Luther on Idolatry and Trust

Martin Luther’s Large Catechism begins with a shrewd reflection on the first commandment:

“You are to have no other gods.”

That is, you are to regard me alone as your God. What does this mean, and how is it to be understood? What does “to have a god” mean, or what is God?

Answer: A “god” is the term for that to which we are to look for all good and in which we are to find refuge in all need. Therefore, to have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe in that one with your whole heart. As I have often said, it is the trust and faith of the heart alone that make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust are right, then your God is the true one. Conversely, where your trust is false and wrong, there you do not have the true God. For these two belong together, faith and God. Anything on which your heart relies and depends, I say, that is really your God.

—Martin Luther, Large Catechism, “[The First Part: The Ten Commandments],” The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert; trans. Charles Arand, et al.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 386.

Luther proceeds to elaborate further on the relationship between idolatry and trust (386–92). You can read it via Google Books.

(HT: Andy Naselli)

Filed under: Faith, God centredness, Idolatry, Love for God, Martin Luther, Worship

What is true of Him

 

“God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” 2 Timothy 1:7

We must think of suffering in a new way, we must face everything in a new way. And the way in which we face it all is by reminding ourselves that the Holy Spirit is in us. There is the future, there is the high calling, there is the persecution, there is the opposition, there is the enemy. I see it all. I must admit also that I am weak, that I lack the necessary powers and propensities. But instead of stopping there . . . I say, “But the Spirit of God is in me. God has given me his Holy Spirit.” . . . What matters . . . is not what is true of us but what is true of Him.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, page 100.

(HT: Ray Ortlund)

Filed under: Attributes of God, Discipleship, Evangelical, God centredness, Holy Spirit, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Warfare, The Christian Life, The word of God

Man Is Not the Centre

Spurgeon writes in Lectures to My Students:

Just as the earth is not the centre of the universe, so man is not the grandest of all beings. God has been pleased highly to exalt man; but we must remember how the psalmist speaks of him: “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him; and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” In another place, David says, “Lord, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him! or the son of man, that thou makest account of him! Man is like to vanity: his days are as a shadow that passeth away.” Man cannot be the centre of the theological universe, he is altogether too insignificant a being to occupy such a position, and the scheme of redemption must exist for some other end than that of merely making man happy, or even of making him holy. The salvation of man must surely be first of all for the glory of God; and you have discovered the right form of Christian doctrine when you have found the system that has God in the centre, ruling and controlling according to the good pleasure of his will. Do not dwarf man so as to make it appear that God has no care for him; for if you do that, you slander God. Give to man the position that God has assigned to him; by doing so, you will have a system of theology in which all the truths of revelation and experience will move in glorious order and harmony around the great central orb, the Divine Sovereign Ruler of the universe, God over all, blessed for ever.

(HT: Darryl Dash)

Filed under: Attributes of God, CH Spurgeon, Doctrine, Evangelical, God centredness, God's Glory, Sovereignty of God

Reach them with the Amazing God not helpful tips

From Kevin DeYoung:

I beg of you, don’t go after the next generation with mere moralism, either on the right (don’t have sex, go to church, share your faith, stay off drugs) or on the left (recycle, dig a well, feed the homeless, buy a wristband). The gospel is not a message about what we need to do for God, but about what God has done for us. So get them with the good news about who God is and what he has done for us.

Some of us, it seems, are almost scared to tell people about God. Perhaps because we don’t truly know him. Maybe because we prefer living in triviality. Or maybe because we don’t consider knowing God to be very helpful in real life. I have to fight against this unbelief in my own life. If only I would trust God that God is enough to win the hearts and minds of the next generation. It’s his work much more than it is mine or yours. So make him front and center. Don’t preach your doubts as mystery. And don’t reduce God to your own level. If ever people were starving for a God the size of God, surely it is now.

Read the rest HERE.

