The Wit And Wisdom of Dr. Dorsett

Every Wednesday and Friday at 8am, I have the privilege to sit under one of the most entertaining, energetic and passionate sixty-five plus men I can imagine. Dr. Lyle W. Dorsett is a historian and theologian, having taught history in secular universities before becoming a Christian. He is a premier C.S. Lewis and John Wesley scholar and his also written biographies on D.L. Moody, A.W. Tozer, and Billy Sunday, among others. He is an ever-interesting mix of, a Charismatic Wesleyan High-Church Anglican, and pastor of Christ the King Anglican Church, which meets at Beeson's chapel on Sundays. He is often less of a professor and more of a general giving marching orders. I differ from him many ways theologically, but have learned a great deal from him. He has made me more resolutely Reformed in my theology, while at the same time making me more resolutely ecumenical in my thinking about church practice. Above all else, he is a warm, real, compassionate, heart-on-his-sleeve kind of man. A couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to talk with him in his office about power evangelism, church planting and Wesleyan theology. Though he is a busy man, we talked for over an hour and a half!

So I thought I would share some of the wisdom he has passed on to our 8am class, which I quickly jotted down to later consider (and share).

"The simple truth is that worship is elementary until it begins to take on the quality of admiration."

On the same subject, he quoted A.W. Tozer: "God has few admirers among Christians today."

"In churches today, we have too many Bible deists, those who read the Bible without the Holy Spirit."

"When you climb up into that pulpit on Sunday, you are who you've been all week."

"Ministry is not glamorous; as long as you think it is, you're not doing God's work."

"It's the hobgoblin of little minds to insist that we know everything."

"If you know God, you can't hide him." To illustrate this, he told the story of when he first met his wife. He couldn't help but "share" her with people, his parents, his best friends. We ought to be more like that regarding Jesus.

"Why don't we pray regarding our ministry? Are we too proud to pray? Or too busy for God? Prayer is our lifeline to the Spirit."

"Roll Tide? Someday nobody will care. Roll Church! The gates of hell will not prevail against it!" (that's a hard one for me)

"If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. If they perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees. Let no one go there unwarned or unprayed for." (that's a classic Charles Spurgeon quote that sits framed on his desk.)

I finish with a story he told about a friend's church that had an old woman known by the children as "Old 100" because no one quite knew how old she was, possibly a hundred years old. Every week during the sermon, she sat in the front row, hunched over. If the pastor took too long with an introduction, she would mutter "Lift him up," referring to Jesus. If she wasn't heard, she started speaking louder and louder, "lift him up, get him up." She wanted to hear about none but Jesus. On one occasion, a visiting preacher started touting himself and his ministry. This was eventually interrupted by Old 100 shouting, "Lift him up! Get him up!" from the front row.

A Prayer for a Holy Ambition

For me and everyone else who is searching out God's calling in their lives:

"Lord, I will not let you go until you give me a holy ambition. Forbid that I would waste my life. Even in these student days, don't let me waste it, Lord. Show me your glory! Show me your passion for your glory. Draw me into it, O God! I don't care about being famous; I want to be faithful. And as small and insignificant as I feel, O God, I want my life to count. So show me, grant me, a holy ambition."

- John Piper

A Brief History of God and Man

First, a biographical note. I am loving Beeson! Receently, I was reading in the library for what seemed like an hour, but was actually three hours. As I walked out of Samford's excellent library through the brilliant campus, I thought about how much I love reading about the glory of Christ. That being said, it is a ton of work. I love the reading, but it is hard to find time and muster up the energy to do it all. Plus, I'm social and I want to spend time with my roommates and the people I'm meeting in school. It can be difficult to find that balance.

My first exam in seminary was to write an essay summarizing redemptive history as revealed in the entire Bible. It was the kind of thing I was glad I did, and I'm glad it's over. It was a great way to start seminary and undoubtedly the most important essay I've ever written. The assignment was not to summarize my own interpretation of the Bible, but to basically "regurgitate" Graeme Goldsworthy's According To Plan, a brilliant Biblical Theology. Since I have so little time to write anything on here due to reading, writing and learning Greek, I figured I would just put my practice essay on here for you all to read. This is something like what I wrote on the exam, except completely different (this is a rough draft, and it's rough in grammar and content, but you can at least get the idea. It's long, but not ridiculously long, since I only had fifty minutes in class to write it all out. This is my seminary education being passed down, and I can't understate the importance of understanding how the Bible, as a whole, fits together. So please read and enjoy!

