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I read this two weeks ago, on schedule with Tim Challies, but haven’t taken time to post my thoughts yet.

The first chapter in this book deals with Christ’s words “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” This was a chapter completely overflowing with wonder and encouragement.

Pink explains that, during the most horrific and evil act of all time, with the Son of God hanging on a cross erected by His own creatures, Christ’s first recorded words were those of prayer. And the prayer was not one of calling judgment down on wicked man, or a prayer requesting strength, or a prayer for the “friends” who had left him alone. It was a prayer of mercy and forgiveness for the sake of his murderers. Pink concludes that none are beyond the reach of prayer.

I was intrigued by the idea that Christ’s prayer was specifically and directly answered in Acts, during Peter’s preaching. Pink draws the link between “they know not what they do” and Peter’s statement in Acts 3:17 to his hearers who he said had “acted in ignorance.” And 3000 people were redeemed after Peter’s preaching, not from Peter’s eloquence, but because Christ Himself prayed for them. This is supported even more in John 17:20, where Christ states that He did not pray for the apostles alone, but for “those who will believe.” We, too, need to intercede in prayer for the enemies of God.

It was also noteworthy that sin is always sin to God, whether done willfully or in ignorance. Leviticus 5:15-16 addressed “sins of ignorance,” and shows that even these required blood sacrifice. Pink writes that “God is Holy, and He will not lower His standard of righteousness to the level of our ignorance.”

Another point Pink addresses is one that I had discussed briefly in a Sunday School class just the Sunday before reading the chapter. He deals with the matter of forgiveness, and when we are to forgive. I admit I am not settled in my mind yet as to how to properly divide this matter. Pink points out that Christ did not specifically forgive people here as he had done during his earthly ministry. Rather, he asks his Father to forgive them. Primarily this can be viewed that Christ, in hanging on the cross, was no longer in a position to forgive. (Matthew 9:6 says Christ has power on earth to forgive sins, and John 12:32 says on the cross he was “lifted up from the earth”; on the cross Christ was our substitute, and was no longer in the place of authority on the matter.) Building on the facts that Christ taught to pray for our enemies (Matthew 5:44), and that he told us to forgive our brother if he repents (Luke 17:3-4), Pink concludes that Scripture does not teach that we must always forgive in all circumstances. He is careful to point out that withholding forgiveness should not include harboring ill feelings or ill will, but we are not to treat the unrepentant brother as if he had not wronged us. Most certainly, however, we are to pray for him. Again, I am not fully settled in my mind on this, and it warrants further study.

Pink pulls so much out of this first saying of the Savior. Do yourself a favor and read the chapter for yourself: The Word of Forgiveness

You can read Tim’s post here: Reading Classics Together - The Seven Sayings (Chapter 1)

We decided a few months ago to start a very small garden this year, both for the fun and for the fresh vegetables that we hope it provides. I had seen a post on LifeHacker regarding square foot gardening and thought it looked like fun. So a week ago we bought some seeds for string beans, snap peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, and a few other things, plus a starter container of “peat pods” for 24 plants. And after about a week, we have plants!

It’s been pretty amazing to watch these things grow. We took a seed and put it in a pile of wet dirt. That was it. Maybe I’m just really simple-minded, but that has got to be one of the coolest things in the world. And to think that one little seed will give us dozens of beans, and another will provide a host of peas. Wow.

Genesis 2:8-9: And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.

Thank you, Lord!

The primary difficulty in writing a summary of any seminar session or message is the complete loss of context and foundation for any of the quotes or conclusions presented. With Dr. Art Azurdia this is even more complicated, as he so carefully builds a foundation on the Bible, then articulately extracts incredible truths that are clearly based on both the immediate passage and the “meta-narrative” or over-arching story of the Bible. However, I would still like to try to present a brief summary.

Had the conference ended Friday night after the first session, we would have had enough to think and meditate on for months. But Azurdia continued Saturday with three separate sessions, the last of which was a in a question-and-answer format with Dr. Azurdia, Jeff Seavey (pastor of Living Water Community Church), and Dan Morse (pastor of Christ our Redeemer Church). I would also be remiss if I neglected to mention the incredible blessing that the music was during this conference. The songs focused consistently on the cross and the work Christ performed, and really helped establish a proper Christ-centered approach to the sessions.

The first session, from Ephesians 5:15-22, was based on the premise that the holy dignity of marriage is grounded in the fact that its ideal can be recovered by the means of the Christian Gospel. In this session Azurdia emphasized that the Old Covenant brought sin to light without any power to overcome sin, while the New Covenant provided the power and ability, through Christ, to overcome sin. The problems in a marriage are a result of the Fall, so the solution for the problems in a marriage is the same as the solution for the effects of the Fall: the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

• Husbands are not commanded to be the head of the wife. The husband is the head, and his example for how to love his wife is exemplified by Christ’s love for the church: sacrificial (Christ died for the church), exclusive (Christ loved “her” — specific and exclusive), and undeserved (love her as a sinner, not a saint).
• I don’t need to be a better husband, I need to be a better Christian

The second session on Saturday continued with Dr. Azurdia’s third point: the holy dignity of marriage is grounded in the fact that it exists ultimately for God and His glory, not for our own self-enhancement, self-fulfillment, or self-actualization.

