Book Reviews - ESV Study Bible

No, it's not God's words I'm reviewing here (he he...) it's man's. Amy and I received our new copy of the English Standard Version (ESV) Study Bible hot off the presses, and I have never been more excited about a single Bible study tool before! This thing is incredible.

First off, the translation. The ESV is a modern (2001) translation done by some of the best evangelical scholars on the planet today. Those who attend Harvest know that I preach from the ESV every Sunday, and there's good reason. For years pastors seemed forced to choose between the New International Version (NIV) and New American Standard (NAS) translations. There are many others of course, but these two are tops in popularity amongst evangelical pastors. Both are good translations in their own right, but they're very different.

• The NIV is a thought-for-thought translation, making it much easier to read than the NAS but not as good a study tool since it's English words don't always align with the underlying Greek & Hebrew.
  
• The NAS has opposite strengths: as an almost word-for-word translation it is a more technically accurate reflection of the original languages making it a better study tool (and thus my first choice for years) but that left it's English pretty stilted and wooden.

The ESV beautifully bridges the gap between these two translations, accurately reflecting the sense and nuance of the original languages (which suits it perfectly for serious study) while preserving a fluency and readability that makes it ideal for casual reading too. When combined with some of the partner resources, like ESV reverse-interlinear versions for both Greek and Hebrew, I was hooked, and I've been preaching from the ESV ever since.

Then along came the ESV Study Bible, and I'm beyond hooked! This version contains all the helpful tools any good study Bible has like explanatory notes, charts, and diagrams. But they're all fully updated with the latest scholarly and archaeological data, and many are rendered in beautiful color. The cross referencing and Concordance features are excellent from the few I've checked so far. The introductory material before each Testament, each section of books, and each book are exemplary. Click here for a study notes sample: the introduction to Ephesians with very cool charts and color diagrams (warning: 4.5MB link!) But there's still more.

What really caught my attention with this particular study Bible is several collections of articles it contains on a variety of core Christian items. There's a whole series of brief articles on Christian theology and ethics, articles on how to read and interpret the Bible, how the Bible came to be and the reliability of the Bible, information on the original Biblical languages (for non-scholars), articles summarizing other major world religions and pseudo-Christian cults, and even an effective plan to read the Bible in a year (whew!). And the capstone of all this excellent material, which sings most strongly to my heart, is a 3 1/2 page Overview of the Bible which traces God's redemptive plan throughout the pages of Scripture. If every Christian reads and understands that article alone the flow of the entire Bible will come alive! Read the rest of them and you'll have an outstanding grasp of Christian faith, thought, and practice. Click here for a sample article.

The final icing on the cake is that buying a hard copy gets you access to the online version, where all the same articles, maps, diagrams, and study tools are at the click of a mouse, all hyper-linked for easy access (try turning back to Deuteronomy from Philippians... oh wait, you don't need to. Just click!)

All from a single study Bible. I've never seen anything quite as thorough and high quality as this, and I can't recommend it strongly enough.

So go get one.

Now!

By the way, I should mention that I have no affiliation with the publisher and receive no benefit from the sale of this study Bible. Other than the benefit of believing God's people are getting their hands on one of the single best resources available for spiritual growth.

So, did YOU know what Solomon's Temple looked like?

Financial Crisis and Christian Living

Last Sunday at Harvest we spent some time praying together as a church regarding how to respond in these financially uncertain times. Our prayer and scripture reading consisted of the following 3 items:

1. Repudiate a faithless partner
Money consistently over-promises, and under-delivers

1 Timothy 6:17
As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.

Matthew 6:31-33
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Prayer: Father, we declare this morning that you were right when you warned us that money is a faithless partner. We publicly agree with you that money cannot be counted on to provide the hope we have for security in this world. And we acknowledge that your own promise to care for us is the only sure, solid basis we have in which to place our hope for security.

2. Repent of our Affluenza
1 Timothy 6:6-10
Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

Luke 12:15
Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.

Matthew 6:24
No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, you warned us as your followers that money would exert an influence on our hearts. As your people, we acknowledge that we are not free from its influence, just as you said we wouldn’t be. We admit that it is very difficult not to love the sense of security that wealth provides, and not to seek after wealth with undue zeal and passion. And to the extent that we have done so, we confess that we have highly esteemed an object of lesser beauty, and failed to love you more than money. We repent of these misplaced affections, and ask that you would grant to us, your people, an accurate appraisal of the worth of money and the worth of your character, so that we may see your inherent value, and love you more fully for having evicted this lesser idol from the realm of our affections.

