Something's Missing in Baucham's Hot Book

Voddie Baucham Jr. provides a great guide for parents and families on courtship, but...

I have read most of the 2009 publication called What He Must Be...if he wants to marry my daughter...

On page 17, brother Baucham writes,

“I believe God has spoken rather decisively in his Word about what our daughters should look for [in a man for eligibility for marriage]. Moreover, I believe there are some non-negotiables that our daughters must be looking for. There are some things a man simply must be before he is qualified to assume the role of a Christian husband. For instance, he must be a Christian (2 Corinthians 6:14); he must be committed to biblical headship (Ephesians 5:23ff.); he must welcome children (Psalm 127:3-5); he must be a suitable priest (Joshua 24:15), prophet (Ephesians 6:4), protector (Nehemiah 4:13-14), and provider (1 Timothy 5:8; Titus 2:5). A man who does not possess---or at least show strong signs of---these and other basic characteristics does not meet the basic job description laid down for husbands in the Bible. Moreover, as a father, it is my responsibility to teach my daughter what these requirements are, encourage her not to settle for less, and walk with her through the process of evaluating potential suitors.”

I like the list. Essentially, Baucham's book elaborates on this list. As I say, I've read well into the 75% range of this book, I am not quite finished with it. Our family, too, has plowed in bits and pieces of this fine book.

But it fails at one super key point. The man that Baucham wants for his daughter manifestly needs---based squarely on the Bible---to be a submissive man.

I am ready to be corrected by his readers. Does Voddie explicate the vital importance of a man to be under authority, to be under elders? I cannot find anywhere in the book where the man needs to be a professing believer under the care of local elders.

Go out and buy five copies of the book. Give them away. It's an excellent work, but it's bad pizza on the topic of men being under authority. The book needs revision, re-working on the subject matter of church membership.

You show me a man who's growing in his ability to follow in the steps of godly elders, with attitudes and actions showing that he's ready to be corrected with their meek and faithful counsel--and then actually heed it, and I will show you a man who's a potential candidate for my daughter.

The first vow a man needs to make before God and witnesses is the vow to be under the care, counsel and discipline of an eldership. That's numero uno.

When he shows that he can follow, then he's growing as a man ready to lead.

G. Mark Sumpter

God's New Society

Growing in Christ's Church Opening Paragraphs

When the revision of the high school Sunday School material published by Great Commission Publications was done back in 1988-89, I assisted the project with the following:

In his book, God's New Society, John Stott points out that all too often “we emphasize that Christ died for us 'to redeem us from all iniquity’ rather that 'to purify for himself a people of his own’ (Titus 2:14). We think of ourselves more as 'Christians' than as 'churchmen,' and our message is more good news of a new life than of a new society” (p. 9). Does that sound like you and your senior highs? Read on. The family of God, the Body of Christ, the fellowship of the Spirit--descriptions of the church tell us something about the believers' relationship to God and to each other. As soon individual Christians are joined with Christ, they are united with fellow Christians. Believers cannot be Lone Rangers even if they want to be. For they are “fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household.”

Stott provides such a great corrective to the individualistic way of faith and life that characterizes my walk with Christ. I need to hear over and over again the cosmic work of Jesus Christ, His work of an every-generation-people.

How I wish that quote from Stott would be branded into my evangelical hide!

O God, save me from the self-centeredness of my individualistic bent when I read and take in Your Word. Your work is for Your glory, not mine.

G. Mark Sumpter

A Must Read in 2010

I have greatly profited from Bryan Chapell's book the past 6-7 years

“The early church robed adult believers in white after their baptisms. The garments did not indicate believers would never again sin. They signified the holiness of God provides despite our impurities. The robes covered an imperfect person. The implications remain vital for us today. We do not have to despair of ever attaining the perfection that would warrant God's acceptance. By recognizing the richness of his provision, we have the resources necessary to move forward in his service. We need never say, I can't do anything right. I always mess up. I have tried time and time again to live right and I always fail. If I try anything I will only look bad and get God mad, so why try? Some Christians are so afraid of stepping out of line that they never get in step with God. Fear of the loss of what little holiness they think they may have managed to scratch out in life has led to paralysis.”

Pick up the book, Holiness By Grace, and sit with Chapell at his table and dig in. This is from p. 202.

G. Mark Sumpter

Young Timothy Serving In Ephesus

God-reliance, not self-reliance, yet full-throttle initiative

In preparing 1 Timothy 4-5 this week, I am being fed by Expositor Donald Guthrie:

On Timothy's youthfulness... 1 Tim. 4:12...

