We have a rotation among our church’s Session to fill the pulpit whenever there is a fifth Sunday in a month (though it gets moved around sometimes for the sake of convenience). Until recently, it worked out to about once a year for each of us (now that we have added two more elders the gap will be longer). Before yesterday, the last time I was up was on December, 31 2006. I was next scheduled to preach back in January of this year, but circumstances delayed the event until yesterday … with the only difference being 1) it was not a fifth Sunday, and 2) the passage was assigned.

Unfortunately, we are currently experiencing technical difficulties (a hardware driver issue in XP). Hopefully I will have an audio version for you next time.

Sermon Date: 04/20/2008
Sermon Passage: Matthew 6:16-24
Sermon Title: Life Coram Deo

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For some time I have been intending to pick up Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. My wife, father-in-law, one brother-in-law and an English professor friend have all read and recommended the series–with certain caveats, of course. I am sure that by now you have heard about the controversy. One can hardly surf the Christian blogosphere (let alone the web in general) and not read something about Pullman and his atheist agenda. As the launch date of the movie adaptation of the first book in the series, The Golden Compass, came and went this weekend I managed to stumble across several good reviews. The first was Al Mohler’s The Golden Compass — A Briefing for Concerned Christians. My initial reaction to his piece was similar to that of fellow PCA guy, David Wayne, who wrote on JollyBlogger that Al Mohler Nails it on “The Golden Compass”. However, after a friend sent a link to Jeffrey Overstreet’s thought provoking review on Christianity Today (Fear Not the Compass) I would now describe Al’s Briefing… as a series of blows–some solid, some glancing. In other words, the nail was still hammered home, but it got bent and left surface dings along the way. Forgive me if this sounds harsh. I have never met Mr. Mohler, but I hear he is an honorable fellow and applaud the changes he has made at SBTS. However, those of us in reformed circles often filter things differently than the broader Bible belt culture in which we live. Perhaps it took seeing the local television news reports of people picketing at the Compass premiere, but there are certain elements in the article that remind me of the ways in which we Christians undermine what our good intentions try to protect.

I have to confess that I am slowly but increasingly becoming unsure of how to respond to the (persistent, pervasive, and burgeoning) paranoia borne of ignorant unbelief among professing Christian believers. The fact is that the Christian faith from the first days of its inception (for convenience’s sake I refer to Acts 2) has been intensely and passionately attacked (and, of course, we immediately think of Saul of Tarsus; and rightly so. But our faith compels us to follow that story through to the end, and answering the question [perhaps even with an air of gloating], “Who’s in charge now, Saul? Who’s the King now, Saul? Huh? Huh? C’mon, man; you’re so tough, you’re so big! Got anymore fight left in you? Huh? Cat got’cher tongue?” But, alas, we seem to only have confidence for such gloating at boxing matches, post-season football games and playground brawls; such real-world confidence seems out of place in the world of faith and religious practice).

In his review, Mohler writes:

So, what’s the problem?

This is not just any fantasy trilogy or film project. Philip Pullman has an agenda — an agenda about as subtle as an army tank. His agenda is nothing less than to expose what he believes is the tyranny of the Christian faith and the Christian church. His hatred of the biblical storyline is clear. He is an atheist whose most important literary project is intended to offer a moral narrative that will reverse the biblical account of the fall and provide a liberating mythology for a new secular age.

The great enemy of humanity in the three books … is the Christian church, identified as the evil Magisterium. The Magisterium, representing church authority, is afraid of human freedom and seeks to repress human sexuality.

The Magisterium uses the biblical narrative of the Fall and the doctrine of original sin to repress humanity. It is both violent and vile and it will stop at nothing to protect its own interests and to preserve its power.

Pullman’s attack on biblical Christianity is direct and undeniable.

So… Satan’s own attack on “biblical Christianity” continues to be direct and undeniable; from the days of the garden, Satan (who is no mere literary character if we are to believe the Biblical account) has had “an agenda about as subtle as an army tank [...] nothing less than the exposure of the tyranny of the Christian faith and the Christian church” (Echoes of the garden: “Did God REALLY say that? Whoa! Pretty heavy-handed and oppressive, don’t you think, Eve? I mean, c’mon; what sort of god would keep such goodies from you except a tyrant intent on oppressing and controlling you?! Take my advice and I will grant you all the delicious, savory wisdom that he is keeping from you.” — and the first lottery ticket was sold and the persistent promise has proven irresistible ever since.) (more…)

Tonight was to be the last of our men’s groups until after the new year. We did not meet this past Wednesday because of Thanksgiving and in classic Scott fashion I forgot to send out the weekly reminder. The consequence was that it was just Bill and me eating my wife’s delicious chocolate-chip pumpkin-loaf and bantering about John Piper’s tendency to make everything so black and white. Please do not get me wrong–Piper asks relevant and important questions but sometimes comes across as too definitive (though for good reason considering the primary audience). One of the chapters we were supposed to cover in Don’t Waste Your Life was “Chapter 7: Living to Prove He is More Precious Than Life.” By divine providence I later stumbled across an email exchange with my pastor from a couple months ago. It quickly reminded me that we should never treat the Christian life like a checklist, as if we have figured certain things out with enough finality that they never need be revisited. And so the Lord continues to persistently and tenderly press me on the [central, radical and essential] questions of living “faithfully” as a covenant child of the God of grace, justice, mercy, and goodness in the face of (and in the midst of) poverty and brokenness.