3. Reach out tangibly to those who hurt
1 Timothy 6:18-19
They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.

1 John 3:17
But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, we pray for those in our church and in our community who are struggling or soon will be due to tough economic times – you call yourself Jehovah Jireh, our great provider. God, show yourself to be great by being their provider. Further Lord, we ask you to use us to do it. Having asked for your heart we now ask for your eyes to see the needs around us, and we ask that you would make us your hands and feet by giving graciously and generously to those in need in your name. God, in a time of uncertainly such as this we ask that you would protect your people at Harvest from a hoarding heart that circles the wagons and closes in around what wealth remains. Rather, we ask that you would fill the hearts of those of us who are financially able with generosity and joy at the prospect of meeting needs in the matchless name of Jesus. We ask that you would give us vision beyond our personal circumstances – enough vision to see the incredible opportunity you’ve provided your church to live in light of eternity, and so demonstrate to the world where real security comes from. Be pleased to glorify yourself through us in this way, because it is for the increasing renown of the name of Jesus we ask these things. Amen.

What Communion Isn't

Something's been on my heart for several months now, and I've been looking for the right time to share it with the church. It turns out this coming Sunday is the right time. So what follows is a bit of a "sneak preview" of part of what I'll say Sunday morning for all you Harvest people, and a little window into what our church is discussing for those who aren't attenders. As always, the full message will be available for download from our web archives and is also podcasted at iTunes by searching Harvest Community Church sermon audio.

What's been on my heart is our celebration of Communion, or the Lord's Supper. Not Communion itself, but the way we typically approach it. In evangelical churches like Harvest it is common for Christians to be instructed to examine their own hearts before participating in communion, often followed by a warning that participating while one has sin in his/her life is at best inappropriate, and at worst is somehow a desecration of the cross of Jesus. And so in some cases Christians will even refuse to participate because they know of some deep-seated sin that's got hold of them, and they don't want to profane the cross.

That view is not only wrong, it's a travesty. Let me explain.

The "examine yourself" idea comes from 1 Corinthians 11:28-29, wherein Paul tells the Christians in 1st century Corinth to check their motives before they participate in communion. (BTW, a cool feature on this blog is that if you hover your mouse over a Bible passage like the one in the last sentence, it will automatically pop up without you having to click away from the blog. Try it! It's cool.) But notice why he tells them to examine themselves: in 1 Corinthians 11:20-22 Paul describes the problem in Corinth. They treated communion as a potluck feast, not the sacramental symbol of Jesus' death that it was intended to be. Further, they profaned this feast by bringing their own favoritism (already dealt with by Paul in chapter 3) to the table, and gorging themselves with their friends whilst the "un-cool" people didn't even get to eat. This is why Paul tells them to examine their motives.

In other words, this passage isn't a universal call for Christians to "clean up their act" before participating in communion. Communion isn't a call to get clean so we're acceptable to God. In fact, rightly understood it's just the opposite.

In the same passage Paul talks about what communion is when he says in verse 26 "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes." Think about that for a moment: what does it mean to "proclaim the Lord's death"? It means we declare that Jesus' broken body and shed blood are the only way our sins are cleansed. So then, why would we try and clean up our sins before celebrating the death of Jesus, when the cleansing of our sin is exactly what makes the death of Jesus worth celebrating? If we're not careful we may find ourselves not only be guilty of misinterpreting Paul's point in 1 Cor. 11, but we may also be guilty of proclaiming exactly the opposite of the gospel: that we have to get cleaned up before we come to Jesus.

The best person in the world to take communion is the Christian who is wrestling with sin. By participating, that believer is declaring that the sin in question is only conquerable through the cross of Christ - that freedom from bondage to that sin comes only from Jesus. The death of Jesus, and the sacrament that symbolizes it, is a sign to the world that we're utterly dependent on the savior for life. Let us not rob that glory from him by attempting to clean up before we come to him. As if we could.

