning as anything but a 24 hour day? When have you ever referred to 6 consecutive periods of an evening and a morning as anything but 6 days? You wouldn’t, because it defies reason. God didn’t do this either. God described what occurred, and the order in which it occurred. One reason that He chose to do it this way, I believe, is to intentionally contradict the “wisdom” of man. Evolution and Big Bang theories say the sun came before the earth; dinosaurs (land animals) before birds; and death before man ever existed. Genesis 1:1-31 deliberately and directly contradicts these ideas. Ex 20:11 aids to confirm this. 2 Peter 3:3-7 even prophesies about today’s “scoffers” and believers in uniformitarianism!

Dear reader, God created the world in six consecutive 24 hour days, and then rested. Since the first sin, man had no true rest! God painted a beautiful picture on that seventh day of the rest we have available to us in Christ. If you will give up the strivings of your own hearts, the works of your own hands and lay it all at the cross and follow Him, you can enter that rest spoken of in Hebrews 4:10-11. All those who thirst, come…John 7:37-39.

Psalm 19:1

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Psalm 19:1

The heavens declare the glory of God. The firmament sheweth His handiwork.

Like so much of scripture, what a simple, yet profound thought! Whereas we humans, myself included, find brevity so elusive, God can proclaim His glory in two short sentences and refute millions of people’s false beliefs in 12 simple English words.

God’s glory is declared by the heavens and the firmament (sky or expanse). Is this personification or do they really talk? Either way, as we dig deeper into outer space and view the complexity of God’s creation, the vastness of the expanse and the beauty beheld, we are continuously convicted of the knowledge of our Creator and His eternal divinity. (Romans 1:19-20) The mere fact that the heavens cannot contain Him, (1 Kings 8:27), while they are far beyond our comprehension is enough to stifle our pride at least momentarily. The sky exhibits to us a clear picture of design, beauty, power and greatness. They are, indeed, the works of His hands. (Ps 104:2, 5).

Possibly more awe-inspiring is my understanding that the complexity contained in our bodies is mathematically even greater than what the heavens declare. There are over 3 billion base pairs in EACH STRAND of DNA in your cells. Look at the human brain’s synaptic connections. There are more potential connections between the billion or so neurons in the human brain than there are atoms in the universe. God’s design is seen everywhere, and His Glory is not hidden but, rather, suppressed (Romans 1:18). This verse is a great foundation for your trust in the scriptural account of creation, so that you can be ready to proclaim God’s Glory as well as the heavens, using His handiwork as a visual aid, and transitioning form there to man’s accountability as a creature and then to the Savior; maybe even for someone you love who is dead in their trespasses, maybe even today!

Are Christians lucky?

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How many times have you heard the phrase, “Good luck!”  Several times this week alone, maybe.  I hear people say they are lucky almost daily.  I’ll admit it’s a minor issue, but when I hear Christians say this word, as if it has some real meaning, I get quite disappointed.  Consider my exhortation.

The definition of luck according to www.m-w.com

1 a: a force that brings good fortune or adversity b: the events or circumstances that operate for or against an individual

I urge you to consider what the Bible has to say about the force that brings good fortune or adversity:

{Emphasis my own}

(1 Timothy 6:13-15) 13 I charge you in the presence of God…14 to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ,15 which he will display at the proper time–he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords,

(Acts 4:24)  And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them,

And for an OT reference: (Proverbs 21:1) The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will.

Simply put, I will make the claim that GOD ALONE is the supreme power of the universe.  There is no concept of “luck” as we use it today.  Luck is the idea that there is an external force that determines the outcomes of events.  For example, a roll of a pair of dice or whether you get a job or not.  I defy this and say that God is sovereign over every event.  I’ll go so far as to say luck is the antithesis of a sovereign God; that a rational person cannot actually claim faith in the One True God of the universe and believe in luck.

So does God determine luck?  In a sense, from a human perspective this would be our conclusion.  God does determine or allow all events, and so from a human idea, he is the ultimate force that actually does determine good fortune.  He IS what we consider luck.  But the problem is that luck is not real.  God is real.  Luck is superstition and belief in it is ultimately idolatry because it ascribes to something other than God the power which is reserved only for God.  Luck is a human explanation for things that we see in the world, an explanation born out of a desire to suppress the truth we know in our hearts as the existence of God.  Romans 1:18-19 reminds us that human beings despise the accountability we have to this creation.  Read my post on the gospel of the glory of Jesus Christ if you do not understand this point.

So what’s my point? Dear Christian reader, I implore you with all humility and grace to remove this word from your vocabulary.  Drop the excuse that it is just a “phrase” you use, even if you in all honesty mean nothing by it.  Don’t you want to be different from the rest of the world?  Do you want to cause an immature brother or sister to stumble?  What if a new Christian was looking up to you for guidance…what kind of example would that set for where you put your faith?  Hold yourself to a higher standard. Speak always as if you really believe that God is the ONLY SOVEREIGN, and that your faith is in Him alone.  Be different.  Be peculiar.  Be God honoring, Christ centered, and loving enough toward others to speak like someone who has been set aside for a purpose, to honor and glorify God alone.

Presuppose no apology for presuppositional apologetics.

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I am guessing that the problem with a clever title is that the content will never quite match. And then there’s the problem of making the assumption that my title is clever, and thus opening the door for people to mock me. Nevertheless, I press forward.

As the title depicts, I do not intend to tell you I’m sorry for practicing what is commonly called presuppositional apologetics. I am going to instead try to provide a working definition of this term, an explanation of its use and prove as well that all men actually employ a form of it. This has been done by several others better than I, but in my effort to write prolifically, I’ve found that most topics have already been written about! Thus, I’m destined to repeat subject matter.

