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On February 16, 2023 By In Church, Culture, Theology, Worship

Transfiguration & Asbury

Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him to the top of a mountain to pray (Lk 9.28). Mountain praying would not be something unusual to the disciples. Throughout history, God met with his people on mountaintops. History begins on a mountain in the land of Eden with a sanctuary at its heart. Abraham meets God on a mountaintop when he sacrifices Isaac. After being delivered from Egypt, the children of Israel worship at Mt Sinai, the same mountain where Moses met with God earlier in the burning bush. The temple is built on a mountain, and, according to Hebrews 12, we still ascend a mountain in our weekly worship. The three disciples had ascended mountains to worship throughout their lives, many times singing the Psalms of Ascent (Pss 120—134) as they went to worship festivals. But on this particular day, God pulled back the veil to reveal to them what happens on the top of the mountain every time they pray … even when they don’t see it.

God spectacularly revealed his glory. Though rare, this was not unique. The children of Israel experienced this at Sinai. Just as Jesus was transfigured before the eyes of the disciples, Moses was transfigured on the mountain. The children of Israel couldn’t look upon his face because of the brightness of glory (Ex 34.29-33). Some believe that this epiphany of Jesus was his divine nature bursting through the veil of his humanity. There is truth to that, but that is not the emphasis. Jesus speaks of himself in this context as the Son of Man. This reference gains layers of meaning throughout history, but its fundamental meaning is “Son of Adam,” the one to whom God gave the blessing and command to be fruitful, multiply, and have dominion. God’s intention for Adam, in the beginning, was that he grow to share his glory. Adam fell short of the glory of God (Rom 3.23). Jesus is the second Adam, the Son of Man, who will obtain this kingly glory. God reveals Jesus’ destiny in his resurrection and ascension and, with that, the destiny of man united with him.

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On February 9, 2023 By In Church, Culture

The Demise of Religious Liberalism

My friend, Dr. Daniel Strand, writes,

“…that Protestant mainline churches used to dominate American life. They ruled the Ivies and produced brilliant and influential public intellectuals. Now we can’t name a single mainline churchman. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”

I recently addressed this topic and concluded:

“The mainline consisting of PCUSA, ELCA, American Baptists in the USA, United Methodists, etc., have taken trajectories of death throughout. They have sought to bestow power on inclusivism and anointed corrupt priests to lead the way, and to hell, they led.”

This was confirmed just a few hours ago as the Church of England reached a crescendo of filth “approving blessings for gay couples for the first time.” The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, said in a joint statement:

“For the first time, the Church of England will publicly, unreservedly and joyfully welcome same-sex couples in church. The Church continues to have deep differences on these questions which go to the heart of our human identity.”

My exhortation is to fellow conservative pastors: prepare yourselves to absorb thousands of refugees. Conservative ecclesial bodies must invest in catechetical discipleship and build a reservoir of resistance against liberalizing forces without and battle locally and nationally against such forces that seek to crawl their way into the midst of the assembly. People are hungry for ordinary worship, biblical preaching, and a conservative backbone.

But while mainline churches have been precipices of disdain for righteousness, there are additional signs that contemporary conservative bodies are headed toward such ends as well. Forthcoming decisions at ecclesiastical gatherings need to be firm, sustaining the biblical rationale for sexual ethics in all it entails without reservations. There should be no more tolerance for biblical embarrassment among conservative denominations.

The first sign of a failing corpus is the over-explanatory nature by which they undertake to excuse themselves for believing certain principles and affirmations. Therefore, they explain away texts which make them look deranged or unfriendly towards the woke cause. Such signs within these bodies are prequels to well-developed franchises.

The great exodus is already occurring. It’s time to add more chairs to our tables.

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On February 8, 2023 By In Church, Theology

Theology as Application to All of Life

One of my most cherished moments in seminary was being exposed to John Frame’s definition of theology. For Frame, theology was defined as “the application of the Word of God by persons to all areas of life.”a

There were always academic dimensions to theology, but theology was something immensely practical. It brought people to a “state of spiritual health.” This definition is helpful because,

“Theology is thus freed from any false intellectualism or academicism. It is able to use scientific methods and academic knowledge where they are helpful, but it can also speak in nonacademic ways, as Scripture itself does – exhorting, questioning, telling parables, fashioning allegories and poems and proverbs and songs, expressing love, joy, patience . . . the list is without limit.”b

I have since used this definition repeatedly and have learned to appreciate it even more as a pastor. The Spirit does not implant in us an application ex nihilo. Instead, theology is applicable and needs to be made applicable by pastors to parishioners and from parishioners to parishioners.