Now, I do think a period of reflection is appropriate to communion. We should seek to become aware of our sin during the Lord's Supper, but the reason is so that we can bring it to him for forgiving and cleansing - a spiritual reality of which we're reminded as we eat the bread and drink the cup. Christians should make communion itself an act of confession of sin and rejoicing that Christ's death covers it.

But let us be on guard against the subtle idea that we have to clean up our lives before we come to the communion table, or the idea that we shouldn't participate if we still have sin in our lives. The sacrament does just the opposite for us. It reminds us of how our sin is dealt with: once, for all time, by the blood of Jesus on the cross.

"But as it is, [Jesus] has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." Hebrews 9:26

Decision 2008 - my choice

Wow, what a competition, huh?

On the one hand we have the seasoned veteran. We all thought he was out of this thing, yet he's been surging lately. He's experienced, battle-tested. We know his ups and we know his downs, because he's been doing this long enough to have been thoroughly scrutinized. In fact, he's been at this longer than most anyone vying for the position. In some ways he's extremely difficult NOT to like: all-American values, self-sacrifice for the cause, that charmingly goofy grin... And yet, for someone so well-known he's strangely unpredictable. He has a way of rankling those on his own side. He sometimes pleases his opponents more than his supporters - something many of his supporters don't easily forget.

And then there's the other guy... the new kid. He's young, almost dashing you might say (certainly compared to his opponent). He's charismatic, with an infectious fire in his belly, a boundless energy, and (as Al Gore might put it) a certain "gravitas." Many look at him and can't help thinking that he's one of those rare, gifted leaders who just has that "it" factor: the intangible, natural, and rare gift for getting it done that outweighs his rather glaring lack of experience. Of course, there is that experience problem: we hardly know the guy. He's barely had a chance to do anything of significance, and his opponents are all too quick to question whether we should hand the "scepter" of responsibility to one about whom we know so little. After all, it looked like he had this thing all sewn up, but suddenly we have a neck-and-neck race again. And in the end the job is not about charisma or gravitas - it's about results.

And that, my friends, is the choice before us. It's a choice that's splitting our unified masses almost right down the middle. Arguments rage, tempers flare, blogs overheat and the news outlets won't let the competition go. But it will be over soon - it must be. For soon, the choice will be made.

Many people are interested in my personal choice, and I'm going to reveal it here. I've kept my cards close to the vest for months now, but with the Fall season getting underway in earnest it's time to endorse my candidate openly. So, in 2008, my vote goes to...

...Kevin Riley for Cal's starting quarterback. Sure he's young, inexperienced (as he showed today in Cal's 42-7 beatdown of Colorado State), and prone to bonehead mistakes. But he's not the only one: our receivers are young too, and the more Riley gets to work with them the brighter football is going to look in Strawberry Canyon for years to come.

Sophomore quarterback Kevin Riley

This has been a very difficult choice. Veteran 5th-year Senior Nate Longshore has led the Bears to many impressive wins over his long career, including 2007's heart-stopping last-second victory over Dennis Dixon's Ducks in Eugene (which netted me a free lunch at Newport Bay, courtesy of rabid Duck guy Scott Stuart). Longshore runs the offense with poise - but his penchant for forcing the ball in late-game situations has cost us too many wins over the years.

Senior quarterback Nate Longshore

Truth be told, in a wild Pac-10 this season my beloved Golden Bears (who currently stand at 1-0 in the conference, 3-1 overall) can finish anywhere from Rose Bowl glory to 6th-place doldrums. Reality will likely be somewhere in between. But I'm not sure we have a noticeably stronger chance of victory with Nate at the controls than Kevin, so in that case my vote is for the future: Kevin Riley for starting QB!

Of course this particular decision rests on the shoulders of a very small electorate: 1 voter, to be precise. And the man who holds that all-important vote will spend a lot of time in the film room before Arizona State rolls into Berkeley next Saturday. So coach Tedford: put in the work, and then go with your gut.

Cal coach Jeff "The Electorate" Tedford

And no matter who lines up under center on Saturday, may Oski have cause to dance deliriously, may the cannon on Tightwad Hill melt from overuse, and may Dennis Erickson return to Tempe with an even whiter head of hair than he has now.

GO BEARS!

Affluenza hurts

Between teaching a class at George Fox University and kicking off another year of ministry activity at the church, it's been a busy couple weeks for me. Still, this blog needs another post, and since I didn't have a Cal football game today to be embroiled with (the Bears had a bye week after a bad loss last Saturday), today's the day to get the next post up.


In my (precious few) free moments lately I've been doing some thinking about the current economic crisis. Massive government bailouts, wildly swinging stock markets, and even the government takeover of a major insurance company (AIG) have dominated headlines. What's going on? As one might expect both presidential candidates have weighed in with some typically vague explanations. But yesterday John McCain caught my attention when he delivered a speech in which he got more specific, laying the blame for our current economic woes right at the doorstep of mortgage lenders and the investment banking industry. Out of greed, he said, the lenders enabled themselves to offer bad loans to consumers which were then invested in by banks. Now that the bottom is dropping out, we're all paying for their avarice.

While I appreciate hearing something direct and specific from a presidential candidate, I think Sen. McCain missed the real culprit in the current financial crisis: us. He is partially right, in that greed in the financial services industry is part of the problem. But the economy isn't an investment bank or a lender, the economy is you and me. And we're kidding ourselves if we don't think we are largely to blame here.

A lot of the current problem can be traced back to 10-15 years ago when US lenders pressured authorities to relax lending standards so they could do more business. Low documentation and no documentation systems, 100% financing and other "creative financing" options, relaxation of underwriting standards... all of this was designed to allow lenders to make more loans - loans to people they never would have loaned money to a few years before. Now, is this greed? Sure it is. More loans mean more commissions for brokers.

But before we make an easy scapegoat of the entire home lending industry (I'm surprised the press hasn't started popularizing the term "big investing"), let's look in the mirror. After all, mortgages don't just appear out of nowhere - someone has to take out the loan for there be a mortgage in the first place. And just who was it that was entering all those zero-down, double-mortgaged, creatively financed loans? Greedy consumers. Who was taking out 110% of the equity in their houses? Greedy consumers. Who was it that jumped at the chance to buy a house they couldn't have purchased a few years ago, just because a few rules changed? Yep, greedy consumers. Just because some commission-paid broker tells me he can get me into that house I'm lusting after doesn't mean it's a good move on my part. And if I'm foolish enough to do it anyway, can I really put all the blame on the "greedy broker"? It isn't just dastardly Wall Street tycoons or Gollum-like mortgage brokers who are at fault here - there was plenty of greed right in our bathroom mirrors.

The reason I've been bugged about all this is I see a nation screaming for a scapegoat, not facing itself in the mirror. We're pressuring the federal government to fix the problem and "go get the bad guys." Now, the government has a role to play especially where laws were broken. But Nancy Pelosi, George Bush, Barack Obama, and John McCain aren't going to fix the basic moral problem in our nation: we deny absolute values (like the good postmodernists we are) and then things like greed, now unchecked, run amok.

And run amok it has. America has experienced an epidemic outbreak of affluenza. Consider the indicators, which I turned up via some simple web searching of places like the Federal Reserve and US Dept. of Commerce:

• Consumer debt (doesn't include people's houses) was $2.4 trillion in 2006. That's $19,000 of non-mortgage debt per US household.


• Mortgage debt increased 84% (from $7 trillion to $12.8 trillion) between 2000 and 2006. That's almost doubling in just 6 years. This statistic is the result of the relaxed lending standards I noted above, and it's the source of our current financial crisis.


• Credit card debt alone tripled between 1990 and 2000.


• In 2001, the percentage of Americans who filed for bankruptcy exceeded that of Great Depression. That year more Americans filed for bankruptcy than graduated from college.

Americans have an affluenza problem - we gotta' have it all now, and we'll borrow like crazy to get it. This makes us easy targets for unscrupulous lenders (our greed makes us easy prey for their greed) and it leaves us financially incapable of weathering difficult times. Soon housing prices dip or some other reality hits and we find we have more debt than assets. Consumer confidence wanes, investing markets buckle, and voila: you've got a crisis. Until we the people decide the problem is looking at us from the mirror, and until we determine to live differently, these kids of problems won't go away. We need to train ourselves to borrow less, spend less, and save more. Thankfully, programs like Financial Peace University (which we host at Harvest) and Crown Financial Ministries teach people how to do exactly that.

And we need to stop demanding that Washington remove the symptoms of our affluenza if we're not willing to attack the root of the disease. That only further moves our government toward practical socialism, which is the worst thing we can do to our economy in the long run.

Borrow less, spend less, save more. Too bad that slogan wouldn't win anyone the White House.

Politics, Persuading, and the Moral Law

I just saw this article, which is a more thorough, and more eloquent, version of the point I've been making with regard to Christians and politics. It's nice to find someone else who agrees with you, and does an even better job explaining himself! The article is long, but I recommend the read - well worth it.

The main point the author makes is that we concerned Christians need to frame our arguments in terms that are accessible to non-Christian Americans. We're deeply concerned about things like abortion, and the breakdown of marriage & family. So we need to learn how to make the case that abortion & family breakdown are bad for our country, whether you're a Bible-believing Christian or not.

The way to do so is to utilize Moral Law - the innate sense all people have of right and wrong, which is accessible through reason. This is the tool C.S. Lewis used so effectively to impact the thinking of millions of secular people in Book 1 of his classic Mere Christianity. And as I wrote previously, it's the tool William Wilberforce used in his anti-slavery crusade, and it's the tool MLK used with such success during the Civil Rights era.

A sample from the article, which illustrates the difference between making a purely "religious" argument and making a more broadly accessible, moral argument:

"Rather than argue that abortion is contrary to God’s law and that we need to bring the Constitution into conformity with God’s law, social conservatives should argue that as a matter of scientific fact the child in a mother’s womb is a whole, living human being, and that as a matter of moral truth the direct killing of any peaceable human being is gravely unjust..."

And another sample:

"Nor should social conservatives be afraid to argue for maintaining marriage’s structure. If marriage isn’t the union of one man and one woman coming together as husband and wife to become father and mother to any children their marital love may bring, then social conservatives should demand that their opponents explain what marriage is. Is it simply the union of any consenting pair of sexually active adults? If so, then why only two? And why does it have to be exclusive and permanent—why not open or temporary “marriage”? Indeed, if marriage isn’t about a bodily union, then why limit it to sexual relationships at all? How about codependent relatives? How are marriage and children connected? Do children need mothers and fathers, or not? These debates can and, in fact, must be had at the level of reason."

I daresay we "social conservatives" need to learn how to use the valuable tool of Moral Law and reason, which are both accessible by those around us, as we make the great proposal that there is a better way to live. Maybe a great place to start is to read Book 1 of Mere Christianity to get a sense of what arguing from Moral Law looks like, from a man who did it so well.

See, Now THIS Is Why I Love Oregon

Just back from a week's vacation: 5 days in the mountains and 2 at the coast. Stunning surroundings, and since pictures are worth a thousand words...

Our cabin was in the trees just above the RV in this picture - right on the McKenzie River. We fell asleep each night to the rush of water on rocks - very soothing.

With Cal's football season opener right around the corner, we took advantage of the many bear statues to stir up some Golden Bear mojo!


I spent one afternoon hiking the 4 miles around Clear Lake, which is the headwaters of the McKenzie. And man, is it CLEAR! The water is so fresh and cold (43 degrees!) that it loooks like a swimming pool...

Note the 4 submerged tree trunks clearly visible in the center of the above picture. The trees date back 3,000 years to when the lake was originally formed by a lava flow. They're still preserved, being submerged in such cold water for so long.

Trail through the lava field... From the lake the water flows into the McKenzie, and then just a little downriver it spills over two lava dams to create two of Oregon's more beautiful waterfalls:

Then it was off to Newport on the Oregon coast for 2 days, including a run through the famous Oregon Coast Aquarium where Elizabeth and Tommy made friends with a very curious Sea Otter:

And finally, a climb to the top of the (still operational) Yaquina Head Lighthouse:
More vacation pictures on Amy's blog.

We returned home Saturday night just in time to watch the Golden Bears overcome enough early-season jitters to beat a decent Michigan State team. Tommy: give them Bears a high-5! Great way to end a vacation!

(Check out our tailback, #4 Jahvid Best, in the video below around the 2:15 mark and after. That's called SPEED baby! The 2 plays of the game occur at 8:45 and 10:15 in this 12 minute video)

Cal vs MSU Highlights from sam walton on Vimeo.