• A healthy Christian family, like a healthy Christian church, has been designed for a purpose outside itself.
• The purpose of every created thing is to bring glory to God. As “idol factories,” we end up making idols of anything, and consistently in the American church, this includes making an idol of the family. “The family” becomes the end, not the means or channel to the end.
• You shouldn’t marry for love. You marry in love for the advancement of the kingdom.

The final session was more informal and involved Dr. Azurdia, Jeff, and Dan answering questions that had been written and dropped into a box throughout the day. There were far more questions submitted than there was time to answer. Without going into any detail, these men address issues from the “exception clause” regarding divorce, to birth control, to the benefits and pitfalls of “full transparency” in a marriage, and how to practically apply the truths learned over the weekend. For me, one of the more refreshing aspects of this time was the humility expressed as these men discussed things for which their opinions differed. There were no egos to be fed, and there was not a hint of pride or divisiveness.

On a side note, one of the quotes from Dr. Azurdia that I found quite humorous was something along the lines of “I tell my students they can preach one topical message per year, but they must immediately confess and repent afterwards.” It would be an understatement to say that Dr. Azurdia preaches expositionally, with complete and utter devotion to the importance of both the individual words and structures of the text, and the importance and and significance of any passage in its book.

As I stated above, this post doesn’t even come close to doing justice to Dr. Azurdia. There are so many more things I could write, but if I could summarize the weekend briefly, it would have to be using a conglomeration of statements Azurdia made: Marriage is divinely designed by Sovereign God, and it carries an ultimate purpose outside itself, extending to the magnification and propagation of the Gospel and the furtherance of the Kingdom of God. The supreme end of marriage is the Gospel, not the marriage, and a strong Christian marriage is characterized by the willingness of each spouse to sacrifice the marriage for the sake of the Gospel.

Finally, Living Water Community Church has made the audio from this weekend’s conference available on their web site (God, the Gospel, and Your Marriage — scroll down to May 9-10). I can highly recommend that couples devote some time to listen to this together. You will undoubtedly benefit more than you can imagine.

If you are interested, Dr. Azurdia has a series of previous messages on the Christian Family available on his web site (The Holy Responsibility Of The Christian Family — scroll down). I haven’t had opportunity to listen to these messages yet, but expect to in the near future.

Last night was the first session from Dr. Art Azurdia on “God, the Gospel, and Your Marriage,” and I can honestly say that listening to him was like drinking from a firehose. Here are a few ideas and quotes:

• “The Bible is not a magic book. We are in all was completely dependent on the illumination of the Holy Spirit.”
• “The dignity of marriage is grounded in the fact that marriage is the holy creation of sovereign God.” He went on the explain that such a grounding removes any authority man thinks he has over marriage, and any right to change it to fit his purposes or dissolve it to accomplish his desires or changed feelings.
• “We must begin with God Himself. Your marriage is not your own. It belongs to God.”
• “Eve’s worth is based in the fact that she is an image-bearer of God, not that she came from man.”
• “Marriage is not the creation of man, so man has no authority to do with it as he wills.

His text for the evening was Genesis 2:15-25, and he consistently and constantly referenced back to this text.

We’re looking forward to three more sessions today with Dr. Azurdia. In another post I will see if I can provide the words to one of the songs we sang; it is easily one of the most powerful songs about Christ’s work on the cross that I have ever sung or heard.

I haven’t been posting much around here lately. I’m actually in a place right now in which I have just a ton of things to write about, but nothing is organized. It’s all jumbled in my head, and I haven’t been able to devote enough single-sitting time to work any of it out in an understandable fashion. I have links, ideas, plans, thoughts about books I’m reading, things the kids do and say, Bible verses that have jumped out lately, topics I’m discussing with folks at church, and so much more. Oh, I wish I could write with the clarity and completeness that Tim Challies does!

But tomorrow evening and Saturday promise to be exciting and humbling as Tami and I attend a marriage seminar led by Dr. Art Azurdia of Western Seminary, hosted by Living Water Community Church at the Lauralwood Baptist Church facilities here in Vancouver. Wow, that’s a mouthful.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Well last weekend I sorta moved the fence. Actually, moving the fence might have been easier, but the grass is finally greener: I replaced our front lawn. Sure, it’s only 400 square feet, but I found out I was only in shape for about 25 square feet…

When our house was built, and the front yard was landscaped, the sod was placed directly on top of sixteen billion tons of river rock and clay. And water bottles. And fast food wrappers. And left-over concrete. So I removed the old sod, garbage, old construction supplies, and a couple of hundred pounds of rock so I could place another patch of newer, better sod.

