Stay There

May 21, 2013 — 1 Comment

The most important thing for a husband to remember is the most important thing for everyone to remember, and that’s the gospel of Jesus. The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus is the most important thing to remember.

This is for many reasons, but take just one. Men were made to be strong and to lead their wives. But men are sinners and foolish, and they marry sinful and foolish women and that’s just for starters. But the gospel is good news for sinful men and women, even the kind who get married to each other. And so you have to remember the gospel.

Paul says as much to the Ephesians: Husbands love your wives like Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her. This means that husbands are called to die for their wives in order to be strong for them and lead them. The problem is that dying sounds like losing. Far too many men plunge into a conflict and after suffering for a bit, after they feel that they have felt the sensation of dying enough, jump off the cross and start barking orders and demand to know why no one is listening.

But when Jesus was mocked as weak, Jesus refused to jump off the cross. The problem many men have is that they jump off the cross thinking that the sensation of dying is the same thing as having died. And unfortunately this is the worst of both worlds. Now your wife’s miffed and you feel like you’ve been through death but haven’t actually fixed anything. And so many men, even Christian men, secretly conclude that it just doesn’t work for them. But that’s like shooting yourself in the foot, and concluding that guns just don’t scare bad guys away. Yeah, good luck with that.

Jesus didn’t jump off the cross. He stayed there and suffered and bled until it was finished, until He died. If you have conflict over how to train your children, where to go to church, what your sex life should be like, how to spend your money, how to spend your time, you need to remember the gospel. Not like some kind of mantra. Not like some kind of good luck charm. You need to remember how the gospel works. Jesus died for sin. He took the shame. He took the false accusations. He took the lies. He took your mess. And He died for it. Now that’s your job, husband. Not that you take away your wife’s sin, not that you’re some kind of perfect savior. No, but it’s your job to imitate Christ to and for your wife. So it’s your job to patiently, graciously listen to her, talk gently to her, pray with her, study the Scriptures with her, get counsel with her, and then make the best decision you can muster for her, remaining calm, cheerful, gentle, affectionate, good humored, full of tenderness and kindness. No matter what. And stay there. Stay there.  Continue Reading…

In Bible - Ephesians, Family, Grace, Manalive, Marriage Bed, Pastoral Theology, Theology - Christology, Theology - Soteriology, Wisdom
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Jesus, Rush, and the Nature of True Humility

May 20, 2013 — 1 Comment

nerdGod made this world, and so long as you’re alive, you can’t escape the way He made it. You might have qualms with gravity, but I’m afraid you’re going to go on living with it.

And since at the center of the world is Jesus Christ, there is no life outside of Him. All things exist and cohere in Him. Therefore, all counterfeit forms of life have to borrow from Jesus. Jesus said that in order to find your life you have to lose it. The greatest in the kingdom is the servant of all. In other words, because the cross has become the center of all human history, everybody is forced to reckon with it. Everybody, even people with qualms, have to live with this fact. And this means there are really only two options. Some bow before it, in true humility, confessing their sins, receiving forgiveness and cleansing, and then they rise bearing that same cross as God works His life into and out of their lives, joyfully following their Savior. Everybody else, failing to actually bow before Christ, must pretend to have humbled themselves. They must pretend to bear a cross. They muster up some kind of limp. They wear it like a cheap toupee. Ever since Jesus came into the world, the old pagan mythos of arrogant strength has been fading away, and now all true power and strength is found in the cross, or else some kind of faux version made with aspartame and a bad aftertaste.

In other words, everybody likes the idea of humility. Ever since Jesus, humility is heroic. Everybody likes the idea of being humble, but nobody really wants to be humbled. In other words, the popular form of humility is a sort of aw-shucks-taint-nothing sort of demeanor. In the broader Christian world it consists of apologizing for everything as often as possible. It’s telling and a little more than ironic that people often describe being humbled at the very point at which they are receiving some kind of recognition, honors, praise. Continue Reading…

In Against Christianity, Bible - 1 Peter, Culture, Politics, TRC, Wisdom
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Pentecost: Ps. 50-51: The Holy Spirit & Covenant Mercy

May 20, 2013 — Leave a comment

Introduction
God is love, and this is because He is Trinity. The love that binds the Father and the Son is the Spirit (Rom. 5:5, 15:30, 2 Cor. 13:14, Col. 1:8). God’s love is not just a feeling, an emotion, it’s a fierce, personal, saving loyalty. This is what the Bible calls God’s hesed, His lovingkindness, His covenant mercy toward us (Ex. 34:6-7, Dt. 7:9, Lk. 1:72-73). Today we consider the gift of the Holy Spirit as God’s covenant mercy.

