Christ Church

Defining History

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Introduction

We have all enjoyed the anticipation of another Christmas, and we are still in a celebratory moment—a Lord’s Day celebration the day after Christmas. But we don’t ever want this celebration to drift off point—this is not the armistice day of a long-forgotten war. This war is on-going, and we celebrate this decisive point in the war as a means of continuing the faithful battle.

The Text

“And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him. And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law, Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel. And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him. And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; (Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2:25-35).

Summary of the Text

After the birth of Jesus, Joseph and Mary brought Jesus up to the Temple to do for Him what the law required (v. 27). There was a just and devout man there named Simeon, and the Holy Spirit was upon him (v. 25). He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and it had been revealed to him that he would not die before he had seen this consolation, the Messiah himself (vv. 25-26). The Spirit brought him into the Temple, and he came up to Joseph and Mary, took the baby in his arms, and blessed God (v. 28). His first word considered what God had promised to him (vv. 29-32), which is that he would see God’s salvation, a light for the Gentiles and the glory of Israel (v. 32). Joseph and Mary were both amazed (v. 33). And his second word was a word of blessing for Joseph and Mary, and he turned and said something to Mary in particular (v. 34). Remember this is all in the context of a blessing. The child is set for the fall and rise of many in Israel, a sign that will be spoken against (v. 34), a sword will pierce through Mary’s soul (v. 35), and the thoughts of many will be revealed (v. 35). The definition of history, which we will consider today, is all wrapped up in this blessing for Mary.

Four Elements

There are four elements to this blessing, which we will consider in turn:

    • The fall and rise of many in Israel;
    • A sign that will be spoken against;
    • A soul piercing grief for Mary;
    • And the thoughts of many revealed.

Falling and Rising

History is a story. It unfolds and develops, and this means that the characters involved are going somewhere. The last chapter will differ from the first. Because this is a long story, this happens in cycles. Because of what Scripture teaches us throughout, there are only two ways for this to go. They are fall and rise, or rise and fall. It is either death, resurrection, and glory, or it is glory, pride, and death.

And at each stage of this development, we have the setting for the alternative. If history were frozen, we could have static good guys and bad guys. But those who fall and rise might need to fall again. These things were written for us as an example, on whom the ends of the ages have come (1 Cor. 10:11). “Don’t be that guy” in the story is a reminder that is constantly necessary. Pope Alexander VI should have been more interested in Caiaphas than he was. Yesterday’s poor, now delivered, are tomorrow’s wealthy, who therefore need to hear the warnings.

A Sign to be Resisted

Jesus is to be a “sign” that is spoken against. Signs carry meaning, and when someone speaks against such a sign they are saying, “No, that’s not what it means.” But when God gives a sign, He gives it with a meaning that is plain. The culmination of this sign was the resurrection of Jesus, by which He was declared to be the Son of God (Rom. 1:4). This divine Sonship means that Jesus will judge the world at the culmination of human history (Acts 17: 31), and that He is the prophet, priest and king over all things now (Ps. 2:8).

Grief is Real

We have every reason to believe that Mary is among the witnesses of the resurrection (Acts 1:14). But she knew, long before this, that the supernatural had invaded our world. George Herbert has a poem where he plays on the letters in the words Mary and Army, and says that this was fitting, for there it was that God pitched his tent (John 1:14). Mary knew she was a virgin, Mary knew what Simeon told them here in our text, she knew what the angel had said, and more. So she knew that the cross was not the end of the story—but it was true grief in the story nonetheless. Knowing we are in a story does not prevent real story grip from happening. A sword went straight through Mary’s soul—and she knew that it was coming years in advance.

Thoughts Revealed

We want to keep the thoughts of our hearts bottled up. As long as they are there, deep inside, we may pretend that we are the lord of them. No one else knows our spites, our petty adulteries, our bitterness. We keep them under our tongue, like a sweet morsel. The doctrine of God’s omniscience refutes this, but we have learned how to keep our doctrines up in the heavens. But Jesus . . . He has come down. He lived among us. His presence reveals, like nothing else can reveal, the thoughts and intents of our hearts. Not by projecting them onto a screen, but rather by showing the world whether we are drawn to Him, or repulsed by Him. From the moment Simeon spoke those fateful words, the winnowing has been in effect. It is come to Jesus, or go away. In Him is light, and away from Him is only darkness.

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Real Ambition

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Introduction:
So we have considered desire, envy, and competition, and we now come to ambition. To address the subject rightly, we have to recall what we learned thus far. There is a certain kind of desire that every human being has to deal with, and this is a desire that tends to veer toward envy. If God has not given us the grace of being able to see this in ourselves, we will come into competitive situations motivated in the wrong way entirely. And the same thing is true of our ambitions. Our ambitions will lust after what God has never given.

