The Gospel-Driven Church

This Blog Has Moved!

2012-01-23T09:26:00.002-05:00

As I teased early last week, there's a big change afoot for the future of The Gospel-Driven Church blog. As officially announced this morning, I am joining the ranks of the bloggers at The Gospel Coalition site. It is an incredible honor to be invited to blog alongside some of my favorite pastor-writers at one of the most widely-read online evangelical neighborhoods. You have probably already read that Trevin Wax is making the move as well.

You can now find me at the new The Gospel-Driven Church.

I will keep this space live but all new posts will be at the new place. Please remember to update your subscriptions, bookmarks, and/or blogrolls.

See ya over yonder!

A Gospel-Shaped Pro-Life Passion

2012-01-20T16:23:00.002-05:00

If you put overturning Roe v. Wade to a popular vote, I'm in line early ready to vote in favor of protecting the approximately one million unborn babies killed each year, and if you're a politician, the best way to lose my vote is to align with the pro-choice agenda.

Nevertheless, I don't believe laws -- or the protests and petitions and politicking that seek to achieve them -- are the primary way we are going to eradicate abortion. Overturning Roe v. Wade is a win -- and it's a win we should work for, hard -- but in my way of thinking, it is not the win.

The emancipation of the slaves and ensuing civil rights legislation was necessary. But none of it ended racism.

I am not proposing an either/or. What I'm proposing is that evangelicals take the harder route, adopt the harder cause, that we pray for and aim for Spiritual change of hearts more than we aim for legal stay of hands.

Here are some thoughts on how we may do this:

1. Gospel-centered preaching. Here's the thing: Pastors who preach culture war receive Amens from the already convinced and almost nothing from everybody else. At its worst a steady dose of this creates an unhealthy "us vs. them" mentality that has us thinking of our enemies in ways the Sermon on the Mount strictly forbids. But pastors who proclaim the freedom from sin and abundant life in Christ lay groundwork for zeal for life, not just for winning political battles. A gospel-driven pro-life agenda means hating abortion because we love women and we love the unborn. That sounds like a no-brainer but so many of our evangelical countrymen just sound like they hate abortion. And preaching isn't just for pastors. In general, more evangelicals need to talk Jesus more than they talk politics, or else we unintentionally communicate that our greatest treasure is "getting our country back" and that our chief message is political. We are great with the good news of the kingdom of the founding fathers. Let's return to the good news of the kingdom of God.

2. Reframing the abortion discussion. Lots of others have said this better than I can, but I think we've dropped the ball on how we frame the abortion issue. It is a matter of human rights, of civil rights, which is a perspective I first heard from my deeply pro-life friend who voted for Barack Obama. (I know, figure that one out.) But this is how we will best win in the political arena, I think. In many cases, this involves merely shifting from arguing against selfish moms (or whatever) and arguing for an appropriate definition of when life begins and becoming advocates for the voiceless unborn, exploited and commoditized. We can steer the discussion into the same rhetoric of the abolitionist and civil rights movements and end up stirring more hearts, I think.

3. Creating cultures of adoption and rescue. Human trafficking is the emerging danger. It's been going for a long time, but the Church is recently (and awesomely) stepping up efforts to combat it, even here in America. My friend Justin Holcomb and his wife lead efforts of Mars Hill Church in Seattle to rescue sex workers, sex abuse victims, and runaways in their city. Others are working hard to rescue young girls from the sex trade. On the other front, the Church is exponentially embracing the beauty of adoption. It has become a bona fide movement, thank God. The reactive culture of rhetoric and protests must give way to these proactive missionary movements. We will begin changing hearts and minds on these matters of life and death as we create cultures of adoption and rescue. But only communities can create cultures, so churches have to buy in corporately. More families adopting, more families serving and taking in pregnant teens, more churches helping families do those things, more churches loving families and kids, more churches finding ways to minister to the exploited and marginalized and to support missions and organizations and crisis pregnancy centers that already are . . . these are the pro-active, missional steps to creating truly pro-life cultures.

4. Prophets, not pundits. I don't know how else to put this. We need an MLK for the pro-life movement, a unifying and prophetic voice. We need intellectually strong but charming, powerful, winsome statesmen. We need people who aren't just jockeying for time on FoxNews. I don't even know if this is possible today, given the nature of media exposure and the divide between political parties -- whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans marched with King; I wonder if we haven't so aligned the pro-life cause with conservative Republicanism that that kind of unity would be impossible for our cause -- but we need a peacemaker with a powerful voice. We need prophets willing to speak truth and rebuke to power while able to speak peace and comfort to the powerless and broken.

5. Technology, technology, technology. The increasing advances in technology, particularly ultrasound technology, is catching up with the abortion industry. Women are seeing their babies. Technology is catching up with abortion. Smart churches will support their local crisis pregnancy centers, which are often frontlines on the struggle for the unborn, and help them get ultrasound equipment. No, they're not cheap. But life isn't either.

6. Love. I'm coming full circle, here, but if we were to outlaw abortion tomorrow, we'd still have 500,000 women a year who didn't want their babies. You have probably already had unwed teenage girls get pregnant in your church, and if you haven't you probably will at some point, and besides all that, there are plenty in your community and city. Before and in addition to removing abortion as a legal option for them, we have to love them, welcome them, teach them, serve them. Only the love of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ can change hearts. Let that be the ammunition of our war.

This is a slightly edited version of a post I ran last year at this time.

Shepherd the Flock that is Among You

2012-01-19T11:29:00.003-05:00

So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you . . .
-- 1 Peter 5:1-2

I have heard more than a few times that a preacher ought to preach for the crowd he wants. There's a grain of truth in that but it's mostly balderdash. Preach to the crowd you have. They're the ones who are there, listening.

Preach as their pastor, not merely as their preacher. (Let the reader understand.)

Shepherd the flock you've got, not the one you want.
Shepherd the flock among you, the one that's messy and real and immediate, not the one reducible to "likes" and re-tweets, not the one in Podcastopia.
Shepherd the flock, don't ignore them, order them around, nag them, demoralize them, treat them as pawns or puppets or inconveniences. Shepherd them to and in Jesus.

There's a lot more that can be said on this, and Peter says a lot more in the ensuing verses, but I suppose some pastors (like me) need to remember the call to "shepherd the flock of God that is among you" on a regular basis.

Our Adorable Conquering Redeemer

2012-01-19T09:37:00.001-05:00

O GOD OF MY EXODUS,
Great was the joy of Israel’s sons
when Egypt died upon the shore,
Far greater the joy
when the Redeemer’s foe lay crushed in the dust.
Jesus strides forth as the victor,
conqueror of death, hell, and all opposing might;
He bursts the bands of death,
tramples the powers of darkness down,
and lives for ever.
He, my gracious surety,
apprehended for payment of my debt,
comes forth from the prison house of the grave
free, and triumphant over sin, Satan, and death.
Show me herein the proof that his vicarious offering is accepted,
that the claims of justice are satisfied,
that the devil’s sceptre is shivered,
that his wrongful throne is levelled.
Give me the assurance that in Christ I died, in Him I rose,
in His life I live, in His victory I triumph,
in His ascension I shall be glorified.
Adorable Redeemer,
Thou who wast lifted up upon a cross
art ascended to highest heaven.
Thou, who as man of sorrows wast crowned with thorns,
art now as Lord of life wreathed with glory.
Once, no shame more deep than Thine,
no agony more bitter, no death more cruel.
Now, no exaltation more high,
no life more glorious, no advocate more effective.
Thou art in the triumph car leading captive Thine enemies behind Thee.
What more could be done than Thou hast done!
Thy death is my life, Thy resurrection my peace,
Thy ascension my hope, Thy prayers my comfort.

-- one of my favorite prayers from The Valley of Vision

Sensual Silliness a Failure of Doctrine

2012-01-18T10:27:00.003-05:00

The soundest and safest Christian reflection consists in "what you have received, not what you have thought up; a matter not of ingenuity, but of doctrine; not of private acquisition, but of public Tradition; a matter brought to you, not put forth by you, in which you must not be the author but the guardian, not the founder but the sharer, not the leader, but the follower."

-- Vincent of Lerins, quoted in Christopher Hall, Learning Theology with the Church Fathers (Intervarsity, 2002), 27.

In Jude 3-4 we read the urging to resist the perverters of grace into sensuality by contending for the faith once for all delivered. In 1 Timothy 1:8-11 we learn that sensual sins, passions of the flesh, are contrary to "sound doctrine" and "the gospel of the glory of the blessed God."

What we learn in these passages and others is that bad doctrine doesn't just affect what we know, but what we do. A wonky theology leads inevitably to wonky behavior.

And so is it really a huge leap to note that the purveyors of so much sanctuary silliness and churchy tomfoolery aren't exactly known for their love of doctrine? They are known for their dynamic ways, their innovation, their spectacle, but not a one of them is known for being a strong proclaimer of God's Word.

The reliance on gimmicks and showmanship is a distrust of the gospel's power, which is condemnation. What does it profit a pastor to gain the best seller list but lose his soul?

Where I'll Be

2012-01-18T10:10:00.007-05:00

Two upcoming events I'd like to tell you about.

Gospel Wakefulness Conference, March 3

I will be preaching the fourth Gospel Wakefulness Conference at Grace Church in Brockton, Massachusetts. Sponsored by the Gospel Alliance New England, cost is just $10 and includes lunch! Details at link above.

2012 PLNTD Conference, March 30-31

Steve Timmis and I will be speaking on Cultivating Gospel Community at this upcoming two-day conference in Fort Myers, Florida. If you register before January 23, the cost is just $29! More details at the link above.

Wrangling and Wondering: A (Brief) Response to Matthew Lee Anderson

2012-01-18T09:23:00.004-05:00

Matthew Lee Anderson has provided an insightful interaction with my book Gospel Wakefulness over at Mere Orthodoxy. Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

I fear I will not be doing Matthew's interest justice in that my response to his in-depth "caution" will be brief. I am grateful for the sharpening and the opportunity to revisit, clarify, and recommend the message(s) of Gospel Wakefulness, but one of Matthew's concerns is that the concept of gospel wakefulness (as I have framed it) does not allow for the reception of criticism. This hems me in a bit, gives me the same impression as the question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" If I do not respond at all, I prove him right. If I respond in rebuttal, I prove him right. The only way to prove him wrong is to say he's right. So you see my predicament.

So I'm going to let the chips fall where they may by protesting but hopefully without appearing that I "doth protest too much." :-)

Matthew bases this caution on the portion of my book where I offer a diagnostic outline of sorts. I say that inability to understand the concept of "gospel-centrality" is a sign one is not wakened to the gospel. Matthew bristles at that, perhaps for good reasons, as he later develops the fear of "gospel" as a Shibboleth and "gospel-centered" as a faddish buzzword that unhelpfully makes us designate some people are in and others are out. I offer two responses to this:

First, I stand by the list of signs there, but I ask that they be kept in the context of what else the book says about judging people as "in" or "out." I am grateful that Matthew refers to my response to Trevin Wax on this subject, something he had not done in his original draft (which he graciously sent me ahead of time). There are numerous passages throughout the book that speak directly to the issue of judging others, setting up tiers of Christianity, and the like. In fact, one of the built-in safeguards discussed in the book is that a person who pridefully operates like "I got this gospel wakefulness thing and you don't!" isn't gospel wakened.

I find it odd that Matthew has picked up on a few problematic passages that buttress his cautions but skips entirely over anything that might actually echo his cautions in the book itself. There is an entire chapter on Gospel Confidence that speaks within on the built-in humility of gospel wakefulness.

Secondly, the sign "The idea of gospel centrality makes no sense to you" is to "gospel un-wakefulness" as the symptom "chest pain" is to "heart attack." The former is indeed a symptom of the latter, but the presence of the former does not necessarily equate to the latter. That's why it's a list of signs to be considered, and I preface that list not by unequivocally saying "If this is you, you're off the team," but by saying "Let me like a doctor gently press on your assurance."

Matthew's other (larger?) concern is how the concept of gospel wakefulness as I outline it allows (or disallows) a faith that permeates political, cultural, and social endeavors. In this discussion, I would only refer back to my response to Trevin. It is indeed possible I didn't distinguish enough in the book between political activism and political idolatry, but that was not the focus of the book. I only maintain that I am not a quietist in the sense the book appears susceptible to being charged with.

Again, I find it odd that Matthew makes no reference at all to the portions of the book that would directly address gospel wakefulness' versatility in areas outside the explicitly "spiritual." I have an entire chapter on the tyranny of hyperspirituality that would speak directly to the ordinary effects of the gospel and the enjoyment of common graces, be they politics or pies (mud or otherwise). In my forthcoming book Gospel Deeps, I have a chapter on "gospel enjoyment" that seeks to expand this idea too.

The things Matthew wants addressed in order to provide cautions are actually in the book. In his published cautions he refers to my touching on the "gospel as catchphrase" in the Conclusion, but in his original draft he discussed the issue without any indication of knowing that part even existed. I had to refer him back to it.

The second to bottom line is this: I actually share Matthew's cautions. They obviously lay larger on his heart than mine, but they resonate with me. And they are in the book. But because the book is largely about exulting in the gospel and its implications, I did not give inordinate space to shoring up every philosophical fear that might arise.

And the very bottom line is this: My aim has not been to coin a concept but to hold up the gospel. As Augustine is said to have said: "Let others wrangle; I will wonder." That's where I'm at with this thing, where I've been at a long time, and I think this disinterest in peripheral wrangling has opened me up to some of the charges I have received. I do indeed find the gospel of Jesus more interesting than Harry Potter and politics, but in saying that I am not saying Harry Potter or politics are never to be discussed.

In any event, if "gospel wakefulness" must disappear into the dustbin of rhetorical nonsense for Christ's glory in the gospel to increase, so be it. And the quicker the better. I do not want "gospel wakefulness" to be counterproductive to the aim of gospel wakefulness.

Revival is Always Christ-Centered

2012-01-14T10:20:00.001-05:00

He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
-- John 16:14

"In all companies, on other days, on whatever occasions persons met together, Christ was to be heard of, and seen in the midst of them. Our young people, when they met, were wont to spend the time in talking of the excellency and dying love of JESUS CHRIST, the glory of the way of salvation, the wonderful, free, and sovereign grace of God, his glorious work in the conversion of a soul, the truth and certainty of the great things of God's word, the sweetness of the views of his perfections, &c."

-- Jonathan Edwards, A Narrative of Surprising Conversions

It is the Spirit's raison d'etre to shine the light on Christ. The Spirit is often called the "shy" Person of the Trinity because of this. He is content -- no, zealous -- to minister to the Church the Father's blessings in the gospel of Jesus. He quickens us to desire Christ, illuminates the Scripture's revelation of Christ, empowers us to receive Christ, and imparts Christ to us even in his own indwelling. For this reason, then, any church or movement's claim of revival better have exaltation of Christ at its center, or it is not genuine revival.

At the front end of Paul's excursus to the Corinthians on the sign-gift charismata, he reminds us: "Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says 'Jesus is accursed!' and no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except in the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:3).

What we often see in false revivals is the exaltation of particular figures or the worship of a worship experience itself. You can turn on nearly any religious television programming and see this work in action. Christ is given lip service but exhilaration, personal revelation, warm fuzzies, and spectacular manifestations are the real objects of worship. Charlatans are at the helm, and they purport to wield the Holy Spirit as if He were pixie dust. In these cases and others, it is not the Spirit stirring, but the spirit of the antichrist.

Edwards writes elsewhere:

When the operation is such as to raise their esteem of that Jesus who was born of the Virgin, and was crucified without the gates of Jerusalem; and seems more to confirm and establish their minds in the truth of what the gospel declares to us of his being the Son of God, and the Saviour of men; is a sure sign that it is from the Spirit of God.

Revival given of the Spirit of the living God, places Christ always and ever at the center.

By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.
-- John 4:2-3

Bearing with One Another: On the Giving and Receiving of Criticism

2012-01-14T10:03:00.004-05:00

There is a lack of love when criticism amounts to complaining about "the other." My friend Bill calls this syndrome I Have Identified the Problem, and It Is You.

Remember, brothers -- all of us, conservative or liberal, young or old, MacArthur acolyte or Driscoll fanboy -- a prophet to the church speaks from the inside. Let us not shrink back from calling each other to repentance, to speaking the truth in love, but let's remember we speak prophetically to us.

And let us not shrink back from our brother's reproof if it is offered in sincerity. He may be wrong, he may be overzealous, but his energy merits consideration. Seeing criticism as never necessary is just as wrong as seeing it as always necessary. Seeing criticism as always evil, always wrong, always hateful and therefore not necessary is just as dangerous as the problem of self-elevating and insulating one's self from criticism.

Public judgment of public speech and actions is not condemnation. Test all things; cling to what is good. If the criticism is truly malicious or just wrong: dismiss it. But not before then. And certainly not with some self-glorifying notion that one is above the reproof of fellow Christians. Don't think strangers have the right to criticize you? Then don't post thoughts in public for strangers to read. It is no Christian virtue to expect privileges without responsibilities.

"We often think we have no need of anyone else's advice or reproof. Always remember, much grace does not imply much enlightenment. We may be wise but have little love, or we may have love with little wisdom. God has wisely joined us all together as the parts of a body so that we cannot say to another, 'I have no need of you.' "

- John Wesley

We critics ought to seek to read others through the lens of charity. Many times the ability to read someone's words in a bad light does not equal an imperative to do so. Instead of first asking our brother why they said or believe something we deem wrong, let's ask ourselves if perhaps we're reading him incorrectly or uncharitably.

We receivers of criticism ought to lend our critics the respect they may be denying us. Respond to questions or criticism in good faith, even if briefly. If our interlocutors prove malicious or disputationally vain, we can then move along. Yes, yes, by all means, don't feed the trolls. But seeking to clarify, elaborate, or winsomely rebut seems a decent way to rhetorically give your shirt to the guy asking for your coat.

But let's honor Christ by attempting to bear with one another. The gospel has identified the problem, and it is us.

We will commend the gospel when we can give and receive criticism with charity and humility.

"Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor."
-- Romans 12:10b

Jesus Was Religious

2012-01-13T09:05:00.009-05:00

Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully
-- 1 Timothy 1:8

It's important not to push back on Jefferson Bethke and his video simply to be contrarian or to avoid liking something because everybody else does. The heart displayed in the video is solid, and he says a lot of right things. But he says a few wrongs one too, and while they aren't wrong enough to overreact, they are wrong enough to note with some cautions.

First, I think using the word "religion" in a negative sense can be okay. Most of us have done it. I've done it. When delivered in a punchy way with a clear context, it makes sense. Most reasonable people understand what is meant by the claim that "Jesus ticked off religious people." Yes, he did. And while we can bring in all kinds of assumptions to what exactly constitutes "religious people," the statement makes sense on the surface.

But in belaboring the point there is much more opportunity for error. Some make a boogeyman out of the idea of "religious people," by which it becomes clear what they mean is "traditional people" or the uncool. My feeling is that the Bible-thumping, starched suit-wearing, hellfire and brimstone religious people taking the fun out of fundamentalism are becoming fewer and farther between, while the church is brimming with self-righteous hipsters and cooler-than-thous. The Pharisees look like Vampire Weekend now. I'm not saying Jefferson is one of those guys; I'm just saying he's offering them red meat.

The way the fellow in the video defines religion, he is right to hate it. But the more he goes on, the less justification he's got for using the word religion. It's not religion that does all those things. It's not even the Law that does all those things. The Law is good! (See Romans 7:12, for instance, or 1 Timothy 1:18.) It's self-righteousness that does all those things. Religion is not, as the fellow says, a man-made invention: legalism is. And even as the Scriptures tell us the harsh things the Law does, it never gives us license to hate it.

So it's not the Law or religion the Bible is against, but legalism and "self-made religion" (Colossians 2:23). There is no room in the video's belaboring of the point, apparently, for "pure and undefiled religion" (James 1:27). It's important to make the "do vs. done" distinction -- vitally important -- but "do" is not bad. Jesus did not come to abolish religion, but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17).

And the really controversial point we ought to make is this: Jesus did not hate religion. He was in fact a religious person. We are used to using the words Pharisee or Pharisaical in the pejorative senses, as labels, but in Jesus' day, the most faithful, biblical religion going, for all its problems, was the religion of the Pharisees. Between Zealots on one side and Sadducees on the other, the Pharisees had carved out a decent niche as the "evangelicals" of the day.

The great sin of the Pharisees was not, in the end, their religious dutifulness -- they sought to interpret the Scriptures literally, were conservative in doctrine and practice, believed in the resurrection to come, and thought God's Word had immediate application to every day life -- but their self-righteous rejection of Jesus. And Jesus, believe it or not, was closest in theology to the Pharisees.

Jesus was a good Jew. He attended synagogue faithfully, observed the feasts and festivals and religious holidays, kept the Law (better than anybody), and made it his mission to obey God perfectly. You better hope Jesus was super-religious, in fact, because it's his perfect religion we rely on for our righteousness.

So, again: Jefferson Bethke is on to something good and right. But we are on to something good and right to make the right distinctions, lest we put ourselves in the Pharisaical place of saying "I thank you God I'm not like those religious people."

And again: the Law is not bad! It is good. And it is not gospel-shaped to hate the Law but to delight in it (Psalm 40:8 and all over Psalm 119).

Caption This - Win a Copy of the Seven Daily Sins Leader Kit

2012-01-12T17:22:00.007-05:00

Provide a caption for this photo in the comments.

Funniest comment -- as judged purely subjectively by me -- wins a copy of the Seven Daily Sins Leader Kit which retails for $49.95 and includes a copy of the book, DVD with supplementary videos, leader guide, CD playlist (featuring Lecrae, Johnny Cash, et.al.), all in a sturdy cardboard case.

Rules and guidelines:

1. I have to think it's funny. Making fun of Tom Brady is fine and dandy, but remember, as a vocal Brady fan, I've heard every variation of the "he's a girl"/"he has a girl's hair" jokes out there, so surprise me.

2. You can enter as often as you like.

3. Leave an email address so I can contact you if you win OR make sure to check back at this post after the deadline:

4. I will pick the winner sometime Sunday and contact them by email (if I have it) and update this post as notification.

UPDATE:
Winner of the kit is Kevin Copeland, whose caption was the best rendition of a repeated joke:

And the women sang to one another as they celebrated,
"Tebow has scored his thousands,
and Brady his ten thousands." (1 Pats 18:7)

But since Nic Ferguson had a similar joke posted before Kevin's, I'm gonna send him a kit too. Email me your shipping addresses at jared AT gospeldrivenchurch DOT com, guys, and I'll get them out asap.

Runner up was James Snare's caption:

Tom: I've really been struggling to understand the difference between Pre-millenialist Chiliasts and Pre-Millenial Dispensationalists. Any help?

Tim: I'm a virgin....

I have no idea what that even means, but it made me chuckle.

Finally, An Older Brother Worthy of the Honor

2012-01-10T09:48:00.004-05:00

His brothers said to him, “Are you indeed to reign over us? Or are you indeed to rule over us?” So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.
-- Genesis 37:8

Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James
- Jude 1a

There is a lot wrapped up in this simple greeting, the opening line of Jude's epistle. Jude is the brother of James, by which he means the James, James the apostle, the brother of Jesus. So this Jude is the Jude who is the brother of Jesus. But he doesn't identify himself as such. He calls himself James's brother but Jesus' "servant."

