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On May 26, 2022 By In Church, Family and Children, Worship

What is the Ascension of our Lord?

The Church celebrates the Ascension of our Lord today. Since most churches are not able to have Thursday services, traditionally, many of them celebrate Ascension on Sunday. But in our day, the Ascension of Jesus is barely mentioned in the evangelical vocabulary. We make room for his birth, death, and resurrection, but we tend to put a period where God puts a comma.

If the resurrection was the beginning of Jesus’ enthronement, then the ascension is the establishment of his enthronement. The Ascension activates Christ’s victory in history. The Great Commission is only relevant because of the Ascension. Without the Ascension, the call to baptize and disciple the nations would be meaningless. It is on the basis of Jesus’ enthronement at the right-hand of the Father that we image-bearers can de-throne rulers through the power and authority of our Great Ruler, Jesus Christ.

The Ascension then is a joyful event, because it is the genesis of the Church’s triumph over the world. Further, it defines us as a people of glory and power, not of weakness and shame. As Jesus is ascended, we too enter into his ascension glory (Col. 3:1) This glory exhorts us to embrace full joy. As Alexander Schmemann once wrote:

“The Church was victorious over the world through joy…and she will lose the world when she loses its joy… Of all accusations against Christians, the most terrible one was uttered by Nietzsche when he said that Christians had no joy.”

A joy-less Christian faith is a faith that has not ascended. Where Christ is we are. And we know that Jesus is at the right hand of the Father. He is ruling and reigning from his heavenly throne. The Father has given him the kingdom (Psalm 2), and now he is preserving, progressing, and perfecting his kingdom. He is bringing all things under subjection (I Cor. 15:24-26).

We know that when he was raised from the dead, Jesus was raised bodily. But Gnostic thinking would have us assume that since Jesus is in heaven he longer needs a physical body. But the same Father who raised Jesus physically, also has his Son sitting beside him in a physical body. As one author observed:

“Jesus has gone before us in a way we may follow through the Holy Spirit whom he has sent, because the way is in his flesh, in his humanity.”

Our Lord is in his incarnation body at the right hand of the Father. This has all sorts of implications for us in worship. We are worshipping a God/Man; one who descended in human flesh and who ascended in human flesh. He is not a disembodied spirit. He is truly God and truly man.

As we consider and celebrate the Ascension of our blessed Lord, remember that you are worshiping the One who understands your needs because he has a body just like you and he rejoices with you because he has a body just like you.

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On May 25, 2022 By In Church

Tragedies: The Southern Baptist Convention Sex Abuse Problem and The Texas School Shooting

by Rev. Rich Lusk

You may have seen the absolutely horrific report on sexual sin and sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention that was released earlier this week. The report is the fruit of an extended independent investigation into claims made against various Southern Baptist leadership and congregations. I have not looked into the report in any detail but it is an absolute travesty. The report documents cases of adultery, fornication, and child molestation. In some cases, offenders were able to move from church to church, multiplying their victims. Those who tried to sound the alarm were silenced. Far too many in the Southern Baptists denomination were obviously more concerned with protecting their “brand” than doing what is best for victims. They used their polity (a commitment to the autonomy of each local church) as an excuse for not warning churches about predators hopping from one congregation to the next. Some leading pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention, including former president J. D. Grear, have argued that the Bible only “whispers about sexual sin” — a claim that was incredibly foolish when it was made and now sounds like complicity in the cover up. The entire sordid ordeal is a massive black eye for all Christians, even those of us who are not Southern Baptist. 

What makes it even more unfortunate is that we live in a time when there are all kinds of excellent resources available to churches and pastors to aid in detecting and dealing with abuse. There is really no excuse for church leaders to not have well established protocols for addressing abuse claims. 

There are many lessons the broader church can take away from this mess. Obviously, making sure that you only have qualified leaders is a must. Do not confuse giftedness and personal charisma with holiness. Making sure abuse claims are taken seriously and the proper authorities inside and outside the church are involved is also a must. At TPC, we partner with MinistrySafe to help us in this area  MinistrySafe provides an online training course for everyone who works with children. They are also able to provide highly competent guidance and counsel if and when an issue arises. We had the entire leadership of the CREC go through MinistrySafe pastors training at our General Council meeting several years ago. To my knowledge, the CREC is the only denomination that has done something like this, but it is highly necessary; church leaders simply must be informed about abuse, how to handle abuse claims, and how to get the best care for abuse victims. 

