Guest User 8/23/15 Guest User 8/23/15

Grounded on the Rock

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. and everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat agains that house, and it fell, and great was the all of it.” — Matthew 7:24-27

Have you ever experienced vertigo? I am fearful of heights, so I expect to feel some sort of disorientation whenever confronted with this fear. On several occasions I’ve lost my bearings and felt dizzy and didn’t know why. It came out of nowhere. It’s a weird feeling—you lose all sense of control, oftentimes wanting to lay down, but even then solace cannot be found. Sometimes people with vertigo live in a perpetual state of dizziness and motion sickness. I’m married to one. It’s not fun. Even my wife’s own driving can make her feel sick at times.

Sin is like vertigo: it disorients your life in such a way that you lose your sense of grounding. When the foundation of our lives moves away from being the Word of God—idols and false identities gladly take its place. We begin to lose control (and even that makes us frustrated). Our perception of people and the world around us begins to shift, thus causing us to misjudge and make assumptions. We fail to see things clearly. Sin is not just a transgression of God’s Law, it’s a redefining of it. Sin flips our world upside down.

Staying Grounded

In the book of Matthew, these themes of rocks, buildings, and foundations develop underneath the plot. Back in chapter four, Jesus stayed firm on the rock of God’s Word when put to the test by Satan. Instead of caving to Satan’s wishes and circumventing the will of God, Jesus remained steadfast in his commitment to the Father. Here in Matthew 7, Jesus shares a story, contrasting what life is like when you are anchored in him, and what life is like when you’re a fool. The difference isn’t the house, but rather the foundation underneath it. Either the house will be built on a foundation that can withstand the onslaught of storms, or it will be built on sand which shifts around making things unstable, leading to an inevitable disaster.

What many tend to forget is that this theme of “rock” returns in chapter sixteen when Peter makes a profound confession as to the identity of Jesus. While others continue to perpetuate misunderstanding by failing to see Jesus for who he really is, Peter gets it right. Rocky, which was Peter’s nickname, confesses that there is a solid foundation, and his name is Jesus.

While many different expositors argue over what this “rock” is—is it Jesus? Peter? His confession?—I tend to believe the answer is, “Yes” to all of these. It is Peter and his apostles in a sense (Eph. 2:20), and it has everything to do with Peter’s confession (because what basic truth is more foundational than the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God?). But it also has everything to do with Jesus himself who is, in fact, the cornerstone (Matt. 21:42; 1 Pt. 2:1-8), which is what “Rocky” confesses.

Exegetical debate and arguments aside, the fact remains: The Word of God, which gives testimony to the truth of Jesus’ identity, is the foundation that holds the Church in place. The Temple was built with large rocks on a large mountain in Jerusalem. And yet here is the true Temple, the fullness of God dwelling with man, walking among a people whose lives are built on sand. Jesus came to change the foundation so we could stay grounded.

What does it look like to be grounded?

If we as disciples who make disciple-making disciples wish to continue the ministry of being grounded in Christ—anchored deep within the gospel—we must commit ourselves to communion with God through various means. Here are some of those means:

The Word of God and Prayer — This commitment is nothing new. It’s the tried and true practice that the apostles taught was of utmost importance (Acts 6:4). The question we must wrestle with is not, “Will you build a foundation?” but rather, “Which foundation will you build?” All men everywhere have a foundation, and either it is built upon the Word of God and prayer, or it is built on something else. To be grounded in Christ—to build one’s house upon the rock—is to commune with God through these two things. When we commit to the Word of God, we are committed to storing up God’s Word in our hearts so we refrain from sin (Ps. 119:11). When we spend time in prayer, we are utilizing the Spirit’s means to communing with God. These two things go together to form a heavy anchor that can keep you grounded when the storm comes.

The Local Assembly — Solo Christianity is no way to build your house, nor is it a way to be an active part of The House (the Church). In fact, it is impossible. There is no such thing as solo Christianity. Which also means that one of the largest idols in America—independence—must be shattered and laid waste. Is it hard? Yes. Is it messy? You bet. Is it necessary? Absolutely. To be grounded in Christ, anchored deep within the gospel, is to be a part of his family. After all, your adoption wasn’t just to salvation—it was to the Church! And the Church welcomes you with open arms. The local assembly is a non-negotiable. I was told recently by someone whose been gone all summer camping (welcome to Michigan), “We’re having marriage issues, maybe it’s because we’ve not been in church much.” Bingo. Truthfully, that’s not the reason—there are plenty of them! But this could be one of them. When severed from the body, the hand doesn’t last long. Commune with God by communing with his people.

Confession — To be grounded in Christ is to make constant confession. Peter gave his confession that Jesus was the Messiah, the son of the living God, and that confession, though admittedly still fuzzy to some degree, mattered most. We are confessional What I mean is, in order to be a Christian, you have to make this same confession that Peter made.

“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame” —Romans 10:9-11

The key is knowing that this confession is perpetual in nature. We are always confessing this. We are always wanting to commune with God. How do we do it? How do we keep that foundation healthy? Confess. Often.

Gospel-Centrality —Gospel-centrality is not a fad, nor is it a cute tagline. After all, the gospel is of “first importance” (1 Cor. 15:3). That’s what we mean by “centrality”—the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news of God’s story climaxing in the person and work of Jesus, is first. It must be the It is never, “Will something be central in your life,” but rather, “What will be central?” For the person who wishes to stay grounded and commune with God in a real, passionate way, the gospel must be central.

Back to the vertigo. The reason our lives get out of whack and we fall into disorientation is because we aren’t grounded in the gospel. Like a boat tossed about without an anchor to be found, so is the man whose life has no anchor in Christ. Show me a person who is committed to these four aforementioned things, and I’ll show you a person whose life is built on the rock of Christ. There simply is no greater foundation for your house.

The next time you are feeling out of whack (e.g., you are impatient, you lack compassion, you can’t seem to forgive, or you struggle with bitterness and a sharp tongue), remember that your disorientation is a sure sign that the foundation is weak. This type of life is utter foolishness. The wind will come and destroy your house and nothing will be left. But to the person who commits his way to God (Prov. 3:5-6), your life will be sustained, not because you are clever and wise in and of yourself, but because you have communed with God in Christ, the rock of our salvation.

—

Rev. Jason M. Garwood (M.Div., Th.D.) serves as Lead Pastor of Colwood Church in Caro, MI and author of Be Holy and The Fight for Joy. Jason and his wife Mary have three children, Elijah, Avery and Nathan. He blogs at www.jasongarwood.com. Connect with him on Twitter: @jasongarwood.

Guest User 8/18/15 Guest User 8/18/15

A New Covenant Meal for Mission

As we drive along the San Francisco Bay, the sunlight fights the pressing fog. When the city diminishes in the rearview, the fog slowly disappears. Sunlight at last. We skirt Sacramento then travel through unpopulated fields with soaring windmills beating like a metronome. We always knew we were getting close to Auburn, my mother’s hometown, when we left the fields and entered the ravine passing under the Foresthill Bridge. It soars over 700 feet. We make our way through town until we enter my grandma’s neighborhood. We crest the hill and below sits her small home situated comfortably in the right corner of the cul-da-sac. The two-hour drive feels like forever as a kid (now two hours seems like a short day trip), but all that mattered is that we arrived at grandma’s house.

We always loved to go there. In her front yard towered a maple tree with broad leaves. The tree reminds me of my grandmother who planted her family in Auburn and kept everyone together and rooted. She was a short but tough Hispanic immigrant who raised eight children in a small home and kept the family together when her husband died shortly after my birth in 1983. She provided everything the family needed. This was never more tangible than when she gathered her family around the table for a meal.

The Food Memory of a Family Meal

In her kitchen, she was in charge like a French chef in his Michelin starred restaurant. She loved you no doubt. You could feel it in the food. No one spends that much time preparing food that good if they don’t love you, but she wouldn't hesitate to bark orders or snap if you were trying to sneak a quick bite: “Out! Out! Out! Get out of my kitchen. It’s not ready.”

Not ready? If you could successfully get a bite of whatever was cooking on the stove it was like finding gold in the ravine. The only exception to that rule for me was when she made tripe. It “perfumed” the entire house and kept me out of the kitchen.

Inevitably during our stay, the entire family was invited to grandma’s. Late afternoon around the end of the work day family slowly started to arrive—first her children and grandchildren who lived within walking distances then the family who drove. If she cooked it, they would come. The women helped her set the table with food and plates and the men would sit outside with a cold beer watching the kids play under the maple tree. If it was summer, there might be a pool out front under the tree. It was the best of times.

These meals were like a family Eucharist and my grandmother was the priest blessing the wine and breaking the bread. We all waited patiently for our portion, our blessing. These meals were her way of keeping the family together and also her way of loving us. It was a tangible sign that you were in the family and that you were loved. You would be cared for. You belonged.

My grandmother passed away when I was in junior high, but my mother continues to make the Hispanic comfort foods her mother made. Just the smell coming from the kitchen as grandma’s roasted chile sauce simmers on the oven makes me feel safe and loved. This is where I belong. This is family.

A Meal of Grace

In the Gospel of Matthew, the apostle reports:

²⁶Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” ²⁷And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, ²⁸for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. ²⁹I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.”

When I was young so much was made of not eating unworthily (a serious admonition of Paul no doubt) that I ate the Lord’s Supper like you might eat something you suspected was poisoned. Or how a young child might eat broccoli—hesitantly, face gnarled, knuckles white. These negative experiences branded my memory.

When the Lord commands the original Passover, he does so to create this type of ingrained memory for his people. The Passover was a tangible assault on the senses of the church. It recalled how God led them out of Egypt. How he spoiled the Egyptians for them. How he parted the Red Sea. How he redeemed them from slavery. In his wisdom, he did this by sitting families down around a table where all their senses were engaged in what was around them. If they obeyed the Lord, they would experience this every year for the rest of their life. I bet just the smell of the lamb cooking would invoke strong feelings of hope and love and mercy.

Sadly, Israel didn’t obey and didn’t keep the Passover every year. This was to their harm. It made their families fragile and vulnerable to worshipping other gods. They didn’t know the story of redemption, and so they didn’t know who they were or who their God was.

As Jesus arrives on the scene, he starts doing things that echo the stories of the Old Testament that tie into the story of redemption. He frees slaves from the bondage of sin. He heals the sick. He casts out demons. Jesus wilderness testing mirrors Israel’s own testing in the wilderness except where they failed he succeeds. How Jesus lives is intentional. He takes the threads of this old story of redemption and weaves his own life into the very fabric of the story. He shows everyone who watches that his life, death, resurrection, and ascension are a second Exodus, the greater story of redemption.

So is it any wonder that when our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ sets up his Passover that he does so around the table? He engages the senses. He pours out the good wine and breaks fresh bread. Have you ever been in the kitchen when the fresh bread comes right out of the oven? Have you ever cracked the crust and felt the warm air inside the bread hit your face? If you have, you won’t forget it. When Jesus calls us to his table, he calls us to remember while giving us something tangible and arresting that points us to a greater reality.

We must never forget that the Lord’s Supper is a place for sinners to receive something tangible. Are you harboring unrepentant sin in your heart? There’s no better place to repentant than the table. The table is one of grace and mercy and forgiveness Are you suffering or in pain or depressed? There’s no better place to find healing than the table. Are seeking Jesus Christ? Put your faith in him, be baptized, and eat freely at his table. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Enter his presence.

The Presence of God for Mission

My pastor Brian Habig made an interesting point about the Lord’s Supper in a sermon earlier this year. In the Old Testament, if you mishandled the ark of the covenant, the very presence of God among his people, you would be killed. As Matthew told us earlier, Jesus says the bread and wine are his body and blood. Paul later stresses the seriousness of eating unworthily with the threat of death. When we partake of the Eucharist, we experience the very presence of God. The body of our Lord sits in heaven ruling but through our union with Christ and the Spirit we now meet in the presence of the Lord to sense his love for us. With every drink and bite, we eat spiritually the body and blood of our Savior as John Calvin described it. This eating is a result of our faith and points to the true body and blood of Christ which was poured out for the many for the forgiveness of sins.

As we approach the table, our hearts should leap for joy as the eating and drinking itself creates in us an instinctual and tangible impression of the gospel for us. This joy is what I experienced every time my family gathered around my grandma’s table—I knew I belonged. The Eucharist should also remind us of Christ’s promise—“I will be with you always” (Matt. 28:20). We are re-fueled for mission in the very presence of God at his table. When the Lord commands the original Passover, he does so to create this type of ingrained memory for his people.

Mathew B. Sims is the Editor-in-Chief at Exercise.com and has authored, edited, and contributed to several books including A Household Gospel, We Believe: Creeds, Confessions, & Catechisms for Worship, A Guide for Advent, Make, Mature, Multiply, and A Guide for Holy Week. Mathew, LeAnn (his wife), and his daughters Claire, Maddy, and Adele live in Taylors, SC at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains with their Airdale Terrier. They attend Downtown Presbyterian Church (PCA). Visit MathewBryanSims.com!

Whitney Woollard 8/16/15 Whitney Woollard 8/16/15

The Prophet Greater Than Moses

Words have no meaning apart from structure. Thus, the way in which we arrange our words are just as important as the words we use. The Gospel of Matthew illustrates this perfectly. The life and teachings of Jesus are intentionally pieced together in such a way that you are forced to consider who Jesus is and how he has come in fulfillment of Old Testament expectations. You immediately recognize that Jesus is the Son of David who will sit on the eternal throne (2 Sam. 7:12-16), he is the promised offspring of Abraham who will bless the nations (Gen. 12:1-3), and he is the prophet greater than Moses who will speak the words of God (Deut. 18:15-19). The first two are clearly stated in Matthew 1, but the latter is only evident when you pay attention to meticulous structuring of Matthew’s book. As you examine the narrative structure you soon discover that Jesus is the figure prophesied about by Moses in Deuteronomy 18:15,

“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen—”

Matthew wants you to understand that Jesus is indeed the prophet like Moses sent by God to speak the truth, enact a new exodus, and set you free. By writing in the manner that he does Matthew leaves no ambiguity as to what the implication of this is for your life— you must listen to Jesus.