The Text: Psalm 50 begins with God calling Israel to court (Ps. 50:1-7). His complaint is not with their sacrifices per se (50:8), but with the fact that they don’t understand what they mean. God doesn’t need their sacrifices because He’s hungry or poor (50:9-13). He wants their sacrifices to embody their worship, their praise, their loyalty, their need for Him (50:14-15). God’s complaint is with the fact that they take His covenant in their mouth, but they are wicked, hate instruction, are friends with thieves and adulterers, and love lies and slander (50:16-20). God has not kept silent because He doesn’t know about it, so they need to do some serious thinking and seek His salvation or be destroyed (50:21-23). Continue Reading…

In Bible - Psalms, Church Calendar, Grace, Pentecost, Sermon Outlines, TRC, Worship
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Ascension Sunday: 1 Cor. 15:12-28

May 13, 2013 — Leave a comment

In the days of the prophet Elisha, the King of Syria was at war with the northern tribes of Israel. But Elisha frequently knew ahead of time the movements of the armies of Syria, and he would warn the king of Israel. This happened a number of times before the king of Syria became convinced that there was a traitor among his cabinet of advisors or generals. But even they knew what was going on, and they told their master that Elisha was a prophet who might even know what you said in the privacy of your own bedroom. So the king found out where Elisha was staying and sent a great army of horses and chariots and surrounded the city where Elisha and his servant were. When Elisha’s servant woke up in the morning, he saw the great army surrounding the city, and he said, ‘Alas, my master – what shall we do?’ But Elisha answered, “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” And he prayed and said, “Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha (2 Kgs. 6:8-17).

Where is heaven? Where is heaven? We often ask what heaven is like. What is it like in heaven? What will it be like when we die? But perhaps an equally or more important question is: Where is heaven? And actually, I think answer the question where, goes a good ways toward answering the what.

The answer of the Bible, as illustrated in stories like this one with Elisha and his servant and the armies of Syria, is that heaven is here. Heaven is not far away, on the other side of the galaxies. Heaven is close by, nearby, all around us. But we can’t normally see it. The problem isn’t that heaven is far away. The problem is that we are like the servant of Elisha, and we can’t see it though the heavenly presence of God is all around us.

When Jesus ascended into heaven, fire didn’t shoot out of the soles of his feet. He didn’t blast off like a human rocket into outer space (as cool as that might sound). Luke says He was taken up, but He also says that a cloud received Him and He was taken from their sight. Remember other events like this: Enoch walked with God, and then he was not for God took him. Or God’s heavenly presence in the burning bush and the cloud and fire leading Israel out of Egypt, coming to rest on Mt. Sinai, and then later the glory of the Lord filling the tabernacle and temple. Or Elijah was taken up in a whirlwind. Or Stephen who gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. We gesture upwards, we look up, we lift up our hands and hearts, but the heavenly presence of God seems to break out in various places at various times all around us. Heaven is above us and all around us. Heaven seems to overlap with earth in some sense. Continue Reading…

In Ascension, Bible - 1 Corinthians, Church Calendar, Creation, Culture, History, Sermon Outlines, Theology - Eschatology, TRC
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Tweezer Protocols

May 13, 2013 — Leave a comment

Jesus asked, “Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?… Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Mt. 7:3, 5)

One of the points we should gather from this instruction is that sin clouds our vision. Sin does not allow us to see clearly. If you have unconfessed sin, unrepentant sin, outstanding sin, you can’t see clearly. The world is distorted. Your judgment is impaired. Confession of sin and repentance is God’s ordinary way of healing moral blindness. But one of the other lessons is that sometimes those most interested in confronting others do so precisely because they can’t see clearly. The plank in their own eye distorts the world, distorts the situation, and in that state it appears that the problem is the other fellow, your brother and his speck. Are you constantly evaluating others, constantly judging their behavior, spotting inconsistencies, comparing yourself to them? Jesus says beware, with the judgment that you judge, you will be judged. Do you want to be evaluated the way you evaluate others? Do you want to be scrutinized the way you scrutinize others? Do you want others to assume about you what you assume about them? Jesus says we should always begin with ourselves, confessing our own sin, our own complicity, our own faults, our own weakness. Maybe your brother needs help, maybe your sister really does need your assistance, but before you offer to get out your tweezers, you should make sure you’ve used those tweezers a number of times on yourself successfully. Continue Reading…

