Posts by Nick Batzig
Everyone is seeking satisfaction in created things or experiences--whether it is a person, a job, money, status, music, family, etc. We are all seeking satisfaction. The reality is that God has created us to find satisfaction in Himself alone--the fountain of living water. In order to cure us of our idolatrous pleasure seeking, God became Man and thirsted under the wrath of God that we deserve so that we might come to Him by faith and drink of the living waters than never run dry. Jesus is an infinite fountain of soul-satisfying grace. We must learn to come to Him--and to that fountain of living water--again and again. It is only as we do so that we will find an "object still more alluring" than that with which we are now seeking to satify ourselves.
Not long after I was converted, many would tell me how my life was a beautiful picture of what Jesus had spoken about in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-31). It wasn't until years later that I came to understand that the parable of the prodigal son wasn't merely the parable of the prodigal son it was also the parable of the prodigal sons. Both sons in the story were spiritually far from the Father. One of them repented and came home to God. The other was inwardly rebellious--thinking that he deserved the blessings of the Father. He was in the home, but his heart was in the far country of self-righteousness. Still, more years passed before I came to understand that the parable is, in its truest and fullest sense, more profoundly rich in it's purpose--it is, in fact, the parable of the three sons.
We must return again and again to this precious fountain of redeeming truth. The Savior has drunk to the full the cup of God's wrath so that we might drink the cup of His blessings. We must learn to again and again remember what it is that we deserve from the hand of God and what our Savior took upon Himself for our salvation. It is only as we do that we are drawn into deeper communion with Him. As R.A. Finlayson put it so helpfully: “As I look upon Him whom I pierced…sin becomes personal and the Savior becomes as personal as sin, and you and He meet together, because you are the sinner that He came to save.”
The sermons of the great preachers of church history are some of most extraordinary treasures that God has placed within the church’s reserve; yet, at the same time, they are some of the most neglected.
The Puritan theologian, Thomas Manton, once said: “The great skill of Christians is to find the New Testament prefigured in the Old, and the Old Testament fulfilled in the New Testament." What helps us most in this endeavor is that it doesn’t take long when reading through the NT to come across one of the 250+ citations of the OT. As we study the way in which the Apostles interpreted the OT we actually discover the Holy Spirit’s infallible interpretation of the OT passage. The principles of interpretation that we glean from the apostolic examples then serve as a guideline for how we ought to interpret other portions of the OT.
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