It is also freeing to consider this definition in light of the theological illiteracy in our day. Certainly, we wish to see the church grow in biblical knowledge, but this definition means that a pastor can instruct even the newest convert on how he ought to live. He can take the measuring of the temple in Revelation 11 and find clear applications for God’s people.

Frame’s definition accentuates the pastoral task in that it calls pastors to ask consistently “How Now Shall We Then Live?” In this sense, as Frame has argued elsewhere, unless theology is practically applied, it has not become true theology.

On the other hand, the one doing theology must first understand it before applying it. We have seen our share of faulty applications in the realm of the home and the church. Therefore, to properly grasp this definition of theology, one needs to be familiar with theology.

David’s battle with Goliath was more than a remarkable example of how we can overcome difficulties in our lives, but also how God can use the weak to defeat the strong and how a nation needs to put its trust in God rather than chariots and how the Church needs smooth stones of faithfulness to destroy the wicked. There are individual and corporate obligations involved in that straightforward narrative.

Theology prepares us to ascend with our Lord; in that reign, we can learn to apply this rulership in all areas of life. In applying our theology, we become ambassadors for our theology. Theology is life, and life is theological.

  1. Systematic Theology, pgs. 8-9  (back)
  2. The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, p. 81.  (back)

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On February 1, 2023 By In Church

Three Theses on Postmillennial Eschatology

One of the joys of speaking loudly around here is seeing some fine china broken in real-time. That’s a metaphor for views being shattered and replaced by something else.

What is that thing broken and replaced? The thing broken is a variation of pessimistic eschatology, and it is being replaced with some happy postmillennialism. Mind you, I am not so much concerned about the loyalty to the systematic category but about the heart of the matter.

It pleases me to see folks going through that theological transformation and sending me notes about it. It is amazing to plant seeds and see them bear fruit much later. God seems to work like that on many occasions.

I believe we are reaching a stage of massive theological conversions, and I have alluded to some of these factors before, but the postmil conversion is a fruitful blossoming of many seeds planted long ago. I have been harping on the postmil “C” chord for a really long time, and I think it’s beginning to see a resurgence.

This may be the result of ecclesiastical behaviors these past three years. In fact, I will go so far as to say that the churches who have been pushing against government tyranny and sundry silliness have postmil bones. Now, lots of other non-postmil flocks have come alongside our efforts or later decided to peek behind the curtain, but the reality is that the majority of pastors I know who decided to fight the tide named one of their kids or their dogs, B.B. Warfield.

This happens not because dispensationalists are gnostic pirates but because theology and ideas matter. A theology that urges the Christian population to cave in cannot be a theology that says, “Jesus shall reign where’r the sun doth his successive journeys run!” It simply can’t!

Now, yes, there are peoples of all eschatological stripes who act inconsistently with their theologies and opine like disciples of John Murray, but by and large, attitudes of reconciliation with government officials who were eager to steal your liberty didn’t come from postmil reformers. They came from those who believed and affirmed a spiritualized kingdom only, one that was content with “If the ship is sinking, why polish the brass!”Postmillennial eschatology is a direct contact sport eschatology. It’s not flag football; it’s the result of a baby created by rugby and the Constantinian religion. It’s real. It’s fleshly. It’s in your face. And wherever it goes, it carries three central affirmations:

First, it affirms that the Christian faith is rooted in the proto-evangelium (Gen. 3:15). It believes that the first Gospel preached was a Gospel that de-throned disciples of the Serpent and moved forward on the offense against religious and political tyrants (II Cor. 10:5). The seed of the woman shall crush the head of the serpent in tangible ways, which necessitates the confrontation of institutions and systems that do not harmonize with the kingdom of heaven.

Second, it affirms the centrality of the Cultural and Great Commissions (Gen. 1:26-28; Matt. 28:18-20). Postmil is not an eschatology of guesses; it’s an eschatology of certainty. We don’t walk around wondering whether the kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven; we affirm the kingdom shall come on earth as it is in heaven in history and time. Christ shall return to receive a glorified bride, not a defeated bride. The great feast is a glorious feast of victorious proclamations (Rev. 7:12). What God commands shall be fulfilled, and there are no nuances to that.

Finally, it affirms a bodily sacrificial life before the watching world (Rom. 12:1-2). The certainty of postmil eschatology is not naive about suffering and pain. In fact, it triumphs through our suffering and pain. It sees the sacrifice of the Church as a sacrifice towards something, a symphonic movement reaching its finale. It moves through sacrificial acts of worship first on the first day of the week (Acts 20:7) and then throughout the rest of time (I Cor. 10:31).

