Jonny Gibson Interview - Be Thou My Vision

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on

the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said,.

�But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would

remain with you.

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you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial.

Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the 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?

And 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 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 500 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 a 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,

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.

And the structure of our church service is 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 and mind and

strength, with 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?

And 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, and to many churches that follow a Reformed

liturgy, and it's really—.

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.

I mean, 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 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...

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 Patry when I'm doing this devotional in the morning.

Do you sing it out loud when you do it?

David.

Depends on 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 as 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 Patry, 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 Patry 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 Patry, 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 Patry, 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 Thou 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 Patry, 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 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

and 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 creedal 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 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.

At 508 -835 -3400.