So now I have a wonderfully even, green, smooth lawn. And that lawn will take gallons of water to maintain. And pounds of fertilizer. And gallons of lawnmower gas. It took me about ten minutes to understand the complete folly of our obsession with lawns, but I live in a neighborhood that has a neighborhood association and architecture approval committee. And I think the rules eliminate the possibility of making the front yard useful, like these folks:

I was plagued last week with problems stemming from 1and1 Internet. I had seen numerous advertisements from them in some of the magazines I read, and their prices were quite low. I opened a business account with them earlier this year, but didn’t move my site and related domain registration until about a month ago.

When that all finally went through, there was a rather significant problem that I emailed them about. They assured me they knew about it and were working on it. Three days later I emailed again asking when it would be fixed, and again the said they were still working on it. After six days, it was still not fixed, and I was disgusted with the lack of service, especially on a business-level account. So I canceled and moved to BlueHost. Still a “discount” hosting company, but smaller and apparently more responsive. I encountered two issues, one of which they kindly explained was my fault and the other they proactively notified me about and resolved in short order.

But when I canceled my hosting plan with 1and1, they saw fit to also cancel my domain registration, dropping “thenorwoodhome.com” into a cancellation status for 30 days. I could either pay $40 to retrieve it through 1and1, or wait until it expired and try to be the first to get it back. So no site, and more importantly, no email except my seldom-used gmail account.

It ends up that this is not uncommon with 1and1. After over an hour on the phone with multiple agents, they will be refunding me the $40 recovery fee. And I’ll be transferring my domain name out just as soon as I can.

Phil Johnson says it so well. And he’s right. Here’s his opening sentence:

Nothing in the past half century has done more damage to the evangelical cause than the notion that the best way for Christians to influence society is by wielding our collective political clout

Saturday was my first climb of 2008. Brother-in-law Paul and I met up with John B. and family and headed east into the Gorge to climb Dog Mountain. The elevation gain at Dog Mountain is about 2800 feet in just over two miles, though based on the condition of my muscles yesterday and today I would have pegged it at about 7500 feet! I’m very sore, and my legs don’t seem to obey my commands as quickly as they did Friday before the hike.

But despite the soreness, the climb was more than worth it. Being in the woods and breathing that fresh, clean air was invigorating, and wondering at the incredible beauty of even a fallen creation was awe-inspiring. The flowers were not yet in bloom, but I expect that in the next three or four weeks the mountainside will be completely covered with the balsam root flowers, which make this great hike even more compelling.

A number of weeks ago, Tim Challies identified the third Reading Classics Together book that he would be reading: “The Seven Sayings of the Savior on the Cross” by A. W. Pink. Tim will be posting comments on a new chapter each week until he completes the book, and invites anyone reading along to contribute their comments. Today was Tim’s first post on the book, and he addressed the introduction. It is not my intention to write full reviews or summaries of each chapter. Rather, I expect to point out a few things that impacted me from the readings.

This is the first book by Pink that I have read, and I can already tell that it will not be the last. He handles the Bible carefully, understanding that each word has genuine meaning, and he extracts thoughts that seem obvious in retrospect, but are often missed or ignored in casual or careless reading. This dedicated approach to understanding Scripture has already been an encouragement to me.

In the introduction to the book, Pink devotes significant space to pointing out evidences that Christ willingly gave his life as opposed to having it taken from him. Three of these seven distinct evidences are Christ’s words “I thirst,” Christ bowing his head and giving up the ghost, and the breaking of the legs of the two other crucified with him.

From John 19:28 (”After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), ‘I thirst.’”) Pink asserts that Christ was in full control of himself on the cross, not powerless, exhausted, or otherwise reduced in mental capacity. As Pink explains, after Christ had hung on the cross for six hours, he reviewed in his mind the prophecies related to his passion and found one yet unfulfilled: Psalm 69:21, which says “They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.” So Jesus, recognizing that he had fulfilled everything to this point, said “I thirst.” This points to “our Lord’s complete self-possession” during the crucifixion, and supports the premise that his life was not being taken, but was being given.

The second of these seven evidences that struck me was based on John 19:30: “When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, ‘It is finished,’ and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” Pink states that from this, we know that prior to this point, Christ’s head was held erect. “It was no impotent sufferer that hung there in a swoon.” Additionally, the scripture states that Christ “bowed” his head, indicating a conscious act, as opposed to a helpless, weak dropping of his head. Christ’s head did not fall, he bowed it, showing again his complete self-possession. “How sublime was his carriage even on the Tree! What superb composure did He evidence.”

Finally, in the breaking of the legs of the two thieves, we see a third evidence that Christ willingly gave his life. All three of these men had been on the cross for the same amount of time. Pink explains that crucifixion is a slow death, with victims often living for two or three days. Yet six hours after it began, with the two thieves still very much alive, Christ was dead. This is yet another proof that Christ’s life was given, not taken from him.

These three evidences help verify that Christ did indeed lay down his life, and support the point that Christ’s death was very different from any other death.

I’ve already started into the first chapter, and am anxious to post about it. But in keeping with Tim’s schedule, I will wait until next week.