Upcoming Apologetics Series

First Baptist Church of Lakewood will be hosting an outstanding six-week apologetics series entitled Uncovering the Christian Faith.

The series will take place Wednesday nights from 6:30 to 8:00 pm, beginning the first week of September. The event is free! Childcare and kid's youth programs are also provided. Invite your friends and family members!

Lectures include:

September 5 - Arguments for the Existence of God, by Dr. J.P. Moreland

September 12 - The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, by Dr. Fred Sanders

September 19 - Introduction to Apologetics and the Resurrection of Jesus, by Dr. Craig Hazen

September 26 - The Case for Intelligent Design, by Dr. John Bloom

October 3 - Why God Allows Evil, by Dr. Clay Jones

October 10 - Christianity and the Challenge of World Religions, by Dr. Craig Hazen

Location: First Baptist Church of Lakewood
5336 Arbor Road
Long Beach, CA
Phone: (562) 420-1471

Visit First Baptist Church of Lakewood or Biola Apologetics Events for any additional information. Audio recordings of the lectures will also be made available.

Celebrate Christmas with a Family Devotional

(Biola.edu) by Fred Sanders

Reflect upon the importance of Jesus' birth

Christmas is a big deal, and Christians know that they should celebrate it in a big way. In fact, there is something strange about how big a deal we are supposed to make of it. The most important things Jesus Christ did for our salvation, after all, did not happen at the beginning of his life, but at the end of it. His death and resurrection are the central events for our faith, and those lie at the other end of the gospels from the nativity story. At the end of the gospels, Jesus Christ does everything: He takes up his cross, lays down his life for us, offers himself up to the Father, descends into the grave, rises from it, and ascends to the right hand of God the Father.

But at the beginning of the gospels, he just lies there, doing nothing. He is a baby. There is a flurry of activity around him: Mary and Joseph are busy, the angels are running up and down between heaven and earth with messages, and shepherds are coming to adore him. Off in the distance are government censuses, murderous kings, and wise men from the East. Ancient prophecies are ringing in everybody’s ears as they come to fulfillment.

But baby Jesus does nothing. In the Christmas play, you don’t need to cast any young actor in the role of baby Jesus, because there is nothing for him to do. A doll is perfectly suited to carry out all the actions of the little Lord Jesus, because the script does not call for him to do or say anything whatsoever. He is carried around a little bit, but mostly he just lies there in the manger, sleeping.

And that passiveness is the secret of why Christmas is so important. It is not a celebration of what Jesus did, or of what he does, but of who he is. At the cross, Jesus accomplished salvation through what he did. That’s why the heart of the Christian gospel really does lie a few months away in our church calendar, in Easter. But Christmas recognizes that all of his work on our behalf is only possible because of who he is: The eternal Son of God, who took on our human nature in order to work out our salvation.

Of course it’s possible to focus on who Jesus is, even while telling the story of his death and resurrection. But at Christmas, it is unavoidable: the baby is not doing anything, and we can only stand amazed at who he is. Easter may be the festival of what Jesus did, but Christmas is the festival of who Jesus is. That is why so many of the Christmas carols come back to the note of simple adoration: “Come, let us adore him.” It is also why so many of them pose questions to us like “What child is this?” Adoration for who Jesus is, rather than thanksgiving for what he does, is the secret of the strange hush that steals over us at the center of this holiday. It is why all we can do is celebrate, gather with loved ones, and exchange gifts and gratefulness.

In My Utmost For His Highest, Oswald Chambers says, “After the amazing delight and liberty of realizing what Jesus Christ does, comes the impenetrable darkness of realizing Who He is.” It is impenetrable darkness because Jesus is not just anybody. He is not just another prophet from God, or a faithful servant, or a messenger. He does not just step into the role of being the son of God for a while. He is the eternal Son of God, the Word who was in the beginning, the Word who is both with God, and is God in person.

Reading: John 1:1-14

Happy 500th Birthday John Calvin!

(Biola.edu) Fred Sanders

July 10, 2009 is the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin. Celebrations and commemorative publications abound to mark this milestone, from a huge conference in Geneva to new biographies and new editions of some of his writings.

John Calvin occupies a place of honor among theologians, as one of the greatest teachers in the history of the Christian church. His legacy is well worth celebrating.

Yet “Calvinism” has become a curse word in the vocabulary of many people, and the name of John Calvin carries unpleasant baggage. Far from being inclined to celebrate his quincentennial, people are inclined to hate John Calvin without ever having read his books or learned anything about him. Marilynne Robinson, author of the Pulitzer-winning novel Gilead, lamented this rough treatment of Calvin in an essay she published in her 1998 bookThe Death of Adam. In her essay, Robinson referred to the reformer by his French name, “Jean Cauvin,” just to “free the discussion of the almost comically negative associations of ‘John Calvin,’ which anglicizes the Latin name under which he wrote, Ioannes Calvinus.” She calls him Cauvin because “the name Calvin …is so burdened that I choose to depart from custom.”

“People know to disapprove of him,” Robinson laments, “though not precisely why they should, and they know he afflicted us with certain traits the world might well wish we were in fact afflicted with, like asceticism and an excess of ethical rigor.” In her final bid to rehabilitate his reputation and win a fair hearing for him, Robinson mocks the popular misunderstanding of Calvin:

Many of us know that Calvinism was a very important tradition among us. Yet all we know about John Calvin was that he was an eighteenth-century Scotsman, a prude and obscurantist with a buckle on his hat, possibly a burner of witches, certainly the very spirit of capitalism. Our ignorant parody of history affirms our ignorant parody of religious or “traditional” values. This matters, because history is precedent and permission, and in this important instance, as in many others, we have lost plain accuracy, not to speak of complexity, substance, and human inflection. We want to return to the past, and we have made our past a demonology and not a human narrative.

These are words worth hearing from one of our greatest living novelists. Marilynne Robinson is an artist whose imagination has been honed and polished by her Reformed theology. But Calvin does not belong only to the Calvinists; his contribution to all thoughtful Christians is too great to belong only to those who confess themselves to be Reformed. Speaking for myself, I am a Wesleyan theologian, and I dissent from the theology of Calvin at three or four (or maybe five) crucial points. But I have learned more from John Calvin than from any other theologian, especially about the great, central doctrines of the Christian faith.

Calvin's greatest contributions to the whole Christian world are: (1.) His Institutes of the Christian Religion, a classic, comprehensive text of Christian theology, (2.) His massive commentaries, a 22-volume exploration of the Bible, and (3.) His theology itself, centered on the glory of God.

Calvin’s coat of arms had the image of two hands hold up a burning heart, with the motto Cor meum tibi offero, Domine, prompte et sincere. “My heart I offer to you, O Lord, promptly and sincerely.” That is the legacy of John Calvin, and the reason he continues to be a teacher of the entire church, 500 years after his birth.

Read more on Calvin and his contributions to the Christian world.

Written by Fred Sanders, Associate Professor of Theology, Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University.

The opinion and viewpoint expressed in this article is that of the author. As a diverse community and within the context of our own theological convictions and community standards, Biola University encourages freedom of thought and expression by its faculty as first responders to relevant news and events.