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On December 24, 2020 By In Church, Worship

Ecclesiology 101: The assembly must assemble

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

Ecclesiology is the study of the church. Various aspects of the church and church governance are covered in ecclesiology, usually in abstract terms. This is good and necessary, but I want to take a more practical approach. I want to talk about ecclesiology from a layperson’s perspective: What does it mean to be the church? How do we function together? What are our duties toward one another? In this series, I hope to lay forth an outline of how the church is to be the church. I will not be focusing on outward-facing ministries of the church (e.g. evangelism), but on inward-facing ministries.

Defining terms

First things first: What does it mean to be a part of the church? To answer this question, we must first determine what the word “church” means. Most Christians know that the church isn’t a building, though we sometimes speak that way. “The church is people!” we rightly proclaim (Matthew 18:17, Acts 11:26).

From there, we might say that the church consists of anyone saved by the atoning work of Jesus (Ephesians 5:25, 1 Corinthians 1:2). In this usage, any self-professed Christian – anyone who believes in Jesus – is a part of the church.

But more fundamentally, the church is an “assembly” or a “congregation.” The word translated as “church” in our Bibles is the Greek ekklesia, which literally means “to call together” or “to assemble.”

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On December 19, 2020 By In Discipleship, Theology, Worship

A Baptism Exhortation

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. ~Galatians 3.27

Prayer: Almighty God, who formed the earth out of water and through water by your word, who saved Noah and his family through water while destroying the wicked, who delivered your people Israel through the Sea while defeating Pharaoh and his armies, all of which are types of baptism into Christ Jesus, we pray that you will look mercifully upon Leah, saving her with your people while destroying sin and death. May she, throughout her life, relying upon the grace you give to her this day, continue to mortify sin so that at the last day she may participate in the resurrection of the just and reign with Christ Jesus eternally. Amen

Clothing is important in Scripture, not merely to cover our infantile nakedness but to glorify us. God never intended the man and woman to remain in their primal condition of nudity. He always intended to clothe them as they grew into the exalted royal rule God destined for them. We see this in the fact that Jesus, when seen after his ascension in Revelation, is clothed in garments of glory and beauty. He did not return to the original condition of nakedness–that occurred on the cross–but is crowned and clothed with glory to rule.

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On December 13, 2020 By In Discipleship, History, Theology, Worship

The Temple. So What?

The Lord has come to his temple. He is going to destroy it. So what?

Large sections of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are taken up with Jesus teaching his disciples about the destruction of the Temple (Mt 24; Mk 13; Lk 21). Jesus not only speaks about it, he prophetically acts out the destruction of the Temple when he turns over the money changers’ tables, drives everyone out, and shuts down the Temple for a day. The Temple occupies a central place in the life of God’s people and becomes a focal point of Jesus’ ministry in the transition between the new age and the age to come. But why? Why take so much time in discussing and focusing on the Temple? Why should we care about what happens to an ancient building back in the first century? Well, if Jesus thought it important enough to talk about, and the writers of the Gospels under the inspiration of the Spirit believed it was important enough to record among the massive amounts of other information that could have been recorded (cf. Jn 21.25), then it must be important to the continuing life of the church.

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On December 6, 2020 By In Culture, Theology, Worship

Devouring Houses

Whenever we see a powerful person using his power to abuse the weak in any way, something goes off in us. There is a great sense of anger at the injustice of it. The big kid on the playground bullying the weakling, the husband abusing his wife, or the parent beating his child raises our righteous ire. We know innately that this isn’t right. Powerful people ought not to be using their power to pummel the weak.

But why? If we actually lived in a universe in which evolution was a reality, these sorts of actions would make sense. The strong survive. The weak do not. Sometimes the strong must eliminate the weak in order to survive because of the scarcity of resources, to eliminate threats, or to demonstrate to others what will happen if they are challenged.

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On October 28, 2020 By In Worship

Fragments from a Restless Reformer, Part 1517

This is the sort of post that demands lots of footnotes and nuances, but I offer none of it. It’s not because of my inherent idleness, but because I don’t want to which may be linked to my idleness.

My late father had a saying which I never understood until much later in life. He said, “Son, you’re gettin’ a spankin’.”

No.

It wasn’t that one.

It was the one about the dynamics of a well-studied position later in life. Yeah, I really can’t make it into a pithy saying.

The essence of what he said was that trying to change the mind of older saints, especially those who have poured into their conviction bucket for a long time is a difficult task. We should try, he said, but we should reach a point where shaping the hermeneutic is a more important process. As Al Gore once said, “It’s the hermeneutic, stupid!” It’s the process of interpreting facts and how you get there that matters.

