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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

A Prayer For These Days

April 22, 2013 — 1 Comment

Almighty and Most Merciful God: You spoke the worlds into existence. The mountains stand by your command. The oceans toss and foam because you tell them to. The earth shakes at the sound of your voice.

When we disobeyed your voice, when we did not love your Word, the world grew wicked and so you spoke a flood. When men despised your word again and lifted themselves up and built a great city with a tower reaching up into the sky. You came down and spoke a flood of confusion. When our fathers went down into a strange land, they became slaved by the gods, by the demons, by their sins, by a wicked tyrant who did not know you who refused to bow to your Word. So you spoke blood in their rivers and sores on their backs. You spoke flies and locusts and you destroyed their land. You put out the light of the wicked and they went down into the darkness of death, but you had mercy on your people and you shined your light upon them, and they walked through the sea unharmed with walls of water on their right hand and on their left.

Again and again, you have been our God. You have been our fortress, our rock, our stronghold, our deliverer, our judge, our Savior. When we have forgotten your word, you have risen up for us. When we have rejected your word, you have had mercy upon us. When tyrants and cruel men have oppressed us and taunted us and sought to crush us, though you have turned your face from us for a little while, your mercies are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.

And in the fullness of time, you sent your Word, and the Word became flesh dwelt among us. But sinful men hated Your Word again. They despised it. They rejected it. They spat on it. They mocked it. They condemned it. And finally, they crucified it. They hung your Word, Your Good Word, Your Life-Giving Word on a cross. They drove spikes through His hands and feet and they drove a crown of thorns into His head. They pierced His side with a spear. And they buried Him in a tomb, sealed with a stone, and guarded by a regiment of Roman soldiers. Continue Reading…

In Church, Justice & Mercy, Pastoral Theology, Prayer, TRC, Worship

A Party in Here

March 22, 2013 — Leave a comment

Is God good?

That’s not just a question about intentions or absence of evil. I mean is God good? And if it’s God we’re talking about, He doesn’t get His attributes from the thrift store. He didn’t pick His goodness up at a garage sale. His attributes are not two sizes too small or something He has to grow into. God’s attributes are God-like, divine, perfect, ultimate. In other words the goodness of God is not a hat He puts on occasionally. God’s goodness is infinite, eternal, unchangeable, unsurpassed. To say that God is good is necessarily to claim that God is the Highest Good, the Greatest Good.

So, is God good? Is He explosively good? Overflowingly good? Everlastingly good? Uncontrollably good?

The answer to this question is the difference between light and darkness, the difference between joy and despair, the difference between true repentance and forgiveness on the one hand, and wallowing around in guilt and regrets and fear on the other.

Romans 1 says that the difference between light and darkness is the difference between thankfulness and ingratitude. Because God’s attributes — His glory, His goodness, His love, His mercy are all clearly seen in the world. You can’t miss them. The world is fully loaded with His goodness. But some people insist on not seeing, insist on not worshiping the God who makes it Christmas every day. These people refuse to give Him thanks, and Romans says that when they do this, their hearts are darkened. But it doesn’t stop there. When their hearts are dark, they begin to profess themselves to be very wise. They write books, publish articles, and have quite a lot to say about things, but they are actually fools. And you can tell because they start worshipping inanimate objects and animals and pretty much anything in creation other than the Awesome God who made it all. And God gives them over to their folly, and pretty soon men in suits are explaining in calm voices how sex with animals is probably a natural urge. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Romans, Creation, Grace, Misc, Wisdom, Worship

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

Putting on the Armor of Light: Resources for Lent

February 13, 2013 — 6 Comments

For those wondering about what we teach or think about the season of Lent at Trinity. Here’s what we print in the front of our bulletins during this season:

“Lent is the season of the Church calendar that spans the 40 days leading up to Easter. Lent is from the old English word which means “lengthening” and refers to Springtime, when the days are getting longer and lighter. Another name for this season is “Quadragesima” which simply means “fortieth,” counting backwards from Easter to the fortieth day before Resurrection Sunday.

In the history of the Church, no other season has perhaps been so abused or misunderstood as Lent. Historically, Lent began as a discipleship class for new believers. It became customary to have baptisms at Easter, and so new believers would be enrolled in these classes prior to Easter to teach them the basics of the faith, frequently working through the Apostles’ Creed, the most basic Christian confession. Eventually, many leaders in the Church saw the need for all Christians to be annually reminded of the basics of the Christian faith and reminded of the basic Christian disciplines.

Over time, many practices like superstitious fasting and various forms of abstinence became substituted for real Christian disciplines and by the time of the Reformation, Lent had become something of a symbol of the oppression of the Roman church, and therefore many of the great Reformers cheerfully taught their congregations to disregard the Roman church’s rules and regulations for Lent. Standing squarely in the Reformation tradition, we want to remember and embrace their wisdom and courage in freeing the people of God from man made traditions and rules. In Christ, we are free, and no Christian man or woman should be bound by man-made customs or traditions regarding eating or fasting, food or drink, days or seasons. No one should feel any tinge of guilt for doing absolutely nothing different during Lent. Continue Reading…

In Church Calendar, Evangelism, Family, History - Reformation, Lent, TRC, Worship

Really Worshipping (with Kids)

December 5, 2012 — 5 Comments

Do you worship God? Do you really worship Him? On Sunday morning, with all of God’s people, do you love Jesus in song, kneeling in prayer, while listening, eating, drinking, raising hands?

And what sorts of images come to mind when you consider this question?