Jesus' kid brother doesn't say, "I'm Jesus' kid brother," but "I'm Jesus' servant." Again, so much is there.

If you're familiar with the biblical narrative even cursorily, you are probably familiar with the younger brother/older brother dynamic that recurs throughout. According to Jewish custom, the oldest son is the honor-bearer of the family. His legacy has primacy. So we see this, as one example, in the law of levirate marriage, which says that if a man dies and leaves a widow, the next younger brother is obliged to marry the woman and thereby continue the lineage of his older brother. In fact, their firstborn would be considered the dead brother's firstborn. (This may be one reason why what's-his-name hands the kinsman redeemer dibs over to Boaz in the book of Ruth.) The older brother is the one owed the birthright.

But if you know your biblical narrative even cursorily, you also know that the honored older brothers throughout the Scripture are blithering idiots. Family after family shows us the younger brothers outwitting, outlasting, and outshining the older brothers. The failure of the older brother to live up to his honorable position begins with Cain, proceeds through Esau to Joseph's brothers and to David's brothers, and culminates in the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son.

What we see is a gospel template gleaming beneath the religious/custom template in each story. God routinely chooses the B-stringers, the scrubs, the alternates, the lowly, the foolish, the weak, and the unassuming to shame the all-stars (1 Cor. 1:27-28). Indeed, of Jacob and Esau, we read, "[T]he older shall serve the younger" (Gen. 25:23). Older brother after older brother offers failure after failure.

Then we get to the prodigal son story and the older brother is put in place not just to show us again the shameful self-righteousness of those whose own honor seeks the dishonor of others but to show us the desperate need for -- finally, for once in history -- a good older brother. In the accompanying parables -- lost coin and lost sheep -- somebody goes looking for the item lost. In the lost son parable, nobody goes, certainly not the older brother who is busy in his room writing that hit song, "Alone in My Principles." So who will go? Who will seek out the lost and rescue them?

The good older brother. The only good older brother. Jesus.

So Jude is perhaps looking at his older brother, the brother whose claims he apparently disbelieved until his brother returned from the grave with a glorified body, and says to himself, "Finally an older brother worthy of the name!" He is the only begotten Son of God (Jn. 3:16), the head and the beginning and the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent (Col. 1:18). Jesus' sheaf is elevated and his younger siblings' sheaves are bowing to it, the sun, moon, and stars encircle him in worship. Jude says of the one who is not ashamed to call us his brothers (Heb. 2:11), "I am not worthy to call my brother my brother. I am his servant!"

And we are his brothers if we will submissively acknowledge his birthright. Jesus is the older brother who does his job. Everybody else is the other guy.

The Universal Cry Answered

2012-01-09T14:22:00.003-05:00

What is it that we all want? Significance, yes. Worth, yes. Approval, yes. All of that and more. I think, though, that if we could sum up the varieties of expressions of human desire we would say "real love." I think the cry of every human heart is to be known totally, inside and out, and loved totally anyway. Everything we've done, everything we've said, everything we've thought, everything we are -- everything. And in response: belovedness.

So we test out this cry, to see if it will be answered in some way, in every relationship. We try it with our parents, our children, our spouses, our friends, our church. It frequently, if not always, goes haywire. Sin gets in the way, fear gets in the way, defensiveness gets in the way, stupidity gets in the way, finite capabilities get in the way.

We are not equipped to love each other perfectly, not yet anyway. We are not omnipotent. And we are not love. And we are not omniscient, so we can't know each other perfectly, inside and out, past present future.

But God is and can do all that. And the good news is that God knows every single stinking thing about us . . . and loves us totally, unabashedly, powerfully, savingly. I find this staggering.

What is Good News for the Poor?

2012-01-09T13:44:00.003-05:00

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
-- Luke 6:20

While I believe social justice (according to the outlines of the Bible) is not optional for Christ's church, I believe it is an implication of the gospel not the gospel itself. Here are some reasons why:

1. The gospel is the news of the work of Christ -- sinless life, sacrificial death, bodily resurrection -- which is already done. The gospel is also "the kingdom" that was coming in Christ's ministry, that he inaugurated in his life, death, and resurrection. But whether we use the gospel definition of 1 Corinthians 15 or the gospel definition of the synoptic gospels, the gospel is news of something that has happened and that he has done. Therefore, anything that happens now and done by us, is not the gospel message itself, but the Christian's living as if that gospel message is true. (Of course, even our works are sourced by God's work, according to Ephesians 2:10, Philippians 2:12-13, etc., but I maintain that when we begin contributing to the work, it ceases being "the gospel.")

2. Related to that, If the gospel's content includes economic justice for the poor, it means that the gospel includes work that Christians do, and if the gospel includes work that Christians do, we end up "preaching ourselves" and stealing the glory of the gospel that is due God alone. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:5, "For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake." We are the servants of others -- including in the work of providing for the poor -- but we preach him only as the gospel, and this distinction is held for Jesus' namesake.

3. Economic justice is a sign of the good news, but not the news itself, in the same way that Jesus' miracles of the healing of the blind or raising of the lame were not the good news, but signs pointing to the gospel of redemption of creation. We see this delineation perhaps most starkly in John 6 when the crowds were eager to eat the signs (bread) but demurred on eating the signified (Christ's flesh).

4. Economic justice is temporal justice. But the gospel's justice is eternal. None of us gets to take money with us. Loving our neighbor in the way of providing for the poor demonstrates that our treasure is not monetary. But to argue that monetary justice is content, not implication, is to muddle the eternal treasure of Christ with treasure that rusts and decays. The miracles were not "permanent." Those healed still died. Those raised died again. Those given food and money were hungry and in need again.

5. Related to that, interpreting "good news for the poor" as economic justice is to misdirect focus off Christ as the super-fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies and make the same mistake as most of Jesus' Jewish audience whose messianic expectation pictured him literally overthrowing the Roman occupation and establishing political kingship in Jerusalem. Now of course, Jesus did do that. He was proclaiming his Lordship -- and in effect denying Caesar's -- but the way he was doing that was not the way expected. That Jesus is Lord has profound effects on how Christians live, including economically, but those are effects of Christ's Lordship, not the content of his Lordship. Some would suggest this view merely "spiritualizes" the promises of God, and while there is a way some do that in disharmony with the Scriptures, we should at least say that what the Bible calls "spiritual" is not un-real. Further, I would not go as far to say Jesus merely spiritualized the kingdom; he was really there, he was really Lord, he really offered his tangible self to follow and trust and to die, and this incarnational reality and sacrifice and resurrection is not un-real at all. Indeed, there is nothing un-real about the promise of a risen Lord securing new bodies for us in a new heavens and new earth to come.

If we reduce the gospel to its implications, we will have to make sense of how the gospel proclaiming "liberty to the captives" would have encouraged John the Baptist while he languished in prison, awaiting execution.

6. The good news for the poor Jesus preaches is not economic justice, or else his own ministry was fairly a failure, as we don't see too many examples of them providing money for the poor, and in fact they were occasionally lacking for things like food and money themselves. It also makes James and John's gospel encounter with the blind man in Acts 3 a consolation prize. They had not silver and gold, but they had something far better.

7. "Good news for the poor" meaning "economic justice for the poor" is an eisegetic reading. Take a look at Luke 7:22, for instance: And he answered them, "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them." Notice that Jesus doesn't say "the poor receive money." The blind get sight back. The lame get mobility. The lepers get restored flesh. The dead get life. But the poor don't get un-poor. They have the good news preached to them. I believe this good news is not money, but the treasure of Christ, the satisfaction of Christ.

8. This is not out of step with the larger Gospel paradigm of "the gospel of the kingdom." It makes perfect sense of the Beatitudes, for instance, which promise "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God" (Luke 6:20. How does it promise the kingdom to the poor? Not in giving money, but in turning the tables on how the have's and have-not's are regarded. No, the promise to the poor is not that they will be rich monetarily but that they will receive the far greater blessing of eternal life in Christ, the approval of God, the status of co-heir with Jesus. In the world's fallen economy, the poor are at the bottom of the barrel because they have not the power of money. But in God's economy, money is not power, and therefore the rich, the powerful, the lords of the earth are humbled, and the humble are exalted.

If the gospel for the poor is economic parity aren't we preaching the gospel of middle class-ness? Or, dare I say it, the prosperity gospel? The reason the gospel of the kingdom is good news for the poor is not because the Son of Man comes handing out cash and prizes but because it upturns the economic values of the world. In God's kingdom, the rich man has his reward now and he will perish later, but the poor are elevated, saved, made "rich toward God" (Luke 12:21).

9. If the gospel's content includes economic justice, it makes little sense to say we believe in this gospel with the gift of faith. I don't need faith to believe I will receive money, but merely an open hand. The requirement of the spiritual "open hand" of faith for grasping of the gospel demands that the gospel promises something immaterial (as of yet).

So with all that said, I reiterate that care for the needy (whether poor or hungry or naked or ill) is a command of God binding on his people and to be obeyed as joyful gospel witness. And so like all good works, they are worshipful responses to the gospel of Christ's finished work, not the gospel itself.

Bloggedy Blog

2012-01-06T15:15:00.001-05:00

Cool news on the future of my blog coming soon.

The Doctrinal Scandal of The Good Samaritan

2012-01-06T08:30:00.000-05:00

The well-known parable from Luke 10:29-37:

But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

What is the point of this story? The primary point is in answering the law-expert's question: "Who is my neighbor?" So when Jesus gets to the end, the moral imperative "Go, and do likewise" is a direct command not to be ignored by the inquisitor, or by us.

I also see what many others see in this parable: A God-loving Christianity, which is the only real kind of Christianity, is neighbor-loving Christianity, and the category of "neighbor" is not limited to those who look, think, and live like us. Our neighbors, in fact, include our enemies. So I too see the strains of kingdom-proclaiming social justice in the narrative.

But if Jesus just wanted us to know that we're supposed to care for people not like us, he could just have easily had "the man" be the hero and the Samaritan be the victim. That's in fact a more direct parallel to the flat moral imperative for Jewish lawyers to show mercy to Samaritans, or for Christians to show mercy to non-Christians. Instead, he makes the Samaritan the hero. Why?

There is a doctrinal point in the parable, an indicative accompanying the imperative. It's why we see in the context that the inquisitor is "desiring to justify himself." It's why, I think, we get the details of the priest and the Levite passing by. These plot points are a poke in the eye of the religious establishment, of course, but casting the Samaritan as "the good guy" is a five-finger exploding heart death punch.

Making the half-breed heretic the hero evens out the playing field. It makes it abundantly clear that justification cannot come from ethnicity or religion or any other earthly badge of honor. By making the bad guy good Jesus shows how any loser is ripe for righteousness because the ground is level at the foot of the cross.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
-- Romans 3:23

Who has loved his neighbor, who has shown mercy, more than Jesus?

So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.
-- Romans 9:16

Breaking: Confession Still Dangerous, Real Marriage Shows

2012-01-05T11:30:00.000-05:00

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
-- Romans 8:1

I have not read the bulk of the new book from Mark and Grace Driscoll, Real Marriage, including the portions provoking the most controversy and criticism, so I can't comment on that (except to say I would probably share some of the less hyperbolic cautions). Here are some thoughtful reviews from varying perspectives by Tim Challies, Denny Burk, and Aaron Armstrong. (Aaron also has a more general review of the book at TGC.)

But I have read the sample chapters that have provoked the second most controversy and criticism, the ones featuring Mark's and Grace's recounting of sins personal and marital. And I have to confess I'm a little disturbed. But not by the Driscolls. As a pastor who has heard plenty of confessions, as a friend to some spectacular sinners, and as a first-class expert sinner myself, I'm pretty immune to the sin shock factor. No, it's some of the reactions that worry me.

Mark and Grace have done us the discomforting service of admitting their failures. And admitting them as sin. And what a lot of the criticism about them on these matters suggests is that the church still has a long way to go with this whole grace thing. I wonder if the people concerned about what young people might be warped by in the "Can We ______?" section of the book are also concerned that young people might be warped by realizing "Evangelicals are not safe people to confess sin to."

What too much of the criticism communicates is that if you will be faithful to confess your sins publicly, church culture will be faithful to throw them back in your face. Brothers and sisters, this should not be. Sin should not be safe in the church, but sinners should.

Mark and Grace, I doubt you're reading this, but may God's grace and peace multiply to you. Thank you for your courage in confession and know that this guy who once wrecked his own marriage appreciates it.

This man receives sinners and eats with them.
-- Luke 15:2

Wonder and Rationality in Calvinism

2012-01-05T09:00:00.000-05:00

John Piper's recent piece The Sovereign God of "Elfland" (Why Chesterton's Anti-Calvinism Doesn't Put Me Off) puts so well into words something I've been trying to figure out how to write about for a while. A taste:

It is a great irony to me that Calvinists are stereotyped as logic-driven. For forty years my experience has been the opposite. The Calvinists I have known (English Puritans, Edwards, Newton, Spurgeon, Packer, Sproul) are not logic driven, but Bible-driven. It’s the challengers who bring their logic to the Bible and nullify text after text. Branches are lopped off by “logic,” not exegesis.

Who are the great enjoyers of paradox today? Who are the pastors and theologians who grab both horns of every biblical dilemma and swear to the God-Man: I will never let go of either.

Not the Calvinism-critics that I meet. They read of divine love, and say that predestination cannot be. They read of human choice and say the divine rule of all our steps cannot be. They read of human resistance, and say that irresistible grace cannot be. Who is logic-driven?

For forty years Calvinism has been, for me, a vision of life that embraces mystery more than any vision I know. It is not logic-driven. It is driven by a vision of the ineffable, galactic vastness of God’s Word.

It's not my aim to be redundant, especially when I couldn't say it half as well as Piper has, but this observation (and you should read his whole post because it's bigger than just that one point) resonates with me. For this reason:

When I first "converted" to a Reformed view of soteriology, much of the criticism I found myself receiving had to do with how hyper-logical Calvinism appeared to be. "Don't put God in your little theological box!" was the sort of thing I heard multiple times from multiple people. That always sounded strange to me, because I had discovered in Calvinism a God much, much bigger -- "ineffeable" and "galactically vast" to use Piper's words -- than the God I had known. Coming to a Calvinistic reading of the Scriptures opened up the box, as it were (for me, anyway).

Lately, though, the criticism seems to have shifted. I hear much more these days the charges that Calvinism doesn't make enough logical sense, that it's too illogical. "How can sovereign predestination and human freedom coexist?" they say. "It's self-refuting." Which is odd, again, since previously it appeared Calvinism didn't allow for enough mystery. Now it allows too much. Ironically enough, it's typically the proponents of the "generous orthodoxy," "wider mercy" type streams of thought, the emergent-type believers in a mysterious God who bristle at the irrationality of Calvinism. For some reason there is more concern now than before that that little theological box is empty.

Just some wondering and wandering thoughts.

Preaching: Once More, With Feeling

2012-01-05T08:30:00.000-05:00

In that day the LORD with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.
In that day, "A pleasant vineyard, sing of it!"

-- Isaiah 27:1-2

The art of preaching the gospel falls not only within the category of Instruction but also Exultation. Worship in a "worship service" does not stop when the music is over; it continues in the sermon. The sermon is a music of its own. No matter the text, no matter the topic, the tune is the joyous anthem of God's slaying the dragon, a redemption song.

The Bible is about God; beginning to end, it is the ballad of God's exploits in vanquishing evil and restoring shalom through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Preaching rehearses this song. Each Sunday: Once more, with feeling!

Jesus is restoring all things. "A pleasant vineyard, sing of it!"

To Be Posted on the Door of Lakewood Church

2012-01-04T10:07:00.002-05:00

Revisiting Luther's 95 Theses this morning and thinking theses 92-95 speak directly to the purveyors of the damnable "prosperity gospel." See if you don't agree.

92. Away, then, with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, "Peace, peace," where in there is no peace. [Ezek. 13:10]

93. Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, "Cross, cross," where there is no cross!

94. Christians are to be exhorted that they be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, and hell;

95. And let them thus be more confident of entering heaven through many tribulations rather than through a false assurance of peace. [Acts 14:22]

Easy Like Friday Afternoon: A Manifesto on Hard-Believism

2012-01-04T09:41:00.001-05:00

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
-- Matthew 7:13-14 (in the King's English)

When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, "Who then can be saved?" But Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."
-- Matthew 19:25-26

It is still scandalous to say what the Scriptures say, which is that no man who doesn't take up his cross is worthy of Jesus (Mt. 10:38). Many are they who want to extrapolate from sola fide to something that is not fide at all. They assume oddly that because faith alone justifies, real faith may be alone, unaccompanied by works, or that the sum total of salvation is justification alone and not also sanctification.

We saw this in the relatively recent "Lordship salvation" debate, in which many solid Reformed brothers helpfully affirmed the classic doctrine of "faith alone" while also affirming what the Bible both says and implies: saved people are changed people. To have Jesus as Savior is to have him as Lord. It is not legalism to say the new birth begins a new life. Yes, we still battle the flesh -- crucifying it daily -- but this in itself is a change from the old life, in which we cared nothing about battling the flesh. We still have sin in us, but we are conscious of it, convicted about it, and concerned to be rid of it. This is not works salvation; this is the fruit of salvation.

Obeying the commands of God does not save us, but it is the way we prove saved. This is the testimony from Abraham onward to the new covenant. It is the testimony of James -- So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead (2:17) -- and of Jesus himself -- "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (John 14:15).

What self-professing "easy-believists" think is that they are upholding the free gift of grace by insisting one can believe without actually changing, that one can have the benefits of Christ's salvation without actually worshiping him as Lord, and some will charge the "hard-believists" with being scandalized by grace. This is because easy-believists are doctrinally dense and categorically confused. They say all one needs to be justified is belief -- which is true -- but they are hard pressed to define what belief is. They cannot explain how one can trust without, you know, actually trusting. Trust for the easy-believist becomes an idea, not an actuality. It is something intellectual, or less. The "faith" of the easy-believist means Hebrews 11 should consist of only ellipses. John Calvin says faith is an empty vessel, but it is held up to be filled. The easy-believist's faith may be called a fog, except even a fog is visible.

Martin Luther -- who nobody with any integrity can charge with legalism -- ran up against this problem himself, writing:

"Faith is not something dreamed, a human illusion although this is what many people understand by the term. Whenever they see that it is not followed either by an improvement in morals or by good works, while much is still being said about faith, they fall into the error of declaring that faith is not enough, that we must do works if we are to become upright and attain salvation. The reason is that when they hear the gospel they miss the point. In their hearts and out of their own resources they conjure up an idea which they call belief which they treat as genuine faith. All the same, it is but a human fabrication, an idea without a corresponding experience in the depths of the heart. It is therefore ineffective and not followed by a better kind of life..."

-- Commentary on Romans

Commenting on this, John MacArthur goes on to say about the easy-believist's notion of faith, "It's not faith at all. They just call it faith." Luther again:

"Faith, however, is something that God effects in us. It changes us and we are reborn from God. Faith puts the old Adam to death and makes us quite different men in heart, in mind and in all our powers. And it is accompanied by the Holy Spirit. Oh, when it comes to faith, what a living creative active powerful thing it is. It cannot do other than good at all times. It never waits to ask whether there is some good work to do, rather before the question is raised, it has done the deed and keeps on doing it. A man not active in this way is a man without faith. He is groping about for faith and searching for good works but knows neither what faith is nor what good works are. Nevertheless he keeps on talking nonsense about faith and good works. It is impossible indeed to separate works from faith just as it is impossible to separate heat and light from fire."

And there's the key! Not only does the easy-believist hold to a faith that is essentially Jello, only less substantial, while claiming to hold more firmly to a scandalous grace, he also underestimates grace.

I am a hard-believist. I am a hard-believist because I take Jesus at his word when he says easy is the way to destruction and hard (or narrow, if you prefer) is the way to life. I am a hard-believist because I take him at his word when he says that with man, being saved is impossible. I am a hard-believist because I believe salvation isn't easy: it requires the death of Christ. It requires new birth. (Anybody know what a baby has to do to be born?) It requires nothing short of Spiritual intervention. It requires quickening, resurrection, cured blindness and healed deafness, a softened heart -- none of which we can do for ourselves. We need radical intervention. We need the command of God, "Let there be light!" We are helpless to be saved. We simply can't do it. Paul writes in Romans 8:7, "For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot."

We require rescue. If it were easy to believe, more people would do it.

I am a hard-believist not because I think we have to do things to be saved, but because we can't do things to be saved. I am a hard-believist not because I think life change is required for salvation but because life change is required of those who are saved. I am a hard-believist not because I deny grace, but because I affirm it. This is what I mean:

In the end, the essential trust here is not that our "life change" justifies us, but that those whom God justifies, he sanctifies. We trust that God is pleased to credit Christ's perfect righteousness to our account, but that he is also pleased to actually make us righteous, to faithfully complete the work he began in us, to Spiritually plant and grow righteousness in our lives. The Bible calls this fruit, and it is by this fruit that we are known as Christians. This is not a denial of grace, but an affirmation of real grace, of the only grace there is, which is the grace that comes in the gospel that is power.

The grace by which we are saved does not stop at enabling some philosophical ghost we would like to call "faith"; it is the power by which we are saved and being saved (1 Cor. 15:1-2). Grace powers justifying faith and grace powers corroborating good works. Grace powers new life.

The easy-believist, on the other hand, posits a de-powered grace, a grace effectual for a belief that requires no according action, a faith that needs no evidence, a new birth that leaves us stillborn. Their gospel is Sanka. It's near-beer. Friends, don't mess with that stuff. The free grace of God is transforming.

A Bible Verse for a Coffee Mug

2012-01-02T14:09:00.006-05:00

When in preaching I am expositing a "non-feel-good" text, I am prone to point out, in Chandleresque fashion, that this is not the sort of Bible verse they put on a coffee mug to sell at the Christian bookstore. There were quite a few of those in our Galatians series, for instance, what with all that accursed-ness and admonitions to self-castration.

Yesterday I received from one of our church members (Amy) one of my favorite Christmas presents ever, pictured below.

The art on the mug is Amy's hand-painted rendering of one of my wife Becky's photographs. Along the bottom of the painting is inscribed a Bible verse. Ezekiel 41:23 to be specific. Because that's not a verse they put on coffee mugs. Love it!

A Personal and Gospel Meditation on Christmas Day

2011-12-25T08:47:00.002-05:00

There was a day we piled up presents under the tree
A festive Babel tower
Tumbling down into the confusion
Of interests with expiration dates
And the speaking of different logos and brands:
"I am of Apple."
"I am of Sony."
"I am of Chicken Dance Elmo."

There was a day we spoke more languages still
Mine of sin and hers of pain
Till it all came tumbling down.
I laid with my children in their room at night,
Michael Card singing sweet gospel lullabies on the stereo
And struggled to believe that
"I AM" was also "I am for you."

What God had joined together
I had torn apart.

This morning in the tumbled detritus
Of wrappings and ribbons
I watched my three beauties play Chinese checkers
And snow falling gently outside
The big picture window,
And I thought,
"I am of Jesus."

