Jonny Gibson Interview - Be Thou My Vision

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Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and on Wednesdays, as you know, dear listeners, we like to have interviews, and I like to interview pastors and theologians and authors, and today is no different, since it�s

Wednesday, at least when we�ll air this show. Just a brief introduction. When I wake up in the morning,

I grab a cup of coffee, I go sit on the couch, and I read the New Testament in Greek for the passage that I�ll be preaching that Sunday.

I read some Old Testament passages and other passages. I have my Heidelberg Catechism with me.

Sometimes I read maybe the Summary of Christian Faith by Birkhoff, and then I�m off for the day after I�ve read my

Bible. Well, I have a new book now, especially the last six days, and I imagine the next 300 days, that I bring with me and sit down and read, and you�re going to need this book, dear

Christian, and you�re going to want to pick up a copy of it, and today we have a wonderful guest on, author of this book and compilation,

Jonathan Gibson. Jonathan, welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Thanks for having me on the radio program,

Mike. Tell me, Jonathan, can I call you Johnny? Yeah, call me Johnny. Only my mother calls me

Jonathan, and that�s when I�m in trouble. You got your PhD at Cambridge. What was your focus of study there?

I worked on the inner biblical allusions and exegesis in the Hebrew text of Malachi.

So how does Malachi allude to, or quote, without naming Moses, earlier parts of the

Old Testament? Okay, well, that�s excellent. I picked up a copy of Be Thou My Vision, your 31 -day guide, kind of a liturgical guide, so that people could have a daily worship time.

Tell me, I think I remember reading this developed, or this was happening because of COVID, and you were trying to figure out a routine.

What was the origin of the book? Yeah, it was during COVID, the lockdowns, as we all remember, sort of March, April, May 2020, and I had more time to think about my quiet times and to do them.

And I started to become a bit dissatisfied with them. They felt very bland and boring, and I found myself quite distracted in them.

I�m sure that�s something we all struggle with, the distraction or the directionless aspect of quiet times.

And so I thought, is there a better way to actually do these? My quiet times up until then had been, you know, say a quick prayer, open my

Bible, read it. And then say some prayers of petition. And so it was prayer, reading prayer.

And I decided to think about how I might actually shape my daily quiet time to be a bit more like a mini church service with elements that we do at church in my quiet time.

So I put together some calls of worship from the Old and New Testaments. I looked for some prayers of adoration from people in church history, had a reading of the law, confession of sin, again, a prayer from church history.

Then I added in creeds, the Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed.

And I also added in a catechism question a day, either from the Heidelberg Catechism or the

Westminster Shorter Catechism. And then a prayer of illumination from someone in church history.

Then I would have my Bible reading. And then a prayer of intercession from someone in church history, like a colic in the

Book of Common Prayer. And then I would say my own prayers for personal things, for church, for world.

And then I'd close with the Lord's Prayer. And I find when I actually did that, that it was like a mini church service.

I find my devotional life really rejuvenated. And I find it far less boring or bland.

I find myself more engaged in what I was doing. And I find myself wanting to do it more and more each day and not wanting to miss a day, because I put together these 31 days that you can cycle through every month.

And so that's really how it arose. It arose out of my own dissatisfaction with my own quiet times.

And I can only speak for myself, but I find it to be a great help in my devotional life since.

Johnny, I'm very thankful to have a copy in my hands and have a bunch for the church here that I ordered for our congregants.

I'm only disappointed in the fact that I didn't come up with this idea first. And you know what

I think is wonderful about this guide? You know, you can only make a book so thick, right?

And so you have 31 days. But this could propel people who are listening and who then read the book.

They do their own, right? You think, okay, is there a format? Is there kind of a guide for me? How should

I do this? You probably read every day in 15 or 20 minutes. And so I'm very encouraged by this.

Big picture, Johnny. Let's talk about means of grace and daily quiet times and stuff like that.

Of course, in the Reformed tradition, there'd be a means of grace, a preaching of God's word on the

Lord's day and sacraments. And maybe for Anglo -Scottish, you add in prayer there. And we understand the importance of that.

But I personally think as a pastor and you, of course, writing this book, that it's important for congregants to read their

Bibles. I mean, if we didn't have a Bible, you know, 800 years ago or a thousand years ago, that's one thing.

But we have our Bibles now. Could you talk to the audience a little bit about the importance of reading your

Bible at home, not ignoring the means of grace at preaching and sacraments, but why is it important for this daily study?

Not in a legalistic fashion, but the importance of it. Yeah, I mean,

I say that in my introduction, that this book is not meant to replace church worship on the Lord's day. It's meant to actually enhance it and get us better prepared for it.