The Same As Moses . . .

Consider the similarities presented between Moses and Jesus. Jesus is sent by God to deliver his people (Matt. 1:21), pursued as an infant by a murderous serpent-like king (Matt. 2:16), and spared in Egypt through providential means (Matt. 2:13). Next Jesus comes out of Egypt, enters the wilderness for forty days of testing (Matt. 4:1-11), and then goes up on a mountain to deliver a new law (Matt. 5:1-7:27). Matthew also tells us that Jesus is known to miraculously feed large crowds of people in desolate, wilderness-like places (Matt. 14:13-21) and is spotted by his disciples on a mountain with his face shining like the sun (Matt. 17:1-8). Sound familiar?

If you’ve read the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures) you know this echoes Moses’ story almost exactly. Matthew, in the way he structures his narrative, is going to great lengths to show you that Jesus has come as the new Moses. Like Moses, Jesus came up out of Egypt, passed through the waters of baptism, entered the wilderness, and went up onto a mountain to give a new, authoritative teaching. As you note the parallels you realize that Jesus could be none other than the long-anticipated prophet.

. . . But Different Than Moses

Yet, as you read Matthew, you’ll notice that Jesus is a new and greater Moses. There’s a different quality to his person and work which supersedes that of Moses’:

Whereas Moses was sent to deliver the nation of Israel out of physical slavery in Egypt, Jesus was sent to deliver people from all nations out of spiritual slavery to sin in their hearts (Matt. 1:21).
Whereas Moses only spoke the words he received from God, Jesus came as the very Word of God who declared, “I say to you” (Matt. 5:21-22ff) and it simply was God’s words.
Whereas Moses came as a recipient of the Law, Jesus came to fulfill the Law (Matt. 5:17).
Whereas Moses’ face shone with the reflection of the heavenly glory he had seen, Jesus’ shone like the sun with his own divine glory (Matt. 17:2).
Whereas Moses mediated temporarily between God and man by the Law, Jesus mediates eternally between God and man by the shedding of his own blood (Matt. 27:51).

Jesus is truly the prophet greater than Moses. He is the new authoritative teacher who came to give us divine teaching, save us from our sins, enact a new exodus out of spiritual bondage, and establish a new and superior covenant between God and his people. The Gospel of Matthew is written in such a way to say, “Behold, your long-awaited prophet has arrived!”What are we supposed to do when that prophet comes? “You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you” (Acts 3:22).

Listening to Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew

Matthew immediately establishes who Jesus is through the structure of his book because he is going to fill the remainder of it with Jesus’ teachings and call you to unequivocally listen to him. “Listen” here isn’t merely hearing his words. It’s the kind of listening which hears, receives, and obeys the words spoken. It’s the quality of listening that transforms Jesus’ hearers into obedient disciples.

It’s imperative we understand the Moses-Jesus relationship and the command to listen to that prophet (Deut. 18:15; Matt. 17:5; Acts 3:22) because Jesus is going to say some radical words in the book of Matthew. He’s going to say the kind of things that “get all up in your business.” As a matter of fact, when Jesus arrives on the scene, he is going to give such countercultural and counterintuitive teachings that any would-be disciple might think twice about following him:

He’s going to teach that lust is the same as adultery (Matt. 5:27-30). He’s going to tell you not to be anxious about what you will eat or what you will drink or what you will wear (Matt. 6:25). He’s going to say that whoever loves father or mother or son or daughter more than him is not worthy of him (Matt. 10:37). He’s going to tell you that you must deny yourself and take up your cross if you desire to follow him (Matt. 16:24). He’s going to affirm that God designed marriage between one male and one female (Matt. 19:4-6). He’s even going to command you to join his mission by making disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19).

Now would be a good time to honestly ask yourself, “Am I listening to Jesus?” Are you listening to his teachings with a soft heart that seeks the understanding of the Spirit and calls upon his power to help you obey? Or, perhaps more importantly, ask yourself, “Do I actually want to receive his words?” This is no small matter. You either accept the words from the prophet greater than Moses and experience life in them through his Spirit or reject him and his words and suffer eternal punishment.

As we read Matthew together this month, let’s invite the Spirit of God and the community of Christ to help us hear and obey the teachings of Jesus in such a way that his Word transforms us. May our time in Matthew strengthen our commitment to the prophet greater than Moses who has the authority to speak the Word of God into our lives and possesses the power to set our hearts free.

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Whitney Woollard has served in ministry alongside her husband Neal for over six years. She holds an undergraduate degree in Biblical Studies from Moody Bible Institute and just finished her Master of Arts in Biblical and Theological Studies from Western Seminary. She is passionate about equipping disciples to read and study God’s Word well resulting in maturing affections for Jesus and his gospel message. Neal and Whitney currently live in Portland, OR where they love serving the local church. Follow her on Twitter @whitneywoollard.

Whitney Woollard 8/9/15 Whitney Woollard 8/9/15

3 Ways to Defeat Demonic Opposition

Have you ever stopped to wonder why life actually seems harder as a Christian? Perhaps you were baptized under the assumption that life would be easier as a Jesus-follower only to discover shortly thereafter it can be more difficult. Gone are the days of ease and carefree living; now you wrestle with an ongoing struggle of sorts. You experience unexplainable opposition, feel mounting pressure, and even “hear” an inner accuser that’s not like you. You just can’t shake the notion that ever since you chose to follow Jesus everything seems “off.”

Welcome to the War

It may be the tension you’re experiencing is demonic opposition. When you became a disciple of Jesus, you also became an enemy of Satan. You have a very real and very evil enemy who is out to devour you (1 Pt. 5:8). Even now there are demonic forces seeking to destroy your love for Jesus, your life, and your peace in him. They tempt you to doubt your identity in Christ and your assurance in God’s purposes, but they will not prevail. You can defeat this opposition by identifying with Christ in his victory over Satan and following his example in refuting demonic lies.

Jesus shows us in Matthew 4:1-11 (also see Mk. 1:12-13; Lk. 4:1-13) that discipleship 101 is learning how to overcome the enemy. This passage tells of an experience Jesus had alone in the wilderness when confronted by the devil. It’s unique among all other stories found in the synoptic Gospels in that we only have it because Jesus chose to recount it to his disciples (every other account comes from eyewitnesses).

Jesus saw this experience as so essential to his messianic ministry and the maturation of his disciples that he wanted his disciples to memorize and testify to it. They needed to know what he went through and how he came out victorious because they too would one day experience demonic opposition in the war against evil. This means if you’re a disciple of Jesus, Jesus thinks you need this story.

Peeling Back the Layers: How to Understand Matthew 4:1-11

Read Matthew 4:1-11 in its entirety to get reacquainted with the text. As you read, note the following points:

Context—It is crucially placed (also in Mark and Luke) between the baptismal revelation of Jesus as the Son of God (Matt. 3:13-17) and the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry (Matt. 4:12-17). Evidently, confronting evil is the first priority on the Messiah’s “to-do” list before he enters the public arena.

Translation—The English rendering of “tempted” doesn’t capture the full breadth of the Greek verb peirazo. Often in Scripture it means “to test,” specifically in order to reveal truth. Jesus is indeed being tempted by the devil to act against God’s will, but he’s also being tested by God to reveal what’s in his heart. In some mysterious fashion, satanic tempting and divine testing work in concert together.

Purpose—Even though this was Jesus’ first significant battle with evil and his circumstances seem horrific, all three Gospel writers go out of their way to make it clear that the whole event took place under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 4:1; Mk. 1:12; Lk. 4:1). This experience, though excruciatingly painful, was happening according to the sovereign purpose of God.

Summary—At its heart, this story is intended to be an obvious recapitulation of Israel’s forty years of testing in the wilderness as God’s chosen Son who was to fulfill a divine calling (being a blessing to all the nations). The lessons Israel should have learned but failed to grasp were to depend on God’s Word rather than bread (Deut. 8:3), not to put God to the test (Deut. 6:16), and to make God the sole object of their worship (Deut. 6:13). It’s not random then that these are the exact three tests that we see in Jesus’ wilderness temptations!

In the same way, Yahweh led Israel into the wilderness to test their hearts to reveal the truth about their obedience and devotion to him (Deut. 8:2), so now another “Son of God” is being led into the wilderness for forty days to be tested by God and tempted by Satan in preparation for his divine calling. Will Jesus, as the beloved Son of God, fully obey the will of the Father or will he fail to overcome evil as every other son of God failed before him (think Adam in the garden, Israel in the wilderness, and even you today)?

**Jesus Is Our Christus Victor: Identifying In Jesus’ Victory Over Satan**

The history of failure and flawed fulfillment in Adam and Israel add to our own experience of failure and disobedience. These failures might make us skeptical regarding the Messiah’s odds of success. However, Matthew 4:1-11 portrays Jesus facing the tests we’ve all failed and being tempted where we’ve all conceded but, surprisingly, he doesn’t fail or compromise. Where we as humans have all stumbled and fallen, Jesus the true human resists and stands firm!

Look at Jesus’ Spirit-led response to satanic attack:

When Jesus is tempted to doubt his identity as the beloved Son of God while suffering the hell of hunger (Matt. 4:3), he looks at the tempter and quotes Deuteronomy 8:3 (Matt. 4:4). He essentially says, “This does not define me. The words spoken by my Father, whom I trust with my life, define me. My love and loyalty to the Father is more real to me than my current condition, no matter how painful it is.”
When Jesus is tempted to test the Father’s love and commitment to him as a means of proving his affection to the Son (Matt. 4:5-6), he looks at the tempter and quotes Deuteronomy 6:16 (Matt. 4:7). It’s as if he’s saying, “I will not test the Father and put him in my service. That’s not how this relationship works. I will trust my Father’s love and commitment to me regardless of my circumstances.”
When Jesus is tempted to obtain the kingdoms of the world by taking a path other than that ordained by the Father (Matt. 4:8-9), he looks at the tempter and says, “Be gone, Satan!” and quotes Deuteronomy 6:13, “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.” This temptation is compromising the very heart of who Jesus is and what he came to do . . . and it infuriates him. He knows one day he will reign as King over all the world but the means by which he will do so has already been determined by the Father—it’s the path of the cross. He will worship and obey God even to the cross.

If you are in Christ, this story is good news! Jesus passed divine testing and defeated satanic tempting on your behalf—he is truly your Christus Victor. His representation of you didn’t begin on the cross, but in the wilderness. Here we witness Jesus defeating evil and showing himself to be the true Adam, the true Israel, the true Son of God, and the true human on your behalf.

The first step in defeating demonic opposition is knowing you have obtained victory over the enemy. Although you have repetitively failed divine testing and succumbed to demonic temptation, through your union with Christ, it’s as if you fully succeeded. You are declared the perfect son of God because of Jesus’ victory for you (first in the wilderness and then on the cross).

The outcome of the war you’re waging against demonic opposition has been determined for you by the true human, Jesus Christ. Be confident in battle, knowing that Satan and his demons are defeated. Because of Jesus you are victorious even when you feel defeated. The battles you are fighting today and the lies you are hearing from the enemy are not definitive of who you are. Your identity as a Christian is the same as Jesus’—victorious son of God.

**Jesus Is Our Great Exemplar: Following Jesus’ Pattern to Defeat Demons**

The war has been won but, until Jesus’ second coming, we still have battles to fight. Recognizing Christ’s victory over evil on our behalf is the first step in defeating demonic opposition. The second is following his example.

As noted above, Jesus thought his disciples needed to know this story because in it he modeled how to counter demonic attack. He quoted Scripture out loud, told Satan to be gone, and then allowed angels to strengthen him. This is an example for all Jesus-followers today: Quote Scripture out loud (in it’s proper context of course!), tell the demons to be gone, and then do something that strengthens you spiritually (worship, Bible reading, prayer, etc.).

Jesus’ particular temptations are a good place to make parallel applications for your life.

When tempted to doubt your identity as the beloved child of God amidst your circumstances, quote Scripture out loud and affirm that your suffering, your insecurity, or your sin does not define you. The word of God, particularly as its expressed through the gospel, defines you. Your love and loyalty to the Father are more real and defining than your current situation, no matter how painful.
When tempted to test the Father’s love and commitment to you, demanding he give you a sign of his affection, quote Scripture out loud and affirm that through Christ you have absolute assurance of God’s love for you. You know he is committed to you because he left the glories of heaven to come and die for you. The gospel leaves no room to doubt God’s affection for you.
When tempted to take another path other than the one God has determined for you, quote Scripture out loud and affirm that you will trust the Father’s plan and purposes for your life even if they include suffering. Tell the harassing demonic voice to “be gone!” Reaffirm that God is the exclusive object of your worship regardless of what lies ahead.

This may not always be easy, but it is straightforward—we simply follow Jesus’ example. It doesn’t have to be weird or scary and it’s certainly not reserved for the spiritual giants. Learning to do spiritual warfare is basic discipleship. Allow me to illustrate this from my life.

Recently, I’ve experienced the worst and most frequent migraines I’ve ever had. The pain is isolating, frustrating, and defeating. While lying in excruciating pain in a darkened room I’ve heard (in my mind, not audible) an old familiar voice say, “If you are a son of God why do you have to suffer? If God really loved you shouldn’t he prove his affection by healing you?” Christian, that’s demonic. That’s not my voice nor God’s, it’s the voice of an enemy seeking to devour me while I’m vulnerable by tempting me to doubt my identity as a beloved child of God.

