Entries Tagged 'Theology' ↓

“When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things” (Mark 6:34).

This simple and oft-quoted verse captured my attention because of the connection, easily overlooked, I think, between Jesus’ assessment of the crowds situation as “sheep without a shepherd” and his being moved with compassion for them, on the one hand, and his beginning to “teach them many things,” on the other.

What I take away from this is that when confronted with a frazzled and shepherd-less flock, Jesus doesn’t resort to leadership tactics or visionary dreaming or group analysis. He turns to teaching. And precisely because they were in such a hapless state, he was compelled to teach them, not just some, but many things. Teaching is, then, I conclude, the means by which the shepherd / pastor cares for his flock.The word of God is thus the shepherd’s rod and staff, his tools for correction and protection and guidance.

It is also worth noting that the people of God are left shepherd-less and uncared for when her pastors fail to teach “many things,” as Jesus did, many things, no doubt, about the kingdom of God. Further, it is worth noting that compassion for people ought to overflow in teaching, as it did in the life of Jesus, whose compassion was unsullied by other motives and understanding of the needs of people perfectly accurate.

My mother recently sent me a great and challenging quote from A. W. Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy.

“If some watcher or holy one who has spent his glad centuries by the sea of fire were to come to earth, how meaningless to him would be the ceaseless chatter of the busy tribes of men. How strange to him and how empty would sound the flat, stale and profitless words heard in the average pulpit from week to week. And were such a one to speak on earth would he not speak of God? Would he not charm and fascinate his hearers with rapturous descriptions of the Godhead? And after hearing him could we ever again consent to listen to anything less than theology, the doctrine of God? Would we not thereafter demand of those who would presume to teach us that they speak to us from the mount of divine vision or remain silent altogether?” (p. 71).

To insist much on those things that the Scripture insists little on, and to insist very little on those things on which the Scripture insists much, is a very dangerous thing (Religious Affections, p. 438; Yale Edition).

Two vitally important and revealing questions arise out of this statement: (1) What do you insist much on that Scripture insists little on? And, perhaps more importantly, (2) What do you insist little on that Scripture insists much on? And, if you’re wondering about a third, then how about this: In light of #1 or #2, do you find yourself in a dangerous position?!

As many of you know, Katie and I have been wrestling with our housing situation for quite some time now. In the last sixteen months, we’ve moved house three times: down to a rental in Oak Park, back to the house we owned in Wheaton, then to a new place in Wheaton just recently, after we (finally!) sold our house in Wheaton. It’s been an exhausting and, admittedly, at times, very frustrating process. Just recently, in fact, this past Friday, we decided to move ahead with putting an offer on a house back in the Oak Park area, only to receive word a half-hour later from our realtor that the house had just been sold earlier that day!

We’ve prayed all the while for God’s grace to sustain us in the midst of these several transitions; and we’ve prayed repeatedly for the Lord to open up the right opportunity for us. We’ve prayed, you might say, for felicity – for the hand of Providence to orchestrate for us happy circumstances. And we’ve done so unabashedly, knowing there’s nothing wrong with praying this way.

However, I was challenged this morning by reading the following comments by the English Puritan, William Jenkyn. His words were a reminder to me to always seek favor over felicity: the blessing of God over God’s blessings. And should God choose to supply us with the blessings for which we hope, then praise God. But should he not, or at least not in the way we were anticipating, then let the favor of God nonetheless be our chief desire and source of joy.

May these words similiarly encourage and challenge you.

Let nothing please or satisfy you, but the light of God’s countenance and do so receive from God here, as that you may be received to God hereafter. Desire not gifts, but mercies from God; not pebbles but pearls, and always labor for that which God never bestows but in love. Luther, when he had a rich present sent to him, professed with a holy boldness to God that such things should not serve his turn. Always desire the favor of God rather than outward felicity. O desire from God that your portion may not be in this life, but that what you enjoy here may be a pledge of better things hereafter.

This past Sunday, we looked at Titus 2:1-10 – a passage rich with personal challenge and application. However, in this post I would like to make a few observations about the implications of this passage for the teaching ministries of the church.

First, our teaching ministries must be firmly rooted in sound doctrine. We must not become slack or compromise on this point. For we cannot build strong Christian lives upon a shaky foundation. And sound doctrine is that foundation. So whether it’s men’s or women’s ministries, our Life Groups / small groups, or our Sunday school curriculum for our children, we must insist upon the fact that is it thoroughly biblical, robustly theological, and doctrinally sound. There’s plenty of superficial, not very substantive teaching material out there. We don’t need more of it. We need more sound doctrine coursing through our teaching curricula. So the first question we should be asking of curriculum or studies we might use would be: Is it firmly rooted in sound doctrine? And don’t just assume that because you found it at a Christian bookstore, or another church is using it to good effect, or its written by a well-known author, that its firmly rooted in sound doctrine.