In his book The Problem of Wine Skins: Church Structure in a Technological Age (IVP, 1975), Howard Snyder writes:

In the Old Testament, God’s concern with the poor consistently appears within the context of the justice of God and the working of justice among God’s people. Thus, biblically, words such as “the poor,” “the needy,” “the oppressed,” “the sojourner,” typically have moral content, relating to God’s requirements for justice. This is not easily comprehended in today’s world because “the poor” does not have such a moral content for us. It has a purely descriptive sense; one might say that for us it is a purely secular word. But what we must see is that poverty itself is of ethical significance – the poor is a moral category. In God’s world there is no human condition which escapes moral significance; and the poor, and the treatment they receive, are strong indicators of the faithfulness of God’s people.
(quoted by Waldron Scott in Bring Forth Justice [Paternoster, 1980, 1997])

The above is a helpful observation — namely, that “poverty itself is of ethical significance … the poor, and the treatment they receive, are strong indicators of the faithfulness of God’s people.” — especially when you consider some of the observations and comments from a recent Barna survey (okay, so Barna will win no prizes for careful sociological research, but his surveys do provide helpful, if informal, snapshots of the state of the evangelical heart.):

Interestingly, evangelical Christians were only half as likely (11%) as the rest of the adult population to deem poverty to be the nation’s most vexing social challenge. Asian Americans (11%) were similarly less likely to see the issue in this way.

Only HALF AS LIKELY? Admittedly, most evangelicals would deem “salvation” as the nation’s most vexing social challenge, but still: “half as likely”? What about the (coincidental?) correlation between “evangelical Christians” and “Asian Americans”? Of course, there is no necessary (explicit or implicit) link between the two pieces of data, but the juxtaposition in a recent Barna report raises the question: what is it about “evangelical Christianity” that would produce a similar attitude toward poverty as that among “Asian Americans”? Might it be that our informal comparison between “Japanese Buddhism” and “Bible-belt Christianity” is a bit more substantive than we have been willing to allow? Is this attitude toward poverty among Asian Americans related to that body of worldview ideas/values that hinders (through willful blindness, ignorance, and stubbornness; cf Ephesians 4:17ff) Asian Americans from truly hearing the gospel of God in Jesus Christ? And do “evangelical Christians” share the same worldview structures? That is, are “evangelical Christians” similarly hindered from hearing the gospel of God in Jesus Christ?

In this light, the following paragraph from later in the same Barna report is rather interesting:

In like manner, people groups that are more affluent provided the smallest estimates of poverty. On average, people from households earning more than $60,000 as well as those who have a college degree estimated the poverty rate to be 20% – substantially below the typical estimate offered by adults, but still significantly higher than the actual rate published by the Census Bureau.

Statistically, it appears that our material “well-being” [in itself a loaded use of a loaded-term ...] and consequent lifestyle actually blinds us to the needs of those around us: think about it — we travel well-maintained roads from white-collar business districts to well manicured subdivisions: our daily commute, by design, does not take us through the most needy parts of our community; we shop at the cleanest stores in the most pristinely and carefully developed areas, often unaware of the people displaced by the development. On occasion — only about 20% of the time, to use the above statistic — we stumble uncomfortably across the “poverty” [by which WE mean those "less fortunate" {whatever that slippery term means} than us] around us and so are forced to acknowledge that “yes, it’s there” — and someone should do something about it.

The Barna article concludes:

Barna expressed surprise that devout Christians were not more engaged with the issue. “Given the extensive comments in the Bible regarding the importance of taking care of the poor, we expected to see a larger distinction between the responses of Christians and non-Christians. As churches seek social causes through which to engage people and their faith, facilitating hands-on responses to poverty would probably activate a lot of latent faith and resources.”

So I wonder (and view Piper’s chapter in new light): how far have I drifted from the gospel of God in Jesus Christ that I fail to apprehend the essential, organic — and profoundly moral — link between “a life worthy of the calling” and “my obligations to the poor”? How far have I drifted, similarly, that I fail to apprehend the essential, prime place of “suffering” as God’s good and gracious tool by which he “grows me in grace”? What gospel is it that shapes me if not the gospel of God in Jesus Christ? What spirit and mind possess me if not the Spirit and Mind of Christ who willingly laid aside his own wealth and privilege to serve a wretch like me, even paying my full debt?