The Fullness of Deity Dwells Babely

2011-12-24T14:26:00.004-05:00

And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God."
-- Luke 1:35

Really, the Advent season runs from Genesis 3 onward, and Christmas Day is when the miracle prophesied in Luke 1:35 is fulfilled. For those of us who believe personhood can be derived from Psalm 139:13-15 and Job 31:15, we believe the Incarnation did not begin at Jesus' birth but at his conception. And if this is so, when Colossians 2:9 says, "For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily," we know that the fullness of deity dwelled in fertilized ovum.

Will the Empire State Building occupy a doghouse? Will a killer whale fit inside an ant?

And here we are told that omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, utter eternalness and holiness dwelled in a tiny person. This makes Santa coming down a chimney seem a logistical cakewalk.

"The head of all rule and authority" (Col. 2:10) had one of those jelly-necked wobbly baby heads. The government rested on his baby-fatted shoulders (Is. 9:6).

This miracle of addition is important. We must hold it tightly or lose the bigness of the Incarnation. God came as unborn child so that Christ would experience all of humanity. And he experienced all of humanity so that we might receive all of him for all of us.

If God came as a vulnerable, needful, weak baby, we have no need to fear for our own vulnerability, needfulness, and weakness. He emptied himself (Phil. 2:7) so that we would not see our own emptiness as a hopeless cause. "As you received him" -- desperate, helpless, desirous -- "so walk in him" (Col. 2:6). The miracle of the God-Baby proclaims the gospel's specialty: rescue of the helpless.

C.S. Lewis's "The Nativity"

2011-12-24T11:40:00.000-05:00

The Nativity
by C.S. Lewis

Among the oxen (like an ox I’m slow)
I see a glory in the stable grow
Which, with the ox’s dullness might at length
Give me an ox’s strength.

Among the asses (stubborn I as they)
I see my Saviour where I looked for hay;
So may my beastlike folly learn at least
The patience of a beast.

Among the sheep (I like a sheep have strayed),
I watch the manger where my Lord is laid;
Oh that my baa-ing nature would win thence
Some woolly innocence!

We Need More Worship Wars, Not Fewer

2011-12-22T10:00:00.000-05:00

Self-denying humility ought to show up in the way we worship together. Thankfully, we don't hear as much these days about worship wars in Christian churches as we did just a few years ago, but they are still there. For years I thought this phenomenon was the bane of the "make it up as you go along" whirl of low-church evangelical Protestantism, and mostly it is. But even with a set traditional liturgy, Roman Catholics and other groups often experience the same kinds of tensions.

Maybe you're like me, reared to have the worship music tastes of a seventy-five-year-old woman. That's because, I think, a seventy-five-year-old woman was picking out the hymns and gospel songs in the church where I grew up. I tear up when I sing "Just As I Am" or "To God Be the Glory." And I'm left cold by what some people call the "majestic old hymns." They sound like what watercress-sandwich-eating Episcopalians from Connecticut would listen to (not that there's anything wrong with that). And so many of the contemporary songs sound as if they were written by commercial jingle writers, trying desperately to find words to rhyme with "Jesus" ("Sees us?" "Never leave us?" "Diseases?"). I'm not saying aesthetics don't matter in worship. Worship is, after all, commanded to be offered with "reverence and awe" (Heb. 12:28). I am saying our varying critiques of musical forms are often just simple narcissism disguised as concern about theological and liturgical downgrade.

We need more worship wars, not fewer. What if the war looked like this in your congregation—the young singles petitioning the church to play more of the old classics for the sake of the elderly people, and the elderly people calling on the leadership to contemporize for the sake of the young new believers? This would signal a counting of others as more important than ourselves (Phil. 2:3), which comes from the Spirit of the humiliated, exalted King, Christ (Phil. 2:5-11).

When I insist that the rest of the congregation serve as backup singers in my own little nostalgic hit parade of back-home Mississippi hymns, I am worshiping in the spirit all right, but not the Holy Spirit. I am worshiping myself, in the spirit of self-exaltation. The church negates the power of the third temptation when we remind ourselves that we all have this devilish tendency and cast it aside whether in worship planning or missions or budget decisions.

-- Russell Moore, Tempted and Tried (Crossway, 2011), 149-150.

What Are New Englanders Like?

2011-12-21T13:38:00.003-05:00

In 1997 Vision New England and the Ockenga Institute at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary conducted a research project to identify composite traits of New England culture. As they noted in Church Network News' published report, each of these traits can be true of other parts of the nation (and world), so the real key for missional ministry in New England is exegeting why's and how's. And as anyone in or familiar with New England can tell you, there is not really one New England "culture" but really different cultures, plural. Nevertheless, there are traits generally true about all New England, and together, these 8 traits give a good outline.

1. New Englanders Tend to Resist Change

2. New Englanders Tend to Value Tradition

3. New Englanders Tend to be Roman Catholic -- I would add that this largely means that when New Englanders note a religious affiliation of any kind, Roman Catholicism dominates. In my neck of the woods, the irreligious vastly outnumber the religious of any kind, but for those who specify a religion on surveys, Roman Catholicism is most noted. I'd also add that, in my neck of the woods at least, more self-identified Protestants are active with church attendance than self-identified Catholics. So this trait can be misleading if misread.

4. New Englanders Tend to Have a Secular Mindset

5. New Englanders Tend to be Self-Reliant

6. New Englanders Tend to be Reserved -- This is the biggest difference I have experienced between Vermont and the South.

7. New Englanders Tend to Favor Insiders

8. New Englanders Tend to Operate Locally

The juxtaposition of traits 2 and 4 makes for some really interesting dynamics in the small rural town where I pastor, for instance.

Announcing Seven Daily Sins - Giveaway Update

2011-12-21T08:25:00.005-05:00

My Bible study follow-up to Abide is called Seven Daily Sins, and it officially drops January 2 from Threads. Here is the pitch:

Pride. Lust. Gluttony. Greed. Envy. Sloth. Wrath. These are the "seven deadly sins" made popular by ancient theologians and contemporary movies. We've all dealt with these sins at one time or another—whether we realize it or not -- and those of us who follow Jesus would like to stop dealing with them once and for all.

The bad news, according to author Jared Wilson, is that we can't shake any of the seven deadly sins. Willpower can't solve the problem; neither will behavior modification. That's because the seven deadly sins aren't things we do -- they're who we are. We carry them around in our hearts 24 hours a day . . .

The good news is . . . well, the Good News. The power of Christ's perfect obedience, sinless sacrifice, and glorified resurrection gives us the freedom to confidently diagnose the root of our sins, boldly kill those sins through gospel-fueled repentance, and joyfully walk in newness of life.

A lot of people will be making New Year's resolutions in the next couple of weeks to in some way be better people. Let's go deeper. Maybe Seven Daily Sins can help with that.

The Giveaway
I'm gonna give away two copies. To be eligible, all you have to do is comment leaving your New Year's resolution. You can be serious or silly, I don't care. One comment entry per person. I will randomly select two comments sometime on Friday and notify winners via email and in this space. (If you don't leave an email address in the comment form, that's fine; just make sure to check back here at the end of the day Friday.)

UPDATE: GIVEAWAY WINNERS
Two winners with their resolutions are below:
Andy: I resolve to step up the creativity that I put towards planning date nights with the wifey.
David Qaoud: To read a book a week.

Andy and David, please email your preferred shipping addresses to jared AT gospeldrivenchurch DOT com, and I'll get your books to you asap.

The Preemptive Strike Against Worry

2011-12-20T11:41:00.001-05:00

Rose: "Don’t be worried, Mr. Allnut.
Allnut: "Oh, I ain’t worried, miss. I gave myself up for dead back when we started."

(from The African Queen, a film by John Huston)

The Christian has been crucified with Christ, and therefore is reckoned dead to the world, so when the world offers its problems, the Christian finds worry superfluous: he has given himself up for dead back when he started.

. . . do not be anxious about anything . . .
-- Philippians 4:6

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
-- Galatians 6:14

Redeemed to Perpetuate the Name

2011-12-20T08:23:00.003-05:00

Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people, "You are witnesses this day that I have bought from the hand of Naomi all that belonged to Elimelech and all that belonged to Chilion and to Mahlon. Also Ruth the Moabite, the widow of Mahlon, I have bought to be my wife, to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brothers and from the gate of his native place. You are witnesses this day.”
-- Ruth 4:9-10

Boaz is that rare man who does things because God lives (Ruth 3:13). So behind and within all of his provision and care for Ruth is the desire to glorify God. We see this even in his expressed motivation upon winning Naomi's land and Ruth's hand from the redeemer with first dibs. He says he has purchased them to perpetuate the names of dead relatives. Clearly Boaz is a "worthy man" (Ruth 2:1) and not just in the sense of financial means.

Were it not for Boaz's larger-than-self vision, we would not have the story of Ruth. Her faithfulness, her commitment, her optimism, her submission are to her praise and God's, but Boaz's faithfulness -- his full-of-faith-ness -- in redeeming her puts her on the map. Against the dark backdrop of the book of Judges' lawless grotesqueries, in which every man did what was right in his own eyes, Boaz shines with the predawn radiance of God's glory in Christ.

Do you know the name of the kinsman redeemer first in line?

Exactly. In Ruth 4:1, Boaz calls him "friend," and the Hebrew behind that word roughly translates to "so and so." Whether his reasons for passing on Ruth were good or bad, old so-and-so's name is not perpetuated. But we know who Elimelech, Mahlon, Naomi, and Ruth are because Boaz honored them by honoring God.

And because Boaz honored them by honoring God, his own name is perpetuated, and his son's, and his son's son, and his son's son's son, and so on until the lot of them spill into Matthew 1, and what we learn there is that Boaz has redeemed Naomi's plot of land and Ruth's widowed hand in order to perpetuate the name of God's Son, Jesus Christ.

And this is why any of us are redeemed: not just so that we'd be personally forgiven and fulfilled, but so that God's name and Christ's lordship would be magnified in every nook and cranny of our lives spreading into every square inch of the world until we spill into the life and world to come. We are redeemed for his namesake and to perpetuate his name.

5 Ways Wives Can Encourage Their Husbands

2011-12-14T10:33:00.003-05:00

An excellent wife who can find?
She is far more precious than jewels.
The heart of her husband trusts in her,
and he will have no lack of gain.
She does him good, and not harm,
all the days of her life.
-- Proverbs 31:10-12

1. Praise Him Verbally
Private nagging and public nitpicking are common temptations for wives of husbands who are sinners, by which I mean wives, but a wife ought to know that this is Chinese water torture on his heart. Most men carry around in their souls the question "Do I have what it takes?" The gospel answers this question, "No, but Jesus does, and what's his is yours." This is the only acceptable way to answer in the "negative." When you nitpick and nag, you give mouthpiece to the accuser who wants your husband to know not only does he not have what it takes, he is worthless because of it. So find ways to constructively criticize and help him repent, but more than that, tell him what you like about him, how you find him attractive or admirable, how you respect him or are impressed by him. Outdo him in showing honor (Rom. 12:10).

2. Submit to His Leadership
This is not a call to be a doormat, but in my pastoral experience I encounter many a wife who says she wants her husband to lead her but then makes it clear in some way that this will only occur when she agrees with his decision. There are few things more demoralizing than a demand to lead with no commitment to follow. Instead, if your husband is not leading you into sin, your followship of your husband is a reflection of your trust in God. Peter writes:

For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. (1 Peter 3:5-6)

3. Reject Relational Legalism
If your husband always feels as though he is only in your good graces when he has performed to your standards or met your expectations, he will not see you as his lover, friend, or partner, but as his boss. Do you know how deeply you want to feel approved of despite your flaws, sins, and failures, that your husband would know the real you and love that you? He wants the same thing, even if he never expresses it.

4. Take an Interest
It's not always that your husband doesn't like to talk. It's just that perhaps he's learned that your favorite subjects are things he doesn't have much to say about. Communicating with you in ways that edify and engage you is his command to obey with joy; communicating with him in ways that edify and engage him is yours. This might mean asking him questions about sports or hobbies or movies or power tools. Or maybe it doesn't mean talking but sitting on the couch to watch the game with him or invading his "man cave"* with your presence but not your agenda.

5. Make Love to Him
This is not universally true, but it is generally true: The number one way a husband feels encouraged is when his wife has sex with him. I put it last because it's likely the touchiest point (no pun intended), but it is (again, generally speaking) top of the list. If you're thinking, "Well, for some husbands maybe, but not mine," ask him. For most men, sexual intimacy is directly wired to feelings of encouragement, confidence, approval, attractiveness, and self-esteem. The things that you likely need in order to feel open to sexual intimacy are the things he typically feels afterwards -- closeness, respect, approval. I know it's weird that God set it up that way, but I think he did so that we would serve each other graciously with our bodies, learning to put each other first in a neat little "No, after you" kind of dance. In any event, one of the chief ways -- if not the chief way -- you can build up your husband is by bedding down with him.

Carolyn Mahaney's chapter "Sex, Romance, and the Glory of God: What Every Christian Wife Needs to Know" in the Piper/Taylor book Sex and the Supremacy of Christ is excellent on this subject. You can download the entire book for free here.

* Dudes, if you have a man cave the sole function of which is for you to spend regular amounts of time sequestered from your family, you need to repent and reorder your priorities.

---
Previously: 5 Ways Husbands Can Sanctify Their Wives

I Won't Pre-Label Revival

2011-12-14T09:46:00.004-05:00

“It happens over and over again that the gospel ‘comes alive’ in a way that the evangelist had never dreamed of, and has effects which he never anticipated. The gospel is addressed to the human person as a human person in all the uncountable varieties of predicaments in which human beings find themselves.

The gospel has a sovereignty of its own and is never an instrument in the hands of the evangelist. Or, to put it more truly, the Holy Spirit, by whose secret working alone the gospel ‘comes alive,’ is not under the evangelist’s control. The wind blows freely.”

-- Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

I really wish people would stop scheduling revivals. It never works. God doesn't synchronize watches with us.

I won't pre-label an event "revival" or an "experience of the Spirit" or anything like that, because a) I am not prescient enough to where the Spirit will blow next, and b) if I were to label something "revival," I would be both tempted to stir things up myself to suit the name and second guessing whether anyone's reaction was a result of the Spirit's spontaneous move or a response to the expectation to react.

I want to raise the sail for revival in desperate prayer, godly sorrow, and dogged proclamation of the joys in Christ, but I don't have enough bluster to move the boat myself.

5 Ways Husbands Can Sanctify Their Wives

2011-12-13T14:44:00.004-05:00

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
-- Ephesians 5:25-27

1. Put Her First
Sacrifice is in view here, as is the understanding of "sanctify" in the sense of "setting apart for special use," as in consecration. Husbands honor their wives not among others, but before and above others.

2. "Gospel" Her
Yes, I know it's not a verb, but you get my meaning here. The passage says Jesus sanctifies the church by "washing" her with the water of the word. The understanding of "sanctify" as "cleanse" is in view here, and a husband who wants to sanctify his wife will share with her the word of God, speak to her the word of God, remind her who she is in Christ, forgive her sins, give her the opportunity to forgive his in word-driven repentance, and in general make sure she is gently, lovingly covered in the Scriptures.

3. Protect Her
Husbands will present their wives in some way to the Lord when that roll is called up yonder as an evidence of their own faithfulness to him. Do we want to be proven true children of God, full of faith in Jesus and his gospel? Then we will show the fruit of faithful husbanding, which is a wife "without spot or wrinkle or any such thing." No, we cannot sanctify our wives the way the Spirit does, and no, neither our salvation nor our wife's salvation is contingent upon our perfect husbanding (thank God!), but manhood is responsibility-taking, and this means taking the responsibility to shield our wives from sin and its temptations, accusations, attacks, unnecessary burdens, hurtful expectations and assumptions, and the like. This can mean everything from taking on housework so she gets to rest or go out with friends to warding off or rebuking people who take advantage of her. It also means no verbal, emotional, or physical abuse. It means no pornography or sexual exploitation. It means treating her and ensuring treatment of her that is gentle, loving, and edifying.

4. Serve Her
How did Jesus the King position himself over the church as its head? By becoming its servant, sacrificing to the point of death in loving service to her betterment.

5. Lead Her
This encompasses all of the above and more. Male headship requires repetitious repentance, deep humility, desperate God-reliance, and a high, passionate commitment to the grace of God for the glory of God, not the gratification of self for the glory of self. Lead, don't push. Set an example in speech and conduct. Show yourself flawed but trustworthy but God as failproof. Refuse to make excuses or pass the buck. Shoulder the burdens and take responsibility.

---
Coming up: 5 Ways Wives Can Encourage Their Husbands

10 Best Books I Read This Year

2011-12-12T14:09:00.004-05:00

These aren't all 2011 releases, as you will see, but they are the ten best books I read this year.

(Honorable Mention: Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I'm 2/3 of the way through it, and it would easily be on this list if I finish it before the end of the year.)

10. In the Woods by Tana French
When I first finished this novel, I wanted to throw it across the room. I tweeted what a ripoff it was and several other readers agreed with me. Then I couldn't stop thinking about it. And now I'm convinced that the thing I thought the book didn't reveal was actually revealed, only hiddenly in the book. In any event, no book this year has provoked such disgust in me and at the same time kept me hanging on, searching it out, chewing on it.

9. Reclaiming Adoption edited by Dan Cruver
Short, but comprehensive and powerful. This collection of essays by Cruver, John Piper, Scotty Smith, et.al. show us the shape of God's heart for us and the outline of the Christian heart for orphans.

8. Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis
Not anywhere close to Lewis's best work, I nevertheless profited from his writing here as I always do. He is faithful to present with awe and insight the "anatomy of the soul" (Calvin) held in the biblical Psalms.

7. Future Men by Douglas Wilson
I don't have boys, but I really enjoyed this book on raising them. I used it off and on in our church men's group, and together we alternately fought with Wilson's ideas and nodded our heads in vigorous agreement with them. If I had boys, I'd find this book invaluable. And Wilson can flat-out write, of course.

6. The Bookends of the Christian Life by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington
The truth about the Christian life -- how the gospel works, how we work in the gospel -- put simply and succinctly. I would recommend this to every believer. It's like a hundred books on idolatry, gospel-centrality, and sanctification condensed into one readable little companion that replaces them all.

5. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
I've read this classic twice before but wanted a refresher before the latest movie adaptation debuts next year. Fitzgerald at his coy, rhythmic, biting best. I also read his This Side of Paradise this year (for the first time) and found it dreadful -- dull and bothersome. I find it hard to believe, actually, that the same guy who wrote that navel-gazing tribute to ennui wrote this insightful indictment of (basically) idolatry. One of a few genuine American masterpieces.

4. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Speaking of American masterpieces, we could talk about the serious Huckleberry Finn, but I prefer the whimsical, engrossing Tom Sawyer. I've loved this book since I was a little boy and as I re-read it this year, I found myself transported not just to the Mississippian stomping grounds of scamps and scoundrels but to the floor of my boyhood home and the couch of my grandmother's house, two places I vividly remember drinking in the adventures of Tom, Huck, Polly, Becky Thatcher, Injun Joe, Muff Potter, and the whole gang. Twain plays on the frequency my imagination is tuned to.

3. Jonathan Edwards on Revival
This is actually the publication title given to this volume containing three of Edwards' works: "A Narrative of Surprising Conversions," "The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God," and "An Account of the Revival of Religion in Northampton 1740-1742." I first read this book while going for jury duty in Houston, Texas, in about 1995. At that time I was a youth minister for a Willow Creek model church; I was interested in theology and wanted to be interested in Edwards, but I had no mental nor spiritual framework for the material in this book. Nevertheless I have held on to it for all these years. Now I'm in New England and wondering what it might take for God to grant the favor of revival to this land again. Edwards' book is stirring for the desperate.

2. The Deep Things of God by Fred Sanders
I consider it brilliance when someone says an old (but uncommon thing) in fresh ways, and this is what Sanders has done. For all those who believe in the Trinity but can't for the life of them see how it might be practical. And for those who think "making the Trinity practical" can't possibly come out to anything deeply theological. Oh, read the thing. It's fantastic. Read it in February and thought, "I won't read a better nonfiction book this year, I bet," and I was right.

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
My lands, y'all. To my shame, I'd never read this before. I laughed and cried. Literally. In public.

This Christmas, Don't Let Jesus Distract You from Jesus

2011-12-12T12:47:00.003-05:00

There is a great danger this Christmas season of missing the point. And I'm not referring simply to idolatrous consumption and materialism. I'm talking about Christmas religiosity. It is very easy around this time to set up our Nativity scenes, host our Christmas pageants and cantatas, read the Christmas story with our families, attend church every time the door is open, and insist to ourselves and others that Jesus is the reason for the season, and yet not see Jesus. With the eyes of our heart, I mean.

I suppose there is something about indulging in the religious Christmas routine that lulls us into thinking we are dwelling in Christ when we are really just set to seasonal autopilot, going through the festive and sentimental motions. Meanwhile the real person Jesus the Christ goes neglected in favor of his plastic, paper, and video representations. Don't get distracted from Jesus by "Jesus." This year, plead with the Spirit to interrupt your nice Christmas with the power of Jesus' gospel.

Revolutionary Ageism and the Church

2011-12-10T12:17:00.003-05:00

There's a reason, I think, the Bible makes it a commandment to honor our parents and the New Testament commands us to care for the old folks in our family: God knows we tend to ignore them, which is really a form of hatred.

Yes, I know that sounds harsh. But can anyone doubt that the modern evangelical church has marginalized seniors and the elderly into ecclesiological inconsequence, that we have assimilated worldly culture's idolization of youth?

I once read in a friend's Facebook status that all the "old people" are gonna hate heaven if they think the worship music in churches is too loud. You know, because heaven's worship is going to be exactly like the laser light rock and roll concerts we got goin' on in evangelicalism right now. /sarcasm

Stupid old people and their lame musical tastes. They don't get "real" worship, do they?

Oddly enough, I thought about the youth-idolatry and pushing of our elders to the margins once while watching the end of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. At the end, after the king has been crowned, the entire procession -- men, elves, and dwarves -- bow a knee to the fat, furry-footed, diminutive hobbits. Why did it make me think of the ageism in the church? Because I think when we do get to heaven, we are going to find that we are honoring the people we wouldn't think to honor in real life (with any meaningful consideration).

Do we tend to think our churches are better off because we think old people are unbending, unhip, unsophisticated, unable to get "the vision"? As we push for multicultural ministry, do we forget multigenerational? When we get to heaven we will fully realize all the wisdom and experience and authority we not only squandered, but ridiculed. I fear the reason we don't pour much ministry into the elderly is because we don't figure we'll get much return on our investment when it comes to realizing our church vision, filling the seats, etc. (A church of all old people, of course, is just as much in danger as a church of all young people -- just a danger of a different kind.)

Yes, some old people don't "get it." But a lot of young people don't either. We just put up with them more and are willing to work with them more because they make our church look cooler.

My friend Darryl Dash wrote an amazing post once titled Don't Write Off the Seniors. Darryl can write this kind of stuff, because Darryl is a true pastor. A taste:

Don’t get me wrong here. I’ve been part of sleepy churches full of seniors who are resistant to change, and that holds no attraction to me.

But I’ve also seen churches full of loud music and jeans and untucked shirts that have the best lighting and video production, with no gray hair in sight. Is that any better than a seniors only church? I wonder. That holds no attraction to me either.

I have been in conferences in which the speaker has said that we need to change, and if the seniors don’t like it, then that’s too bad. Again, I believe seniors need to flex, but the glib writing off of an entire generation speaks to a serious blind spot in our approach to ministry today.