Second, our teaching ministries must prioritize life-change. Paul said to Timothy that the goal of his instruction was love (1 Tim. 1:5); so too should it be the goal of all our instruction as well. We cannot be content with filling our heads with more and more and more knowledge. Knowledge is critical and foundational – don’t misunderstand me! Knowledge is just not sufficient in itself; it must lead to life-change. And so we must work hard to find out what “fits” with biblical teaching, and then teach it. Furthermore, we must do this from cradle to grave: from young to old. This is as important for our students as it is for our seniors; this is as critical for our kids as it is for our college-aged.

Third, our teaching ministries must creatively enable intergenerational, life-on-life interactions. The classroom is a necessary part of what it means to teach; but the classroom is rather limited. We need to think carefully and creatively about how it is that we can rub shoulders with one another on a more consistent basis so that the kind of modeling and mentoring happens. This is one of the primary reasons why our Life Groups at Calvary Memorial Church are not demographic or life-stage specific, but instead are multi-generational. So that this kind of life-on-life, cross-generational mentoring can happen on a more regular basis. We need to continue to think creatively about how to make that happen more and more and in other areas of the life and ministry of this church.

Fourth, and finally, our teaching ministries must be wholly reliant upon the grace of God. It is critical that we not forget this! It is all too tempting to come away from Sunday’s sermon with marching orders and try to man-handle the teaching ministry of the church. We must remember that it is the grace of God that trains us on the art of living Christianly in the world (2:11-12). It is reliance upon what God has done, not what we must do; it is resting in his provision for us, not the provisions we must make for ourselves; it is looking to his Holy Spirit for empowerment, not to ourselves for the necessary motivation to do what needs to be done. Unless we look to the grace of God and promote the grace of God in all our teaching, we may well end up in the predicament the Pharisees in Jesus’ day found themselves in: they were great teachers and holy, well-disciplined bunch, but they were miles and miles from the Kingdom of God because they didn’t understand the grace of God.

As you may know, the term ‘missional’ has become something of a buzzword. It’s a neologism I personally quite like; it’s the adjectival form of the noun ‘mission’ and thus serves as a catchword for a certain way of both being and living in the world vis-à-vis the non-Christian society around us.

There’s a lot talk these days about being more missional. But in my experience these conversations tend, frankly, to focus more on form than substance. All too often I find myself left with the impression that being missional has more to do with lighting candles, playing cool music, growing a soul-patch, preaching in jeans, and generally being just a bit edgy – than it does with living a life that is “self-controlled, upright and godly,” as Titus would have us (2:12).

I’m sensitive to not overstating my case, so let me ask: When was the last time anyone attended a conference for ‘missional’ churches and church leaders and discovered there that the key to missional outreach is the renunciation of sin and the full-throttled pursuit of holiness?

Yet, as I read Titus, here’s the irony. According to Titus, the most effective missional and congregational outreach is a corporate devotion to good works. As New Testament scholar Gordon Fee has rightly observed, the letter of Titus is thoroughly evangelistic in its thrust: throughout this letter Paul encourages behavior that will be attractive to the world; thus good works are for the sake of outsiders.

So while I’m on board with the need to be more missional – that is, to take seriously the cultural chasm that has developed between contemporary forms of Christianity and the surrounding post-Christian culture – I’m nevertheless increasingly convinced that the most effective prescription for being and becoming truly missional in any recognizably New Testament sense is to cultivate zeal for good works within the life of the church of Jesus Christ. Zeal for good works is as missional as it gets.

Our study in the book of Titus will, then, help us as a congregation learn how better to do that most missional of things: “adorn the doctrine of God our Savior” (2:10). So that the gospel of God looks more attractive and beautiful and winsome and ultimately compelling to outsiders.

The second reason why we need to hear the message of Titus is because we as evangelical Christians desperately need to close the credibility gap.

I trust everyone is aware of the fact that evangelicals have what one might call a ‘public relations’ problem, a problem with our image, with how we’re perceived. The recent study by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons entitled, unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity, has underscored this point sufficiently enough. As you are doubtless aware, the word on the street is that evangelicals are hypocrites. And, of course, in some cases, as I think we would all agree, the charge of hypocrisy is entirely (albeit regrettably) justified.

However, let me say plainly that I don’t believe our chief problem is hypocrisy. Rather, it’s credibility. At least my experience has been that for the vast majority of us evangelicals, our problem isn’t that we say one thing and then knowingly do another (i.e., hypocrisy). Instead, it’s that we say one thing and then unwittingly fail to let that shape the rest of our life; thus, we create a credibility gap between our professed convictions and our actual practice.