So, without further ado, and without apologies, I love the Reformation! I love Luther’s wit, Calvin’s technical debates with Anabaptists, Bucer’s concern for a well-ordered liturgy, and the reformation of song that sprung from a Lutheran dungeon and arrived at a reformation church in Pensacola, Fl.

I didn’t grow up in such an environment, which means it was somewhere between 19-20 that I was exposed to reformational thinking. Not the one shot of espresso kind, I was exposed to the three fingers of scotch kind. Mind you, when I first read Gary North, R.J. Rushdoony, David Chilton and Greg Bahnsen, I hated their agenda. But like the neighborhood kid you despised growing up, you began to look more favorably towards their faults and then you realized that their faults were more in the personality department than in the department of thought. One can always say that if it were not for their weird footnotes, they would be more mainstream. But again, look at what the mainstream produces. Can I get an corporate yuck?

It was later that R.C. Sproul and MacArthur and John Piper and Doug Wilson (one is not like the others) came into my theological salad. These all shaped my thinking in various ways, but it was that snarky and oft-cranky brother, James B. Jordan, with whom I shared probably hundreds of meals together that changed my hermeneutic for good. Now, here’s a story for all you kids that I may not have told. And it goes like this…

There was once a little boy who was enamored by other traditions with pointy hats. Though it wasn’t for very long, it was long enough and my inner commitment to Dutch flowers was being compromised at some level. But as I perused a fancy library one day, I came across a book about creation written by that cranky fella I mentioned above. There was a chapter in there amidst all the hurrahs on creation methodology that was titled something, something, Gnosticism. I still read that chapter once a year to pay homage to my brother who is now elderly and no longer able to display his sharpness to the world.

It was my hermeneutic that changed. I began to walk differently, kicking colored rocks instead of the plain ones. I wasn’t adding an additional year of Greek or Hebrew to my resume, I was adding a way of looking at the world that made me love Jesus more and my Jesus-shaped Bible as well. At that moment, I stopped looking at Rome or Constantinople with so much admiration, and started looking to Geneva’s ecclesiology with great respect. It’s the hermeneutic, stupid! Look at the world around you with consistent eyes and ask, WWZD? What would Zechariah do? And then ask, what would Zephaniah do? And then ask, what would Zaphnath-Paaneah do?

We do need a better orientation on how we look at the world. This is a Christ-shaped world filled with common grace and joy, and the Bible is a welcoming playground for those who have new eyes to see. So, dear friends, a happy season! May your candy be tattooed with graces and sugared with spices from Katie’s kitchen and may you cuss at the right wrongs and not the wrong rights. As Luther used to say, “You may sin boldly, but let your trust in Christ be bolder still!”

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On October 18, 2020 By In Counseling/Piety, Discipleship, Theology, Worship

The Temple of the Lord

From a distance, it must have been an awe-inspiring sight. There, sitting atop a mountain was a magnificent work of architectural art. Jutting up above the walls and drawing the eye to itself sat the Temple in Jerusalem. On a mountain peak outside the city looking in, one could see this marvelous structure, buzzing with human activity, and, if the wind was just right, one could smell the aromas of meat grilling on the altar. The beauty of the Temple told the onlookers and worshipers that this was the place where one came to meet the God of Israel and to be a part of his people. This is where one went to meet God and sit and have a communion meal with him, finding life.

During Jesus’ day, the Temple had become an architectural deception. Though everything about it screamed “LIFE,” it had become nothing more than an elaborate tomb, filled with rotting flesh and the stench of death. There was nothing there to satisfy the soul. This happened over the years of neglect and rebellion. Certainly, no one intended for it to turn out this way in the beginning. It probably started slowly and crept like a slow-moving cancer through the years until the time when Jesus came and gave the diagnosis and pronounced it dead (Lk 19.45-48).

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On October 13, 2020 By In Worship

The Absurdity of Leviticus

I was trying to do the impossible this morning listening to Leviticus. I attempted to listen to it through the eyes of an atheist–to see laws about priestly purity, eye defects, dwarfs, damaged private parts, and other bodily oddities that needed to come into conformity to the holiness code. As a supposed atheist I imagined mocking such texts and the grotesque descriptions and the absurd necessity to conform to such laws simply because of our humanity. Why should purity laws apply to menstruating women when it is merely the natural function of a female body? Why make her unclean for something she has no control over? How barbaric to apply standards to the regularity of life!