Darryl closes his post with a reflection on James 1:27, writing:

If our religion is pure, we will look after those who are oppressed and forgotten, and that surely includes a lot of seniors today. I’m increasingly convinced that we need to move beyond generationally divided ministry and take this seriously. And we’ve got to take some of the challenges they’re facing and figure out how we can visit them in their afflictions and actually help.

If we write off the seniors, James says, we’ve failed. That’s a pretty big deal.

True dat.

In our efforts to multiculturalize the church -- which is a great effort and a godly one -- let's not forget the need to multigenerationalize the church. Is your church monogenerational? If not, are your seniors second class citizens in your church? If so, what can you do to fix this?

The kingdom of God turns the tables on business as usual, and this includes church business as usual. The countercultural call of the kingdom requires a revolutionary ageism, where we actually honor our elders above ourselves and our youngers, actually honor those we are most tempted to deem having outlived their usefulness.

Be Jesus-Full

2011-12-09T13:41:00.001-05:00

I have been and always will be doggedly suspicious of pastors who rarely (or never) mention Jesus.

John Piper says, "What we desperately need is help to enlarge our capacities to be moved by the immeasurable glories of Christ."

We ministers of the gospel -- and Christians at large -- can fumble this commission in three main ways:

1. We speak in vague spiritual generalities. Love. Hope. Peace. Joy. Harmony. Blessings. All disembodied from the specific atoning work of the incarnate Jesus and exalted Lord. It all sounds nice. It's all very inspirational. And it's rubbish. He himself is our peace. He himself is love. He himself is life. He does not make life better. He is life. Any pastor who talks about the virtues of faith, hope, and love, with Jesus as some implied tangential source, is not feeding his flock well.

2. We speak Christ as moral exemplar. We tell people to be nice because Jesus was nice. We tell them to be sweet because Jesus was sweet, good because Jesus was good, hard-working because Jesus was hard-working, loving because Jesus was loving. This is all well and good, but you could substitute "Mother Theresa" or even "Oprah" for "Jesus" and essentially have the same message.

3. We avoid the real problem -- sin -- and therefore either ignore the real solution -- the cross -- or confuse its meaning. In many churches, not only is sin never mentioned -- because it hurts people's feelings or what-have-you -- the cross is rarely mentioned. And when the cross is mentioned, because we don't want to talk about sin, it becomes instead the great affirmation of our special-ness, rather than the great punishment for our unholiness. The cross becomes not the intersection of God's justice and mercy but the symbol of God's positive feelings about our undeniable lovability.

In all of these instances, and others, people are inspired and enthused, but they are moved about God's recognition of their own awesomeness, not about the glories of Christ. The capacity is enlarged with our growing self-esteem.

Even angels long to gaze into the life-giving riches of the gospel of grace. We prefer to drink deeply from the well into which we're gazing -- our navels.

Pastors, inspiration sells. But only Jesus transforms.

Crooked Line Comunication Squelches Freedom and Kills Confidence

2011-12-09T13:33:00.002-05:00

A minister reflects on getting that second-hand criticism. It's frustrating. A snippet:

“I got a call saying some people are concerned about this kind of thing,” he explained. “Youth group happens in the youth room. Even if there’s only one kid. That’s where you do your Bible study.”

Who called? How many people are concerned? Which ones? And would it be okay to teach them to worship Satan as long as we did it in the youth room?

“I appreciate the concern,” I told him. “If someone else calls, be sure to remind them of my phone number.”

The next day, a friend called, pretending to wonder what the young people did on Sunday night. “Some people are concerned . . .”

The Great A&W Incident, as it’s known around our house, baptized me into the murky waters of church ministry and the sideways, backhanded, upside-down channels we use to communicate with one another in the family. Before The Incident, I assumed we would all talk to each other. Not around each other.

What a naive dork I turned out to be.

It was a small thing, The Incident. But it fit into a larger pattern of crooked-line communication that one day, years later, helped break a church into a million tiny pieces.

For the laymen out there, "some people are upset/concerned" is maddening. Use it only when anonymity is absolutely necessary, as it will cripple your pastor's confidence. "Some people" might as well be "all people." Because if we don't know who's mad, we are ill at ease with everyone. It leads us to be timid, suspicious, distrusting. (eg. Can we tell this person about our fears and struggles, or is this person the one who thinks I'm doing a terrible job?) There are times when vulnerable people lack the confidence to bring concerns directly, but most other times the biblical mandate to take an offense to someone directly, not to someone anonymously through someone else, is more necessary.

I learned a good line from Andy Stanley in his "Life Rules" series: "Never say something about someone you wouldn't say to them." I'd add this rule of thumb: If you can let an offense go, do it. If you can't, take it to the offender, not to others.

Is Your Baby Jesus Too Safe?

2011-12-08T08:30:00.000-05:00

Christmas Eve I saw a stable, low and very bare,
A little child in a manger.
The oxen knew Him, had Him in their care,
To men He was a stranger,
The safety of the world was lying there,
And the world's danger.

-- Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, "The Stable"

Don't Thingamatize Christmas

2011-12-07T17:37:00.000-05:00

The danger in the seasonal celebration is that we cave to sentimentality and rote nostalgia and thus forget that the meek and mild baby in a manger was nothing short of the opening salvo in the kingdom of heaven revolution consisting in God personally invading earth.

We will toss around words this month like "spirit," "grace," "peace," and "hope." The Bible will not let us have these ideas merely as ideas, as things. They are personal. Thus: "He himself is our peace" (Micah 5:5; Eph. 2:14) and "God is love" (1 John 4:8). Let's not mess with ethereal virtues, no matter how Christianly gauzed. Leave ethereal virtues to vague saviors. Our Savior is incarnate!

Sinclair Ferguson brings it home:

[R]emember that there isn’t a thing, a substance, or a “quasi-substance” called “grace.” All there is is the person of the Lord Jesus — “Christ clothed in the gospel,” as Calvin loved to put it. Grace is the grace of Jesus. If I can highlight the thought here: there is no “thing” that Jesus takes from Himself and then, as it were, hands over to me. There is only Jesus Himself.

Don't thingamatize Christmas. Take it personally.

Build a Well: Janie's Christmas Stocking

2011-12-06T09:04:00.003-05:00

My friend and fellow Forge leadership team member Chris lost his dear wife Janie to cancer a couple of years ago. Chris is an amazing, humble guy, working hard and now raising 3 kids as a single man, and through it all his vision of the all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ has been an encouragement and a challenge to all who know him.

Last year Chris started a project called Janie's Christmas Stocking to both honor his late wife and provide financial and material assistance for some needy local families. This year the aim of Janie's Christmas Stocking is to build a well for an African village. You have probably heard before of the dire need for clean water in the poorest parts of Africa -- it's not just to satiate thirst but to prevent even simple illnesses or viruses from dirty water that can be deadly to populations ravaged by the immunity-weakening scourge of HIV and AIDS.

Chris (via Food for the Hungry) needs to raise $2500 to build a well. Will you help him honor Janie and show God's love to our African neighbors in need? Go here and find out how you can donate via check/snail-mail or online.

8 Departure Dangers from Gospel Centrality

2011-12-06T08:30:00.000-05:00

Only let us hold true to what we have attained.
-- Philippians 3:16

There are lots of distractions from and temptations to discard a commitment to gospel-centeredness. Here are just 8.

1. The Devil's Accusation
Every now and then I will hear some variation of this accusation from the evil one: "How can you get up there and talk about the gospel? You're a self-righteous hypocrite." Satan often tries to stifle gospel proclamation by reminding the proclaimer of his unworthiness. The specific accusation may change, but the motive is the same: get the gospel-centered preacher off his game. If the devil can get us to doubt our calling, our legitimacy as ministers, our capability as proclaimers, or merely our authorization to present the gospel, he knows he's closer to getting the gospel unheard.

2. The Devil's Insinuation
This word from the accuser is one I hear more often than any other: "This gospel stuff is gonna get old. Don't you think if you play this same old record every day people are going to get tired of it?" The devil would love to convince us that the gospel is not versatile or resilient, that it is not the every day power of salvation for all who believe.

3. Exasperation
Many times we are tempted to depart from gospel-centrality because we are fed up in not seeing the results we want or expect. Don't do that. Don't give up.

4. Rationalization
One distinguishing mark of heresy is just how reasonable it sounds. Paul warns not of wild-eyed malarkey but "plausible arguments." You may hear from some very sincere, honest, intelligent people who have been believers for a long time that the gospel-centered stuff is all very nice but they know the gospel already and what they really need to know is what the Bible says about getting out of debt or surviving the workplace. Sounds totally reasonable, no? Law-drivenness almost always does, and legalism rarely shows up these days in a three piece suit, red face, and fist pounding on a pulpit but in sweetness and light, from faithful tithers with kids in the youth group.

5. Accommodation
The rationalizers may not be able to get you to abandon gospel-centrality altogether, so they will instead try to get you to adopt "gospel plus." They're not saying to stop with the gospel stuff, they're just saying you need to be, you know, balanced. "Give us the gospel, sure, but also some of this and that too," they say. But Jesus + anything is not Jesus. Our people need the unadjusted, unadulterated gospel. They need it straight up, not mixed.

6. Minimization
Gospel minimization comes in a variety of forms, and it is itself a form of the error of accommodation. One claim gospel minimists make is that the gospel is not as important as other things, that it's the ABC's of the Christian life, perhaps, and what Christians really need to mature is the meat of "deeper teaching," which can encompass anything from systematic theology to eschatological speculation. Very often minimization comes in the form of gospel obfuscation, by which I mean the insistence that we simply imply the gospel to better make seekers comfortable or tack it on the end of a sermon in a public invitation or save it for a special sermon series or other special occasions. Sometimes minimizers want to dress up the gospel with songs from the radio, dance productions, cool videos, lasers, fog, stage-jumping dirtbikes, glowstick wielding ravers, or any number of other things the idol factory of our hearts haven't even manufactured yet.

7. Irritation
The same sun that melts the ice, they say, hardens the clay. Some people will just be flat-out offended or irritated by gospel-centered preaching, teaching, counseling, and ministry. A fear of man may lead us to acquiesce to their disgruntlement to keep the peace.

8. Insulation
Here's a big one, way too often not prepared for. A steady dose of faithful, robust gospel preaching will likely attract fringe-y people. Jesus had a way of attracting "those people." So it is with Jesus preached faithfully. If you commit to preaching the biblical Jesus and the radical grace of his gospel, you ought to commit to accumulating the kind of people that were attracted to Jesus. And, God willing, if your church grows from gospel preaching, it will change. You have no choice there. It must change. To grow is to change. And then what happens is that people who've been with the church a long time, people who may have been a part of your core or at least your core supporters and cheerleaders, may begin to turn on you. Because their church is looking different. Things are changing. And people don't tend to like change. Because the gospel enables us to obey the Great Commandment and empowers us to join the Great Commission, insulation is the enemy of the gospel.
---

(I've labeled the first two dangers as belonging to the devil, but all of these temptations to depart from the gospel come from the devil. Let's stand firm and resist.)

As God Lives

2011-12-05T16:15:00.002-05:00

Remain tonight, and in the morning, if he will redeem you, good; let him do it. But if he is not willing to redeem you, then, as the LORD lives, I will redeem you. Lie down until the morning. -- Ruth 3:13

Against the backdrop of the spiritual and cultural climate detailed in the book of Judges gleams the little story of redemptive romance called Ruth. The contrast is vivid. While "everyone did was right in his own eyes" (Judges 17:6, 21:25), the worthy man Boaz looks at pathetic, poor, widowed, foreign Ruth and says, "As the LORD lives, I will redeem you" (Ruth 3:13).

What is Boaz saying, really?

One short thing that communicates a few things:

First, he is saying his plan to redeem Ruth (and thereby the clan of Elimelech) is as sure as there is a God in heaven. "Will you redeem me?" Ruth asks, and Boaz says (in a way), "Does the pope wear a funny hat?" That kind of thing. Only he's more reverent than me.

Secondly, and more deeply, what Boaz is saying is that he is going to redeem Ruth because God lives. Boaz is the strange sort of man who does things because God exists. In this sense he is the most logical of men. Does God exist? If so, much must be different about my life. I ought to live my life as if God exists.

What if we all applied this standard to our motivations and determinations? What would our lives look like if we really believed the LORD lives?

Thirdly, and deeper still, Boaz is committing to redeem Ruth -- to paraphrase C.S. Lewis here -- not because a God lives, but because this God lives. This means he is going to redeem her in the Lord's way and for the Lord's purposes. "LORD" is all caps, denoting the divine name there -- YHWH. "As this personal one true God lives, I will redeem you." According to YHWH's glory, to make his name great, to exalt and glorify the God who is my God, Boaz will do this.

Ruth's redemption is not only or primarily for her glory, nor is it only or primarily for Naomi's or Boaz's or Elimelech's or Mahlon's. It is God's glory first and foremost that Boaz redeemed Ruth, and of course we don't just see this in his words or in this short history but as we trace the history through the ages to the first chapter of the Gospel According to Matthew.

As the LORD lives, we have been redeemed. Let the redeemed of the LORD say so.

The Shape of Gospel Astonishment in Psalm 24

2011-12-05T15:44:00.005-05:00

1 The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof,
the world and those who dwell therein,
2for he has founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the rivers.

There is God. He existed before anything existed, for he has always existed and he will always exist. He created everything that exists outside of himself and therefore he owns it all, including mankind.

3 Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD?
And who shall stand in his holy place?

How can we enjoy fellowship with this awfully holy God? Who can justifiably enter his presence? The answer:

4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not lift up his soul to what is false
and does not swear deceitfully.
5He will receive blessing from the LORD
and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
6Such is the generation of those who seek him,
who seek the face of the God of Jacob.
Selah

Sigh. I would love to enjoy fellowship with God, to receive his blessing and his righteousness. But I don't have clean hands and a pure heart, and I have often lifted up my soul to falsehood and have sworn deceitfully. If that's the standard for acceptance unto God's favor I can only hang my head in shame and sorrow.

7 Lift up your heads, O gates!
And be lifted up, O ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.

What? What do you mean?

8Who is this King of glory?
The LORD, strong and mighty,
the LORD, mighty in battle!
9Lift up your heads, O gates!
And lift them up, O ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.

Wait, what? Christ the LORD enters the equation? Well, of course! Of course he can do it! Jesus can abide in his presence, he can receive blessing from the Lord, he has a pure heart and clean hands, he is not false or deceitful in any way, and certainly he has sought the will of the Father at all times. I don't have to hang my head in shame any more: Christ my righteousness has entered and purchased justification before the holy God for me!

10Who is this King of glory?
The LORD of hosts,
he is the King of glory!
Selah

And hallelujah!

Gospel-Driven

2011-12-02T09:36:00.004-05:00

"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age . . ." -- Titus 2:11-12

"for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" -- Philippians 2:13

"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." -- Ephesians 2:10

"Only let us hold true to what we have attained." -- Philippians 3:16

"For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me." -- Colossians 1:29

"We love because he first loved us." -- 1 John 4:19

Tim Tebow Uses Words At All Times Because They're Necessary

2011-12-02T09:36:00.001-05:00

I like me some Kurt Warner (as a person -- my football loyalties always laid elsewhere, esp. when he and his Rams devastated my Titans in the Super Bowl), but I didn't like his recent advice to Tim Tebow:

I’d tell him, "Put down the boldness in regards to the words, and keep living the way you’re living. Let your teammates do the talking for you. Let them cheer on your testimony."

The idea behind this and other counsel to young master Tebow to lighten up on the Jesus talk is that talking about Jesus turns people off, so one should just be a good person instead. I've now seen both Christians and non-Christians suggest this approach.

There are a few problems with this advice:
1. It assumes Tim isn't already "being a good person."
2. It assumes one can simply imply the gospel with actions and it be understood.
3. It assumes that the gospel isn't offensive, really, but is made so through verbalizing it too much.

All of those assumptions are incorrect. Clearly for Tebow (who I respect and appreciate as a person -- my football loyalties lay elsewhere :-) which is a good thing since even though "he just wins," he's not a very good quarterback (yet?)) speaking the gospel and demonstrating its implications is not an either/or proposition. He rightly understands you cannot do one without the other.

I listened to a guest on Jim Rome's ESPN2 show yesterday say Tebow would commend his message more if he stopped talking about it and simply became a good football player. What all these folks appear to be saying is this: "Tebow turns people off by talking about his message so much." But what my ears hear is this: "Tebow's message makes me really uncomfortable and I don't like it, so I wish he'd just shut up and 'be nice'."

In fact, the Rome guest used the words "shoving it in our face," which is what offended parties often say about people who actually don't shove anything in anybody's face but merely talk most about what's most important to them. Last I heard, Tebow was not randomly showing up at people's homes and workplaces and cornering them with an evangelistic appeal. People are asking him questions, requesting interviews, wanting to hear what he has to say. And what Tebow has to say is directly influenced by the most direct influence on his life. Shouldn't this be true of everyone who claims Christ saved them?

What most of us seem ill-equipped to understand is a public figure so enamored with the love of Jesus he won't shut up about it. May his tribe increase, I say.

Tebow is apparently not the kind of star interested in paying Jesus some lip service when he wins a game or award. He's apparently a guy whose mouth is connected to the overflow of his heart.

The truth is that the gospel is a scandal. I wish brothers like Kurt Warner would factor that into their consideration. That people are blanching at Tebow's Christ-centered words is not because Tebow is offensive but because Christ is.

The truth is that faith comes by hearing, not by deducing through comfortable apprehension of good deeds. An implied gospel is a gospel fail.

(Oh, and that quote often attributed to St. Francis -- "Preach the gospel at all times; if necessary use words"? Yeah, he didn't say that. Or believe it.)

Proverbs 29:18 is Not About Your Big Ideas

2011-12-01T13:11:00.003-05:00

“Where there is no vision, the people perish . . .” (Prov. 29:18, KJV).

Proverbs 29:18 may be one of the most misapplied verses in all the evangelical church today. Many a church leader has used it to spiritualize his strategies and blackmail followers into supporting his entrepreneurialism. Vision statements are cast. Mission statements are crafted to serve the vision. A list of values is composed to serve the mission. An array of programs is developed to serve the values. A stable of leaders is recruited to serve the programs. An army of volunteers is inspired to assist the leaders.

Much of what goes on in our local churches serves to make sure the church machine keeps running. In less healthy—but sometimes very big—churches, the entire machine is designed to put on an excellent weekend worship service. All of this would indeed perish if that vision were not cast.

But what if a leader’s good idea for church growth or success was not the vision Proverbs 29:18 had in mind? What if we aren’t free to insert anything we come up with, no matter how spiritual or “inspired by God”?

The verse is longer than is usually quoted. Proverbs 29:18 (in the ESV) in its entirety reads: “Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law.”

The vision is “prophetic vision”; what is in mind here is the revelation of God to his biblical spokesmen. Where there is no vision shared with us by the prophets, to whom God revealed the mysteries of the ages, we like savages run wild. In other words, we may have a vision, but if it is not the one given to the biblical representatives of God’s revelation and the forecasters of God’s coming glory, it is not to be conformed to. “But blessed is he who keeps the law.” The latter part of the verse implies that when the vision of the prophets is held by the people, the blessing of living God’s way ensues.

What is the vision of the prophets? It is “the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints” (Col. 1:26; see also Rom.16:25 and Eph. 3:9). The vision is Jesus.

The world would have us know a billion other things. The church would sometimes have us know many other things, as well. But those who have beheld the life-changing vision of our glorious Lord Jesus Christ know better.

-- Gospel Wakefulness, 201-202

The Divine Discovery

2011-12-01T10:28:00.000-05:00

You are an explorer deep in the uncharted recesses of the Brazilian jungle, tracing along a tree-covered tributary of the dangerous Amazon river. You have braved wildlife, guerilla armies, the harsh terrain, and even pockets of the unreached indigenous tribe known as the Yanomamo Indians. Further and further you go, days upon days, sweaty and sore and skin marked by poisonous vegetation, thorns, gnats and mosquitoes, fungi from the damp conditions.

You are cut off from the outside world. Nobody would ever find you out here if you were to be killed or become fatally lost. Weeks into your trek, the jungle seems without end, each arduous mile similar to the last. You climb and descend, wade and forge, scramble and scurry. One foot in front of the other, eyes weary but alert, you hear the slight hush of the waterfall long before you reach it. Your pace quickens.

As the dense underbrush gives way, you eventually stumble out into a rare clearing and discover a silver cascade roaring down a rocky slide. The afternoon sun gleams through the emerald leaves of the forest and gives the reflective water a colorful sheen.

You can't help yourself: you wade into the water, braving whatever ravenous fish or snakes may lurk within. The water sparkles. Wading up to your waist closer and closer to the waterfall you notice a gleam of something that lay beyond the beautiful curtain. Should you stick your head in? You do. There is a recess there, a cave.

You climb over the rocks, the water pummeling your neck and head, and squeeze through into an opening in the rock wall behind the falls that could not have been carved just the by the water itself. The cave goes further into the side of the hill and you leave the waterfall behind you, taking delicate, careful steps on the wet floor. Venturing deeper and deeper, the light through the watery mouth of the cave dims, so you turn on your flashlight (crank-powered, naturally) and when you turn a corner, your jaw drops.

The bend in the tunnel in the cave in the mountainside opens into an enormous room. There is golden furniture everywhere, inlaid with jewels. Tables and chairs, altars and lampstands, all pure, solid gold, all adorned with rubies and diamonds and emeralds. What is this place? Who made it? Why is it here? Some of the material glows with an otherworldly aura, as if harvested eons ago from some interstellar gemological vein and transported to this place by some priestly extraterrestrial's sacred hands. Could this have been manufactured by primitive peoples? Surely not. The room is simultaneously advanced and primordial. It is another dimension.

It begs belief. Are you hallucinating? Is it a dream? How...? Why...?
What. in. the. world?

You've found it. You had no idea it was there, but you found it. And you may die the last one to see it. You may die just thinking about it! It's like discovery of fire. An unexplainable, incomparable wonder builds up in your heart, you feel that you may explode with joy. Bewildering, exultant, dazzled, staggering bliss!

This is what daily rediscovery of the gospel is, can be, ought to be like.

Know Your Nomenclature

2011-12-01T10:01:00.001-05:00

Some commonly mistaken terminology in theological statements and discussions:

Tenets are beliefs. Tenants are people who live in a building.

Armenians are people from Armenia. Arminians are people who somehow identify with the free-will theology of Jacobus Arminius.

Calvin is the man's name, so it's Calvinist or Calvinism. No idea who Calvan is or what Calvanism is.

Crucifixion, not crucifiction. That's a not unimportant distinction.

It's the book of Revelation singular, not Revelations plural.

When I started this post, I knew there were a bunch more but now I can't remember them. What more am I missing?

Glory

2011-11-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

For all the blessings of common grace we receive from the ongoing and rapid advances in technology, one thing we have struggled to receive from ever-morphing gadgets and gizmos is a sense of awe over God and a sense of expectation about what he may do next.

“Behold, I am making all things new,” declares Jesus Christ. The same promise is made by the inventors of electronic doodads. But only Jesus is telling the truth.