(HT: Todd Pruitt)

Filed under: Attributes of God, Doctrine, God centredness, God's Glory, Moralism, The Gospel

No God, no happiness

“The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first—wanting to be the centre—wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race. Some people think the fall of man had something to do with sex, but that is a mistake. (The story in the Book of Genesis rather suggests that some corruption in our sexual nature followed the fall and was its result, not its cause.) What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’—could set up on their own as if they had created themselves—be their own masters—invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

The reason why it can never succeed is this. God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

—C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (HarperOne, 1980), pp. 49–50.

(HT: Tony Reinke)

Filed under: CS Lewis, Communion with God, God centredness, The Bible, The Christian Life

God’s Greatest Adversaries Are His Gifts

John Piper, A Hunger for God | “The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. For all the ills that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18-20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.

Jesus said some people hear the word of God, and a desire for God is awakened in their hearts. But then, ‘as they go on their way they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life’ (Luke 8:14). In another place he said, ‘The desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful’ (Mark 4:19). ‘The pleasures of this life’ and ‘the desires for other things’—these are not evil in themselves. These are not vices. These are gifts of God. They are your basic meat and potatoes and coffee and gardening and reading and decorating and traveling and investing and TV-watching and Internet-surfing and shopping and exercising and collecting and talking. And all of them can become deadly substitutes for God.”

(HT: Symphony of Scripture)

Filed under: Discipleship, God centredness, Holiness, Idolatry, John Piper, Sanctification

What is an Idol?

From Tim Keller’s Counterfeit Gods:

What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give. A counterfeit god is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living. An idol has such a controlling position in your heart that you can spend most of your passion and energy, your emotional and financial resources, on it without a second thought. It can be family and children, or career and making money, or achievement and critical acclaim, or saving “face” and social standing. It can be a romantic relationship, peer approval, competence and skill, secure and comfortable circumstances, your beauty or your brains, a great political or social cause, your morality and virtue, or even success in the Christian ministry. When your meaning in life is to fix someone else’s life, we may call it “codependency” but it is really idolatry. An idol is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, “If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure.”

Filed under: Discernment, Discipleship, God centredness, Gospel-centred, Idolatry, Jesus Christ, Salvation, Sanctification, The Christian Life, Tim Keller

Remember God

“What one thing about God in Christ speaks directly into today’s trouble? … Just as we don’t change all at once, so we don’t swallow all of truth in one gulp. We are simple people. You can’t remember ten things at once. Invariably, if you could remember just ONE true thing in the moment of trial, you’d be different. Bible “verses” aren’t magic. But God’s words are revelations of God from God for our redemption. When you actually remember God, you do not sin. The only way we ever sin is by suppressing God, by forgetting, by tuning out his voice, switching channels, and listening to other voices. When you actually remember, you actually change. In fact, remembering is the first change.”

- David Powlison

(HT: Of First Importance)

Filed under: Discipleship, God centredness, Renewing the Mind, Sanctification, The Christian Life

Why You Need to Start Talking to Yourself More

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, pp. 20-21:

Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says, “Self, listen for moment, I will speak to you.”

(HT: Justin Taylor)

Filed under: Biblical exposition, Discipleship, God centredness, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Sanctification, The word of God

What Our Mission Is Not

Whilst this is a definition/explication of Desiring God’s mission statement, it is also a biblical mandate for every believer. I like this:

Our mission at Desiring God is to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. By turning a few things around, we can also see what our mission is not – and therefore more clearly what it is.

Our mission is not to create cul-de-sacs, but to spread.

Our mission is not to spread just knowledge about God. It is to spread a passion for God. Head and heart.

Our mission is not to spread a passion for the mediocrity of God or for the overlooking of God or for the assuming of God. It is to spread a passion for the supremacy of God.

Our mission is not to spread a passion for the supremacy of human beings or Western materialism or even you. It is to spread a passion for the supremacy of God.

Whilst this is a definition/explication of Desiring God’s mission statement, it is also a biblical injunction upon all Christians. I like this:

Our mission is not to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in just a few things, or just a few parts of your life like the time you spend at church, but in all things.

We aim to do this not simply for Americans or Western Christians but for all people groups.

We aim to do this not for the boredom or gloom or sadness of all people groups, but for thejoy of all people groups. “Let the nations be glad and sing for joy” (Psalm 67:4).