Although it would have been easy to test God, to “make” him prove his love through my healing, I couldn’t stop thinking about Jesus in the wilderness. There he was literally starving to death, yet he was unwilling to exercise his power to obtain food or test God because he trusted the Father fully. He trusted the Father on my behalf even as my own trust failed. And so, in my pain, I followed Jesus’ example and spoke out loud,

“My circumstances, no matter how painful, do not define me. God’s Word defines me. I am a child of God and his love and commitment to me is eternally certain because of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I refuse to put my Father to the test. Be gone! I will only worship and serve God, even now in my pain.”

Afterwards I continued to rest and pray as I rode out the migraine with a newfound sense of confidence in God’s goodness. There was nothing weird or magical about it. I simply identified in Jesus’ victory then followed his example in the power of the Spirit to the glory of God.

Don’t allow demonic opposition to destroy your joy and peace in Christ. Learn to recognize voices that aren’t from the Spirit of God and then speak out God’s truth. Grow in your discipleship by daily identifying with Christ in his victory over evil and following his example in refuting lies.

—

Trillia Newbell 8/6/15 Trillia Newbell 8/6/15

Fear and Faith

I find Paul to be a wonderful example of a God-fearing man who had to learn to trust. He had to learn to be content (Philippians 4:11). Paul hadn’t arrived. He was tried by fire. He was tested, and his faith and trust in the Lord grew as a result. I share this because you and I so often hold the men and women in Scripture as our example for life. The example from Paul is one of learning—not of perfection. The valiant woman of Proverbs is another example of a biblical character we may elevate. She laughed at the unknowns in the days to come and found her security and strength in the fear of the Lord (Proverbs 31:25, 30). She is the quintessential biblical example of a strong and courageous woman. When I envision her, I imagine she is unruffled by uncertainty and ready to face any danger. Boy, do I wish I were like her! Thankfully, that is why she is considered an ideal. I, however, would characterize my everyday walk with the Lord quite differently. I am fearful, but I want to be bold and trusting. I am anxious, but I want to find confidence and rest in God. I imagine that the valiant woman, if walking the earth, wouldn’t be comfortable with the pedestal we’ve put her on. No one is perfect, and even the “ideal” woman needed to grow and learn.

Walk by Faith

Similarly, you and I are tried. We don’t become Christians and suddenly understand what it means to walk by faith. Like a baby, we may begin our journey by pushing off from our hands, then crawling, pulling up on the Word of truth, and failing and falling many times. And then one day we reach the point where we take that sure step of faith, and before we know it, we are wobbling toward a straight path. We aren’t born walking from our mother’s womb, and we aren’t born again trusting perfectly.

I’m not alone in this. Just the other day I received an email from a friend, requesting prayer because she was afraid to leave her daughter as she traveled across the state. Before that, and over the past several months, I’ve had the privilege of caring for women who have had miscarriages, and they fear having more or never getting pregnant again. I have a dear college-aged friend who shared that she was afraid she might not do well enough on a midterm to pass her college class; and my single girlfriend is praying that the Lord will bring her a husband—but the prospect seems dim, so she fears it just won’t happen. I could go on. And I imagine you resonate with similar temptations and circumstances.

We too often fear the past, the present, and the future. There is the fear of being who we are, so we try to please people. We, unlike the psalmist in Psalm 23, are afraid that the future is not as good as God says; will goodness and mercy really follow me all my days? (Psalm 23:6). There is the fear of other women, and—as a result—we compare ourselves to them and judge their actions and motives. We fear the future with anxious thoughts about our children not knowing the Lord when they get older or about our husband not returning from a trip. We don’t want our kids to die, so we fixate on death and forget who is really in control. And we wonder if we are good enough for anyone or anything.

I know this to be true firsthand. From trusting God for a husband to praying that I wouldn’t have another miscarriage, I’ve experienced the intense and debilitating temptation to fear. The fear I am referring to is by definition an expectation of harm; it is to be alarmed and apprehensive. When I am tempted to fear in this way, it is because my false sense of control has been altered by a circumstance. Or there are unknowns—what lies in the future—and I realize I have absolutely no control over what will happen. In many ways, our fears rest in seeking trust and security in ourselves. Within a matter of seconds I can bury my husband in my private thoughts; I’ve arranged the funeral and am now terrified as I try to figure out how to raise our two beautiful children by myself. These thoughts are imaginary; it hasn’t happened. It’s just my fear. During those times my mind isn’t meditating on what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise (Philippians 4:8). I’ve noticed that my decision to play God never works out well for me. Can you relate? Regardless, I think you and I do this because we believe it’s easier to be in control. But when we realize we don’t reign supreme, that we don’t have sovereign authority over our lives, it can be terrifying.

A Remedy for Our Fears

There is, however, and thankfully, a remedy for all our fears. That remedy comes as a person, and the means through which He provides the comfort, along with the Holy Spirit, is through His Word. To fight our fears, we will look at God’s sovereignty and love and watch our fears dissipate as we apply God’s Word to our lives. The very thing we are holding on to (control) is, ironically, the thing we most need to let go of. As you and I come to understand that our God isn’t ruling as a tyrant but is lovingly guiding and instructing as a Father, we can loosen the tight grip on our lives that produces the bad fruit of fear. This isn’t “Let go and let God.” It’s “Let go, run hard toward your Savior, and learn to trust God.”

There is, however, a fear that we want to possess. It is a fear defined as an awestruck wonder of the holy God who condescended to become a man, died on a cross, and bore the entire wrath that you and I deserve so that we might now enter into His presence. We can enter His presence and receive grace. He can turn our weak and sinful fear into a fear of Him. That’s what He does; He turns coal into diamonds. We don’t have to be crippled by fear, because we have a God who holds the oceans in the hollow of His hand. He doesn’t promise that our lives will be easy (far from it), but He does promise to take care of us, His daughters, till the very end and for all of eternity. Ultimately we fight fear by trusting in the Lord and fearing Him.

—

Trillia Newbell (@trillianewbell) is a wife, mom, and writer who loves Jesus. She is the author of United: Captured by God’s Vision for Diversity (Moody).

Guest User 8/4/15 Guest User 8/4/15

The Gospel of Matthew Reading Plan

We’ve launched a series on The Gospel of Matthew for the month of August. Brad Watson, our executive director, encouraged our readers to read a chapter a day in the Gospel of Matthew. To help jumpstart your reading, we want to share our reading plan (below) and this helpful resource from the folks at The Bible Project (@JoinBibleProj):

Mon, August 3rd—Mathew 1
Tues, August 4th—Mathew 2
Wed, August 5th—Matthew 3
Thurs, August 6th—Matthew 4
Fri, August 7th—Matthew 5
Sat, August 8th—Matthew 6
Sun, August 9th—Matthew 7
Mon, August 10th—Matthew 8
Tues, August 11th—Matthew 9
Wed, August 12th—Matthew 10
Thurs, August 13th—Matthew 11
Fri, August 14th—Matthew 12
Sat, August 15th—Matthew 13
Sun, August 16th—Matthew 14
Mon, August 17th—Matthew 15
Tues, August 18th—Matthew 16
Wed, August 19th—Matthew 17
Thurs, August 20th—Matthew 18
Fri, August 21st—Matthew 19
Sat, August 22nd—Matthew 20
Sun, August 23rd—Matthew 21
Mon, August 24th—Matthew 22
Tues, August 25th—Matthew 23
Wed, August 26th—Matthew 24
Thurs, August 27th—Matthew 25
Fri, August 28th—Matthew 26
Sat, August 29th—Matthew 27
Sun, August 30th—Matthew 28

As Brad encouraged:

Read the Gospel of Matthew. One of the reasons Jesus’ life ends up feeling like a random collection of anecdotes and one liners is we rarely read through it all together. We may have done so in our early days of faith but have since neglected it. We invite you to spend August reading the Gospel of Matthew. Read a chapter a day. As you read, contemplate the passage. Here are some helpful questions:

What is Jesus saying or doing?
What does that say about his character?
How are people reacting to him? How does that expose your reaction to Jesus? How would your friend who doesn’t believe in Jesus respond to this?
How is Jesus proving to be the true humanity? The true Prophet? The true Priest? The true King?
What is most challenging about Jesus?

Pray the Gospel of Mathew. Practice Lectio Divina, Read, Reflect, Respond, and Rest.

Zachary Lee 8/4/15 Zachary Lee 8/4/15

9 Basic Reasons to Study Church History

For many, just the word “history” brings up bad memories from high school. When I hear the word “history,” I think of random things such as Charlemagne, carpet-baggers, Huguenots, dates, times, presidents, and a bunch of things I forgot until we studied WWII (which was actually interesting). For most Christians, church history is the same way. We don’t really know much about it. We know a little about the Apostles in the book of Acts, then there is a bunch of stuff we think is weird and too “Catholic,” and then there is the Reformation, and here we are today with prosperity preachers and Joel Osteen.

So is church history important? Is it useful for discipleship? How much should we study it? My hope is to briefly sketch why I think church history is important for evangelicals today and is actually a gift from God to help us understand how to apply his Word. Why study church history?

1. Church history reminds us that we are part of a larger family of faith.

We have a tendency to think the church really began in our lifetime with cool pastors, conferences, and podcasts. Or, we have a tendency to think the church really began at the Reformation. We forget that there has always been a remnant. There has always been a true church. Jesus promised that the gates of Hades would not prevail against his church and the gates of Hades never have. People loved Jesus in the early church (Irenaeus, Athanasius, Augustine, et. al.), in the middle ages (Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, et. al.), in the Reformation (Luther, Calvin, et. al.), in the early modern era (Edwards, Whitfield, Wesley, et. al.), and in the modern era (Machen, Henry, Barth, et. al.). On the one hand, church history protects us from thinking our denomination is right and everyone else is wrong (most of our denominations are less than 400 years old), and, on the other hand, it reminds us that we are part of a larger family of faith dating back more than 2,000 years.

2. Church history helps us rightly interpret the Bible.

God’s Word is meant to be interpreted within the community of faith. When an individual just runs away from the church and doesn’t listen to instruction from others, he usually starts a cult. We must interpret the Bible as we bounce ideas and interpretations off one another. And we don’t just bounce ideas off of those around us. We use the larger community of faith including the writings of Christian brothers and sisters who have passed away.

3. Church history helps us hold to correct doctrine.

Though God’s people may err in certain doctrinal matters, certain teachings like the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the resurrection, and the second coming are always held as truth by all true Christians. Church history helps us see what God’s people have always believed and what doctrines the majority of Christians have seen as essential. It helps us continue to pass on the “once-for-all-delivered-to-the-saints” gospel (Jude 1:3). There is a saying that, “new kinds of ‘christians’ are really just old kinds of heretics.” Knowing correct doctrine helps us guard against false teachers and religious sects today.

4. Church history helps us guard against reading our culture onto the biblical text.

Church history helps us see how other cultures have interpreted the Bible and see where some of our biases and prejudices pop up. For example, the topics of homosexuality and gender roles are rather controversial subjects today but almost completely agreed upon throughout most of church history. If we are teaching about these subjects in new ways, this should cause us to ask if we are reading our culture onto the Bible and making it say what we think is important today instead of what it actually says. Another example is that in America many Evangelicals think drinking alcohol is sinful. Seeing that this is a unique idea in post-prohibition America (and is not thought to be sinful in almost all other times and countries in church history) helps us put this issue in perspective.

5. Church history helps us see where we might be defending our traditions instead of the teachings of Scripture.

It is vitally important to know what the church has believed at each point in our history and why. That keeps us from “drinking the Kool-aid” and just doing what our denomination says. It is important for a Lutheran to know what Luther thought. It is important for a Presbyterian to know what Calvin thought. It is important for a Baptist to know about the radical reformation and English separatism. It is important for a Pentecostal to know about the Wesleyan holiness movement. It is important for an Episcopalian to know about the Anglican Church, the Reformation, and Thomas Cranmer. The list could go on and on. Knowing which historical actions caused certain beliefs is essential for challenging our views according to the Bible.

6. Church history helps us know how to address situations today.

I can’t think of any issues today that the church has not already dealt with in its past whether that be grace, politics, denominations, ethics, pastoral ministry, etc. The old adage, “Those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it” is true of church history as well. By studying church history we can avoid stepping on landmines by seeing who has stepped on them before. We can copy what the past has done well and avoid some of the mistakes they made.

7. Church history brings humility.

If you hold a theological view or an interpretation of Scripture that almost nobody has ever held then you can know that 99% of the time you will almost certainly be wrong. The burden of proof is on the person who is holding a “new” view. This should humble us and keep us from thinking that everyone else was just too silly to see things like we see them today.

8. Church history helps us minister to others.

If I know the history of someone else’s ideas, denomination, or theology, it allows me to know how best to minister to them. It lets me know where they might be off and what issues they may misunderstand.

9. Church history is a reminder of God’s grace

Instead of looking like a bride we as God’s people have a history of looking more like a harlot. What is interesting to me is just how un-Christian so much of church history is. We have a history of shooting ourselves in the foot. However, just like Israel in the Old Testament, God loves his beautiful, messy, disobedient, lovely bride . . . the church. It is a reminder of how kind God has been to keep his promises despite our failures to be faithful to him. It is true that “if we are faithless he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself” (2 Tim 2:13).

In all this we know that only God’s Word is perfect and history is our imperfect attempt to play that out. However, church history is a helpful guide and companion on our journey in the Christian life and it is God’s gift to help us be faithful.

Resources:

Church History in Plain Language by Bruce Shelley
The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1 by Justo Gonzalez
The Story of Christianity, Vol. 2 by Justo Gonzalez
Historical Theology by Alister McGrath

—

Zach Lee is Associate Home Groups Minister at The Village Church and is married to Katy. Follow him on Twitter: @zacharytlee.

