Presbyterian & Reformed

Adding this to the blogroll:
http://thepuritans.wordpress.com/

The “About Page” alone was enough to convince me!

What I am doing here….

“The method that I shall choose to discourse upon these words shall be this—I will propound certain questions upon the words, and direct particular answers to them; in which answers I hope I shall answer also, somewhat at least, the expectation of the godly and conscientious reader, and so shall draw towards a conclusion.”
-John Bunyan

Why I am doing it….

“My intention in this weak endeavour (which is but the undigested issue of a few broken hours, too many causes, in these furious malignant days, continually interrupting the course of my studies), is but to stir up such who, having more leisure and greater abilities, will not as yet move a finger to help [to] vindicate oppressed truth.”
-John Owen

How great is that?

How I love Spurgeon. Besides Scripture, he is a true balm for my soul. From Today’s ‘Morning’ devotion on the verse “Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out.” (Song of Solomon 4:16), he writes

… Our souls may wisely desire the north wind of trouble if that alone can be sanctified to the drawing forth of the perfume of our graces. So long as it cannot be said, “The Lord was not in the wind,” we will not shrink from the most wintry blast that ever blew upon plants of grace. Did not the spouse in this verse humbly submit herself to the reproofs of her Beloved; only entreating him to send forth his grace in some form, and making no stipulation as to the peculiar manner in which it should come? Did she not, like ourselves, become so utterly weary of deadness and unholy calm that she sighed for any visitation which would brace her to action? Yet she desires the warm south wind of comfort, too, the smiles of divine love, the joy of the Redeemer’s presence; these are often mightily effectual to arouse our sluggish life. She desires either one or the other, or both; so that she may but be able to delight her Beloved with the spices of her garden. She cannot endure to be unprofitable, nor can we. How cheering a thought that Jesus can find comfort in our poor feeble graces. Can it be? It seems far too good to be true. Well may we court trial or even death itself if we shall thereby be aided to make glad Immanuel’s heart. O that our heart were crushed to atoms if only by such bruising our sweet Lord Jesus could be glorified. Graces unexercised are as sweet perfumes slumbering in the cups of the flowers: the wisdom of the great Husbandman overrules diverse and opposite causes to produce the one desired result, and makes both affliction and consolation draw forth the grateful odours of faith, love, patience, hope, resignation, joy, and the other fair flowers of the garden. May we know by sweet experience, what this means.

Due to a set of circumstances that include my own addlepatedness, I don’t have my notes with me from Sunday, so I’ll need to double up with next Sunday’s post.

By way of atonement, here’s a great post from a guy called Derek Brown. Convicting stuff in the Screwtapian manner. Check out the post on Derek’s site, along with his other great stuff but following the link.

What follows is purely Derek’s work.

How To Waste Your Theological Education

1. Cultivate pride by writing only to impress your professors instead of writing to better understand and more clearly communicate truth.

2. Perfect the fine art of corner-cutting by not really researching for a paper but instead writing your uneducated and unsubstantiated opinions and filling them in with strategically placed footnotes.

3. Mistake the amount of education you receive with the actual knowledge you obtain. Keep telling yourself, “I’ll really start learning this stuff when I do my Th.M or my Ph.D.”

4. Nurture an attitude of superiority, competition, and condescension toward fellow seminary students. Secretly speak ill of them with friends and with your spouse.

5. Regularly question the wisdom and competency of your professors. Find ways to disrespect your professors by questioning them publicly in class and by trying to make them look foolish.

6. Neglect personal worship, Bible reading and prayer.

7. Don’t evangelize your neighbors.

8. Practice misquoting and misrepresenting positions and ideas you don’t agree with. Be lazy and don’t attempt to understand opposing views; instead, nurse your prejudices and exalt your opinions by superficial reading and listening.

9. Give your opinion as often as possible – especially in class. Ask questions that show off your knowledge instead of questions that demonstrate a genuine inquiry.

10. Speak of heretical movements, teachers, and doctrine with an air of disdain and levity.

11. Find better things to do than serve in your local church.

12. Fill your life with questionable movies, television, internet, and music.

13. Set aside fellowship and accountability with fellow brothers in Christ.

14. Let your study of divine things become dull, boring, lifeless, and mundane.

15. Chip away at your integrity by signing your school’s covenant and then breaking it under the delusion that, “Those rules are legalistic anyway.”

