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On December 21, 2023 By In Christmas, Theology

Christmas & The Kingdom

“When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.”

~2 Samuel 7:12-13

From the beginning, God’s task for his son, Adam (Lk 3:38), was to build a kingdom. Wrapped in the commands to subdue the earth and have dominion in Genesis 1:28 is the reality that Adam is a king over creation who has the responsibility to be a good steward of creation, developing and arranging the world under his lordship. The goal was to glorify all creation so that it imaged the Father’s heavenly dwelling place. God’s will was to be done on earth as in heaven. The Father was the high king, and Adam, his vice-regent, was commissioned to carry out the Father’s will.

The success of this project began with Adam’s heart allegiance being given to his Father, but the mission was not limited to Adam’s heart. He was to have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Adam was to cultivate the soil, making it fruitful. He and his wife were to be fruitful and multiply, filling the earth (Gen 1:28). As the family grew and became families, and as families became larger societies, they to arrange their lives under the lordship of God’s son and have entire societies who gave their allegiance to their heavenly Father. Everything from the ground to governments was a part of this kingdom-building project. The earth was to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as waters covered the sea.

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On December 14, 2023 By In Church, Theology

Garments of Salvation

“I will greatly rejoice in Yahweh; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.”

~Isaiah 61:10

The theme of clothing is woven into the warp and woof of Scripture. Man is created naked and unashamed, but he wasn’t to remain unclothed. As creation around him was immature and, in that sense, naked, needing to be clothed with the glories created by man’s dominion, man himself was to mature and be clothed with garments of glory and beauty. We can know this with certainty because the resurrected and ascended Christ Jesus, the last Adam, is clothed in his glorified state. He was naked and ashamed on the cross, but in his exaltation, he is gloriously vested (see Rev 1). Man’s destiny was to be clothed, and his clothing would be the glory for which God created him.

Man sinned and fell short of this glory (Rom 3:23). After the first sin, the man and woman sought to clothe themselves with fig leaves, covering their shame. This wasn’t the glory God intended. God shed blood and clothed them with the skins of animals.

Nevertheless, God’s plan was unchanged. Man was still to take dominion of the earth and make clothes for glory and beauty from it. The world would fight him in various ways, but God intended man to share his glory so that man would be clothed in the way God himself was clothed. God clothes himself in creation (see Psa 104:1-2). This is the manifestation of his glory. God desires that man share his glory, clothed in a glorified creation.

Images of this glory are given in the high priest of Israel. When God delivered the children of Israel from Egypt, they plundered the Egyptians. From this old, decimated world that was Egypt, God provided the materials to make a new world. This was the world of the Tabernacle with its principal figure, the high priest, the new man. God made clothes for the high priest, and these clothes were “for glory and for beauty” (Ex 28:2). The high priest’s garments were made from animal (wool), mineral (gold, silver, and precious stones), and vegetable (linen). The high priest wore creation like a garment. He is the living image of the invisible God who wears creation as a garment.

Isaiah 61 refers to these priestly garments throughout the chapter and, toward the end, calls them “the garments of salvation” and “robe of righteousness.” These are parallel, describing the same thing with slightly different images.

Isaiah 61 is structured by creation imagery. “The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh” begins the chapter. The chapter ends with the image of a man and woman, bridegroom and bride, clothed and in a fruitful garden. The middle of the chapter describes ruins, a formless and void world. The Spirit is brooding over the ruins and will re-create the world, culminating in a glorified husband and wife in a fruitful garden. The one upon whom the Spirit rests, the Anointed One, of whom Isaiah prophesies, is coming to make a new creation. He will not turn back the clock and make everything as it was in the beginning. He will glorify the world with the man and woman at the center with their garments of salvation.

The garments of salvation and robes of righteousness are not abstract concepts, ideas that need down-to-earth illustrations so that we can grasp them. The garment of salvation is the glorified creation. The developed creation, the new heavens and the new earth that will be our garments, will be our salvation. Salvation is not an escape from the earth, a bodiless existence in a distant immaterial heaven. Salvation is being clothed with the glorified creation.

The One for whom we wait in this season of Advent does not come as a bodiless spirit or transform into one after his work is completed. He is the Spirit-anointed One who clothes himself with the creation, hovers over its ruins, and then transforms creation into glorious garments. At the end of Isaiah 61, we learn these garments are not for him alone. He takes a bride under the wing of his garment. She is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, sharing his garment. I speak of Christ and the church.

In your baptism, you have “put on Christ” (Gal 3:27). The one who took on the creation and brought it to its intended glory in his resurrection and ascension is your garment of salvation, your robe of righteousness. In him, you are glorified.

Work remains to be done. Christ has glorified the creation in his own person, and now all creation must follow. This is our continuing work in the world until Christ’s second Advent. In the power of the Spirit, whom we share in our union with Christ, we are to work to make everything we touch in the creation a glorious garment worthy of Christ and his bride.

