Jojo Agot

God Heard them Crying

One lesson I learned from Exodus:

God heard the cries of the Hebrew people. I am aware that that doesn’t sound very spectacular to our ears. We all know that God hears our cries, no big deal. In fact, we, people of the 21st century, even have this twisted sense of entitlement that God is supposed to hear us. He is God after all. It is His job to hear us when we cry. And so the fact that God heard the cries of the Hebrews doesn’t amaze us that much.

But what’s really interesting about the Hebrew story is that they were simply just crying to no one in particular. There is not a record that their cries were directed at Jehovah. Yet all the same, God came down to respond by delivering them in a very spectacular way. Incredible, isn’t it? God, in His amazing grace, swooped down to intervene in human affairs even if it is unbidden by the initiative of their prayers.

Too Little Exposition

One of the alarming trends in modern pulpits is how there’s too little exposition of the Word of God. Preachers open their sermons with stories purportedly to catch the attention of the listeners. They read their texts some fifteen minutes later and proceed with sermons that have nothing to do with the quoted texts. There’s little wrestling with the word of God. The tension is in the human response to the text, not the Bible answering the Bible. And we wonder why Christians have so little respect and love for the written Word of God.

The Mind is the Servant of the Heart

The mind is the servant of the heart. The mind serves to know the truth that fuels the fires of the heart. The highest point of glorifying God is enjoying Him with the heart. But this is only an empty emotionalism if the joy is not awakened and sustained by correct knowledge of who God is. The saddest predicament of our age is for Christians to think that using our intellect to know God is unspiritual.

–Adapted from John Piper’s THINK

Thoughts Inflame Affections

Indeed, thoughts and affections are sibi mutuo causae—the mutual causes of each other: “Whilst I mused, the fire burned” (Psalm 39:3); so that thoughts are the bellows that kindle and inflame affections; and then if they are inflamed, they cause thoughts to boil; therefore men newly converted to God, having new and strong affections, can with more pleasure think of God than any.

–Thomas Goodwin

Reflections on Genesis

The one thread that binds the whole book of Genesis (and the entire Bible, for that matter) is the theme of God’s grace in relation to the plan of redemption. As I read Genesis, it almost felt like the old, familiar children’s stories are literally leaping off the pages of the Bible in different shades and colors of grace. Adam and Eve’s clothing, Cain’s mark in the forehead, the choosing of Noah, the language confusion in Babel, Abraham’s call, Hagar’s desert wandering, Jacob’s complicated story and Judah’s trysts all point to the dismal failure of humanity and the staggering magnitude of the grace of God.

What’s especially significant to me was the often repeated theme of men trying to forge progress without the blessings of the divine. The lineage of Cain and the builders of Shinar were a curious case study of humanity’s relentless pursuit of the good life apart from God. It’s both sobering and revealing to me because historically speaking, and even today in our larger society, we see it happening the same way it happened to them.

Continue reading Reflections on Genesis

Erosion of (Theological) Language

Gerhard O. Forde on the erosion of language in theology:

It is evident that there is a serious erosion or slippage in the language of theology today. Sentimentality leads to a shift in focus, and the language slips out of place. To take a common example, we apparently are no longer sinners, but rather victims, oppressed by sinister victimizers whom we relentlessly seek to track down and accuse…

We no longer live in a guilt culture but have been thrown into meaninglessness—so we are told. Then the language slips out of place. Guilt puts the blame on us as sinners, but who is responsible for meaninglessness? Surely not we! Sin, if it enters our consciousness at all, is generally something that “they” did to us. As Alan Jones, dean of the Episcopal Cathedral of San Francisco, put it once, “We live in an age in which everything is permitted and nothing is forgiven.” Continue reading Erosion of (Theological) Language