In Misc
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Getting Grace

May 13, 2013 — Leave a comment

Sin is insanity. Sin doesn’t make sense. And for that reason sin always looks for an excuse, justification. And for the same reason, any excuse will do, any justification will work because there really isn’t a good one.

All sin makes matters worse. But we momentarily pretend that sin is the solution, our salvation, our deliverance. Things are not going my way, so I will get angry. Things are taking too long, so I will demand them. I am sexually frustrated so I will serve my lusts. I do not feel respected or honored enough, so I will criticize the success of others. I am depressed and lonely so I will drink until the pain is numb. I have no direction so I will sit here and watch movies and play video games and check facebook every five minutes. I was late to work, so I will lie to my boss. It’s all insane. It never makes sense.

But this isn’t the same thing as saying that sin is completely random. From the perspective of grace, walking in the Light, sin can look horribly schizophrenic and at times completely out of nowhere. But grace also teaches us wisdom, and that wisdom can see the way seeds are planted, sprout, and grow up into big problems. While sin is a certain breed of insanity, it has it’s own predictable logic and trajectory. And that logic includes the need for justification.

Because God is good and righteous and holy, and we are made in His image. We have an inherent need and deep desire for goodness, righteousness, and holiness. In other words, we like being right. We like when things come together, are harmonious, make sense. Only those who are truly mentally handicapped can be at ease with being wrong or inconsistent. And even then, we probably don’t realize or understand how it’s still not that simple. Continue Reading…

In Grace, Pastoral Theology, Wisdom
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Untimely Birth

May 10, 2013 — Leave a comment

Paul uses an unusual phrase hosper ektroma “untimely birth” to describe his vision of Jesus and conversion to Christianity (1 Cor. 15:8). N.T. Wright points out that normally, ektroma refers to a miscarriage or abortion, and clearly Paul doesn’t mean the word in it’s normal, literal usage since the result of such a birth is death. But it could refer to the timing of his birth into Christ, referring to “his not being ready to be born.”

Wright notes that this phrase might also refer to the drama of the event: “He was, as it were, ripped from the womb in a traumatic way, blinded by the sudden light like an infant whose organs had not yet developed sufficiently to cope with the demands fo the outside world… Paul explains the difference between himself and the others not in terms of his seeing Jesus being a different sort of ‘seeing’, but in terms of his own personal unreadiness for such an experience. It took an emergency operation, he may be saying, to bring him into the list of witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection; his ‘seeing’ of Jesus was the same as theirs in terms of the Jesus they saw, but it was radically different in terms of his own experience, being ripped from the womb of zealous Judaism, to come face to face with the crucified and risen Lord.”  Continue Reading…

In Bible - 1 Corinthians, Bible - Job, Bible - Numbers, Theology - Soteriology
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Jesus is Not the Church

May 9, 2013 — 1 Comment

If the church identifies its structures, its leadership, its liturgy, its buildings, or anything else with its Lord — and that’s what happens if you ignore the ascension or turn it into another way of talking about the Spirit — what do you get? You get, on the one hand, what Shakespeare called, ‘the insolence of office’ and, on the other hand, the despair of late middle age, as people realize it doesn’t work… Only when we grasp firmly that the church is not Jesus and Jesus is not the church — when we grasp, in other words, the truth of the ascension, that the one who is indeed present with us by the Spirit is also the Lord who is strangely absent, strangely other, strangely different from us and over against us, the one who tells Mary Magdalene not to cling to him — only then are we rescued from both hollow triumphalism and shallow despair.

- N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope, 113.

