Christ Church

Mere Gospel

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Introduction

The world is only a complicated place when we are drifting lazily into the confusion wrought by sin. Think about it for a moment. There are two kinds of people in the world—sons of God and sons of the devil. There are two destinations, and only two, toward which we are all traveling—the resurrection of life and the resurrection to death. There are only two ways of living—clean and dirty. There are only two gospels—one from man that will collapse under the weight of your sins, and one from God that will cause your sins to collapse beneath the weight of God’s grace.

The Texts

“And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God” (1 Cor. 2:1–5).

Summary of the Text

At the end of the previous chapter, Paul exults in the scriptural standard of pride. Let the one who boasts, do so in the Lord (Jer. 9:23-24). And he then moves on to remind the Corinthians of something they would well remember. He had not come to them in his own name, in the strength of his own powers, or on his own authority. Rather, he declared to them the testimonyor witness of God (v. 1). He had determined, decided, and judged (krino) that he would know nothing among them except Christ and him crucified (v. 2). His presence in Corinth was not that of some flashy dude exuding charisma. He came in weakness, fear, and trembling (v. 3). His words, and his preaching, were not dependent upon a flattering persuasiveness that naturally arises from sophistry (e.g. man’s wisdom, sophia). Rather, there was in Paul’s life and demeanor a proof of the Spirit and of power (v. 4). The basic alternative is presented. Your faith will either be in the wisdom of man or it will be in the power of God (v. 5). That power displayed by God is encapsulated in the message of Christ and him crucified (v. 2).

Sophistry, Then and Now

Contrary to a common assumption, Paul’s contrast here between the power of the cross and the enticing words of carnal wisdom is not a contrast between eloquence as such and truth over on the other side. This is a fallen world, and there are always sophists who want to substitute human eloquence for divine wisdom, which is absurd. This is what the ancient sophists wanted to do, and it is what their descendants now in our era want to do.

The error is to think, first, that the message of the cross needs to be adorned with human wisdom, and then that it needs to be reinforced or supplemented by human wisdom, and then, in the last analysis, replaced by human wisdom.

So what is the role of human eloquence in preaching the gospel? It is what Paul is actually demonstrating here. The words of the preacher, like the preacher himself, must be a bondservant to the message, and the words of eloquence, if they are to be true and not false, must be driven before the gospel gale, all sails out.

A Caution

It would be a grotesque mistake to say that Christians should talk about nothing but a truncated message that consists of “Christ died on the cross,” and that all other topics are to be avoided. No—far from exulting in the cross, that approach would minimize it. Rather, because Christ is the founder of a new humanity, and because His founding obedience was what He did on the cross, this means that absolutely everything that men and women can do—from forecasting the weather to changing diapers, from sailing a ship to digging a well, from driving a car to teaching a class—falls under the authority of Christ’s death and resurrection. The cross was not just another event in a world filled with events. The cross was a new organizing principle, under which all thingswould be made new (Rev. 21:5). This is why we should be able to talk about absolutely anything in the world, and within a short space of time find ourselves talking about the death of Jesus, without changing the subject.

The Solution First

Our message is straightforward—we preach the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. We declare first, who He is. He is the divine Son of Almighty Jehovah. He is Himself fully divine, and He entered—forever—into our human condition through the Incarnation.

He lived a perfect, sinless life, and He did this so that His people of the new Israel could be represented by His obedience. And because they all had been disobedient before this, He represented them also by bending His head underneath all the wrath that a holy God could pour out upon Him. In that moment of dereliction, the Lord Jesus was struck by the fist of God. And in the following moment of ultimate vindication, three days later, that same hand of God raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at His own right hand, where there is an everlasting river of pleasure.

The Solution Related to the Problem

This gospel is to be declared to every creature (Mark 16:15). And the creatures who are to hear this message are creatures who are lost in their sins.“Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father” (Gal. 1:4). The gospel is good news, but there are two kinds of good news. The first is a “bolt from the blue” good news, and which does not require any kind of antecedent difficulty. The second kind of good news (e.g. a pardon from the governor the day before your execution) is a type of news that requires a full apprehension of an earlier delivery of badnews. News that they have discovered a cure for cancer will strike a man who hascancer differently than it will strike a man who is entirely healthy.

And the Solution Applied to the Problem

In the wisdom of God, He determined that men, women and children are delivered by means of this gospel when they (by the grace of God) do two things. They must first turn away from their sins, and secondly they must believe the gospel.

“Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19).

So what is your condition? Porn junkie? Selfish high school girl who has her parents totally whipped? Embezzler? Malicious and petty biter? Manipulator? Liar?