But for me, it's like you're saying, it's both and. We should be reading our Bibles devotionally during the week, because in God's kind providence in the last four or five hundred years, we've all been able to get a

Bible in our own language and at a price that we can afford. And so we should be reading it ourselves and then hearing it preached at church.

You know, in the Old Testament, it's interesting, Isaac, when he is about to meet Rebecca, it says that he'd come home from a day's work and he was out in the field meditating.

Now, what was he meditating on? Well, I think it's reasonable to think that he was meditating on God's covenant promises to him and to his father,

Abraham, and to all that God had done in his life. So he was meditating on God's word. And then you see how

David spoke of God's word in the Psalms. You think of Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the mockers, but his delight is in the law of the

Lord. And on his law, he meditates day and night. It's the language of personal devotion on a regular daily basis.

Psalm 119, your word, I've hid in my heart that I might not sin against you. And so in the Old Testament, we have these examples of people reading

Scripture and meditating on it on their own in a time of devotion. And then you have it in the

New Testament where Jesus will say to the Pharisees, have you not read? Have you not read?

And he's basically saying, have you not been reading God's word and meditating on it personally?

And then Peter encourages believers to, you know, give themselves to feeding and the milk of God's word, the pure spiritual food of God's word.

So there's actually exhortations in Scripture and examples in Scripture that this is something we ought to be doing.

And yes, we get it primarily on the Lord's Day preached from the pulpit, but it's a bit like, you know,

God's word is spoken of like manna from heaven. And when God led his people through the wilderness, they had manna every day of the week.

They were to collect on six days of the week and collect extra for the Sabbath, but they were to eat bread every day of the week.

And that's really like God's word, isn't it? We need manna from heaven every day because we are pilgrims like the

Israelites of old, pilgrims on our way to the celestial city above, and we need to be fed each day.

And if we don't feed on God's word, then we're going to starve and we're going to get hungry and go look for food elsewhere.

And so I think that's why it's really important to sustain and nourish our spiritual lives, that we have a regular time with the

Lord each day to open our Bibles and hear him speak to us. AMEN. We're talking to Johnny Gibson today, ordained minister of the

International Presbyterian Church in the UK, and associate professor of Old Testament at Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia.

Johnny, I think one of the benefits that I see to this book that's in addition to this great enhancement for personal quiet time, for lack of a better word,

I come from a background, and I don't know your background, but many people I know, the liturgy of the church, their first church or two, was simply maybe a hello, how are you, and an introduction, maybe an announcement, 35 minutes of praise songs, and then a sermon.

That was the liturgy. I mean, every church has a liturgy. I particularly like this because as a pastor, we've added things to our worship service that maybe a normal congregant might think, well, why is there a confession of sin or an assurance of pardon?

I like this, Johnny, because with the call to worship, adoration, reading of God's law, confession of sin, assurance of pardon, creed, praise, catechism, prayer,

Scripture reading, another prayer for intercession, and then the Lord's Prayer, I think it's helping congregants see that flow for a corporate worship service on the

Lord's Day. So for that, I commend you. Thank you for that. Hmm, yeah, I came across a phrase in Brian Chappell's book,

Christ -Centered Worship, many years ago, structures tell stories. Structures tell stories.

And the structure of our church services, whatever the liturgy is, written or unwritten, it's telling the story, a story.

And I think some services convey the story that worship is all about what we do for God, and we initiate it.

So we begin praying or we begin singing. But actually, Christian worship begins with God speaking to us.

And so that's why I have the call to worship as the very first element. It's not us beginning with a prayer or us beginning with a song.

It's us hearing from God in His Word as He calls us to His worship through His Word.

And so I think having this structure that I've developed based on some of the Reformation liturgies is a helpful way to actually hear the story of the gospel.

It is God who calls us to worship. We respond in adoration for who He is as Creator, Redeemer, Consummator, what

He's done in history. And then we hear His law read for us, and it exposes our sin.

The Ten Commandments or the Shema, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, the might and strength of Jesus, saying the greatest commandment is to love

God with heart and soul. And the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. As we hear the law read, we realize we haven't kept the law.

We actually need God's forgiveness. And so that naturally leads into a confession of sin.

And then having confessed our sins, it's good to affirm what it is or to hear God's comfort in the gospel with an assurance of pardon, and then to affirm what it is about the gospel that gives us that assurance of pardon.

What is it about the gospel we believe? So it's good to affirm one of the creeds of who

God is as the Triune God and what He's done in His Son, the Lord Jesus. So there's a deliberate structure to this book and to many churches that follow a

Reformed liturgy. And it's really a structure that's teaching us the story of the gospel.