Guest User 7/28/15 Guest User 7/28/15

Being Misunderstood for the Kingdom

I learned very quickly that I had a choice. Either I could constantly invoke my inner attorney to give myself legal defense, or I could invite misunderstanding and let that be okay. Sure, there’s a tension and wisdom that tells us both responses may be done with a confident humility, but maybe one of these options is the better one? Ministry is challenging. Discipleship is messy. Doing life as a sinner with other sinners can be sinful. When our heart’s desires make tangible appearances through words and actions, bad things can happen. Blowback can and does occur. How should we respond to one another when misunderstanding occurs? How ought we as reconciled-to-God-in-Christ-now-justified-sinners deal with interpersonal conflict and sinful interaction? Thankfully, Jesus, the Second-Person of the Trinity, took on flesh and dwelt among us. He identified with us and exemplified in himself what it means to do ministry and invite misunderstanding.

STORIED CONFLICT

In Matthew 13, we find Jesus teaching about the kingdom of God in various parables. He tells of the Parable of the Sower, the Parable of the Weeds, the Mustard Seed and Leaven, the Hidden Treasure, Pearl of Great Value, the Net, and the Master of the House with Old and New Treasures. Each of these stories are likened to some aspect of the kingdom of God and are used by Jesus to explain himself and his ministry.

But that’s not all we find in this chapter. Matthew gives us a look into what is happening behind the scenes, as it were, and explains a bit more about the parables. In 13:10-17, there’s an excursus that involves only Jesus and his disciples. The crowds are not privileged to this particular conversation. “Then the disciples came and said to him, ‘Why do you speak to them in parables?’” (Mat. 13:10). Conflict is on the horizon. What seems to be the problem?

SECRETS OF THE KINGDOM

Jesus responds to their question, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given” (13:11). Any information that disciples glean from Jesus’ parables is to participate in the secrets of the kingdom of God. In other words, the mysterion that Jesus explains can only be given through the Sovereign hand of God and divine revelation. The Apostle Paul shares the same thing, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (2 Cor. 2:14).

What Paul means (and I believe by implication it is the same thing Jesus believed) is not that you have to be a super Spirit-filled person in order to understanding this stuff, and if you say the right prayer, do the right thing, you’ll eventually figure it out. No—Paul means that any particular revelation of knowledge that pertains especially to the kingdom of God is only granted from above.

Men do not use logic and reason, then conclude God. Men cannot use logic and reason without God. God is the one who imparts wisdom and understanding. This is what Jesus is getting at with the secrets of the kingdom. It is not an issue of natural insight and basic rationale. It’s an issue of divine revelation. It is only for those, “It has been given.”

PUSHING IT FURTHER

Jesus goes on to say, “This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand” (v. 13). Don’t miss what Jesus is saying: There is a dividing line when it comes to the kingdom of heaven. What I am doing in my teaching is clearly laying out the lines of demarcation. There is no middle ground; in fact, there are only two ways to go about this—either you will understand because the Spirit makes you understand, or you will continue in your sin and constantly go about misunderstanding what I’m telling you.

Jesus pushes it further by creating the dividing line. Why did he do it? To start, Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 6. Isaiah was to go and preach and Israel wasn’t going to listen. (Not the greatest ministry task. . . . Go and preach, and don’t get mad—they won’t listen anyway. Who wants that job?) Matthew makes it clear that Jesus is Isaiah—a prophet to a rebellious Israel.

The other reason Jesus creates the dividing line this way is because Jesus is okay with misunderstanding. Remember he didn’t come into the world to condemn the world, for the world was condemned already; Jesus came to save it (Jn. 3:17). By drawing the line, Jesus gave no ground for having a neutral position. You are either for him, or against him (Matt. 12:30). Either men will turn to Christ in repentance, or they with harden themselves and perpetuate misunderstanding.

VULNERABILITY IN COMMUNITY

We can learn much from this passage. I want to try and bring one aspect into focus, and it has everything to do with you. If you’ve been involved in ministry in any capacity, you know that misunderstanding abounds. The story I hinted at to start had to do with me being a pastor who has had his share of misunderstanding. In fact, in one Sunday I heard two things: 1) “I learn something every single week when you preach!” and 2) “We’re leaving because we don’t feel like we’re learning anything.”

How does that work? How can a pastor sit at someone’s bedside who is dying from cancer and be told the next day that he doesn’t care about people? Consider another paradox in ministry. How can a lay person who is passionately involved prayer about many different issues be told by someone else that she has bitterness in her heart and seems rather uninvolved in ministry? What’s the deal with misunderstandings in community?

Discipleship is an invitation to be vulnerable. It invites misunderstanding and chooses to put that inner attorney out of a job. It’s being so comfortable in your justification that your messy sanctification doesn’t trip you up. The reality is, any amount of investment you make in someone else’s life will invoke misunderstanding. You reap what you sow. The deeper you get into someone’s life the messier it gets. And that’s okay.

Jesus was quite okay with being vulnerable and he built his ministry on misunderstanding. That’s how it was supposed to be. “For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Is. 53:2). He wasn’t spectacular and outwardly special. He left his home in glory to take on flesh and serve his people. He taught with wisdom and compassion yet was treated foolishly and hated by many.

What makes this special for us in discipleship is knowing that we don’t have to defend our case, but can live our lives for the glory of God free from the chains of man-pleasing. We can be vulnerable and okay with misunderstanding. Why? Because Jesus was vulnerable and misunderstood—so much so, that he was crucified for you. The misunderstanding of Christ led to the salvation of men. So rest easy, and continue to run.

—

Brad Watson 7/26/15 Brad Watson 7/26/15

The Scandal of Jesus

Despite the talk about the biblical gospel of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, we rarely stop to take in, reflect, or meditate on the life, character, words, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Christianity is nothing without Christ, yet we often rely on second or third hand descriptions of Jesus from books, blogs, preachers, movies, and music. All of these things are helpful and involved people using their gifts to make Jesus clear. However, at some point, to get to know Jesus and understand his message, you have to go to the source and read a Gospel account. Why? Because Jesus is God manifest in human form (Col 1). The fullness of God dwelt in him. He is the Conqueror of Sin, Author of Salvation, Giver of Life, Rescuer from Darkness, and Initiator and Sustainer of All Creation. Jesus is not an idea but a person. A person who lived, spoke, acted, befriended, rebuked, and made the intentions of God’s love clear. What did he do, what did he say, how did he teach us to be restored humans, and how do you worship and follow him? The answers to those questions are scandalous because he is not a contestant in the competition to be your best friend, but he is claiming and proving himself to be fully God. He is not simply the center of a worldview but God. He is not the example for effective discipleship only, but he is the Savior of the World who descended from heaven into the world.

Making Jesus in Our Own Image

For many years I was content with my favorite stories of Jesus: walking on water and the feeding the thousands. I also had a choice selection of teachings: the beatitudes, the great commission, loving your enemies, and the cost of discipleship. Lastly, I had my favorite parables he told: the prodigal son, the soils, the good Samaritan, and the wedding feast. These weren’t just my favorites; they were my entire playlist.

In the end, I chose to make Jesus into who I wanted him to be. I didn’t take in the whole of his life or his teaching, but the bits and parts that appealed to me most. To me Jesus was the collision of my preferences. He oddly, approved of my political, economic, ministerial, and personal preferences. Jesus had my personality even. Journeying through life proved my Jesus wasn’t enough for me or the world I inhabit. The Jesus I had fashioned was too small.

Making Jesus Our Method

Then, I began to read the Gospels to discover the best way to be a Christian and make other Christians—which is a noble task but not the primary task of reading a Gospel. I wanted the best practices, techniques, and tools for making disciples. I didn’t read them to follow Jesus myself. Stop reading the Gospels to figure out how to “make disciples for Jesus” read it to “be a disciple of Jesus.” That’s when you will make disciple of Jesus.

I realized I was quoting Jesus as a proof for my model of ministry and not worshiping and wondering at God incarnate. The Gospels are theology and story—not pragmatics. It is the most captivating true story about what God is like, what he does, and what he wants for us. The story of Jesus unfolds in our mind as our story. We long to be reminded of our God’s most visible moment. This story changes what we believe, who we are, and the world we live in. The Gospels are not “how-to manuals.” They are theology and story.

You can’t use Jesus to perfect a method. The only effective discipleship models come first from beholding Christ and only then walking humbly in stride with him and the way he loved the Father, submitted to the Spirit, and loved neighbor. The point of the Gospels is not that Jesus chose twelve guys and spent a lot time with them. The point is the Kingdom of God breaking into the kingdoms of this world through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Jesus is the point of the Gospels.

I didn’t know Jesus because I hadn’t tried. I tried to find myself in Jesus (as the hero playing his role), instead of finding God in Jesus. I tried to use Jesus for my purposes, not to glorify him in wonder and worship. I had avoided confrontation with Jesus and it had left me the same. I yearned for transformation in the midst of the holy God who was pleased to dwell as a man on earth.

This month GCD is committing the majority of our articles to the endeavor of knowing Jesus through the Gospel of Mathew. We hope you will join us in the wonder, bewilderment, conflict, and challenge of knowing Jesus.

How to Join Us in This Journey

What is Jesus saying or doing?
What does that say about his character?
How are people reacting to him? How does that expose your reaction to Jesus? How would your friend who doesn’t believe in Jesus respond to this?
How is Jesus proving to be the true humanity? The true Prophet? The true Priest? The true King?
What is most challenging about Jesus?

Pray the Gospel of Mathew. Practice Lectio Divina, Read, Reflect, Respond, and Rest.

What We Pray and Anticipate Will Happen

You will encounter the scandal of Jesus not being who you want him to be. You will find that Jesus is not a warm cuddly lovable loser. Instead you will discover he is the Prophet who says: This is the truth. You will find that Jesus is not an all accepting cuddly bear. Instead you will discover that he’s the King who says: This is true humanity. You will find that Jesus is not just a philosopher of good ideas on the ideals of life but someone who says: Love looks like and does this. You will find Jesus as the Priest who says: Access to God is closed, but I will make a way to usher you into unity with God. Lastly, there’s the scandal that Jesus is God. You will find a holy, completely other, Jesus.

—

Brad Watson (@bradawatson) serves as a pastor of Bread&Wine Communities where he develops and teaches leaders how to form communities that love God and serve the city. Brad is the author of Raised? and Called Together: A Guide to Forming Missional Communities. He lives in southeast Portland with his wife and their two daughters. You can read more from Brad at www.bradawatson.com

R.D. McClenagan 7/21/15 R.D. McClenagan 7/21/15

The Weeping King

“As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it.” —Luke 19:41

We start our lives crying. Babies never come out of the womb staring blankly at the doctors ready for the umbilical cord to be clipped. At least, I don’t think there has ever been a baby like that. In fact, it is not until you hear the baby cry that you actually know it is okay and can breathe and react to its new surroundings. If the baby does not cry, then something is actually wrong with him.

Though tears are welcome and expected from our little ones, it doesn’t take long before we begin encouraging people not to cry, or to suck it up and get it together. Crying becomes a sign of weakness and an awkward vulnerability for teenagers and adults. We are conditioned to suppress our emotions and tears as much as possible.

The irony is that as we get older and experience the world more there is far more to cry about. As we grow up, we experience the brokenness of the world and that brokenness can be unrelenting. From the diagnosis of cancer to the death of a child, from the wreckage left in the wake of a storm to the wreckage left in the wake of a divorce—we cannot escape the pain of the human experience. And this is why I am grateful that Jesus Christ is a man acquainted with sorrow , grief, suffering, and tears of the human experience.

The Haunting Tears

On my Mount Rushmore of Bible verses there is one that I continually come back to and meditate on—Luke 19:41. Luke is the only Gospel writer who notes Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, but I am so thankful he did. The Greek word translated “wept” carries the meaning of bawling and weeping loudly. Jesus does not simply have a tear or two running down his face, but tears upon tears cascading down his cheeks as he sees the city of Jerusalem come into view. Jesus’ tears have always haunted me and encouraged me as I pastor and preach, to enter into the weeping of the world and be okay to stay there.

Jesus could have come into Jerusalem any way he wanted. He could have climbed onto a war horse and rushed into Jerusalem filled with anger and rage. He could have walked into the city emotionless and stoic, unmoved by the brokenness and sin he was passing by , but Jesus is not that kind of king. Instead he was a king who rode into Jerusalem weeping and wailing on a young colt. He was a king who was broken by the brokenness of the world.

If we are not a weeping people, then we are not the people of Jesus. Weeping and lamenting, however, are often dismissed in Christian (and most adult) circles. One must simply turn on any Christian radio station to note how little mention of lamenting or weeping is talked about. We are encouraged to be happy, to stay uplifted, to move quickly over the pain and onto what God can do in and through our pain for his glory.

I am not against being encouraged and uplifted. I do believe our pain and suffering have a purpose in the eternal plan of God, but let’s not be too quick to fast forward through the lamenting and weeping to the the fixing, reasoning, and theologizing.

Let’s enter into the weeping. Sit there. Stay there. Let the tears of the world have a place among us as the people of a weeping King. Lamenting, weeping, and wailing should have a revered place among the people of God.

Lamenting for the World

As we lament for our world, we do so with hope because our weeping King is also a reigning King. Jesus did not stop his mission in Luke 19:41, but pressed into the heart of darkness that week in Jerusalem—absorbing the tears of the world and laying the foundation for the day when all tears will be wiped from the eyes of God’s people in the New Jerusalem.

In The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien writes wondrously of the hope to come through the comfort that Aragorn offers Arwen before he passes away, “In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold, we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.” Right now all that we have is our memories, and many of them are wonderful, but they remain in the past and no matter how much we wish we could relive them—we cannot. Many of these memories are painful, and no matter how much we wish we could forget them—we cannot. Our memories are what define us, shape us, and often imprison us.

But the world that is coming transcends all memories and somehow someway, mysteriously and wondrously, it will usher us into a place beyond time and memory where sorrow is ended and joy finally overflows eternally. This is the world we must always point people towards.

So let’s be an Easter people, gladly celebrating the breaking in of God’s kingdom of life, love, and wholeness here and now and longing for the ultimate breaking in of life, love, and wholeness in the world to come. But let’s also be a Palm Sunday people, a Luke 19:41 people, a weeping with those weep and lamenting with those who lament people. That is, quite simply, what it means to be the body of Christ in the here and now, lamenting in hope, looking back to Palm Sunday and Easter, and longing for the great Day to come—when our returning King wipes our tears away with his nail pierced hands at last.

