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Jesus, Rush, and the Nature of True Humility

May 20, 2013 — 1 Comment

God 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

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

The Porn War

April 30, 2013 — 8 Comments

I’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

Nobody Wants to be That Guy

April 29, 2013 — 2 Comments

Nobody wants to be that guy preaching the gospel on the street corner. Nobody wants to be the guy knocking on his neighbors’ doors inviting them to church or sharing Christ with them. Nobody wants to be the girl who tells her roommate it’s a sin for her boyfriend to have his hands down her pants. And no, it doesn’t matter that you’re planning to get married. Nobody wants to be that family that walks out of the theater because they refuse to hang out in the company of losers on screen. Nobody wants to be that student who raises his hand and points out that if there is no god then gang rape is a perfectly reasonable option to consider for sexual fulfillment.

Nobody wants to point out that your favorite television show is full of vile language and more tits than even any self respecting farmer ought to see in a life time. Nobody wants to be the lady who gently suggests that the reason you got that piercing was to offend the older women at church and maybe score with the cute boy in the choir. Nobody really wants to repeat what Paul says about husbands and wives, cheerfully without apology, in a clear voice into the microphone. Don’t worry: I won’t repeat it here in case there are some tender consciences reading. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Romans, Culture, ethics, Evangelism, Grace, Manalive, Wisdom

Our Babel Moment

April 26, 2013 — Leave a comment

I’ve grown up in the middle of the Media-Lucy-and-Charlie-Brown game. So I don’t believe anything they say. I don’t believe the suits. I don’t believe the shiny smiles. I don’t believe your sexy low-cut blouse. I don’t watch the news. I don’t read it. I subscribe to no newspapers. I do not have cable television. And whenever I have a few minutes to catch a bit of what they call news, I’m always reassured that I’m still not missing out. Someone recently asked how I get my news, and after a minute I realized that the simple answer is some kind of combination of Twitter feeds and Facebook (though I’ll admit I’ve occasionally practiced a bit haruspicy in my son’s full diaper). I’m not saying I’ve got an edge on anyone here, but I am saying I don’t think it matters.

I’ve thought for some time now that living here in the 21st century watching the talking heads and not giving a rip about what they say must be what it was like in Babel a little over four thousand years ago when God came down on their building project to confuse them. We are living in a Babel moment. God has confused our words. He has done this partially through the advent of social media and the internet: the proliferation of news outlets, news sources, coupled with the fact that anybody and their grandma can post something on Facebook or Twitter or Youtube and it has the potential to go viral. And so we have pictures of kittens and political cartoon memes and people trying to speak straight-faced on the TV about snipping the spinal cords of living babies. And this leads to the other way God has sent confusion: sin. Down the street there’s a discussion going on about whether a man with a proclivity to hump other men should be granted a marriage license. Unmanned drones are dropping bombs here and there. Terrorists are blowing themselves up in various places, rumors of economic crisis and collapse, Christians being persecuted in other countries, nuclear crisis in North Korea, and government conspiracies to confiscate all our guns and turn America into a police state. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Genesis, Culture, Economics, Justice & Mercy, Politics, Prayer

Witnesses of the Resurrection

April 1, 2013 — Leave a comment

We’ve just celebrated Easter yesterday, proclaiming Christ is risen! and in many of our communities and churches we will continue to celebrate over the next number of weeks proclaiming this truth, singing this truth, sharing this truth with neighbors and family members and friends. This is the good news, the gospel, that Jesus is risen from the dead, according to the scriptures (1 Cor. 15:1-4ff).

But when it comes to evangelism and sharing the gospel with unbelieving friends, neighbors, and family members, we often get hung up on the peripheral details. How do we explain why homosexuality is sinful? Why do we believe in creationism? Why should abortion be illegal? I’m not saying those aren’t hugely important questions, but we oughtn’t get sidetracked from the central question which is: Who is Jesus and what happened to Him? And why does it matter?

Fundamentally, we are testifying to the truth that Christ is Risen. That’s the bottom line. If that’s not true, then we’re still in our sins and all our preaching and evangelism and witnessing and apologetics is worthless (1 Cor. 15:14). But Paul knows that Jesus really is risen from the dead because he saw Him. Paul got his life interrupted by Jesus. Continue Reading…

In Bible - 1 Corinthians, Church Calendar, Culture, Evangelism, Grace, Theology - Soteriology

Jesus Was Not a Victim

March 19, 2013 — Leave a comment

Rich Bledsoe writes:

The book of Hebrews speaks of the “deceitfulness of sin.” Once sin is unmasked one way, it transmutes itself like a virus into a slightly different form that is immune to the old antidotes. We live in the very odd day when the Christian Gospels have done a great deal of work to unmask what was invisible to the ancient world in regard to the victim. But now in many cases the garb of victimhood can be donned in order to victimize others, in order to persecute. The persecuted have in many cases become the persecutors, and it is necessary to understand that victimhood is not an automatic ticket to righteousness or moral superiority. Several recent theological perspectives have granted to victims a special status and even an “epistemological advantage”, meaning that only victims really see the world as it is. In all of this thicket, it is essential to highlight the fact that Jesus was not in the final analysis a victim, and He did not pioneer the way to make victimization profitable, but he opened the way to overcome and create a new social order that is truly based on righteousness.

Read the whole article here.