1. God’s covenant with man, his commitment to redeem and recreate a kingdom for himself, is the most dominant, over-arching theme of the Bible. This commitment is perhaps best summarized by the statement repeated throughout Scripture: “I will be their God, and they will be my people” (Ex 29, Jer 31, 2 Cor 6, Heb 8, Rev 21). There is but one covenant which has a number of different expressions in the course of redemptive history. Each expression was initiated by God, the superior party, but in all instances, something was required of man: obedience. This covenant was perfected in the person and work of the God-man Jesus Christ, who lived a perfectly obedient life and bore the wrath of God on the cross so that God might be reconciled to his people forever. All other expressions of the covenant foreshadow this new covenant.

2. In the beginning, God created, according to his word, all things in right relationship with him. Creation itself shows the fullness of God’s sovereignty and freedom (Gen 1). The best of all of God’s creations was humankind, whom he chose to give his image that they might partake in a special communion with their transcendent, wonderful Creator. Instead, Adam and Eve, representatives of all humankind, rejected God’s word as being truthful and trustworthy. The choice to rebel in Genesis 3 was a failed attempt to become as God, to become the primary authority, causing all relationships of the kingdom of God to be dislocated. In Genesis 3:15, however, we find the first hint the gospel, a hint that God himself will make things right.

3. In Genesis 6, the Bible states that “Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” Despite the wickedness of humankind, God chose one family to be his instrument to preserve righteousness in the world. He made a covenant with Noah and his family to save them from his wrath (in this case, the flood) if they would obey, and it was their benefit to do so. The nature of God’s grace is that it is unconditional; Noah did not do anything to deserve receiving an escape from God’s wrath, but God initiated with him a covenant.

4. God, in this same grace, calls Abraham away from his country and kindred to be the great father of many nations, a promise which is ultimately accomplished through Jesus. His electing grace continues to younger sons in Abraham’s line, Isaac and Jacob. Jacob’s sons then become the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel. Through providential circumstances involving great suffering (Gen 50), the eleventh son, Joseph, is ordained to save his family from starvation, thus preserving the chosen, Messianic line that will come through his brother, Judah.

5. God purposely brought his people to Egypt so that he might display his power. He institutes the Passover to show the importance of his children (his chosen ones) and decrees that his redemptive acts should always be celebrated. With the exodus, he shows that he will not let Egypt or anything else stand in the way of his covenant, but will do everything necessary to accomplish his purposes. The blood of the lamb is an escape from judgment for God’s covenant people and the blood of the Lamb of God gives the elect an escape from judgment, thus celebrated continually by the Lord’s Supper. His redemption of Israel from an alien power, Egypt, foreshadows his redemption of his chosen from an alien power, the devil.

6. God’s acts of faithfulness towards his people require God’s people to respond faithfully. After the exodus, God reminds the Jews of what he has done for them (Ex 19). On this basis, the law is given so that God’s people might respond appropriately. It also reveals to them their inadequacies to keep the law, from which they can only be freed by the shedding of blood, and can only approach the holy God through a mediator. Christ came to establish himself as the eternal, perfect mediator through the shedding of his blood.

7. In the events that happen in the wilderness following the exodus, we see God’s longsuffering love. Though Israel rebels and is disciplined for forty years, they are ultimately allowed into the promised land under Joshua, for God is a God who keeps his covenants in spite of the faithlessness of his people. Thus where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. God then appoints judges to save the people from the folly of not submitting to God’s law. Also, the examples of Rahab and Ruth are the beginning of the revelation of God’s purposes to bring Gentiles into his kingdom as well, a theme that runs throughout the Old Testament and is fulfilled Jesus’ death for every nation, tribe and tongue.

8. After the judges, Israel lusts for an earthly king. God gives them the king the want, Saul, who fails. Then he provides his chosen king, David, who is a foreshadowing of the perfect King to come, the Christ. God makes a covenant with David summarizing the previous covenants and promising a great King, the Messiah, through David’s line. God fulfills his covenant partially through Solomon, who builds the temple to be God’s dwelling place, but ultimately fulfills his covenant through the temple veiled in human flesh (Jn 2:19-22). During the time of the early kings, important psalms of praise and wisdom literature are written. Both teach of the glory and attributes of God for wisdom and worship. Jesus is the full and final revelation of God’s glory and wisdom (Heb 1).

9. Among good and poor kings of Israel and Judah, God appoints prophets to speak his very words. Such prophets object to the faithlessness of God’s people in keeping their part of the covenant, for which the exile is a result. During this time of exile, however, great Messianic promises are given, including Jeremiah 31, one of the most important text of the Old Testament, which declares that though God’s people have failed again and again, God himself will see to it that they uphold their end of the covenant. Later prophets continue to instruct Israel and prophesy concerning the details of the Messiah, but the Old Testament is a book that in itself is not completed. It hinges on the hope of the Messiah coming to restore God’s people.