Postmillennialism breaks the fine china of the spiritualized/escapist church and calls her to take up the sword in one hand and the shovel in the other (Neh. 4:18). That means we will protect our right to worship the Triune God, and we will work as unto the Lord, and we will strive with all our hearts to ensure that our children and our children’s children seek the good of the city until that day.

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On January 28, 2023 By In Church

The Case for Weekly Communion

Evangelicals like myself, rooted in the Reformation, came very late to the beauty of weekly communion. I was a sophomore in college before I realized that the vast stream of the Protestant tradition celebrated communion weekly. For most of my life, I assumed the table was reserved for special occasions like Easter or Christmas. In fact, I attended a Brethren congregation that did communion once a year.

However, as I broadened my theological interests, I understood the Supper’s function in the liturgy and in the theology of the church, and it became unbearable to contemplate its absence during a worship service.

Historically, our Reformed forefathers—including Luther and Calvin—desired communion to be weekly. In fact, in the early centuries of the Church and the majority of Protestant Churches in the 16th century practiced weekly communion. It was only in the 19th century, and in particular, during the Prohibitionist movement, that weekly communion became mostly obsolete.

Therefore, the infrequent practice of communion is relatively new in the church. This does not mean it’s wrong, but it should raise questions and challenge our assumptions about what the Bible says concerning the frequency of such practices.

The Didache, one of the earliest records of the church after the Bible, says the following:

“On the Lord’s own day gather together and break bread and give thanks, having first confessed your sins so that your sacrifice may be pure.”

The Church believed that we become a purer people by celebrating the sacraments weekly. This is not because there is something magical in the bread and wine but because God uses these means to communicate his presence and strength to us (WCF XXIX.1).

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On January 26, 2023 By In Church, Family and Children, Politics, Wisdom

Authority’s Secrets

“The heavens for height and the earth for depth, so the heart of kings is unsearchable.”

~Proverbs 25.3

Recently government classified documents are showing up frequently and in some odd places. Classified documents are those secrets to which only certain high-level government officials are privy. The intention of classifying documents is to protect people from the knowledge that they don’t need to have. The government may be protecting those who are working undercover or information that they have on other countries that concern our national security. Sometimes classified documents are a coverup for people who would be punished for crimes if the right people discovered what went on. Nevertheless, the government keeps secrets, and they don’t want those secrets to get out by someone wandering through a former vice president’s garage, his son’s laptop, or even wandering through a former president’s house.

Whatever you believe about the classification of documents and the secrets that they hold, the principle of authorities keeping secrets is a sound one. That is, the Bible teaches that there are some things that authorities will know that others don’t. This is not a gnostic-type special revelation given only to the upper-echelon Illuminati. This is a perspective that subordinates may not have along with information that may hurt them or other people.

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On January 23, 2023 By In Church

Typological Glories of Infant Baptism

The question of baptism and its recipients is truly a matter of grace and not of works. It was my Calvinism that led me to the font. I knew–though it took me a while to act on it–that grace was more than a mere soteriological category. Grace was everything and in every act of God for us. The question of an infant’s ability never crossed my mind as a barrier to accepting covenant baptism. The question of God’s grace was the key that unlocked the baptismal font.

Baptism is a heavenly Pentecost. The Spirit is poured, not we who pour ourselves. Everything is of grace; Gratia sunt omnia. God identifies us as His own from the beginning as He did with the creation, and then He christens us with His spirit. Baptism is the divine hovering. Baptism is gracious because, through it, God re-enacts the creation of the world. In baptism, we are a new creation.

God has copyrighted the world. He labels, gifts, and graces. Man does not have that capacity; man does not create in and of himself; therefore, man cannot change his own identity. We are imitators, but yet only capable of imitating because God graces us with His artistic gifts. We imitate God as we are graced into his imitative presence in the waters of baptism.

In the beginning, the world is first identified by the Triune God (Gen. 1), and then it is called to praise that God (Ps. 19). We are first identity-less (dark and void), and then God fills us with His Spirit (light and life). Baptism is all of grace. We were void and empty. God looked at us (Ezk. 16) and washed us, and clothed us with fine clothing (Ps. 45). We are Trinitarianly clothed.

Baptism is one fulfillment of the third commandment. Wherever the child goes, there he carries the Name of his God. And because God is his God, he should not take his name in vain. He takes his identity in his baptismal garments, which cover his whole body of actions, thoughts, and words.

