Church Calendar Archives - Page 35 of 47

Ascension Humility (Ascension Sunday 2015)

Joe Harby on May 17, 2015

Introduction

On Ascension Sunday, we mark and remember the coronation of the Lord Jesus Christ. This crowning was the coronation of the ultimate example of humility. Now the Bible teaches us that in Christ, we are kings and priests (Rev. 1:6; 5:10). We will rule with Him, and in Him (Rev. 2:26-27). And the Scriptures also teach that our path to our little thrones will be just like His path to His great throne (2 Tim. 2:12). This means that we need to make a point of studying what actual humility is like, and how it actually desires what God promises us.

The Text

“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:5–11).

Summary of the Text

We are told in the previous verse that our gaze should be outward—we are not to spend our time gazing on our “own things,” but rather on the “things of others” (v. 4). In doing this, we are not starting from scratch. We should have a mind within us that was previously in Christ Jesus (v. 5). If pressed for an explanation of what He did, Paul explains that though he was in the form of God (morphe, characteristic shape), He did not consider His equality with God something that He should grasp (v. 6). Rather, He emptied Himself and took the form (morphe) of a servant, that servant form being the likeness of men (v. 7). And being found in human shape (schema), He humbled Himself to the point of death on a cross (v. 8). As a consequence of this great act of obedience, God has exalted Him highly and given Him a name that is above every name (v. 9). The result of this gift is that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow—in Heaven, on earth, and under the earth (v. 10). Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, and this in turn will redound to the glory of God the Father (v. 11).

Humility is Ambitious

If God did not want us to be motivated by thought of reward, then why did He offer so many of them? In this passage, God sets before us the exaltation of Jesus, pointing to that as part of the story. When we are told to imitate Him in His humility, we are being directed to the glorious destination of all such humility. Jesus didn’t tell us to ban seats of honor at weddings; He taught us a trick for how to get into them (Luke 14:7-11). But there is a trick within the trick. The trick is that we have to die. Jesus didn’t say to rip out the chief seats in the synagogues—He pointed out the inglorious behavior of those who loved those seats (Luke 20:45-47). He promised us long life in the land if we honored our fathers and mothers (Eph. 6:1-4). But we have to pursue our inheritance of land the way He instructs (Luke 14:25-26; Mark 10:29-31). So we honor our fathers and mothers rightly by hating them rightly.

So humility is defined by what we are ambitious for, and not by whether we are ambitious. Those who pretend to want nothing at all are those who have entered on a deep course of self-deception. “Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God” (John 12:42–43, ESV). There are two, and only two, possibilities for us. We will either love the glory that arises from man, or we will love and seek after the glory that comes from God. We were created to pursue glory, and so we can do nothing else. Because we are fallen, it is easy to pursue the wrong kind of glory—but the problem is not that it is glorious, but rather because, at the end of the day, it is not glorious.

“Who will render to every man according to his deeds: To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath” (Rom. 2:6–8).

In short, there is a way of striving for glory, seeking it, that is not self-seeking. It is to follow the path that Jesus established.

So Humility is Not Craven

Humility is a perfection of grace, and so it is not surprising that the devil wants to counterfeit it. Just as he offers counterfeit glory, so also he offers a counterfeit path for getting there. But true humility does not crawl; it is not a quadruped. C.S. Lewis captured the biblical view perfectly when he said this: “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” Remember our text—we are to be thinking of the things of others. That is not the same thing as thinking of our “own things,” provided we do it with a morbidly self-critical eye. The egoistic self has an enormous gravitational pull; it is an ego-centric black hole. And so it is that we find the possibility of someone thinking about himself all the time, and believing for that entire time that he is being humble. But this self-focus is arrogance and pride, not humility. If you are in the center of that little television screen in your brain all the time, it does not matter if you see a creeping little worm or a glowing celebrity. The problem is pride.

Back to the Ultimate Example

Jesus did what He did for the joy that was set before Him (Heb. 12:2). The glory that Jesus now has is the glory that we have been promised. We are not told to wait and think about something else until the glory is dropped on top of us. No, we are told, commanded, summoned, to pursue that glory. And that is how we can understand affliction rightly. The Puritan Thomas Bridges said it well when he said that affliction is nothing but a dirty lane leading to a royal palace. And that lane is one that Jesus walked down, and He summons us to pursue glory by following after Him.