I love that, Johnny. You know, day by day as we read our Bibles, it's important because we don't have the gospel written on our hearts.

We live in a law world, and that's just the way it works. And all of a sudden, we need to be reminded, oh, for instance, in day six that I read today, confession of sin, you included a

Martin Luther quote. And in part, it says, for this I rejoice, praise and thank you,

O God. Without cost and out of pure grace, you have given me this boundless blessing in your dear

Son. Through Him you take sin, death and hell from me and do grant me all that belongs to Him.

Amen, Martin Luther. It's just encouraging to hear those words, especially if we're honest with ourselves and realize how imperfect even our best righteousness is.

So I think that's good. Additionally, Johnny, you know what I like? I think about things in a practical fashion often is family worship time.

Many men that I know want to be leaders. They would like to sit down at the dinner table and talk about the

Lord and His word. And they don't really know what to do, right? Do they have to study all night? Do they need to know a subjective genitive, objective genitive?

What do we do? And I think this would encourage men who are listening that they'd like to step up and be a leader for family worship for a time around the dinner table of what to say or do.

This is a great introduction for them. And if they want to mold it and shape it in the way they want to with their family, they're free to.

But I think that's an additional benefit to your book. Yes. I've had one or two people say to me that what they like about it is it doesn't require much work on the participant's part as to try to think about what they're going to do today for their quiet time or, in this case, family devotion.

It's actually laid out for you. You just keep following the format each day and reading out the prayers and reading the scriptures and saying the various parts.

So, yes, I think that's what's an advantage to us. We're all busy people, aren't we?

Especially fathers, husbands, heads of home. We're all busy. We've got a lot on our minds.

And so at family worship in the morning or in the evening, whenever we choose to do it, it's helpful just to have something that actually is already prepared for us.

And we just need to lead in leading the family in it. And as you say, it's very flexible.

You don't have to do every single element. There's some nights with my wife and our son,

Ben, when we do it on the Lord's Day to close the Lord's Day. We don't always do the creed because we've done the creed at church, for example.

So there's bits that you can leave out if time is of the essence. And also, if you've got really young children, you can adapt it to be a bit shorter than it is in the book.

But at least all the elements are there and you can choose on that particular day which ones you want to cover and which ones you can leave out.

So true. I have a personal confession, and then I'll ask you the personal question. I have not yet sung out loud the

Gloria Patri when I'm doing this devotional in the morning. Do you sing it out loud when you do it? Depending where I am.

If I'm in my own office or study, I do. If I'm at work here, I sort of whisper singing.

There's such a thing. So I do. Yeah, we sing it every night at our family worship in the evenings.

It's a family. And our little kids, Zach and Hannah, are three and two, the youngest two.

And they love it. They sort of roam the table because they're so young. We don't expect them to sit still for 20 minutes.

So we let them roam. But as soon as we start singing the Gloria Patri, myself, Jackie, and my oldest son,

Ben, they get drawn back in and they love to sing it. And even though they're two and three years old, what it's doing, actually, is preparing them for Sunday worship because we sing the

Gloria Patri in Sunday worship. And so they actually love to sing it in church.

And doing it in the home actually prepares them for worship on the Lord's Day. For folk who are not familiar with the

Gloria Patri, it's, Glory be to God the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

It's a short Trinitarian hymn that's been used in church worship in the

Christian church for nearly 2 ,000 years, from 3rd, 4th, 5th century.

It started to be used and said, and then it was chanted. And there have been different tunes put to it.

If you Google Gloria Patri or on YouTube or something like that, you can listen to a nice version of it and then get the tune and know how to say it.

There's also an audio book available of Be Thine My Vision. And I read through 31 days, including scripture readings.

And I don't sing it because I'm tone deaf. I'm a jailhouse singer behind a few bars looking for a key.

But Crossways put together a lovely audio book, which has some really nice music, which there's an artist that sings the

Gloria Patri. So you could listen on the audio book and get the tune from there as well.

Wonderful. Today we're talking to Johnny Gibson, the author of Be Thou My Vision, a liturgy for daily worship, published by Crossway.

And by the way, Crossway did a great job of publishing. I didn't know what this was called exactly until I looked it up for the binding.

It's called Cloth Overboard. So I don't know if they went overboard on the cloth and put too much cloth in it, but it's

Cloth Overboard. Yeah, it's a very nice, it's a very nice book.

I think the content's lovely, not because I wrote it, but I've just compilated, compiled all the prayers.

But they've done a lovely job in the formatting on the inside with red text for the rubrics, nice layout, flow charted text for the prayers.