Infant baptism is of grace because it is the re-enacting of creation. Creation begins in darkness– as in a womb– and is washed. It is like our God destroying nations with fire and creating new ones with a few drops of water. 

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On January 19, 2023 By In Church, Theology

The Cut and Paste Bible

Christians are people of the book. We are a people of the corporate book called the Bible. The Bible was composed by Spirit-led men in all they wrote (II Pet. 1:20-21). But when we read the Bible, we tend to make it an encyclopedia of our favorite life verses. “You like your verses, but I have mine,” we say as if we were playing poker. You can have your own favorite theology, but that’s because you are overlooking my favorite texts. It is easier to function this way than to search for patterns and types and covenantal structures.

This is one of the greatest tragedies of our day. We have created a cut/paste hermeneutic. We have seen the Scriptures as a collection or an appendix of isolated texts. We have accepted the plague of individualism under the guise of special hallmark cards. As a result, we forget that when we read in John 3:16 that God so loved the world, that statement is only an inspired reality in the context of John’s judgment-filled theology of Jesus’ coming. God loves the world, but he does this by condemning and judging people to eternal destruction. In our day, we have decided that if John 3:16 is good enough for Tim Tebow, it’s good enough for me. We can preserve it in its own separate corpus to be pulled out for any ordinary evangelistic enterprise. The result is a Bible that is chopped, red-lettered, and mutilated by our preferences.

But the Bible is a corporate and contextual text. It is vastly different than the individualized approach many take to it. My own assertion is that the individualization of the Bible—the read-one-verse-a-day Bible programs– has created a culture that views the corporate gathering as secondary in importance. Therefore, to quote James B. Jordan, “individualism means that the Bible history is reduced to moralistic stories.” But Samson, Jacob, and Ruth only make sense in union with the rest of the Bible.

When we gather for the Lord’s Day worship, we are worshiping with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven and all the Christians on earth; true enough. But when we worship, we also worship in the context of the entire biblical story. We are participants in the corporate nature of the text. We are people of the book and, therefore, oppose the plague of individualism.

We come to worship not as atomized creatures but as restored humanity put together in a corporate body of worshipers. When we worship, we join the story of the Scriptures in all its fulness and unity.

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On January 14, 2023 By In Church

7 Reasons to Work Hard at Worship

Liturgy comes from two words: “Work” and “people.” Therefore, liturgy can be accurately defined as the “work of the people.”

Our Lord was so righteously angry by the easy business transactions (easy worship) of the Temple that he turned upside down the world when he overturned the tables of the money-changers (John 2:13-16). Such audacity should be imitated by God’s people but cautiously exercised in light of our sinfulness. So here is my attempt to cautiously turn a few tables upside down with the hope that some will decide to keep it that way rather than try to put it back up or mend the broken pieces.

Worship has become perfunctory in our day. The seeker-sensitive movement of the 90’s has morphed into a thousand strategic models for church growth, offering easy worship choices that would be best spread in a meal for pagan gods than the God who made the heavens and earth. Easy worship produces light Christians. Light Christians produce weak men, and weak men produce feeble societies. A worship that does not demand the body and soul is not worthy of its name.

I offer several reasons why worship is and should be hard. And by “hard,” I do not mean “mathematical,” demanding intellectual prowess and a high IQ, but simply that it is fitting for God’s people to bring their bodies as actionable beings into the throneroom of grace. In fact, the best worship is one which can be absorbed within a couple of weeks of practice. But one must be willing to invest in this effort to benefit from its glory.

So, why, then, must worship be hard?

First, worship must be hard work because God demands those who worship him to do so in “spirit and truth (John 4:24).” I take “Spirit” to mean in, “Spirit-led” form. Worship requires a Spirit-shaped liturgy. It must be guided by the inspired words of the Spirit and the indwelling presence of the Spirit. Jesus demands that we take up the cross and follow him, which is hard work lived out by the power of the Spirit.

Worshiping in truth also demands much from the worshiper. John the Baptist had borne witness to the truth (John 5:33), and that witness cost him his life. Thus, worshiping in truth is a challenging task. Our gathered assembly must be prepared to fight hard to/in worship. If worship demands little or nothing from us, it fails the John 4:24 test.

