Jesus is Not Optional

March 11, 2013 — Leave a comment

A few weeks back, as we were beginning the Lenten season, Pastor Leithart reminded us that Lent is normal Christian life. At different times of the year we focus on different things, but we focus on different things which should all be normal Christian living. The themes of Advent, Epiphany, and Trinity season are always true all the time, but we plan to consider those themes annually.

One of the ways of thinking about Lent is as a countdown to Easter. During Advent many of us do Advent calendars and wreathes, recounting the story of salvation leading up to the birth of Jesus as Christmas. At Lent, we are specifically focusing on the faithfulness and obedience of Jesus even to the point of death on the cross for us and for our salvation. But Jesus laid His life down specifically with the full intention of taking back up again on the third day. We are counting down to Easter, counting down to Resurrection.

But this is true all the time. Everyone of us will soon meet our Maker. We hope and pray for long lives of faithfulness, but we do not know the day or the hour when our Master will summon us to appear before Him. And all men must appear before Him sooner or later. There are no other options. Jesus is not optional. And on the great last Easter, all men will be raised from their graves, God’s beloved children will be raised to glory, and those who do not know Him will be raised to eternal judgment. And there will be no lies on that Last Day. All will be laid bare before Him. Nothing will be hidden. Continue Reading…

In Church Calendar, Exhortations, Lent, TRC
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Jesus Love

March 10, 2013 — 1 Comment

Daniel and Claire, you know well Paul’s command to husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her. But I wonder if we often miss just how scandalous this command is. I think perhaps our modern culture’s general aversion and disgust with Paul’s teaching on marriage is probably approaching the level of scandal that it is. But I suspect that they are actually not scandalized enough. They get hung up on the asymmetry of Paul’s language. Husbands lead like this; wives follow like that. Husbands love; wives respect.

But the scandal is deeper than that. Paul says that husbands are to love their wives like Jesus loved the Church, and when we look elsewhere, we see that the kind of love Jesus had for us when He went to the cross for us was not a reasonable sort of love, not a sensible kind of love. In Romans 5, Paul uses four different adjectives to describe our state when Jesus died for us. Paul says we were weak, we were ungodly, we were sinners, and we were enemies when Christ died for us.

The culture around us uses a word that sounds exactly like our word “love.” They spell it the same; they even pronounce it the same. But I would suggest that based on what they actually do with that word, most of the time, they mean something entirely different than we do. In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.” Continue Reading…

In Bible - Ephesians, Family, Lent, Marriage Bed, Wedding Exhortation
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Polyphonic Love

March 9, 2013 — Leave a comment

Ethan and Caroline, Anymore, a wedding is a highly charged political statement. On the one hand, you have the complete abandonment of marriage for a many. For these people, a wedding is more like a special Valentine’s Day present, a neat little ceremony that expresses some vague notion of love. But you can just as easily live together, have children together, and have a family without it. On the other hand, and in what seems like a completely irrational stance, you have the homosexuals clambering for the right to marry also. We shouldn’t be surprised when soon all sorts of other couples want the same rights to marry several wives, near relatives, or somebody’s pet turtle or a favorite sock. In either case, these marriages are not Christian marriages. Those ceremonies, whatever they may be, are not Christian weddings. They aren’t talking about Christian love.

But rather than getting depressed and all gloomy about the state of Western Civilization, I think we should look at this state of affairs with thankfulness and hope. God is telling this story, and we should assume that there is a good reason why He put us in this chapter. And if He has piles of pagans and non-Christians clambering to talk about love and marriage and weddings and what it means to be a family, we should assume that this is precisely because God wants us to talk about it more not less.

There are many ways to come at this, but I’d like to suggest that we use a musical analogy. Christians should begin pointing out more and more that true love in Christian marriage is polyphonic not monophonic. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Ephesians, Family, Wedding Exhortation
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Strong Like That

February 28, 2013 — 1 Comment

“Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.” (1 Cor. 16:13)

As we have been taught and received gratefully for years, God gives different kinds of glory to men and women. Another way to say that is, according to the creation pattern, God gives different kinds of strength.