Coal Fires and Fish (Easter 2015)

Joe Harby on April 5, 2015

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Introduction

The physical presence of the Lord Jesus, alive after the resurrection just as He promised He would be, transforms everything. We can see this very clearly in the fall and restoration of the apostle Peter after the resurrection of Jesus.

The Text

“And the servants and officers stood there, who had made a fire of coals; for it was cold: and they warmed themselves: and Peter stood with them, and warmed himself” (John 18:18).

“And the other disciples came in a little ship; (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits,) dragging the net with fishes. As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread” (John 21:8-9).

Overview

These two verses are just a few pages apart, and the Greek for the charcoal fire is identical (anthrakian). The apostle John is a very careful writer, and the contrast that is built in here is no accident. We are being invited to compare and contrast the two settings.

The first fire was built by the enemies of Christ (18:18), and the second was built by Jesus Himself (21:9). Peter was present in both settings, and he was present because of something that had been said by the apostle John (18:16; 21:7). Jesus was present in both settings. In the first He was on trial for His life (John 18:27; cf. Luke 22:61), and in the second He has conquered death (21:1). In the first, Peter denied the Lord three times, just as Jesus had predicted (18:17, 25, 26), and fell into sin. In the second, he affirmed his love for the Lord three times, more humbly than before, and was reinstated to ministry (21: 15, 16, 17). In the first, Peter received something from wicked men (warmth), and in the second he received something from the Lord (food, and forgiveness). In the first, Peter does not compare favorably with the disciple that Jesus loved—John was more influential “at court,” John didn’t deny the Lord, and John didn’t run away. In the second, Peter has all such comparisons put to rest for him (John 21:21-22). “What is that to you?”

153 Fish and Big Ones Too

Paying attention to the number of fish caught is not a mystical or spooky reading of the text–—it is a literary reading of the text. It is reading with your eyes open. The issues are placement, foreshadowing, parallelism, conventions, and so on. To illustrate the difference, consider another detail from this text—when Jesus called out to His disciples fishing about 100 yards offshore, He told them to put their nets down over the right side of the boat, which they did. When they had done so, the result was a huge haul. This was a way of Jesus identifying Himself. When He had first called them to ministry, He had called them away from their nets (Matt. 4:18-22) so that they could become fishers of men. And when Jesus had done a similar miracle like this one before, the response that Peter had had was that of being overwhelmed with his own sinfulness (Luke 5:8). The first time the miracle had made him aware of his sinfulness; the second time he was living in an awareness of his sinfulness, with the memory of his denials and blasphemies still raw, and this same miracle calls him out of it.

This scene in John has a return to both elements—Jesus deals wonderfully with Peter’s sin and fall, and Jesus recommissions him to ministry as a fisher of men. He tells him three times to “feed the sheep” (21:15, 16, 17). We should also have no trouble seeing the fish as emblematic of the coming haul at Pentecost. The nations were to be brought into the boat, and Jesus indeed made His disciples fishers of men. In this case, Peter had jumped out of the boat, and the others had brought the fish in. But Peter is soon to rejoin them in the work. I like to imagine Peter standing on a wall in order to preach at Pentecost, and to see him cast his gospel net over the right side.

But what is it with the specific number of fish? This is a good place to illustrate the difference between a careful literary reading and mystical reading. This number has had a goodly amount of ingenuity to be spent on it. Some of it has been fanciful, some of it pretty pedestrian, and some of it sober. But the sober reading is still astonishing.

Bear With Me

The pedestrian reading is that 153 is mentioned because that’s how many fish there were, darn it, and John was simply interested in adding an irrelevant little detail. He put that in for “local color.”

A fanciful reading is that when you add the ten of the commandments to the seven of the seven-fold Spirit, as Augustine urged, you get 17, and 153 is the triangular of 17. (Triangularmeans that if you add the numbers 17 to 16 to 15 to 14 and so on down to one, the sum is 153). The problem here is that you can also get 153 from Seventeen magazine, and that doesn’t mean that John is talking about the challenges of adolescence in a secular age. This is the kind of thing that John Calvin called “childish trifling.”