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On January 12, 2023 By In Church, Counseling/Piety, Discipleship, Wisdom

The Spiritual Pastor

Within the life of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit has a special role. He creates and sustains bonds or relationships between people. He has been doing this forever. This is his activity in the life of the Trinity in eternity. He is the Spirit of God the Father (Gen 1.2; Rom 8.9, 14; 15.19) as well as the Spirit of the Son/Christ (Gal 4.6; Rom 8.9). The Spirit “belongs” to both the Father and the Son.

Our early church fathers described the Spirit as the “bond of love” between the Father and the Son. In the Trinitarian relationship described in terms of love, the Father is the Lover, the Son the Beloved, and the Spirit is the Bond of Love between them.

We understand his eternal ministry in the Trinity because we hear of his work with us. His work with us images his eternal ministry. He creates bonds between us and God as well as one another. This is why Paul says in Ephesians 4 that we are to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

The Spirit creates the bond with the body of Christ through baptism according to 1Corinthians 12.13: “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body–Jews or Greeks, slaves or free–and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” The Spirit is the one who puts the body of Christ together; whether you are talking about the Person of Christ in the womb of Mary (Lk 1.35) or the body of Christ, the church (1Cor 12.11). The Spirit puts things and people in a relationship with one another.

The pastoral ministry is a Spiritual ministry. This does not mean that he has a “mystical ministry” over against dealing with the material aspects of the world. The pastor is a bond-maker. He brings people together, facilitating the creation of relationships.

The pastor/king introduced to us in Ecclesiastes is called qoheleth, normally translated as “Preacher.” But the word speaks about someone who gathers or is a convener. He brings both people and words together, and he creates bonds with people through his words. He creates bonds.

The pastoral ministry aims to reconcile God with man (2Cor 5.18-20). We exercise that ministry by gathering people for the preaching of the Word and administering the Sacraments. By the power of the Spirit, the Word is proclaimed, and people are united with Christ through baptism and the supper.

This Spiritual ministry doesn’t end there. As the Spirit creates relationships among the members of the body of Christ, joining each member to the other to work together as one body, so the pastor is given to the church to equip the saints for the work of the ministry so that each member works properly with other members for the body to build itself up in love (Eph 4.11-16).

At times this will mean that the pastor helps individuals work through personal and interpersonal relationship issues. He instructs members through the Scriptures on how to apply wisdom to their particular situation so as to restore and maintain the bond of peace.

Many of us pastors take it upon ourselves (whether through personal expectations or expectations imposed upon us by our congregations) that our calling is to be an expert in every area of dealing with issues; that if there is a problem in the church we must be the ones who personally “fix it.” However, this is where understanding our Spiritual ministry is extremely helpful. While dealing with issues in the church is our responsibility, dealing with the issue can take the form of helping the person make the right connections with other Christians who are better equipped to help them in particular areas. Just as a medical doctor who is a general practitioner may refer one of his patients to a specialist, so we soul doctors may need to do the same. The Spirit creates relationships with Christ and with one another, pointing to others. As pastors, we also point people to Christ and others who are better equipped to help.

Many of us pastors don’t like this for a number of reasons. Our lack of expertise in any area and not being able to fix each and every problem is viewed as weakness that will cause us to lose respect in the eyes of our people. They may believe that they no longer need us. Consequently, we try to become an expert in counseling, therapy, and/or other areas so that we can do everything ourselves. It’s job security. However, it is also a lack of love for God’s people. Though good intentions may be in there somewhere, there is a selfishness that cares more about my pride and my job than for the health and welfare of the people of God. Sometimes loving people means pointing them to others for help.

For us to fulfill our Spiritual ministry as pastors, we must be humble, recognizing our limitations. Some of us are better in certain areas than others. Each pastor comes with his own set of strengths and weaknesses. We can’t be experts in every area in which our people might need help. We may be general practitioners, knowing many of the basics so that we can help people with common problems, but we must recognize that there are specialists to whom we may need to refer our people. Connecting people with other people is not a dereliction of your duty. It is your Spiritual responsibility.

In order to connect our people with other Christians who may be able to help them better than we can, we need to get to know other people. These people may be within your own congregation. Get to know people and their skills so that you can make connections with others. This may also mean learning of resources outside of your church to which you can refer people who need help that you can’t give them.

Humility once again comes into play here. When you point people away from yourself and to Christ in other people, you will not receive the initial glory for fixing the problem. That’s okay. The Spirit was sent to glorify the Son (Jn 16.12-14). As we point to Christ in other people and help create those relationships, we are doing the Spirit’s work.

Pastor, you don’t have to know it all. You don’t have to do it all. You are not deficient as a pastor if you must point your people to others to find the help they need. You are doing the Spirit’s work.

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