The Text:
“And he put forth a parable to those which were bidden, when he marked how they chose out the chief rooms; saying unto them, When thou art bidden of any [man] to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room; lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him; And he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room. But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee. For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (Luke 14:7-11).

Overview:
Christ tells us a parable that reveals His shrewd humility. But at the same time, if we understand Him, we see it is a true humility—this kind of thing offered up to God as a “trick that He won’t see through” is obviously crazy. This must be done before God openly. On one occasion Jesus saw a bunch of people jockeying for position somewhere, angling for that elusive place of honor (v. 7). He then told them a parable about the seating arrangements at a wedding, and He said not to take the seat of honor (v. 8). If you do, a more honorable guest will certainly show up, and the host will have to take you down a few notches, perhaps all the notches (v. 9). Voluntarily take the lowest place, He says, and you will be invited up—to the applause of all (v. 10). And having said all this, Christ gives the principle. The man who exalts himself will be taken down. The man who humbles himself will be exalted (v. 11). This is because God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). This is a principle that runs throughout the Lord’s teaching, and throughout the Bible. “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified [rather] than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (Luke 18:14).

Up Pride Mountain:
Our culture has been profoundly shaped and affected by the Lord’s teaching. This is the case even though numerous individuals don’t have the heart of the matter within them. The obvious rightness of the Lord’s requirement is nevertheless reflected in our customs and manners in a way that was not true in the ancient world. But all this means is that the subtlety of sin has to take an extra hairpin turn in its way up Pride Mountain. We now have folks taking the lowest place as the way of manipulating situations and looking humble to boot. But just saying the right thing (like the Pharisee in the temple) is not good enough. We don’t want to be like the woman in the old blues song with “a handful of gimme, and a mouthful of thank you, honey.”

Confusion and Ambition:
We need to know what the adversary is—because if we have been paying attention, we already know where the adversary is: in our own hearts. “But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but [is] earthly, sensual, devilish. For where envying and strife [is], there [is] confusion and every evil work” (James 3:14-16). The word rendered as strife here is a particular kind of strife—it is not the strife of two armies colliding, but rather the strife that results from electioneering or campaigning. Positioning would be another word for it. The NIV renders it well as selfish ambition; we might say striving ambition. Now, who is the running mate in this campaign? Two times James tells us—envy, bitter envy. If this is the condition of your heart, don’t lie to yourself about it (v. 14). This ambition does not come from above, but is diabolical (v. 15). And where you have envy and this kind of ambition together, you have “confusion and every kind of evil work.” Always. This striving, this ambition, comes from a love of honors, a love of glory (Mk. 12:38-40), which is coupled with a hatred of the road that God has required for all who would come to His kind of honor and glory. We don’t like that road because it runs through a deep valley.

A Two Way Street:
The person who is ambitious like this is begging for the opposition of God. Confusion and every evil work will dog him. God does not just make positive promises (“if you humble yourself, you will be exalted”). He also makes negative promises also (“if you push yourself to the front, He will see to it that you are set back”). When the disciples on the road got into an argument over who was the greatest, He spoke to them this way. “And he sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, If any man desire to be first, [the same] shall be last of all, and servant of all” (Mark 9:35; cf. 10:42-44). There are two ways to take this, both healthy.

Pyramid World?: 
We do not live in a pyramid world—which is another way of saying that glory and honor are not zero-sum games, any more than anything else in God’s plan is. If you think that only one can occupy the top spot, and that you want to be that one, this will result in confusion and every kind of evil work. But God has created a rich, textured, and organic world, with an almost infinite array of options for godly ambition. There are two things to recognize—the first is that God is the master composer, and His symphony is going to be glorious beyond all reckoning. The second, just as important for your joy, is to find out what instrument you have been assigned and stop starting greedily at the first violin. In his introduction to a discussion of spiritual gifts, Paul says, “For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think [of himself] more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith” (Rom. 12:3). Godly ambition does not mean that any Christian can be at the top of the pyramid (making faces at the archangel Michael) provided he just humbles himself enough. This is not the spiritual equivalent of “any child can grow up to be president,” which is (incidentally) a lie. Godly ambition means that those who humble themselves in accordance with God’s word will find themselves blessed to the maximum capacity that their gifts and calling will allow. To want anything more than that is to take hold of the wrong kind of ambition. Drop it; it is your death.

The Way Up Is Down:
Jesus does not teach us that there is a problem with wanting to be great in the kingdom (Matt. 5:19). On repeated occasions, He instructs how to strive for that. He tells us how live in such a way that God says well done. If you don’t want that well done, then something is really wrong. But if you want the well done, here is the thing—you have to do it well. And doing it well involves imitating the Lord Jesus, who certainly had more reasons to not “stoop” than we do.