—

R.D. McClenagan is a teaching pastor at Door Creek Church in Madison, WI where he lives with his wife Emily and their increasingly adorable twin baby daughters Maisie and Camille. Follow him on Twitter: @rdmcclenagan.

sam krueger 7/9/15 sam krueger 7/9/15

Worship as the Goal of Mission: Multiplying Images of God

In worship, we represent God’s image more and more clearly, not only to subdue forces of evil but also to multiply these images of God to fill the earth:

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living that moves on the earth. (Gen 1:28)

The command to “fill the earth” implies that the earth is not yet filled with images that reflect God’s glory. While the boundaries of the Garden are clearly delineated (Gen 2:10-14), the call to multiply images of God would expand the boundaries of that Garden sanctuary until it filled the whole earth. Our mission is to be used in God’s hand to bring about more worshipers in the image of God who might multiply and fill the earth with even more worshipers.

Outside of the Garden-sanctuary of Eden lay a chaotic inhospitable area. God calls Adam not only to “work and to keep” the Garden of Eden (see Gen 2:15) but also to expand that Garden and “fill the earth” (Gen 1:28). Bible scholar John Walton notes that “people were gradually supposed to extend the Garden as they went about subduing and ruling” in order to “extend the food supply as well as extend sacred space (since that is what the Garden represented).” God wanted to expand that sacred space and dwelling place from the limited confines of the Garden-temple of Eden to fill the entire earth. As Adam multiplied children in his image, then they would expand God’s dwelling place of his presence into the chaos outside of Eden until it filled the earth, and the whole earth reflected God’s order and his glorious presence.

We are created to fill the whole earth with God’s glory. God formed the earth and made it . . . [and] did not create it empty, he formed it to be inhabited! (Is 45:18, emphasis added; see Ps 115:16)

God’s ultimate goal in creation was to magnify his glory throughout the earth by means of his faithful image bearers. Psalm 8 begins and ends with the goal of glorifying God:

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Ps 8:1, 9)

This majesty of the Lord is his “glory” (Ps 8:1), a glory reflected in humanity who is “crowned . . . with glory and honor” and given “dominion over the works of your hands” (Ps 8:5-6). God’s glory is to be spread “in all the earth” through humanity crowned “with glory and honor” and properly expressing their dominion in creation. We are created to glorify God by filling the earth with image bearers crowned with that glory.

What does it mean to glorify God? The Westminster Catechism reminds us that “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” If we are created to glorify God, then we should know what that means. We glorify God by multiplying images of him who are crowned with his glory; we glorify God by multiplying disciples. Jesus himself glorified God in this way. Near the end of his life, he declared,

I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. . . . I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. (Jn 17:4, 6)

Jesus glorified God by making disciples who kept God’s word. The mark of these disciples was obedience. Similarly, we glorify God by our mission in making disciples who keep God’s word.

How then do we multiply disciples? Disciples multiply only as the word of God bears fruit in and through our lives. In Acts, the Genesis 1:28 language of “be fruitful and multiply” marks the growth of the church:

And the word of God continued to be fruitful and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem. (Acts 6:7; our translation)

But the word of God bore fruit and multiplied. (Acts 12:24; our translation)

So the word of the Lord continued to bear fruit and prevail mightily. (Acts 19:20; our literal translation)

Unlike Genesis 1:28, the word of God, not people, bears fruit and multiplies in Acts. Similarly, in Colossae the gospel “has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit (karpophoreō) and growing (auxanō)” (Col 1:6, our translation; see 1:10). Just as Adam and Eve were to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen 1:28), so now the gospel is “bearing fruit and growing” and filling the earth (Col 1:6, 10). Spiritual progeny are multiplying to fill the earth through the gospel.

However, why does the word of God increase and multiply in Acts and Colossians through spiritual progeny instead of physical progeny, as in Genesis 1:28? In fact, Genesis 1:28 likely does not have in mind only physical children, but children who also were to be spiritual image bearers of God. We must recall that even in Genesis 1:28, the word of God is essential, since Adam and Eve were to subdue the earth through obedience to God’s word (see Gen 2:16-17). Adam and Eve fail to subdue the serpent because they do not remember and obey God’s word properly (Gen 3:1-7). The genealogy of Genesis 5 traces the initial stage of the proper fulfillment of Genesis 1:28, and the “likeness of God” in Adam is passed down to Seth, who is in Adam’s “likeness, after his image” (Gen 5:1, 3). Here, the image of God in Adam is passed down through Seth, who keeps God’s word, unlike the murderer Cain. Images of God multiply as a vanguard movement, beginning to spread out over the earth with the goal of filling it with divine glory bearers. Acts and Colossians focus now on the spiritual children of Christ, the Last Adam (see Col 1:15-18), who are multiplied (e.g., see Acts 6:7, “And the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem,” emphasis added).

Therefore, gospel growth is the key to true church growth. Church leaders can often seek programs and marketing processes to accelerate church growth, and such programs and processes may have a place. However, lasting church growth is essentially gospel growth. If church growth is based on programs that do not root people in the “living word” (see Acts 7:38) of God, then they will “in time of testing fall away” (Lk 8:13). We must get people to come to church, but we must also get the word of God to come to people. The only way to integrate people into the body of Christ is by the word of God growing in them. Our mission is to multiply disciples, image bearers of God who know and use God’s word to subdue the deceptive work of our enemy in the world. If Jesus Christ himself rides out in victory against the evil one with a “sharp sword” of God’s word coming “from his mouth” (Rev 19:15), so we must equip God’s people with this sharp sword of God’s word to come from their mouths, since we are in union with Jesus, and what is true of him in this respect is true of us.

—

G. K. Beale (PhD, University of Cambridge) holds the J. Gresham Machen Chair of New Testament and is professor of New Testament and biblical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary.

Mitchell Kim (PhD, Wheaton College) is lead pastor of Living Water Alliance Church in the Chicago suburbs. Building on extensive experience in the immigrant church, he has helped found and guide Joshua Generation to equip youth workers to reach their generation for Christ. He also teaches Bible in the graduate school at Wheaton College and participated in the Lausanne Congress for World Evangelization in Cape Town, South Africa in 2010. Of Korean descent, he was born in southern California, raised in Tokyo and lives in Naperville, IL with his wife Eunsil and their three children.

Taken from God Dwells Among Us by G. K. Beale and Mitchell Kim. Copyright (c) 2014 by G. K. Beale and Mitchell Kim. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426. www.ivpress.com

Zachary Lee 7/5/15 Zachary Lee 7/5/15

The Life of the Mind for Knowing God

I have some formal education but not as much as others. I don’t have a PhD. I’m not a professor. I’m entertained by mindless T.V. shows and video games on my iPhone. If asked to do a math problem I freeze, blackout, then vomit. However, I’ve recently become aware of how much the Bible actually pushes the importance of serious biblical study. “Yeah,” you may say, “I know we are all supposed to read the Bible as Christians.” However, I think I mean something stronger than that. I mean something closer to “almost all we should be doing is growing theologically because our devotion to the Bible shows how much we believe it really is God’s Word.” Yikes! That is a pretty strong statement. So let’s see if it is true. Let’s see what the Bible itself has to say about how much we should study.

High-level Bible Study

The Bible is not ambiguous about the fact that Christians are to be serious studiers.

We are told to love God with all of our “mind” (Mk. 12:29). We are commanded to “Destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). We are told to meditate on God’s law “day and night” (Ps. 1:2). We are told to discuss it with our children when we walk and when we rise and when we sit and at all times of the day (Deut. 11:9). We are told to question everything, especially teaching and “prophesies” (1 Thess. 5:21). We are called to supplement our faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge (2 Pt. 1:5).

And that’s not all . . .

The king of Israel was to copy God’s entire law by hand and read it every day of his life (Deut. 17:18). The sole academic requirement for elders is that they are “able to teach” (1 Tim. 3:2). God’s people perish due to their lack of theological knowledge (Hos. 4:6). We are commanded almost forty times in Proverbs to seek, not just “wisdom,” but “knowledge.” Paul rebukes those who have a zeal (i.e. passion) for God but not according to knowledge” (Rom. 10:2).

And this is just a tiny fraction of all the times we are told to know God’s word, to seek knowledge, and to study, study, study!

Church Leaders Yesterday

We also see a pattern regarding the importance of education in church history. All the major players in church history seem to be very highly educated either formally or informally:

Jerome translated the entire Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin.
Augustine was a Rhetoric professor in Milan before his conversion and had a broad education in the humanities.
Gregory the Great said, regarding the education of ministers, “No one claims to be able to teach an art until first having learned it through careful study. With what incredible boldness then do the unlearned and unskillful stand ready to assume pastoral authority, forgetting that the care of souls is the art of arts! For it is clear that the ills of the mind are more hidden than the ills of the bowels. And yet quite often those who have no knowledge whatever of spiritual principles dare to declare themselves physicians of the heart, while those who do not know of the use of drugs would never dare to call themselves physicians of the flesh!”
Martin Luther had a doctorate in Theology and translated the entire Bible into German by himself while locked up in a castle struggling with spiritual attack. Luther thought that the biblical languages were so important that he said he would be willing to go to school with the devil to learn them. He also encouraged people to study until they “had taught the devil to death and had become more learned than God himself and all his saints.”
John Calvin studied at both the University of Paris and at Orleans and wrote one of the most popular Protestant Systematic Theology textbooks ever.
Ulrich Zwingli, in addition to having a strong formal education, had all of Paul’s letters memorized in Greek.
George Whitfield and John Wesley both studied theology at Oxford.
Jonathan Edwards graduated from Yale at 17 and then became the president of Princeton. His dissertation was delivered, of course, in Latin. He sometimes studied 14 hours a day and is considered to be the greatest mind to ever come out of America.
Even those like Charles Spurgeon, who didn’t have a lot of formal degrees, were highly educated . . . Spurgeon tutored Greek at Cambridge.

Evangelicalism Today

Great church leaders in the modern era are the same way. Some of the most influential, godly, Christian leaders are also the most knowledgeable:

John Piper has a PhD from the University of Munich.
Wayne Grudem has a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard, a Master’s degree from Westminster (which broke off of Princeton Seminary), and a PhD from Cambridge.
N. T. Wright has 5 degrees from Oxford, including two doctorates.
Alister McGrath has 5 degrees from Oxford, including two doctorates.
D. A. Carson, in addition to having a PhD from Cambridge, reads 500 books a year. Think about that… there are only 365 days in a year!

But what about the Apostles? Weren’t they uneducated?

Despite the overwhelming pattern above, some will object and say, “The Apostles were a bunch of uneducated fisherman and God seemed to use them despite their lack of training.” However, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, some were highly educated (like Paul who wrote a lot of the New Testament). Second, these other men spent three years personally walking with Jesus! What better education is there to knowing God then living with the God-Man for 3 years?! Also, the Apostles knew Aramaic (and some knew Greek and possibly Hebrew) which are more biblical languages than most pastors know. They didn’t need to study the background or culture of the Bible because they lived in it. They had also seen the risen Jesus, been commissioned by him to be Apostles, and had been empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth. That is a far cry from anyone’s meager education today. In a sense we could say they had more theological training than anyone else, not less. Ministerial training is not about a lot of knowledge but about the right knowledge.

Discouraged Yet?

The above facts don’t make me want to be a Christian—they make me want to give up. If the above information is true then I feel like God will never use me. I’ll never attain the level of these guys. I don’t have a PhD. I don’t debate scholars in Latin. And I’ve never translated the entire Bible into a new language.

However, my purpose is not to tell you that you have to be a scholar but merely to correct a trend in our evangelical culture which seeks to make Christians a people of the heart without also being a people of the head. This shouldn’t make you feel as though you have to become an ivory tower monk. It should, however, encourage you just to take “baby steps” and to devote yourself to studying God’s word. Part of loving God more is to know more about him.

Jonathan Edwards described knowledge about God like firewood and passion for God like fire. A fire with no firewood just produces a big flash but no lasting heat. Firewood without fire doesn’t do much good either. But if there is a fire the more firewood you add to the pile the brighter and hotter it will burn. Theology is the ceiling to your worship – by knowing more about God your capacity to love him grows.

God uses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. So the power is not in education in and of itself. But it is the education that allows one to better unlock the treasures of God’s Word. That is why these men are great and that is what the Bible itself tells us to seek.

Reconnecting Head and Heart

We have a tendency to vilify academics and act as though study is somehow unspiritual. We also have a tendency to feel as though serious Bible study is only for the “experts.” However, God wants all his people to be serious Bible students. So how can we take some “baby steps” and what are some practical things we can do to grow? Perhaps this means participating in some of these activities:

Asking seminary professors or pastors what books they recommend so you don’t waste your time on poor books.
Auditing a class at a local seminary.
Listening to seminary lectures on iTunes U.
Just devoting yourself to reading for fifteen minutes a day.
Asking more questions from people who know a lot about theology.

It’s not about reading a lot of books. It’s about reading the right books and to know what books those are you have to ask the guys who know. The easiest thing you can do to start is just to read the Bible a little every day. You won’t understand everything at first, but the more familiar you become with the Bible the more it will make sense over time.

It is easy to accidentally separate “head” from “heart.” We do it all the time. We either try to merely know facts about God (and not love him) or we just try to love him and conjure up emotion (and don’t correctly think about whom we are loving). However, it doesn’t have to be this way. The Christian is called to love God with our whole heart and our whole mind. It is not so much a “scale” or “spectrum” (which would mean that loving God moved one away from knowledge and having knowledge moved one away from love). Rather, these are two separate categories in which one should seek to grow. If one finds that they love God but don’t know much about him they shouldn’t try to love him less as if that will make them know more. Conversely, if one finds that they know about God more than they love him they should not study less as if being dumber will somehow make them love God more. Rather they should just seek to grow where they are weak whether that be head or heart.