His renewing work killed him. But that is the way it’s supposed to work. Disobedience unto death is undone by obedience unto death, and only Jesus was Man enough to do that. Crushed by the weight of the cross, pinned there by envy and nails, stricken and open, he achieved victory most epic. The veil between heaven and earth tore,the grave gave up its dead, the universe tightly wound in its own burial shroud rapidly unravels. Can you feel it shaking? “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

And so the Scriptures tell us that Jesus Christ is the radiance of God’s glory and
that the heavens declare the glory of God, that the glory of God is evident in creation. For this reason, John Calvin spoke of creation as “the theater of God’s glory,” a worldwide proscenium under which the wonder of Christ was to be beheld, projected, and enjoyed. Every jot and tittle of general revelation is meant as an arrow to the special revelation of the living and sovereign Word of God. Mark Talbot writes:

In the Institutes, “this most glorious theater” means our universe, and the works referred to are God's work in creation and providence. Like an architect who manifests his greatness in every feature of an opera house from the grand sweep of its tiered balconies to his little touches with its light switches, so God reveals and “daily discloses [his glory] in the whole workmanship of the universe” from the splendor of the heavens to the shape and structure of the toenails on an infant's feet.

The story told in the theater is set in the theater itself -- which is to say, God says something through creation about the gospel that says something about creation -- and Jesus is the central player in the whole shebang. The entire Bible unfolds this intricate story for us, first in shadows, finally in blazing light.

This is a slightly edited excerpt from Gospel Deeps, forthcoming from Crossway in 2012.

Photo by Tommy Eliassen.

Foisting Christ at Christmastime

2011-11-29T08:00:00.000-05:00

My friend Burk Parsons tweeted something a couple of days ago that prompts me to revisit a topic I broached last Christmas season. Burk says:

Saying in a corrective tone "Merry Christmas" in response to a store clerk's mandated "Happy Holidays" greeting is not a form of evangelism.

I agree, but taking a step back, I think we ought to contemplate why it is some evangelicals get so offended by this practice. I know we don't like the idea of a Christless Christmas -- and we shouldn't! -- but let's think about it for a second: Is insisting that a store clerk throw out Christ's name in a thoughtless cultural greeting any meaningful kind of redemption of the reality that what we're encouraging is hollow cultural Christianity and what we're doing is buying stuff?

I submit that "Merry Christmas" as an empty cliche is equally Christless to "Happy Holidays." And in fact we ought to reckon the perfunctory "Merry Christmas" as more offensive than a cheerful "Happy Holidays," not less.

Why? Because God commands us to revere his name and keep it holy. I don't think getting irked that the clerk at Target didn't Jesusify his mandated holiday greeting meets what this law demands.

I guess what I'm saying is, why do we want to force people to claim our Christ? Let's not foist Christ at Christmastime. We ought to take care we aren't campaigning for Christ's name to be taken in vain! But I fear this is what we're doing.

Boycotting or petitioning to make store salespeople confess Christ to us does nothing to truly honor Jesus. It just puts our preferred religious gauze on what is very often (though not always) moralistic or consumeristic idolatry. It might make us feel better but it does not truly adorn Christ's gospel. As Uncle Lewis says, "That ain't the Christmas star, Gris. That's the light on the sewage treatment plant."

My Friend Nellie

2011-11-29T07:30:00.000-05:00

In a couple of hours I will be at the funeral for my friend Nellie. She ~~was~~ is a really sweet lady I've been blessed to know over the last 2+ years.

Nellie was a member of my church although she'd never attended while I've been pastor and has never, as far as I know, heard me preach a sermon. When I arrived here in 2009, the retired pastor, Roland, began introducing me to the dear ladies in area nursing homes and I inherited pastoral care of her from him. She stood out right away. Despite being in her mid-90's, fairly immobile, somewhat hard of hearing, and enjoying vision in only one eye, she was always spirited, joyful, flat-out mighty with cheer.

Her beloved King James Bible was always near at hand. Once she told me the print was too small for her to read any more. So I got her a giant print KJV. She said she couldn't read that either. But I think she just didn't like the idea of a "new" Bible. She knew a whole lot of it by heart anyway.

One thing that always struck me about Nellie was her phenomenal memory. It could sometimes be a month between my visits but she always remembered details about my family and things going on at church. I remember her asking about Becky and how she was doing while we spent 9 months living in different states. I was blessed and impressed by that.

Nellie and Kate, another dear saint we lost last year, are part of an aging generation of Vermonters that I fear are the last for a while faith-holders of this land. They lived Vermont's days of richer spiritual health and have held the faith while those following behind have not.

Nellie began writing poetry in 1987, when she was 72 years old(!), as a way to grieve and remember the passing of her daughter Norma. Ten years later some relatives collected all her poems and bound them. Nearly all of them gleam with gospel. Here's my favorite:

My Only Hope is Jesus

My Jesus I love thee
I love thy written word
It's the sweetest story ever told
that I have ever heard.

You are always with me
you live within my heart
and if I ever need a friend
you are there to impart.

You are always there to listen
to what I have to say
and you answer all of my prayers
in your own special way.

I can come to you in spirit
I can come to you with love
and know some day I'll dwell with you
in my Heavenly home above.

When my work on earth is over
and my work for you is done
you're my only hope for Heaven
you're the only one.

I love it. This poem, like all her poetry, is guileless and without pretense. I even love the theological sophistication belied by the simple lines in the last stanza that basically say "after my life of work for God is done, my only hope for heaven is nevertheless Jesus." No, this poem won't win any awards, but the faith it displays has won the joy of Jesus, which is a treasure beyond compare.

Last Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving, Pastor Roland let me know that the nursing home had contacted Nellie's family to tell them she likely only had days and to start preparing for her passing. I visited her that night. She indeed did not look good. Slumped over, breathing with much labor, coughing, she welcomed me, but she didn't recognize me. She began referring to conversations we hadn't had, picking up trains of thought mid-stream that made no sense. I could see she was going.

I held her hand. I prayed for her. I read 1 Corinthians 15 to her, the whole long thing, and she sat in silence. When I was done, I said to her, "Jesus loves you and is proud of you, Nellie." I told her that even though her body was weak, she was strong as Jesus inside. She looked at me and began reciting Psalm 23 perfectly, in the King James of course. When she was done, she recited it again. She knew it was too good not to rerun. Then she said, "Jesus died for me. I love my Jesus." Sometimes I don't know what "joy inexpressible and filled with glory" means, but at that moment I did. I had no words. So I just squeezed her hand gently and smiled at her through tears and sat there. That's what you do in the presence of greatness.

Nellie died three days later, on Friday morning. She was 95.

I've struggled over the last couple of years sharing the gospel at the funerals of those who by most indications did not know Jesus. Today I am so happy I get to celebrate her life as well as The Life that gave her life and is giving her life even now and forever more.

5 Leadership Signs Your Movement is Dying

2011-11-28T08:28:00.001-05:00

One or two of these in isolated instances are likely handle-able. A pattern of any one or any combination of these signs in a pastor or the leadership culture of a church likely indicate a stalled or dying movement.

1. Insulation from criticism and/or interpretation of any criticism as attacks or insubordination.

Of course there is such a thing as malicious attacks, divisiveness, and nitpicking busybodies. But too many leaders treat all criticism as on par with those sins in an attempt to deflect or retaliate against any challenge to their sense of authority or rightness. In some cases it gets really bad when affected leaders treat any question, no matter how innocently or sincerely asked, as an affront to their authority, or when leaders cultivate a system that prevents questions, criticisms, challenges even reaching their eyes or ears. The minute leaders start insulating themselves from valid criticism is the minute they begin exalting themselves. And exaltation of anyone but Christ is death. Self-reflection, accountability, and openness to sharpening/correction are musts for healthy biblical leadership.

2. Paranoia about who is and who isn't in line.

If a leader is constantly worried about who's on their side and who's not, who's saying or thinking what about them behind their back, who can be trusted and who can't, who are allies and who are obstacles, etc. etc., he is entering a world of insecurity that is hostile to the confidence of Christ's righteousness. And really, most times a leader frets about who may not be unquestionably submitting to his leadership it is a sign he's already lost credibility and trust. (Very closely related to this red flag is the tendency some pastors have to think of their people largely as statistics, consumers, assets, or liabilities, rather than as, you know, people.)

3. Need to micromanage or hold others back from leadership opportunities or other responsibilities.

Was it Luther who said, "All of us are ministers; some of us just happen to be clergy"? I don't know, but I like it. Good leaders don't just hand off responsibility but authority. A leader who micromanages trusts only in himself. Therefore, a leader who won't trust other gifted and authorized leaders doesn't trust God. And leaders who don't trust God cannot lead life-giving movements.

Pastor, you can't and shouldn't do it all yourself. It's not healthy for you and it's not good leadership of your church to attempt shepherding it as a one-man show. Nobody wins in that situation, no matter the glory it may earn you and the comfort it may afford others. That's all temporary, and therefore so will be your movement.

4. Impulse to horde credit and shift blame.

Leaders who claim all the credit and clout for successes and deny any responsibility for failures aren't leaders but self-righteous glory-hogs. Self-righteous glory-hogs will eventually find themselves denying responsibility for the failure of the movement they spent a lot of time taking the credit for. Healthy leaders on mission understand that double honor comes with double responsibility.

5. Progression has become reaction.

Ever heard pro-Calvinism preaching that sounded more like anti-Arminianism? Or vice versa? Good leaders know that emphasizing what they're for more than what they're against is vital for fostering forward momentum. It's okay to criticize or debate in appropriate measures, but so many pastors and leaders make the common mistake, fed by their emotions and the easy provocation of soapboxing, to rail and rant. Such stirring can draw a crowd and stir that crowd's emotions, which can create a false impression of a coalescing movement. But a collection of naysayers and bitter critics can't sustain movement over time. The content of our message can absolutely include what the message is not but if the shape of our message is what it is not (or what we hate or who we're against, etc.) we triumphantly and enthusiastically shoot ourselves in the foot over and over again. It will be a frustrating -- and ultimately failing -- endeavor of Sisyphean proportions attempting to sustain a movement if it is known more for its denials than its affirmations.

The Goodness of Gift-Giving

2011-11-25T11:13:00.002-05:00

There can be an undercurrent of guilt-tripping in some of the recent campaigns to redeem Christmas generosity. Programs like Advent Conspiracy are great. (Our family started our own version last year where we spent money on those in need instead of each other and then shared about who we helped and why with each other on Christmas morning.) The subversion of materialism and consumerist idolatry is a very, very good thing. But let's be careful not to take pride in it or to shame those who, you know, buy gifts for each other.

One of my concerns is that programs like Advent Conspiracy or even rhetoric meant to shame Black Friday shoppers become ways materialistic Christian suburbanites do penance for their year-long accumulation. But year-end rebuke of consumerism doesn't mitigate consumerism the rest of the year. Instead -- and how's this for a novel concept? -- let's just be generous people, year-round.

There's nothing wrong with giving gifts to friends and family. There's nothing wrong with even buying those gifts, rather than making them. And there's nothing wrong with trying to save money when buying those gifts. Gift-giving is good, and so is saving money on gifts you were going to buy anyway.

Flee consumerism this holiday season. But flee also smug abstention.

Preaching with the Grain

2011-11-22T12:00:00.001-05:00

Most preachers know the experience well. You're chugging along, preaching your text, expounding and exulting (or trying to, anyway), and suddenly you hit the jet stream. Remember that scene in Finding Nemo when the searchers join the sea turtles and suddenly -- whooosh! -- they're swept into a current that sweeps them along surf-style? It's like that, isn't it? There are moments where the Spirit just sort of anoints the experience, and the trajectory of the sermon starts to move in unanticipated but ecstatically orderly ways.

My latest experience of this was this past Sunday. I was simply minding God's business in Ruth 2:1-13. In that text we find this verse: "Let your eyes be on the field that they are reaping, and go after them. Have I not charged the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn" (v.9).

I didn't think anything "special" of that verse. I highlighted it simply as Boaz's tender and protective concern for Ruth, his show of care and provision for her. But in a moment of gospel exultation near the end of the sermon, as I compared what Boaz the redeemer has done for this foreign widow to what Christ the Redeemer has done for we alien sinners, I was further comparing Ruth's faithful hard work and our obedience, making it clear that we obey in faith as she obeyed in faith, and when the Redeemer rewards us, he reckons our having taken refuge under the Lord (v.12) as our righteousness -- whooosh! -- I was swept up into the jet stream and said something along the lines of, "The Father calls us to rest from our striving, to drink the water drawn by somebody else."

That thought, that gospel angle on v.9, had not occurred to me prior to that moment. I wish I could say I saw that glaring up from the text in my prep. I did not. It hit me like lightning in that moment of gospel ecstasy. I stopped. I wanted the congregation to know it. So I noted it. "That wasn't in my outline, by the way. That water thing. It just hit me. Isn't that cool?" My congregation is not typically a very effusive one; we're in Vermont, don'tchaknow? One guy said, "Amen," a few gave murmurs of approval. I could see in many faces we were sharing a moment of awe in how the Spirit can illuminate a text to shine a light on Christ. It was super, for real.

I find that this happens most often when I am sticking to the text, not straying too far into my own thoughts or stories, and when I am showing both what the text immediately means and then secondarily how it might adorn the gospel. Finding the gospel spring in any text can be hard work, but once it's found, Christological goodness just starts bubbling over. It rarely happens when I'm superimposing some other homiletical agenda onto the text, inserting my predetermined points and principles, molding the text to fit them. Instead, gospel momentum is found when we preach with the grain of Scripture. Let it rule and let it roll.

Three Things I've Learned from Lewis

2011-11-22T09:30:00.004-05:00

On this day in 1963 the world lost C.S. Lewis. (Aldous Huxley also died the same day, but both deaths were overshadowed by the assassination of President John Kennedy.) Every year on this date, I've run some variation of a tribute to the greatest Christian writer of the twentieth century, but this year a little something different. A list of what Lewis has taught me over the years:

1. Wonder. My first introduction to Lewis was not the Chronicles of Narnia, actually, but as a child, Out of the Silent Planet. It was completely weird and wonderful. When I got to Narnia shortly thereafter -- I was about 8 or so, probably -- I consumed each book one after another lustily, like a compendium of Turkish delight. Lewis' space capsules and English manses and wardrobes and attic spaces grabbed ahold of me, broadcasting where my neurons were tuned, man. I was the kid who saw a treasure map on the back of a box of Cap'n Crunch cereal and was convinced it led to buried valuables in my Brownsville, Texas neighborhood. Reading the Space Trilogy (well, the first two books when I was little, the third well into high school) and Narnia was like warp speed for my already truckin' along childlike wonderment.

2. Reason. Even Lewis's fiction is chock-full of logic. "Don't they teach that in schools any more?" the Professor says to the Pevensies when they don't believe Lucy's fantastic story. Lewis's faith was full of wonder but was, also, entirely reasonable, and in the 80's when the apologetic industry was dominated by Josh McDowell and burgeoning creation science (Lee Strobel hadn't hit the scene just yet), I was ingesting The Abolition of Man and Mere Christianity. And probably the most influential non-fiction work of his for me is his collection of essays named after "God in the Dock." The article "Myth Became Fact" is one of my all-time favorite short pieces, fiction or non, and offered a complementary weight to one of my favorite lines in Perelandra, which I quote probably way too much in all the stuff I write. (Ransom understood that myth is "gleams of celestial beauty and strength falling on a jungle of filth and imbecility.") Lewis helped me make sense of this polytheistic, pluralistic world. His classic trilemma in Mere Christianity just made sense. His own logic and reason is not airtight of course, but he approached Christianity not just as a worshiper but as a thinking worshiper, and he therefore becomes an invaluable asset for relentlessly scrutinizing young men and women who are sorting out their faith.

3. Artistry. Homeboy could flat-out write. And when he wrote, he exulted. In his own words:

As I write, I am not merely teaching. I am adoring. Please do not take the enchanted as merely the didactic.

When I was in the first grade, my class filled out these little booklets that chronicled our favorite subjects, foods, games, etc. and one of the questions was "What do you want to be when you grow up?" My six year old hand wrote Author in that blank, and through a series of adolescent aspirations and a call to vocational ministry I have never not wanted to be a writer of books. Lewis threw gasoline on that childish ambitious fire, and he showed me over and over again what words can do. His writing was show and tell for me, displaying in so many beautiful, confident ways how literary pursuit is worship.

Don't Waste Your Exclamation Points

2011-11-21T10:14:00.001-05:00

Generally speaking, a church will over time become affected by, influenced toward, and transferred into whatever her preacher is most excited about.

Pastor, our people don't usually get excited about what we tell them to be excited about. Have you figured that out yet? Instead, they get excited about what they see actually excites us.

This means we ought to steward our exclamation points wisely. If you're one of those rah-rah guys firing on all emotional cylinders for everything from bake sales and the book table to baptisms and baby dedications, you create an equality between minutiae and missional milestones that can be disorienting, and ultimately dulling. But more directly, just remember that if everything is exciting, nothing is.

Or if the real energy of your gatherings is reserved for knock-out musical productions and cool videos but your teaching is "low-key," sit-on-a-stool, let's chat about how to "let God be Lord" over your finances, you are cultivating dysfunctional discipleship. Check out Skye Jethani's stuff on "experience-driven" worship in The Divine Commodity for some insight on this concept.

But we also have to be careful in our preaching about what we are most naturally reacting with awe to, driving home, and exulting in. If it is the biblical imperatives we communicate that what's really exciting about God's Word is the Law. And there is certainly a way to delight in God's commands! (Note that exclamation point.) But over time, we will impress upon our bodies that the Law is more dazzling than the gospel, and this is fuel for a quick sprint into a brick wall. Let's save our real enthusiasm for our beautiful Savior, our awe for his finished work, our exclamations for his grace.

The Gospel's Seasonal Effective Disorder

2011-11-14T11:01:00.005-05:00

I'm recalling lately the opening worship service agony I put myself under in my previous life as a non-church planter pastoring a floundering church plant. There were plenty of gatherings where our worship band outnumbered congregants. I would read our call to worship and as the music began, I would make my way back to the building foyer, prostrate myself on the floor and beg God to send a few more people before I had to preach the word. It was a soul-wearying battle with pride, with unrealistic expectations, with distrust. Our church began as a young adult ministry in a megachurch, and preaching gospel-centered expository sermons each gathering was like re-landing an alien mothership each week. Once we'd gone out to find our own way as independent community, people stayed away in droves.

I'm in Vermont now. Our church attendance has nearly doubled in the last two years. Our giving outpaces our budgeted need each month. People are excited, sparkling about the eyes and bringing their lost friends. We're baptizing adults and enjoying the exclamatory gurgles of babies in the service.

And I am not doing a thing differently than I did in the lean days. I'm in a different place, sure, and minister to different people, but my preaching, my counseling, my leadership, everything else is the same ol' same ol'. I am the same guy stubbornly doing the exact same thing. I am insanely repeating the same "methods" and expecting different results. And it appears to be working. This proves to me it has nothing to do with me (which is quite liberating, actually).

I believe there is an "in season" and an "out of season."

In my pride, I wish I could take credit for having devised a new system or appropriated the right model. When I am tempted (often) to glory in accomplishments and visible signs of success, I remind myself of those agonizing floor-of-the-foyer moments in the olden days, when I wanted to trust stuff God takes away as easily as he gives. I recalibrate my spirit on the gospel often, beating it into my head continually so that faithfulness to its proclamation is my measure of fidelity, my gauge of success. Everything else can be taken away like that.

What I am reminding myself is that we are not charged with creating fruitfulness but preaching the Word. The growth is up to God. Luther remarked that he simply studied and taught and then the Reformation happened while he was sleeping or drinking beer.

Brothers, let us be faithful to simply, as Spurgeon said, open the cage and let the lion defend itself. The word will not return void in God's time. The gospel will create its glorious disorder among God's people according to the movements of his Spirit.

preach the word; be ready in season and out of season . . .
-- 2 Timothy 4:2

The Spirit Before and After Pentecost

2011-11-14T10:37:00.004-05:00

Did the Spirit not prowl the earth, seeking whom he may save before his coming at Pentecost? Is God's Spirit not omnipresent? How did people love and obey God before Pentecost if we believe, as Jesus said, he would be sent after the Lord's ascension?

John Piper explains with a neat illustration:

Now let me suggest an analogy to illustrate the experience of the Spirit before and after Pentecost. Picture a huge dam for hydroelectric power under construction, like the Aswan High Dam on the Nile, 375 feet high and 11,000 feet across. Egypt's President Nasser announced the plan for construction in 1953. The dam was completed in 1970 and in 1971 there was a grand dedication ceremony and the 12 turbines with their ten billion kilowatt-hour capacity were unleashed with enough power to light every city in Egypt. During the long period of construction the Nile River wasn't completely stopped. Even as the reservoir was filling, part of the river was allowed to flow past. The country folk downstream depended on it. They drank it, they washed in it, it watered their crops and turned their mill-wheels. They sailed on it in the moonlight and wrote songs about it. It was their life. But on the day when the reservoir poured through the turbines a power was unleashed that spread far beyond the few folk down river and brought possibilities they had only dreamed of.

Well, Pentecost is like the dedicatory opening of the Aswan High Dam. Before Pentecost the river of God's Spirit blessed the people of Israel and was their very life. But after Pentecost the power of the Spirit spread out to light the whole world. None of the benefits enjoyed in the pre-Pentecostal days were taken away. But ten billion kilowatts were added to enable the church to take the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ to every tongue and tribe and nation.

What is a Gospel-Centered Church?

2011-11-08T08:29:00.002-05:00

A commenter this morning asks, "What is a gospel-driven church? What does a Bible believing church look like?"

Always helpful to refresh.

Joe Thorn reflects on "Gospel-Centered"

Ray Ortlund answers "What does it mean to be a gospel-centered church?"

Redeemer City Church's definition and list of marks thereof.

And the best short piece I'm aware of is this one by my friend Joel Lindsey: "What is a Gospel-Centered Missional Church and Why Do We Need One?"

Can Real Christians Not be Gospel Wakened?

2011-11-08T08:04:00.002-05:00

I am grateful this morning for Aaron Armstrong's positive review of Gospel Wakefulness. Aaron highlights a few passages from and features of the book most others do not, and that is an encouragement to me. It is clear that he felt the book, yet understood what I was trying to say about feeling, which is a double bonus and a great comfort for the author.

At the end of his review, however, Aaron expressed a concern, writing:

As much as I appreciate Gospel Wakefulness, I do have one point of concern. That is the distinction between the gospel awakened Christian and the one who believes, but isn’t necessarily captivated by the gospel. My concern is that this distinction could be used to create a false dichotomy between believers—as if there were Varsity and Junior Varsity Christians (an idea that tends to permeate certain segments of Pentecostal circles). While I’m not sure that was Wilson’s intention, it’s something that could be problematic for some readers who are particularly sensitive to that kind of thing. But it reveals an elephant in the room -- can a believer truly not be in awe of the gospel? We all have season where our hearts wander and our affections are weak, but do the Scriptures give us room to say that there really is a distinction? I’m not sure that the Scriptures give us room to say that it’s the case, particularly as we look to what Jesus says to the lukewarm Laodiceans in Rev. 3:16. But then again, I don’t think it would be terribly wise to plant a flag too firmly without serious amounts of prayer and study.