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Loving Little Ones #1

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Introduction
The duties of a godly parent are profound and challenging. This is particularly the case when you are dealing with little ones who cannot explain anything to you. They don’t know their own heart, and they could not tell you about if they did. We have to get our guidance from Scripture. And like everything else, parenting is completely dependent on the grace of God—but on this subject, it should be immediately obvious to us that we are dependent on the grace of God. But when that grace is operative, what does it look like?

The Texts
“If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well” (James 2:8). “Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones” (Luke 17:1-2).

Overview
The context of James’ injunction is interesting. He has just been talking about a biblical refusal to show partiality between rich and poor. And after this statement in our text, he moves on to give a general statement about heart attitudes. “For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment” (v. 13). My particular point here is not the larger social point that James is making, but rather the attitudes that drive it, and what those attitudes look like in the microcosm of the home. In the home, who are the rich and who are the poor? Who is the establishment, and who are the ruled? Who has control of the courts and who does not? And can it be said of parents generally that they love mercy, and that mercy triumphs over judgment? In the passage from Luke, Jesus warns against stumbling or offending little ones. He attaches one of the most dire warnings in the Bible to this caution (v. 2). Jesus said a lot of things about children that are routinely ignored today, just as the first disciples tended to ignore them. When we stumble or offend little ones, we are not letting mercy triumph over judgment.

Delight
Parents should always desire to be like God in their relationship to their children. But when we think this, we gravitate to what we think or assume God is like instead of gravitating to what God reveals Himself to be like. Here is the fundamental attitude. “The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing” (Zep. 3:17). “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (Luke 11:13). Parents who are “evil” frequently are better to their kids than parents who think they are being good by imitating a Cosmic Slavedriver. Delight in your children. Be crazy about them. Don’t hold back. They are cuter than everybody else’s. Parents should always desire to be like God in their relationship to their children.

The Structure of the Garden
But you must take care to structure your delight. When God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden, He gave them, in principle, the run of the world. There was one thing, and one thing only, that was off limits, and that was one tree in the middle of the Garden. What does this tell you about God’s sense of proportion? Which way does He lean?

You are trying to imitate God, not some federal regulatory agency. Keep life simple. Keep the rules simple and easy to memorize. Don’t keep changing them, and don’t multiply opportunities for disobedience. God had one rule in the Garden, and ten rules at Sinai. The rest of the Old Testament are commentary on those ten rules, which can actually be reduced to two—love God and love your neighbor. I recall vividly the three rules in my father’s house when I was growing up—no disobedience, no lying, and no disrespecting your mother. This is the spirit of Scripture.

Make sure there is always a boundary (delight is not indulgence; delight has a backbone), and carefully police that boundary. But don’t multiply boundaries. Don’t multiply opportunities for disobedience. “Come here. Put on your coat. Put that down. Find your boots. I thought I said to come here!” Reduce the number of commands you issue by about 90%, and then enforce all those commands. Don’t exasperate your children (Eph. 6:4; Col. 3:21). Remember their frame. “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust” (Ps. 103:13-14).

Discipline That Delights
Yeah, but when does the hammer fall? Doesn’t there have to be moral order in the home? Don’t we have to have the rule of law around here? Depending on what you mean by putting it this way, probably not. A parent who disciplines effectively is refusing to allow his child to make himself unlovely. “I love you too much to let you do that to yourself.” Discipline is corrective, and it is applied for the sake of the one receiving it. It is not punitive, and it is not rendered for the sake of the one giving it.

When you are spanking a child, you are either being selfish or you are being selfless—one or the other. You are doing it because you are exasperated, frustrated, beside yourself, and frazzled, or you are doing it as a fragrant offering to the God of your fathers. An ungodly sentiment can be roughly categorized as, “Take that, you little swine,” and a godly sentiment as, “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” What does Scripture say? “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted” (Gal. 6:1). When you are highly motivated to discipline your kids, you are not qualified. When you are qualified, you don’t feel like it.

Discipline, rightly understood, is not an exception to the rule of delight mentioned earlier, it is a principal expression of it. “If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons” (Heb. 12:7-8). Refusal to discipline (with the right attitude) is a form of disowning a child. Refusal to discipline (again, with the right attitude) is a form of hatred. “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes” (Prov. 13:24).

All who love, discipline. But it does not follow from this that all who discipline, love. A child must grow up in, be surrounded by, and be nourished in, the love of God revealed for His people in the Word Incarnate and the Word revealed. This is the context in which godly child-rearing occurs, and, outside of which it cannot occur.

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Friendship Evangelism

Christ Church on

Introduction:
For various reasons, evangelism is a difficult subject for many Reformed Christians. Some die-hard Calvinists may have glanced at the title of this message—friendship evangelism—and asked, “What’s evangelism?” Or, if they are really die-hard Calvinists, perhaps they asked, “What’s friendship?” But this attitude is not what the Bible teaches, not what the tradition of the Reformed faith teaches, and it is not what we have sought to practice in this congregation.