And so what is the message I have for you? What message is here that is of a kind that makes no sense to your carnal heart but which will deliveryour carnal heart? Look away from that sin. Turn away from it. Turn so that the sin can see nothing but your back. The only way this works is when you look to Christ. And by Christ, I mean a twisted bronze snake on a pole. I mean a rock in the wilderness, with living water flowing out of it. I mean bread from heaven, falling out of the sky.

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God’s Will For Your Life in 2019

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“Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more, just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God; 2 for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, 5 not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; 6 that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. 7 For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness. 8 Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit” (1 Thess. 4:1-8).

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State of the Church 2019

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Introduction

As you know, it is our custom to present a “state of the church” message every year around this time. Sometimes the message addresses the state of the church generally, as in, across the nation. Other times, like today, the message concerns particular issues that pertain to our congregation.

The Texts

“And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith” (Gal. 6: 9–10).

“But ye, brethren, be not weary in well doing” (2 Thess. 3:13).

“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Cor. 15:58).

“Use hospitality one to another without grudging” (1 Pet. 4:9).

Summary of the Texts

Before highlighting what each of our texts is saying, let me begin with the takeaway point from all of them. If we hear the message here rightly, we will see that the fusion of joy and staminais a peculiar work of the Holy Spirit. And if we are in the path we ought to be in, if we are walking in the right way, we will be in great need of Him to perform that work in us. We will need that peculiar fusion of joy and stamina.

In Galatians, Paul exhorts us to not give way to weariness, and the way we are to do this is by keeping our eyes on the agricultural metaphor. We will not grow weary if we keep our eyes on the harvest. Good works, done for all men, but especially for the household of faith, are a form of farming. Plowing hard ground can seem like an eternal distance from the ripening grain of autumn, so lookahead. Consider the whole point.

In Thessalonians, the same exhortation is given—do not grow weary in doing good. In this instance, it is an exhortation given to hard-working saints who are surrounded by goof-offs, leaning on their shovels. Not only must we not grow weary in the good work we are doing, we must also not grow weary in the work of disciplining those who do not understand the biblical view of work, or who do not understand it in their hands.

In Corinthians, Paul says that we are to aboundin our work. We are to be committed to it, and are to be steadfast and immoveable. This work that we are to abound in is work that is not in vain. This means that God wants us to hustle. And remember that this is in the chapter that is talking about the resurrection of the dead. Our abundant work nowis not going to be considered in vain then. Or, as R.C. Sproul put it, right now counts forever. If a cup of cold water given in the name of Christ will not be forgotten in the Lasts Day, then what of the greater words that are assigned to us?

And then Peter tells us to be given to hospitality, and not to be put off by the rudeness or thoughtlessness of others.

As Our Congregation Ages

I know that a number of you have been taking care of elderly parents. This is good and right and holy. Some of you have moved in together, while others are having to navigate this transition from varying distances. As lifespans increase, one of the things that also increases is the need to take care of the elderly. Something that used to be relatively rare is becoming relatively common. So as a congregation, you are to be commended for being the kind of support network that aging families need. And the next generation down needs to be taking notes, because this is a problem that is not likely to shrink. “But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel” (1 Tim. 5:8). You all are living it out.

Life’s Report Card

Our congregation is filled with the spirit of entrepreneurship. That is all to the good, but you must remember the key role that failureplays in every true free market system. There is a strong temptation for many to think that objective standards of excellence only exist for as long as you are in school. Thereyou are evaluated, right out of a grade book—everything clean and tidy. And then, after you graduate, and are out in the world of business, you can start to think that all the standards are somehow subjective now. But frequently it is the other way around. “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings; He shall not stand before mean men” (Prov. 22:29).

The Hospitality Dilemma

There is a reason why Peter says that we are to show hospitality without grumbling. Hospitality is a principal way of showing love for one another, and hospitality can be a principal occasion for thoughtlessness and rudeness. Love, in short, creates opportunities for lack of love. So take care, and beware. You are a hospitable group, and so the temptations that accompany hospitality—temptations for hosts and guests alike—will be plentiful.

Called to Our Work

Work is not a result of the fall. Adam was given his task of exercising dominion before he disobeyed the commandment. And he was given a helper for the task before he disobeyed the commandment. God has called us to our work.

This is not the same thing as being called to the work that we assumed that we were going to get done today. God often changes the schedule on us. How many times have we said something like, “I didn’t get anything done today,” when what we mean is that we didn’t get any of ourplans accomplished. All we did was what God assigned to us to do. Oh, only that?

Life in a working community is angular. There are bumps, misunderstandings, understandings, collisions, rivalries, envies, competencies, incompetencies, honest evaluations, and much, much more.