The goal is not degrees but knowing God. Or, as church historian Justo Gonzalez says, “The goal of theological studies is not a degree or diploma. Their final goal is the contemplation of the face of God in the final reign of peace and justice.”

—

Zach Lee is Associate Home Groups Minister at The Village Church and is married to Katy. Follow him on Twitter: @zacharytlee.

Scott Sauls 6/30/15 Scott Sauls 6/30/15

We Are Not Called To Be Awesome

Earlier this year, the former Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, made a pretty stunning statement. It was in the middle of a speech in which he was reflecting on his own legacy at the age of 72. He spoke about initiatives he had spearheaded in to reduce obesity, eliminate second hand smoke from public spaces, and neuter gun violence on the streets. In each instance, Mayor Bloomberg had demonstrated a desire to promote human health, safety, and flourishing. The surprising part of his speech was the takeaway, in which he speculated about the afterlife. He said, and I quote, “I’m telling you if there is a God, when I get to heaven I’m not stopping to be interviewed. I’m heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.”

After first hearing the Mayor’s statement, a thought dawned on me: Whatever we might think about Christianity, it is by far the most utterly unique religion that the world has ever known. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that unlike every other religion ever known to humanity, Christianity has an entirely different view of the afterlife than Michael Bloomberg.

Because with Jesus, and only with Jesus, the door of heaven’s entry is presented to us at the beginning of our journey, not at the end. The door is Jesus himself. He lived the life we should have lived but didn’t, and he died the death we should have died but will never have to…because he lived and died in our place. And he rose from the dead to seal it.

Besides Christianity, other religions say what Mayor Bloomberg said on account of himself: If you want to make it to heaven, you have to accomplish something. You have to live up to something. You have to bring it.

For honest people, this is a terrifying thought. Even Karl Marx recognized this. In a rare moment of transparency, Marx disclosed an inner thought that no doubt had a lot to do with the destructive worldview he would come to espouse. Reflecting on his own struggle for “salvation” or “significance” or “identity” or whatever we want to call it, Marx said, “I am nothing and I should be everything. Man, the poor, denuded creature, must repress his smallness.”

Michael Bloomberg and Karl Marx are really saying the same thing, just from different angles — Bloomberg from a place of superiority and feeling big, and Marx from a place of inferiority and feeling small. Both are saying that the way to salvation is through work. Through exertion. Through human effort. Through fulfilled expectations. We start off small and we become whatever it is that we make of ourselves. In the end, that will be our salvation or our judgment, depending on how we have performed. In the end, that will be our ticket to being accepted by God (if we believe he exists), by others, and by ourselves.

Have you ever wondered where the insatiable ache comes from? You know, the one that longs to have our name remembered on a building, or in a history book, or on a donor list, or on a book or album cover, or by an industry, or by our descendants? Have you ever wondered where the drive to accomplish something comes from, or the desire to leave a legacy?

But what if your name has already been given to you, and your legacy has already been achieved? What if it is God who has already given you that name and that legacy?

He has.

Jesus Christ lived and died—he made himself nothing—so you would never have to feel like a nothing. He became small so you would never have to “repress your smallness” as a poor, denuded creature. And he rose from the dead so you could get to heaven and walk right in and not have to stop for an interview, because your trial has already occurred and your record of accomplishment has already been established by another.

The door of heaven’s entry is opened to you at the beginning of your journey, not at the end.

Another way to put this is that God has not called you to be awesome. Rather, he has called you to be humble, faithful, forgiven, and free.

We can all leave the awesome to Jesus. When we do, we will also become the best version of ourselves. But without the pressure.

—

Scott Sauls is senior pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, and author of Jesus Outside the Lines: A Way Forward for Those Who are Tired of Taking Sides. You can connect with Scott at scottsauls.com or on Twitter at @scottsauls.

Originally published at scottsauls.com.

Hannah Anderson 6/25/15 Hannah Anderson 6/25/15

Catechizing Our Children in Wonder

Success by Religious Conformity

It was one of those moments when I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. So I opted to just shrink lower into our second-row pew, stifle my giggles, and thank God for my seven-year-old son and all his glorious honesty.

My husband pastors a rural church in SW Virginia; and while we do our best to keep our kids out of the fishbowl, we do expect them to participate in the full-scope of congregational life. This includes our mid-week Bible study. This isn’t usually a problem, but like all of us, there are days when our children would rather stay home. Sometimes they’re tired, busy doing other things, or in the case of my seven-year-old son, simply finds his Legos more interesting than sitting still for an hour.

On this particular Wednesday night, my husband and I had dealt with the standard objections over dinner, and by 7:05, everyone was safely ensconced in our pew with our heads bowed. The head deacon was opening the service with prayer as only a head deacon from a rural Baptist church can when about half way through, he asked God to touch the hearts of “those who could have come tonight, but chose not to.” Not missing a beat, my son piped up, “Well, I didn’t want to come, but I HAD to.”

My son’s resistance to church is not the only discipleship hurdle we face as parents. It is easily matched by his older sister’s recent acknowledgment that she finds God’s eternality “weird” and by the fact that their five-year-old brother regularly asks to pray at meal time for the sole purpose of controlling the length of the prayer. (“Dear-God-Thank-you-for-this-food-help-us-to love-each-other-Amen.”) If parenting success is measured by religious conformity, we’re batting 0 for 3 here.

Discipleship Through Fear

These kinds of situations have the potential to worry Christian parents who desire to pass their faith on to their children. With reports of widespread Millennial angst and stories of apologists’ daughters rejecting Christianity, it easy to fear our children will not come to a personal relationship with Christ. It’s even easier to respond out of that fear by simply doubling our efforts to force faith into them through more catechism, more Bible memory, more “church.”

Part of the reason we do this is because we tend to believe discipleship happens through the accumulation of religious knowledge. A quick Google search for “children’s discipleship” brings back resource after resource—everything from catechisms to Bible memory systems to pint-sized devotional books–all promising to produce faith in the next generation of believers. What I rarely hear discussed is the necessity of discipling our children through “natural revelation.” When theologians use the term “natural revelation,” they are referring to what God has revealed about himself through the world around us. “Specific revelation,” on the other hand, is what God has revealed about himself through the Scripture.

And while I believe Scripture is essential to the process of belief, Scripture was never intended to be engaged in a vacuum. Instead, faith happens as the Holy Spirit impresses the truth of God’s Word (specific revelation) onto a heart that has been primed to accept it by experiencing the truth of God in the world around it (natural revelation). Like a pair of chopsticks, the two must work together.

The Apostle Paul understood this and it’s precisely why in Acts 17—that famous Mars Hill sermon—he begins by appealing to what the Athenians already knew through their experience of the world. They already believed in some “unknown God” because they could see his works both in them and around them. Most of us understand the importance of this approach in adult evangelism; we craft winsome arguments and appeal to the nature of the cosmos and the intrinsic code of right and wrong that seems to be written on every human heart. What fewer of us recognize is that we must evangelize and disciple our children in this exact same way. We must evangelize and disciple our children through wonder as much as through catechism.

Wonder as Much as Catechisms

In Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton, that great British philosopher of the last century, writes that he gained his understanding of the world as a child:

“My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery . . . a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by mere facts.”

It is this “certain way of looking at life” that many Christian parents neglect—or perhaps have never even acquired for themselves. We are not merely stuffing our children’s heads with facts; we are shaping hearts to believe that certain realities are true so that when they do finally encounter the facts essential to faith, they will already have hearts that can recognize them. When they finally memorize “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” it will find lodging because they have already gazed up into this same heaven and marveled at its brilliant stars; and they have already let the sand from this same earth slip through their chubby fingers.

So that in the end, they don’t believe there is a Creator simply because Genesis 1 tells them so; they believe there is a Creator because they have seen his Creation.  

As you go about discipling your children, as you teach them their Bible verses and correct them when they disobey, do not neglect the sacred discipline of awe. Take them to the mountains to walk forest trails in search of the millipedes and butterflies that are the works of his hands. Take them to the seashore to be knocked over by the power of a wave so that one day they’ll know how to be knocked over by power of God. Take them to the art museum to thrill at colors and shapes and textures whose beauty can only be explained by the One who is Beauty himself. Take them to the cities to crane their necks to the see the tops of sky scrapers and shiver at God’s miracle of physics that keeps them from tumbling down.

And then take them to church.

Take them to church to bow their heads and receive the Word that gives them the ability to know the God behind all these wonders in a personal way. Take them to church to let the joy of their little hearts overflow in worship of the One through whom all these things consist. And take them to church, so that in the midst of other worshipers, in the midst of other image bearers, they too will be able to find their place in the great, wide world he has made.

—

Hannah Anderson lives in the hauntingly beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She spends her days working beside her husband in rural ministry, caring for their three young children, and scratching out odd moments to write. In those in-between moments, she contributes to a variety of Christian publications and is the author of Made for More: An Invitation to Live in God’s Image (Moody, 2014). You can connect with her at her blog Sometimes a Light and on Twitter @sometimesalight.

Jeremy Writebol 6/23/15 Jeremy Writebol 6/23/15

Take Up and Read Beautiful Words

The longest Psalm in the Bible is a literary masterpiece. Covering one hundred and seventy-six verses the song is an impressive feat of creativity and command of language. In sets of eight lines each, the writer of the Psalm uses each letter of the alphabet to commend and speak of the power of the Word of God—“Aleph” through “Taw” (A to Z). In some ways, the Psalm itself is a grade-school alphabet primer to teach not only a language, but the greatness of the Word of God. While it might have been used in an educational environment to teach Hebrew children their ABC’s, the Psalm itself shows a powerful aspect of God’s Word that is often overlooked—namely its beauty. Consider for a moment the creativity of a writer who took the painstaking time to consider and weigh every word so that each line began with the proper Hebrew letter as well as making sure that the lines themselves were coherent. Each point makes sense. For the writer, the language became an artistic tool, like a chisel in the hands of a master carpenter to create something solid and indelible. Language became the vehicle of beauty and that beauty created desire.

Beauty is the spring of desire. It makes perfect sense that what our hearts, minds, bodies, and even our tongues and ears perceive as beautiful becomes more and more desirable to us. The Bible itself becomes an artisan spring of refreshment calling us to desire God more and more. God uses words to display his beauty, and even the words themselves are beautiful, artistic, creative, and delightful. But we frequently overlook the beauty of the Book.

The Bible As Textbook

When I was a senior in high school I began to visit colleges to assess whether the school would be a good fit for me and to see if I would click with a program of study that I would pursue as a vocation. I remember spending time one evening with a group of guys in a Bible college dorm asking them about the school and what pitfalls and snares I might face there. The students didn’t talk about the pitfalls of the city or the allurements of the party scene. They talked about the danger of the Bible.

Specifically, my counselors warned me against the danger of the Bible becoming a mere textbook. Yet this is how so many of us treat the Bible today. Instead of God’s Word being a beautiful, artistic, life-giving stream the Bible is shaped to become to just a history text book. Most history textbooks I remember were pretty boring. This is the approach we often take to the Bible. “Now class, open your book to page 116 where we are going to study the exodus of Israel.” Pretty boring.

The Bible becomes a textbook when we allow it to just be a source of information. We just look for knowledge to help us identify what to do and when to do it. We use the Bible to know the facts, dates, and timelines of the history of God’s people so that when we reach the pearly gates we can answer the appropriate question about when Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and exiled the Israelites (hint: 586 B.C.). We become Bible fact-givers that could topple any foe in a rousing game of Bible Trivia with our knowledge and profound grasp of information.

But we stand in serious danger of losing out on the reality and heart of the Bible. The beauty that draws us to desire God more. The Pharisees’ of Jesus’ day were in perilous danger of the same thing themselves. Jesus confronted them and said, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (Jn. 5:39–40). We use the Bible as a textbook for information but miss the beauty Scripture seeks to make us eagerly desire—Jesus Christ.

Beauty in the Book

How does God use words to cause us to thirst and hunger for him? How does the Bible become a spring that makes us thirsty for the water of life? One way the Bible itself develops thirst is by itself being a thirst-inducing piece of literature. Creativity, beauty, imagination, and a master-level command of language creates something distinctly unique and beautiful. As Harper Lee said, “The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.” Like Psalm 119 the creativity of the writers of Scripture is profound and deep. Scripture itself is a myriad of types of genre, style, and creative energy. If we really pay attention to these aspects of good literature within the Bible itself the beauty of the book shines forth in a new way that makes us thirsty for God.

The Bible is not just one style or genre. It’s abundantly creative in the types of writing it contains. God uses story to draw us into the drama of his work. He uses poetry to move our emotions and hearts. He uses genres like fantasy to spark and overwhelm our imaginations with things that we can not fully perceive. He draws us into life on the street through letting us read the personal letters of pastors to the churches they love so much. He shows us the power of sin through the legal documentation of the law so that we despair of our own righteousness and flee to Christ. He helps us walk well through life by giving us memorable, witty, yet dense sayings of wisdom. He provides language for our hearts through song so that we pray and answer God in all his glory.

The Bible is not a monochromatic history. The more we see the complexity and beauty of each genre, the more we will desire to know and delight in the God of the Bible.

Engage the Book

Psalm 119 powerfully invites us to love and engage the Bible because of its beauty. How do we sing and say with the writer of Psalm 119:24, “I find my delight in your commandments, which I love”? God doesn’t make it difficult for us, like taking down some awful tasting cough medicine. He attracts us with beautiful literature that leads us to a beautiful God.

To see the beauty of God’s word we should engage the Bible itself. Utilizing resources like Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart’s Reading the Bible For All It’s Worth will help us understand the genres and diversity of the Bible. Leland Ryken’s How to Read the Bible as Literature is another excellent source of help to see the beauty in the Bible’s diverse genres. Beyond helpful resources about the Bible we should open up and engage the Bible itself in its beauty.