“Although a young man, he was to excel in those very qualities in which youth is wont to be deficient--gravity, prudence, consideration for others, trustworthiness, mastery over the passions (Guthrie quoting E.F. Scott of Moffat's Commentary). In this way it would become evident to believers that in Christianity authority is contingent upon character and not age.”

Comment: The thing that always captures my heart about younger men serving in the church is there faithful, full-of-faith, less calculated initiative. Amen. There's a place for less calculation; in our scientific age, we want every dot over the I, and every T crossed. Somehow, older mentors need to encourage the full-throttle initiative, all the while urging young men to be God-reliant, teachable and staying within the touch of the wisdom of a mentor's years of service. Possible?

On the charge to Timothy to watch his doctrine and his life, 1 Tim. 4:16...

“Timothy is to ensure that what most impresses other people is his true Christian development, and not some lesser thing such as brilliance of exposition or attactiveness of personality... Moral and spiritual rectitude is an indispensable preliminary to doctrinal orthodoxy.”

Comment: One's life is the sermon ALWAYS being heard. Example, virtue, modeling and living out God's standard pack the punch and make impact with force for the attestation, confirmation and heart-conviction of truth. We always remember lives well lived in Christ Jesus.

The above quotes from Donald Guthrie in his Tyndale Commentary, The Pastoral Epistles, pp. 97, 99.

G. Mark Sumpter

From Boys to Men

The Day that Tretiak, the World's Star (Soviet) Goalie Sat Down

Here is Jim Craig standing in victory.

His counterpart the veritable iron curtain of a goaltender, Tretiak of the Russians, back on this date, sat down.

Near the very end of the first period of the Miracle Game at the Olympics between USA and the Russians, our player, Christian, blasted a long shot at Tretiak, and he blocked it rather easily and yet, he coughed up a rebound.

That's when American Mark Johnson spanked it in. There was controversy about the goal because it happened right near the time of the buzzer. After the officials conferred, the goal was confirmed a bona fide goal, and it was also ruled that there was one tick of the clock left for the end the first period.

The Soviets, who had skated off the ice for the intermission, thinking the period was over, were called back out for a faceoff. The one tick expired. But noticably absent was Vladislav Tretiak. He had been benched; the world's best goalie had been replaced by the Soviet's number two man. Wow.

Today marked the 30th anniversary of the U.S. Olympic Men's Ice Hockey Team's Miracle on Ice. The young Americans had upset the Soviet Union! Days later, TEAM USA won the gold medal at the 1980 Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, NY!!

I stopped over at the rink in Northeast Portland shortly thereafter and was beaming. It was a win that was way, way over the top.

My closest reach in trying to touch the 1980 Olympians was skating one scrimmage against Eric Stobel in 1976. Eric played forward for the Miracle Team. He's wearing number 19 in this picture above.

G. Mark Sumpter

Quote for Lent

Loved in Jesus Christ, United in Our Head and Savior!

“What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it—the fact that HE KNOWS ME. I am graven on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His mind. All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. I know Him because He first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, One who loves me; and there is no moment when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore when His care falters. This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort—the sort of comfort that energizes, be it said, not enervates [i.e. does not lose force]—in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good.

There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion Him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench His determination to bless me.

There is, certainly, great cause for humility in the thought that He sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow humans do not see (and I am glad!), and that He sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself (which, in all conscience, is enough). There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, He wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose. We cannot work these thoughts out here, but merely to mention them is enough to show how much it means to know not merely that we know God, but that He knows us.”

From J. I. Packer’s Knowing God, p. 37 IVP

40 days before Easter, Amen! Lent is a forty-day season before the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the tomb. It begins today on Ash Wednesday, and we reflect on the days of the wilderness-temptation scene of our Lord’s life and ministry. The Sundays are not counted in the forty day period, because each Sunday memorializes the historical reality of His Resurrection. Lent ends on April 3, 2010, the day before Easter.

G. Mark Sumpter

Fatal Attraction

Why We Need Faithful Story-Telling, Story-Thinking

OK. I think a head-gasket just blew. Listen to this quote from the great book, Science and Grace—God’s Reign in the Natural Sciences from Crossway Books.