While all Christians follow and imitate Jesus, the God-man, men are given the specific duty of modeling Jesus by virtue of being born men. Women have a general duty to follow and imitate Christ, but they do that by embracing their specific duty of modeling the glory of the Church.

Another way we might say this is that God gives men the duty to be strong, to protect and lead and work the ground (of whatever field they find themselves in), and God gives women the duty to be strong to conceive life, nurture life, and glorify life. And in both cases, sacrifice is necessary. Continue Reading…

In Bible - 1 Corinthians, Family, Manalive, Wisdom
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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
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Jesus is Enough Freedom: Col. 2:16-23

February 25, 2013 — Leave a comment

Introduction

We said last week that forgiveness is the foundation of our resistance to all lies, half truths, and empty philosophies. This is because guilt is what makes us vulnerable. Guilt is what makes us captive to every tyranny. It doesn’t allow us to see clearly.  But the flip side of this truth is therefore that forgiveness is what sets men free. It gives us eyes to see.

Summary of the Text: Paul’s “therefore” is directly related to the fact of forgiveness just unpacked (2:13-15). Other peoples’ opinions are powerful, but Paul says when it comes to food and drink and holidays and feasts, we must not be bound (2:16). This is fundamentally because all the regulations of the Old Covenant were shadows of Jesus who is the reality (2:17). If we are held captive by those who are into fasting, worshiping angels, or mystical visions we will lose our reward in Jesus because His power is made manifest in simple weakness not our fleshly schemes (2:18, cf. 1 Cor. 1:25-31). The central problem is that these traditions fail to cling to Jesus, our Head, which is where we receive our nourishment, find unity, and grow up into Him (2:19). This freedom has everything to do with having already died (cf. 2:11-13) because if they have already died with Christ then it makes no sense to live as though they haven’t (2:20). On one level, the Jewish laws make no sense after Jesus has brought us into His new world, and on another level, those kinds of traditions don’t make any sense when we have already died (2:21-22, cf. Acts 17:30-31). What makes these kinds of things attractive is the fact that they have an appearance of wisdom, humility, neglect of the body, but they are actually worthless when it comes to restraining our flesh (2:23). And this is because when we find our safety and security in made up rules, we’re actually indulging our fleshly minds (2:18), instead of restraining the flesh.   Continue Reading…

In Bible - Colossians, Church Calendar, History - Reformation, Jesus is Enough, Lent, Politics, Sermon Outlines, TRC, Wisdom
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Calling Latin Peeps

February 25, 2013 — 6 Comments

A friend of mine has an old (1663) KJV Bible with the following Latin quote (ascribed to Luther) hand inscribed in one of the front pages:

“Pactum feci Domino Deo meo, ne mihi mittat vel visiones, vel somnia, vel etiam angelos. Contentus enim sum Hoc Dono, quod habeo Scripturam sanctum, qua abunde docet, ac suppeditat omnia qua necessaria, tum ad hanc vitam tum ad futuram.”

My rough translation on the fly:

“I have made a covenant with the Lord my God, that He give me neither visions nor dreams nor even angels. For I am content with This Gift which I have: Holy Scripture which teaches abundantly, and supplies everything necessary, both for this life and for the future.”

So how’d I do? Any suggestions or corrections?

Thanks and cheers in advance.

In Bible, History - Reformation, Misc, Sola Scriptura
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Paid in Full

February 20, 2013 — Leave a comment

In my sermon this last week, I said that God’s approval of us is not based on our performance but based solely on Jesus and what He has done for us. A reasonable question might be: But what about the fact that the Bible somewhat frequently describes God’s disapproval based on people’s performances? Don’t people reap what they sow? Didn’t Jesus say that men will be judged for their every idle word?

And the answer to these questions is yes. But everything hinges on whether you’ve already been judged or not.

In other words, if one day you get a bill in the mail out of nowhere and it turns out there was some major accounting failure, and now you owe hundreds of millions of dollars in back payments, well, unless you have a nice stash of cash somewhere, you’re sunk.

And just to keep things interesting, what if you knew that even if you worked 80 hour work weeks your entire life and only spent the bare minimum necessary to live, you’d still never be able to pay the debt? You’d still be sunk by millions.

