Blog https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org Thu, 28 Mar 2024 08:40:27 -1000 http://churchplantmedia.com/ Sing to One Another https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/sing-to-one-another https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/sing-to-one-another#comments Wed, 24 May 2023 09:00:00 -1000 https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/sing-to-one-another "Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ"
(Ephesians 5:18b–20)

 

I want to briefly plead for us all regarding the music portion of our worship services, that we turn up the voices and turn down the musicians.

One awesome privilege we enjoy in these times is the accessibility of much excellent modern worship music that is theologically rich and quality in sound. My assumption is that many churches are singing songs written by the Getty’s, Indelible Grace, Matt Boswell, and Matt Papa. My concern here is not to address the need for more theological soundness in our music choices, but rather that, along with the accessibility of excellent modern worship music, many of us are tempted toward an over-professionalization of the music ministry. We are tempted to so match the quality and skill of the musicianship of modern recording artists, that we might underemphasize how much more important it is to hear the actual voices of the saints in our congregations. 

Ephesians 5:18–20 says that singing to one another is one of the ways to be filled with the Spirit. Is it possible that if we cannot hear each other’s voices while we sing, we are putting at risk the filling of the Spirit of Christ in our services that we so desperately need? It’s interesting that Paul says Spirit-filled singing is “addressing one another.” Isn’t singing in church supposed to be about addressing God? Of course. This is why he continues in the same sentence to say that we are at the same time “making melody to the Lord.” It’s both-and. Most of us are doing well at the to the Lord part. How are we doing in the addressing one another part?

There is a massive difference when attending a worship service where the musicians and singers are the dominant sound, and where the voices of the congregation are the dominant sound. 

The most important and dominant sound in the room during the music portion of our services ought to be the voice of the congregation. Of course, this is not to deny excellence in musicianship. But the point of excellence in musicianship is to support and drive the voices of the church. 

At my own church, the goal for the sound of our musicians is something like vanilla. Basic. Plain. Average. You can never go wrong with offering vanilla ice cream for dessert. Everyone will happily eat it. It’s almost nobody’s favorite. Nobody talks about how good it is, even though everyone likes it. It always satisfies a sweet tooth. Your church musicians do not need to sound professional to help the congregation sing to one another. Vanilla is fine. Whatever you experienced at a worship conference with the Getty’s or Shane and Shane or City Alight may have been good. But it is not ideal. The sound of the voices of the people of God singing to God and one another is ideal.

This may mean turning the volume of the musicians way down. It may mean scaling down the instrument variety to just a piano or guitar, and a simple cajon — vanilla. It may mean more acapella, especially if your church doesn’t have gifted musicians. And that’s ok. If your people are singing to one another and to the Lord, you are experiencing the ideal on Sundays. 

Notice also that a quality of Spirit-filled singing is that it is done “with all your heart.” There are many songs put out these days that are theologically rich, but musically difficult for most church members to sing — at least initially. If our people are struggling to sing, then they are likely not singing “from the heart.” Taking great care whenever we choose songs is an act of love and good-will toward our congregations. 

It's ok to sing songs that are musically difficult sometimes. “And Can it Be” by Charles Wesley is one example of a song with rich theology but advanced musicality. It is definitely doable. But remembering that we need our congregational singing to be with all the heart, we may need to be slower to introduce too many new or difficult songs. This takes wisdom as well as knowledge of your congregation, and each church will be different in applying this. 

Let us recover congregational singing. The Lord sits enthroned upon the praises of his people (Psalm 22:3). In John’s vision of the Revelation, he heard what sounded like the roar of rushing waters and peals of thunder (Rev. 19:6). What did he hear? Voices! “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns.” Our worship gatherings should match as close as possible heaven itself (see Matt 6:10). Sunday morning worship is the closest thing we have this side of heavenly worship. So let us sing to one another with music from our hearts to the Lord! 

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"Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ"
(Ephesians 5:18b–20)

 

I want to briefly plead for us all regarding the music portion of our worship services, that we turn up the voices and turn down the musicians.

One awesome privilege we enjoy in these times is the accessibility of much excellent modern worship music that is theologically rich and quality in sound. My assumption is that many churches are singing songs written by the Getty’s, Indelible Grace, Matt Boswell, and Matt Papa. My concern here is not to address the need for more theological soundness in our music choices, but rather that, along with the accessibility of excellent modern worship music, many of us are tempted toward an over-professionalization of the music ministry. We are tempted to so match the quality and skill of the musicianship of modern recording artists, that we might underemphasize how much more important it is to hear the actual voices of the saints in our congregations. 

Ephesians 5:18–20 says that singing to one another is one of the ways to be filled with the Spirit. Is it possible that if we cannot hear each other’s voices while we sing, we are putting at risk the filling of the Spirit of Christ in our services that we so desperately need? It’s interesting that Paul says Spirit-filled singing is “addressing one another.” Isn’t singing in church supposed to be about addressing God? Of course. This is why he continues in the same sentence to say that we are at the same time “making melody to the Lord.” It’s both-and. Most of us are doing well at the to the Lord part. How are we doing in the addressing one another part?

There is a massive difference when attending a worship service where the musicians and singers are the dominant sound, and where the voices of the congregation are the dominant sound. 

The most important and dominant sound in the room during the music portion of our services ought to be the voice of the congregation. Of course, this is not to deny excellence in musicianship. But the point of excellence in musicianship is to support and drive the voices of the church. 

At my own church, the goal for the sound of our musicians is something like vanilla. Basic. Plain. Average. You can never go wrong with offering vanilla ice cream for dessert. Everyone will happily eat it. It’s almost nobody’s favorite. Nobody talks about how good it is, even though everyone likes it. It always satisfies a sweet tooth. Your church musicians do not need to sound professional to help the congregation sing to one another. Vanilla is fine. Whatever you experienced at a worship conference with the Getty’s or Shane and Shane or City Alight may have been good. But it is not ideal. The sound of the voices of the people of God singing to God and one another is ideal.

This may mean turning the volume of the musicians way down. It may mean scaling down the instrument variety to just a piano or guitar, and a simple cajon — vanilla. It may mean more acapella, especially if your church doesn’t have gifted musicians. And that’s ok. If your people are singing to one another and to the Lord, you are experiencing the ideal on Sundays. 

Notice also that a quality of Spirit-filled singing is that it is done “with all your heart.” There are many songs put out these days that are theologically rich, but musically difficult for most church members to sing — at least initially. If our people are struggling to sing, then they are likely not singing “from the heart.” Taking great care whenever we choose songs is an act of love and good-will toward our congregations. 

It's ok to sing songs that are musically difficult sometimes. “And Can it Be” by Charles Wesley is one example of a song with rich theology but advanced musicality. It is definitely doable. But remembering that we need our congregational singing to be with all the heart, we may need to be slower to introduce too many new or difficult songs. This takes wisdom as well as knowledge of your congregation, and each church will be different in applying this. 

Let us recover congregational singing. The Lord sits enthroned upon the praises of his people (Psalm 22:3). In John’s vision of the Revelation, he heard what sounded like the roar of rushing waters and peals of thunder (Rev. 19:6). What did he hear? Voices! “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns.” Our worship gatherings should match as close as possible heaven itself (see Matt 6:10). Sunday morning worship is the closest thing we have this side of heavenly worship. So let us sing to one another with music from our hearts to the Lord! 

]]>
Why the Church Must Recover Its Vision for Education https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/why-the-church-must-recover-its-vision-for-education https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/why-the-church-must-recover-its-vision-for-education#comments Thu, 16 Feb 2023 10:00:00 -1000 https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/why-the-church-must-recover-its-vision-for-education If you were to search for “Christian school near me,” you would likely find a whole host of private Christian schools. But with how many of those schools does your church have a meaningful partnership or relationship? Other than a once-a-week youth group or Sunday School, what kind of investment has your church made in the education of your church’s children? Unfortunately the answer to these questions rarely reflects substantial engagement. This is a strange situation given the Church’s historic educational dynamism. On the whole the Church has lost her vision for seeing the school as a meaningful mission and ministry, and this will result in serious ramifications for the future. 

For most of church history we see a very organic partnership between church and schools. Since the early medieval era, we see the Church quickly planting schools. Alcuin, in the 800s, started a vibrant church school in Charlemagne’s court that was renowned for its jovial community and dynamic teachers. The famous Byzantine schools of Constantinople met in churches and monastery courtyards to train up their children. The universities in Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge all became centers of synergy that combined the ministry of the church and the school that shaped our entire civilization. 

And then we see the strong emphasis on education and schools during the Reformation period, as churches invested vast resources and energy into the education of their children. The missionary movement of the 19th century was also marked by countless churches and schools being planted around the world side-by-side as missionaries preached in the church on Sundays and taught in schools the rest of the week. The same can be said for the pioneers in North America: after they built their log cabins, the next priority was to build the church that would also be able to be used as a school. 

So what happened? Why don’t we see the church today having the same kind of engagement with education? 

In the decades following World War I, we see the birth of the “parachurch organization.” While many local congregations focused on the fundamentals and responded to liberalism at the seminary level, other entrepreneurial Christian groups formed across denominational boundaries. They began new civic and community service groups: Christian summer camps, the YMCA and YWCA, Christian aid organizations, Christian universities, Christian college ministries, and Christian schools. All these exploded across America. Most were not initiated by a single local church or denomination. These groups would become vital in providing the general context for the emergence of Non-Denominational Christianity in the 1970s and beyond. With the rise of these parachurch schools, the local church seems to have felt “unburdened” to participate in the education of their own children. However local churches today should recommit to engaging with Christian K-12 education in their community. 

Christian families are looking for ways to give their children a deeper foundation than a youth group program is able to give. The church is losing nearly two thirds of young adults who grow up in the church.* The local church must step into the lives of her children in a more intentional way. The church must take more initiative in the instruction of their children not just with moralistic training, but with a robust worldview framework that encompasses all areas of the intellectual life. Youth groups just aren’t enough.** The church must re-engage with education if we want our young people to catch a fully orbed vision of the Christian life lived out. 

Perhaps the most impact a church can make in this area would be by planting a new school program out of your church. Though this has a high cost, the benefits are even higher. Some churches are exploring a collaborative school approach, which means that students meet on the church campus for two or three days a week and the rest of the learning days are “homeschool days” at home with parents. This model side steps many of the overhead costs and burdens associated with a conventional school.  If your local church is small and doesn’t have the resources to start a school, you can begin having conversations with other like-minded churches about what it would look like in your context.

If starting or participating in running a school isn’t something your church could realistically do, there are other meaningful ways your congregation could engage in. If you have a church facility, you could consider affordably renting facilities out to a local Christian educational program during the week. Pastors could look for opportunities to teach a Theology class to high school students. Your church leaders could join the school board of the local Christian school.

The missional opportunity for the church in the area of education is tremendous. The educational landscape in America has become increasingly bleak for families seeking a gospel centered education. How the church responds (or doesn’t) in this cultural moment, will have ramifications for decades to come. The local church (or group of local churches) that can offer a quality Christian education at an affordable cost, will become a lighthouse in the community. The local church will earn credibility in the community for the ministry and service they provide, which will in turn open new opportunities to minister. Families that would never otherwise enter a church, will be open to sending their children to the church to be educated. These children will not only hear the gospel, but may also become familiar with the rhythms of prayer and worship of the church. 

The local church must recover her vision for the education of her children. Our children should be given the opportunity to have the church hold a significant voice in their education in a way that will create meaningful bonds that will last beyond their high school graduation. Our generation of pastors and Christian educators will have to answer to how we have invested in our children. How have we fed Christ’s youngest sheep? How have we prepared our children with imaginations saturated with God’s presence to go into the world to participate in new churches, new schools, new businesses, and new families? How the local church responds in this cultural moment will have repercussions that last for generations. 

https://www.barna.com/research/resilient-disciples/

** https://www.amazon.com/Juvenilization-American-Christianity-Thomas-Bergler/dp/0802866840

 

Recommended Resources

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If you were to search for “Christian school near me,” you would likely find a whole host of private Christian schools. But with how many of those schools does your church have a meaningful partnership or relationship? Other than a once-a-week youth group or Sunday School, what kind of investment has your church made in the education of your church’s children? Unfortunately the answer to these questions rarely reflects substantial engagement. This is a strange situation given the Church’s historic educational dynamism. On the whole the Church has lost her vision for seeing the school as a meaningful mission and ministry, and this will result in serious ramifications for the future. 