The authors are talking about the place of the study of science within the story of God’s Hand in day to day providence and His Hand of special revelation: that is, His story of Jesus Christ—born, lived, died and raised. Here we go, Science and Grace, pp. 168-170:

“Our Modernist-shaped instincts lead us to assume that science is and should be exclusively about the ‘seen,’ and the material ‘stuff’ of the universe. But the story is being played out—is being gestated and demonstrated—in both the seen and the unseen, and if science is a part of that story, it must be pursued with both the seen and unseen in view….[This] story metaphor can also help us resist the dominance of reductionism—the idea that we are only making progress in understanding the universe when we break it down into smaller and smaller components isolated from the whole.

Story-thinking forces the relationship nature of created being and rich conception of its contingency to the forefront of the discussion…[this] contingency of the universe is based on a moment-by-moment dependency in past, present and future tense. This dependency is not just interesting background information, but is held to be an integral element of what the universe really is. Created being has its existence and meaning only in relation to its Author and Sustainer and the story He intends to tell in and through it. This Author doesn’t stand outside the story but actually enters into it in the incarnation of the Son and by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Individual characters and settings have real existence and significance in themselves, but they cannot be isolated from the story itself without loss of meaning and significance and even a diminishment of their reality.

In the providence of God, the characters would not be the same without the story, and the story would not be the same without the specific characters. In view of this it makes no sense to contend that if we want to really get to know a character in the story, some feature of nature, we must first try to isolate the character entirely from the story. It makes no sense to contend that a true understanding of the story is advanced by focusing on isolated parts without at some point considering each part in context of the whole or that we want to understand the story better, we will consciously try not to pay attention to the Author’s ‘notes’ and His commentary concerning the structure of the story and His purposes in telling it.”

I am humbled by the goodness and skill of these two authors, Mr. Morris and Mr. Petcher. Over the years, I have thought that by getting down to greater and greater specificity that I am getting deeper and deeper into truth. I am one who gravitates to the study of bits and pieces; for example, in the study of God’s Word, I customarily think that in isolating those bits and pieces, I am somehow digging into deep stuff. I have worked from a wrong assumption: that the small bits contain the really, really important stuff, and I have missed the power of context, the relationality of truths—the place of story. I have missed God’s way of the comprehensive cosmic context. I have missed the meaning of the parts by ripping them out of the context of the beauty and power of the whole!

With this in mind, it is the doctrine of the Trinity to the rescue once again! There is only one true God. This one true God exists as three distinct persons. Each person is fully divine. The Father works of himself, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. The One and the Many: Particularity and Wholeness.

G. Mark Sumpter

Light Shining in the Darkness, 1 Samuel 24

Like Two Heavy Weights in the Ring, Saul and David, in the Cave at En Gedi

The Gospel of John tells us: the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it. See John 1:5.

David has the opportunity to pounce on Saul, to snuff out the Lord's anointed one in the dark, dark cave at En Gedi. It's a cave, Saul is cornered. It's a cave, Saul is alone. It's a cave, Saul has dropped his pants to take care of business. It's a cave, a picture perfect place for his burial.

Has God's providence set the table or what?!! Jump on it, David!

David's own men, as well, chime in; they are in the cave with him saying, This is the Day! (see 1 Samuel 24:4) One writer suggests they were singing like Sunday school kids, This is the day, This is the day that the Lord has made...

But the darkness does not overtake the light; the light conquers all!

David spares the life of Saul. Rather than acting with man-originated answers to take care of his troubles, to take vengeance, he seeks God's way for the coming of the kingdom.

Here is yet one more story of David learning patience. Ten years of learning patience! David entrusted himself to Him who judges justly (1 Peter 2:23).

G. Mark Sumpter

Jonathan Edwards With Adolescence on His Hands Too, Part II

A Form of Adolescence found in Early 1700s New England, way before Stanley Hall’s 1905 “Adolescence”

Also from a bit earlier in the book….

“Edwards’ most lengthy exposition in his catalogue of vices had to do, predictably, with the indulgences of the young. The fault lay first with all parents. Family government and education, the keystone of the old Puritan social system, had fallen badly in decline. Parents, he observed, were reacting against what they felt were too strict upbringings.