10. In the gospels, Jesus of Nazareth presents himself as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy as the true prophet, priest, king and wise man. After the resurrection, he explains to his disciples that the Old Testament scriptures were all about him (Luke 24:25-7). He teaches that he is the true temple (John 2:19), the true Israel and last Adam (Luke 3) by succeeding in overcoming temptation where man failed, and Word of God incarnate, the same who created (Jn 1). All that he was, he was on our behalf. God’s promises, fulfilled by his life, death and resurrection, were all to redeem and recreate a people for himself.

11. The kingdom of God, foreshadowed in the Old Testament, is fulfilled in the book of Acts by the spreading of Jesus’ kingdom, which is not of this world. In Acts, we see regeneration that first came in Jesus is now available and spreading to all nations. In Acts, the Holy Spirit takes the place of the bodily presence of Jesus so that God is still with his people and promises to be until the end of the age (when he will dwell more visibly with his people).

12. The New Testament epistles help us to understand how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament, how we access salvation by faith, how this good news changes our individual lives and communities. They explain the relationship and differences of what Christ did to save his people (justification), the saving work he’s doing in them (sanctification) and that one day he will finally save them (glorification). Just as God’s covenant community received the blessings of what the priestly mediator did on their behalf, so Christians are recipients of all the blessings in and with Christ Jesus.

13. In the book of Revelation, God has given humankind a great gift through John’s vision, the ability to see the end, though we are not there yet. The end is not really the end, but the beginning of God dwelling and reigning with his people forever in a more visible way than ever before. It is the consummation of the gospel inaugurated on the cross, the regeneration of all things into their final glorified form and the reason for all the expressions of the covenant throughout redemptive history, including the new covenant of Jesus’ blood.

Evangelism, Sovereignty and Manipulation

If you've talked to me much the last couple months, since I've returned from Ireland, then you've probably heard me talk about this or something close. When I returned to America, I was appalled with the way most American Evangelical Christians do evangelism.

The tendency is to emphasize how easy it is to "accept Jesus", and not consider that it was not at all easy for Jesus to endure the cross and separation from the Father to save us. This leads to a weak, minimalist, man-centered theology. Moreover, I have personally witnessed preachers emotionally manipulate congregations into making a decision. While a decision to follow Christ is a part of our salvation, the cause of our decision can only come by regeneration of the Holy Spirit, not through a counterfeit emotional experience. But so many practice evangelism as if we can trick men into being Christians, and as if we can fool God by holding Him accountable to a one-time decision. If we are primarily saved by our decision to follow Jesus, then what happens when we decide not to follow him, which is what we decide every time we sin?

Yet many preachers evangelize in this way in order to see results, results not necessarily to boast in their efforts, but in order to see measurable progress. So often, sadly, our faith is contingent upon seeing God work, yet we are called to trust that God is accomplishing "all things according to the counsel of his will" (Eph 1:11), even when we can't see it. It takes a greater level of faith to do real evangelism, not manipulation. We need to trust that God is more interested in glorifying himself than we are.

Until recently, I had not clearly and directly recognized how our view of God's sovereignty played into evangelism. For my Evangelism and Church Growth class at Beeson Divinity, we read a book by J.I. Packer titled Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. Packer explains that a high view of God's sovereignty over all things does not inhibit man's responsibility, nor evangelism, but quite the opposite. He explains:

So far from inhibiting evangelism, faith in the sovereignty of God's government and grace is the only thing that can sustain it, for it is the only thing that can give us the resilience that we need if we are to evangelize boldly and consistently and not be daunted by temporary setbacks. So far from being weakened by this faith, therefore, evangelism will inevitably be weak and lack staying power without it.

Concerning manipulation, Packer, writing in 1959 apparently foresaw what a low view of God's sovereignty would create in Evangelical Christianity, for he describes what is common today:

If we regarded it as our job, not simply to present Christ, but actually to produce converts--to evangelize, not only faithfully, but also successfully--our approach to evangelism would become pragmatic and calculating...(If this were true) We must have...an irresistible technique for inducing a response...And we should evaluate all evangelism, our own and other people's, not only by the message preached, but also of visible results...Thus our philosophy of evangelism would become terrifyingly similar to the philosophy of brainwashing.

Packer goes on to say,

It is not right when we regard ourselves as responsible for securing converts, and look to our own enterprise and techniques to accomplish what only God can accomplish. To do that is to intrude ourselves into the office of Holy Ghost, and to exalt ourselves to the agents of the new birth. And the point that we must see is this: only by letting our knowledge of God's sovereignty control the way in which we plan, and pray, and work in his service, can we avoid becoming guilty of this fault. For where we are not consciously relying on God, there we shall inevitably be found relying on ourselves. And the spirit of self-reliance is a blight on evangelism.

We are called to proclaim the gospel, in word and deed, everywhere and all the time with heartfelt love and compassion for all. But it is dangerous when we operate under the false pretense that it depends on us. Instead, we go forth declaring the victory Jesus already won at the cross! Go forth and make disciples with the conviction that our mission cannot fail as long as God is on his throne!