One other note: As so often happens in our culture, tragedies are immediately politicized and weaponized to further an unrelated agenda.  I’ve already seen people arguing that the Southern Baptist scandal happened because the denomination is committed to a male-only pastorate, or that this case proves that all churches are full of sexual hypocrites and therefore the church should not be listened to when it speaks about homosexuality, transgenderism, etc. While any scandal like this should drive a church to humbly repent, we should also recognize that Satan uses things like to seek to silence faithful churches from teaching the truth about men, women, marriage, and sex. As tragic as the Southern Baptist sex abuse problem is, it will also be tragic if that scandal is used to steer the entire denomination in a progressive direction, which is clearly what some are going to try to do with it.

The school shooting in Texas yesterday was yet another tragedy of senseless evil at work in our world. We can grieve with those who grieve, even at a distance, and we can certainly pray for the community in Uvalde. Sadly, as with abuse scandals, mass shootings tend to be quickly transformed into political talking points about race, gun control, mental health, or some other agenda. This a ridiculous response: We are not going to stop horrific acts of violence like this with one more gun control law, and everyone in their right mind knows that. Knee-jerk emotional responses do not change the world in a positive way. But there was one thoughtful thread on Twitter that someone alerted me to yesterday. Ali Beth Stuckey asks the question: If the one commonality among all of these shooters is that they are young males, does that indicate something significant? Her response does not say everything that probably needs to be said about the issue, but she raises some good questions. The young men perpetrating these wicked acts are certainly not victims, but their actions do point to a much wider social sickness and spiritual rot that surrounds us. 

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On May 18, 2022 By In Church

Temptations for Christians Who Want to Change the World, Part 2

See Part 1

Guest post by Rev. Jeff Meyers

This is the second installment of a condensed version of the “Final Reflections & Summary” from my book Wisdom for Dissidents (full title: Ancient Wisdom for Today’s Christian Dissidents).

The third temptation is to cozy up to our enemies, thinking that we can win their favor. If we can get them to like us, maybe they will leave us alone. This is the “partiality” problem James criticizes in 2:1-13. It is not simply that they are favoring the rich over the poor. That would be bad enough. But the man who is being catered to in their assembly is the one who wears the ring of authority and the robe of office (2:20). He is explicitly identified as an oppressor, someone who drags them into court, and a blasphemer against the name of Jesus (2:6-7). To “judge” the rich oppressor as someone more deserving of special care than the poor believer is “to become judges engaging in an evil conspiracy” (2:4). That evaluation from James is not just about individual “evil thoughts” but about how the brothers have conspired together to appease their rich enemies. They have thereby dishonored those poorer disciples whom “God has chosen . . . to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom” (2:5).

The appeasement option ought not to be on the table for conscientious Christian leaders. To turn a blind eye to immorality and abuse with the hope of getting a hearing from some powerful government or academic figure would be to betray our allegiance to the Lord. Not only is such schmoozing mostly ineffective—the more you give, the more they will take—but such behavior runs counter to the examples of the prophets and of Jesus himself. The prophets denounced the rich and powerful, even, maybe especially, when they were in positions of authority in Israel. Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others did not cozy up to corrupt, immoral leaders. Neither did Jesus. 

Fourth, the most insidious temptation, according to James, is to use the power of our words to guide the church toward aggressive and violent action thinking we are acting thereby as agents of God’s justice. As we have argued, James 3:1-12 is at the heart of the letter. And the key passage that unlocks the entire letter is James 1:19-20, “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”  Anger against their oppressors has fueled impetuous speeches with the intent to rally the disciples to make things right by means of aggressive, retributive action (3:13-16; 4:1-12). This kind of Christian “zealotry” will not make things right. Instead, such speech and behavior are not of the Spirit but demonic (3:15). These angry and violent responses have been fueled by the immature rhetoric of their teachers, the brothers responsible for leading their communities. They want freedom, but they are going about achieving liberty in the wrong ways.

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On January 6, 2022 By In Church

Epiphany as Gift-Giving Celebration

Happy Epiphany!

It doesn’t have the same ring as “Merry Christmas” or “Christ is risen!” but it carries significant repercussions for our Christmas and Easter theology. In some sense, Epiphany is the key that unlocks both classic Christian festivals. Epiphany secures the triumph of Jesus’ life and mission.

In Epiphany, we celebrate the “manifestation” of Jesus to the Gentiles. When Magi came to give him gifts, they gave him gifts as a foretelling of the great gift the Son will give the Father at the end of history (I Cor. 15:24-26). When Christ returns, he returns with the kingdom as a gift to the Father. Jesus receives gifts, but he is the great gift-giver of history.

Jesus introduces himself to the Gentile world as a fulfillment of Simeon’s song. He is a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of Israel (Matt 2:1-12). Jesus’ entire ministry is a ministry of gift-giving, which culminates as his body is given for his people (Lk. 22:19). Indeed, gift-giving is a crucial component of the revelation of Jesus to the world.