But what if you already knew about the bill before it came? And what if you knew the debt was already paid? Well then, when the bill showed up, it would come more like a scheduled visit to the dentist. You don’t really look forward to those sorts of appointments and they aren’t usually fun, but they’re bearable and expected.

And here’s what I mean. For those who know Jesus, they already know that they have sinned and will sin again, and that Jesus freely suffered and bled for those sins already. They know that bills have piled up, and they know that there are still more bills in the mail. We may not know the exact breakdown of the bills, but we know what the total was. The wages of sin is death. The total debt owed was a perfect, sinless life, impossible for any sinner to pay. But the news that changed our lives was the news that Jesus has paid our debts in full. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Colossians, Evangelism, Grace, Jesus is Enough, Lent, TRC, Wisdom
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Jesus is Enough Forgiveness: Col. 2:8-15

February 18, 2013 — Leave a comment

Introduction

Today we continue Paul’s letter to the Colossians, particularly looking at Paul’s warning to be on guard against empty philosophies and traditions. Instead, Paul urges us to rest secure in the fortress of forgiveness because Jesus is enough forgiveness.

Summary of the Text: Paul has already alluded to the possibility of “enticing words” (2:4), but now he’s zeroing in on his point. The Colossians have received Christ and all of his treasure (2:3, 6), but Paul warns them about being robbed of those riches through philosophy, empty lies, traditions of men, and the basic elements of the world (2:8). Instead of those things, they ought to be taken captive completely by Christ (2:8, cf. 2 Cor. 10:5, Rom. 6:16ff). While Paul is less direct in Colossians (than say Galatians), he knows that the Judaizing heresy is in the air (e.g. Col. 2:11, 16). But this concern could include all sorts of political, social, religious pressures exerted from any direction: the “traditions of men” and the “rudiments of the world” (2:8). And Paul gives basically three reasons why they are safe in Jesus. First, Paul reiterates that Jesus is God and rules over all the powers (2:9-10). They are not missing any information, lacking any crucial practice, or vulnerable to their attacks. Second, Paul insists that the fundamental practice Jesus commanded to identify with Him was baptism (cf. Mt. 28:18-20), and if they have been baptized, they have been joined to the fulfillment of the Jewish sign of circumcision (2:11-12). Finally, Paul explains that the fundamental reason they can be confident that Jesus is enough is because they have been forgiven all their sins (2:13-15). And this forgiveness has accomplished three things: it raised them from the dead, destroyed the condemnation of the law, and disarmed the principalities and powers (2:13-15). Continue Reading…

In Bible - Colossians, Bible - Hebrews, Jesus is Enough, Sermon Outlines, TRC, Wisdom
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We Call It Glory

February 18, 2013 — 1 Comment

Peter says that a godly man must honor his wife as the weaker vessel (1 Pet. 3:8). The fact that many Christians would turn a light shade of pink when this verse is read out loud is an indication of just how spineless and cowardly we have become. But still worse are the consequences that necessarily flow from ignoring this verse or explaining it away with footnotes and throat clearing.

This means that a man who gets up multiple times a night with young children throughout the week and continues to get up early to go to work must not complain or be bitter when his wife happens to get up once and asks to sleep in for a bit. He may not respond by pointing out how “unfair” that is. This is to ask God to flatten out the differences between men and women. This is to dishonor a woman’s glory rather than to honor it.

Let me give you another example: This means that a wife or daughter may feel free to unload her feelings, hurts, confusions, worries, and fear to her husband or father, and that man may not unload in the same way on his wife or daughter. A man must be honest, but his duty is to be strong for his wife, to be strong for his daughter. This may seem unfair to some, but it is nothing less than the gospel in operation. Paul says that a man’s example is Jesus who loved His bride and gave Himself for her (Eph. 5:25). He bears our burdens, and men must bear the burdens of those they are responsible for. To ask a man to be “transparent” and to “share his feelings” is to ask a man to disobey Jesus. There is of course a generic way in which, all Christians “bear one anothers’ burdens,” but this is not a command at odds with the way God made the world with men and women and their respective glories. Continue Reading…

In Bible - 1 Peter, Bible - Ephesians, Family, Manalive, Marriage Bed, Wisdom
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