16. Don’t read to learn; read only to refute what you believe is wrong.

17. Convince yourself that you already know all this stuff.

18. Just study. Don’t exercise, spend time with your family, or work.

19. Save major papers for the last possible moment so that you can ensure that you don’t really learn anything by writing them.

20. Don’t waste your time forming friendships with your professors and those older and wiser than you.

21. Make the mistake of thinking that your education guarantees your success in ministry.

22. Don’t study devotionally. You’ll never make it as a big time scholar if you do that. Scholars need to be cool, detached, and unbiased – certainly not Jesus freaks.

23. Day dream about future opportunities to the point that you get nothing out of your current opportunity to learn God’s Word.

24. Do other things while in class instead of listening – like homework, scheduling, letter-writing, and email.

25. Spend more time blogging than studying.

26. Avoid chapel and other opportunities for corporate worship.

27. Argue angrily with those who don’t see things your way. Whatever you do, don’t read and meditate on II Timothy 2:24-26 and James 3:13-18 as you prepare for ministry.

28. Set your hopes on an easy, cushy pastorate for when you graduate. Determine now not to obey God when he calls you to serve in a difficult church.

29. Look forward to the day when you won’t have to concern yourself with all this theology and when you will be able to just “preach Jesus.”

30. Forget that your primary responsibility is care for your family through provision, shepherding, and leadership.

31. Master Calvin, Owen, and Edwards, but not the Law, Prophets, and Apostles.

32. Gain knowledge in order to merely teach others. Don’t expend the effort it takes to deal with your own heart.

33. Pick apart your pastor’s sermons every week. Only point out his mistakes and his poor theological reasoning so you don’t have to be convicted by anything he says.

34. Protect yourself from real fellowship by only talking about theology and never about your personal spiritual issues, sin, and struggles.

35. Comfort yourself with the delusion that you will start seriously dealing with sin as soon as you become a pastor; right now it’s not really that big a deal.

36. Don’t serve the poor, visit the sick, or care for widows and orphans – save that stuff for the uneducated, non-seminary trained, lay Christians.

37. Keep telling yourself that you want to preach, but don’t ever seek opportunities to preach, especially at local rescue missions and nursing homes. Wait until your church candidacy to preach your first sermon.

38. Let envy keep you from profiting from sermons preached by fellow students.

39. Resent behind-the-scenes, unrecognized service. Only serve in areas where you are sure you will receive praise and accolades.

40. Appear spiritual and knowledgeable at all costs. Don’t let others see your imperfections and ignorance, even if it means you have to lie.

41. Love books and theology and ministry more than the Lord Jesus Christ.

42. Let your passion for the gospel be replaced by passion for complex doctrinal speculation.

43. Become angry, resentful and devastated when you receive something less than an A.

44. Let your excitement for ministry increase or decrease in direct proportion to the accolades or criticisms you receive from your professors.

45. Don’t really try to learn the languages – let Bible Works do all the work for you

“June 15.—Day of visiting (rather a happy one) in Carronshore. Large meeting in the evening. Felt very happy after it, though mourning for bitter speaking of the gospel. Surely it is a gentle message, and should be spoken with angelic tenderness, especially by such a needy sinner.”

Continue Reading »

I thought this would an easy post. It’s not.

This week’s sermon resonated with me in ways that are really not open for public airing. Suffice to say, I’m currently in the wilderness. It opened up for me on Wednesday evening last week as I came home from work and Kid’s Club. Without getting into some sort of weird virtual onanism, no, Mum – it’s not cancer!

But it’s harsh. It’s ugly. It’s gonna hurt like ripping band-aids off a hairy arm. Superglued band-aids. With nails in ‘em. And little teeth. It will involve fundamental changes in my life and life-style for the next two or more decades.

Then along comes this preacher dude and tells me that I need to identify, accept, and embrace my wilderness.

Identify – check. Yep. It’s looming over my life and my wife’s life like an angry cloud. We know the squall is coming. We’re beginning to batten down the hatches – but we also know the boat ain’t waterproof. But – we’ve identified our wilderness.

