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“The approach of today’s attractional church is like the Trojan Rabbit of Monty Python‘s Arthurian nincompoops–smuggled inside the castle walls with nobody inside.”
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Great brief biography of John Calvin. We liked Calvin so much we named our son after him.
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Contradicting the Celebrating
God is in the business of reconciliation. Paul said that God “reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).
This is what God did in Christ. This is what the divine Christ did. This is what happens when the fullness of God takes on flesh: He gives Himself to bring together what was split apart.
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It Feels Like Conflict
What is life in the Spirit like? Paul told the Corinthian Christians that they were a demonstration of the Spirit’s power (1 Corinthians 2:4). They didn’t get saved by fancy speech but through God’s supernatural work. Their change was like a recommendation letter, “written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God” (2 Corinthians 3:3). They were being transformed into the glorious image of Christ, and “this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
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Davids and Daniels
Not many Christians are wise, or influential, or popular by worldly standards. God can and does save people in those categories, but He calls us all to humility before the cross whatever our station. Most of us will never walk the corridors of power or have a theological insight go viral or impress a high number. Again, while God does call some Daniels and Davids, most of us will be like that guy who worshipped and obeyed the Lord that the Bible never mentioned.
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A Moral Pebble in Your Shoe
Rather than appreciate collateral blessings, our unbelieving culture would rather maneuver Christians off the hill of blessing altogether. More than that, they want us to feel guilty about the good we have. The right way for us to respond, which we’re discouraged from doing by the ones without the good, is to boast more. This requires a little fleshing out, and it’s not something that can be done properly in the flesh.
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Who Wants the Cross?
We do not use a crucifix as one of our symbols. A crucifix is a cross that has Jesus still hanging on it. This is the wrong image. He is not still dying, let alone being crucified again and again as the official doctrine of the Catholic mass teaches.
Christ is not still dying, but He will always be the one who died. Paul used the perfect tense in 1 Corinthians 1:23: “we preach a having been crucified Christ.
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Kneeling on Sundays
Of all things, kneeling on Sundays is in the news these days. Interesting, isn’t it? Our society still finds a story in symbols and liturgy. This does not mean that the ones kneeling or the ones standing or the ones talking about it on TV understand the story, but they all know that bodily posture matters. It has for a long time.
Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!
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Not Just Speech Patterns
I used to get very nervous when I heard others talk about “incarnating the gospel” and spent many energy dollars arguing against using that language. It used to be a popular expression among a group that downplayed doctrine and emphasized service, usually to the people more easily identified as “needy.” Isn’t the gospel news? Isn’t it truth that we tell? How can it be something that we do?
The gospel is truth, objective reality with meaning that can’t be changed.
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Bearing Their Gravitas
Which do you think is the greater problem in the church, placing too much value on preachers or too little? Good arguments could be made on both sides.
The existence of “celebrity” pastors is, sadly, a real thing. Calling some of them celebrities is unfair, since we typically call a celebrity someone who is famous for being famous. There are these types of celebrity pastors with mega-church book sales and TV audiences though they have nothing to say near as self-helping good as Marcus Aurelius/Tony Robbins.
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Perspective Fail
Our pursuit of righteousness is not only a personal pursuit. Paul urged his disciple, Timothy:
Flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. (2 Timothy 2:22)
We are in a battle against the world, the devil, and the sinful flesh (see Ephesians 2:2-3). There are “opponents” within and without (see 2 Timothy 2:25). Each soldier must do his part, fight in his part of the field, but it is because he is part of something bigger.
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Remembering How We Are Supposed to Die
Jesus told His disciples a number of things on the night He was betrayed including: “all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). Based on the letter we know as First Corinthians, it was hard to identify Christ’s disciples in Corinth.
Instead of love for one another they argued about who had social priority, who was part of the better “club” with the better preacher, who had the most important spiritual gift.
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The Debt Immense
Because of the way God created the world many things of value can be shared, but with totally different results. A shared reward is divided, a shared laugh is multiplied. A shared space subtracts the amount of room for you, a shared discovery adds to the joy.