Most of my junior year in Mr. Lavelle’s high school English class was spent memorizing poetry from throughout the vast spectrum of Western literature. The final examination was to recite on paper some sixty different verses of poetry and prose. As pointless as it seemed at the time (akin to learning algebra), it was an exercise that has had a lasting effect. I was reminded recently in conversation of just how many of those assignments stuck with me over the last eighteen years: “He prayeth best, who loveth best, all things both great and small; for the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all” (Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner); “Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found” (Pope, An Essay on Criticism); and then there was Richard Lovelace’s famous love song, To Althea, From Prison: “Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take that for an hermitage.” That last half of Lovelace was a stretch (I admit to googling it), but with some prodding I could come up with more … In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree … on second thought I will spare you further torture, suffice it to say that I am thankful for having Mr. Lavelle as a teacher and being on the receiving end of his passion for poetry. Paul J. Lavelle, Jr., age 54, of Harrisburg, PA passed away peacefully after a courageous battle against cancer on Tuesday, March 13, 2007.

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Recently I came across the writings of a different Richard Lovelace—the contemporary Richard F. Lovelace, professor of church history at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, who, other than name, has little else in common with the hasty 17th century cavalier lyricist, except for having a gift at conveying complex principles (albeit a lot less flowery). One such example is the following passage from “Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal,” a book that takes a deep dive into a world where revival is “normative;” exploring the reality that our seemingly ordinary “spiritual lives” are being radically shaped and altered by God. Writing on the issue of “the gravitational force toward enculturation,” that is, the gravitational force of fallen humanity to wed the truth of God’s redemptive proclamations to the forms and functions of fallen humanity as embodied in the surrounding culture, Lovelace says:

“The evangelical stream, however, was only partially dis-enculturated, and it became increasingly less so, … But it was still largely wedded to the Puritan version of the training-code morality [an enculturated version itself; a thorough-going product of the enculturation of the gospel, rather than the "separatist" image we have of Puritanism ...], which caught on in Pietist circles also. As the understanding of grace declined in revivalism, evangelicalism erected a stronger shell of protective enculturation to guard it from the world. Not only did it cling to the Puritan taboos, but in the nineteenth century it added more: wine and tobacco, both of which had been consumed by both Reformers and Puritans. The early Temperance movement was motivated by social compassion for the victims of distilled liquor during the stresses of the Industrial Revolution, and it really called for temperance. When moderation seemed too difficult a spiritual discipline and too slow a remedy, the revivalists of the 1820’s and 30’s moved on to redefine temperance as abstinence, to the horror of Charles Hodge [professor at Princeton Seminary], who protested that the replacement of Communion wine with grape juice was an insult to Jesus and to biblical ethics. … A few decades later, coffee and tea were added to the taboo list by revivalist Charles Finney [whose] understanding of justification and sanctification were essentially severed from any doctrine of union with Christ; in effect, he taught justification by sanctification and not by faith, and sanctification by will power more than by grace.” (Lovelace, Dynamics, p194, emphasis added)

Note the connection at the end of the passage between the development of a moralistic training-code ethic and the “disconnect” of justification from the person, work and life of Christ and the union of the believer in Christ’s person, work and life. As Lovelace says almost explicitly, the degree to which we lose a clear focus on the nature and place of the “grace of God in Christ” we develop calcified hearts; as we become increasingly “accustomed to grace,” as is generally the case here in the Bible Belt, we become increasingly impervious to the life-work of grace itself.

The thrust of his argument: revivals tend to fizzle at the rate that the clarity, centrality and certainty of “God’s grace in Christ” diminishes; and the corollary—those who are “asleep in the light” are wakened and energized at the rate that “God’s grace in Christ” becomes more intensively clear and indispensably central and un-movably certain to the understanding and practice of all of life. How? It is by the prayerful, faith-filled preaching, teaching, and counseling of the Word, which is always (thankfully) accompanied by the Spirit who overcomes our faithless and self-protective resistance so as not to flop lifeless on the sanctuary floor, but so that it will have its intended, life-creating effect.

Along these lines we (those who are called as leaders in the Church) find that one of our greatest shepherding struggles involves 1) getting disentangled from the “enculturated” way in which we understand, live and teach the gospel of “God’s grace in Jesus Christ” and 2) struggling to articulate in winsome and convicting ways the extent to which we are addicted to pursuit of the Kingdom according to the forms, functions and patterns of fallen humanity. That is, it is not merely that we say “no” to “drink, smoke, chew and going with girls who do;” but more to the heart of the matter, it is that we seek to pursue “Jesus” and “the life of Jesus” and even “the righteousness of Jesus” according to the strategies and systems of the world, “according to the flesh,” as Paul says in 2 Corinthians.

Pursuing Christ and His Kingdom “according to the flesh” is so profoundly, deeply and pervasively a part of who we are and a part of the religious industry in the South, that anything that directly or indirectly counters it is dismissed out of hand—sometimes, but rarely, dismissed violently and explicitly; but more often dismissed out of hand by benign, though willful and ignorant, blindness and deafness (cf. Eph 4:17ff).

May we therefore be continually reminded of our shepherd calling: namely, to lift high the cross of “God’s astounding grace in Jesus Christ” in such a way that we and the congregations given to our care are consciously and increasingly gripped by its reality, pulsing through every aspect of life in a fallen world.