But 666 is the triangular of 36 (and 36 is 6 times 6). It is a number we instantly recognize. The biblical writers often did make some of their points with numbers, and John particularlydid. The fact that it is unusual to us doesn’t make it unusual or odd to them. We already have solid grounds for understanding the fish as representing the Gentile nations. We have that “fishers of men” call that Jesus gives Peter and Andrew, James and John. We have the fact that throughout Scripture, the sea represents the Gentiles and the land the Jews. No one in the Old Testament is shown eating fish, but in the New Testament fishing (and the eating of fish) comes to the front and center.

On the day of Pentecost, how many nations are listed? Well, 17 actually (Acts 2:7-11). And we have to remember the practice of encoding numbers in names (called gematria) was common in the ancient world. They could do this in a way that we cannot because they used the same symbols for letters and for numbers. We have Roman letters and Arabic numbers. But in Hebrew, the first nine letters corresponded to 1-9, the next nine were 10-90, and the last five were100-400. So?

Well, as one biblical scholar points out, the prophet Ezekiel promised that the time of the New Covenant would be a time of glorious fishing.

“And it shall come to pass, that the fishers shall stand upon it from Engedi even unto Eneglaim; they shall be a place to spread forth nets; their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many” (Eze. 47:10).

The prefix En simply means spring, and so there are two words we should consider here —Gedi and Eglaim. If we look at the numerical value of Gedi in Hebrew, we find that it is 17, and the value of Eglaim is 153. Now try reading through Ezekiel 47, with its living water from the Temple of the Church, and trees on both sides of the river, with leaves for medicine, for the healing of the nations, and see how fishers of men shall stand there, from “the Spring of 17” to “the Spring of 153.”

Ezekiel was talking about the salvation of the Gentiles under the figure of fish, and he uses these numbers. John refers to this, and it has the same meaning as the explicit meaning given to it by Jesus in Luke (fishers of men). This means that 153 is a symbolic number for the Gentile nations who will be brought into the kingdom of God.

Back to the Charcoal Fire

Remember that Peter is being restored. The antithesis is very clear here. The charcoal fire built by the enemies of Christ is not really a good place to warm yourself—and it ends with snarling, cursing, devouring, bitterness, and tears.

The charcoal fire built by Christ is built in order to feed the disciples, and then, as Peter is being restored, he is commanded (in his turn) to feed the Christians who will follow him. Post-resurrection, the Lord who feeds His disciples is as humble as He was in the upper room when He washed their feet. They come to the beach, and He is cooking their breakfast. “How do you want your eggs?”

The resurrected Christ forgives and feeds. Our responsibility is to be forgiven, to be fed, and then to forgive . . . and feed. The first charcoal fire is the fire of betrayal, treason, sin, blasphemies, crashing pride, and humiliation. The second fire is the fire of free and full forgiveness, a fire of complete reconciliation.

After Peter denied the Lord, and went out to weep bitterly over it, how many times do you think he wished he could do everything over? How many times do you think he

lamented his self-confidence and bluster? How many times do you think he wished he could go right back to the beginning of his discipleship, and follow Christ faithfully this time? And what does Jesus give him? In the miracle of the fish, this is exactly what He gives to Peter. He takes him back to the moment he was first called, and is graciously given an unspeakable gift. Here, follow me again. All is forgiven. This really is a do-over.

Come, Follow Me

And what about you? Do any of us need to experience this kind of reconciliation? The answer is yes for all of us. The Lord is not more gracious to Peter than He is to you. Do not ask about Peter what Peter asked about John—you will get the same answer. What is that to you? You follow me—but you follow Him cleansed and forgiven. As though you had never denied Him.

This sermon is modified from a sermon first preached in 2007.

Gathered Up Godforsakenness (Good Friday 2015)

Joe Harby on April 3, 2015

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We call this day Good Friday, and it is good that we do. This was a day of darkness foreordained by the good pleasure of God, the day on which He determined to do whatever it might take to secure the salvation of the world.