In Culture, ethics, Justice & Mercy, Lent, Manalive, Pastoral Theology, Theology, Wisdom

The Public Gospel

March 18, 2013 — Leave a comment

One of the hallmarks of Peter Leithart’s work has been the public nature of the Christian faith. To say that Jesus is King is to make a highly charged political claim. Worship is a political act. The sacraments are public, objective realities that proclaim cosmic truth to power regardless of and often despite the intentions of the people involved in them. Baptism means that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus. The Supper proclaims the victorious and vicarious death of Jesus to the world until He comes. And this is all because the Word of God is living and powerful and thunders from heaven and demands obedience, allegiance, loyalty. God’s truth trumps all pretenders.

The last couple of weeks Pastor Leithart has continued his series through the book of Isaiah, and he has reminded us particularly that the prophet Isaiah was not foretelling a future for Israel that could exist only in their hearts. The prophet’s burden is not something that might remain safely within the confines of the minds of certain exiled Jews. Isaiah was not trying to calm everyone down, giving them a religious pacifier to suck on while the uncircumcised rejoice over the destruction of Jerusalem. No, if anything, Isaiah is trying to get the people worked up, excited, rambunctious. Yes, he promises peace and comfort, but this is the peace and comfort of victory, the peace and comfort of deliverance from their enemies, the peace and comfort of coming home. In other words, the salvation Isaiah foretold can’t leave Israel in exile, can’t leave Jerusalem in ruins, and therefore cannot be a merely private experience. God’s justice is public. God’s righteousness is always for everyone to see. It stops the mouths of kings, and it does so because they read about it in the morning paper.

What follows is my own ruminations on this fact: Over the last two hundred years (at least) the Church has been in retreat in America. We have sown the wind and now we are reaping the whirlwind politically, culturally, economically, etc. If you do the math that means that probably right around the founding of America, the retreat was already beginning. Some of the faithful old guard could see it coming and put up the best fight they knew how, but plenty were already hedging their bets, compromising, and still others were already in apostasy and full blown naturalism was on the rise. And the net result over time has been for many professing Christians to hunker down in the bunkers of a private, personal, and overly spiritualized version of the faith Jesus bled and died for. This happened in some quarters under the guise of highly emotional experiences of revival and spiritual renewal which did not (for the most part) translate into much momentum publicly. Others hunkered down with fat books and systematic theologies, and while they may have said many true things, all the pointy edges were sandpapered with the proper scholarly apparatus, footnotes, and Greek word studies. Nobody but their closest friends and relatives read them (and mostly to be polite). Continue Reading…

In Against Christianity, Bible - Isaiah, Culture, Federal Vision, Manalive, TRC

Kill Your Feelings

February 27, 2013 — 3 Comments

A man is required by God to disconnect his feelings from his duty. This is not because a man doesn’t have them. A good man is not cold and heartless. But a good man represents Jesus rightly by bearing his own feelings as well as the feelings of others, specifically those people entrusted to his care. The man who dumps his feelings whether in an emotional puddle or in an outburst of anger is misrepresenting Christ. But a Christian man bears them patiently, cheerfully because He knows the gospel. He knows that he has an older brother named Jesus who has borne it all.

This is not stoicism or apathy. Rightly understood, this is just faithful obedience to our Lord. Feelings are not holy. They have no automatic rightful place in the world. Feelings may be as sinful as thoughts and actions and words. You have no innate right to your feelings. And they are not exactly the same thing as the pain you feel when you stub your toe. Of course there’s the “ouch” factor, but hurt feelings may be completely disobedient to Jesus. Anger may be in complete rebellion to Jesus. There is a time to mourn; there is a time for rejoicing. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Ephesians, Culture, Family, Lent, Manalive, Marriage Bed, Wisdom

We Will Not Lie

February 13, 2013 — 10 Comments

For as long as I can remember, in the days leading up to Ash Wednesday, one of my daughters always tells us every year that she doesn’t want the ashes on her forehead. And whenever we ask her why, the answer is always the same. She says, “I don’t want to die.” And while we’ve always asked her to go up with the rest of the family, and she’s always been compliant, she’s also been known to have wiped them off her forehead almost by the time she’s made it back to her seat. At some point, we realized that she also thought dying always meant literally being crucified, dying on a cross. Now, she still talks about not wanting to die, though she still occasionally reminds us that she might not die on an actual cross, and she often remembers to mention that after she dies Jesus will raise her from the dead. But she still doesn’t particularly like Ash Wednesday. She still doesn’t want to die.

I’m convinced that my daughter actually understands this service far better than most people do. Next to Christmas and Easter, I sometimes wonder if Ash Wednesday is the third most attended service in the Christian Calendar. I couldn’t find statistics to confirm or deny that, though among Protestants it appears that Mother’s Day has the third highest attendance. So maybe I’m wrong. But there’s still a strange sort of enthusiasm surrounding Ash Wednesday that seems all wrong. It’s understandable that Christmas and Easter would be popular celebrations even among unbelievers or nominal Christians. But as a culture, we don’t really know what to do with death. We are a nursing home culture. We are a distraction culture. We are a drug and alcohol culture. We pay to be numbed, to be distracted, to be lied to, to avoid the harsh realities of suffering and death.

But come Ash Wednesday, if you live in a big city you’ll see people on the street with crosses on their foreheads. Joe Biden will no doubt make an appearance on national television with a cross on his forehead. And then, if you drove down Main Street today here in Moscow, you saw a woman on the corner of Sixth Street with a big white sign that read “Ashes To Go.” Which pretty much sums it up for me. We want death like we want most things: fast, easy, painless, and could I get fries with that? She might as well have been smearing a Nike swoosh on people’s foreheads. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Acts, Bible - Isaiah, Church Calendar, Culture, Grace, Lent, Sermon Outlines, TRC, Wisdom, Worship