There are similar created mysteries regarding debt. Some debts are big and others small, but a bigger debt might be less burdensome depending. What is owed?
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First, We Eat
The whole idea of living in such a way as to provoke an entire people group to jealousy is a lot of work. It’s good work, and it’s God’s plan, but where do we start.
First, we eat.
Jesus told a crowd that they should labor for the food that endures to eternal life. They asked, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” This is a huge question.
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Willing to Dig
Here are my notes from the ECS convocation a couple days ago.
Once upon a time in a land not so very far away, a small group of people lived where it rained almost every day. It rained so much that sometimes the people wondered if it would ever stop. It didn’t always rain at the same time or in the same amount, but it rained so frequently that everyone took water for granted.
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Jealous of a Complainer
How do you know that God is willing and working in you for His good pleasure? As you are working out your salvation with fear and trembling what is the result? If you could choose just one act of believing obedience to make a dent in the world, what would it be?
It’s possible that one thing answers all those questions. Though he doesn’t use the word, it connects Paul’s thoughts in Philippians 2:12-16.
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The Place of the Sulk
When we think about our salvation by grace and the fruits of grace that would provoke others to jealousy, even elect Israel (Romans 11:11), we do not deny “the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha” (John 19:17). We call it Calvary, from the Latin, Calvariae meaning “skull.” Jesus was tortured, mocked, and crucified at Calvary. He was crucified as a sinner so that He could be a substitute for sinners.
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Shape and Cadence
In perhaps the most well-known passage about salvation by grace through faith, one word is used three times. It isn’t grace, it isn’t faith, it isn’t saved, it isn’t Christ or God. The word is works.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
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Differences Are Assumed
It’s proverbial that everyone puts their pants on the same way: one leg at a time. And, not everyone wears the same size, type, or color of pants. Also, not everyone does the same work in their pants once they’ve got them on. This is not a deep parable.
We who come to the communion table hold something precious in common: our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. “The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?
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Broccoli for Dinner
The sage preacher once said, “Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil” (Ecclesiastes 8:11). Sinners can be teachable, especially when others are getting caught. They’re not concerned about violating a principle but about avoiding punishment. In Solomon’s day a delay could occur between the sentence being sorted out and carried out. How much more license in our day when judges can’t even define an “evil deed.
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A Long Session in the Same Direction
The sign of the old covenant was circumcision. There were other signs and symbols given by God to Israel to designate them as His own, but circumcision was the specific covenant mark. The sign of the new covenant is not baptism, at least it isn’t ever connected as such in the New Testament. While there are some similarities between the two initiating rites, especially that both happen at the beginning and ideally only once, nowhere do we read in the Bible about Christian baptism and a covenant.
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Bleeding Forgivness
Why does God forgive anyone? We come near the beginning of our worship service to confess our sins and seek His cleansing and forgiveness. God says that He will forgive those who repent and believe. He sent His Son as a substitute so that He could grant forgiveness without undermining justice. There is no question that He does forgive, but why does He do it?
He forgives because we need it.
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Even More Personal
In Luke’s account of Jesus instituting the Lord’s Supper, he chases the eating and drinking with two surprising things.
The first thing that Luke relates after the New Covenant meal is that “a dispute arose among them, as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest” (Luke 22:24). This may not be the correct chronology, as both Matthew’s account and John’s account of the night of Jesus’ betrayal do not mention this argument between the disciples as happening between the Last Supper and Gethsemane.
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What Is Earthly
There is a way that we must hate the things of earth so that we can also love the things of earth in a different way. In order to change the world we must not be slaves to the world; we cannot worship the world and offer that to God. That’s idolatry, and the Lord is jealous for His own glory.
So let us take very seriously our responsibility to hate the things of earth as God defines the things of earth.
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By Faith We Do Stuff
Our fellowship around the communion table is in faith. What we have in common is Christ, and how we hold onto Him is also the same: by faith.
Because we rely on Jesus, when we gather around the table we like to tell stories about those who lived (and died) by faith.
I love how tired the author of Hebrews got when giving history to his readers about those “of whom the world was not worthy.