But the fact that it was good and holy in its purpose and intent, and was good for us, as all God’s blessings are, did not prevent it from being hard as sin, and as black as the hearts of the men who condemned Him.

One of the best ways for us to evaluate what kind of day this actually was would be through looking at how Jesus Christ anticipated it. The night of His arrest, He was in an olive grove called Gethsemane, across the Kidron Valley, opposite Jerusalem. The Lord’s submission there to the cup given to Him by His Father is justly famous, but there are a few additional details the gospel writers tell us in the description that will help us to understand our salvation more fully.

Before considering these phrases, remember that Jesus was a man who had spent His entire ministry, over the course of three years, as one who was always in complete control. He was the master of every situation. If a crowd wanted to throw Him off a cliff, He walked through them. If He was asleep in the bottom of a boat, and a tempest arose, He would tell the wind and waves what to do. If a leper came to Him, He would touch the leper and cleanliness would spread to the leper, instead of uncleanness spreading the other way. If He needed to walk across the Sea of Galilee, He would do so. If the chief theological logic choppers of the nation came to trap Him with questions, He deflected all their stratagems easily, as though they were cobwebs in a doorway. If He met a disreputable woman, He knew exactly what to say and do. He could tell people to roll away a stone so that a man who had been dead four days could obey Him and come out. In short, His disciples had never seen Him in over His head. The world had never seen such mastery. Never.

Christ was the final Israel. He was Israel, the obedient Son. And as an obedient Son, all the blessings of Deuteronomy were in the palm of His hand by right. “And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth: And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God” (Deut. 28:1–2 ). This was the secret of His mastery. This is the reason all the blessings of God pursued Him wherever He went. This was how He did His miracles—not as God in disguise doing tricks for the children, but rather as a Spirit-empowered Israelite. He had all the authority that flowed from obedience.

But something in the Garden of Gethsemane threatened to undo Him.

Matthew tells us that He was sorrowful [lypeo], and Matthew and Mark both tell us He was very heavy with grief [ademoneo]. Matthew and Mark both tell us He was exceedingly sorrowful [perilypos]. Mark says that He was “sore amazed” [emphobos]. Luke adds the detail that an angel came to strengthen Him, and says that He was in such an agony [agonia] that He manifested signs of a condition we call hematidrosis, a condition where agony or fear causes the cluster of blood vessels around the sweat glands to burst, causing the blood to be secreted with the sweat. And Luke, the physician, tells us that they were great drops of bloody sweat. In short, Jesus, complete master of every possible circumstance, was terrified.

Blend these three accounts together in a paraphrase.

“Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to the disciples, “Sit here, while I go a little further to pray. Pray that you don’t enter into temptation.” And He went about a stone’s throw away, taking with Him Peter, as well as James and John, the two sons of Zebedee. And He began to be sorrowful, very heavy with grief, and pressed down with terror. Then He said to them, “My soul is crushed with sorrow, even to the point of death. Stay here, and watch with me.” And Jesus knelt down and prayed, saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but Yours, be done.” And an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening him. And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly, such that His sweat was like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And when he rose up from prayer, and came to His disciples, He found them sleeping for sorrow.”

But after the agony of Gethsemane, Jesus is back in control. His submission to God was not only true, but also complete. He was fully composed when the Sanhedrin vents its rage against Him. When He stands before Pilate, bloody and beaten, the situation makes Pilate afraid (John 19:8 ). After He was nailed to the cross, Jesus gives a repentant thief an exquisite promise of Paradise that day. He remembers to entrust the care of His mother to John.

The one moment when this is not true was the great moment of dereliction, that moment He had been dreading in Gethsemane. Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. God made the one who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. The blow finally fell, and when it did Jesus cried out in a holy despair, quoting Scripture, and it is still “my God, my God.”

So Jesus was deserted in that moment, so that you could come home. He was forsaken by His Father, so that you—born forsaken—might be adopted by His Father. Jesus stepped, obediently and willingly, into the abyss of godlessness so that you and I could step, obediently and willingly, into the arms of the Father. He obeyed His Father into the void, so that we could all be summoned out of the void.