The most notorious result was the ‘amazing’ impurities tolerated among the young in recent years. Not only was lasciviousness encouraged by nightwalking and similar frivolities, but New England parents allowed practices of ‘bundling’ in which parents allowed young people to spend the night in bed together partly clothed…

...Bundling, which was supposed to be a way of getting acquainted without sexual intercourse, did not always work as advertised. Pregnancies before marriage were rising dramatically in New England. Even in well-churched Northampton, where premarital pregnancies were rarer than in some parts of the region, the figure had recently risen to one in ten first children born within eight months of marriage. Premarital sex was commonplace. Even when it resulted in pregnancy, so long as the couple married, there was no longer much stigma involved.” pp. 130-131

From, Jonathan Edwards—A Life by George Marsden, Yale University Press, 2003

G. Mark Sumpter

Jonathan Edwards With Adolescence on His Hands Too, Part I

A Form of Adolescence found in Early 1700s New England, way before Stanley Hall’s 1905 “Adolescence”

“The social conditions for young people in western New England had become trying. Families were large, five to nine children on average. During the seventeenth century the town of Northampton had distributed open land to sons as they came of age. That practice, plus scattering tracts and maintaining meadows for common cultivation, had provided a strong economic base for the communalism integral to the Puritan cultural ideal. But after 1705, there was no more land available in the township except some distributed in 1730 to encourage a new settlement at Southampton, about eight miles away…

…With no new land available, young people were living with their parents. While that did not necessarily cause economic deprivation—farms might prosper from having extra family laborers—it did change social patterns. Young people were postponing marriage about three years longer than had their parents, so there the average age of marriage was about twenty-eight or twenty-nine for men and twenty-five for women.

Young people from their mid-teens until their late twenties were likely to be in this in-between situation. They lived in villages with communal structures, but they were not as likely to be participating responsibly in the community as their grandparents had at the same age…

…As Edwards’ sermons against frolicking made clear, unmarried sons and daughters were under the authority of their parents, but—not surprisingly—parental rule was hardly working as he would have liked. For many young people, the official expectation that they postpone all sexual activity until marriage and the disparity between that standard and their actual sexual practices helped to create a sense of guilt…” pp. 158-159

From, Jonathan Edwards—A Life by George Marsden, Yale University Press, 2003

G. Mark Sumpter

Princely Nurture of Children

From the Dutch Hall of Fame--the Berkhof, De Jong, et al Crowd

“We assume that our covenant children have been adopted into the family of the King of Kings--as such they must be given a princely, royal education.”

From Y. P. De Jong and his, God's Covenant with Man

A princely, royal education?

My guess, Y.P. DeJong, did not intend to accent princely and royal as specific points of methodology for our educational nurture of children. But the royal motif fits suitably.

Just as Israel had her centerpiece of worship regulating all of life, and just as that worship was founded on the regiment and nurture of liturgics---I am speaking of the practice of the royal-priestly life and duties of Aaron and his sons---so all of life today moves and has its being in the shadow of priestly nurture, training and modeling.

Tabernacle privilege and parenting are partners. In what way?

First, Aaron and the sons of the Levitical trade, with worship and life, were word and deed oriented. As to the word, Aaron was the assistant of Moses, to be his mouthpiece, with his royal word orientation; and as to deed, Aaron and his sons handled (or mishandled) the censor, oil and other tabernacle, priestly practices. In miniature, the royal-priestly model of tabernacle life and work of the Old Testament was all-of-life encompassing. Words and deeds sandwiched with worship make for a life lived to the glory of God. Worship and work, worship and family, worship and civil matters, and on and on. Father Aaron and his sons provided this method of nurture.

Second, all of the tribes of Jacob camped around the perimeter of the tabernacle, and Numbers 2 tells us: they faced the worship of God. Things were centered on the Lord's presence and His morning-afternoon-evening services of worship. Therefore, every Israelite, with his and her eyes, ears and hands, took cues from Aaron and his sons. It reinforced Deuteronomy 6: nurture and education was an every day, all day devotion, and a matter for all of life. Whether rising up, lying down, walking along the way or busy at the household chores, children were enveloped for instruction and tutelage. Aaron showed the way.

De Jong may have meant simply loftiness and excellence by his comment about princely and royal education for covenant children, but they mark out a robust charter for our worship-based, promise-grounded and all-of-life nurture for our homes. Being children of the King of Kings necessitates training based on tabernacle life. Aaron homeschooled his sons, such royal and priestly training provides the platform for our high calling for today. It's more of the God's Kids, God's Way thing.

HT: the quote above from the Bergeron family, a Classical Conversations family.

G. Mark Sumpter

Kamloops Hockey, One More Time

C.J. Stretch, a Hot-Shot Forward for the Kamloops Blazers, Reflects Back

Go here to read the 20-year old's take on the road trip his club just completed. His comments include words about the game on February 3, when several of us from Grants Pass cheered him on.

Part of his comments give a shout about his SPECIAL fans!

Fun stuff!

G. Mark Sumpter