But the more you read into Leviticus the more impossible it is to remove the Christian eye from its intended goal. If Leviticus borrows heavily from the strange it is because the Bible carries with it a seal of authenticity in every book, and especially Leviticus. There is an inherent “deep weird” to the Bible that Christian must embrace. We don’t embrace it because we delight in the oddity, but because for the world to be coherent, it must have elements of the strange within it. Bodily discharges—though unbearably odd to mention—is so common that only a truly Spirit-inspired book could deal with it so bluntly.

The Christian faith must be embraced as a Levitical faith; one that is not shy of rituals and impurity and rituals for purity. It must also be embraced to reveal the vast contrast between the care God has for the well-being of his people and just how uncaring the gods of this world are about our well-being. Only a true God provides a system of symbols, rituals, death, and resurrection for his people. Indeed, Leviticus provides the route to holiness and our need for a Holy God.

As Paul says in Romans, the unbeliever cannot see the truth because he is blind. Perhaps Leviticus serves as a test for ordinary Christians on whether we embrace the raw language of Scripture as God’s reality or whether we prefer to sanitize the faith to fit our preconceived notions of reality. The Leviticus code is a pointer to the cleansing of the nations. There is no life without blood and there is no atonement without holiness. Leviticus is the pathway to the cross where the Holy One absorbs all our impurities, and simultaneously it is the aroma that draws true Israelites to the house of Yahweh. For the atheist it is sheer absurdity, but for the Christian it is the way of life and holiness and truth.

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On October 6, 2020 By In Culture, Politics, Worship

God’s Perfect Storm: Reflections on Psalm Sing Arrest in Moscow Idaho

You can’t plan Psalm Sing arrests. It was God at work and we were there to watch it unfold.

Gabe Rench Arrested at Psalm Sing September 23. Photo credit: Kip Mock

I am a member of Christ Church and I was there at Moscow City Hall on Wednesday, September 23. As I reflect on the Psalm Sing arrests, it is clear that God was at work putting all the pieces together so it would add up to a perfect media storm.

That Wednesday afternoon, we weren’t planning on getting arrested. I thought the police would be out issuing a lot of citations. That is what I was preparing for. When we arrived at City Hall, I was surprised to see about ten police were out there already. It was intimidating but I thought even then they would just issue citations.  

I am not sure why the police went up to Gabe Rench. He was near the front of the group but there were others they could have talked to.

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On September 6, 2020 By In Discipleship, Family and Children, Theology, Worship

Jesus Loves The Little Children

As parents, we sometimes wonder if it is all worth it. We are tired from the week of work and all the activities in which we have engaged ourselves and our children. Getting ready for worship on Sunday and actually going is a hassle. We don’t want to feel that way, but if we are honest with ourselves, we do. Not only do we have to get ourselves ready, but we also have to get our children ready. Then, when we get them there, all they want to do is squirm, color, cry, and go to the bathroom; and those are just the teenagers! We’re not “getting anything out of it” and, apparently, our children aren’t “getting anything out of it.” Do they even pay attention? Do they understand what is going on? Have they thought about what a blessing it is to be in the presence of God? Apparently not. They don’t seem to be thinking about this at all.  All of this can be a bit overwhelming and discouraging at times, especially when you are worn out. Why bother?

“Why bother?” is a good question. Jesus’ band of disciples didn’t think it was all that important to have children in the presence of Jesus. Luke doesn’t tell us specifically in chapter 18 why the disciples rebuked the parents and tried to keep the children from coming into Jesus presence, but from the evidence gathered throughout the Gospel, we are on pretty solid ground to understand that they didn’t think that the children were important enough to be that close to the King. They’re not great warriors. They’re not intellectual giants. They’re not even potty-trained! They can’t possibly be useful because they are whining and crying as their parents are bringing them to be touched by the Messiah. Who has time for that? We need to make better use of our time and the King’s time. Jesus wasn’t pleased. He thought it was important that they are touched by him, so his disciples better start thinking that it is important that these children be touched by him.

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On August 16, 2020 By In Worship

Bring. The. Noise. (Psalm 47)

Sports and their fans are an interesting phenomenon. They are mock wars; our forces against your forces. The forces have specific colors, banners, chants, music, shouts, and sometimes just a great amount of noise around them.

In a war, when your side is winning or has won, you are encircled with joyful noise. The noise is used to intimidate the enemy, celebrate victory, and energize the warriors as it spirals ever upward and energy creates more energy.

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