The reason we can be certain of the fulfillment of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) is that Epiphany’s gifts to Jesus are gifts that will be dispersed among men. Jesus is the unfailing gift-giver to the nations. He has never failed to provide for his people. Even in Israel’s underserved position, he still offers them life and light.

For the Christian, Epiphany signals a season of discipleship through rituals of gift-giving. The entire biblical premise of sanctification entails a life of exchanges (my life for yours). Christians are called to think through their ordinary rituals and adjust them accordingly for the sake of revealing Christ’s work to the nations. Three questions arise for us to ensure the gift-giving environment:

First, how can my home be a gift of refreshment to my children and those who enter it?

Second, how/what are my daily habits? In what ways are those rituals bringing life to my own soul and those around me?

Third, how am I being apostolic in my endeavors? How is my private and public life sharing the mission of Messiah to the world?

Epiphany means to make known what was hidden. Christ’s presence was a mystery to the Gentiles, but now his life is made known to the nations as a babe and as the Creator of the cosmos. It speaks to our need to wrap our lives as gifts to those around us and to be constantly on the lookout to give of ourselves to others out of the abundance of gifts we have received from Christ(mas).

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On January 1, 2022 By In Church

A Note from the Founder

This is the first post of the year, which means I get an extra measure of grace in writing more. That is to say, I have much to say. And if you reach the end of this post, I salute you in good Kuyperian fashion.

I expect to stray into a few autobiographical curves on the road. Transparency is my crime, and song is my time. Our histories are too brief to remain quiet. God may be quiet in our inquietude, but he is not silent. He is never silent. The noise in our heads does not confuse the mind of God which is altogether harmonious from eternity past to all eternity, world without end, amen!

I want to offer a digest of this year and phrase the whole narrative as a big comedy piece. This entire endeavor from government mandates to ecclesial shutdowns was crystallized for me in a very lengthy essay by Josie Appleton who made some very salient observations about the pandemic. The title of his piece was “Toxic Sociality.” Now, as I stood staring at the screen reading that title, I was reminded of the audacity of the world 20 years ago when it kept moving after I completed the final words of “Mere Christianity.” It was an outrageous act of history to take steps forward while my mind was paralyzed by Lewis’ meticulous arguments. I felt the same way when I read and re-read those words, “Toxic Sociality.” According to Appleton, this refers to the overall impact of the pandemic which was to pose a threat to “human social relation in general.” It trivializes the holy by punishing spontaneous laughter and coffee tables. To say I despise the grammar surrounding COVID is an understatement, as my readers have noted in the last 200-300 posts. And it goes far beyond the political insanity surrounding masks, vaccines, boosters, lockdowns, etc. If, in fact, there are humans out there that still wish to pretend this entire tour de force is all about our health, I pity the fool. It’s ultimately about typology, amigos! It’s about establishing patterns of existence that alter the way we do life together and that inevitably intoxicate the holy with echoes of fallen Eden.

Social creatures made with distinct rituals are now called to cease from them, not for a couple of weeks, but for over 700 days and the result is a series of comic moments, so humorous that even those who embraced it as Mosaic law from the beginning are now pausing to wonder whether the joke was on them. But if their Venmo account keeps drawing every month, they won’t poke the dragon. If the media, or whoever and whatever can seize the moment, they want to reshape human relationality. If they can make humans less Christo-humans, then they can make humans anew. They can create an entirely new social space where gender, identity, and victims play the role of supporting actors and actresses in the grand drama of de-christianization.

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On December 30, 2021 By In Church, Theology, Wisdom

The Church: The Manifold Wisdom of God

The created order was in disarray. This disorder was deeper and more serious than the unformed and unfilled state of the original creation. While the darkness and the deeps required a great amount of wisdom and power to overcome, they were not hostile. Sin changed all that. Sin introduced a death-sting that fought to keep things separated that God intended to be unified. The sleep of Adam from which he awoke to the glory of Eve became a sleep from which he would not awake. He would lie there ripped in half without resurrection glory. He would return to the dust from which he was made.

Sin’s death was not limited to our individual bodies. This death was the enemy of life as God intended. Anything that separated what God purposed to be joined together was death that needed to be overcome. From the beginning, God purposed that all humanity be caught up in his eternal fellowship as Father, Son, and Spirit as one worldwide family. Proverbs 8.30-31 poetically allude to this as Yahweh and Wisdom mutually delight in one another and in the sons of men. This delightful union and communion are what Paul speaks of to the Ephesians when he says that God’s eternal plan revealed in Christ Jesus was to unite all things in Christ (Eph 1.9-10). Without the presence of sin, this would have been a friendly process of maturity (a truth I explained in the article Incarnation Anyway). Sin latched on to this process, fighting it tooth-and-nail, refusing to allow death to move into the resurrection of unity between God and man and man with man.