If like our church, you have come to the conclusion that generally speaking, our children should worship with us, as full members of the body of Christ, then maybe you laughed when I first asked the question. Maybe slight tinges of bitterness or regret shot through your gut. Wish I could worship. Maybe someday I’ll get to focus on God. Wish my church had a nursery, a children’s church, etc.

Now, for the record, God doesn’t give us any specific directions here. The principles are that we should let the little children come to Jesus, and for of such is the Kingdom of God and the promises of God are to us and to our children. And on the flip side, if a college student or a friend or Uncle Joe can sit with you and help bring some order to the busyness in your row, then you’ve got a mini-nursery going already, and if the elders want to offer to organize that for everyone, especially for the littlest squirrels in the congregation, I don’t have any major qualms. We don’t do that at my church, but you won’t get any Baptist hellfire from me about that. My beef is with shipping the four year old off to the three ring circus downstairs, when she’s old enough to start hollering Amens and eating the Lord’s Supper and drawing pictures of the pastor up front. Which is to say, all things being equal, there ought to be a lot of kids and kid noises in a normal Jesus-loving worship service because Jesus loves little kids and if we think they’re distractions for worshipping Jesus then we’re no better than the uptight disciples. Continue Reading…

In Child Kingdom, Church, Family, Worship

Pleading with Joy

November 27, 2012 — 1 Comment

This is the last Sunday in Trinity Season. This is the close of the second half of the Church year in which we celebrate the work of the Spirit since Pentecost in the history of the Church. We remember the powerful work of the Spirit in the ordinary things of life and in ordinary people who are transformed into extraordinary saints by the grace of God. But next week we begin Advent, when we celebrate the fact that we serve the God who comes, the God who arrives, the God who intervenes dramatically at times. We serve God in the ordinary things, in the dishes and the homework, but we are not merely on autopilot to the end of history. The same Spirit that bids the sun rise every morning, the same Spirit that upholds every atom in our body, is the Spirit that hovers over the world and thunders the creative Word of God. The Spirit comes and transforms. The Spirit comes and gives life. The Spirit comes and raises the dead. Trinity Season reminds us that God is eternally good, eternally glorious, and He reigns over all things perfectly forever, growing us up in millions of little, ordinary things. Trinity Season teaches us to bow our heads and kneel before His majesty and wisdom, to receive from His hand all things and bless His holy name. But Advent reminds us to stand up on our chairs and cry out to God. Advent teaches us to sing, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel. Continue Reading…

In Advent, Church Calendar, Prayer, Worship

It’s Sexy to Talk Like a Revolutionary

November 19, 2012 — 3 Comments

A while back Doug Wilson posted some great thoughts on Jamie Smith’s book Desiring the Kingdom.

Doug writes:

His thesis, on paper, seems great. Worship shapes desire, and we should measure our success in the church and in the academy by how well we do in forming particular kinds of people — people who love Christ and one another. Education is about formation, not information. All this is great.

But the problem is:

In short, Smith wants worship to shape and form folks, but the formation he has in view involves disparagement of free markets, accepting the Word from feminine mouths and the sacraments from feminine hands, and sniffing at believing efforts to beat back the sodomization of America, then whatever kind of worship service he wants, we should not want it. If that is what is cooking, why should we want to eat? Continue Reading…

In Against Christianity, Books, Creation, Culture, Worship

Priest as New Creation

November 12, 2012 — 2 Comments

In Exodus 39, the priestly garments are made with the echoing refrain: “… as the Lord commanded Moses.”

It’s no accident that this refrain is repeated 7 times, mimicking the seven days of creation:

Day 1: Light & Darkness: 39:1: Holy garments for service

Day 2: Firmament: 39:2-5: Ephod

Day 3: Dry Land, Seas, Seed bearing plants: 39:6-7: Onyx stones for the shoulders w/ the names of the children of Israel

Day 4: Rulers in the Firmament: Sun, Moon, & Stars: 39:8-21: Breastplate with 12 precious stones bearing the names of the sons of Israel

Day 5: Birds & Fish: 39:22-26: Robe

Day 6: Man & land animals: 39:37-29: Coats, hats, pants, and sash of linen

Day 7: Holy Sabbath: 39:30-31: Gold crown bearing the inscription: Holiness to the Lord Continue Reading…

In Bible - 1 Peter, Bible - Exodus, Theology - Ecclesiology, Worship

The Wood Remembers

October 30, 2012 — 2 Comments

My daughter recently began violin lessons, and her mother and I are very excited about this. She has actually wanted to play for a while, much to my delight, and she has a fantastic teacher whose enthusiasm, skill, and creativity mesh together to make my daughter even more into it than before (if that is possible). Of course there is some of the beginner squeaking and scratching going on, but I can honestly already imagine the sounds growing solid, maturing, filling out, glowing warm and vibrant off the strings, singing high haunting notes, resonating through the wood, filling my home.

Anyone who has played violin or has any interest in violin music knows or has heard that the most famous, most coveted violins in the world have the name Stradivarius. I don’t really know much at all about violins, but I have heard the name Stradivarius. Though the rightful preeminence of these violins is disputed by some, the name alone has become short hand for excellence, quality, and a legacy of beautiful sound. Because of the weight of glory that follows the name, many studies have been done both to the materials the instruments are made of and built with as well as various analyses of the sounds they make. While there doesn’t seem to be any conclusive results from these investigations, the legendary status lives on. Continue Reading…

In Art, Creation, Education, Family, Grace, History, Music, Theology - Eschatology, Worship