For most of church history we see a very organic partnership between church and schools. Since the early medieval era, we see the Church quickly planting schools. Alcuin, in the 800s, started a vibrant church school in Charlemagne’s court that was renowned for its jovial community and dynamic teachers. The famous Byzantine schools of Constantinople met in churches and monastery courtyards to train up their children. The universities in Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge all became centers of synergy that combined the ministry of the church and the school that shaped our entire civilization. 

And then we see the strong emphasis on education and schools during the Reformation period, as churches invested vast resources and energy into the education of their children. The missionary movement of the 19th century was also marked by countless churches and schools being planted around the world side-by-side as missionaries preached in the church on Sundays and taught in schools the rest of the week. The same can be said for the pioneers in North America: after they built their log cabins, the next priority was to build the church that would also be able to be used as a school. 

So what happened? Why don’t we see the church today having the same kind of engagement with education? 

In the decades following World War I, we see the birth of the “parachurch organization.” While many local congregations focused on the fundamentals and responded to liberalism at the seminary level, other entrepreneurial Christian groups formed across denominational boundaries. They began new civic and community service groups: Christian summer camps, the YMCA and YWCA, Christian aid organizations, Christian universities, Christian college ministries, and Christian schools. All these exploded across America. Most were not initiated by a single local church or denomination. These groups would become vital in providing the general context for the emergence of Non-Denominational Christianity in the 1970s and beyond. With the rise of these parachurch schools, the local church seems to have felt “unburdened” to participate in the education of their own children. However local churches today should recommit to engaging with Christian K-12 education in their community. 

Christian families are looking for ways to give their children a deeper foundation than a youth group program is able to give. The church is losing nearly two thirds of young adults who grow up in the church.* The local church must step into the lives of her children in a more intentional way. The church must take more initiative in the instruction of their children not just with moralistic training, but with a robust worldview framework that encompasses all areas of the intellectual life. Youth groups just aren’t enough.** The church must re-engage with education if we want our young people to catch a fully orbed vision of the Christian life lived out. 

Perhaps the most impact a church can make in this area would be by planting a new school program out of your church. Though this has a high cost, the benefits are even higher. Some churches are exploring a collaborative school approach, which means that students meet on the church campus for two or three days a week and the rest of the learning days are “homeschool days” at home with parents. This model side steps many of the overhead costs and burdens associated with a conventional school.  If your local church is small and doesn’t have the resources to start a school, you can begin having conversations with other like-minded churches about what it would look like in your context.

If starting or participating in running a school isn’t something your church could realistically do, there are other meaningful ways your congregation could engage in. If you have a church facility, you could consider affordably renting facilities out to a local Christian educational program during the week. Pastors could look for opportunities to teach a Theology class to high school students. Your church leaders could join the school board of the local Christian school.

The missional opportunity for the church in the area of education is tremendous. The educational landscape in America has become increasingly bleak for families seeking a gospel centered education. How the church responds (or doesn’t) in this cultural moment, will have ramifications for decades to come. The local church (or group of local churches) that can offer a quality Christian education at an affordable cost, will become a lighthouse in the community. The local church will earn credibility in the community for the ministry and service they provide, which will in turn open new opportunities to minister. Families that would never otherwise enter a church, will be open to sending their children to the church to be educated. These children will not only hear the gospel, but may also become familiar with the rhythms of prayer and worship of the church. 

The local church must recover her vision for the education of her children. Our children should be given the opportunity to have the church hold a significant voice in their education in a way that will create meaningful bonds that will last beyond their high school graduation. Our generation of pastors and Christian educators will have to answer to how we have invested in our children. How have we fed Christ’s youngest sheep? How have we prepared our children with imaginations saturated with God’s presence to go into the world to participate in new churches, new schools, new businesses, and new families? How the local church responds in this cultural moment will have repercussions that last for generations. 

https://www.barna.com/research/resilient-disciples/

** https://www.amazon.com/Juvenilization-American-Christianity-Thomas-Bergler/dp/0802866840

 

Recommended Resources

]]>
Pattern of Creation, Pattern of Worship https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/pattern-of-creation-pattern-of-worship https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/pattern-of-creation-pattern-of-worship#comments Tue, 07 Feb 2023 15:00:00 -1000 https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/pattern-of-creation-pattern-of-worship When God creates the world, the Bible tells us that he does so by speaking and/or singing it into existence (Ps. 33:6; Heb. 11:3). He creates it by his Word and Spirit (Gen 1:2-3). And the initial creation sequence follows a specific pattern: God lays-hold of something, he divides it, transforms it, unifies it, and judges it, declaring it “good” (or, in the case of Adam’s loneliness, “not good”).

To see how this works we can look at the very early verses of Genesis 1: God takes the formless void; He divides the Light from the Dark; He transforms it, calling one part “Day” and the other part “Night”; He unifies it, making Day and Night a single cycle of time; and then judges or evaluates it—He looks and sees that it is good (Gen. 1:2-5).

This pattern continues in the days of creation. It is how God builds.

We see it again, applied to the body of Adam in Genesis 2: It is not good that Adam is alone, so God decides to glorify the creation by giving Adam a Helper (Gen. 2:18). To do so God takes Adam and puts him into a deep sleep, a death-like state; He then divides Adam, taking a portion of his side (Gen 2:21). He transforms that division by building Eve from the “rib”; and then reunifies the creation—Man and Woman are intended to be “one flesh” (Gen 2:22). The work is evaluated and judged, Adam joins with God in declaring the majesty of His handiwork (Gen. 2:23).

We can follow this pattern throughout God’s covenantal history with Israel: continually in the Story God lays hold of His people; He divides them, taking them into the Flood or into Egypt or into Exile or giving them into the hand of Philistia and Midian; under the crucible of that division, God transforms His People, leading them “from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:18), from stone altars to a bronze altar, and from a Tent to a Temple. He also is faithful to reunite them after each transformative rescue. At the end of each season of Israel’s life God’s works and deeds are judged as right and good: Miriam leads the people with a tambourine (Ex. 15:20-22), Moses sings the song of the covenant (Deut. 32:1-47), Samuel raises his Ebenezer (1 Sam. 7:12), David dances mightily (2 Sam. 6:14-23), and so on.

If this is the pattern of creation, if this pattern runs with the grain of the cosmos, then it can be a helpful pattern by which to make sense of our own little works of creation. We are made in His Image, the way we make looks like the way He makes. Let me take my wife as an example:

Rachel ascends to the kitchen and lays her hand to undressed produce in our cupboards. Then she divides them, cutting onion, portioning shoyu and brown sugar, grating ginger, driving the caidao into the joints of the chicken. Then in a careful sequence, with all the artful habit of a Levite, she transforms these things by fire. The chicken is browned, the ginger charred, the onion sauteed, the shoyu and brown sugar reduced to a simmering syrup. In the end she unifies them in a single meal: it is now something more, something other, than the mere sum of its parts. She brings it to the table and, though we have no tambourine at the coast or raised rock outside of Beth-Shemesh, we judge, weigh, and evaluate it: “mmmmm, this is very good” and “brah broke da mouth.”

Here's the point: it should seem strange to us if our worship, if the worship of the Church on the Lord’s Day, departs from the pattern of Creation. If the pattern of our worship of the Lord of Creation runs against the grain of Creation, perhaps we need to reflect on why that is so. What is called “liturgy” is not a fancy word for high-churchmen. Liturgy names the pattern of worship by which the people of God render to Him true and laudable praisethe pattern by which we, the priesthood of all believers, participate in the renewal of all things for the glory of God.

Every church has a liturgy, a pattern of worship. The suggestion here is that, at minimum, the pattern of our worship should follow the pattern of creation. The liturgies of the historic reformers thought (and, often enough, fought) a lot about this. In general we can think of a basic pattern of worship on the Lord’s Day which draws its life from the pattern of Scripture in the following outline:

  1.     Laying-hold of: Worship should begin with the sound of Scripture calling us to worship, laying ahold of us as persons, and ordering us according to the Word of God. God welcomes us into His House and gathers us into the work of the Spirit.
  2.     Dividing: Worship cuts us up. The Word of God is a blade which divides bone and marrow (Heb. 4:12). We are pierced by the Gospel like the crowds at Pentecost (Acts 2:37), the fallow ground of the heart is ploughed (Hos. 10:12), and we are called to the glad Gospel act of confessing our sins and hearing the Good News that God forgives sinners (1 Tim. 1:15).
  3.     Transforming: The Word of God and the Spirit of God also transform us. We are not like what we once were (1 Cor. 6:11). We are those who “have been with the Lord” (Acts 4:13). We are renewed inwardly (2 Cor. 4:16). The praises of the people of Yahweh ring-out and incorporate me in the sound of the Lord’s Victory (Ps. 118:15). We also bring to the Lord the gifts of our hands: tithes and offerings, art and music, song and teaching, ourselves and our families. We give unto the Lord what He has given us and find them, like ourselves, transformed in the process.
  4.     Unifying/Glorifying: Christian worship culminates in the Dominical Sacraments, in Baptism and Holy Communionthe New Birth and the New Meal the Lord gave us and told us, explicitly, to do until He comes again (Matthew 28:19-20; Lk. 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:26). In both of these we are unified. We are unified with Christ, having died and been raised with Him (Col. 2:20; 3:1-3), we share in His life; we fellowship in His sufferings, and share in His Resurrection (Phil. 3:10). And we are also unified with each other being “one in the Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:17) and “one body with many members” (1 Cor. 12:12-27). This is New Testament theology par excellence: Having shared one loaf (1 Cor. 10:17) and one baptism (Eph. 4:5), we share one Lord (Eph. 4:6), who is the head of the Church (Col. 1:18).
  5.     Evaluating/Judging: Worship should conclude with the sound of rejoicing, which is the right evaluation of all that God has done. The Father, through his Son, has found us “good” and we who have been with him, have declared him “good” as well. We have tasted and have seen the goodness of the Lord (Ps. 34:8). We leave the worship of the Lord’s Day “rejoicing in the power of the Spirit” (Rom. 15:13), and sent-out into the world (to our homes and neighborhoods and schools) proclaiming all that the Lord has done for us (Mk. 5:19).

When the wisemen come to adore the baby Jesus and present him with gifts, I do not think that Mary or Joseph ask category questions about the regulative or normative principle in worship. Nor do I think they pondered how to make the moment as culturally-sensitive as possible. I think they recognized in the pattern of that worship the pattern of the Lord of all Creation who, at that moment, sat enthroned upon the lap of his mother, ruling over the lords of the East. Let us follow their example, and allow our worship to be conformed to the Lord of Creation.



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When God creates the world, the Bible tells us that he does so by speaking and/or singing it into existence (Ps. 33:6; Heb. 11:3). He creates it by his Word and Spirit (Gen 1:2-3). And the initial creation sequence follows a specific pattern: God lays-hold of something, he divides it, transforms it, unifies it, and judges it, declaring it “good” (or, in the case of Adam’s loneliness, “not good”).

To see how this works we can look at the very early verses of Genesis 1: God takes the formless void; He divides the Light from the Dark; He transforms it, calling one part “Day” and the other part “Night”; He unifies it, making Day and Night a single cycle of time; and then judges or evaluates it—He looks and sees that it is good (Gen. 1:2-5).

This pattern continues in the days of creation. It is how God builds.