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On December 13, 2021 By In Church, Counseling/Piety, Culture

Paul Tripp, Wokism, and Tri-Perspectivalism

I wish to offer just a couple of initial thoughts on the psychology of conversion towards woke and social justice ideologies. The task seems rather complex, and I do not wish to offer the final word but a mere word on a somewhat layered conversation. This is a primer’s worth of articulation on the subject.

This post stemmed from some questions raised by some fine people in my recent post on Paul Tripp. Some sent me private questions, and some others opined on the note. The gist is that several people expressed how much they have appreciated Paul Tripp’s work in the past and cannot understand how he could make such dramatic shifts culturally. They are wondering what causes such magnificent theological and cultural changes. For the record, I restate my level of appreciation for Tripp and his labors on a variety of counseling themes.

Nevertheless, trajectories are a real thing, and some prophets can see these things more accurately and astutely than I do. My own assessment is that these trends stem from a set of priorities.

Over the years, many of us have been completely shocked by movements among Reformed people who hold to the Catechisms, Confessions, and Creeds, but yet have sold their ideologies to the biggest woke bidders. I have detailed many of these over the years, but I want to offer just a brief summary as to why this manifestation is so evident in our day.

It is first and foremost essential to note that these movements happen slowly for most and are fast-paced for a few. These theological movements generally occur when perspectives begin to change in little things. Big changes occur through a thousand microscopic ones.

The classic example of this is the Republican political leader who makes remarkable speeches on the dangers of leftist sexual ethics and how modern attempts at distorting traditional marriage are dangerous. That healthy dogma begins to lose stamina when his son comes out as a homosexual. Suddenly, the strong assertions rooted in Genesis 1-2 begin to lose their vigor and eventually–as we have seen many times–that politician succumbs to social pressures and changes his view of sexual ethics affirming that homosexuality is something brave and bold and that we ought to listen more attentively to those in that community.

I argue that these changes are perspectival. If we break them down to existential (experiences), situational (cultural-historical), and normative (the authority of the Bible) we can arrive at a more accurate interpretive model for how these stalwarts move incrementally towards woke and BLM rhetoric.

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On November 13, 2021 By In Church

Against the World

The Church was in controversy against false leaders in the days of Jesus, in Athanasius’ 325AD, in Luther’s 1517, in Bonhoeffer’s 1940, and our own in 2021. The Church moves and conquers one square inch after the other, but never easily. She seeks to take the land with the expected opposition. When we say, “Jesus is Lord,” the world responds: “Only in your faith.” When the Church says, “this is my Father’s world,” they say, “Only in your little secluded world of fanatics.” This privatized faith is not the real thing; it’s the skim milk the world has expected from our banquets.

The Christian Church is antagonized by her own timidity. We think the world, the flesh, and the devil will give us a few inches here and there willingly with a thank you card attached to it. But that’s not how it goes. The Church receives nothing from the world for free, for the world is at enmity with God; the world wants unhindered pluralism, and she wants you to give up your inches of gain for 30 pieces of silver.

The sooner we discover that we are heirs of Abraham destined to take the entire world that rightly belongs to King Jesus, the better. The apathy and complacency will only delay the blessings God has in store for his people.

The reason we are so captivated by the claims of Jesus is that he has proven that all authority and power belong to Him and no one can take that from his hands. We cannot cease to press his claims because every inch is an inch he died to secure. The real estate market has one owner, therefore we should not be timid disciples but bold proclaimers in word and deed.

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On November 4, 2021 By In Church, Culture

Altar Calls, Revivals, and Toxic Religion

There is a celebratory parade going on in certain camps exalting the virtues of grace over the Bible Belt religion. The strategy is to find ways to ridicule the training of many of us who grew up under mom and dad’s religious education in the South. They argue that we have been strangled by the legalism of local independent baptist/evangelical churches and therefore we have suffered much for it. Of course, the political point is that such a generation created the evangelical Trumpers, and for many, that was and will always be a bad, bad, boy moment. But among these tribes growing up in the Scofield Bible generation, some made the great escape and they can now tell the story of how grace transformed them from those religious meanies.

Russell Moore goes so far as to refer to this kind of religious upbringing as “toxic” and that those who remain Christians are examples of “survivors.” Now, a few footnotes:

First, many of us can sit down and share some stories that are cringe-worthy of our upbringing in independent churches and many of us probably have a share of stories that ruined our appetite for certain things. That is true.