Apart from Christ, all of us stagger through this life, our arms full of Godforsakenness. And yet Jesus comes to each of us and says, “Here, let me take that.” And in the event we are now remembering, He gathered up all our Godforsakenness into Himself, and made sure that all of it died and went down to the heart of the earth. We know because He escorted it there personally.

And so this is indeed Good Friday. But let it be remembered that this word good, as wonderful as it is, represents the understatement of the ages.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.

Palm Sunday 2015: The Crowds of Palm Sunday

Joe Harby on March 29, 2015

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Introduction

A commonplace in Christian circles understands the events surrounding the first Palm Sunday to be a clear demonstration of the “fickleness of crowds.” But there are good reasons for questioning this common assumption.

The Text

On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, Took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord (John 12:12-13).

But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus. The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas. Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified. And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified (Matt. 27:20-23).

Overview

When Jesus entered into Jerusalem riding on a donkey, in fulfillment of prophecy, a great multitude gathered around and received Him as their king, as one who was coming in the name of the Lord. There is nothing in the account to suggest that the acclaim and joy were not genuine.

And yet, a very short time later, a multitude before Pilate was persuaded by the chief priests and elders to clamor for the destruction of Jesus. There is nothing in this to suggest that the composition of the crowd was largely the same as before, or that the crucifixion of Jesus was the result of everybody suddenly changing their minds. Rather, the facts recorded for us appear to suggest that Jerusalem was divided over the identity of Christ, and that those who loved Him were (temporarily) out-maneuvered.

Jesus was arrested at night, and was examined by Annas in a secret proceeding at night, in full contradiction to Jewish law. By the time they showed up before Pilate, it was still early (John 18:28). From the time of the Lord’s arrest to the time when the first nails went in, about nine hours elapsed. The whole thing was an iniquitous rush job. For about half that time, while all this was going on, the godly from the Triumphal Entry, those yearning for the redemption of Israel, were sound asleep in their beds.

Fidelity and the Appearances

We have a marked tendency to go on the basis of appearances. Even Elijah once fell victim to this mistake. “God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying, Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life. But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of
grace” (Rom. 11:2-5).

Momentum is truly a mysterious thing. Ability to speak and to be heard is also mysterious, and often has little to do with actual numbers. This means that it is often the case that things can look far worse than they actually are.

The Good Purposes of God

The crowds on Palm Sunday were not silent in their reception of Christ. They dutifully responded just as they ought to have done, and if they had not, the stones would have cried out. But their joy was short-lived and was replaced by black despair when Jesus was arrested, tried and executed. But their faithfulness was still a seed which bore fruit soon enough.

God gave to His faithful a moment of great glory when they received Christ in His triumphal entry. But this glory was still early, and not near glorious enough. It was premature by design, a proleptic glory. Hopes were raised high, just to be dashed to earth again. But this was a necessary part of God’s good purposes. “For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done” (Acts 4:27-28).

The plan of God involved far more than a parade into Jerusalem, a parade to warm the heart. God’s purpose was the redemption of the cosmos, the creation of a new heaven and a new earth. This means that sometimes the ungodly appear to outnumber the godly because God wants to make it apparent that the power is His, and not ours. We serve a God who raises the dead.

Sins of Silence

At the same time, 6,999 faithful but silent ones can indicate a separate set of problems. It may not be utter and complete faithlessness—as it appeared to be to Elijah—but among the faithful we still might find a distinct range of problems. One of the most common is ungodly silence. As with all things, this sin can be used by the hand of God, but we are still responsible for it.

Remember the antithesis—there were two crowds in the Jerusalem of that day. Because of God’s purposes in the world, there are always two crowds—the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Where is your allegiance?

Remember your loyalties—the saints received Christ into Jerusalem loudly. Have you ever stood by silent when others were not being shy about their allegiances at all?

Remember God’s priorities—the general consensus was that the Messiah would come to Jerusalem and kick out the Romans. What He actually did was come to Jerusalem and kick out the moneychangers. Sometimes we are “silent” because we showed up at the wrong place.