And we aim to do this not through our own efforts or with an ambiguous God-is-whoever-you-think-he-is God in mind, but through Jesus Christ, who died for us on the cross 2,000 years ago, rose again, ascended into heaven, sent the Holy Spirit, and will come again.

Filed under: Evangelical, God centredness, Jesus Christ, John Piper, Love for God, Missions

Would You Pray This Prayer?

From The Gospel Coalition Blog:

Francis Chan offers the following video devotional based on Proverbs 30:7-9.

Two things I ask of you;
deny them not to me before I die:
Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that is needful for me,
lest I be full and deny you
and say, “Who is the Lord?”
or lest I be poor and steal
and profane the name of my God.

Filed under: Biblical exposition, Discipleship, God centredness, Holiness, Obedience, Prayer, Sanctification, The Bible

Only For The Asking

“How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Luke 11:13

In a sermon preached in 1740, Jonathan Edwards pointed out that we ask God for basically two kinds of things. We ask him for temporal blessings like health and jobs and family needs. We also ask him for spiritual blessings. But Edwards noted how much more frequently and fervently we ask for temporal blessings:

“They don’t need any preaching to stir them up to take thorough care to obtain those outward things. . . . And if they begin to suffer for want of those things, how much do they make of their sufferings! . . . Had God nothing better to bestow upon you, when he had made you his children, than a little money or land, that you seem so much to behave yourselves as if you thought this was your chief good? . . . I am bold to say that God is now offering the blessing of his Holy Spirit to this town, and I am bold to say we may have it only for the asking.”

(HT: Ray Ortlund)

Filed under: God centredness, Holy Spirit, Jonathan Edwards, Prayer, Revival, The word of God

Action Steps For Anxiety

Paul Tripp’s six action steps for anxiety:

Remind Yourself That God Is In Control: When you convince yourself that your world is out of control, you are on the verge of paralysis. Watch your self-talk. Are you saying to yourself: “God is in control of this circumstance, He is my Father, and He is ruling this for my benefit”?

Accept Confusion: Believing in God’s sovereignty doesn’t mean life will make sense. Believing in God’s sovereignty is needed because life doesn’t make sense. Your rest is not in figuring out your circumstances–your rest is in the God behind the circumstances.

Don’t Allow Emotions To Rule: As much as the emotions you experience will be right, good, and appropriate, don’t let them set the agenda. There is a temptation to do that, but allowing yourself to be pulled away by the emotions of the moment could cause you to regret your decisions later.

Distinguish Needs From Wants: Be very careful what you put in your catalog of “need.” The minute you tell yourself something is a need, you’re saying it is essential for life. Then you are going to determine that you can’t live without it. It’s easy to attach yourself and your sense  of security to the gift rather than to the Giver.

Know Your Job Description: God promises to provide. Your job is to live the way God has called you to live. Instead of giving way to discouragement, look for ways you can contribute to God’s people at the moment.

Run To God, Not Away From Him: God’s promise to us is not first the relief of the suffering–His promise is to give us Himself. He will never turn a deaf ear to the natural cries of a person of faith when life doesn’t make sense. God hears and answers and works and comforts.

(HT: Tullian Tchividjian)

Filed under: Discipleship, Evangelical, God centredness, God the Father, God's goodness, Paul Tripp, The Christian Life, The word of God

How obedience is born

“For, until men feel that they owe everything to God, that they are cherished by his paternal care, and that he is the author of all their blessings, so that naught is to be looked for away from him, they will never submit to him in voluntary obedience; no, unless they place their entire happiness in him, they will never yield up their whole selves to him in truth and sincerity.”

- John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Bk I, Ch. 2

(HT: Of First Importance)

Filed under: Christian hedonism, God centredness, John Calvin, Obedience, The Christian Life

God-centred and Gospel-centred need each other

Filed under: Christ-centred, DA Carson, Doctrine, Evangelical, God centredness, Gospel-centred, Jesus Christ, John Piper, Sanctification, The Christian Life, The Cross, The Gospel, Tim Keller