Second, since I am in the Reformed persuasion side of things, I have plenty of humorous stories about eschatology charts and walking down the aisle for the 4th time in a week-long revival extravaganza and of being terrified–ahem 1999!–that the rapture was coming.

Finally, I can also share how many of my friends were driven away from the church later in life as a reaction to what they perceived as rigorous and often graceless training. Much of their assessment is true.

Much could be added to this list and I have shared them on numerous occasions on various platforms. I join the frustration with what is considered and defended as “Fundamentalism” in my part of the world. In fact, my own father was a graduate of Bob Jones University and even had a subscription to “The Sword of the Lord.” In fact, when I was in college, I eagerly ran to my box to find the latest edition to read the latest sermon. I hope this proves that I was a teenage-mutant-dispy.

Now, here is where “Amazing Grace” meets “I Come to the Garden Alone:” the critique of Southern religion or Bible-Belt Religion fails because it assumes ideas of grace are somehow immune to abuses. It assumes that some alternative to fundamentalist religion was pure and provided the gravitas to carry us through our lives. It assumes that the only kind of training that is fruitful is the one that limits the boundaries of duties and increases the garden of grace.

While it would have been lovely to grow up in a richer theological environment, with festive sounds of Psalm-singing all around, I would not trade my history. My Bible-Belt upbringing made me cherish this phase of life and in many ways prepared me to embrace life with firmer conviction. You see, one of the things that folks like Moore fail to grasp is that the myriads of Bible verses we memorized were being used to form a backbone and a hunger for more; that Bible-Belt training prepared us to embrace healthier habits only because we knew our Bibles well. At one time I had over 400 verses memorized and that sits within me like a balm for my soul, though I can’t remember all the commas and thous any longer.

While so much of the formation of the fundamentalist world is flawed, it shaped many of us to see the Bible as the authoritative revelation of God’s world, good ol’ hymn-singin’ as good medicine for the soul, and responsibility and duty as vital to formation. And of course, we could add more, but you didn’t come from that world without grasping those three elements.

To speak of it as “toxic religion” is a simple way of dismissing it and treating it with utter contempt while showing how grace is better than all of that stuff. But “grace” has been used during this COVIDsteria season as a baseball bat to religious liberties and as a way of conveying “Love Thy Neighbor” in the most egregiously legalistic way possible. Moore and his tribe have joined the “grace” forces to ensure that such regulations and jabbery were instrumental in the re-shaping of society.I am all about grace for breakfast, lunch, and supper, but when it is divorced from clear mandates and when it does not come shaped by a bold Christendom, I want none of it. And while some may claim they survived “that toxic religion” and now found this “grace-free religion,” I can guarantee you that the latter comes with a cost. What you claim as “survival” probably will produce a generation of teenagers who won’t survive leftism, but will feel the bern and certainly won’t be cheering for Brandon.

Ultimately, what we have here, is an example of ingratitude. Gratitude looks at the past and despite all the flaws can still see how God was shaping our humanity and providentially caring for our souls through Fanny Crosbie and AWANA. It’s really how we should look at our Bible-Belt past–with gratitude for that ol’ time religion.

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On October 14, 2021 By In Church, Worship

Ecclesiology 101: The assembly must confront and forgive one another

In this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

The fifth duty of the assembly toward one another is to confront and forgive sin. No doubt, this is the requirement that causes the most consternation for Christians. Of all the duties listed in this series, this is the command that many churches neglect altogether. That shouldn’t be the case. Confronting sin is never fun or easy, but it is a command from God. We must obey it, and he will give us the strength to do so.

Step one: Keep it private

Consider the instruction from Jesus himself in Matthew 18.

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother (Matthew 18:15)

Jesus establishes that you are deputized to confront those who sin against you. If someone sins against you, you have the authority to go to them privately and try to make amends. The goal is for the offender to repent and for you to forgive him. The intent of this process is not to humiliate the offender, but to bring about reconciliation.

Popular belief would have you think that confronting sin is unloving and vindictive. But does that sound like something Jesus would approve of? No. Confronting sin is actually based on love. It is a good and gracious thing, and your demeanor must reflect that. You do not confront someone with anger and disrespect. You approach them with kindness and gentleness.

How should Matthew 18 work in practice? If a fellow assembly-member sins against you, you start by keeping it as quiet as possible. You’re supposed to deal with it privately, with that person alone. You should clearly explain your grievance, citing Bible verses as necessary. Ideally, the person will confess his fault and ask for your forgiveness. You must then forgive him (Matthew 18:22, Colossians 3:13).

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