To use a metaphor: we don’t have a heart problem, but a circulation problem. It’s not that our heart isn’t pumping blood as it ought; it’s just that the blood doesn’t seem consistently to reach the extremities of our daily lives. Hence, our credibility problem. For we leave outsiders who observe our lives with that niggling question in their mind: “Do they really believe what they’re preaching, since it doesn’t really seem to penetrate the practicalities of their daily life? It’s as if they’re peddling a soda they themselves don’t really enjoy drinking?”

Despite the air of cynicism toward religion that pervades our culture, people are nevertheless surprisingly willing to give credit to a person who actually lives by his or her convictions, almost regardless of what those convictions are! In this day and age of virtual-this and virtual-that, where everything is accessible, but nothing is real, we’re increasingly hungry for just that: something real, something authentic, something credible, something – indeed, someone – believable, someone who actually practices his or her own convictions.

Here’s where the book of Titus comes in. For it is written to help the believers on the island of Crete, and the church of Jesus Christ ever after, to address this issue of credibility in the eyes of outsiders. For the burden of the argument of the book is that we are to devote ourselves to good works for the sake of outsiders, in order to “adorn the doctrine of God our Savior” (2:10) and thus commend the gospel in and through a life of holiness and godliness and gospel-centered consistency.

At Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park, where I serve as the pastor, we have recently begun a sermon series on that seldom-preached New Testament epistle, Titus. (Incidentally, I asked for a show of hands of who has ever heard a sermon series on Titus and don’t recall seeing any!).

In this and the following two posts I would like to mention several reasons why we need a series on Titus.

The first is our need to make-up for what I will call a discipleship deficit. It has become a well-worn cliché to describe North American Christianity, in particular, evangelicalism, as a mile wide and an inch deep. That is a rather unflattering way of acknowledging that even though forms of evangelical Christianity are widespread in American cultural and society, the actual depth and substance of our lives is rather thin. Although we’ve been good at winning converts, we’ve not been so good at making disciples. We can fill big churches, but we struggle to grow godly men and women. This is what I mean by our discipleship deficit.

For years Dallas Willard has been emphasizing this very point. In fact, listen to what he says in an article written in 1980 for Christianity Today (included in his Spirit of the Disciplines):

For at least several decades the churches of the Western world have not made discipleship a condition of begin a Christian. One is not required to be, or to intend to be, a disciple in order to become a Christian, and one may remain a Christian without any signs of progress toward or in discipleship.

He then concludes:

So far as the visible Christian institutions of our day are concerned, discipleship clearly is optional.

Why is this? There are doubtless a variety of reasons: some social, some cultural, some historical. But, ultimately, I believe the reason for our discipleship deficit is theological: too many preachers and Bible teachers have taught a truncated gospel, one that fails to draw any real link between faith and obedience, or between grace and good works. Again, I think Dallas Willard nails it when he writes: “Obedience and training in obedience form no intelligible doctrinal or practical unity with the salvation presented in recent versions of the gospel.” The effect is that we can “believe” the gospel but not live like Christians, or “trust Jesus” even though it has very little impact on our life.

The book of Titus, and I hope and trust this sermon series on Titus, will help redress this discipleship deficit by reminding us that the gospel is fully orbed and to embrace grace is to be transformed, necessarily and inevitably, into a doer of good works. For that is what grace does: trains us to renounce a life of sin and seek a life of righteousness (Titus 2:11-14).

Colossians 3:5-11, this Sunday’s sermon text, contains a pair of what scholars of the ancient world and the New Testament call “vice lists.” The first is in 3:5: “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry” (NIV). The second is in verse 8: “anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.” The items in this list look, at least at first blush, rather randomly selected. And not a few scholars would say that they are, and that this is precisely what we would expect of a list like this when it’s compared with similar lists in the ancient writings of pagan and Jewish authors.

But are they? Or might there be some underlying thematic coherence to either of these lists? Or both of them together?

I’m preparing to preach from Colossians 3:1-4 this Sunday and I’m musing on the meaning of “things above” and “earthly things” in 3:1 and 3:2. We are, Paul says, to set our hearts and minds on “things above” and not on “earthly things”:

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your heart on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.

What are these “things above” to which Paul is pointing? And what are these “earthly things”? For example, is a computer an “earthly thing,” and an angel a “thing above”? So that if we want to follow Paul’s advice I must stop typing (since it leads me inevitably to think about an “earthly thing”) . . . and start meditating on beings that occupy another metaphysical plane of existence, not earthly but above?

And what does it mean to “set” our heart and mind on the one or the other?