All of it is life in the body, which is to say, life in Christ.

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Christmas with Both Feet on the Ground

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Introduction

One of our great temptations is to project doctrinal anachronisms back into the past. When Jesus was living among us, and teaching His disciples, it is pretty easy for us to take post-resurrection realities, or post-ascension realities, or even post-Nicene realities, and project them back into the minds of the disciples. Now these were realities at these earlier times, but they were not known or confessed realities. Yet.

The disciples had a dim and hazy understanding of who Jesus was, but it did not really come into focus for them until after the resurrection. And even the understanding that Jesusgrew up into, as He grew, was an understanding of His own identity and mission which increased.

The Text

“And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.” (Luke 2:40).

Summary of the Text

Speaking of the Lord Jesus as a child, Luke tells us some very interesting things. First, as a true child, He grew. His spirit grew stronger, which means that it grew stronger than it had been before. The child was filled with wisdom, and you could see that wisdom growing in Him. In all of this, it was clear that the grace of God, meaning the favor of God, was resting upon Him. There is an echo here of what was said centuries before of Samuel. “And the child Samuel grew on, and was in favour both with the Lord, and also with men” (1 Sam. 2:26).

Away in a Manger

The sum of what I am saying here is that the baby Jesus was not lying in the manger, thinking something like “well, thirty years to go.” That conception is far too much like “God in a man suit” to be orthodox—assuming infinitude inside and finitude outside. Remember that we are confessing that Jesus is fully God and fully man, and these natures are fully united together in one person, Jesus the son of Mary.

But to say that Jesus is fully God and fully man is to say that He was fully infinite andfully finite, which means that infinitude and finitude must somehow be added together, and not finitude somehow subtracted from infinitude. Jesus was fully omniscient andtruly limited in knowledge. Now what is the psychological import of all this? What was Jesus thinking and experiencing? Fortunately, the Bible tells us.

The Experience of Finitude

In His divine nature, Jesus was fully omniscient. But in the lived experience that Jesus had, this was a knowledge that He did not “tap into.” How do we know this? There are several instances in Scripture where Jesus confesses that He does not know something. Being omniscient and experiencing omniscience are not the same thing.

“And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?” (Mark 5:30).

“But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father” (Mark 13:32).

And Yet . . .

At the same time, we know that Jesus had to have known of His divine vocation from early on. Luke almost certainly got his knowledge of the early events of the life of Jesus from Mary—he says he got his accounts from eyewitnesses (Luke 1:2). He says pointedly that Mary treasured all these things up in her heart (Luke 2:19). And there was that back closet at their house with three chests containing gold, frankincense, and myrrh. An angel had appeared to her. Mary knew that she had conceived Jesus when she was still a virgin. I mean, something was up.

We know that He had a strong awareness of who He was by the time He was twelve. “And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49). Jesus knew at this point that He had to be about His Father’s work. He did notknow why Joseph and Mary were frantic with worry. And yet, it says, He was submissive to them (Luke 2:51), and this is part of what Mary treasured up in her heart. And right after this is our text, saying that Jesus flourished under the grace and favor of God.

The Confirmation

Jesus presented Himself to John the Baptist for a reason, and that reason had to do with His understanding of the Scriptures. Jesus already knew when He came to the river. And yet, in a special and miraculous sense, what He knew was divinely communicated to Him.

“And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22).

And what was confirmed to Him at His baptism is the very point of the assault from the devil in the temptation immediately following (Luke 4:1). This was the point of the devil’s spear. “Ifyou are the Son of God, if you are the Son of God . . .” Thatwas the truth that Jesus was being tempted to test. That was what He was being challenged to doubt and independently confirm.

Anointed by the Spirit

Jesus did not do the great miracles that He did, and He did not know what He miraculously knew, because He was “God inside.” He did all that He did because the Holy Spirit empowered Him to do so. He did what He did throughout the course of His ministry as a Spirit-empowered man.

To be tempted is to be limited and finite. And Jesus knows what it is to be tempted. He has that experience, which is strong consolation for us. “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15). The word rendered here as “touched” means to “suffer together with.”

Apostle and High Priest

“Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus” (Heb. 3:1).

Jesus is fully God, and fully man. As God, He is the sent one from God, the apostle of God coming to us. As man, He is our high priest, coming to God on our behalf. He is the perfect bridge that crosses the chasm between a holy God and sinful man. And thatis the entire point of Christmas.