We see it again, applied to the body of Adam in Genesis 2: It is not good that Adam is alone, so God decides to glorify the creation by giving Adam a Helper (Gen. 2:18). To do so God takes Adam and puts him into a deep sleep, a death-like state; He then divides Adam, taking a portion of his side (Gen 2:21). He transforms that division by building Eve from the “rib”; and then reunifies the creation—Man and Woman are intended to be “one flesh” (Gen 2:22). The work is evaluated and judged, Adam joins with God in declaring the majesty of His handiwork (Gen. 2:23).

We can follow this pattern throughout God’s covenantal history with Israel: continually in the Story God lays hold of His people; He divides them, taking them into the Flood or into Egypt or into Exile or giving them into the hand of Philistia and Midian; under the crucible of that division, God transforms His People, leading them “from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:18), from stone altars to a bronze altar, and from a Tent to a Temple. He also is faithful to reunite them after each transformative rescue. At the end of each season of Israel’s life God’s works and deeds are judged as right and good: Miriam leads the people with a tambourine (Ex. 15:20-22), Moses sings the song of the covenant (Deut. 32:1-47), Samuel raises his Ebenezer (1 Sam. 7:12), David dances mightily (2 Sam. 6:14-23), and so on.

If this is the pattern of creation, if this pattern runs with the grain of the cosmos, then it can be a helpful pattern by which to make sense of our own little works of creation. We are made in His Image, the way we make looks like the way He makes. Let me take my wife as an example:

Rachel ascends to the kitchen and lays her hand to undressed produce in our cupboards. Then she divides them, cutting onion, portioning shoyu and brown sugar, grating ginger, driving the caidao into the joints of the chicken. Then in a careful sequence, with all the artful habit of a Levite, she transforms these things by fire. The chicken is browned, the ginger charred, the onion sauteed, the shoyu and brown sugar reduced to a simmering syrup. In the end she unifies them in a single meal: it is now something more, something other, than the mere sum of its parts. She brings it to the table and, though we have no tambourine at the coast or raised rock outside of Beth-Shemesh, we judge, weigh, and evaluate it: “mmmmm, this is very good” and “brah broke da mouth.”

Here's the point: it should seem strange to us if our worship, if the worship of the Church on the Lord’s Day, departs from the pattern of Creation. If the pattern of our worship of the Lord of Creation runs against the grain of Creation, perhaps we need to reflect on why that is so. What is called “liturgy” is not a fancy word for high-churchmen. Liturgy names the pattern of worship by which the people of God render to Him true and laudable praisethe pattern by which we, the priesthood of all believers, participate in the renewal of all things for the glory of God.

Every church has a liturgy, a pattern of worship. The suggestion here is that, at minimum, the pattern of our worship should follow the pattern of creation. The liturgies of the historic reformers thought (and, often enough, fought) a lot about this. In general we can think of a basic pattern of worship on the Lord’s Day which draws its life from the pattern of Scripture in the following outline:

  1.     Laying-hold of: Worship should begin with the sound of Scripture calling us to worship, laying ahold of us as persons, and ordering us according to the Word of God. God welcomes us into His House and gathers us into the work of the Spirit.
  2.     Dividing: Worship cuts us up. The Word of God is a blade which divides bone and marrow (Heb. 4:12). We are pierced by the Gospel like the crowds at Pentecost (Acts 2:37), the fallow ground of the heart is ploughed (Hos. 10:12), and we are called to the glad Gospel act of confessing our sins and hearing the Good News that God forgives sinners (1 Tim. 1:15).
  3.     Transforming: The Word of God and the Spirit of God also transform us. We are not like what we once were (1 Cor. 6:11). We are those who “have been with the Lord” (Acts 4:13). We are renewed inwardly (2 Cor. 4:16). The praises of the people of Yahweh ring-out and incorporate me in the sound of the Lord’s Victory (Ps. 118:15). We also bring to the Lord the gifts of our hands: tithes and offerings, art and music, song and teaching, ourselves and our families. We give unto the Lord what He has given us and find them, like ourselves, transformed in the process.
  4.     Unifying/Glorifying: Christian worship culminates in the Dominical Sacraments, in Baptism and Holy Communionthe New Birth and the New Meal the Lord gave us and told us, explicitly, to do until He comes again (Matthew 28:19-20; Lk. 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:26). In both of these we are unified. We are unified with Christ, having died and been raised with Him (Col. 2:20; 3:1-3), we share in His life; we fellowship in His sufferings, and share in His Resurrection (Phil. 3:10). And we are also unified with each other being “one in the Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:17) and “one body with many members” (1 Cor. 12:12-27). This is New Testament theology par excellence: Having shared one loaf (1 Cor. 10:17) and one baptism (Eph. 4:5), we share one Lord (Eph. 4:6), who is the head of the Church (Col. 1:18).
  5.     Evaluating/Judging: Worship should conclude with the sound of rejoicing, which is the right evaluation of all that God has done. The Father, through his Son, has found us “good” and we who have been with him, have declared him “good” as well. We have tasted and have seen the goodness of the Lord (Ps. 34:8). We leave the worship of the Lord’s Day “rejoicing in the power of the Spirit” (Rom. 15:13), and sent-out into the world (to our homes and neighborhoods and schools) proclaiming all that the Lord has done for us (Mk. 5:19).

When the wisemen come to adore the baby Jesus and present him with gifts, I do not think that Mary or Joseph ask category questions about the regulative or normative principle in worship. Nor do I think they pondered how to make the moment as culturally-sensitive as possible. I think they recognized in the pattern of that worship the pattern of the Lord of all Creation who, at that moment, sat enthroned upon the lap of his mother, ruling over the lords of the East. Let us follow their example, and allow our worship to be conformed to the Lord of Creation.



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The Importance of Studying Church History https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/the-importance-of-studying-church-history https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/the-importance-of-studying-church-history#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2023 11:00:00 -1000 https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/the-importance-of-studying-church-history Every local church should learn from Church History in order to grow spiritually. Church history technically starts at Genesis 1.26—the creation of God’s people—but when referring to Church history in this blog, I’m referring to the study of the history of God’s people from post-book of Acts (around AD 70) to the present. And learning from that history is a must for every Christian.

Scriptural reasons to study Church History

1. The world is headed in a certain direction

Revelation 21.1: Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more—this is where all of history was headed ever since Genesis 1. If you believe God is sovereign, then you believe when He first created the heavens and the earth in the beginning, He had the end of all things in mind—He declares the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46.10)—and He has been working all things according to the counsel of His will (Ephesians 1.11). So any part of history you study, you will recognize God moving things toward the final state.

2. God is specifically building His Church

Matthew 16:18: And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.—This is one of Jesus’ promises of victory over the devil that connects all the way back to Genesis 3.15, where God promised the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. There’s been a war ever since, and the Christian church is a part of that war. So as you study history, and look for the Christian Church, you will see Jesus building and protecting and upholding and disciplining—and always loving His Church. 

3. We are supposed to learn from the errors of others

In 1 Corinthians 10, after explaining about Israel’s failures in the wilderness, Paul says in v6: Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. –Paul teaches us that Christians of the past are examples to us. Paul is inspired by the Spirit when he teaches us that we are supposed to learn from the mistakes of those who have gone before us. 

4. We are supposed to learn from the faith of others

Hebrews 11.1–2: Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation—and then the author of Hebrews tells us how all our family members of the past have done wonderful things for the kingdom, and also suffered for the sake of Christ, by faith. And we are supposed to learn from them and be encouraged by them. In other words, the inspired Word exhorts us to learn from the faith of previous generations.

5. There is a very thin line between “obey your leaders” and “obey leaders from the past”

The line is so thin that I, personally, don’t draw the line. Hebrews 13.17: Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.—God commands all Christians to obey the leaders in their life. Obey your pastors. They are keeping watch over your souls. Christian church leaders are a great gift to Christians. 

Right before that, the author said in verse 7: Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.– “Those who spoke”—past tense—the word of God. “Consider the outcome of their way of life”—he is speaking of leaders who have died. And then he follows it right up with verse 8: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

You can listen to the voice of leaders from the past because the Jesus they served is the same Jesus you serve today. 

Pastors have always been the teachers of the Christian church. And so we need to remember our leaders and all the faithful leaders who have proclaimed Jesus Christ, the one who is the same today as he was a thousand years ago and a thousand years before that. Studying Church history helps us stay in the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 4).

 

Recommended Resources:

  • Dowley, Tim, ed. Introduction to the History of Christianity, 3rd ed. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2018.
  • Noll, Mark. Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012.
  • Trueman, Carl. The Creedal Imperative. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012.



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Every local church should learn from Church History in order to grow spiritually. Church history technically starts at Genesis 1.26—the creation of God’s people—but when referring to Church history in this blog, I’m referring to the study of the history of God’s people from post-book of Acts (around AD 70) to the present. And learning from that history is a must for every Christian.

Scriptural reasons to study Church History

1. The world is headed in a certain direction

Revelation 21.1: Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more—this is where all of history was headed ever since Genesis 1. If you believe God is sovereign, then you believe when He first created the heavens and the earth in the beginning, He had the end of all things in mind—He declares the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46.10)—and He has been working all things according to the counsel of His will (Ephesians 1.11). So any part of history you study, you will recognize God moving things toward the final state.

2. God is specifically building His Church

Matthew 16:18: And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.—This is one of Jesus’ promises of victory over the devil that connects all the way back to Genesis 3.15, where God promised the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. There’s been a war ever since, and the Christian church is a part of that war. So as you study history, and look for the Christian Church, you will see Jesus building and protecting and upholding and disciplining—and always loving His Church. 

3. We are supposed to learn from the errors of others

In 1 Corinthians 10, after explaining about Israel’s failures in the wilderness, Paul says in v6: Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. –Paul teaches us that Christians of the past are examples to us. Paul is inspired by the Spirit when he teaches us that we are supposed to learn from the mistakes of those who have gone before us. 

4. We are supposed to learn from the faith of others

Hebrews 11.1–2: Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation—and then the author of Hebrews tells us how all our family members of the past have done wonderful things for the kingdom, and also suffered for the sake of Christ, by faith. And we are supposed to learn from them and be encouraged by them. In other words, the inspired Word exhorts us to learn from the faith of previous generations.

5. There is a very thin line between “obey your leaders” and “obey leaders from the past”

The line is so thin that I, personally, don’t draw the line. Hebrews 13.17: Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.—God commands all Christians to obey the leaders in their life. Obey your pastors. They are keeping watch over your souls. Christian church leaders are a great gift to Christians. 

Right before that, the author said in verse 7: Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.– “Those who spoke”—past tense—the word of God. “Consider the outcome of their way of life”—he is speaking of leaders who have died. And then he follows it right up with verse 8: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

You can listen to the voice of leaders from the past because the Jesus they served is the same Jesus you serve today. 

Pastors have always been the teachers of the Christian church. And so we need to remember our leaders and all the faithful leaders who have proclaimed Jesus Christ, the one who is the same today as he was a thousand years ago and a thousand years before that. Studying Church history helps us stay in the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 4).

 

Recommended Resources:

  • Dowley, Tim, ed. Introduction to the History of Christianity, 3rd ed. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2018.
  • Noll, Mark. Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012.
  • Trueman, Carl. The Creedal Imperative. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012.



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Celebrating the New Year with Old Readings https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/celebrating-the-new-year-with-old-readings https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/celebrating-the-new-year-with-old-readings#comments Mon, 02 Jan 2023 13:00:00 -1000 https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/celebrating-the-new-year-with-old-readings The New Year has come, and so also our resolutions. Whether you’re determined to start a diet or form fresh habits or simply to pick up a new hobby, there are many ways to start this New Year “anew.” For Christians, reading often can be included in such New Year’s resolutions. Every year new books are published and each may grab our attention—fiction and non-fiction alike. While “new” has brought many great things and has done much for the church (everything has been new in its own time), one of the best ways to learn and start afresh is dusting off the old books by saints from the longtime past. There is a significant benefit to refresh ourselves with timeless classics—old works that have shaped us and continue to shape us. What is this benefit and why are old(er) classical books in the Christian tradition beneficial? To answer this, we can learn from C. S. Lewis.