First, I’ll narrowly define presuppositional apologetics as “using the Bible to defend the Bible.” In other words, a presuppositional apologist “presupposes” the veracity of the Bible, the truthfulness of the Bible, the inerrancy of the Bible when giving a defense of the doctrines contained therein. The contrary is people who attempt to do what they would describe as “argue from reason” or “special pleading.” From a biblical apologetics standpoint, this could be seen as the contrast between the following two scenarios.

Some Christian apologists will attempt to persuade you to believe there is a God by pointing to His creation, pointing to evidence that He exists like irreducible complexity in cells, etc. The idea being that if they can show you that God can be inferred, that God is also, in fact, implied, and you will believe. They may make statements like, “I can prove creation is true without using the Bible.” Or, “Look at the evidence for Jesus’s death and resurrection.” Often items like testimonies will be used as “proofs” of God, independent of scripture. This paragraph is a gross generalization, and should be treated as such.

A presuppositional Christian apologist will argue from scripture that God created everything. Everything that they attempt to assert, or prove, will be based on the fact that it is declared or implied by the Bible. Even the fact that the Bible is true, is only argued to be true from the fact that the Bible declares itself to be true. It is the Word of God because God says its His Word. This is clearly a circular argument…but an OK one, since the Bible is the ULTIMATE AUTHORITY in the Christian presuppositional worldview, there can be nothing outside the Bible (and thus, less ultimate) which could “vouch” for it. Imagine the president walking into your mayor’s office and asking the secretary to “vouch” for him. Of course not! He is the president, he speaks for himself, and no lower authority will say otherwise.

We need to digress momentarily to higher and ultimate authorities. We all appeal to external authorities. How do we know our name? Our parents, or our birth certificate. This is a common practice. Unfortunately, when arguing for the Bible, people will often rely on false authorities. People will appeal to something they call “reason”, or “intuition”, not realizing that they have appealed to a standard that is not consistent! How can my reasoning be different from yours if it is a standard? It cannot. That’s why two people can have logical arguments which are sound and valid, but what we notice is that their assumptions are different. Our appeal to the Bible as the ultimate authority is a starting assumption, or presupposition. YOUR LACK OF APPEAL to the Bible as the ultimate authority is a starting assumption as well. That’s why I confidently wrote earlier in the article that EVERY MAN actually, in practice, is “presuppositional.” It is irrational to say you assume nothing, because in so saying you are assuming things are not absolute which in fact are. If there is such a things as absolute truth, then to start any argument to determine if absolute truth exists by not assuming such a thing as absolute truth is inane. If you found absolute truth, you’d contradict your assumption which would be absurd, making it impossible for absolute truth to be real. If you didn’t find absolute truth, you’d simply have validated what you assumed to be the case from the start…and it doesn’t take a genius to affirm what he already believes, anyone can do that.

So the fact of the matter is this, when you are sharing your faith with someone, you can either choose to stand on God’s Word as Truth, and unleash it so it can speak for itself, or you can attempt to persuade someone on your own cleverness. Interesting enough, to use logic at all, you must steal biblical principles. What you need to understand is that to be consistent with what you say you believe, you cannot attempt to prove the Bible from outside the Bible. If the Bible is true, then IT MUST BE THE ULTIMATE AUTHORITY. If there was an authority above the Bible then why doesn’t the Bible appeal to it? The Bible appeals only to itself as its authority, and rightfully so. So it is either a book of fables or the Word of God. As a nonbeliever, I can understand your hesitation to ascribing “God breathed” to the Bible, but as a believer? You MUST treat the Bible as God breathed…for you to attempt anything else is idolatry. You are putting yourself and your cleverness or whatever technique you think you’ve learned or perfected above the Word of God. That’s one reason (of many) I like the Way of the Master and Answers in Genesis. They rely on the Bible and are not ashamed.

Even the death, burial, resurrection and substitutionary atonement of Christ for the sake of sinful men like me is only understood in light of its depiction in scripture.  No external argument will persuade men of their sin.  For without the law of God, who knows what sin is?  Romans 7:7

In conclusion, I’ll take a page from AIG here and tell you that we are all viewing the world through some “glasses.” We all bring assumptions, the question is whether or not be simply reaffirm our assumptions, or even know what they are, or do we see the contradiction in statements like “There is no absolute truth”, “It’s wrong to judge”, and “You cannot push your beliefs on other people.” Rational thinking exposes the fallacy in the preceding statements. A biblical worldview is the ONLY WORLDVIEW that makes sense of the world, and that makes sense, because if the Bible is true, it must be required to understand the world. Christians should unapologetically and unabashedly proclaim the truth of scripture with as little interpretation of their own added, in fact! When arguing evolution and creation, we ought not argue about evidence…but rather how we view the evidence.

One final note to a nonbeliever. Axiomatically, if you are truly investigating Christianity with honesty and integrity, please do what I did. Read the gospels in the New Testament with “what if these are really true” glasses on. Let yourself imagine that the Bible really is the Word of God, and then decide what it must mean to you. If you assume it is not true, then there is nothing in it that can compel you otherwise. May God bless you!

I really liked the wording on Wikipedia for this entry, I share it below for your reference:
a presupposition is a belief that takes precedence over another and therefore serves as a criterion for another. An ultimate presupposition is a belief over which no other takes precedence. For a Christian, the content of Scripture must serve as his ultimate presupposition…. This doctrine is merely the outworking of the lordship of God in the area of human thought. It merely applies the doctrine of scriptural infallibility to the realm of knowing.