Aaron is right. Suggesting a varsity team and a JV for the Christian community was not my intention. I sought to address this notion in the book itself. Here are a couple of relevant passages:

This is not to set up tiers of Christian sanctification, as if there is a first-class discipleship and a second-class, and so on. Every believer is united with Christ on the same foundation, with the full access and authority granted by being made joint heirs with Christ. And in the final day, no matter where we are in our Christian walks, we will all reach the same destination on the same basis. There are no coach seats on the journey to Christ when he calls his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to another. (pp.31-32)

And perhaps most directly, as I explore the distinction I make between conversion and gospel wakefulness:

I do not mean to diminish the full scope of the radical change that occurs when someone believes in Christ for salvation. Rather, I mean to not diminish the full scope of what Christ’s salvation covers, and this includes a mustard seed faith that has not fully blossomed yet. You are no less justified the moment of your salvation than you are ten minutes or ten years later, but the warp speed sanctification of gospel wakefulness may make you feel as though you were. What I’m trying to say is that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and resurrection out of the grave are big enough, grand enough, effective enough, and eternal enough to cover your shoddy Christian life, assuming of course you do believe.

This is in fact the thrust of the gospel: it is Christ’s work that saves, not yours. Be careful, then, not to attribute your continuing sinfulness or moments of depression to a lack of salvation. For one thing, people who are not truly saved generally don’t worry about whether they are or aren’t anyway—your anxiety on that matter is evidence of a reborn heart. But for another thing, this will only set you up for more trouble later on, because gospel-wakened people don’t stop sinning either. If the measure of your perfection is the measure of your assurance, you will always be a timid, fearful Christian. But if your measure of assurance is the perfection of Jesus Christ, you are ripe for gospel wakefulness. (pp.27-28)

Aaron's concern in fact appears a little similar to one expressed by Trevin Wax in his review, although Aaron's runs the other way. While Trevin thought a misunderstanding could lead to people questioning their salvation, Aaron appears to suggest they ought to! I see that he makes allowances for seasons of wandering and weakness, but one reason why I included an entire chapter on depression is because I wanted to make an allowance for the darknesses that will not lift while our omnipotent Jesus is ever-faithful. I think we may lose our sense of awe if we place the focus of our assurance on our sense of awe.

One of the means of gospel wakefulness, in a moment of profound brokenness, may be to see just how faithful God has been in Christ despite our lethargic, tempestuous, waffling Christian life. I do not at all mean to say that someone may repent and believe and their life not at all look like it! I only mean to say that all justified persons are somewhere in the process of the Spirit's progressive work of sanctification, and that, providing as I said "they do believe," one's level of awe no matter how great is a poorer assurance than the finished work of Christ, in whom there is no shadow of turning.

By all means, let's work out our salvation with fear and trembling, let's test ourselves to see if we are in the faith. But let's remember that, as Augustus Toplady has said, "A feeble faith may lay hold on a strong Christ."

So can real Christians not be awed by the gospel? Yes, and it frequently happens for us each new morning. But there are God's mercies, waiting anew to meet us. That's awesome.

What Works

2011-11-07T17:29:00.005-05:00

The love of the world cannot be expunged by a mere demonstration of the world's worthlessness. But may it not be supplanted by the love of that which is more worthy than itself? The heart cannot be prevailed upon to part with the world, by a simple act of resignation. But may not the heart be prevailed upon to admit into its preference another, who shall subordinate the world, and bring it down from its wonted ascendancy?

If the throne which is placed there must have an occupier, and the tyrant that now reigns has occupied it wrongfully, he may not leave a bosom which would rather detain him than be left in desolation. But may he not give way to the lawful sovereign, appearing with every charm that can secure His willing admittance, and taking unto himself His great power to subdue the moral nature of man, and to reign over it?

In a word, if the way to disengage the heart from the positive love of one great and ascendant object, is to fasten it in positive love to another, then it is not by exposing the worthlessness of the former, but by addressing to the mental eye the worth and excellence of the latter, that all old things are to be done away and all things are to become new. To obliterate all our present affections by simply expunging them, and so as to leave the seat of them unoccupied, would be to destroy the old character, and to substitute no new character in its place. But when they take their departure upon the ingress of other visitors; when they resign their sway to the power and the predominance of new affections; when, abandoning the heart to solitude, they merely give place to a successor who turns it into as busy a residence of desire and interest and expectation as before - there is nothing in all this to thwart or to overbear any of the laws of our sentient nature - and we see how, in fullest accordance with the mechanism of the heart, a great moral revolution may be made to take place upon it.

This, we trust, will explain the operation of that charm which accompanies the effectual preaching of the gospel.

-- Thomas Chalmers, "The Expulsive Power of a New Affection"

Read Chalmers' masterpiece here (pdf).

TD Jakes and Theological Arrhythmia

2011-11-07T17:09:00.005-05:00

Popular religious spokesperson T.D. Jakes, overseer of The Potter’s House in Dallas, Texas, was all over my blog subscription feed a few weeks back because of his invitation to the Elephant Room. Jakes has a background in Oneness Pentecostalism which is traditionally known for its view of the Trinity, commonly classified as modalism.

Modalists maintain that there is one God and that he exists in three Persons -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -- but not simultaneously. Instead, modalists use language like “God exists in three manifestations,” inferring that God is sometimes Father, sometimes Son, and sometimes Holy Spirit. This view has always been untrue but was officially declared a heresy (twice) by the Church in the fourth century. The “sometimes” of modalism’s manifestation language is at odds with both Scripture and the verbiage of the creeds. Here, as an example, is a taste of the Athanasian Creed’s Trinitarian confession:

And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity;
Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.
For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit.
But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal.

When the Athanasian creed speaks of the three Persons of the Trinity having coeternal majesty it denies a God who morphs into one of three persons at a time.

Now, T.D. Jakes wishes to distance himself from his Oneness Pentecostal background. He desires a wider audience. So he claims that his view has evolved from his heterodox foundations. But the language in his church’s statement of faith on the Trinity still includes the fuzzy, red-flaggy “manifestations,” and when Jakes attempts to differentiate himself from Oneness Pentecostalism he nevertheless neglects to distance himself from it, finding it very difficult to clearly state his personal view of the Trinity out of fear of hurting the feelings of those in his Oneness past.

In 2000, he denied in a statement to Christianity Today that he is a modalist but in fifteen paragraphs nowhere articulates simple orthodox Trinitarianism. He affirms that there is one God and affirms that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct, both of which are good affirmations, but he cannot seem to put the two together to distinguish between Three-in-Oneness and one-at-a-time-ness. Ten years later Jakes is pressed well by Open House interviewer Leigh Hatcher to stake out his perspective but Jakes claims the Trinity is hard to define. But it is not difficult to confess orthodox Trinitarianism, for those who want to do it . . .

Is this important? Should we have just left poor Bishop Jakes alone? No, we should implore him earnestly to come out of the shadows of obfuscation -- or the absolute darkness of heresy, if that’s where he is -- and embrace the light of orthodox Trinitarianism.

Seeing the Trinity is important because if we want a real relationship with God we must make sure it’s really God we’re in a relationship with.

I have watched Jakes preach on television, and while I would trade his special pleading for the gospel any old day, I much admire his energy. He is a dynamic, engaging fellow. Yet he is out of step. Time and time again, given ample opportunity to unequivocally disavow heterodoxy he shows only his theological arrhythmia. For a brother with so much rhythm it is a shame he claps on the 1 and 3 when it comes to orthodoxy.

(This is an altered version of an excerpt from the manuscript for my book Gospel Deeps, forthcoming from Crossway in 2012.)

Justification by Vocabulary?

2011-11-03T12:49:00.006-04:00

Matt Smethurst recently interviewed me for The Gospel Coalition on my new book Gospel Wakefulness. Here is an excerpt that has been making the rounds today:

Near the end of the book you ask, “Is gospel centrality just a trend?” What are some practical ways that we who champion gospel-centered theology and living can guard against this temptation to treasure the trend more than God himself?

Keep asking this question, for starters.

We need to also work at making sure the "gospel-centered" jargon doesn't become our badge of orthodoxy, that we don't shrink the church to the size of our tribe. I think when we trend that way, we have clearly made the gospel-centered movement more cherished than Christ and his body.

I also think we ought to take care that what we are seeing and doing are acts of worship, exulting in the gospel, which looks like—to borrow from Piper —"oh!" language, rather than merely recitations of the mechanics of salvation or rote theology. When Paul is outlining the workings of the gospel, he doesn't do so simply or a-theologically; he is nearly breathless. He ransacks his vocabulary to do some sense of justice to it, to revel in it. His sense of awe is palpable.

Matt's questions reflects a genuine concern. It's a good question, and we need to keep asking it and not get irritated by those sincerely challenging on this point.

Here is the portion of the book he is referencing in his question, which comes from the book's Conclusion:

I met a gospel-loving fellow once who said all the gospel talk in some of evangelicalism’s newer movements made him nervous. Like me, he grew up a product of 80s pop culture, and he said to me, “Do you remember The Smurfs? Do you remember how they used the word ‘smurfy’ for everything? If something was great, the Smurfs said it was smurfy. A beautiful sunrise wasn’t beautiful: it was smurfy. For every Smurf’s success, they would say he had done a smurfy job.” My friend said, “I feel like all the gospel-centered this and gospel-driven that is just our version of ‘smurfy.’”

Is “gospel-centered” like “smurfy”? Bill Streger cautions against making “the gospel” a word of utility—noun and verb and adjective rolled into one—lest we make “the gospel” an evangelical shibboleth. He says, “Learning to talk about the gospel can be the worst thing for your spiritual health.”* How so? Streger suggests that if we are gospel-centered in language only, we may delude ourselves, but we can’t fool God. He says he’s afraid many of us have just learned to mimic the popular lingo of what he calls “gospel hype.”

Is gospel centrality just a trend? Is “gospel wakefulness” just a buzzword? Perhaps. If so, we will end up standing before Jesus at the end of days, resting in justification by vocabulary.

I am more hopeful. Certainly there are some who preach the gospel or talk the talk of gospel centrality out of false motives, or ignorant ones. But as for me and many others I know well, we are learning to talk in new ways to reflect the new thing that has happened to us, the new thing that is happening to our churches (which is really just a returning to the old thing). To use the phrase “gospel wakefulness” could be an affectation. Or it could be how people talk when they know the gospel’s power intimately and have resolved to know nothing else. Maybe some of us can’t shut up about how the gospel affects this or implies that, because it’s the gospel that energizes us and interests us. Maybe it’s because we have found nothing else to come close in fascination.

* Bill Streger, “Gospel Hype,” message given at Lead 2010 conference in Auburn, Maine, October 8, 2010.

Gospel Wakefulness Giveaway Notice

2011-11-01T16:46:00.002-04:00

I'm giving away two copies of my new book Gospel Wakefulness tomorrow to randomly selected "likers" of my public Facebook page. If you've already "liked" me, do nothing. If you haven't, go on ahead with yo bad self.

I'm using an online random number generator and will discover, announce, and notify the winners at end of day tomorrow (Wednesday).

May I Go In There?

2011-11-01T14:40:00.008-04:00

This is taken from an illustration in John Phillips' Exploring Hebrews commentary that has always moved me.

Imagine with me a Moabite of old gazing down upon the Tabernacle of Israel from some lofty hillside. This Moabite is attracted to what he sees so he descends the hill and makes his way toward the Tabernacle.

He walks around this high wall of dazzling linen until he comes to a gate and at the gate, he sees a man. “May I go in there?” he asks, pointing to the gate where all the bustle of activity in the Tabernacle’s outer court can be seen.

“Who are You?” demands the man suspiciously.

“I’m from Moab,” the stranger replies.

“Well, I’m very sorry, but you can’t go in there. You see, it’s not for you. The Law of Moses has barred the Moabite from any part in the worship of Israel until his tenth generation.”

The Moabite looks so sad and said, “Well, what would I have to do to go in there?”

“You would have to be born again,” the gatekeeper replies. “You would have to be born an Israelite, of the tribe of Judah, or of the tribe of Benjamin or Dan.”

“Oh, I wish I had been born an Israelite,” the Moabite says and as he looks again, he sees one of the priests, having offered a sacrifice at the brazen altar and the priest cleansed himself at the brazen laver and then the Moabite sees the priest enter the Tabernacle’s interior. “What’s in there?” asks the Moabite. “Inside the main building, I mean.”

“Oh,” the gatekeeper says, “That’s the Tabernacle itself. Inside it contains a lampstand, a table, and an altar of gold. The man you saw was a priest. He will trim the lamp, eat of the bread upon the table and burn incense to the living god upon the golden altar.”

“Ah,” sighs the Moabite, “I wish I were an Israelite so that I could do that. I would so love to worship God in there and help to trim the lamp and offer Him incense and eat bread at that table.”

“Oh, no, the gatekeeper hastens to say, “even I could not do that. To worship in the holy place one must not only be born an Israelite, one must be born of the tribe of Levi and of the family of Aaron.”

The man from Moab sighs again, “I wish that I had been born of Israel of the tribe of Levi of the family of Aaron,” and then, as he gazes wistfully at the closed Tabernacle door, he says, “What else is in there?”

“Oh, there’s a veil. It’s a beautiful veil I’m told and it divides the Tabernacle in two. Beyond the veil is what we call ‘the Most Holy Place’… ‘the Holy of Holies.’”

“What’s in the Holy of Holies?” the Moabite asks.

“Well, there’s the sacred chest in there and it’s called the Ark of the Covenant. It contains holy memorials of our past. Its top is gold and we call that the mercy seat because God sits there between the golden cherubim. Do you see that pillar of cloud hovering over the Tabernacle? That’s the Shekinah glory cloud. It rests on the mercy,” said the gatekeeper.

Again, a look of longing comes over the face of the Moabite man. “Oh,” he said, “if only I were a priest! How I would love to go into the Holy of Holies and gaze upon the glory of God and worship Him there in the beauty of His holiness!’

“Oh no!” said the man at the gate. “You couldn’t do that even if you were a priest! Only the high priest can enter the Most Holy Place. Only he can go in there. Nobody else!”

The heart of the man from Moab yearns once more. “Oh,” he cried, “If only I had been born an Israelite, of the tribe of Levi, of the family of Aaron. If only I had been born a high priest! I would go in there every day! I would go in there three times a day! I would worship continually in the Holy of Holies!”

The gatekeeper looked at the man from Moab again and once more shook his head. “Oh now,” he said, “you couldn’t do that! Even the high priest of Israel can go in there only once a year, and then only after the most elaborate preparations and even then only for a little while.”

Sadly, the Moabite turned away. He had no hope in all the world of ever entering there!

. . . Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith (Hebrews 10:19-22).

Here it is, a tremendous word of welcome, extended to Jew and Gentile alike, to come on in and worship, not in the holiest place of the human tabernacle, but into the Holy of Holies in heaven itself "by the blood of Jesus."

John Calvin's Last Will and Testament

2011-10-31T08:05:00.000-04:00

IN the name of God, be it known to all men by these presents that in the year 1564, and the 25th day of the month of April, I Peter Chenelat, citizen and sworn Notary of Geneva, have been sent for by Spectable John Calvin, minister of the word of God in the Church of Geneva, and burgess of the said Geneva, who, being sick and indisposed in body alone, has declared to me his intention to make his testament and declaration of his last will, begging me to write it according as it should be by him dictated and pronounced, which, at his said request, I have done, and have written it under him, and according as he hath dictated and pronounced it, word for word, without omitting or adding anything—in form as follows:

In the name of God, I John Calvin, minister of the word of God in the Church of Geneva, feeling myself reduced so low by diverse maladies, that I cannot but think that it is the will of God to withdraw me shortly from this world, have advised to make and set down in writing my testament and declaration of my last will in form, as follows:

In the first place, I render thanks to God, not only because he has had compassion on me, his poor creature, to draw me out of the abyss of idolatry in which I was plunged, in order to bring me to the light of his gospel and make me a partaker of the doctrine of salvation, of which I was altogether unworthy, and continuing his mercy he has supported me amid so many sins and short-comings, which were such that I well deserved to be rejected by him a hundred thousand times—but what is more, he has so far extended his mercy towards me as to make use of me and of my labour, to convey and announce the truth of his gospel; protesting that it is my wish to live and die in this faith which he has bestowed on me, having no other hope nor refuge except in his gratuitous adoption, upon which all my salvation is founded; embracing the grace which he has given me in our Lord Jesus Christ, and accepting the merits of his death and passion, in order that by this means all my sins may be buried; and praying him so to wash and cleanse me by the blood of this great Redeemer, which has been shed for us poor sinners, that I may appear before his face, bearing as it were his image.

I protest also that I have endeavoured, according to the measure of grace he has given me, to teach his word in purity, both in my sermons and writings, and to expound faithfully the Holy Scriptures; and moreover, that in all the disputes I have had with the enemies of the truth, I have never made use of subtle craft nor sophistry, but have gone to work straight-forwardly in maintaining his quarrel. But alas! the desire which I have had, and the zeal, if so it must be called, has been so cold and so sluggish that I feel myself a debtor in everything and everywhere, and that, were it not for his infinite goodness, all the affection I have had would be but as smoke, nay, that even the favours which he has accorded me would but render me so much the more guilty; so that my only recourse is this, that being the Father of mercies he will show himself the Father of so miserable a sinner.

Moreover, I desire that my body after my decease be interred in the usual manner, to wait for the day of the blessed resurrection.
Touching the little earthly goods which God has given me here to dispose of, I name and appoint for my sole heir, my well beloved brother Antony Calvin, but only as honorary heir however, leaving to him the right of possessing nothing save the cup which I have had from Monsieur de Varennes, and begging him to be satisfied with that, as I am well assured he will be, because he knows that I do this for no other reason but that the little which I leave may remain to his children. I next bequeath to the college ten crowns, and to the treasure of poor foreigners the same sum. Item, to Jane, daughter of Charles Costan and my half-sister, that is to say, by the father’s side, the sum of ten crowns; and afterwards to each of my nephews, Samuel and John, sons of my aforesaid brother, forty crowns; and to each of my nieces, Anne, Susannah, and Dorothy, thirty crowns. As for my nephew David their brother, because he has been thoughtless and unsettled, I leave to him but twenty-five crowns as a chastisement. This is the total of all the property which God has given me, according as I have been able to value and estimate it, whether in books, furniture,6 plate, or anything else. However, should the result of the sale amount to anything more, I mean that it should be distributed among my said nephews and nieces, not excluding David, if God shall have given him grace to be more moderate and staid. But I believe that on this subject there will be no difficulty, especially when my debts shall be paid, as I have given charge to my brother on whom I rely, naming him executor of this testament along with the spectable Laurence de Normandie, giving them all power and authority to make an inventory without any judicial forms, and sell my furniture to raise money from it in ordér to accomplish the directions of this testament as it is here set down in writing, this 25th April, 1564.

Witness my hand,
JOHN CALVIN.

Invincible

2011-10-31T08:00:00.000-04:00

"World, death, devil, hell, away and leave me in peace! You have no hold on me. If you will not let me live, then I will die. But you won't succeed in that. Chop my head off, and it won't harm me. I have One who will give me a new one."

-- Martin Luther

Revisiting Hot Potatoes the Church Must Handle: Prescient (?) and Pressing

2011-10-27T08:15:00.002-04:00

Four years ago I posted this list word for word. With the possible exception of #3 I still stand by it.

Hot Potatoes the Church Must Handle

This is just a random list of "side issues" I think of future importance to the evolving discipleship culture of evangelicalism. These are matters of internal Church culture I think will need to be tackled by those interested in reform.

1. The rise of young Calvinists* who equate a commitment to doctrinal orthodoxy with a commitment to Calvinism. And on the flipside, the rise of those disinterested in doctrinal orthodoxy b/c the perception is that to be passionate about theology makes one a Calvinist jihadist.

2. The push on behalf of the LDS "church" to be considered not just Christians, but evangelical Christians. And the apparent sympathy for this movement from scholars/pastors within the evangelical church.

3. The effect evangelicalism's burgeoning political apathy may have on social justice issues evangelicalism can't afford to be apathetic about.

4. The preoccupation of major denominations with issues non-essential to the faith.

5. Economic depression and widespread unemployment, two American cultural crises the Church -- with its addiction to bigger, faster, better -- is not equipping its own culture to confront.

6. The proliferation of technology that makes the world smaller as it makes individuals actually less and less personally connected. And the Church's present inclination to accommodate this distance rather than to counteract it.

That's all I can think of right now. Anybody got any others?

Look!: Charles Spurgeon's Gospel Wakefulness

2011-10-26T09:00:00.000-04:00

His story of his conversion sounds like gospel wakefulness to me:

I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair until now had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm, one Sunday morning, while I was going to a certain place of worship. When I could go no further, I turned down a side street, and came to a little Primitive Methodist chapel. In that chapel there may have been a dozen or fifteen people. . . . The minister did not come that morning; he was snowed up, I suppose. At last, a very thin-looking man, a shoemaker, or tailor, or something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach. . . . He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had little else to say. The text was “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth [Isaiah 45:22].”

He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in that text. The preacher began thus: “My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, ‘Look.’ Now lookin’ don’t take a deal of pain. It ain’t liftin’ your foot or your finger; it is just, ‘Look.’ Well, a man needn’t go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man needn’t be worth a thousand a year to be able to look. Anyone can look; even a child can look.

“But then the text says, ‘Look unto Me’. . . . Many of ye are lookin’ to yourselves, but it’s no use lookin’ there. Ye will never find any comfort in yourselves. Some look to God the father. No, look to him by-and-by. Jesus Christ says, ‘Look unto Me.’ Some of ye say, ‘We must wait for the Spirit’s workin’.’ You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ. The text says, ‘Look unto Me.’”

Then the good man followed up his text in this way: “Look unto Me; I am sweatin’ and great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hangin’ on the cross. Look unto Me; I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend to heaven. Look unto Me; I am sittin’ at the Father’s right hand. O poor sinner, look unto Me! Look unto Me!”

When he had gone to about that length, and managed to spin out ten minutes or so he was at the end of his tether. Then he looked at me under the gallery, and I dare say, with so few present he knew me to be a stranger. Just fixing his eyes on me, as if he knew all my heart he said, “Young man, you look very miserable.” Well, I did, but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance before. However, it was a good blow, struck right home. He continued, “and you always will be miserable—miserable in life, and miserable in death—if you don’t obey my text; but if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved.”

Then lifting up his hands, he shouted, as only a primitive Methodists could do, “Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do but to look and live.” I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said—I did not take much notice of it—I was so possessed with that one thought. Like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, the people only looked and were healed, so it was with me. I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard that word, “Look!” What a charming word it seemed to me! Oh! I looked until I could have almost looked my eyes away.

There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that instant, and sung with the most enthusiastic of them, of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to him. . . . And now I can say—
E’er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And Shall be till I die.
-- from Spurgeon's Autobiography

Spaced Out in Open Spaces

2011-10-26T08:30:00.000-04:00

Nobody ever stood at the base of the Rocky Mountains, looking up, and said, "Remember that time in high school when I could bench 300 pounds?"
-- Matt Chandler

I have a theory -- just a guess, mind you -- as to why hippy-dippy New Agers predominate in places like the Pacific Northwest, New England, and the American Southwest. It's because the environment is so overwhelmingly beautiful.

This thought was triggered in my mind last Sunday when one of youth was presenting his testimony of a solo trek in the mountains of upstate New York over the summer. He said to the congregation, "When you're in the mountains you realize, 'Yeah, I'm insignificant'." That reminded me of the Chandler quote at the top of the post and it made me think about how for many people -- not all, of course -- living in naturally beautiful places heightens the spiritual senses.