C. S. Lewis, in his introduction to Saint Athanasius’ classic work, On the Incarnation, offers us lucid rationale as to why we ought to read “old” works from Christians before us. He opens his “Introduction” to the classic work by saying, “There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books” (p. 9). He gives the example that many people, instead of reading Plato himself, read books about Plato and Platonism (p. 9). However, Lewis finds this bewildering. He writes, “It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than second hand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful” (p. 9, emphasis added). 

Take careful notice here—“much easier and more delightful,” says Lewis. How can this be so? Think of, for example, the children’s game of “Telephone.” One person whispers a sentence in another person’s ear, that person then relays the sentence to the next person, and so on and so forth until the last person tries to reiterate the sentence, yet most of the time, the sentence “gets lost in translation,” as the saying goes, and the final person says something quite different than the first. This illustrates what often happens with books. The (good) contemporary theologians build from what the early theologians wrote, but reading someone who writes stuff about what someone else said can be a bit confusing and muddying. Lewis gives this example: If two people had a conversation starting early morning, and then “If you join at eleven o’clock,” you certainly will not fully understand the whole conversation (p. 10). This is the case for good books—they are “conversations” of doctrine (i.e., teaching) that has been already taught (to teach something truly “new” is a dangerous thing in theology). Starting with newer books is like coming late to a conversation in Lewis’ mind.

In this light, Lewis offers some advice: “If he [‘the ordinary reader’] must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old” (p. 10). Why would Lewis suggest this? He answers, “I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet” (p. 10 emphasis added). But why would Lewis want to “protect” the “ordinary reader—the “amateur”—from reading only “new” or modern books? Lewis explains, saying, “A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications … have to be brought to light” (p. 10).

The image Lewis provides is stellar. Like a new vehicle must go through multiple tests (tech tests, crash tests, etc.) before it hits full production and the market, a new book still needs to be determined if it is really “worthy” of our limited time, in part, because it might be false. Unlike classic works that are still read and still influence us today that have passed the test of time, such “new” books have yet to pass that test. Many new books often won’t and don’t pass that test. And since we are finite creatures, sheep that need a shepherd, we ought to be shepherded by those who have proven not to be wolves, or at minimum, those that won’t unintentionally lead us down unwanted paths.

To be clear, Lewis just before this does say that he does “not wish the ordinary read to read no modern books” (p.10). Lewis rather suggests that “It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between” (p. 10). 

As a professor (a green one at that!), I try to implement such rationale of using old, timeless classics, requiring my students to read works from, for example, Athanasius (On the Incarnation), Augustine (On the Trinity), Anselm (Proslogion or Why God Became Man), Thomas Aquinas (Summa theologiae), John Calvin (Institutes of the Christian Religion), Francis Turretin (Institutes of Elenctic Theology), and though a bit more modern, Herman Bavinck (Reformed Dogmatics). Or my colleague requires his students to read is the fantastic work by Irenaeus, On the Apostolic Preaching. I’m not perfect at this and I still require my students to read a host of contemporary works (e.g., Scott Swain, John Webster, etc.), but I do find that the classic works are often just that—classic.

For this new year, I think pastors and church leaders would do well to recommend not only new books to their sheep, but that they recommend the books that have passed the test of time—those great classic books in the Christian tradition that continue to shape, encourage, and teach us today (even if indirectly). Where could you start? The Center for Baptist Renewal (CBR) has a great list here and here. I for one led a study at a church on a modified version CBR’s list of classics, and it was a joy. And so, as we enter the New Year, I encourage pastors and church leaders to celebrate the New Year by reading old books, for their teaching is both timeless and refreshing.

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The New Year has come, and so also our resolutions. Whether you’re determined to start a diet or form fresh habits or simply to pick up a new hobby, there are many ways to start this New Year “anew.” For Christians, reading often can be included in such New Year’s resolutions. Every year new books are published and each may grab our attention—fiction and non-fiction alike. While “new” has brought many great things and has done much for the church (everything has been new in its own time), one of the best ways to learn and start afresh is dusting off the old books by saints from the longtime past. There is a significant benefit to refresh ourselves with timeless classics—old works that have shaped us and continue to shape us. What is this benefit and why are old(er) classical books in the Christian tradition beneficial? To answer this, we can learn from C. S. Lewis.

C. S. Lewis, in his introduction to Saint Athanasius’ classic work, On the Incarnation, offers us lucid rationale as to why we ought to read “old” works from Christians before us. He opens his “Introduction” to the classic work by saying, “There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books” (p. 9). He gives the example that many people, instead of reading Plato himself, read books about Plato and Platonism (p. 9). However, Lewis finds this bewildering. He writes, “It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than second hand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful” (p. 9, emphasis added). 

Take careful notice here—“much easier and more delightful,” says Lewis. How can this be so? Think of, for example, the children’s game of “Telephone.” One person whispers a sentence in another person’s ear, that person then relays the sentence to the next person, and so on and so forth until the last person tries to reiterate the sentence, yet most of the time, the sentence “gets lost in translation,” as the saying goes, and the final person says something quite different than the first. This illustrates what often happens with books. The (good) contemporary theologians build from what the early theologians wrote, but reading someone who writes stuff about what someone else said can be a bit confusing and muddying. Lewis gives this example: If two people had a conversation starting early morning, and then “If you join at eleven o’clock,” you certainly will not fully understand the whole conversation (p. 10). This is the case for good books—they are “conversations” of doctrine (i.e., teaching) that has been already taught (to teach something truly “new” is a dangerous thing in theology). Starting with newer books is like coming late to a conversation in Lewis’ mind.

In this light, Lewis offers some advice: “If he [‘the ordinary reader’] must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old” (p. 10). Why would Lewis suggest this? He answers, “I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet” (p. 10 emphasis added). But why would Lewis want to “protect” the “ordinary reader—the “amateur”—from reading only “new” or modern books? Lewis explains, saying, “A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications … have to be brought to light” (p. 10).

The image Lewis provides is stellar. Like a new vehicle must go through multiple tests (tech tests, crash tests, etc.) before it hits full production and the market, a new book still needs to be determined if it is really “worthy” of our limited time, in part, because it might be false. Unlike classic works that are still read and still influence us today that have passed the test of time, such “new” books have yet to pass that test. Many new books often won’t and don’t pass that test. And since we are finite creatures, sheep that need a shepherd, we ought to be shepherded by those who have proven not to be wolves, or at minimum, those that won’t unintentionally lead us down unwanted paths.

To be clear, Lewis just before this does say that he does “not wish the ordinary read to read no modern books” (p.10). Lewis rather suggests that “It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between” (p. 10). 

As a professor (a green one at that!), I try to implement such rationale of using old, timeless classics, requiring my students to read works from, for example, Athanasius (On the Incarnation), Augustine (On the Trinity), Anselm (Proslogion or Why God Became Man), Thomas Aquinas (Summa theologiae), John Calvin (Institutes of the Christian Religion), Francis Turretin (Institutes of Elenctic Theology), and though a bit more modern, Herman Bavinck (Reformed Dogmatics). Or my colleague requires his students to read is the fantastic work by Irenaeus, On the Apostolic Preaching. I’m not perfect at this and I still require my students to read a host of contemporary works (e.g., Scott Swain, John Webster, etc.), but I do find that the classic works are often just that—classic.

For this new year, I think pastors and church leaders would do well to recommend not only new books to their sheep, but that they recommend the books that have passed the test of time—those great classic books in the Christian tradition that continue to shape, encourage, and teach us today (even if indirectly). Where could you start? The Center for Baptist Renewal (CBR) has a great list here and here. I for one led a study at a church on a modified version CBR’s list of classics, and it was a joy. And so, as we enter the New Year, I encourage pastors and church leaders to celebrate the New Year by reading old books, for their teaching is both timeless and refreshing.

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On Advent and Hopeful Waiting https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/on-advent-and-hopeful-waiting https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/on-advent-and-hopeful-waiting#comments Tue, 29 Nov 2022 12:00:00 -1000 https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/on-advent-and-hopeful-waiting In response to the mad rush of the season that has now come to span Halloween to New Year’s Day, “the holiday season,” Christian leaders and writers have renewed the idea that it is good to wait for Christmas and that “Advent” is the name of the Christian season marked-out for that waiting. Sermons, devotional books, Bible-studies, etc., are churned-out with increasing strength encouraging us to labor long in the waiting for the celebration of Christmas. “Let the sweet fruit of the annual celebration of the Holy Nativity ripen to its fullness” is the central teaching. Yes and amen! This is great news. We must indeed learn to wait.

What I want to comment on here, however, is not a mere renewal of the call to wait through the four weeks of Advent but is to reflect on what it is exactly that Advent teaches us to wait for. Advent, after all, does not mean “waiting” it actually means “appearing.” If Christmas celebrates the Birth of Christ, his first Advent which already happened, then what does our current observance of Advent teach us to wait for? What is the Appearing that the Church finds herself awaiting?

When asked like this the answer becomes obvious: we are waiting for his Return, the joyful and terrible Appearing for which the Church waits in hope (Titus 2:13-14). Christ has come and Christ will come again. Advent reminds the Church that we live in the waiting. The season of Advent is not a time for practicing a kind of waiting which we never do during the rest of the year. It is, rather, an intensification of the waiting that the Church exists in until Christ comes again to judge the living and the dead. In so doing, a well-kept Advent forms in us endurance and patience and glory as we groan inwardly for the renewal of all things (cf. Rom. 5:4, 8:23; 2 Cor. 5:2).

We remember the waiting of all of creation for that first Advent two millennia ago, even as we ourselves wait with all creation for the long-expected second Advent which lies gloriously ahead of us. Waiting during the season of Advent for the arrival of Christmas teaches us to wait for the Resurrection with hope. Rushing to seize the fruit of Christmas early, before it is time, is hopeless on a calendrical level in the same way that rushing to revolt and actualize an over-realized eschaton is hopeless on a political level. The hopelessness in both cases results from doubts that what we have been promised is coming will actually arrive. We doubt the promises, either doubting that He will be faithful to us this Christmas or doubting that He will be faithful to us in the End.

Advent is not just a season that teaches us “waiting” in some unqualified sense. Advent serves to teach us hopeful waiting. We are not like the men in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, who are waiting for something—anything—to happen (or maybe for nothing at all). We are waiting in hope for our Redeemer.

There’s a homiletical application here as well as a pastoral one. Advent sermons should concern themselves less with the run-of-the-mill preaching themes for pre-Christmas season (Gratitude, Year-End-Giving, Wonder, Christmas, etc.) and more with the Promise of His Appearing (2 Tim. 2:4-8). In the pain and difficulty of waiting, good Advent preaching should fill us with the hope that our “redeemer lives, and that at the last He shall stand upon the earth” and that with our eyes we shall see him face to face (Job 19:25-27). 

The pastoral application is this: hopeful waiting is a kind of trial, a kind of inward suffering. Waiting means “not moving-on” and demands the cost of foreclosed options we could have pursued if we had stopped waiting and “made things happen”—if we had just listened to the voice of Job’s wife who encourages us to just curse God and be done with it (Job 2:9). There is a kind of agony in allowing the Christmas season to come slowly, to watch it creep in, just as there is a kind of agony is laboring for the Gospel, watching it likewise creep in and work slowly, like leaven in a lump of dough (cf. Mark 13:33).

Particularly, contemporary culture is marked by a profound antipathy towards waiting and a simultaneous tendency to render everything difficult and “un-positive” as painful and therefore morally wrong. We want everything immediate, microwaved, high-speed 5G, and un-mediated by time, creation, or persons. For our culture even the microseconds required to buffer the next episode of The Great British Bake Off are experienced as a kind of suffering. Pastoral care and attention must be given to discipling those entrusted to our care in the holy waiting which marks the Church as we await the Second Coming.