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On December 7, 2023 By In Counseling/Piety, Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

To Know & Be Known

One of the scariest prospects since the fall of man into sin is to be thoroughly known.We want to know and be known by others. There is a deep longing for this knowledge but also a great fear. We desire this sort of intimacy because we are God’s image-bearers. God knows himself infinitely. Father, Son, and Spirit are completely exposed to one another. There are no hidden thoughts, no secrets between them. The intimacy is perfect.

When the man and woman were created, they experienced this intimacy, immaturely but truly. That is one aspect of them being naked and unashamed. When they sinned, they hid. They hid from one another and God. But the desire to know and be known wasn’t taken away. We want to entrust ourselves to others without fear of rejection in complete love.

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On December 6, 2023 By In Theology

Anticipation

This is a time of year that is filled with hope. You can see it especially in the eyes of little ones as they look with longing expectation at the gifts wrapped under the tree. “Did Mom and Dad get me what I asked for?” Their excitement grows to a fever pitch on Christmas Eve. They can’t stand it. It is difficult to sleep. Their hopes for what they will discover the next morning keep them tossing and turning all night. Then, long before the sun rises, they are ready for mom and dad to get up. Why are they staying in bed so long? Christmas morning is here! Sometimes their hopes are realized, and it is the pleasure of parents to see grateful joy in the eyes and feel it in the hugs of these little ones. Their hope has been realized. Now it is time to enjoy that for which they have been hoping.

Hope is powerful. That for which we hope controls our thinking and the way we live our lives. During Advent, we are reminded year by year of our hope as Christians. We are children whose Father has promised us gifts for the future. We don’t know exactly what all of these gifts will look like, but we know that our Father, who loves us infinitely more than any of us can love our own children, delights in giving what is good to us so that we can experience grateful joy together when our hope is realized.

But hope that is seen is not hope. If we are hoping, that means we don’t have what we hope for. Until Jesus returns and raises us from the dead, we are living in a perpetual Advent season; a time of anticipatory hope. This is our future for which we should long with eager expectation. It should control our thoughts, affect our emotions, and shape the way we live. Our Father has good things in store for us.

Because of our hope in Christ, we can be recklessly obedient with our lives. We can abandon ourselves to our Father’s will completely. He will not fail us. What he has promised he will give us. Our hope is certain. So, when he calls us to do things in which we must take some risks with our lives, it is okay. He has given us hope that he will give back whatever we give to him in full measure plus. If he, through the church, calls you into a special service, you can go even though you might lose some of your present comforts. If in his providence he puts you in a position to stand publicly against the rising tide of cultural evil in our society, you can put your livelihood and even your life at risk. If he has called you to take the risk of a relationship–a friendship, a marriage, becoming a parent–you can do that too.

Our hope frees us from the fear of losing everything; something that we must do when we begin to follow Jesus. The hope that we have in Christ Jesus informs us that when we lose everything in Christ, we will discover one day that we have everything. When you are freed from the fear of loss–especially the loss of your life in death–then you are free indeed. One day, when our hope is realized, all the seemingly interminable waiting, expectation, and risks will fade into memory as we and our Father delight in the gifts he gives on that resurrection morning.

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On December 1, 2023 By In Church, Culture, Postmillenialism, Theology, Wisdom

Pastoral Leadership in an Age of Wokeness

This is a guest post by Rich Lusk, pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church of Birmingham, AL.

Are woke pastors committing vocational suicide? Is it enough to not be woke? Or must a pastor be explicitly anti-woke in order to remain faithful?

I admit upfront I know absolutely nothing first hand about the Scott Sauls case and therefore anything I say here is strictly speculative. The charges brought against Sauls that he has been abusive and manipulative are very interesting because Sauls would definitely have been considered at the forefront of the so-called winsomeness crowd that is constantly arguing for civility and a “third way,” that is, some kind of rapprochement with progressivism, even though he is within a conservative denomination. Now, maybe Sauls has been abusive and manipulative and neglectful. Maybe he has been a tyrannical leader. Sometimes men become the very thing they most rail against; sometimes we fall into the sins we say we are most opposed to. Maybe Sauls was a hypocrite in this way, calling others to be civil in public while being very uncivil behind closed doors. Again, I don’t know. The only knowledge I have of the situation comes from second and third hand reports in articles relying on anonymous sources – and we all know how anonymous sources can be.

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On November 30, 2023 By In Church, Culture, Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Wait

We don’t like to wait. Everything in our world is becoming faster and faster, so we don’t have to wait. The information of the world is at our fingertips with our phones so that we can access it anytime we wish. We order packages online that, at times, can be delivered the same day. We are a generation of the immediate.

Built into the Church Year are times of waiting. Advent, the four weeks before the Christmas season, is one of those times of waiting. The Church Year is not a biblical law that must be obeyed lest you be in danger of hell. The Church Year is a discipleship tool, a time of instruction to teach the life of Christ in an embodied way so that people not only think about the propositional truths of Christ but also, in some small way, feel the rhythms of the life of the incarnate Son. Advent is the anticipation of his coming. Anticipation means waiting, and we don’t like to wait.