So I wonder if the reason we see so many pantheists and New Agers and what-not in these specific areas has something to do with the way the largeness of God's creation has triggered in them a sense of the numinous -- "Yes," they reason, struck small by the majesty of the mountains or the roaring of the oceans or the mystery of the desert, "there is something larger, more meaningful, more spiritual than me in the world" -- while the rebellion of their heart has triggered in them a spiritual knee-jerk response of self-assertion. Perhaps New Agey-ness is a way of offsetting the pain of undeniable smallness.

And when you think of it that way, we see this response in every form of idolatry, explicitly "spiritual" or otherwise.

A Way for the Very Vilest of Men

2011-10-25T08:05:00.000-04:00

‘Would I know the fullness and completeness of the salvation God has provided for sinners? Where shall I see it most distinctly? Shall I go to the general declarations in the Bible about God’s mercy? Shall I rest in the general truth that God is a God of love?

Oh, no! I will look at the crucifixion at Calvary. I find no evidence like that: I find no balm for a sore conscience and a troubled heart like the sight of Jesus dying for me on the accursed tree. There I see that a full payment has been made for all my enormous debts. The curse of that law which I have broken, has come down on One who there suffered in my stead; the demands of that law are all satisfied: payment has been made for me even to the uttermost farthing. It will not be required twice over.

Ah, I might sometimes imagine I was too bad to be forgiven; my own heart sometimes whispers that I am too wicked to be saved. But I know in my better moments this is all my foolish unbelief; I read an answer to my doubts in the blood shed on Calvary. I feel sure that there is a way to heaven for the very vilest of men, when I look at the cross.”

-- J.C. Ryle, “Calvary”

Pastors Who Want to Write Books

2011-10-25T08:00:00.000-04:00

I liked this piece from Barnabas Piper a lot.

When I receive proposals for books or book ideas from pastors I often get something like this as an accompanying comment: “I am the pastor of a X,000-person church, and based on their response to this message I think there is a large demand for this material.” This seems like a reasonable assertion. 80% of the congregation loved the messages, therefore a large percentage of like-minded Christians will also like the message. Unfortunately there is almost no correlation between what a pastor’s congregation thinks of his sermons and the audience size when that is turned into a book.

There are a few reasons for this.

1) Pastors have a relationship with their congregations. There is trust, familiarity, and warmth that allows for a sort of impact that doesn't carry over to a “cold” audience like book readers. An average or unskilled preacher can still be an enormously effective one because he loves and is loved by Christ and his congregation, but a good book requires skill to create.

2) There is often an enormous difference in the dynamism or effectiveness of the spoken word versus the written word. Many Pastors use scant outlines or basic notes to preach powerful sermons. Many pastors are skilled story tellers and can weave a verbal tapestry or paint a verbal picture with ease. Others have the talents of an orator and can use verbal variance to engage an audience. And for others it is the sheer passion and devotion that carries the sermon. Translating that same powerful preaching into powerful literature is no easy feat, and one that many aren’t prepared or equipped to do.

3) Worship services are multi-sensory experiences. The pastor’s sermon is both carried by and carries the worship in song and prayer. It is a cycle of worship experiences that builds itself up. There is no easy separation of song, prayer, scripture, testimony and sermon in the transformation of people’s hearts, nor should there be. Books are information on a page. Their power is in the words themselves with no other sensory engagement, so to take an effective sermon and publish it might be like taking a fish out of water.

4) Pastors are in a context whether it be denominational, racial, generational, or social. Maybe this means they communicate in a certain style to connect with their congregation. Maybe it means they are addressing particular issues or needs that have arisen in that context. But whatever it means the net effect is that the voice and message are uniquely suited to that context and not necessarily to a broader audience.

Gospel-Centrality and Insanity

2011-10-24T18:04:00.005-04:00

A few weeks back a fellow in our church shared his testimony with me. He said he'd been taking his young family to church once upon a time because he figured it was a good thing to do, and he'd attended there for two years, sitting week in and week out under gospel preaching, before finally one Sunday it occurred to him: "I'm a sinner! I need this gospel!"

I imagine the internal struggle of his pastor for those two years. I know it well myself. Ever preached the gospel dickens out of a text in front of a crowd of stoic rural New Englanders? My lands, it can keep a preacher humble. (The assorted experiences of gospel wakefulness can keep a preacher hopeful.)

What are we doing when we commit to gospel-centered preaching and teaching in the face of non-apparent results? Every chance we get we hold up Jesus Christ as preeminent and precious, we exult in his glorious excellencies, and we present the gospel boldly, clearly, and with unction. Still nary a crack in the surface of reception. It is like preaching, as they say, to a brick wall.

Should we switch things up? Try another tack? Testable non-results is one of the reasons so many churches tuck the gospel behind fog and lasers or adjust their teaching to the 7 Steps busywork of moralistic therapeutic deism. I mean, isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

Yes.

Brothers, let us be "out of our minds" together on this. Let's preach the word in and out of season. Let's commit to the utter foolishness of preaching, understanding that sometimes God puts us on purpose before a crowd for whom the gospel hardens, not softens.

There may be other reasons (fixable or not, adjustable or not) why we see little fruit, but it will never be because the gospel is being preached.

For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
-- 1 Corinthians 2:2

Dude, Prepare for Later Now

2011-10-17T23:03:00.006-04:00

Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, "I have no pleasure in them."
-- Ecclesiastes 12:1

Ah, youth! I remember, in the prime of my life, overflowing with the confidence and vigor of pure, automatic trust in my teenage athletic abilities, stepping into the huddle of one of our Saturday football games and saying to Mark, our all-time quarterback, "Just give me the ball. I will score." And Mark let loose a beauty of a pass -- few things look and feel so beautiful to a teenage football-playin' boy than a perfectly thrown pass in the dazzle of an autumn afternoon squirmish -- and I on the furious run brought it to safe harbor in my arms like a baby, racing past the staggered defense on skinny wheels, thirty yards, twenty yards -- he.could.go.all.the.way -- ten yards, five yards, touchdown. I did what I said I would, because I knew I could. Ah, youth!

But the evil days come, creeping in inch by inch, day by day, as metabolism sneaks out of the house overnight, easing the sports car out of the driveway and disappearing. Were I to enter that huddle this coming Saturday and speak with honesty, I should say, "Just give me the ball. I will run out of gas ten yards in, pull up with a muscle cramp, and collapse with two high ankle sprains."

I'm trying, really I am. But compared to the halcyon days of youth, the days have come in which I say, "I have no pleasure in them." Things creak when I get out of bed. I don't even know what they are.

Remember your Creator, the Teacher says. Remember him in your youth. Because youth is passing, fading. It is vanity, meaningless, chasing the wind. Even if you're fast, dude. So it is imperative, in the days of vim and vigor, to prepare for later now. Place your lasting joy in lasting things. Enjoy what you've got while you've got it, but set the termination of your affections on the treasure you cannot lose.

If you fail to prepare for later now, you will wind up a pathetic relic to the past. Before you know it, you're not reminiscing but lamenting. Do you wanna be that guy looking up time machines on the Internet and electrocuting your gonads, eating everybody's steak and ruining their lives? Or leaning against the wall of the high school hangout, a total creeper? They're not laughing with you; they're laughing at you, dude.

Ah, youth. Rejoice in it, for now. Rejoice in the Lord always.

Love Rushing Through the Dam Break

2011-10-17T22:54:00.006-04:00

Man is eager for vengeance and God is eager for forgiveness.
-- John MacArthur

There is only one against whom we have all sinned and we keep sinning, and yet he is the only one whose posture of forgiveness is more eager than eager. He has grace like riches (Eph. 1:7, 2:7). He doesn't have to watch his spending. He forgives like it's going out of style.

A fellow sinner may forgive but it takes some working up to do. In some cases, he may even be eager to forgive but this eagerness does not come naturally. In many cases, though, there is not eagerness but dutiful obligation. We bring our sorrow, our repentance, our request for pardon, and we receive questions, probing, testing, measuring. We deserve this, there's no question about it. And really repentant persons will accept the difficulty of an offended party's forgiveness as part of that repentance. So we slink, tail between our legs, chastened and stung. It has to be this way because of the nature of human hurt and the antisocial nature of sin.

But, genuinely sorrowed over our offense, aren't we deep down hoping, craving, desperate for the offended not to stand off, arms crossed, waiting for us to drag ourselves into a posture of penitence, but smiling, ready to accept us again? And so our God runs to us. And he tells us to approach his throne with confidence (Heb. 4:16) to receive grace in our time of need.

The cross of Christ both proves and founds God's eagerness to forgive. Because of Christ's propitiating sacrifice, planned in love from eternity past and effectual to eternity future, we have no hoops to jump through, no qualifications to meet, no penitent mantras to intone, and no cowering to do. The act of God's forgiveness is not a muted, somber affair, but a "time of refreshing" (Acts 3:19-20).

His lovingkindness endures forever. He is not just quick to forgive, but eager and aggressive. Forgiveness is flowing out of him. Your heavenly Father is not a miser with grace. He is a fountain of forgiveness.

"Forgiveness is mainly that the love of the offended shall flow to the offender, notwithstanding the offense. It is love rising above the dam which we have flung across its course, and pouring into our hearts. Our own parental forgiveness is in some feeble way analogous to God's, and shows us that the essence of it is not the suspension of penalty, which may or may not be the case, but the unchecked and unembittered gift of God's love to the sinner."

-- Alexander McLaren, "Christ's Claim to Forgive, and Its Attestation" [emphasis added]

God's forgiveness is like love rising over the dam, yes, a brimming overflow, but it's also like love rushing mightily through a dam break, flooding freely.

Your Money is No Good Here

2011-10-17T15:19:00.002-04:00

Come, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
-- Isaiah 55:1

I have accomplishments galore, religious and otherwise. I am good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. I am brimming with excellence!

Don't bring it. Don't do it.

The deal is all Christ is for all your nothing. Don't cheapen the treasure with your currency.

Come buy the unsearchable riches of grace with your poverty of spirit. That's all he'll accept.

Pastoral Options in Postures of Envy

2011-10-17T15:12:00.004-04:00

There are two shades, one more subtle than the other, but just as deadly.

The first and more obvious resents another pastor's apparent success, begrudges his exposure or appeal, criticizes his approach to mission, questions his legitimacy and impugns his motives. He is infringing on your mission field, your territory. He is receiving the attention you ought to be receiving, garnering the opportunities that rightly belong to you. You've been at it longer and are doing it "righter." Plus, he's dumber than you.

Then there's the other side that sounds like this:
That guy's just jealous of me.

We ought to beware both postures.

"My Wife's Death in Biblical Perspective"

2011-10-17T09:16:00.003-04:00

I commend the following 20 minutes to you. It is the late great E.V. Hill preaching the eulogy at the funeral for his wife Jane (Baby) in 1987. It is a very moving tribute and love letter, but also a stirring exultation in Job 1:21: "The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD."

See How Rich Believers Are

2011-10-14T08:29:00.001-04:00

"See how rich believers are, they are matched into the crown of heaven;. and by virtue of the conjugal union all Christ's riches go to believers, communion is founded in union. Christ communicates his graces . . . As long as Christ hath it, believers shall not want; and he communicates his privileges, justification, glorification: he settles a kingdom upon his spouse for her jointure . . . This is a key to the apostle's riddle, 2 Cor. 6:10, 'As having nothing, yet possessing all.' By virtue of the marriage-union, the saints are interested in all Christ's riches."

-- Thomas Boston, An Illustration of the Doctrines of the Christian Religion, Volume 2 (Berwick, U.K.: W. Gracie and J. Rennison, 1804), 134.

Thoughts on Church "Video Venues"

2011-10-12T10:43:00.004-04:00

Thabiti Anyabwile has written a provocative piece on the multi-site church movement. It created a bit of a stir. As a way of shamelessly piggybacking off his post, I thought I'd share a slightly edited reprint of a piece I wrote back in 2009, collecting my own thoughts on the church multiplication strategy known as "video venues."

First, a couple of disclaimers:

1) I would not word my opposition as strongly as Anyabwile's. And my opposition is not really to the multi-site concept but to the use of video preaching (and video music) as the features of a worship service. There are quite a few churches that appear to do multi-site well, by which I mean, they feature live preaching, have dedicated elders shepherding a community rather than organizers attracting a crowd, and they function for the most part like church plants. I think some multi-site approaches are viable means of a church's gospel mission. In any event, my aversion to the video venue multi-site movement is not morally framed. What I mean is, I am not saying video venue multi-site is sinful (or even unbiblical). I am not speaking to its wrongness per se, but rather hope to suggest it is not wise. Sort of a "not everything that is permissible is profitable" kind of thing.

2) Secondly, some of my best friends are multi-site pastors. And they are all fantastic, humble, godly men who love Jesus, love the Church, and love seeing lost people get saved. I am not against them.

So: why I'm averse to video venue multi-site whatchamacalits:

1) I do not think it is wise, in our consumer culture, to go down the path of continued un-incarnation.

This applies to the "virtual church" phenomenon in general, as well. In a day when the idolatry of the self and the mass production of "beauty" and the disconnection of individuals from each other are daily, constant, pernicious struggles, I don't think the church can afford to un-incarnate anything, much less its preaching. Video is by definition un-incarnational.

2) Video venues are not counter-cultural.

You can go a lot of ways with this thinking, sometimes overboard, but the kingdom of God is supposed to run counter to the way of the world. What I see in the worst examples of the video venue movement is just more accommodation of cultural values begun in the modern church's idolization of "relevancy" twenty years or so ago. All churches should be seeker sensitive (in the best sense of the phrase), by which I mean seeker comprehensible and seeker welcoming, and all churches should be good students of the culture and good workers at contextualization, but there is a line between contextualizing and accommodating, and I think video venues often cross the line. At what point do we look at cultural trends not as things to mirror and ape but to challenge and subvert? Technology, as some insist, may be neutral, but that does not automatically mean that all technological tools are suitable for uncritical ecclesiological appropriation. I am afraid many churches have moved from "leveraging technology" to merely mirroring whatever they think the world finds appealing or slick.

3) Video venues can reinforce the kind of pragmatism that has not served the church well at any point.

We are just now seeing the data revealing the fruit of the attractional paradigm, and it is not good. Big churches are increasing, but the numbers of Christians are not. By most accounts, the most churched states in the nation are in danger of soon-coming evangelical disaster. Much of the video venue stuff is clearly from the same school of thought as the ecclesiological trajectory we are only now discovering was wrongheaded and, moreover, impotent to grow disciples.

4) A video preacher can't be shot in the face.

Seriously.

5) Video venues assist the idolization of and over-reliance on preachers.

This is something Matt Chandler, himself the pastor of a church using video venues, brought up: "Twenty years from now are there fifteen preachers in the United States?"

There are a lot of sub-points under this general point:

- Would your church be able to open its satellite campus if the main pastor was not the one doing the preaching? If not, doesn't that say something important about the viability of your church and where it is centered?

- What happens if your pastor gets hit by a bus? Would your church collapse? Do you lose major attendees? Do satellite campuses have to close down? (And this is not just a problem with video venue churches, but with any church unhealthily centered on the personality of the pastor. A one-campus megachurch I attended fired its pastor and hundreds of people left. The vocal evacuees largely stated their inability(!) to attend a church where the fired pastor wasn't preaching.)

- What happens to the men in your church with preaching gifts? Where do they go to exercise their gift and bless their church family? (Somewhere else, that's where.) How do video venues develop future pastors and preachers?)

I understand that God raises up certain men of unusual anointing to lead in unique and higher-profiled ways. But what does it say about the gospel if, where the rubber meets the road, we minister as if it requires a certain level of homiletical talent to do its work?

Just some bullet points. I hope they are received in the spirit with which they are given: not as having it all figured out, but just as having some concerns. I am assuming common ground between all of us is that we want to see the fruitfulness of the Church and Christ glorified by it.

Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner?

2011-10-12T09:48:00.001-04:00

"One evangelical cliché has it that God hates the sin but loves the sinner. There is a small element of truth in these words: God has nothing but hate for the sin, but it would be wrong to conclude that God has nothing but hate for the sinner. A difference must be maintained between God’s view of sin and his view of the sinner. Nevertheless the cliché (God hates the sin but loves the sinner) is false on the face of it and should be abandoned. Fourteen times in the first fifty psalms alone, we are told that God hates the sinner, his wrath is on the liar, and so forth. In the Bible, the wrath of God rests both on the sin (Rom. 1:18ff.) and on the sinner (John 3:36).

Our problem, in part, is that in human experience wrath and love normally abide in mutually exclusive compartments. Love drives wrath out, or wrath drives love out. We come closest to bringing them together, perhaps, in our responses to a wayward act by one of our children, but normally we do not think that a wrathful person is loving.

But this is not the way it is with God. God’s wrath is not an implacable, blind rage. However emotional it may be, it is an entirely reasonable and willed response to offenses against his holiness. But his love, as we saw in the last chapter, wells up amidst his perfections and is not generated by the loveliness of the loved. Thus there is nothing intrinsically impossible about wrath and love being directed toward the same individual or people at the same time. God in his perfections must be wrathful against his rebel image-bearers, for they have offended him; God in his perfections must be loving toward his rebel image-bearers, for he is that kind of God."

-- D.A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God

First Face

2011-10-11T10:40:00.001-04:00

Francis Jane Crosby wrote more than 9,000 hymns, some of which are among the most popular in every Christian denomination. She wrote so many that she was forced to use pen names lest the hymnals be filled with her name above all others. And, for most people, the most remarkable thing about her was that she had done so in spite of her blindness.

"I think it is a great pity that the Master did not give you sight when he showered so many other gifts upon you," remarked one well-meaning preacher.
Timeline

Fanny Crosby responded at once, as she had heard such comments before. "Do you know that if at birth I had been able to make one petition, it would have been that I was born blind?" said the poet, who had been able to see only for her first six weeks of life. "Because when I get to heaven, the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior."

-- source

NINES Video: "How I Do" Preaching

2011-10-07T12:00:00.001-04:00

This was my contribution to this year's NINES video conference. It aired during the first preaching segment.

That's Got to Get Out

2011-10-07T10:00:00.000-04:00

Good gracious, John Piper, God love 'im.

I think the way that I became a preacher was by being passionately thrilled by what I was seeing in the Bible in seminary. Passionately thrilled! When Philippians began to open to me, Galatians open to me, Romans open to me, the Sermon on the Mount open to me in classes on exegesis (not homiletics, but exegesis), everything in me was feeling, "I want to say this to somebody. I want to find a way to say this because this is awesome, this is incredible!"

So for preachers today that go everywhere but the Bible to find something interesting or something scintillating and passionate, I say, "I don't get it. I don't get that at all!" Because I have to work hard to leave the Bible to go somewhere to find an illustration, because everything in the Bible is just blowing me away. And it is that sense of being blown away by what's here—by the God that's here, and the Christ that's here, and the gospel that's here, and the Spirit that's here, and the life that is here—being blown away by this, I just say, "That's got to get out."

True Greatness

2011-10-07T08:00:00.000-04:00

What is the message of the gospel?

That the greatest good (God) offers the greatest action (love) to the greatest need (wrath-owed sinners) by sending the greatest treasure (Jesus) in the greatest invitation (to everyone) into the greatest life (everlasting).

How is this not exciting?

A Grief That's Rightside Up

2011-10-06T08:41:00.006-04:00

Creative genius Steve Jobs has died. If you're reading this right now, you likely already knew that.

My family made the switch to Apple computers about 5 years ago and we have no plans to switch back. I know Apple products are considered the talisman of the hipster, but we use them because they're easy to use. The PC-related headaches are gone. We don't have iPhones (and don't really need them in rural Vermont ;-), but we have iPods. In addition, I was impressed and heartened by Jobs's refusal to allow the download or use of p()rnography apps on Apple devices. (I hope those who've inherited the reigns of the company will maintain this policy.)

In any event, Jobs's unique blend of visionary leadership and ferocious creativity undoubtedly towers over not just the technological landscape but the cultural landscape of the 21st century.

There have been some excellent tributes within the evangelical blogosphere today. Greg Thornbury's elegy is excellent, as is Al Mohler's reflection. My personal favorite thus far, however, is this piece at The Resurgence by Mike Anderson titled "Dear Steve".

Anderson is clearly a fellow who hasn't just looked up the facts for a concise Jobs biography; he is a fellow who feels Jobs's legacy. So when he turns from appreciation to Christian reflection, you sense his authenticity.

In his article, Mohler writes "Christians cannot leave the matter where the secular world will settle on Steve Jobs’ legacy. The secular conversation will evade questions of eternal significance, but Christians cannot."

Yes, and amen.

In his article, Anderson takes it and makes it more personal -- indeed, the entire thing is written as if in a concerned letter to Jobs himself -- responding to some of Jobs's nicely wrought but poorly thought words on what death is, then writing, "Steve, I hope that your death will embolden many not to sit on their hands and wait to tell those whom they love and respect about the great and glorious gospel of Jesus."

This morning I tweeted "What does it profit a man to change the world but lose his own soul?" I was taken to task by two (so far) people for lacking compassion. But the opposite is true.

It is a hollow compassion to mourn the loss of a man's products and creativity and set aside the potential loss of his soul as not as important, even if what we just mean is that it's not as important at this time. Nobody I have seen is denying Jobs's incredible impact and artistry. But Jesus' words in Matthew 16:26 point us in the direction of greater grief, deeper grief.

A grief that mourns the loss of a man's worldly accomplishments but feels no anxiety for his eternal destiny is upside down. A man's worth lay not in his achievements or success but in his being made in the image of God. Setting aside for the moment the state of Jobs's eternal destiny -- because none of us can really know for sure -- let us just be real about what is at stake in this life. It's not fame and renown, it's not the fulfillment of our gifts and talents, it's not the altruistic good we can do our fellow man -- it is eternal life and eternal death. All else is treasure that rusts.

I have officiated more funerals in the last year than I can count. Most of those were for men who did not publicly profess faith in Christ Jesus. This is not theoretical for me, not theological grandstanding. I've sat with a Christian mother in the hospital while she waited to identify the body of her son who died hours before of a drug overdose, holding her hand as she welled up with anguish about the precariousness of his eternal destiny. I have spoken words of comfort while talking through God's plan of salvation with grieving families who thought their dearly departed were Christians but weren't sure. I have preached funeral homilies looking lost mourners straight in the eye to say their grief is wasted if it doesn't send them to Jesus in saving faith.

I have shared tears, and I have shared Christ, because my tears are wasted if I am not generous with the better gift. The stakes are too high to obscure them.

The Westboro heretics plan to picket Jobs's funeral. This is idiotic and hateful. If Phelps' band of religiously maladjusted yellers truly wanted to make a statement at Jobs's funeral to prove they treasure Christ, they'd be the loudest mourners there, torn up about a man's gaining the world but losing his soul. But their approach is as upside down, just in a different way, as mourning the loss of a man's earthly output out of proportion to the state of his soul.

Because God is true, so is eternity. And because eternity is true, we need a grief set rightside up, mourning the greater loss as greater.