We cannot merely call our churches and ministries to waiting, and to learn waiting in the rhythms of Advent. We must also pastor them through the intense difficulty of waiting in a culture of instant gratification. We must make the theological connection for them that when waiting becomes excruciating it is because “excruciating” means “coming from the Cross” and that Christ of the Cross is being formed in us while we wait (Gal. 4:19; Col. 1:27).

Advent is, finally, a season for singing the songs of waiting. Save the Christmas hymns for that last week before the 25th of December, spend Advent singing songs that give language to the inward groan of the Spirit. Begin with the Psalms and spiritual songs of Scripture (Eph. 5:19): the Magnificat (Lk. 1:46-56), Psalm 43, the Dignus est Agnus (Rev. 5:9-13), and the Venite (Ps. 95:1-11, 96:13) are absolute “musts.” And then move on to the great Advent hymns: O Come O Come Emmanuel, Hills of the North Rejoice, Come Thou Redeemer of the Earth, and Lo He Comes with Clouds Descending are all great selections.

Hopeful waiting is the work of the Church in this age and it is difficult. Advent intensifies the waiting and helps form us as a people who wait well, with lamps trimmed and burning (Matt. 25:1-13; cf. Luke 12:35). In all of the planning meetings surrounding Advent and Christmas let us consider how we can preach the Promise of his Appearing, pastor our people in the difficulty of waiting, and how we can transform that waiting into praise by turning it into song.

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In response to the mad rush of the season that has now come to span Halloween to New Year’s Day, “the holiday season,” Christian leaders and writers have renewed the idea that it is good to wait for Christmas and that “Advent” is the name of the Christian season marked-out for that waiting. Sermons, devotional books, Bible-studies, etc., are churned-out with increasing strength encouraging us to labor long in the waiting for the celebration of Christmas. “Let the sweet fruit of the annual celebration of the Holy Nativity ripen to its fullness” is the central teaching. Yes and amen! This is great news. We must indeed learn to wait.

What I want to comment on here, however, is not a mere renewal of the call to wait through the four weeks of Advent but is to reflect on what it is exactly that Advent teaches us to wait for. Advent, after all, does not mean “waiting” it actually means “appearing.” If Christmas celebrates the Birth of Christ, his first Advent which already happened, then what does our current observance of Advent teach us to wait for? What is the Appearing that the Church finds herself awaiting?

When asked like this the answer becomes obvious: we are waiting for his Return, the joyful and terrible Appearing for which the Church waits in hope (Titus 2:13-14). Christ has come and Christ will come again. Advent reminds the Church that we live in the waiting. The season of Advent is not a time for practicing a kind of waiting which we never do during the rest of the year. It is, rather, an intensification of the waiting that the Church exists in until Christ comes again to judge the living and the dead. In so doing, a well-kept Advent forms in us endurance and patience and glory as we groan inwardly for the renewal of all things (cf. Rom. 5:4, 8:23; 2 Cor. 5:2).

We remember the waiting of all of creation for that first Advent two millennia ago, even as we ourselves wait with all creation for the long-expected second Advent which lies gloriously ahead of us. Waiting during the season of Advent for the arrival of Christmas teaches us to wait for the Resurrection with hope. Rushing to seize the fruit of Christmas early, before it is time, is hopeless on a calendrical level in the same way that rushing to revolt and actualize an over-realized eschaton is hopeless on a political level. The hopelessness in both cases results from doubts that what we have been promised is coming will actually arrive. We doubt the promises, either doubting that He will be faithful to us this Christmas or doubting that He will be faithful to us in the End.

Advent is not just a season that teaches us “waiting” in some unqualified sense. Advent serves to teach us hopeful waiting. We are not like the men in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, who are waiting for something—anything—to happen (or maybe for nothing at all). We are waiting in hope for our Redeemer.

There’s a homiletical application here as well as a pastoral one. Advent sermons should concern themselves less with the run-of-the-mill preaching themes for pre-Christmas season (Gratitude, Year-End-Giving, Wonder, Christmas, etc.) and more with the Promise of His Appearing (2 Tim. 2:4-8). In the pain and difficulty of waiting, good Advent preaching should fill us with the hope that our “redeemer lives, and that at the last He shall stand upon the earth” and that with our eyes we shall see him face to face (Job 19:25-27). 

The pastoral application is this: hopeful waiting is a kind of trial, a kind of inward suffering. Waiting means “not moving-on” and demands the cost of foreclosed options we could have pursued if we had stopped waiting and “made things happen”—if we had just listened to the voice of Job’s wife who encourages us to just curse God and be done with it (Job 2:9). There is a kind of agony in allowing the Christmas season to come slowly, to watch it creep in, just as there is a kind of agony is laboring for the Gospel, watching it likewise creep in and work slowly, like leaven in a lump of dough (cf. Mark 13:33).

Particularly, contemporary culture is marked by a profound antipathy towards waiting and a simultaneous tendency to render everything difficult and “un-positive” as painful and therefore morally wrong. We want everything immediate, microwaved, high-speed 5G, and un-mediated by time, creation, or persons. For our culture even the microseconds required to buffer the next episode of The Great British Bake Off are experienced as a kind of suffering. Pastoral care and attention must be given to discipling those entrusted to our care in the holy waiting which marks the Church as we await the Second Coming.

We cannot merely call our churches and ministries to waiting, and to learn waiting in the rhythms of Advent. We must also pastor them through the intense difficulty of waiting in a culture of instant gratification. We must make the theological connection for them that when waiting becomes excruciating it is because “excruciating” means “coming from the Cross” and that Christ of the Cross is being formed in us while we wait (Gal. 4:19; Col. 1:27).

Advent is, finally, a season for singing the songs of waiting. Save the Christmas hymns for that last week before the 25th of December, spend Advent singing songs that give language to the inward groan of the Spirit. Begin with the Psalms and spiritual songs of Scripture (Eph. 5:19): the Magnificat (Lk. 1:46-56), Psalm 43, the Dignus est Agnus (Rev. 5:9-13), and the Venite (Ps. 95:1-11, 96:13) are absolute “musts.” And then move on to the great Advent hymns: O Come O Come Emmanuel, Hills of the North Rejoice, Come Thou Redeemer of the Earth, and Lo He Comes with Clouds Descending are all great selections.

Hopeful waiting is the work of the Church in this age and it is difficult. Advent intensifies the waiting and helps form us as a people who wait well, with lamps trimmed and burning (Matt. 25:1-13; cf. Luke 12:35). In all of the planning meetings surrounding Advent and Christmas let us consider how we can preach the Promise of his Appearing, pastor our people in the difficulty of waiting, and how we can transform that waiting into praise by turning it into song.

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Preparing for Advent with Three Christological "Rules" for Reading https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/preparing-for-advent-with-three-christological--rules--for-reading https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/preparing-for-advent-with-three-christological--rules--for-reading#comments Fri, 18 Nov 2022 08:00:00 -1000 https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/preparing-for-advent-with-three-christological--rules--for-reading The Advent season—the season in which we remember and celebrate the miraculous incarnation and eagerly await the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ—is just around the corner (Nov. 27th – Dec 24th) this year. There are numerous ways we can “prepare” for the great celebration of Christmas (after Thanksgiving, of course, for those of you already listening to Christmas music). Jokes aside, I’d like to propose just one way for pastors and church leaders who are entrusted to read and teach Scripture and to help others read and teach Scripture. How can we faithfully do such in this upcoming Advent season? Again, this is just a way, not the way or the only way, but nonetheless, a good way to help us prepare for Advent.

In their recent book, Biblical Reasoning, R. B. Jamieson and Tyler R. Wittman deliver a significant aid for interpretation of Scripture by showing Scripture’s own “rules” for interpreting Scripture, specifically in relation to its trinitarian and Christological content. Given that it’s almost “the most wonderful time of the year,” as even the pagans admit, let us consider three Christological “rules” from this book for interpreting Scripture as we prepare to celebrate and await Christ this upcoming season.

Three “Rules” 

We now come to three “rules” for accurate Christological reading. We’re beginning near the end of their book, so these are rules 7–9 of Biblical Reasoning. The following summarizes, in brief, their content.

Rule 7: The eternal, divine Son is the sole subject of everything Jesus does and suffers. Christ is one prison, one agent, one ‘who.’ Therefore, in reading Scripture’s witness to Christ we must never divine Christ’s acts between two acting subjects, attributing some to the divine Son and others to the human Jesus as if there were two different people” (p. 126).

In other words, because Jesus is one person, not two persons, we must approach Scripture knowing that whatever Jesus does, it is his one person acting—the divine Son.

Rule 8: Since Christ is a single divine person who subsists in both a divine and a human nature, Scripture sometimes names him according to one nature and predicates of him what belongs to the other nature. Scripture ascribes divine prerogatives to the man Jesus, and human acts and sufferings to the divine Son. So read Scripture in a way that recognizes and reproduces this paradoxical grammar of Christological predication” (p. 126).

In other words, because Jesus is one person—the second person of the Trinity, i.e., the eternal begotten, divine Son—who, in his incarnation, has two distinct natures, we predicate the things of both natures to his one person. Here we see what is commonly referred to as the communicatio idiomatum (“communication of attributes/properties/idioms”) (see pp. 141–145). All things of the Christ—divine and human—are said of his one person, which can seem to be a “paradox”: the divine Son is said to do human acts (eating, dying, etc.) and the man Jesus born of Mary is “Immanuel,” “God with us” who has authority to forgive sins (see pp. 146–148) and commands the wind and the waves (see pp. 148–149). 

Rule 9: Scripture speaks of Christ in a twofold manner: some things are said of him as divine, and other things are said of him as human. Biblical reasoning discerns that Scripture speaks of the one Christ in two registers in order to contemplate the whole Christ. Therefore read Scripture in such a way that you discern the different registers in which Scripture speaks of Christ, yet without dividing him” (p. 153).

In other words, because Jesus has two distinct natures—divine and human, and so is fully God and fully man—and since these natures remain distinct, it is not surprising for us to see “paradoxical,” to borrow a term from the authors (also see Jamieson’s book, The Paradox of Sonship), things being spoken of about the one person of Jesus, the divine Son. This is what they label as “partitive exegesis” (p. 156, 163–167) where Scripture talks about Jesus as “one ‘who’ with two ‘whats’” (p. 156). Jamieson and Wittman refer us to Romans for two clear examples of this.

First, in Romans 1, Paul says that “Christ Jesus” (v. 1), is God’s “Son” (vv. 2–4), and yet is the one “who was descended [γενομένου; genomenou] from David according to the flesh [κατὰ σάρκα; kata sarka]” (v. 3). Commenting on this verse, they show that the Greek of the passage tells us Jesus “came into existence ‘by means of the seed of David’ … So Paul names Jesus as God’s Son and narrates the event of his incarnation—his assumption of human life and lineage derived from his mother” (p. 157). They note that the “partitive qualifier ‘according to the flesh’ should pop off the page. No one speaks of their lineage this way, and for good reason. It would be inelegant and unnecessary—unless, of course, there is more to one’s lineage … Jesus is not only David’s son but also God’s Son” (p. 157.)

Second, in Romans 9, Paul writes, “To them [the ethnic Jews] belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen” (v. 5). Notice again Paul’s use of “according to the flesh” (identical Greek to Rom 1:3) here (see p. 157). And yet Paul calls Christ “God” (see pp. 157–158).

These three rules derived from Scripture itself help us read Scripture and confess Jesus for who he is and what he has done in a faithful manner. Understanding Scripture’s speech about Christ is integral for understanding and confessing who Jesus is—“the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16). But what does it mean that Jesus is this anointed one? And what does it mean that Jesus is the Son? After all, others were anointed and we are called sons of God (Gal 4:5). These rules help us honor Jesus in confessing him as the enterally only begotten, divine Son of God, of one substance with the Father, who “became flesh” (John 1:1), as the creeds say, “for us and for our salvation.”