The Text:
“No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light. The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness. If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light. And as he spake, a certain Pharisee besought him to dine with him: and he went in, and sat down to meat” (Luke 11:33-37).

Overview:
Jesus teaches us that when we turn on the lights, we do not do this in order to hide it away (v. 33). You don’t keep a light bulb burning in a back room of the basement—not on purpose anyway. Now Jesus says that we do this so that “they which come in may see the light” (v. 33). Now there are many places in Scripture where a “shining of the light” refers to what we call contact evangelism, but this is not one of them. When someone stands up in the town square and preaches the gospel, he is shining the light, but by a different means than is in view here. Jesus moves from a mention of lighting a candle to the cryptic statement that “the light of the body is the eye” (v. 34). If your eye is single, your whole body is full of light. If your eye is evil, your whole body is full of darkness. This business about the eye was a Jewish idiom, referring to generosity and stinginess respectively. But be careful—there are people in darkness who think they are in light (v. 35). They think they are hanging from the ceiling when they are in fact under a bushel. All of these are connected—eye, body, room. Jesus then was invited to share a meal with a Pharisee, and He did so (v. 37).

Clearing Some Debris:
Contact evangelism is the equivalent of an evangelistic cold call. If a person is gifted and called to this, it is wonderful. Friendship evangelism is far more organic and does not depend in any way on anything like calling, ordination, or giftedness—Jesus is presupposing here that this experience will be shared by all His faithful followers. It is commonly called friendship evangelism, but we could call it light of the eye evangelism.

But not all that calls itself friendship evangelism is. Friendship evangelism is something other than friendly evangelism. Scripture say to let your love be without hypocrisy. You don’t want to invite a nonbeliever over because you have a product line you’d like to show him. Under such circumstances, the nonbeliever would right feel abused. This is not friendship evangelism, but rather pretence evangelism. Friendly marketing evangelism is not friendship evangelism.

At the same time, be aware that true friendship with nonbelievers will always hit a sticking point. If you had the best relationship in the world with your mother, how could you be complete friends with someone who despised her? But the impediment needs to be that problem, and not your personal grievance that he is not letting you “complete a sale.”

Also remember a few common pitfalls — take heed to your own walk with God. First, evangelism is a two-way street, and sometimes the world recruits people from the Church better than we recruit people from the world. So you want to be an evangelist to the rich, evangelist to the bar crowd, evangelist to attractive, single women on campus? You can only export what you have, and if your spiritual life is a mess, then that is what you will take on the road. Second, evangelism is not what many assume. Many Christians really don’t want to be struggling spiritually, and they view evangelism as a means of grace. They feel like “real Christians” if they are sharing their faith. But sharing your faith is not an assigned means for propping up your faith. And last, evangelism is not so that you can become an ecclesiastical Billy the Kid, just another gunslinger with notches on your Bible.

A Woven Life:
Our postmodern world wants you to think of everything as a collage, with everything arranged by juxtaposition only. The juxtaposition does get an “effect”—you have your church people, biology class people, work people, and so on. Your life and your worldview is a pastiche, a hodge-podge, and not a Charles Hodge-Podge either. Owen Barfield said that what C.S. Lewis thought about everything was implicit in what he said about anything. The biblical worldview is woven. An integrated Christian life should be woven together in who you are. This means that when talking with anybody about anything, you will find yourself talking about Christ—and you will get to Christ without changing the subject.

What do I mean by juxtaposition? “What’s your major? Who do you think is going to take the Super Bowl?” And then you grab the spiritual discussion by the ears and haul it in. “Aaa! Too soon, too soon!” There is an old blues song—“never make your move too soon.” Don’t lug it in unless it is part of who you are. If everything is connected, soon is fine. If everything is disconnected, two years of friendship won’t make it any easier. If we really understand the Godness of God in everything, we can’t answer five honest questions in a row without it all coming down to Christ naturally.

Now for the Surprise:
What is the common theme that ties everything together? What is the integrative tie? It is your relationship to your material possessions, to your money. “And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations” (Luke 16:9). Use ungodly mammon to make friends for yourselves, friends who will then receive you in heaven.

We see the same thing in our text. Jesus said that if your eye is light (if you are generous), your whole body will be full of light. He then said if your whole body is full of light, then it will be the candle that should give light to the room. And the well-lit room is the one where people can see well enough to ask questions. The room is lit so that those who come in might see it.

Now everything rides on this. Friendship evangelism rests upon generosity, sacrifice, kindness, openness, hospitality, goodness, and open-handedness. That is to be the texture of your life, and non-believers are welcome to come along with you. In short, is your evangelism giving or taking? Are you a benefactor or a salesman?

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