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On March 30, 2024 By In Theology, Wisdom, Worship

How God Became King: Where Is God?

Holy Saturday seems to be that day that is lost within all the Holy Week observances. We go through the feast of Maundy Thursday, the solemn vigil of Good Friday, and then we simply wait around for Resurrection Sunday morning. But what happened Saturday? Well, not much. But that is actually the point, and it deserves some attention.

In Matthew’s Gospel, we hear about events that happen in between Friday and Sunday, what, on the church calendar, is called Holy Saturday. We know the end of the story. We anticipate the end of the story. And well we should because Matthew has given us explicit statements of Jesus as well as hints of anticipation throughout his record of Jesus’ life. But all of this occurs in history, which means that it takes time. Sometimes we want to jump over this part and immediately start reading the final chapter. If we do, we miss an important part of the gospel story and the opportunity to understand just a little better how God works.

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On March 29, 2024 By In Theology, Worship

How God Became King: The Death of the Son of Man

On Palm Sunday, Jesus rode into Jerusalem deliberately announcing his kingship. He tells his disciples to go find a certain donkey with her colt and untie them. Garments and palm branches line his way while children cry out to him in prayer and praise for salvation all with Jesus’ approval. Jesus’ statement was bold, to say the least. Through his conscientious actions, he announced his kingship. He knew the crowds gathering for Passover would make these connections as well. Worshipers certainly did. They were calling him the Son of David, God’s Messiah, the one whom Psalm 2 declares will rule the nations with a rod of iron and Psalm 110 says sits at Yahweh’s right hand. The Jewish leaders made the connections as well, especially when he took up his kingly calling to cleanse the Temple.

Jesus is King, and he has come to take back what Adam so willingly handed over to the serpent. The serpent will not give up what was given to him without a fight. That’s alright. Jesus came to fight and win. His war strategy still befuddles the minds of many, but it was and remains effective.

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On March 28, 2024 By In Theology, Worship

How God Became King: Ritualized Love

Jesus commanded his disciples on this night to “love one another as I have loved you.” Jesus gave this command in the context, not only of washing the disciples’ feet, but also in the establishment of the Lord’s Supper (something that John only alludes to).

The Lord’s Supper, anticipating the cross and resurrection, is ritualized love. To say that it is “ritual” doesn’t mean that it is empty, a mere rote repetition of what Jesus commands us to do. God’s rituals, formed by his word, are creative; God’s rituals form us into people he wants us to be through the words and actions that he prescribes. Responding in faith means submitting to the ritual in totality. This includes meditating on what you are doing and seeking to conform your life to the meaning.

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On March 21, 2024 By In Theology, Worship

Palm Sunday: The King. The Healer.

“Would that there were kings in Gondor, as there were once upon a time, they say! For it is said in old lore: The hands of the king are the hands of a healer. And so the rightful king could ever be known” (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Book 5, Chapter 8, emphasis original). After the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, Faramir, the new steward of Gondor, lay at the point of death and was being grieved by an old wife, Ioreth, the eldest woman in the houses of healing. She longed for a king because kings had the ability to heal. To her surprise, the king arrived. He didn’t have the appearance of a king, but his kingship was revealed in his healing powers.

Some believe Tolkien references Medieval lore that English and French kings had healing powers. Others posit that he is making an apparent reference to the kingship of Jesus. Even if Jesus’ kingship wasn’t at the forefront of Tolkien’s mind, Aragorn’s healing powers as king are an echo of the Great King.

When the blind beggar, Bartimaeus, cries out for healing, he calls out to the Son of David, the king of Israel, to heal him (Mk 10:47). Why would he call for the king of Israel to heal him? Because he knew that the hands of the king were the hands of a healer. Isaiah prophesies that the servant of Yahweh, the king, will heal the land, open the eyes of the blind, and unstop the ears of the deaf (Isa 35:1, 4, 5; see also 42:7). The king is revealed by his healing powers.

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On March 7, 2024 By In History, Politics, Theology

As Far As The Curse Is Found

“… and through him to reconcile all things to him, making peace through the blood of his cross, through him whether things upon earth or things in the heavens.”

~Colossians 1:20

The question of the extent of the effects of the atonement has been a point of debate in the church for quite some time. Did Jesus die to make salvation possible for everyone (general or universal atonement), or did Jesus die to secure salvation for God’s elect alone (particular or limited atonement)? This debate got hot and heavy in the seventeenth century when a group called the Remonstrants developed five articles concerning salvation that included universal atonement. The Synod of Dordt responded with what has come to be known as the five points of Calvinism, which includes limited, definite, or particular atonement. (Somewhere between these two were the Amyraldians, who were “four-point Calvinists” because they couldn’t buy into the limited atonement.)