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The Advent season—the season in which we remember and celebrate the miraculous incarnation and eagerly await the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ—is just around the corner (Nov. 27th – Dec 24th) this year. There are numerous ways we can “prepare” for the great celebration of Christmas (after Thanksgiving, of course, for those of you already listening to Christmas music). Jokes aside, I’d like to propose just one way for pastors and church leaders who are entrusted to read and teach Scripture and to help others read and teach Scripture. How can we faithfully do such in this upcoming Advent season? Again, this is just a way, not the way or the only way, but nonetheless, a good way to help us prepare for Advent.

In their recent book, Biblical Reasoning, R. B. Jamieson and Tyler R. Wittman deliver a significant aid for interpretation of Scripture by showing Scripture’s own “rules” for interpreting Scripture, specifically in relation to its trinitarian and Christological content. Given that it’s almost “the most wonderful time of the year,” as even the pagans admit, let us consider three Christological “rules” from this book for interpreting Scripture as we prepare to celebrate and await Christ this upcoming season.

Three “Rules” 

We now come to three “rules” for accurate Christological reading. We’re beginning near the end of their book, so these are rules 7–9 of Biblical Reasoning. The following summarizes, in brief, their content.

Rule 7: The eternal, divine Son is the sole subject of everything Jesus does and suffers. Christ is one prison, one agent, one ‘who.’ Therefore, in reading Scripture’s witness to Christ we must never divine Christ’s acts between two acting subjects, attributing some to the divine Son and others to the human Jesus as if there were two different people” (p. 126).

In other words, because Jesus is one person, not two persons, we must approach Scripture knowing that whatever Jesus does, it is his one person acting—the divine Son.

Rule 8: Since Christ is a single divine person who subsists in both a divine and a human nature, Scripture sometimes names him according to one nature and predicates of him what belongs to the other nature. Scripture ascribes divine prerogatives to the man Jesus, and human acts and sufferings to the divine Son. So read Scripture in a way that recognizes and reproduces this paradoxical grammar of Christological predication” (p. 126).

In other words, because Jesus is one person—the second person of the Trinity, i.e., the eternal begotten, divine Son—who, in his incarnation, has two distinct natures, we predicate the things of both natures to his one person. Here we see what is commonly referred to as the communicatio idiomatum (“communication of attributes/properties/idioms”) (see pp. 141–145). All things of the Christ—divine and human—are said of his one person, which can seem to be a “paradox”: the divine Son is said to do human acts (eating, dying, etc.) and the man Jesus born of Mary is “Immanuel,” “God with us” who has authority to forgive sins (see pp. 146–148) and commands the wind and the waves (see pp. 148–149). 

Rule 9: Scripture speaks of Christ in a twofold manner: some things are said of him as divine, and other things are said of him as human. Biblical reasoning discerns that Scripture speaks of the one Christ in two registers in order to contemplate the whole Christ. Therefore read Scripture in such a way that you discern the different registers in which Scripture speaks of Christ, yet without dividing him” (p. 153).

In other words, because Jesus has two distinct natures—divine and human, and so is fully God and fully man—and since these natures remain distinct, it is not surprising for us to see “paradoxical,” to borrow a term from the authors (also see Jamieson’s book, The Paradox of Sonship), things being spoken of about the one person of Jesus, the divine Son. This is what they label as “partitive exegesis” (p. 156, 163–167) where Scripture talks about Jesus as “one ‘who’ with two ‘whats’” (p. 156). Jamieson and Wittman refer us to Romans for two clear examples of this.

First, in Romans 1, Paul says that “Christ Jesus” (v. 1), is God’s “Son” (vv. 2–4), and yet is the one “who was descended [γενομένου; genomenou] from David according to the flesh [κατὰ σάρκα; kata sarka]” (v. 3). Commenting on this verse, they show that the Greek of the passage tells us Jesus “came into existence ‘by means of the seed of David’ … So Paul names Jesus as God’s Son and narrates the event of his incarnation—his assumption of human life and lineage derived from his mother” (p. 157). They note that the “partitive qualifier ‘according to the flesh’ should pop off the page. No one speaks of their lineage this way, and for good reason. It would be inelegant and unnecessary—unless, of course, there is more to one’s lineage … Jesus is not only David’s son but also God’s Son” (p. 157.)

Second, in Romans 9, Paul writes, “To them [the ethnic Jews] belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen” (v. 5). Notice again Paul’s use of “according to the flesh” (identical Greek to Rom 1:3) here (see p. 157). And yet Paul calls Christ “God” (see pp. 157–158).

These three rules derived from Scripture itself help us read Scripture and confess Jesus for who he is and what he has done in a faithful manner. Understanding Scripture’s speech about Christ is integral for understanding and confessing who Jesus is—“the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16). But what does it mean that Jesus is this anointed one? And what does it mean that Jesus is the Son? After all, others were anointed and we are called sons of God (Gal 4:5). These rules help us honor Jesus in confessing him as the enterally only begotten, divine Son of God, of one substance with the Father, who “became flesh” (John 1:1), as the creeds say, “for us and for our salvation.”

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“Understanding Your Mormon Neighbor” https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/-understanding-your-mormon-neighbor- https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/-understanding-your-mormon-neighbor-#comments Fri, 14 Oct 2022 14:00:00 -1000 https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/-understanding-your-mormon-neighbor- At this point in the evangelical church, it is almost a cliche to speak of the most effective form of evangelism as “personal evangelism.” Ask any church member about some best practices for gaining gospel opportunities, and they would probably say something with regards to hospitality, building relationships, and getting to know who you are talking with. For anyone who is serious about Jesus’ message of salvation by grace alone, this message is absolutely central, and non-negotiable. However, there remains the perpetual question of how (Matt. 10:19) to share this message in a way that is understandable to the recipient. In the words of Proverbs 16:23, “The heart of the wise makes his speech judicious and adds persuasiveness to his lips.” Most missiologists call this idea contextualization.  The person seeking to share Jesus’ good news, desires to make the message understandable in order that people might see its relevance.

However, in the location that I minister, contextualization is more of an afterthought. The evangelistic approach that most people want to employ in our area goes something like this: “If I can tear this worldview apart as fast as possible, while simultaneously insulting everything this group holds dear, they will become Christians. And I will get patted on the back by other Christians and churches.” Where might this bombastic mission field exist? In what local people have long called “Mormon Town,” otherwise known as Laie, on the island of Oahu. Although most people would theologically and practically subscribe to the above mentioned style of compassionate personal evangelism, when in contact with a person from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS for brevity) there is a default that most evangelicals reset to—that of apologetics (a verbal defense of the faith) or polemics (an active tearing down of counter perspectives).

Please hear me: there is nothing wrong with polemics or apologetics, indeed, I have been greatly ministered to in my own faith through apologetic ministries. And, truly, apologetics play a massive role in the conversion of many Mormons to a true understanding of who Jesus is and a clear delineation of the blessed gospel of grace. However, when this is our first impulse as we seek to minister the good news, our mindset shifts from the living room to the octagon so to speak. It is no longer about loving conversation and a winsome presentation of the gospel, gently correcting, and supplementing information, but about theological argumentation and philosophical domination. Though we all know the well worn evangelistic cliche, “Win the argument, lose the soul,” we don’t seem to care as much when it comes to someone from the LDS community.

Perhaps no book has better helped me (a recovering aggravated assaulting apologist) to see this inconsistency than Ross Anderson’s book Understanding Your Mormon Neighbor. Ross is a former Mormon, who is now a seasoned pastor continuing to minister to LDS people in Utah. What he delineates is a revolutionary idea, that really is not revolutionary in any other context, and it is this: approach Mormonism as a culture and not just a cult. Shocking I know. The simplicity and profundity of this concept is plain. The strategy is merely taking our well-known, well-trudged, and widely accepted practices of missiology and applying them to a Mormon context.

When one does this, we begin seeing the Mormon community as a mission field in need of gospel proclamation, and not as heretics in need of an inquisition. Please do not misunderstand me—Mormonism is a cult. It denies multiple essential components of the gospel (see Travis Kerns’ article), however, Mormons are still people. Most of whom have never heard the true gospel, many of whom have been victimized by the LDS church themselves (see the many secular and Christian support groups that seek to help heal the trauma of the LDS religion). Furthermore, the congregating of many of those with the same belief system, values, and vicinity creates a culture, not all of which is bad because of His common grace (Matt. 5:45).

Tim Keller says in Center Church, “The gospel has supernatural versatility to address the particular hopes, fears, and idols of every culture and every person. This points us to the need for contextualization” (p. 44). I wonder sometimes if our theology of the gospel is too thin as we minister to our mormon neighbors. What I mean to say is that, many of us become insecure of the power of the gospel when we come in contact with cult members, and thus, abandon the work of contextualization, and trust in the power of apologetics more than the power of the Spirit through the proclamation of the good news. Again, apologetics is vital, and even vital in serving the mormon community. The question is, are we abusing the discipline of apologetics in order to hide what is truly going on in our hearts—a lack of faith that the gospel can save?

In preparation for planting our church, my wife and I traveled to Utah to talk to those who are doing this hard work of contextualization and outreach among the LDS community. What they had found over decades of ministering to those in the Mormon community is that, although many of them had met born again christians on their 2 year mission trips (a relatively common cultural aspect of young people’s lives), most of those encounters were not marked by love, but by doors slammed in their faces. While I understand the desire for doctrinal purity, the danger of wolves in sheep’s clothing, and the zeal to “contend for the faith” (Jude 3), Christians must also understand that the people in the Mormon community are still image bearers of God. They are still our neighbors whom we are admonished to show Christ’s love (Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:39).

Let us never forget that we too were once enemies of the cross, in dire need of hearing the life changing message of the gospel of grace (Rom. 5:8, 10), bought through the shed blood of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. This is my plea to you brothers and sisters: Before you look at someone from the LDS church as a cult member or wolf, see them as a person, a person in need of the gospel. Then talk with them as you would with any other person about the gospel, seeking to apply the beauty of Jesus’ message to the pain points in their lives, remembering that this is how many of us came to faith as well. Trust in the power of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Mormon.

 

—Oahu Pastor

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At this point in the evangelical church, it is almost a cliche to speak of the most effective form of evangelism as “personal evangelism.” Ask any church member about some best practices for gaining gospel opportunities, and they would probably say something with regards to hospitality, building relationships, and getting to know who you are talking with. For anyone who is serious about Jesus’ message of salvation by grace alone, this message is absolutely central, and non-negotiable. However, there remains the perpetual question of how (Matt. 10:19) to share this message in a way that is understandable to the recipient. In the words of Proverbs 16:23, “The heart of the wise makes his speech judicious and adds persuasiveness to his lips.” Most missiologists call this idea contextualization.  The person seeking to share Jesus’ good news, desires to make the message understandable in order that people might see its relevance.

However, in the location that I minister, contextualization is more of an afterthought. The evangelistic approach that most people want to employ in our area goes something like this: “If I can tear this worldview apart as fast as possible, while simultaneously insulting everything this group holds dear, they will become Christians. And I will get patted on the back by other Christians and churches.” Where might this bombastic mission field exist? In what local people have long called “Mormon Town,” otherwise known as Laie, on the island of Oahu. Although most people would theologically and practically subscribe to the above mentioned style of compassionate personal evangelism, when in contact with a person from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS for brevity) there is a default that most evangelicals reset to—that of apologetics (a verbal defense of the faith) or polemics (an active tearing down of counter perspectives).

