Leon Morris—a Note on John 10 and Shepherding

A Shepherd’s Care for the Sheep

“It is plain enough that dangers could arise for the shepherd at any time. But the Palestinian shepherd did not reckon on dying; he thought he would survive. The job has its dangers, certainly. But men have never been deterred from jobs simply because there are dangers (as we can see from modern life as well as any other). Men always think that there are ways of dealing with the danger and never expect the dire results to follow for them---it is always other people who get caught! So with the shepherd in antiquity. Allowing for the fact that there would be problems as he looked after the sheep, he though he could cope; otherwise he would not be a shepherd. He knew that there was the possibility that he would be wounded or even die, but he knew the resources he had and was optimistic. No man willingly dies for animals like sheep.

But the one thing Jesus says he will do for people in his capacity as Shepherd is die for them. That for him was the central thing. He had come to bring salvation, and that meant death on behalf of his sheep.

A Palestinian shepherd might sometimes die in the exercise of his duty as a shepherd, but that was always a mishap, something that occurred as a result of some miscalculation. If he was thinking of the welfare of his sheep, the shepherd thought of what he could do by his life, not of what he could by his death. Jesus’ attitude was quite different. He put his death in the forefront. That is what the Good Shepherd would do.”

G. Mark Sumpter

To God Be the Glory

Encore!

Why are we biblical Christians? Yes, we use the Bible. But why? Because it is the book that God has given. And why is that important? It is to the Bible we go, where we learn about God. And why be concerned about God? Because God is at the center of all that God is about. And to see God at the center, God for His own glory…God for His own honor…God for His own name… God for His own purposes… God asking the questions, God answering the questions… God in the midst… not to the side… God in fore-thought, not an after-thought… this is to confess what the God of the Bible confesses: for Yours is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory Forever and Ever and Ever………. And we can yet ask again, why be God-centered about God? Because God is centered on God.

It is like a symphony hall…. The Father is the conductor…. The entire orchestra is the Son of God; and the audience who bears witness is the Holy Spirit. He, our God, enjoys the hall… for it’s His hall… it’s His score of the music, His conducting of the score, His playing of every note—each section perfect in pitch, time, with skill and peformance; He is the display, the witness, the response, the eyes that are fixed in wonderment and awe, the One who moves to the edge of the seat to turn His ear to melodic and pastoral textures, and then stands to cheer, “bravo, bravo!” This is the symphony hall called Trinity Hall… the marquee board reads, “For from Him and to Him and through Him are all things. To Him be the glory for ever and ever.”

G.Mark Sumpter

After the Lord’s Supper

The part about “to...fulfill their vows…”

Question 175 from the Westminster Larger Catechism


Q. 175. What is the duty of Christians, after they have received the sacrament of the Lord's supper?


A. The duty of Christians, after they have received the sacrament of the Lord's supper, is seriously to consider how they have behaved themselves therein, and with what success; if they find quickening and comfort, to bless God for it, beg the continuance of it, watch against relapses, fulfill their vows, and encourage themselves to a frequent attendance on that ordinance: but if they find no present benefit, more exactly to review their preparation to, and carriage at, the sacrament; in both which, if they can approve themselves to God and their own consciences, they are to wait for the fruit of it in due time: but, if they see they have failed in either, they are to be humbled, and to attend upon it afterwards with more care and diligence.


At Faith Presbyterian, we left worship renewed in the covenant mercies and covenant marching orders of the Lord last week, and there was the stress of fulfilling our vows to one another; after all, we had just heard from the Lord of His renewal with us, now it was time in our own renewal to walk in the vows. So, there was the exhortation: “we’ve just sat at the Table together; we say we enjoy the Table Fellowship, let us go forward and be the family we are in Christ Jesus.”


I like this question: What is the duty of Christians, after they have received the sacrament of the Lord's supper?


G. Mark Sumpter

Presbytery—the Work of the Church, moving “Like a Mighty Glacier!”

Jack Phelps, thanks for the pix!

Last week, the Presbytery of Anselm of the CREC met in the Matanuska Valley, Alaska. What a shot—huh? In high school and then later in ministry years up there, we used to climb around on this giant—as do so many Alaskans. Pastor Jack Phelps serves Covenant Bible of the CREC in the Great Land.

This is the Matanuska Glacier; her sprawl is able to be seen at about mile 90, 95 or so on the Glenn Highway.

G. Mark Sumpter

The Doctrine of Adoption, II

God's filial love--the apex of grace

“Adoption, as the term clearly implies, is an act of transfer from an alien family into the family of God himself. This is surely the apex of grace and privilege. We would not dare to conceive of such grace far less claim it apart from God’s own revelation and assurance. It staggers imagination because of its amazing condescension and love. The Spirit alone could be the seal of it in our hearts. ‘Eye hath not seen, no ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God’ (1 Cor. 2:9, 10). It is only as there is the conjunction of the witness of revelation and the inward witness of the Spirit in our hearts that we are able to scale this pinnacle of faith and say with the filial confidence and love, Abba Father.” John Murray, p. 134 in his Redemption Accomplished and Applied.

Murray elsewhere says that adoption reigns as the chief fruit of Christ’s redemptive work for His children; here he calls it the apex of grace. I've been accustomed to think of justification as the apex of grace.