Whenever the extent of the atonement is debated, the focus is usually on individuals’ salvation. But if we only think of the atonement and its effects in terms of individual salvation, what Paul says in Colossians 1:20 is quite confusing. Within Paul’s hymnic poem of Christ, “all things” consistently refers to the cosmic order, things upon earth and things in the heavens, visible and invisible, thrones, lordships, rulers, or authorities (see 1:16). Christ makes peace with the entire created order through the blood of his cross.

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On February 29, 2024 By In Church, Discipleship, Theology, Worship

The Cosmic Church

What is the church? Is it really all that important? If you ask evangelical Christians in America, you will get a variety of responses. In one survey, when evangelicals were asked whether or not every Christian has an obligation to join a local church, thirty-six percent of the respondents said, “Yes,” and fifty-six percent said, “No.” In another survey, a similar fifty-six percent agreed that worshiping alone or with one’s family is a valid substitute for regularly attending the worship of the church. Many professing Christians see the church as a good but non-essential part of the Christian life. The church is an aid to my personal relationship with Jesus, but my participation in the church has little to no bearing on my relationship with God and eternal destiny.

Paul disagrees.

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On February 15, 2024 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom, Worship

The Powerlessness of Fasting

Fasting is on the minds of many Christians around the world at this time because we have entered the season of Lent, a time in the Church Year that, among other things, focuses on Jesus’ forty-day fast in the wilderness. Fasting is encouraged as the church disciples her members to take up their crosses and follow Christ.

Fasting has a long and sometimes muddled history. God has always approved of fasting if it is done within the boundaries and for particular purposes. It can be argued that a form of fasting existed before the fall as God forbade the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil for a time. This pre-fall fast was a practice in patience, praying and waiting for the time God would allow them to eat and move into another stage of glory.

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On February 1, 2024 By In Counseling/Piety, Discipleship, Theology

Can I Please God?

Can I please God? Am I and my works ever worthy enough for God to say, “I am well pleased with you?”

There was a time in my life that I would have answered that question, “Absolutely not. I am a sinner and can never walk worthy of the Lord in a way that pleases him. It is impossible for me to please him because he is perfectly holy and tolerates no sin. My righteousness is only and exclusively alien. Christ’s righteousness is all that God the Father sees. Christ pleases God. Christ is worthy, but nothing about me is worthy.”

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On January 25, 2024 By In Church, Theology

The Three Marks of a True Church

How do you know if a church is a true church? As the Reformers were being excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church in the sixteenth century and having to form their own churches, they developed three distinguishing marks of a true church. The Belgic Confession (a Dutch Reformed confession written in the mid-1500s) summarizes these three marks:

The marks, by which the true Church is known, are these: if the pure doctrine of the gospel is preached therein; if she maintains the pure administration of the sacraments as instituted by Christ; if church discipline is exercised in punishing of sin: in short, if all things are managed according to the pure Word of God, all things contrary thereto rejected, and Jesus Christ acknowledged as the only Head of the Church. Hereby the true Church may certainly be known, from which no man has a right to separate himself. (Article 29)

The right preaching of the Word, the proper administration of the sacraments, and the exercise of church discipline are the triad that marks out true churches.

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On January 18, 2024 By In Church, Theology, Wisdom

A Good Church Is Hard To Find?

“Faithful churches are hard to find” is a sentiment that is quite common among conservative Christians. It is easy to understand why we hear this so often. There are loads of unfaithful churches that receive a great deal of press. Ordaining women, homosexuals, and transsexuals to the pastoral ministry is becoming more commonplace. Churches blessing same-sex unions and affirming “gay Christians” are understood as love. The woke mobs rather than the Scriptures control the doctrine and practice of many churches. Shepherds let the wolves in to devour the sheep through false teaching and by not disciplining sins defined by Scripture. However, they are all too willing to condemn and cancel people for the sins defined by the zeitgeist. News of these sorts of churches floods our feeds, confirming our fears that a good church is hard to find.

The types of churches described above are most certainly synagogues of Satan and must be avoided. But there are times when our definition of “faithful” becomes too narrow. A faithful church is what you perceive to be a perfect church, a church in which all the families have their lives together, where the pastor walks about three feet above the ground, where nothing bad has ever happened, and where everyone is a studied theologian and biblical scholar with all doctrinal matters completely settled. The faithful church is the church that exalts your non-essential pet doctrine as the threshold for membership and harps on that doctrine in such a way every week that makes the whole congregation smug in not being like the rest of those churches out there. The faithful church is the one that employs the methods you believe are the right way to do things.

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