Please hear me: there is nothing wrong with polemics or apologetics, indeed, I have been greatly ministered to in my own faith through apologetic ministries. And, truly, apologetics play a massive role in the conversion of many Mormons to a true understanding of who Jesus is and a clear delineation of the blessed gospel of grace. However, when this is our first impulse as we seek to minister the good news, our mindset shifts from the living room to the octagon so to speak. It is no longer about loving conversation and a winsome presentation of the gospel, gently correcting, and supplementing information, but about theological argumentation and philosophical domination. Though we all know the well worn evangelistic cliche, “Win the argument, lose the soul,” we don’t seem to care as much when it comes to someone from the LDS community.

Perhaps no book has better helped me (a recovering aggravated assaulting apologist) to see this inconsistency than Ross Anderson’s book Understanding Your Mormon Neighbor. Ross is a former Mormon, who is now a seasoned pastor continuing to minister to LDS people in Utah. What he delineates is a revolutionary idea, that really is not revolutionary in any other context, and it is this: approach Mormonism as a culture and not just a cult. Shocking I know. The simplicity and profundity of this concept is plain. The strategy is merely taking our well-known, well-trudged, and widely accepted practices of missiology and applying them to a Mormon context.

When one does this, we begin seeing the Mormon community as a mission field in need of gospel proclamation, and not as heretics in need of an inquisition. Please do not misunderstand me—Mormonism is a cult. It denies multiple essential components of the gospel (see Travis Kerns’ article), however, Mormons are still people. Most of whom have never heard the true gospel, many of whom have been victimized by the LDS church themselves (see the many secular and Christian support groups that seek to help heal the trauma of the LDS religion). Furthermore, the congregating of many of those with the same belief system, values, and vicinity creates a culture, not all of which is bad because of His common grace (Matt. 5:45).

Tim Keller says in Center Church, “The gospel has supernatural versatility to address the particular hopes, fears, and idols of every culture and every person. This points us to the need for contextualization” (p. 44). I wonder sometimes if our theology of the gospel is too thin as we minister to our mormon neighbors. What I mean to say is that, many of us become insecure of the power of the gospel when we come in contact with cult members, and thus, abandon the work of contextualization, and trust in the power of apologetics more than the power of the Spirit through the proclamation of the good news. Again, apologetics is vital, and even vital in serving the mormon community. The question is, are we abusing the discipline of apologetics in order to hide what is truly going on in our hearts—a lack of faith that the gospel can save?

In preparation for planting our church, my wife and I traveled to Utah to talk to those who are doing this hard work of contextualization and outreach among the LDS community. What they had found over decades of ministering to those in the Mormon community is that, although many of them had met born again christians on their 2 year mission trips (a relatively common cultural aspect of young people’s lives), most of those encounters were not marked by love, but by doors slammed in their faces. While I understand the desire for doctrinal purity, the danger of wolves in sheep’s clothing, and the zeal to “contend for the faith” (Jude 3), Christians must also understand that the people in the Mormon community are still image bearers of God. They are still our neighbors whom we are admonished to show Christ’s love (Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:39).

Let us never forget that we too were once enemies of the cross, in dire need of hearing the life changing message of the gospel of grace (Rom. 5:8, 10), bought through the shed blood of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. This is my plea to you brothers and sisters: Before you look at someone from the LDS church as a cult member or wolf, see them as a person, a person in need of the gospel. Then talk with them as you would with any other person about the gospel, seeking to apply the beauty of Jesus’ message to the pain points in their lives, remembering that this is how many of us came to faith as well. Trust in the power of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Mormon.

 

—Oahu Pastor

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Confessing Mystery and Talking about the Trinity https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/confessing-mystery-and-talking-about-the-trinity https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/confessing-mystery-and-talking-about-the-trinity#comments Thu, 06 Oct 2022 14:00:00 -1000 https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/confessing-mystery-and-talking-about-the-trinity The Holy Trinity is the core confession of the Christian faith that lies behind all the biblical content believers confess to be true. It is only by God’s kind condescension in revealing himself that we know him as Trinity. “It is,” as Thomas Aquinas puts it, “impossible to attain to the knowledge of the Trinity by natural reason … by natural reason we can know what belongs to the unity of the essence, but not what belongs to the distinction of the persons”(a). Apart from divine revelation, adequate knowledge of the Trinity is not had, and so eternal life would not be enjoyed by God’s creatures. However, God the Trinity has revealed himself as he is: “No one has ever seen God; the only begotten God [μονογενὴς θεὸς; monogenēs theos(b)], who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:18); “we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God” (1 Cor 2:12). Nonetheless, that God has faithfully revealed himself as he is—as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—does not mean that our knowledge of him is exhaustive or comprehensive. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity remains mysterious.

Such a confession of “mystery” aligns well with the Christian tradition. Take, for example, post-Reformation theologian, Francis Turretin: “In the Christian religion there are two questions above all others which are difficult. The first concerns the unity of the three persons in the one essence of the Trinity; the other concerns the union of the two natures in the one person in the incarnation”(c). In much earlier circles, one of the Cappadocian church fathers, Gregory of Nazianzus, writes, “To know God is hard, to describe him impossible … mentally to grasp so great a matter is utterly beyond real possibility”(d). So why would we say anything at all about such sacred teaching and reality beyond our intellectual grasp?

Among the numerous reasons to speak about the Trinity (and there really are numerous reasons), space limits me to discuss only one here: the doctrine of the Trinity “pervades”(e) every component of the Christian confession of faith from beginning to end (f). Herman Bavinck says, “The confession of the Trinity is the heartbeat of the Christian religion”(g). He adds, “For the church, the doctrine of the Trinity was the dogma and hence the mystery par excellence. The essence of Christianity … could only be maintained, the church believed, if it was grounded in the ontological Trinity”(h).

The doctrine of the Trinity is not only the “heartbeat” and “essence of Christianity,” but it also acts, as it were, a sort of formal entryway in the Christian faith. In this regard, Scott Swain connects baptism—the entrance rite of Christianity—to the Trinity(i). Jesus himself commissions his disciples, saying, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt 28:19). In other words, the formal entrance into Christianity is a rite that involves a trinitarian formula—there is one singular name (τὸ ὄνομα; to onoma), and this singular name is of three persons: Father, Son, and Spirit(j)—wherein we begin “to ‘put on’ the reality signified and sealed to us through baptism in God’s triune name,” namely, that “In baptism the God who is Father, Son, and Spirit signifies and seals to us that he is our Father, through union with the Son, by the indwelling of the Spirit and that we are God’s sons and daughters, fellow heirs with Christ of an eternal kingdom”(k). Put simply, on account of the baptism formula ordained by our Lord Jesus himself, the Trinity is part of the formal Christian basics. 

If this is true, pastors and teachers should not shy away from teaching about the Trinity despite its immense difficulty. That the Trinity is “mystery” does caution what we say about and how far we go in our speech about God, but that does not require us to be completely silent about the doctrine. If (1) the Trinity is the “heartbeat” and “essence of Christianity,” as Bavinck says it is, and (2) if the trinitarian formula is engrained in the entrance rite of Christianity, and (3) if, as Calvin writes, “The final goal of the blessed life, moreover, rests in the knowledge of God”(l), then talking about the Trinity is both joyful and necessary for the Christian life. 

Additionally, we might say something briefly about why talking about the Trinity is worthwhile. We can learn from two prominent figures from the Christian tradition who wrote seminal pieces on the Trinity: Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.

First, in his seminal work, On the Trinity, Augustine famously wrote: “where we are seeking the unity of the three, of Father and Son and Holy Spirit … [there is] nowhere else a mistake more dangerous, or the search more laborious, or discovery more advantageous”(m).

Second, Thomas Aquinas has likewise famously written on the benefits and necessity of speaking about the Trinity, which in one sense elaborates on Augustine’s more general statement:

"There are two reasons why the knowledge of the divine persons was necessary for us. It was necessary for the right idea of creation. The fact of saying that God made all things by His Word excludes the error of those who say that God produced things by necessity. When we say that in Him there is a procession of love, we show that God produced creatures not because He needed them, nor because of any other extrinsic reason, but on account of the love of His own goodness … In another way, and chiefly, that we may think rightly concerning the salvation of the human race, accomplished by the Incarnate Son, and by the gift of the Holy Spirit."(n)

To close, let us recall and enjoy Paul’s trinitarian benediction to the church of Corinth: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor 13:14).

 

References:
a. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae Ia.32.1 resp.
b. For an understanding of this term, see Charles Lee Irons, “A Lexical Defense of the Johannine ‘Only Begotten,’” in Retrieving Eternal Generation, eds. Fred Sanders and Scott R. Swain.
c. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, XIII.xi.1.
d. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 28.4 in On God and Christ.
e. I thank Matt Crutchmer for this terminology.
f. John Webster saw this especially well. See John Webster, God Without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology, vol. 1, God and the Works of God.
g. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, 227.
h. Bavinck, RDA, 230.
i. See Scott R. Swain, The Trinity: An Introduction, 16–17, 27–28.
j. See Swain, The Trinity, 30–31.
k. Swain, The Trinity, 17.
l. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion I.v.1.
m. Augustine, De Trinitate (On the Trinity), I.5.
n. Aquinas, ST Ia.32.1 ad. 3.

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The Holy Trinity is the core confession of the Christian faith that lies behind all the biblical content believers confess to be true. It is only by God’s kind condescension in revealing himself that we know him as Trinity. “It is,” as Thomas Aquinas puts it, “impossible to attain to the knowledge of the Trinity by natural reason … by natural reason we can know what belongs to the unity of the essence, but not what belongs to the distinction of the persons”(a). Apart from divine revelation, adequate knowledge of the Trinity is not had, and so eternal life would not be enjoyed by God’s creatures. However, God the Trinity has revealed himself as he is: “No one has ever seen God; the only begotten God [μονογενὴς θεὸς; monogenēs theos(b)], who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:18); “we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God” (1 Cor 2:12). Nonetheless, that God has faithfully revealed himself as he is—as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—does not mean that our knowledge of him is exhaustive or comprehensive. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity remains mysterious.

Such a confession of “mystery” aligns well with the Christian tradition. Take, for example, post-Reformation theologian, Francis Turretin: “In the Christian religion there are two questions above all others which are difficult. The first concerns the unity of the three persons in the one essence of the Trinity; the other concerns the union of the two natures in the one person in the incarnation”(c). In much earlier circles, one of the Cappadocian church fathers, Gregory of Nazianzus, writes, “To know God is hard, to describe him impossible … mentally to grasp so great a matter is utterly beyond real possibility”(d). So why would we say anything at all about such sacred teaching and reality beyond our intellectual grasp?

Among the numerous reasons to speak about the Trinity (and there really are numerous reasons), space limits me to discuss only one here: the doctrine of the Trinity “pervades”(e) every component of the Christian confession of faith from beginning to end (f). Herman Bavinck says, “The confession of the Trinity is the heartbeat of the Christian religion”(g). He adds, “For the church, the doctrine of the Trinity was the dogma and hence the mystery par excellence. The essence of Christianity … could only be maintained, the church believed, if it was grounded in the ontological Trinity”(h).

The doctrine of the Trinity is not only the “heartbeat” and “essence of Christianity,” but it also acts, as it were, a sort of formal entryway in the Christian faith. In this regard, Scott Swain connects baptism—the entrance rite of Christianity—to the Trinity(i). Jesus himself commissions his disciples, saying, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt 28:19). In other words, the formal entrance into Christianity is a rite that involves a trinitarian formula—there is one singular name (τὸ ὄνομα; to onoma), and this singular name is of three persons: Father, Son, and Spirit(j)—wherein we begin “to ‘put on’ the reality signified and sealed to us through baptism in God’s triune name,” namely, that “In baptism the God who is Father, Son, and Spirit signifies and seals to us that he is our Father, through union with the Son, by the indwelling of the Spirit and that we are God’s sons and daughters, fellow heirs with Christ of an eternal kingdom”(k). Put simply, on account of the baptism formula ordained by our Lord Jesus himself, the Trinity is part of the formal Christian basics. 

If this is true, pastors and teachers should not shy away from teaching about the Trinity despite its immense difficulty. That the Trinity is “mystery” does caution what we say about and how far we go in our speech about God, but that does not require us to be completely silent about the doctrine. If (1) the Trinity is the “heartbeat” and “essence of Christianity,” as Bavinck says it is, and (2) if the trinitarian formula is engrained in the entrance rite of Christianity, and (3) if, as Calvin writes, “The final goal of the blessed life, moreover, rests in the knowledge of God”(l), then talking about the Trinity is both joyful and necessary for the Christian life. 

Additionally, we might say something briefly about why talking about the Trinity is worthwhile. We can learn from two prominent figures from the Christian tradition who wrote seminal pieces on the Trinity: Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.

First, in his seminal work, On the Trinity, Augustine famously wrote: “where we are seeking the unity of the three, of Father and Son and Holy Spirit … [there is] nowhere else a mistake more dangerous, or the search more laborious, or discovery more advantageous”(m).

Second, Thomas Aquinas has likewise famously written on the benefits and necessity of speaking about the Trinity, which in one sense elaborates on Augustine’s more general statement:

"There are two reasons why the knowledge of the divine persons was necessary for us. It was necessary for the right idea of creation. The fact of saying that God made all things by His Word excludes the error of those who say that God produced things by necessity. When we say that in Him there is a procession of love, we show that God produced creatures not because He needed them, nor because of any other extrinsic reason, but on account of the love of His own goodness … In another way, and chiefly, that we may think rightly concerning the salvation of the human race, accomplished by the Incarnate Son, and by the gift of the Holy Spirit."(n)

To close, let us recall and enjoy Paul’s trinitarian benediction to the church of Corinth: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor 13:14).

 

References:
a. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae Ia.32.1 resp.
b. For an understanding of this term, see Charles Lee Irons, “A Lexical Defense of the Johannine ‘Only Begotten,’” in Retrieving Eternal Generation, eds. Fred Sanders and Scott R. Swain.
c. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, XIII.xi.1.
d. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 28.4 in On God and Christ.
e. I thank Matt Crutchmer for this terminology.
f. John Webster saw this especially well. See John Webster, God Without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology, vol. 1, God and the Works of God.
g. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, 227.
h. Bavinck, RDA, 230.
i. See Scott R. Swain, The Trinity: An Introduction, 16–17, 27–28.
j. See Swain, The Trinity, 30–31.
k. Swain, The Trinity, 17.
l. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion I.v.1.
m. Augustine, De Trinitate (On the Trinity), I.5.
n. Aquinas, ST Ia.32.1 ad. 3.

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What Is the Christian Sabbath? https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/what-is-the-christian-sabbath https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/what-is-the-christian-sabbath#comments Thu, 29 Sep 2022 09:00:00 -1000 https://hawaii.thegospelcoalition.org/blog/post/what-is-the-christian-sabbath What Is the Christian Sabbath? 

I have found many Christians resist the Sabbath as a New Covenant ordinance mainly because of bad representations of Sabbatarianism. There are obviously many Christians who reject the Sabbath because of biblical arguments, but my aim is to eliminate bad Sabbatarianism as a reason for rejection. Please allow me to attempt to encourage you with a positive—I think beautiful—case for what Christians should do on Sundays. If you’re a non-Sabbatarian, I hope this will make you at least think, “Sabbatarians are not crazy.” If you are a Sabbatarian, I hope this will strengthen your observance of the Lord’s Day. 

One key for Sabbath-keeping is to hear what Jesus said in Mark 2.27. The Pharisees rebuked the disciples for harvesting grain on a Sabbath. Jesus corrected them by explaining they were not sinning in doing so, just as David was not sinning by feeding his cohort with priestly bread. The moral law of love superseded ceremonial commands about the priesthood. In a similar way, he reminded the Pharisees, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.In other words, the Sabbath is for our good; it is not a lord for us to bow down to. We do not serve it; it serves us. The Sabbath is a gift.

A gift from who? Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made.” Made by whom? 

Answer: God made the Sabbath, and made it as a gift for us.

That begs the question: When did he make it?

The obvious answer is at the first week of creation. 

Genesis 2.1–3:

1Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

Here are a few ways to help you envision healthy Sabbath-keeping:

  1. God rested — We know that when God commands us to remember the Sabbath (Exodus 20.8), he is not commanding us to “get some physical rest,” because God does not physically rest. God was not tired. We should get rid of the idea that taking a Sabbath is because we need a break. God did not take a break.
  1. Yet he truly rested — that is what the text says. The word “rested” is related to the word for “seat” or “dwelling place.” Picture God sitting on his throne. This is a picture of a king ruling over his kingdom. Remember he told mankind earlier to have dominion, because we are made in the King’s image; he has ultimate dominion, and we are to be like him. No wonder those created in God’s image naturally want to use the Sabbath to worship the King.
  1. God is enjoying creation — From Genesis 1, we know what it looks like when God is not creating. God created the world in six days, but he’s not creating every single minute of those first six days, is he? He also looks at his creation at different times and sees that it is good, and at the end of day six, very good. When God is not creating—and surely when God finishes all his work of creating—he is seeing, or looking on with pleasure. God rested in order to enjoy his creation! He is ruling, reigning, and enjoying his creation.

The flip side of that for those made in God’s image—those who are like him, those who reflect his glory—the flip side is that we must enjoy our Creator. Worship and enjoy God. That sounds like a gift.

Then, to make it all the more clear that God made the day for us:

  1. God blessed the Sabbath — “3 So God blessed the seventh day”which means from the first week of creation until the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the entire world was under the calendar in which the seventh day was “blessed.” When you consider that the first six days were filled with God saying, “good…good…very good,” how good must the Sabbath day be! That day was uniquely blessed among all the good days. The Sabbath is a blessing from your Creator.
  1. God sanctified the Sabbath — and made it holy.” There are many ways this could be translated: God made it holy, God sanctified it, God consecrated it, God set it apart. Clearly, the Sabbath is the Lord’s Day. He made it for our good, to be devoted to him. The Sabbath was not a new institution at Mt. Sinai and the giving of the 10 Commandments. God instituted a Sabbath Day principle—in which Israel was called to “remember”—at creation. 

But shouldn’t all our days be devoted to God?

Yes, and God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. The Sabbath is a uniquely holy day. What better way to spend a uniquely holy day than in the worship of God. The true believers in the Old Covenant seemed to understand this (see Psalm 92). And on the day of the resurrection, New Covenant believers seemed to understand that Sunday was now uniquely blessed, and a day to be devoted to the Lord (see altogether Matt 28.9; Acts 20.7; 1 Cor 16.2; Rev 1.10).

It is no secret that our flesh would love to use the Sabbath for other things, even other lawful things. But will soccer games, surfing, or even sleeping, make you as happy as worshiping and enjoying your Creator, along with other blood-bought saints especially? Perhaps the best way to enjoy the Sabbath is not to focus on the things the Pharisees loved to focus on: do not carry your mat, do not heal, do not pick grain. Or perhaps in modern terms, “do not watch football, do not go shopping, do not cook.” Rather, let us take this as the gift that the Bible says it is: worship and enjoy God more than any other day.

 

Recommended Resources:

  • William Gouge, The Sabbath’s Sanctification
  • J.C. Ryle, The Sabbath: A Day to Keep
  • Robert Paul Martin, The Christian Sabbath.
  • G.K. Beale, New Testament Biblical Theology (chapter 23)



]]>
What Is the Christian Sabbath? 

I have found many Christians resist the Sabbath as a New Covenant ordinance mainly because of bad representations of Sabbatarianism. There are obviously many Christians who reject the Sabbath because of biblical arguments, but my aim is to eliminate bad Sabbatarianism as a reason for rejection. Please allow me to attempt to encourage you with a positive—I think beautiful—case for what Christians should do on Sundays. If you’re a non-Sabbatarian, I hope this will make you at least think, “Sabbatarians are not crazy.” If you are a Sabbatarian, I hope this will strengthen your observance of the Lord’s Day. 

One key for Sabbath-keeping is to hear what Jesus said in Mark 2.27. The Pharisees rebuked the disciples for harvesting grain on a Sabbath. Jesus corrected them by explaining they were not sinning in doing so, just as David was not sinning by feeding his cohort with priestly bread. The moral law of love superseded ceremonial commands about the priesthood. In a similar way, he reminded the Pharisees, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.In other words, the Sabbath is for our good; it is not a lord for us to bow down to. We do not serve it; it serves us. The Sabbath is a gift.

A gift from who? Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made.” Made by whom? 

Answer: God made the Sabbath, and made it as a gift for us.

That begs the question: When did he make it?

The obvious answer is at the first week of creation. 

Genesis 2.1–3:

1Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

Here are a few ways to help you envision healthy Sabbath-keeping:

  1. God rested — We know that when God commands us to remember the Sabbath (Exodus 20.8), he is not commanding us to “get some physical rest,” because God does not physically rest. God was not tired. We should get rid of the idea that taking a Sabbath is because we need a break. God did not take a break.
  1. Yet he truly rested — that is what the text says. The word “rested” is related to the word for “seat” or “dwelling place.” Picture God sitting on his throne. This is a picture of a king ruling over his kingdom. Remember he told mankind earlier to have dominion, because we are made in the King’s image; he has ultimate dominion, and we are to be like him. No wonder those created in God’s image naturally want to use the Sabbath to worship the King.
  1. God is enjoying creation — From Genesis 1, we know what it looks like when God is not creating. God created the world in six days, but he’s not creating every single minute of those first six days, is he? He also looks at his creation at different times and sees that it is good, and at the end of day six, very good. When God is not creating—and surely when God finishes all his work of creating—he is seeing, or looking on with pleasure. God rested in order to enjoy his creation! He is ruling, reigning, and enjoying his creation.

The flip side of that for those made in God’s image—those who are like him, those who reflect his glory—the flip side is that we must enjoy our Creator. Worship and enjoy God. That sounds like a gift.

Then, to make it all the more clear that God made the day for us:

  1. God blessed the Sabbath — “3 So God blessed the seventh day”which means from the first week of creation until the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the entire world was under the calendar in which the seventh day was “blessed.” When you consider that the first six days were filled with God saying, “good…good…very good,” how good must the Sabbath day be! That day was uniquely blessed among all the good days. The Sabbath is a blessing from your Creator.
  1. God sanctified the Sabbath — and made it holy.” There are many ways this could be translated: God made it holy, God sanctified it, God consecrated it, God set it apart. Clearly, the Sabbath is the Lord’s Day. He made it for our good, to be devoted to him. The Sabbath was not a new institution at Mt. Sinai and the giving of the 10 Commandments. God instituted a Sabbath Day principle—in which Israel was called to “remember”—at creation. 

But shouldn’t all our days be devoted to God?

Yes, and God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. The Sabbath is a uniquely holy day. What better way to spend a uniquely holy day than in the worship of God. The true believers in the Old Covenant seemed to understand this (see Psalm 92). And on the day of the resurrection, New Covenant believers seemed to understand that Sunday was now uniquely blessed, and a day to be devoted to the Lord (see altogether Matt 28.9; Acts 20.7; 1 Cor 16.2; Rev 1.10).

It is no secret that our flesh would love to use the Sabbath for other things, even other lawful things. But will soccer games, surfing, or even sleeping, make you as happy as worshiping and enjoying your Creator, along with other blood-bought saints especially? Perhaps the best way to enjoy the Sabbath is not to focus on the things the Pharisees loved to focus on: do not carry your mat, do not heal, do not pick grain. Or perhaps in modern terms, “do not watch football, do not go shopping, do not cook.” Rather, let us take this as the gift that the Bible says it is: worship and enjoy God more than any other day.

 

Recommended Resources:

  • William Gouge, The Sabbath’s Sanctification
  • J.C. Ryle, The Sabbath: A Day to Keep
  • Robert Paul Martin, The Christian Sabbath.
  • G.K. Beale, New Testament Biblical Theology (chapter 23)



]]>