Conclusion

Jesus set His face in order to go to Jerusalem. He did this because He set His mind on the joy that was set before Him. His entry into Jerusalem was an early step—and we have yet come close to completely the journey that He began. We are still in the shallows of that joy.

State of the Church 2015

Joe Harby on December 28, 2014

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Introduction

One of the things that characterizes the writings of the apostle Paul is his regular practice of giving thanks to God for the saints of various churches he was writing to. Not only does he thank God for them, but he insists on telling them that he thanks God for them.

The Text

“Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers;” (Eph. 1:16). “We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you” (Col. 1:3). Also see 1 Thess. 1:2, 3:9, and 2 Thess. 2:13.

Summary of the Text

God gives us gifts in one another, and through one another. We are the body of Christ to one another. The recognition that God is behind all of it is central. When Paul gives thanks, he gives thanks to God. All the good works that we do for one another are repurposed gifts, redirected gifts. God first gives, and then as a consequence of this, we are able to give. But we can only give biblically if we ourselves are a gift. When we give, we are imitating God who always gives Himself in the gift. So this is why we render a two-fold thanks. When we say thank you, we say thank you first to God, and secondly to the instrument in God’s hand. We do good works because we are God’s workmanship (Eph. 2:10)—we render gratitude and glory to Him, but this in no way takes away from the gratitude we render to our fellow servants. Rather, it recognizes the true source of all good gifts. No true Christian wants to be an autonomous gift; we should all want to be the gift of one to another.

Gratitude by Name

The apostle is also not shy about naming names. There are many places where we know only two things about someone—his or her name, and the fact that the apostle Paul was grateful for him or her. From Epaphroditus to Junias, we know that Paul was grateful to individuals by name. We also know that his gratitude did not always result in giving us that name. “And I intreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which laboured with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellowlabourers, whose names are in the book of life” (Phil. 4:3).

Giving Thanks for You

And so, in what ways has this congregation been a cause for gratitude?

This congregation has been a “family-integrated church” for many years, and you were doing it before it was “a thing.” Our service is an hour and a half long, and we all worship together—from the seniors down to the littles. So we are grateful

to God for you, and for all the hard work that goes into keeping some sort of moral order in your row. Don’t be discouraged—we are coming up to the time of harvest. A child born when we first went to weekly communion is around fourteen now. Another fourteen years and he will have a four-year-old on his lap, explaining the wine and the bread to him.

Community is as community does. You are an extraordinary congregation of helping hands—whether we are talking about unloading moving vans, or preparing meals for families in need, or giving to those who are less fortunate. When help has been needed, the wordoutpouring would be a good way to describe what frequently happens.

We want to believe what the Bible teaches us to believe, and we want to behave the way the Bible says to behave. In the providence of God, this means that we often find ourselves off the beaten path. You have been taught some “odd” things, and I am grateful that you have been such good sports about it. God is God, and grace is grace. Everything else follows, and the earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

You are musically adventurous. We are very grateful to God for the music He has given us to sing, but for you old-timers, we have occasion to be even more grateful to God for the music we used to sing. We have a lot to do, and a long way to go, but we are very grateful for what we get to sing on the way.

You are committed, in a way that few North American congregations are, to providing our covenant children with a thoroughly Christian education. Learning to think like a Christian is not something that can be managed with one message on Sundays only. Our task is to learn how to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. This is our task every hour of every day.

Hard to Satisfy

God is a perfect Father. The humblest effort to please Him does in fact please Him. He is very easy to please. At the same time, He is perfect, and therefore very hard to satisfy. Easy to please, hard to satisfy. He will not be satisfied until the work of His Spirit in us is final and complete. “Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus: Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily” (Col. 1:28–29).

We sometimes make the mistake of thinking that any expression of gratitude will make the one we are praising think that they have nothing else to do, that they have arrived. Since we don’t want that to happen, we withhold our gratitude because we don’t want anything going to anybody’s head. On the other hand, going the other way is thought of as discouraging. What we need is to know that we are already accepted in Christ, completely and finally. We are accepted in the Beloved, which means that there is no condemnation. We are set free to grow, without a gun to our heads. Grace is the only soil in which a true Christian can grow.