Augustine was engaged by the beauty of the Bible as he heard little children singing “Tolle lege” (“take up and read”) so he took up the beautiful book and began to read the Bible. As God spoke Augustine saw the spring from which everlasting water flows—Christ himself. We would be wise to do the same. “Take up and read” to see the beauty of God’s word.

—

Jeremy Writebol (@jwritebol) has been training leaders in the church for over fourteen years. He is the author of everPresent: How the Gospel Relocates Us in the Present (GCD Books, 2014) and writes at jwritebol.net. He is the pastor of Woodside Bible Church’s Plymouth, MI campus.

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Guest User 6/14/15 Guest User 6/14/15

Beholding the Glory of Christ in Prayer

This is Part Two in our beauty series. —

I had to learn the hard way.

Isn’t that sometimes the best way though?

I remember as a child learning the importance of prayer. Bowing your head, folding your hands, and closing your eyes were all key elements. My friends and I made a game out of the process, sometimes accusing each other of not following protocol. “You had your eyes open,” someone would exclaim. “How would you know that if you had your eyes closed like you should have!” I would reply. It was fun at the time, but I didn’t quite grasp the importance of prayer until much later on in life. What started as a harmless game would later become a magnificent burden.

The Importance of Prayer

One of the challenges I have as a father is teaching my children to pray. In the Garwood home, we pray before we share a meal, before bedtime, and usually in the car when the occasion arises. My seven year old son enjoys thanking God for the great day he had, especially if it involved him getting to go outside for a while to play. My three year-old daughter likes to pray about things she wishes were true, like the family going to the water park or traveling to see the grandparents. My two year-old son prays in tongues (I’m kidding). Actually, the only thing I can understand with him is “Amen” at the end, as he moves on with his day.

All joking aside, when I pray with my children, I try to convey one of the most important reasons for prayer—the beholding of the glory of Christ. Why is this important? Take a look at what Jesus prays in John 17:24, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” God the Son prays to the Father and asks that those who belong to him would behold his glory.

The goal of our praying ought to be the beholding of Christ.

What It Means to Behold

What does it mean to “see” Christ’s glory, and why would this be something worth pursuing? Ultimately, the Bible teaches us that we will see Christ’s glory in two ways: by faith now (2 Cor. 5:7-8) and by sight in eternity (1 Cor. 13:12).¹ The end result of our running the race is a face-to-face meeting with Christ. The challenge, however, is the running of the race. We live by faith, not by sight (2 Cor. 5:7), which means that our pursuit of God through the means of grace we call “prayer” involves faith. We must believe the promises of God. We must cling to the truths we find in the Scriptures. The beholding we do now by faith in prayer leads to the beholding we will do in eternity. One is temporary. The other is everlasting.

John Owen is helpful,

No man shall ever behold the glory of Christ by sight in heaven who does not, in some measure, behold it by faith in this world. Grace is a necessary preparation for glory and faith for sight. The soul unprepared by grace and faith is not capable of seeing the glory of Christ in heaven. Many will say with confidence that they desire to be with Christ and to behold his glory. But when asked, they can give no reason for this desire, except that it would be better than going to hell. If a man claims to love and desire that which he never even saw, he is deceiving himself.²

What Owen is getting at is the connection between what we do by faith here and now, and what will eventually be in eternity. “You wish to see Christ in the fulness of heaven? Great; live by faith now.” The correlation could hardly be clearer. Beholding Christ forever begins by beholding him by faith in this life. And what does it mean to behold? To gaze upon, cling to, focus upon, draw near to, and rely by faith on Christ. We must take him as our own today. Beholding is about attentiveness to Christ in the present.

Problems with Beholding

The truth of the matter is that we are busy. And it’s killing us.

“How are you doing?”

“Oh, I’m doing well, thanks for asking; I’ve been really busy lately!”

“Yes, me too. Life just seems to constantly get in the way!”

Ever had this conversation? Busy is the go-to answer in assessing ourselves. We’ve moved from “I’m fine” to “I’ve been busy,” as if either of those answers suffice. In our culture of discontinuous change, we simply cannot keep up. The next iPhone is out with a new processor and upgraded camera, and suddenly ours from just last year might as well be a bag phone. The struggle with gazing upon true beauty in the face of Christ today is our lack of attentiveness. We don’t have time and even if we did, we don’t.

Is this where you’re at today? Are you struggling to behold Christ by faith in earnest prayer because you think you don’t have time?

Prayer as a Means of Beholding

The reason I chose the means of prayer is mostly because it’s the one thing we almost all wish we did more of, and it’s the one thing we can do right now. You can’t read the entirety of the Bible this very second, nor can you figure out your entire life right this very second. But you can pray. And you can pray in faith. When we stoop before the Throne we can be assured that our prayers are being handled with care (Heb. 4:16). The Mediator who is both Priest and King invites us in to gaze upon his beauty as we pray in faith for wisdom, direction, and guidance.

We’re not too busy to behold the glory of Christ in prayer; we’re too dependent upon ourselves. Prayer is for people who are needy, not those who are self-sufficient. The way to behold Christ in faith through prayer is repenting of our self-righteousness and fall before him with tears. You may feel overwhelmed, busy, anxious, and stressed to the max. You may feel like you cannot go on. But let me reassure you: God gives you more than you can handle because the idol of self-sufficiency destroys you.

Drop the facade—we are not impressive, but Christ most definitely is. Beholding Christ by faith in prayer is a means of grace to strengthen your weary heart. Repent of excuse-making. Repent of self-sufficiency. Repent of feeling the need for instant gratification. Turn away from the need to indulge yourself with the newest and greatest, and instead behold Christ with patience wrought by the Holy Spirit.

^{1. John Owen, The Glory of Christ, abridged and simplified by R.J.K. Law (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2009), 4.↩}

^{2. Ibid., 4-5.↩}

—

sean post 6/7/15 sean post 6/7/15

The Story Wars

Enjoy this excerpt from Sean Post’s The Stories We Live. Order your paperback today! Or use 1-click to purchase your digital copy from Amazon! —

Lawyers sometimes have a saying they use when building their case behind closed doors: “The best story always wins.” When it’s time to render a verdict, the judge and the jury won’t be thinking about the information presented as much as they will be asking, “Which story is most compelling and coherent?”

The courtroom isn’t the only place where story wars unfold. In the unseen corners of the human heart, they rage daily. These stories vie for supremacy on the silent channel of our thoughts. This battle is between the story of God and alternative broken stories.

Temptation is a Story War

In Matthew 4, Jesus experiences three temptations that highlight how many times the most powerful temptation is not to do something bad, but to do something good in the wrong way. Satan offers Jesus the chance to live into a story with the same ending as God’s perfect plan but with a different plot.

Specifically, Jesus is tempted to indulge a legitimate desire (eat), to believe something that is true (he is the Messiah), and to pursue a kingdom-minded shortcut (establish the Kingdom of God). These are all good things, which is exactly why these temptations were strategically chosen by Satan. Satan offers Jesus the chance to live a story with the same ending as God’s perfect plan but with a different plot.

So what’s the problem with these temptations? They don’t seem so bad.

In the first temptation, Jesus was tempted to indulge a desire at the cost of a greater desire. There’s a sad story in the Bible of a man who sold his birthright for a bowl of stew because he was hungry. This is the epitome of short-sightedness. It’s easy to allow a legitimate desire to crowd out things that may be even more important.

In the second temptation, Jesus was tempted to believe a truth in isolation. That is, a truth isolated from the rest of the story of Scripture. It was only Jesus’ knowledge of God’s broader plans and purposes that allowed him to reject the sound byte truth that Satan fed him.

During the third temptation, Jesus was tempted to establish the Kingdom by temporarily worshipping the wrong thing. Satan was saying, “We can get to the last chapter of the story without any conflict. All you have to do is worship me.”

As far as I can tell, every temptation I’ve ever faced has fit one of those three molds. Temptation comes to us in the form of a story. And that story will always tweak the details of the biblical story in some way. At that point, we are caught in the middle of two stories that war for our heart.

Sin is Trusting a Broken Story

The essence of sin is false love. When we love the wrong things in the wrong order, we’ve put our stock in a broken story. Rather than desiring God above all things, some misplaced desires flood our vision.

If you have some perspective, it’s probably not too difficult to look back and see how these broken stories have manifested in your life. You have pursued (and still pursue) loves that were “ultimate” for you but were also false.

Tristan’s Story

From the moment Tristan first stepped into my car on the way to the coffee shop, he seemed burdened. We ordered drinks, sat down, and the whole situation came pouring out. He was confused about why he continued to look at pornography even though he didn’t want to. Together, we began to unpack the broken story he was trusting in.

During our conversation, it became clear Tristan’s deep longing was to be a husband and a father. The porn was a cheap substitute for the intimacy his soul craved. The porn promised to meet this desire, but it couldn’t. His spirit was left sloshing around in a wake of sewage.

For Tristan, grasping the distinction between the true story of Jesus and the broken story of pornography was a turning point in his internal civil war. He was able to see that his good desire for intimacy was being hijacked and driven down a road that leads to death. So we talked about the road to life and truth. We spent the end of our time exploring the question, “How is God inviting you to you feed your desire for intimacy with him and with others?”

All of us are seduced by broken stories. For a moment, they promise hope, but if we follow them long enough they lead to frustration, pain, and an overwhelming emptiness. So how can we gain perspective in the midst of these story war?

The way we refuse false love is by catching a captivating picture of Jesus as the true and better lover of our souls. And our weapon for fighting the story wars is not willpower; it’s worship. As we fixate on Jesus, we see that he is the real picture of human flourishing. Other stories of our good can’t deliver. So worship (i.e., affection and desire for God) —not willpower—is what kills sin in our lives.

Trusting the Best Story

Actor Jim Carrey has famously said, “I wish everyone could get rich and famous and have everything they ever wanted so that they can see it’s not the answer.” Jim is saying, “Hey, wake up world. What you are chasing won’t make you happy. That story is broken.”

What if we took that advice? What if we allowed the Holy Spirit to begin to expose the emptiness of the stories we regularly trust in? How much more joy would we find in Jesus as we aligned ourselves with the true story of God?We would be free from lying successes, free from false loves, and free from broken stories. We would know the true story, trust the true story, and we would be set free to actually live a better story.

I can tell you that these ideas work with two-year olds. Parents, the beauty of grasping that sin is “loving the wrong things” is your toddler can understand it. I’m able to say things like, “Son, right now you are loving that toy more than your brother.” That really drives at the heart. My encouragement to you is this: help your child see the story war in their own heart. What false loves can you help them identify? When they demand a toy forklift or a snow globe or a skateboard or an iPod or a candy bar you can ask them, “How long will these things make you happy for?”

In our lives, in our families, in our churches, in our culture, may the best story win. The good news is, it will.

—

Sean (@Sean_Post) lives in Maple Valley, WA with his wife and two sons and leads a one-year discipleship experience for young adults called “Adelphia”. He is completing his doctorate in Missional Leadership.

Adapted from Sean’s upcoming GCD Books title The Stories We Live: Discovering the True and Better Way of Jesus. Coming June 2015.

Michael Hansen 6/4/15 Michael Hansen 6/4/15

Reconciled At the Table

The way many churches exclude the Lord’s Supper from their regular worship service deeply concerns me. The Lord’s Supper forces the church to look itself in the mirror. When Jesus welcomes the congregation to the table of fellowship, we are confronted with the reality that he is far more welcoming and hospitable than we are. Christians can often be fickle people. On the one hand, this is understandable. Christians have an objective standard from which to judge right and wrong. This is a good thing because Christians have a moral and ethical compass with which we can navigate the swells of an increasingly relativistic society.

On the other hand, this can be a bad thing. Christians are often prone to use God’s objective standards to shun and exclude people when the God they worship is neither shunning nor excluding.

Look around the congregation.

How many people can you count that you would not invite to your table? There are great sinners in the congregation. There are people you don’t like. But all of these people are welcomed to the Lord’s table at the his invitation.

Jesus once told his disciples that he will draw all men to himself when he is lifted up (Jn. 12:32). What happened to Jesus when he was lifted up? He was broken. What happens to the bread when the minister lifts it up before the congregation? It is broken. The Lord’s Supper is much more than an act of remembrance for individual Christians. The Lord’s Supper is a participatory event where all men find themselves drawn to Christ’s broken body.

When Jesus’ body was broken the walls of separation between Jew and gentile, male and female, slave and free, black and white were broken as well (Gal. 3:28). This happens in the Lord’s Supper. People who would not dine together at their own tables are brought together at the Lord’s Table, they are brought together by the broken body of Jesus Christ. At the Lord’s Table, we participate in and show forth the great reconciliation of mankind.

Moreover, because the table is fenced, it is not up to us whether or not our neighbor will participate or not, it is up to use whether we will participate or not. At our own tables, we decide who we will invite and who we will exclude. At the Lord’s table, we are all invited, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28), but we are also told that we are to examine ourselves (1 Cor. 11:28).

When we are invited to the Lord’s Table each week, we are taught to look at our own hearts in regards to fellowship rather than to our neighbor’s faults. Sinful hearts look outward for excuses not to commune with others, sinful hearts turn in on themselves. In the Garden, Adam’s sin was a sin of consumption and blame shifting. When he was confronted, Adam shifted the blame on Eve, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12). In the Lord’s Supper, we are invited to eat rather than prohibited. Further, as we participate we are conditioned to remove the plank from our own eye before commenting on the speck in our neighbors (Matt. 7:5).

Look around the congregation.

How many people look just like you? Are they all white (let’s hope not)? Are they all black (let’s hope not)? Are they all republicans or democrats (let’s hope they’re libertarians)? No, there are people from all walks of life, all races, all socioeconomic classes, and all ideologies being drawn to the broken body of Christ.