Accept it – well, check for me. It just is. Can’t change it. Can’t go around it. Can just steer the ship into the heart of the beast and hope the hatch battening outdoes the ship leaking..ing.

Embrace it. For me, I’m ok. It’s a bit like embracing my dog after he’s run all through mud and water and rolled in a rotting deer carcass and eaten some random poopy-pile he’s discovered. Yeah, I know that under the filth and stench there’s something that loves me – and I love. But it’s hard not to wonder when you have poopy-breath slobbery kisses landing on your own mug.

So it’s weird. I’m not gonna die in all likelihood – although before coming to Christ, this would have pushed me strongly into suicidal depression. I’m not going to be homeless in the foreseeable future. But everything else is up for grabs. That’s terrifying – but oh so oh so OH SO freeing! I can’t tell you how freeing it is. Terrifreeing – that’s what it is.

Pray that God might terrifree you sometime soon. It’s scary but all that stuff in the sermon about heaven being shinier and Jesus being more central – I can vouch it is true and the ride really hasn’t even begun yet.

I doubt that terrifree will be my lasting contribution to the O. E. D. – but I do hope I can hang onto it as a touchstone as me, my bride, and sundry dogs transition into life 2.0.

I was reading John MacArthur’s Ashamed of the Gospelthis morning, and was profoundly moved by some quotes he had from a sermon by Spurgeon – Holding Fast the Faith. It resonated (both Spurgeon and MacArthur) strongly with the call to an identification, acceptance, and embracing of the wilderness as seen in Sunday’s sermon. I was deeply moved by both the first chapter of MacArthur’s book (which I read online and now MUST buy) and Spurgeon’s defence of the face in the light of his censure by the Baptist Union during the Down-grade Controversy.

Here’s a link to Crossway where you can read the first chapter of the book by MacArthur, and you can click the link below to read Spurgeon’s sermon in it’s entirety.

I found the text in a PDF at Spurgeon Gems - and ammended it slightly for the blog here but the bulk of the work was obviously done by Emmett O’Donnell and I commend the site heartily to all.

Holding Fast the Faith
by C. H. Spurgeon

Delivered on Lord’s Day Morning, February 5, 1888,
at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.

“And to the angel of the Church in Pergamos write: These things says He which has the sharp sword with two edges. I know your works and where you dwell, even where Satan’s seat is: and you hold fast My name and have not denied My faith.” – Rev 2:12-13 Continue Reading »

Today was a ’swap Sunday’ where the guys at our two sites swap pulpits. The same rules apply – My notes on his sermon; mistakes are attributable to me by default; no comments today.

Intro:
A vacation in 2002 took in South Dakota and was much enjoyed. All the usual suspects were there; Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, even Wall Drug and, of course, the Badlands. The Badlands looked like a scifi movie set. Harsh, rugged, sweeping canyons and soaring mesas with shades of red and burnt orange. Still, despite the hostility of the landscape, it was strangely beautiful. But despite the beauty it was still called the ‘Bad Lands’ for a reason, it was hostile to life. Bad lands, indeed.

Hendrikson, in his commentary on Mark, says words to the effect that “John was preaching in rolling badlands.” The imagry is one of desolation, hostile, snake-filled, ruined country – just like the South Dakota badlands.

Part I:

Mark continues to camp in the wilderness in these next verses of his introduction. In fact, he uses the term wilderness 4 times in the opening 13 verses that introduce the gospel. The word he uses is <greek> and means desert. In ancient near eastern speak, desert means not only a lack of water, but carries the sense of something derelict. A ruin. A place where hunmanity has withdrawn, leaving behind demons. In Scripture, however, wilderness caries a two-fold aspect: A place of moral disolution, but also a place of spiritual renewal.

The wilderness tests and strengthens those in it. (Hos 13:4-5; Gal 1:17; Heb 11:37-40)

In Mark we see this dualism. John is bringing, or proclaiming, spiritual renewal in the desert and John the Baptist climaxes in spiritual revival as we see in John 5.

There are still hints of the desolation. John is a wild guy, a peculiar guy. His wardrobe is odd and points to his prophetic office. The leather belt (cf 2 Kings 1:8) and the camel hair robe (cf Zech 13:4) point to the prophetic nature of his ministry. His diet, too, was odd eating locusts and wild honey. