Nick Roark's Blog, page 30

“If technology is your savior, you’re lost” by Tony Reinke

“If God is the center of your life, technology is a great gift. If technology is your savior, you’re lost.

The Gospel of Technology promises to simplify our lives and give us more free time, stronger relationships, added security, and better societies.

Too often, what are we left with? More complex lives, less free time, increased loneliness, added insecurities, and amplified social inequality.

Humans are makers and worshipers, and too often what we craft with our hands becomes what we worship with our hearts. (Isa. 44:9–20)

Man has always been quick to bow before the idol of technology, and he always finds himself unsatisfied. Christ knew this.

As the Creator of all human possibilities, he was not scientifically naïve. He authored all science!

He ‘knew all the secrets of nature, the usefulness of human arts to the comfort of the world, but never recommended any of them as sufficient to happiness.’ (Stephen Charnock, Works, 4: 68)

Christ created all human potential, and yet when He came to earth, He basically ignored the whole realm of technological advance in order to teach us where to find true happiness.

Jesus Christ didn’t arrive as a scientist, astronomer, or inventor.

He didn’t incarnate to wow us with new gadgets.

He didn’t come to establish science; He came to be worshiped by scientists.

He came to give us a greater gift.

He came to give us Himself.

He came as our Savior.”

—Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 179-180.

“A great mist over the things of eternity” by J.C. Ryle

“We live in an age of progress,—an age of steam-engines and machinery, of locomotion and invention.

We live in an age when the multitude are increasingly absorbed in earthly things,—in railways, and docks, and mines, and commerce, and trade, and banks, and shops, and cotton, and corn, and iron, and gold.

We live in an age when there is a false glare on the things of time, and a great mist over the things of eternity. In an age like this it is the bounden duty of the ministers of Christ to fall back upon first principles.

Necessity is laid upon us. Woe is unto us, if we do not press home on men our Lord’s question about the soul!

Woe is unto us, if we do not cry aloud:

“The world is not all. The life that we now live in the flesh is not the only life. There is a life to come. We have souls.”

Let us establish it in our minds as a great fact, that we all carry within our bosoms something that will never die.

This body of ours, which takes up so much of our thoughts and time, to warm it, dress it, feed it, and make it comfortable,—this body alone is not all the man.

It is but the lodging of a noble tenant, and that tenant is the immortal soul! The death which each of us has one day to die does not make an end of the man.

All is not over when the last breath is drawn, and the doctor’s last visit has been paid,—when the coffin is screwed down, and the funeral preparations are made,—when “ashes to ashes and dust to dust” has been pronounced over the grave,—when our place in the world is filled up, and the gap made by our absence from society is no longer noticed.

No: all is not over then! The spirit of man still lives on.

Every one has within him an undying soul.”

–J.C. Ryle, Old Paths: Being Plain Statements of Some of the Weightier Matters of Christianity (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1898/1999), 39.

“The strongest Christian is the one who feels his weakness most” by J.C. Ryle

“Let us watch jealously over our hearts, and beware of giving way to the beginnings of sin.

Happy is he who feareth always, and walks humbly with his God.

The strongest Christian is the one who feels his weakness most, and cries most frequently, ‘Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe.’ (Psalm 119:117; Prov. 28:14)”

–J.C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on John, Volume 3 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1869/2012), 3: 24.

“He built the bridge all the way” by Jerry Bridges

“God says to us:

‘Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.’ (Isaiah 55:1)

The gospel is addressed to those who have no money or good works. It invites us to come and “buy” salvation without money and without cost.

But note the invitation to come is addressed to those who have no money—not to those who don’t have enough.

Grace is not a matter of God’s making up the difference, but of God’s providing all the “cost” of salvation through His Son, Jesus Christ.

The apostle Paul spoke to this issue in Romans 3:22 when he said, “There is no difference.”

There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, between the religious and the irreligious, between the most decent moral person and the most degenerate.

There is no difference between us, because we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

To say the grace of God makes up the difference of what God requires of us is like comparing two people’s attempts to leap across the Grand Canyon.

The canyon averages about nine miles in width from rim to rim. Suppose one person could leap out about thirty feet from the edge while another can leap only six feet.

What difference does it make? Sure, one person can leap five times as far as the other, but relative to nine miles (47,520 feet!), it makes no difference.

Both leaps are absolutely worthless for crossing the canyon.

And when God built a bridge across the “Grand Canyon” of our sin, He didn’t stop thirty feet or even six feet from our side.

He built the bridge all the way.

Even the comparison of trying to leap across the Grand Canyon fails to adequately represent our desperate condition.

To use that illustration we have to assume people are trying to leap across the canyon; that is, most people are actually trying to earn their way to heaven and, despite earnest effort, are falling short of bridging the awful chasm of sin separating them from God.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Almost no one tries to earn his way to heaven (Martin Luther, prior to his conversion, being a notable exception).

Rather, almost everyone assumes that what he or she is already doing is sufficient to merit heaven. Almost no one is making a sincere effort to increase the length of his “leap” across the canyon.

Instead, in our minds, we have narrowed the width of the canyon to what we can comfortably cross without any additional effort beyond what we are already doing.

The person whose moral lifestyle might be equivalent to thirty feet sees the distance as narrowed to a comfortable twenty-nine feet; and the person who can leap only six feet has narrowed his canyon to five.

Everyone expects that God will accept what he is already doing as sufficient “currency” to “buy” a house in heaven.

Like the first audience who heard Jesus’ famous parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, most people are confident of their own righteousness (Luke 18:9–14).

They may, at a moment of serious reflection, concede they are not perfect by any means, but they consider themselves to be basically good.

One great problem today is that most of us really don’t believe we’re all that bad. In fact, we assume we’re good.

Like the tax collector, we do not just need God’s grace to make up for our deficiencies; we need His grace to provide a remedy for our guilt, a cleansing for our pollution.

We need His grace to provide a satisfaction of His justice, to cancel a debt we cannot pay.

It may seem that I am belaboring the point of our guilt and vileness before God.

But we can never rightly understand God’s grace until we understand our plight as those who need His grace.

As Dr. C. Samuel Storms has said:

‘The first and possibly most fundamental characteristic of divine grace is that it presupposes sin and guilt. Grace has meaning only when men are seen as fallen, unworthy of salvation, and liable to eternal wrath. Grace does not contemplate sinners merely as undeserving but as ill-deserving.… It is not simply that we do not deserve grace; we do deserve hell!‘”

–Jerry Bridges, Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God’s Unfailing Love (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2008), 27–29, 33-34.

“Watch me” by D.A. Carson

“As a chemistry undergraduate at McGill University, with another chap I started a Bible study for unbelievers. That fellow was godly but very quiet and a bit withdrawn.

I had the mouth, I fear, so by default it fell on me to lead the study. The two of us did not want to be outnumbered, so initially we invited only three people, hoping that not more than two would come.

Unfortunately, the first night all three showed up, so we were outnumbered from the beginning. By week five we had sixteen people attending, and still only the initial two of us were Christians.

I soon found myself out of my depth in trying to work through John’s Gospel with this nest of students. On many occasions the participants asked questions I had no idea how to answer.

But in the grace of God there was a graduate student on campus called Dave Ward. He had been converted quite spectacularly as a young man. He was, I suppose, what you might call a rough jewel.

He was slapdash, in your face, with no tact and little polish, but he was aggressively evangelistic, powerful in his apologetics, and winningly bold. He allowed people like me to bring people to him every once in a while so that he could answer their questions.

Get them there and Dave would sort them out! So it was that one night I brought two from my Bible study down to Dave. He bulldozed his way around the room, as he always did.

He gave us instant coffee then, turning to the first student, asked, ‘Why have you come?’

The student replied, ‘Well, you know, I think that university is a great time for finding out about different points of view, including different religions. So I’ve been reading some material on Buddhism, I’ve got a Hindu friend I want to question, and I should also study some Islam. When this Bible study started I thought I’d get to know a little more about Christianity – that’s why I’ve come.’

Dave looked at him for a few moments and then said, ‘Sorry, but I don’t have time for you.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ said the student.

‘Look,’ Dave replied, ‘I’ll loan you some books on world religions; I can show you how I understand Christianity to fit into all this, and why I think biblical Christianity is true – but you’re just playing around. You’re a dilettante. You don’t really care about these things; you’re just goofing off. I’m a graduate student myself, and I don’t have time – I do not have the hours at my disposal to engage in endless discussions with people who are just playing around.’

He turned to the second student: ‘Why did you come?’

‘I come from a home that you people call liberal,’ he said. ‘We go to the United Church and we don’t believe in things like the literal resurrection of Jesus – I mean, give me a break. The deity of Christ, that’s a bit much. But my home is a good home. My parents love my sister and me, we are a really close family, we worship God, we do good in the community. What do you think you’ve got that we don’t have?’

For what seemed like two or three minutes, Dave looked at him. Then he said, ‘Watch me.’

As it happened, this student’s name was also Dave. This Dave said, ‘I beg your pardon?’

Dave Ward repeated what he had just said, and then expanded: ‘Watch me. I’ve got an extra bed; move in with me, be my guest – I’ll pay for the food. You go to your classes, do whatever you have to do, but watch me. You watch me when I get up, when I interact with people, what I say, what moves me, what I live for, what I want in life. You watch me for the rest of the semester, and then you tell me at the end of it whether or not there’s a difference.’

Dave Two did not literally take Dave Ward up on his offer: he didn’t move in with him. But he did keep going to see him. Before the end of that semester he became a Christian, and subsequently a medical missionary overseas.

You who are older should be looking out for younger people and saying in effect, ‘Watch me.’

Come – I’ll show you how to have family devotions.

Come – I’ll show you how to do Bible study.

Come on – let me take you through some of the fundamentals of the faith.

Come – I’ll show you how to pray. Let me show you how to be a Christian husband and father, or wife and mother.

At a certain point in life, that older mentor should be saying other things, such as: Let me show you how to die. Watch me.”

–D.A. Carson, From the Resurrection to His Return (Geanies House, Fearn, Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2010), 28-32.

“The only thing that God says He forgets is our sins” by Sinclair Ferguson

“As we approach the end of the week, we’re going to think about something that we actually need to forget.

Yesterday, we talked about remembering God’s covenant with us because He remembers that covenant with us, and He promises that He will never forget it.

But I find it intriguing that in that covenant, He actually promises that there is something He will forget.

In the promise of the new covenant made in Jeremiah 31:34, quoted in the New Testament in Hebrews 8:12) because it is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, God says, “I will remember their sins no more.”

He makes a similar promise in Isaiah 43:25:

“I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”

We can think about it this way: the only thing that God says He forgets is our sins. He has blotted them out with the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.

That is a very important promise to remember because some of us– I suspect more than might be prepared to admit in public– are haunted by the memory of our past sins. Remember how that was true of King David.

In Psalm 51:3, he wrote that his sins were ever before him. He could be paralyzed by the memory of them.

Perhaps there were days when he was not thinking much about his past, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere, the memory of his sins was like a fiery dart in his mind, paralyzing his sense of fellowship with God.

And so David needed to know day by day that his sins were blotted out and that the Lord remembered them no more.

In the United Kingdom, people sometimes invest in what are usually called gilts. Gilt-edged securities are very high-grade government-issued stock.

I think they are called that because originally the paper on which they were printed was gilt-edged, like some of the old Bibles. And I sometimes think that the devil, who is described as the accuser of the brethren, is an investor in guilt-edged stock– not gilt, but guilt.

When Satan tempts us to sin, he tells us, “This isn’t such a big deal.“

But then when we fail and fall, he capitalizes on our sin and emphasizes our guilt. He comes to us and almost seems to screw into us our deep incapacity and, as John Calvin once said, seeks to drive us to despair.

We can be paralyzed with shame, and it can be a frightening thing to experience. We’re like Joshua the high priest in Zechariah 3. There we are before God, clothed with filthy garments, and Satan is standing at our side accusing us.

We need to remember what happens next in that passage. The Lord said to Satan, “The LORD rebuke you, O Satan!” (Zechariah 3:2), and the angel of the Lord took off Joshua’s filthy garments.

He then spoke these beautiful, heart-melting words: “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments” (Zechariah 3:4).

What a picture that is of the believer clothed in the filthy garments of sin, but now, through Jesus Christ, clothed in pure vestments from head to toe.

I wonder if you can see yourself standing before the throne of God and hearing God say:

“But I don’t see any sin. I see only purity. I’ve covered your sin with the blood of Christ and clothed you in His righteousness.”

Does God really forget your sin as you trust Him? Yes, indeed. He tells us that He removes our sin as far as the east is from the west (Ps. 103:12).

I wonder if you have forgotten what God says He will forget. God remembers our sins no more.

So perhaps the thing we need to remember most of all is the one thing the Lord tells us He remembers no more.

There is nothing more glorious than to be living a paralysis-free Christian life in the presence of the heavenly Father, knowing that He loves us more than we will ever know; and that He has given His Son to cover our sins; and that He says to us, “Your sins I remember no more.”

I do hope you know the peace that brings.”

–Sinclair B. Ferguson, Things Unseen: One Year of Reflections on the Christian Life (Sanford, FL: Ligonier, 2024), 41-42.

“The entire Christian life is lived under the reign of God’s grace” by Jerry Bridges

“The entire Christian life from start to completion is lived on the basis of God’s grace to us through Christ.

The Christian’s total debt has been paid by the death of Christ. The law of God and the justice of God have been fully satisfied.

The debt of our sins has been marked “Paid in Full!” God is satisfied and so are we.

We have peace with God, and we are delivered from a guilty conscience (see Romans 5:1; Hebrews 10:22).

Not only has the debt been fully paid, there is no possibility of going into debt again. Jesus paid the debt of all our sins: past, present, and future.

As Paul said in Colossians 2:13, “[God] forgave us all our sins.”

We don’t have to start all over again and try to keep the slate clean. There is no more slate.

As Stephen Brown wrote, “God took our slate and He broke it in pieces and threw it away.” This is true not only for our justification, but for our Christian lives as well.

God is not keeping score, granting or withholding blessings on the basis of our performance.

The score has already been permanently settled by Christ. We so often miss this dimension of the gospel.

We are brought into God’s kingdom by grace.

We are sanctified by grace.

We receive both temporal and spiritual blessings by grace.

We are motivated to obedience by grace.

We are called to serve and enabled to serve by grace.

We receive strength to endure trials by grace.

And finally, we are glorified by grace.

The entire Christian life is lived under the reign of God’s grace.

What, then, is the grace by which we are saved and under which we live?

Grace is God’s free and unmerited favor shown to guilty sinners who deserve only judgment.

It is the love of God shown to the unlovely.

It is God reaching downward to people who are in rebellion against Him.”

–Jerry Bridges, Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God’s Unfailing Love (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2008), 19–21.

“We cannot meditate too deeply or too often on Psalm 23” by Christopher Ash

“1. It is good, before we appropriate this psalm to each one of us, to take time to meditate on what it would have meant for the Lord Jesus to take comfort and assurance from its words during His life and trials on earth.

2. Our main response, once we are settled in Christ, is to dwell, to our very great comfort, on each image in the psalm, rejoicing that the Father is our shepherd, that Christ is now our good shepherd, and

a. that He gives us (Ps. 23:2) “all things that pertain to life and godliness” through “His precious and very great promises” (2 Pet. 1:3–4);
b. that He promises us His guiding hand to keep us in righteous living and grant us repentance when we stray (Ps. 23:3);
c. that He assures us we need fear no evil, not even death (23:4);
d. that there is a victory banquet in store with uncountable blessings and untold joy (23:5); and
e. that, on the one hand, His unchanging goodness and covenant love follow us every day of our lives and, on the other, we will dwell in His immediate presence forever (23:6).

We cannot meditate too deeply or too often on these privileges, and we do well to devote ourselves to this practice when things are easy, that these truths may flow in our bloodstream for comfort when we walk through darkness.

3. Philip Eveson observes, “The ministerial office in the Christian Church is based on this shepherd image” (cf. 1 Pet. 5:1–4). Those entrusted with the office of pastor (Ps. 23:1) can meditate on what this will mean for them. For they too, as undershepherds answerable to the chief shepherd, are called

a. to feed the flock (23:2) with the word of God (Acts 6:2, 4), whatever this costs them (John 21:15–19);
b. to use the Scriptures “for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16) that the sheep may walk in paths of righteousness (Ps. 23:3);
c. to prepare the dying for their death, that they may walk through the valley of the shadow of death confident that they need fear no evil (23:4); and
d. to keep the eyes of the sheep on the Messiah’s banquet (23:5) and their eternal home (23:6).

4. It is a proper response for us to belong with loyal gladness to a church. Expounding Psalm 23 “after grace at the dinner table” in 1536, Luther waxed eloquent on the blessings of being fed by the word of God; he went on to say this:

As often, therefore, as the Christian who belongs to a church in which God’s Word is taught enters this church, he should think of this psalm. With the prophet he should thank God with a happy heart for His ineffable grace in placing him, as His sheep, into a pleasant green meadow, where there is an abundance of precious grass and fresh water—that is, for being enabled to be at a place where he can hear God’s Word, learn it, and draw from it rich comfort for both body and soul.”

-Christopher Ash, Psalms 1–50, vol. 2, The Psalms: A Christ-Centered Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024), 2: 274–275.

“Nothing now remains for us but to sing Hallelujah!” by F. W. Krummacher

“And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, ‘O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.'” (Matthew 26:39) 

“His language is, ‘The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?’ Great and momentous words! Let us spend a few moments in meditating on them.

A cup is a vessel which has its appointed measure, and is limited by its rim. The Saviour several times refers to the cup that was appointed for Him.

In Matthew 20:22, He asks His disciples, ‘Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of?’ By the cup, He understood the bitter draught of His passion which had been assigned Him.

We heard Him ask in Gethsemane, at the commencement, if it were not possible that the cup might pass from Him; and here we find Him mentioning, with the most unmoved self-possession, ‘the cup which his Father had given him.’

We know what was in the cup. All its contents would have been otherwise measured out to us by divine justice on account of sin.

In the cup was the entire curse of the inviolable law, all the horrors of conscious guilt, all the terrors of Satan’s fiercest temptations, and all the sufferings which can befall both body and soul.

It contained likewise the dreadful ingredients of abandonment by God, infernal agony, and a bloody death, to which the curse was attached—all to be endured while surrounded by the powers of darkness.

Here we learn to understand what is implied in the words:

“Who spared not his own Son, but freely gave him up for us all.”
“The Lord laid on him the iniquities of us all.”
“I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.”
“Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.”
“God made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin.”

All that mankind have heaped up to themselves against the day of God’s holy and righteous wrath— their forgetfulness of God— their selfish conduct— their disobedience, pride, worldly-mindedness— their filthy lusts, hypocrisy, falsehood, hard-heartedness, and deceit— all are united and mingled in this cup, and ferment together into a horrible potion.

“Shall I not drink this cup?” asks the Saviour.

“Yes,” we reply, “empty it, beloved Immanuel! we will kiss Thy feet, and offer up ourselves to Thee upon Thy holy altar!”

He has emptied it, and not a drop remains for His people. The satisfaction He rendered was complete, the reconciliation effected.

‘There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.’ The curse no longer falls upon them.

‘The chastisement of our peace lay upon him; and by his stripes we are healed,’ and nothing now remains for us but to sing Hallelujah!”

—F. W. Krummacher, The Suffering Saviour: Meditations on the Last Days of Christ (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1947/2004), 134-135.

“Our teacher, guide, and Savior” by Peter J. Williams

“The beginning of the Jewish Bible, together with the finale offered by Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection recorded in the New Testament, tell the greater story of a Creator God, whose commands we humans have disobeyed, making us subject to the death penalty.

To have that penalty lifted, we need a substitute more valuable than a Passover lamb to take our place.

What if the great storyteller also lived a perfect life?

What if he came from God?

What if he was the long-anticipated Jewish Messiah?

What if he was God’s Son? All these things are claimed of Jesus in the Gospels, the very books that we have seen reliably reporting Jesus’s words.

If Jesus came from God, it would also explain how he could be such a genius.

The single best explanation for Jesus’s genius is found at the beginning of John’s Gospel, where the Word, later identified as Jesus Christ (John 1:14, 17), is described both as alongside God and as God himself:

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, – and the Word was God.’ (John 1:1)

If the storyteller Jesus Christ is God himself, who made the world, invented language, oversaw history, and then became human to tell us about God and to rescue us from our alienation to him, then his wisdom and genius make sense.

And if he is that smart and if he also loved us enough to die to save us, the only sensible thing to do is to accept him unreservedly as our teacher, guide, and Savior.”

-Peter J. Williams, The Surprising Genius of Jesus: What the Gospels Reveal about the Greatest Teacher (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2023), 112-113.