In a world where selfishness has become a cultural virtue, the Lord’s table is hardly a place to perpetuate selfish interests. At the Lord’s Table, you dine with and commune with people you might never dream of inviting to your own table. But there you are, partaking of the same loaf and drinking from the same cup. In this act much is being proclaimed. Who you eat with says a lot about you and at the Lord’s Table we eat with Jesus, this cannot be overlooked. But while we eat with Jesus we are also eating with other people who are eating with Jesus.

The Lord’s table proclaims not only that we belong to Christ, but also that we belong to one another—all our differences and problems included. God’s people are not static in our relationships. Both vertically with God and horizontally with each other our relationships are dynamic. The Lord’s Supper images the dynamic nature to the life of Christ’s Body. We are growing, albeit with growing pains, further and further into the image of Christ, the head of the Body (Eph. 4: 15-16).

The church is a body of many members. Further, God’s word serves as a two edged sword cutting to the hearts of his people (Heb. 4:12) who have become living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1). Throughout each service God’s word has cut His church into pieces just as the levitical sacrifices are cut into pieces (the sermon). But the service does not end here. The church must learn that we are only broken by God’s Word because the Word of God was broken for us: “This is my body broken for you.” Moreover, as the body of many members (the church) partakes of the broken body of Christ we are made whole again by our participation in the one loaf (1 Cor. 10:17).

Perhaps the reason there is so much strife in the church nowadays is because we are not communing with one another as we ought. Our ultimate allegiances need to be formed not by who we would invite to our tables but by whom Jesus, weekly, invites to his.

Just food for thought.

—

Michael and his wife Caroline live in Athens, GA. Michael blogs weekly at Torrey Gazette. You can follow Michael on Twitter @_Michael_Hansen.

Zachary Lee 5/31/15 Zachary Lee 5/31/15

Can We Do All Things?

It’s easy to misinterpret and accidentally use verses out of context. We all do it. Peter even tells us that Paul is hard to understand (2 Pt. 3:16)! However, one passage I see gets misused more than others. Paul writes to the Corinthians:

All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body… Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. –1 Corinthians 6: 12-20

Let’s talk about how many people interpret this passage. By “all things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable,” many people assume Paul is saying we have the freedom to do quite a lot, but that we just sometimes shouldn’t. We are not really bound by any rules, but sometimes it is unhelpful to follow our freedoms. We might have the right to drink, per se, but sometimes it is not profitable for us.

That sounds good on the surface, and may even have some truth to it in other places in the Bible (Romans 12, for example), but this interpretation has many problems. First, is it true? Can we do all things? Is the same Paul who says he is bound by the law of Christ (1 Cor. 9:21) and gives us multiple letters full of commands saying “all things are lawful for me?” Is he really saying I can do everything (murder? sexual immorality?), but that I just shouldn’t because it’s not profitable? That’s probably not the best interpretation of this passage.

Second, these people then interpret verse 18 to say that sexual immorality is somehow worse than all other sins. Paul does say, “Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body.” In other words, all sins are bad, but sexual immorality is against one’s own body, so it’s especially devious. Is this the right interpretation? Are there no other sins that are against your body (suicide, gluttony, cutting, drunkenness, etc.)? Is sexual sin worse than, say, assaulting someone?

This passage brings up so many questions. What does Paul mean by “All things are lawful for me?” What does he mean by “Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food?” What does he mean by saying, “Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body?” Does this make sexual sin some kind of “special” sin that is somehow worse than all the others? Why is this passage so difficult to interpret?!?!

Is Paul Stating His Own Position?

The problem with this passage (and the reason that it is so confusing) is because most people assume Paul is stating his own position. However, this text becomes clear once we realize he is quoting the position of the Corinthians then refuting it.

Before we delve into this further, three pieces of background information are needed:

Slogans were as popular then as they are now. Our culture is rich with slogans. Nike has “Just Do It.” McDonald’s slogan used to be “Have you had your break today?” Now it’s “I’m lovin’ it.” Kay Jewelers has “Every kiss begins with Kay.” We are all familiar with slogans. In fact, we even have cultural slogans in the U.S. today. “To each his own,” “Don’t judge me,” “YOLO” (You only live once!) and many others. They had slogans in Corinth too. Some of which we will see in just a moment.
The Corinthians separated their spiritual life from their physical life. Corinth was located in Greece and had been intellectually shaped by the philosophy of Plato who radically separated the concept of one’s soul from one’s body. Because of this dichotomy, those in the Corinthian church thought that they could commit sexual immorality with their body because it didn’t affect their spiritual life.
The Greek New Testament was originally written with no punctuation marks, in all capital letters, with no spacing. Therefore, in English, the sentence: “Bob said, ‘I’ll go to the store tomorrow.’” Would look like this: BOBSAIDILLGOTOTHESTORETOMORROW

In fact, it looks much like a hashtag (#) on Twitter today. This means that we don’t have quotation marks to look for in Greek and have to discern who is speaking by context.

Using Their Arguments Against Them

With all that in mind, we are now ready to interpret this passage. The key to getting it right is to realize that Paul is quoting the Corinthians then refutes them and is not only giving his own thoughts. The ESV translation is helpful because it puts quotation marks around certain phrases (although it misses some other needed quotations). Here is what is going on, step by step.

The Corinthians say: “All things are lawful for me” (i.e. I can do whatever I want).

Paul refutes: “But not all things are profitable” (i.e. no you can’t).

The Corinthians say: “All things are lawful for me” (i.e. I can do whatever I want).

Paul refutes: “But I will not be mastered by anything” (i.e. you Corinthians are being enslaved by your sin and shouldn’t be).

The Corinthians say: “Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them” (i.e. if you have sexual organs you are supposed to use them).

To summarize thus far, the Corinthians falsely believe they can commit sexual immorality because 1.) All things are lawful for them and 2.) They have been given sexual organs to use them. Paul refutes them at every turn.

That’s verses 12-14. What about verse 18? Now, this could be a quotation from Paul. If so, then he is showing how sexual sin uniquely unites you to another person because you become “one flesh” with them. No other sin unites your whole being to another person like sexual immorality. However, other people see this phrase as a Corinthian quote. If so, then Paul is refuting their position. If it is a Corinthian slogan, then there should probably be quotation marks around the phrase as well: “Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body.” In this reading this is not Paul’s position; it’s the Corinthian’s. Also, it is helpful to note the word “other” is not actually in the Greek. The translators added it to clarify what they thought the verse meant. But the addition makes sexual sin sound like a “special” kind of sin. You’ll see this if you look at the NASB quotation I used above because the word “other” is in italics. Verse 18 literally says “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body.” Did you catch that? Every sin! If this is a Corinthian slogan then the Corinthians are saying that sins committed with the body don’t affect the soul and, therefore, all sins are outside the body.

If this Paul’s position the problem is he contradicts himself later when he says “but the immoral man sins against his own body.” So, all together, when we understand that Paul is quoting Corinthian slogans this confusing passage in 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 looks like this:

Corinthians: I can do everything

Paul: No you can’t

Corinthians: I can do everything

Paul: No you can’t

Corinthians: If you have genitals, you are supposed to use them whenever you want.

Paul: No you shouldn’t

Corinthians: Every sin that a man commits is outside his body and doesn’t affect his spiritual life.

Paul: Sexual sin affects both your body and your spiritual life.

Paul is having a back and forth dialogue with the cultural and religious assumptions of the Corinthians. It is just hard to see because Greek didn’t use punctuation marks.

Doesn’t that make more sense? Isn’t that a better (and more probable) understanding of what Paul is saying?

Now, the idea of Corinthian slogans and quotations in this chapter is much debated. More research remains must be done. I personally still wrestle with verse 18 and whether or not Paul is separating the effects of becoming “one flesh” with another in sexual sin from other sins. However, knowing that Paul is quoting the Corinthians here helps us make more sense of God’s word to us in this difficult and multi-faceted letter. Though we are free from the Mosaic Law in every way we are still under the “Law of Christ” (1 Cor. 9:21) and all things are not actually lawful for us.

What About Discipleship?

Why write about this on a blog about discipleship? The answer: Holiness is a key aspect to growing in your faith.Not only will your spiritual growth be hindered by sin (sexual sin included), but you will also walk in less joy and freedom if you take up the Corinthian’s slogans. Now, the good news of the gospel is that Jesus’ lordship provides you with a loving God who forgives your sin no matter how much you mess up. We don’t “do better” by trying to do better. We “do better” by realizing that God loves us because of Jesus even if we don’t “do better.” We strive for holiness but it is a grace-motivated effort—not to make God love us but because he already does.

So make every effort to fight against sin. Get counseling, confess your dark secrets, get rid of your computer, cut off your right hand. Do whatever you must do to kill sin. All the while know that Christ has already and ultimately defeated sin and he loves you as you battle it. Whoever the Son sets free is free indeed—that includes freedom from minimizing sin like the Corinthians.

—

Zach Lee is Associate Home Groups Minister at The Village Church and is married to Katy. Follow him on Twitter: @zacharytlee.

Greg Willson 5/26/15 Greg Willson 5/26/15

3 Meditations on Participation in Wasteful Worship

Televangelists. Is there any symbol of selfish religion more cliché than an over-emotive televangelists selling promises and prayers through the airwaves? Many of us see the televangelist and balk.

As Christians, we are disgusted or ashamed or angry or some kind of combination of all these and more. But as much as we’d like to distance ourselves from this kind of double-minded religion, it ought to hit close to home. Inside each one of us is a televangelist eager to use the means of religion for his own ends. The story of Mary anointing Jesus in John 12 confronts that darkness within us. Here’s the story:

Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it. Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.” – John 12:1–8

In this story, we see an outwardly religious person bent on using religion for his own gain shame an outsider for her extravagant worship . . . all in the name of religion. Mary’s wasteful worship is nothing more than an offense to Judas. John, of course, opens up the hood of Judas’ heart and we see the engine of double-minded religion exposed as greed. Judas’ heart is contrasted with that of Mary’s who, being enamored with Jesus, is the image of single-minded devotion.

CONFRONTATION

Mary’s wasteful act brings out Judas’ corrupt and pragmatic heart. Whereas Mary understands the importance of Jesus’ presence and his limited time on earth, Judas focuses on the price of the perfume. Notice how he automatically prices the perfume: It’s 300 denarii?! If you can’t do the denarii math in your head, that was about one year’s wages. This is a significant amount of money! And Judas, focusing on the money, misses the priority of Jesus and the importance of his presence. Judas’ presence in this story is more than a way for us to feel self-righteous (“at least I’m not like that Judas!”). As we point the finger at Judas, we can’t help but point back into our hearts.

As much as we’d like to remove ourselves from Judas’ corrupt pragmatism, how often do we use religion for our own ends? I live in the American South. We are known for getting drunk on Saturday and attending church on Sunday. Do we think Sunday somehow cancels out the weekend? We use religion to offload guilt and feel better about ourselves. Or maybe you think yourself better or more special than others who don’t come to church on Sunday. You, like Judas, are using religion for your own ends of self-justification.

Like the corrupt televangelist on the screen using religion for their greedy gains, each Sunday we find ourselves in the pew using religion for our own greedy gain. We are Judas.

COSTS

Wasteful worship confronts our dark hearts, but it’s more than that as well. Wasteful worship is costly. For Mary, this perfume was tangibly a great cost. The amount of time and money put into this little jar is astounding. It came all the way from India, and some even think it was possible this was a family heirloom, passed down from generations.

This cost her reputation. If she was married, letting her hair down was a massive cultural taboo. Even if she was single, her act would have scandalized. People would have been talking about how inappropriate Mary’s affection was probably for weeks after this event. Though it was common for guests at banquets to be anointed and for them to wipe off excess perfume on others’ hair, that was a job reserved for the lowest servant. Mary is willingly taking a humble position at great cost to her own reputation.

This act also cost Mary emotionally. She didn’t just robotically go through motions of anointing; she is overcome and all in. Her heart is engaged with her hands.

Mary teaches us that worship rightfully cost. It cost our money, time, reputation, and emotions. We don’t mind costs when it comes to things we love. We willingly buy gifts and spend time with those we love. We risk what others might say about us for the sake of what or who we love. If we truly are engaged with whatever we desire, our emotions will follow suit. For Mary, the cost wasn’t calculated like it was for Judas. She was in awe of Jesus. Jesus had raised her brother Lazarus from the dead! This is the Son of God!

CALLING

Mary’s worship was a waste . . . a glorious waste. As quick as Judas is to shame her, Jesus defends her. Jesus is on the side of the wasteful worshipper. He tells Judas to back off, then gives the reason for his defense. “You will always have ministry opportunities with you, ” he says, “but I will not always be with you.” Jesus rebukes Judas’ priorities of work over worship, instructing us in our ultimate calling as humans—to worship our Lord.

Jesus then re-focuses this God-approved waste toward his impending death. The shadow of the cross looms over this banquet. Jesus on the cross confronts our greed and guilt that lead to death. He takes them on himself and puts those sins to death. Jesus, his body on the cross, pays the ultimate cost with his own life. This was his calling. As an act of worship in obedience to the Father, the Son offered up his life and died that we could live.

Jesus confronts death through his own death, that we may not die. This is the ultimate waste. He wasted his status as the Son of God, instead of elevating himself as he humbled himself. He wasted his power as the second Person of the Trinity; he could’ve crushed his opponents. He wasted his blood on those who spit at, cursed, and delighted to see him die. We get to enjoy the blessings of Jesus’ wasteful worship, presented to the Father as a fragrant offering for his satisfaction. The wasteful death of the Son of God allows us to now participate in wasteful worship, freed from our corrupt pragmatism.

This is, after all, our ultimate trajectory. John’s visions of what the new heavens and earth is like is an overwhelming image of wasteful worship—singing, feasting, enjoying the presence of the Lamb. What a waste! A glorious, hopeful, and joy-filled waste worthy of our lives today and forever.

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Greg Willson is participating in God's work of renewal, planting churches in Manchester, England, creating music and writing about those topics and more. Follow him on Twitter: @gregoriousdubs.