The Spirit works with the Word to confirm, to seal the eternal inheritance; but more, the Spirit enables us to grasp the promises and reality regarding God's good pleasure and delight in us and for us.

The Word convinces, and the Spirit convinces. A double testimony to the truth.

G. Mark Sumpter

O Lord, I Repent From Wanting to Get People Saved

Ken Myers writing about C.S. Lewis on method of presenting Christ

“Lewis’s imaginative skills were thus focused less on the mere credibility or plausibility of belief (which are the concerns of most apologists) and more on the ramifications of belief: If the gospel is true, here is how the world would look. Even ‘belief’ had a more comprehensive scope in his thinking than most apologists recognize. The gospel wasn’t just a message about getting saved; it was a message of salvation in the context of a bigger story about the meaning of everything. It presupposed a cosmology and a rich anthropology. As in the Creed, Lewis’s defense of the faith began with a tacit but rich affirmation of the Maker of heaven and earth, who made all things in a particular way, the shape of which his creatures would do well to honor.” Ken Myers in the recent Touchstone Magazine, “Contours of Culture,” Sept/Oct 2010.

Lord, help me show people just how great You are; what Your world is like and what it will be like more and more since Jesus is subduing more and more for His own name, and Dear Father, You show them life in the Big Picture of things—for the glory of Jesus’ Lordship. Amen.

G. Mark Sumpter

Gather the People

In prayer

Joel 2:16 “Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and nursing babes…”

There’ll be corporate prayer—summoned by the elders of Faith Church on October 24, 10:00 AM, and we’ll be praying for the church in the Northwest and around the USA for faithfulness and truth in the family, church and state.

G. Mark Sumpter

Other Prayers

A Lutheran Prayer Book, 1960

O GOD, who givest daily bread without prayer, even to all the wicked, we pray thee that thou wouldst give us to acknowledge these thy benefits; and enable us to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving. Amen.

O MERCIFUL, PATIENT FATHER, who dost protect and preserve us, guide us by thy grace and banish the blindness of the world and our minds, that we may apply ourselves wholly to the keeping of thy commandments, and do our work without care, like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, because thou hast promised to care for us and bade us cast all our cares on thee, who livest and reignest for ever. Amen.

THE LORD preserve us from all evil. The Lord preserve our souls. The Lord preserve our going out and our coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore. Amen.

G. Mark Sumpter

The Whole Thing

Total Truth

I am grateful for the insights into the unity of the Bible given by Douglas Wilson. I first heard a CD from him maybe 3 years ago, where he began citing the English Bible where there’s a quote or citation of the Old Testament referenced in the New. He went one by one, and then turning to examine the New’s citation and use.

The New Testament is full of themes and direct quotations from the Old Testament. It contains a range of uses of the Old—from faint allusions to specific, definite quotations. Some 224 direct citations of the Old that are introduced by a formula, “it is written” or something like “where it says.” Beyond the 224 another 71 references cite Old Testament verses without the formula. That means one verse in every 22 ½ verses of the New mentions the Old. Some teachers have sought to make a case that there are over 4,100 passages “reminiscent of the Old Testament.” In a striking manner there’s a broad sweep about this—consider the spread of the Hebrew Bible quoted in the New: 94 times the Pentateuch is directly quoted or has direct allusion, 99 from the Prophets, and 85 from the Writings (Psalms, Job, etc.). Out of the 39 Books of the Hebrew Scriptures only 6 fail to get an explicit quotation or direct allusion (Judges-Ruth literature, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Ezra-Nehemiah literature, and Chronicles literature). But no doubt all the Books of the Old Testament are faintly alluded to in the New.

There are volumes and volumes published that provide Insight Mountain about this: 1) The integrity of the Bible’s inspiration, inerrancy and infallibility; 2) The case for the closed canon of God’s revelation; 3) The centrality of the message of Jesus Christ on the page or in the scene of every OT story, and much, much more. Only one matter that I have time for—have you considered that one reason we fail to prize and act on the integrated whole and unity of God’s world in education is because we fail to prize and act on the unity—the integrated whole and unity—of God’s Word? We divide Chemistry from Literature; we separate English Grammar from Geography; we isolate Political Science from Cinema Studies. We fragment. We set disciplines off from one another turning them into self-contained, self-regulating, self-governing entities. Idolatry abounds. The One—anyone one of the subjects of life—becomes an overachiever; and it swallows up the Many. When the church fails to prize the unity of the Bible and act on it, she loses ground in her responsibility to sit under God as Lord working to bring every discipline of learning under Christ (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). We fragment and break apart the Bible; and we fragment and break apart God’s world.

G. Mark Sumpter

The Doctrine of Adoption

What used to be a lonesome doctrine in the field of applied salvation

“If you want to know how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.”


J. I. Packer, Knowing God

I am working on prayers for our congregational worship on the theme of adoption; on the subject of our standing, privileges and responsibilities in the bosom and heart of our God.

Back in the 1970s and 80s, you might have found two books on the topic of adoption, sonship and so on. But today: Peterson, Ferguson, Hoekema, Needham and the various writings of Jack Miller and his son, Paul. We're loaded for bear in our day.

I want to pull out two or three quotes from John Murray too. He surprises us. Stay tuned.

Westminster Shorter Catechism
Q34: What is adoption?

A34: Adoption is an act of God's free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all the privileges of the Sons of God.

G. Mark Sumpter