In Ascension, Bible - Luke, Church Calendar, Theology - Christology, Theology - Ecclesiology
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Made to Hunt Treasure

May 4, 2013 — Leave a comment

The Bible teaches that God made man for this world. God created this world for man. He invented this place for people. God made all things and called them good. Then He created man and woman, and He called it all very good. But God didn’t create the world finished. He didn’t create the world like a piece of art meant only to hang in a gallery somewhere. He created the world as a work in progress. He created the world good and very good, and He rested from His work on the seventh day, the first Sabbath. But in the work of creation, God established a pattern, a picture, an example and told Adam to follow it. Which is to say that God created the world good but not finished. He completed His work and rested, but God made Adam for work also. God made Adam for real work. God made Adam to be fruitful, to create, to invent, to discover, to rule creation with wisdom. And God created the woman to work with him, alongside him, to help him.

When God planted the Garden of Eden and placed Adam and Eve in it, He explained to them that the river flowing out through the middle of the garden actually split into four different river heads. God said, down the first river Pishon, you will find the land of Havilah which is full of gold. It’s good gold and there is bdellium and onyx stones there as well. Adam didn’t even know what gold was. He didn’t know where Havilah was. He didn’t know what bdellium and onyx stones were either. But God gave him these descriptions and pointed into the distance and said, You’re gonna want to go that way. What God did was give Adam the very first treasure map.

But God wasn’t done. He pointed to the other rivers: Gihon goes down to Ethiopia. Hiddekel goes toward Assyria. And the fourth river is called Euphrates, and I’m not even telling you where that one goes. This is glorious. God created the universe and the first man and the first woman, and He set them down in this lovely garden and immediately points out the world to them. But He doesn’t tell them everything. He just points and gives clues. But the point is clear. This world is loaded with glory. It’s loaded with goodness, and it was made for us. And God wants us to find it.

Solomon says that it’s the glory of God to conceal a matter, and it’s the glory of kings to search it out (Pr. 25:2). That’s what this world is for. That’s what people are for. They are for hard work. They are for late nights and early mornings. They are for digging in the dirt: inventing and discovering and uncovering and planting and building and birthing. They are for trial and error. They are for learning. They are for uncovering the glory of God in this world.   Continue Reading…

In Bible, Bible - Genesis, Bible - Proverbs, Creation, Family, Manalive, Marriage Bed, Wedding Exhortation, Wisdom
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The Porn War

April 30, 2013 — 8 Comments

usedwomanI’ve blogged about lust and porn before, but I thought I’d put a few more thoughts down here.

You should think about the porn war like any other war as having both defensive and offensive aspects. Defensive warfare is not a winning tactic, but it is a necessary tactic. And usually, when the Spirit has sacked a man, and he comes to his senses, repents, and wants to get out the prison cell of lust and pornography, the defensive angle has to be emphasized first. You need to get real accountability (pastor, parent, wife, godly roommate), change jobs, stop traveling so much, throw away your computer, put Covenant Eyes on your smart phone, cut off your hand or eye causing you to sin (Mt. 5:28-30). Jesus prescribes amputation, so don’t expect this to be very fun. This should be done right away while the Spirit is still burning within you. After about two weeks, the chances of you wanting to do anything drastic fall dramatically. But you should basically imagine your lust as a wild beast. You need to think about killing the damn thing, and that means you need to be your own worst enemy. Imagine the worst about your self. What are you likely to do in your weakest moment? Then cut that off. Pluck it out. Move out. Quit your job. Throw away your phone. Sounds crazy, but if it doesn’t look crazy, I don’t think you can say you’re actually obeying Jesus.

But the real problem is in your heart, in your mind, in the way you think about women, the way you think about sex and love. So after you slammed all the doors shut, padlocked them, run barbed wire around the tops of the fences, and dumped a bunch of broken glass around every entrance and exit, you need to do some hard thinking and praying about your heart and mind. Here’s a list to get you started:

1. God made women in His own image. Women are people. They are human beings. They are beloved daughters of God. He made them. He loves them. He values them. Do you think of women as God’s daughters? Do you recognize that they all belong to Him? They are His? And they are daughters, mothers, sisters, and friends of other people. They are real people. And this does not cease to be true when they are photographed or filmed. When you see a woman on the cover of a magazine do you remember that God made her? That she has an eternal soul, a story, a family, loves, hopes, dreams? Continue Reading…

In Bible - Matthew, Culture, Justice & Mercy, Manalive, Marriage Bed, Wisdom
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