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The Christmas Gift

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Introduction

Our celebration of Christmas is all about the arrival of the one who was given to us. For unto us a Son is given (Is. 9:6). The Christ was given. God so loved the world that He gave. In Isaiah’s promise, there are two words that are repeated twice, and they emphasize the reality of God’s great gift. Those words are unto us.

The Text

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

“And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:16).

Summary of the Text

John tells us that God gave us His only begotten Son because He loved the world. He did it so that anyone who believed in that Son should not perish, should be delivered from the wrath that was already resting upon him, and could be ushered into everlasting life. But this love that God has for the world is not something He decided to do on a whim. God’s love for the world proceeds from the way He is. It proceeds from His ultimate and everlasting character. The love that God extends to the world (John 3:16) is the same love that we have known and believed in, the love that God has to us (1 John 4:16). And what kind of love is that. John tells us that God is love, and so it follows that the one who lives in love is living in God, and the one who lives in love has God living in him. But note the potency of that phrase—God islove.

Deep Error from Shallow Hearts

Before we are converted to God through Christ, we tend to veer in one of two directions. Whenever we conceive of ultimate reality, we either imagine unity at the top or we imagine plurality at the top. If the former, then we go in the direction of some form of Unitarianism—it could be Deism, it could be Islam, or it could be the generic God of American civic religion. The god at the top of this system is a solitary monad, the ultimate hermit god, the greatest bachelor.

The other direction is to assume some sort of multiplicity at the top. This reduces to some form of polytheism—many gods. And because each of these gods is contained by the cosmos, by the “whole show,” over time that cosmos in its entirety tends to assume the place of ultimacy, which has a tendency toward pantheism.

These two ways of thinking have a political expression as well. The Unitarianism system is a model of the cosmos that is a “tower of power,” and so the political arrangement that reflects this (remember that we become like what we worship) is authoritarian. The political arrangement that reflects polytheism is called pluralism. There is usually a hidden unity in the system somewhere, but on the surface we have many voices, many laws, many gods.

The unbelieving mind is incapable of resolving the problem of the one and the many. Which is ultimate? Unity or plurality?

God Is Love

When the early church was battling through the various controversies surrounding the Trinity, and then surrounding the relationship of the human and the divine in the Lord Jesus Christ, these were weighty controversies—they were notnontroversies.

Prior to the creation of the world, when there was nothing but God, how was it possible to say that God islove? How can we possibly claim that love is an aspect of God’s essential character? If there is no one else, if God is simply an ultimate solitary being, there can be no Beloved. If there is no Beloved, then God didn’t start loving until He created the world, and He needed to create the world in order to start loving. This would mean that He was dependent on something external to Himself in order to be love—which is intolerable. God islove.

God So Loved

Biblically defined, love means revealing yourself and it means giving yourself. When God loved the world, what did He do? He gave. What did He give? He gave His only begotten Son. The word here is monogenes, and the clear implication is that He gave Himself. But then what did He do? This is also important. He toldus about it. So God gave us Jesus, so that we could have everlasting life. And then God gave us John 3:16, to tellus that He had given Jesus so that we could have everlasting life. God gave us Himself, and then God revealed Himself.

These gifts are not offered to us insteadof Himself.

An Aside About Christmas Presents

Why do we give presents at Christmas? What is that all about? What we are doing is celebrating the greatest gift ever given: “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift” (2 Cor. 9:15). The gift that God gave to us was ineffable, indescribable, beyond all mortal calculation. Giftis the hinge upon which all human history turns. Gift is the meaning of everything. Grace provides the meaning of life.

In the beginning, God gave us a perfect world in the first instance, which we promptly wrecked in our insolence and rebellion. So then God undertook to repair that cosmos, making it much more glorious than it had been before, and He did this by bearing the penalty of sin Himself. This is how He gave Himself, and the Christmas message reveals how He gave Himself.

When you are shopping for presents, you are imitating that. When you buy a present for someone, you are not doing it so they will leave you alone for another year, or at least until their birthday. No, you are giving a token that represents you, that reveals you, that gives you.

Nicea and Chalcedon

Nicea testifies to the truth that God is love. If the eternal Word is God, then God loves His Son eternally, which means that God is love. It cannot be any other way. Love is not an add-on extra. Love is an essential part of who God is. The Father loves the Son eternally. The Son loves the Father eternally. Their mutual infinite love is Himself an infinite person, the Holy Spirit of God. This is why the Spirit is described as the Spirit of God, and as the Spirit of Christ.

And Chalcedon means that that the God who is love is that love unto us. And as recipients of that love, what are we to do? Returning to the text, we are to dwell in the love He has bestowed, which is how we are enabled to dwell in Him. When we dwell in His love, we dwell in Him, and when we dwell in Him, He dwells in us.

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