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On November 21, 2023 By In Discipleship, Family and Children, Theology, Worship

The Demands of Paedocommunion

One danger of any ritual is thinking it works for blessing standing alone. The water of baptism magically grants eternal salvation apart from faith. The bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper convey blessings no matter how you live outside of the church or if you participate in the worship service. The “sinner’s prayer” saves apart from participation in the body of Christ and without perseverance. No matter the ritual, there are always dangers of isolating them from a full life of faith, treating them as if they are magic spells.

Those of us who have the privilege of practicing full covenant communion (that is, welcoming our baptized children to the Table) are not immune from the danger. Just as some treat baptism as something of a finish line, so some parents and churches treat paedocommunion (child communion) as if eating the bread and drinking the wine of communion are all that matters for the children. They don’t have to participate in the rest of the service. They can be in a nursery or some other room in the building, cutting themselves off entirely from the rest of the congregation, but when it comes time for communion, they expect to be a part.

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On November 16, 2023 By In Discipleship, Family and Children, Theology, Worship

Communion: It’s For Our Children Too

Once upon a time, God created a man and a woman and put them in a garden. In the middle of this garden were two trees: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. From the latter, they were forbidden to eat. From the former, God welcomed them to eat. The man and woman would meet God at the trees, and God would give them the fruit of the Tree of Life and, through it, share his life with them.

God blessed the man and the woman at their creation and told them to be fruitful and multiply. In their original state of righteousness, the children born would be sinless, just like their parents. They would come to the sanctuary-garden with their parents, meet with God, and receive the fruit of the Tree of Life with them when they were able to eat solid food. As man multiplied in this state, he would be truly fruitful; his children would be faithful worshipers and have access to God’s sanctuary-garden and food.

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On November 9, 2023 By In Church, Theology, Worship

Meaningless Ritual?

We have all witnessed or even participated in what we call “meaningless worship;” people going through rote recitations in a mindless, heartless, and thankless way. They go to worship out of mere habit, trying to keep their parents off their backs, or with some superstitious view that they are keeping God at bay by giving him a little time each week. These people–maybe even we at times–approach worship in general and the Table of the Lord each week without reflection. Wherever we see this we tend to think that their worship is meaningless. But is it?

I understand what we mean when we speak about meaningless worship: worship is meaningless to the worshiper. But whether or not the worshiper reflects upon and responds to the call of God in worship does not invest or divest the worship of its meaning. The meaning of worship rests upon the word of God that establishes the worship. So, when Jesus, instituting the Lord’s Supper, says, “This is my body” and “This is my blood,” every person who eats and drinks at his Table participates in the body and blood of Christ. That is the reality of worship that can’t be changed by the disposition of the worshiper. Ours is to recognize what God has created by his word and conform our lives to it in faith. We attribute to the worshiper too much power if we think that his attitudes and response invest worship with meaning. The ritual meal was created by the word of God. That word is reality. Just as in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth by the word of his power establishing what is, so in the Supper the Word of God establishes the reality that the bread and wine are his body and blood. He did not say that they become his body and blood depending upon how the person responds. They are his body and blood, and each person who eats and drinks participates in that body and blood.

Participating in the body and blood of Christ in the Supper is a call to respond in faith because, though each and every person who eats and drinks at the Table of the Lord participates in the body and blood of Christ, they do not all participate to the same effect. This is where the response of the worshiper has meaning. Those who come to worship and give homage to God with their lips but with their hearts far from him, they eat and drink to their punishment. As in the church in Corinth whom Paul addressed concerning this issue, Christians cannot murder Christ by dividing up his body through selfishness and hostility, come to his Table, and believe that there will be no negative consequences. That is not eating and drinking in faith. On the other hand, those who love the brethren, who seek to serve others, who confess and repent of their sins, making their relationships right when they have gone wrong, they are coming to the Table in faith and may eat and drink with confident joy. The effect to those who eat without faith is death. The effect to those who eat in faith is life. It is the same Supper for all, but not all receive it to the same end.

So then, whether we engage in mindless and heartless worship or we pour ourselves out in worship, worship has meaning. Jesus has given it meaning by his creative word. Ours is to recognize this reality and conform our lives to it in joyful faith.

Image by Deborah Hudson from Pixabay

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On October 26, 2023 By In Church, Theology, Worship

Ruminations on the Lord’s Supper: The Altar

Altars dot the biblical landscape. We find them early on in Scripture when Noah disembarks and builds an altar. Abraham moves through the land of promise, establishing altars throughout the land. When the people of God are delivered from Egypt, God makes Mt Sinai one big altar, complete with fire and smoke. As Mt Sinai becomes the sanctuary of God, the Tabernacle (Ps 68:17), it also looks like an altar with the glory cloud above it and in it (cf. Ex 40:34-38). In one sense, the entire Tabernacle is an altar as the fire and smoke of God’s presence fill it. So it was also with the Temple (2Chr 7:1-3). There were specific altars in both the Tabernacle and Temple that provided an exposition of the meaning of these structures from different perspectives. There was an altar of ascension offerings in the courtyard and an altar of incense just outside the veil or the doors that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies.

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