Happy Birthday to Jonathan Edwards

2011-10-05T11:55:00.002-04:00

Born this day 1703 was (arguably) America's greatest theologian-pastor. Here is an excerpt from the sermon of his that most resonates with my soul:

If you are a poor, distressed sinner, whose heart is ready to sink for fear that God never will have mercy on you, you need not be afraid to go to Christ, for fear that he is either unable or unwilling to help you. Here is a strong foundation, and an inexhaustible treasure, to answer the necessities of your poor soul, and here is infinite grace and gentleness to invite and embolden a poor, unworthy, fearful soul to come to it. If Christ accepts of you, you need not fear but that you will be safe, for he is a strong Lion for your defense. And if you come, you need not fear but that you shall be accepted; for he is like a Lamb to all that come to him, and receives then with infinite grace and tenderness. It is true he has awful majesty, he is the great God, and infinitely high above you; but there is this to encourage and embolden the poor sinner, that Christ is man as well as God; he is a creature, as well as the Creator, and he is the most humble and lowly in heart of any creature in heaven or earth. This may well make the poor unworthy creature bold in coming to him. You need not hesitate one moment; but may run to him, and cast yourself upon him. You will certainly be graciously and meekly received by him. Though he is a lion, he will only be a lion to your enemies, but he will be a lamb to you. It could not have been conceived, had it not been so in the person of Christ, that there could have been so much in any Savior, that is inviting and tending to encourage sinners to trust in him. Whatever your circumstances are, you need not be afraid to come to such a Savior as this. Be you never so wicked a creature, here is worthiness enough; be you never so poor, and mean, and ignorant a creature, there is no danger of being despised, for though he be so much greater than you, he is also immensely more humble than you. Any one of you that is a father or mother, will not despise one of your own children that comes to you in distress: much less danger is there of Christ's despising you, if you in your heart come to him.

If that don't ring your bell, your clapper's broken.

Rejoicing is Remembering

2011-10-04T11:02:00.007-04:00

Some wise words from Ray Ortlund on 40 years of marriage. Ray reflects on Proverbs 5:18 -- "rejoice in the wife of your youth" -- helping us to see that a prime way to rejoice in the wife of our youth is to remember, to bring those youthful days into our present appraisal of our spouse.

Along those same lines, here is some encouragement to rejoice-by-remembering for wives from Shirley Rice:

"Are you in love with your husband? Not, Do you love him? I know you do. He has been around a long time, and you’re used to him. He is the father of your children. But are you in love with him? How long has it been since your heart really squeezed when you looked at him? ... Why is it you have forgotten the things that attracted you to him at ﬁrst? ... By the grace of God, I want you to start changing your thought pattern. Tomorrow morning, get your eyes off the toaster or the baby bottles long enough to LOOK at him. Don’t you see the way his coat ﬁts his shoulders? Look at his hands. Do you remember when just to look at his strong hands made your heart lift? Well LOOK at him and remember."

(Quoted by Ed Wheat in Love Life for Every Married Couple (Zondervan, 1980), cited in Carolyn Mahaney, "Sex, Romance, and the Glory of God: What Every Christian Wife Needs to Know," Sex and the Supremacy of Christ, edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor (Crossway, 2005), 209.)

The command to rejoice in the Lord can seem unreasonable given present circumstances, but it is never optional and it is always possible through the power of the Spirit when we look not down or around but up to the risen Christ who has died for us and made us alive. Likewise, we can always find reasons to be disappointed with our spouse -- because they are sinners (like us) -- but one way we can bring rejoicing up to date is by retrieving it from the joys of youth.

Related:
Steps to Grace-Driven Marriage
Steps to Grace-Driven Sex
A Specified Grace in Solomon's Song

Gospel Wakefulness, Second Blessings, and Quietism (Oh My!)

2011-10-04T09:25:00.005-04:00

I am grateful for Trevin Wax's review of my upcoming book Gospel Wakefulness. Trevin's appraisal is largely positive -- indeed, he supplied an endorsement for the book previously -- writing in both the endorsement and today's review, "Anyone hungry and thirsty for righteousness will be refreshed by the invigorating streams of truth that flow from Gospel Wakefulness."

Alas, Trevin says, "I have a couple of misgivings."

First, again, let me say that I'm thankful for Trevin's wisdom and sharpening, and because we've been friends for a few years I have benefited from them in the past. Trevin was kind enough last week to send me a draft of his review so that I would not feel ambushed, but also so that we might dialogue a bit before it went "live." Let me be clear at the outset in saying I find his concerns smart, and to a lesser degree even share them. But I did want to respond to the misgivings in the hopes of clarifying what I mean by gospel wakefulness and what it entails.

Trevin writes:

First, Jared recounts how his passion for the gospel resulted in a decreased passion for politics. He writes: “What was happening? I couldn’t stop talking about the holiday at the sea, and I couldn’t figure out why I should be inordinately enamored with mud pies” (65). On one level, I agree wholeheartedly that many Christian political activists could use a strong dose of gospel wakefulness. We need to reorient our activism around our ultimate hope and set our sights on the unshakeable kingdom that will never fade.

But Gospel Wakefulness leaves no room for the reality that, for some people, gospel wakefulness will be best expressed through increased political action.

Trevin is responding to a passage in which I lamented discovering that my "all gospel all the time" talk was apparently not welcome -- nor even understood -- on a blog dedicated to evangelicalism. While I could have said more to qualify my statements in the book, denying that gospel wakefulness precludes political action, my point was not that politics is incompatible with gospel wakefulness but that political idolatry is. Perhaps I overstated my point, but I don't think many sober-minded people could deny that evangelicals have a political idolatry problem.

In any event, I'm thankful for this opportunity to affirm Trevin's claim -- that gospel wakefulness increases our passions for God's glory in every area of life. But "God's glory" is key there, as I'm sure Trevin agrees. Moreover, I do not espouse a quietist gospel and deny that that is in the thrust of the book. As I wrote in my emailed response to Trevin, "I would hope that the point I was making was not that gospel wakefulness precludes passion for politics but precludes a passion for politics that overshadows or dilutes passion for the gospel itself."

Along those lines, I would heartily recommend this piece by John Piper: Let Christians Vote as If They are Not Voting. With his passionate emphases in social justice issues like racism and abortion, nobody could rightly accuse Piper of quietism. But that sermon of his is a good reflection of where I land, and where I hope the gospel wakened will land when it comes to politics as well.

Trevin shares another concern:

My other reservation concerns the possibility of turning “gospel wakefulness” into a pseudo-Wesleyan version of the “second-blessing” experience. Jared explicitly writes against setting up tiers of Christian sanctification. There is no first-class discipleship and a second-class, etc. (31) Still, his emphasis on the sudden experience of gospel wakefulness could give the impression that there are Christians and then there are Christians. There are sleeping Christians and awakened Christians. At its best, Gospel Wakefulness is a simple proposal about sanctification and growing in grace. But a misunderstanding of the book’s intentions could easily lead to unhelpful division and categorization.

This concern I take more to heart. And it is one I saw coming. I have had similar discussions with folks at conferences where I've spoken on gospel wakefulness.

I'm thankful that Trevin reiterates that the book does not teach gospel wakefulness as a second blessing-type experience, only that it could be misunderstood to do so. I was concerned enough about this misunderstanding to, as Trevin notes, be proactive in addressing it as I composed the book. This is the full passage that includes the "no first-class and second-class Christians" line that he cites:

Keying in on the idea of love abounding more and more [in Philippians 1:9-11], Paul is talking about progressive sanctification here, what happens as you and I grow in Christ. Our hearts become larger, more capable of enjoying God’s love and giving God’s love to others. We are more and more filled with the fruit of righteousness. For those who experience the Spiritual quantum leap of gospel wakefulness, there is a filling of this fruit of righteousness that is like being caught in a sudden, blinding downpour. For others, this filling is a steady drizzle over time.

This is not to set up tiers of Christian sanctification, as if there is a first-class discipleship and a second-class, and so on. Every believer is united with Christ on the same foundation, with the full access and authority granted by being made joint heirs with Christ. And in the final day, no matter where we are in our Christian walks, we will all reach the same destination on the same basis. There are no coach seats on the journey to Christ when he calls his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to another.

(pp.31-32)

I believe this passage is clear enough in denying that the experience of gospel wakefulness makes one Christian better or "more saved" than another. But in light of Trevin's public concern, perhaps I might offer some more differences between gospel wakefulness and a sort of second blessing, "victorious Christian" teaching, like Keswick theology for example.

In Keswick-type theology, Christians are admonished toward an unbiblical passivity, sort of a "let go and let God" type thing. For those of us who affirm monergistic salvation, we acknowledge there is a real passivity on our parts that takes place in the transforming work of God in our lives. But not only is "let go and let God" not helpful, it's not biblical. And it's not the point of gospel wakefulness or its entailments.

I have dedicated a chapter to the spiritual disciplines and a chapter to grace-driven sanctification, both of which include many admonitions to effort. Besides those, there are plenty of passages throughout the entire book that make it clear gospel-centrality doesn't happen by accident. Throughout the text, I speak toward being ruthlessly violent with idols, beating the gospel into our heads continuously (a la Luther), and planting the flag of God's sovereignty into the soil of every day.

Secondly, Keswick-type theology posits classes of Christianity. In this way it is akin to "Lordship salvation," another error that sounds biblical but is not. I hear and submit to Trevin's concern that my book may set up a "sleepy Christians" vs. "wakened Christians" dichotomy, but if we look at gospel wakefulness more akin to revival on the individual scale, I suspect this dichotomy will not be grounds for pride or legalism. The unrevived church -- mine and probably yours -- is no less a church. Indeed, one of the chief emphases of my book is that gospel wakefulness results not in looking for some higher plain of spiritual existence but in staring at and drinking in the immeasurable riches of Christ that are totally available to every believer, wakened or not, because it is Christ who is big, not us. I write in the book:

You are no less justified the moment of your salvation than you are ten minutes or ten years later, but the warp speed sanctification of gospel wakefulness may make you feel as though you were. What I’m trying to say is that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and resurrection out of the grave are big enough, grand enough, effective enough, and eternal enough to cover your shoddy Christian life, assuming of course you do believe.

This is in fact the thrust of the gospel: it is Christ’s work that saves, not yours. Be careful, then, not to attribute your continuing sinfulness or moments of depression to a lack of salvation. For one thing, people who are not truly saved generally don’t worry about whether they are or aren’t anyway—your anxiety on that matter is evidence of a reborn heart. But for another thing, this will only set you up for more trouble later on, because gospel-wakened people don’t stop sinning either. If the measure of your perfection is the measure of your assurance, you will always be a timid, fearful Christian. But if your measure of assurance is the perfection of Jesus Christ, you are ripe for gospel wakefulness.

(pp.27-28)

One of the last things I'd want to happen as a result of this book is a damnable caste system among believers. I know evangelicals well enough to know that any idea, concept, method, no matter how biblical, can be turned into an idolatrous fad or a badge of honor, and I am not naive enough to think that the gospel wakefulness concept could not be susceptible as well. But I have tried to take great care in the book to keep pointing back to the real gospel, as well as to show examples of gospel wakefulness in the Scriptures, church history, and modern testimonies so that this new phrasing may not obscure an ancient way of God.

Again, I am thankful for Trevin's endorsement and his thoughtful review, concerns and all. And I hope this response will help clarify my positions and the place of what I call "gospel wakefulness" in the Christian experience. I suspect dialogue will continue, and I am grateful for that as well, so long as in everything Christ increases and I decrease.

The Gospel Cures What the Law Cannot

2011-09-28T09:00:00.000-04:00

"The number of crimes does not diminish but is continually on the increase. You must admit that consequently the security of society is not preserved, for, although the dangerous member is mechanically cut off and set far away out of sight, another criminal always comes to take his place at once, and often two of them. If anything does preserve society, even in our time, and does regenerate and transform the criminal, it is the law of Christ speaking in his conscience. . . . It is only by recognizing his wrong-doing as a son of a Christian society -- that is, of the Church -- that he recognizes his sin against society -- that is, against the Church. So that it is only against the Church, and not against the State, that the criminal of today can recognize that he has sinned."

-- Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Justified: Just-as-if-I'd always . . .

2011-09-27T10:51:00.004-04:00

In Genesis' tales of Abraham and Sarah, we see the ways that Sarah exerts control. "Go into my servant Hagar," she tells Abraham. The rest is manipulative history. We also learn that "she was afraid" (Gen. 18:15).

Then, in 1 Peter 3:5-6, Peter commends Sarah's submission and fearlessness.

Say what now?

Welcome to the covenant of grace. In here Abraham the sinful jerk has his faith credited to him as righteousness, and you can too. God out of his measureless love in the unsearchable riches of the grace of Jesus makes us controlling cowards totally justified.

Covered in his seamless righteousness, Jesus' perfect obedience becomes ours.

Justified: "just as if I'd" never sinned, right? But also just as if I'd always obeyed.

The "Religious People" Boogeyman

2011-09-27T09:55:00.002-04:00

There's something else about the "Did Perry Noble lie?" thing that I have found troubling for some time. Setting aside for the second whether Noble is evincing double-mindedness in the two stories, setting aside for the second the presuppositional problem that leads to thinking "Highway to Hell" in church (Easter Sunday or not) is a good idea, there's something Noble says in both video clips, something that is typical for him (but that he by no means has innovated) that remains a systemic dysfunctional philosophy of the prevailing attractional church paradigm. It is this: there are "religious people" in our church threatening our culture of contempo-casual.

First of all, there are people in every church, no matter what kind of church it is, who struggle with the distinction between law and gospel, who struggle with the driving place of grace in their pursuit of holiness, so it won't do to deny that legalism looms in our churches. Legalism lurks in every heart, actually, mine and yours. But this constant invoking of the judgmental "religious people" is very often a boogeyman. It's an imagined threat, a scare tactic employed to both justify dumb exercises in license and arouse the self-satisfied mockery of self-identified "grace people."

I remember first reflecting on these theoretical lurking legalists when the elders of a church I attended fired its lead pastor. The pastor called rallies in parks, spoke to the local news. He said the reason he was fired was because the elders wanted to satisfy "religious people" who wanted to make the church more stuffy and traditional. This was not true. He was fired for a long record of unrepentance in the areas of self-uncontrol, short-temperedness, verbal abuse, isolation, and the like. But I also knew his claims weren't true because I'd been in the church long enough to know that those "religious people" weren't there. That kind of person wouldn't have lasted a month at our church. Our music, our architecture, our dress, our media, and our message was designed in part to repel them.

With a moment's thought, the logic is easy to see, actually: Those kind of "religious people" hate these kinds of churches. So they don't go to them. The truth is that people who hate attractional churches and the pastors who lead them, the people who are beyond humbly critical and well into legalistic judgmentalism, the people who want stuffy traditional "boring" worship don't go to Newspring Church. Legalistic hatemongers who get out of bed hungry to rant on their blogs or what-have-you about Perry Noble et.al. actually exist, yes, but they go to other churches. And even if these kinds of churches did happen to have these kinds of people skulking about their congregations, out of masochism or whatever, they do not have them in any sizable number that would merit entire productions devoted to their offense.

So we're left with two options, really:

- Pastors who invoke the "religious people" boogeyman are really just trying to offend people outside their church. This might be good for laughs and applause, good red meat for the congregation, good for camaraderie, but it is also profoundly stupid. If you make decisions at your church out of a desire to thumb your nose at people at other churches, you need to get a life.

- Pastors who invoke the "religious people" boogeyman are really just bullying and dismissing sincere people in their churches who have concerns or questions about the goings-on. It's a fantastic way to deflect all criticism, whether it's legitimate or not. It's a great way to insulate oneself from reflection and accountability by drowning it out with the fan club's laughter and chest-thumping.

"Pharisee," "legalist," "religious person" is the church version of racist or Nazi. It is the rhetorical nuclear option specifically designed to shut up anyone with questions and paint them among their brothers and sisters as graceless jerks. But I think it actually works the other way around:

Employing the "religious people" boogeyman ironically indulges in what it professes to decry. It is a great way to pray along with the self-justified pharisee, "I thank you God that I'm not like those religious people."

If you've got real legalists in your church -- and you do -- the only way to intentionally offend them is by preaching the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ. Everything else is just vain posturing and prideful provocation.

Worship is Love On Its Knees

2011-09-27T08:00:00.000-04:00

"Worship is humble and glad; worship forgets itself in remembering God; worship celebrates the truth as God's truth, not its own. True worship doesn't put on a show or make a fuss; true worship isn't forced, isn't half-hearted, doesn't keep looking at its watch, doesn't worry what the person in the next pew may be doing. True worship is open to God, adoring God, waiting for God, trusting God even in the dark.

"Worship will never end; whether there be buildings, they will crumble; whether there be committees, they will fall asleep; whether there be budgets, they will add up to nothing. For we build for the present age, we discuss for the present age, and we pay for the present age; but when the age to come is here, the present age will be done away. For now we see the beauty of God through a glass, darkly, but then face to face; now we appreciate only part, but then we shall affirm and appreciate God, even as the living God has affirmed and appreciated us. So now our tasks are worship, mission, and management, these three; but the greatest of these is worship.

"And do you see why it's so easy to create that pastiche of 1 Corinthians 13, substituting 'worship' for 'love'? Worship is nothing more nor less than love on its knees before the beloved; just as mission is love on its feet to serve the beloved . . ."

-- N.T. Wright, For All God's Worth (p.9)

The Pulpit is the Prow

2011-09-24T19:40:00.002-04:00

". . . for the pulpit is ever this earth's foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favorable winds. Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow."

-- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

Missing Rich Here in America

2011-09-19T21:30:00.003-04:00

The great Rich Mullins was taken up in his own chariot of fire 14 years ago today. Here's the video for maybe my favorite of his songs. (Video's not that great, but the song always stirs me.)

The Fourfold Curse and The Tide's Turning on Two Words

2011-09-19T16:25:00.003-04:00

Ever felt Ephesians 2:1-10? You've probably read it, maybe multiple times. But ever felt it? Ever drunk it? Steeped in it? Had it knock you over?

Ephesians 2:1-3 is just brutal. Paul pulls no punches. How bad are we? Really, really, really, ridiculously bad. According to those three short verses we are, apart from Christ, dead. Dead, Paul says. Like, you know, dead-dead.

"But wait," we think, "I sure didn't feel dead. I could do stuff." Oh, you mean like obeying your appetites (v.3), following the way of the world (v.2), and worshiping Satan (v.2)? Good job there.

It doesn't get worse than this. We are dead, belly-ruled, world-following, devil worshipers. The curse we both suffer and embrace has us hemmed in on all sides. There is no escaping. We are much, much worse than we think we are.

Oh! But verse 4! Two sweet words start the reversal of our will and fate. Two words. Not "be still" but with the same effect -- the ten-hutting of a storm. Two words that part the sea, roll back the darkness with violent force, like the jolting, snapping up of window shades. Two little words like wings of a seraph, breaking through our tomb with a bright ray of light and lifting us up and through the spiritual aether, seating us in the heavenlies (v.6).

"But God."

Two words: the crash cart, the smelling salts, the sweet manna, the dagger in the devil's neckbone.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ . . .

You feel that? Not if you didn't feel verses one through three, you didn't. "Til sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet," Thomas Watson tells us.

The curse is four fathoms deep and un-swim-uppable. But "but God" signals the divine retrieval, our Spiritual surfacing, our deliverance. "But God" barrels in, carrying us out in two strong arms. "But God" heralds the arrival of God's glory, the unsearchable riches of Christ, and in its wake trails the train of all the blessings Christ has purchased for us with himself.

If you understand those two words -- “but God” -- they will save your soul.
-- James Montgomery Boice

The Lord is Never Late

2011-09-15T15:26:00.003-04:00

Reading in my friend Michael Kelley's upcoming book Wednesdays Were Pretty Normal, about his family's journey of faith through their young son's battle with leukemia, I found a passage of reflection taking me back in time. I do not know the fear and grief of having a child with a life-threatening illness, but when Michael writes --

I prayed. I petitioned. I cried. And I felt . . . nothing. Emptiness. Despair. Isolation. Darkness. Where was He, this God who so loved the world? Where was the great Healer? We needed Him there, in that cubicle of a hospital room. Doing something. Healing something. Springing into action. I didn’t need a Jesus that was sleeping in the boat while the storms raged around His friends. I needed a Jesus who was turning over the tables of sickness and disease and calling out cancerous cells like they were demons.

-- this I know.

I was taken back to the smell of the guest bedroom carpet, where my nose had been many hours of many nights, my eyes wetting the fabric as I cried out to God. You ever groaned? If you have, you'd know. I planted my face in that floor and prayed guttural one-word prayers til I couldn't speak any more. The lullaby music from my daughter's room across the hall haunted me. I felt alone, unloved, unaccepted, and unacceptable. But I knew I deserved it all, so I was trying to be as submissive to God's discipline as I could. But it hurt. Oh God it hurt.

I was clinging to the hem of Christ's garment in desperation in those days, beyond begging him for the restoration of my marriage, beyond begging him for forgiveness of my sins, beyond begging him to take away my thoughts of suicide. I just wanted to know he was there.

The Bible says "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Heb. 11:1). And by his grace I had that faith. A tiny sliver of it, to be sure, but I had it. Half a mustard seed maybe, clenched in my fist. All visible evidence to the contrary, I was still too afraid of the alternative. I was too scared to believe God didn't exist, that he didn't love me, that he didn't care. I was exhausted but my stubbornness and that speck of faith persisted even in the spiritual silence.

And then one night I heard the voice of the Spirit, not audibly mind you, but clearly, straight to my heart, applying the word of the gospel to me: "I love you and I approve of you." Because I had been exposing my mind to the gospel at that time, I knew he meant that he approved of me "in Christ," not that he approved of my sin or righteousness; that much was clear by the devastation I was in. Like the prodigal son, "I came to my senses."

In my pained estimation in those dark days, the Lord was moving much too slowly, but I knew in that moment that he is not slow in keeping his promises (2 Pet. 3:9). He was holding me all along, and his reviving word came right on time. I pray I will remember this in dark days to come.

The Lord is never late.

Don't give up.

For still the vision awaits its appointed time;
it hastens to the end—it will not lie.
If it seems slow, wait for it;
it will surely come; it will not delay.
-- Habakkuk 2:3

A Picture of How the Gospel Cures What the Law Cannot

2011-09-14T10:41:00.001-04:00

From Sarah Vowell's engaging history of the Puritans, The Wordy Shipmates:

When John Cotton's grandson, Cotton Mather, wrote his Ecclesiastical History of New England in 1702, he told a story about [John] Winthrop that I would like to believe is true. In the middle of winter, Boston was low on fuel and a man came to the governor complaining that a "needy person" was stealing from his woodpile. Winthrop mustered the appropriate outrage and requested that the thief come see him, presumably for punishment. According to Mather, Winthrop tells the man,
"Friend, it is a severe winter, and I doubt you are but meanly provided for wood; wherefore I would have you supply yourself at my woodpile till this cold season be over." And Winthrop then merrily asked his friends whether he had not effectually cured this man of stealing his wood.

On Coverings

2011-09-14T10:34:00.003-04:00

You want this jacket? Well, you can have it. Because I am cloaked in failure.
-- Jerry Maguire

Poor Jerry. He has the wrong covering.

Blessed Jerry. He sees his emptiness.

. . . from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.
-- Luke 6:29b

You want this jacket? Well, you can have it. My shirt too. Because I am clothed in the righteousness of Christ. I'm all set.