But the three ribbons that help you navigate the day you're in, the catechism question you're in, and also the

Bible reading plan from Robert Murray McShane at the back. I think the three ribbons also make it a really aesthetically beautiful book.

Well, and of course, we here in America like accents like yours, and so that you read your book for the audio,

I like that. This is maybe an odd question, but I'm just curious. Have you received,

I know you've received positive feedback, but has anybody given you negative feedback in any way, shape, or form?

I wouldn't say negative, no. It has been overwhelmingly positive so far.

Probably one or two people are initially a little bit skeptical, reluctant.

Some people who aren't from a tradition that talks about liturgy or speaks about liturgy, a lot of church, maybe is sort of just ignorant or it's not something they've come across, and therefore they think they don't really need it.

But you said it earlier in the program, Mike, we all have a liturgy. Every church has a liturgy, whether it's written down or not.

And we actually, we all have a liturgy for our quiet times, our devotional lives. As I said at the beginning, mine was pray, read my

Bible, pray. Prayer, reading, prayer, that's a liturgy. What I've tried to do with this book is enrich the liturgy for our daily devotions.

So it's not whether you're going to have a liturgy or not, it's just which liturgy you're going to have.

And so for those who are a bit hesitant and think, I'm not really into liturgy, I would encourage them to give it a go and see what you think.

Winston Churchill said after World War II, when Westminster Parliament Building had been bombed and they were going to refurbish it and redesign it, there was a debate about whether to redesign it back to the way it was, with the opposition sitting opposite, or make it a more circular chamber for debate.

And Churchill said, no, we go back to exactly the way it was. He said, first we shape our buildings and then our buildings shape us.

And I think you can apply that to liturgy. First we shape our liturgy, and then our liturgy begins to shape us.

So for those who are unfamiliar with this kind of liturgical way of doing your devotions,

I would encourage them to give it a go for a month. And maybe over time, they'll see that the liturgy is actually shaping them.

That's important. And maybe people will do the same thing with the cradle aspect to it.

And maybe they're more biblicistic and they have zero tradition. And I am happy it's in here, because that's part of my liturgy of personal daily worship, would be reading some of the

Heidelberg Catechism. It's here, and even in the one that I read today, the Nicene Creed. I thought to myself, well,

Mike, why do you read Summary of Christian Doctrine by Berkhoff a little section every morning? It's because I don't want to make errors, right?

You know, people say, well, can you talk more than three minutes without making a Trinitarian error? And even the language of is, did

Jesus add humanity? But then I read this morning, even with Nicene Creed, incarnate by the

Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man. And I thought, well, this helps me and helps the reader speak properly and biblically about the

Lord Jesus and, of course, the Father and the Spirit. So I really appreciate the cradle aspect to it.

For those that are listening, I mean, I think of one of the great creeds in all the scripture. We could do Deuteronomy 6, of course, as Johnny alluded to, but 1

Timothy 3, verse 16, great indeed, we confess, we all agree with and say, he was manifested in the flesh, talking about the

Lord Jesus, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.

We all have creeds. And for this to be here in the book, I appreciate it. Side note, no hate mail, but I put the

Nicene Creed and the Athanasius Creed up in the men's bathroom, so they'd have something to look at when they were there.

And so I want them to think Trinitarianly. Yeah, that's a great thing. I think it's a nice point you've made that the creeds are really, they're boundary markers, aren't they?

They keep us in the Orthodox Christian faith. They keep us affirming and upholding the one holy faith that's been delivered once for all to the saints.

And these are people who went before us, who entered theological controversies, who went into battle for the

Bible. And what did the Bible say about the Trinity, about Christ and its human and divine natures?

And they've articulated in history a really helpful summary of the system of Christian doctrine.

And as you say, it keeps us safe. It helps us read our Bibles properly and not become

Biblicists in a way that can lead us into unorthodox and heterodox teaching.

Perfect. Well, I've got a minute to wrap up the show, Johnny. Thank you for being on the show. I really appreciate it.

It was a great idea that will help the local church and dads and moms. It will help pastors as well.

I snooped around on the internet a little bit. Dear listeners, you can find the book that's listed for $30, $29 .99.

I think I found it two places for $18. That's as of today, this show will play in a week.

So double check that. I think you can find it for around $18. It's a book really that'll last you your entire life.

Be Thou My Vision. Johnny Gibson, 31 -day liturgical guide, which will help structure your daily worship.

If you miss a day, fine. Pick it up and pick it up another day. It's a good guide. Not prescription necessarily, but description.

Johnny, thank you for being on No Compromise Radio today. I really appreciate it. Mike, thanks for having me on.

It's been a pleasure to talk to you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.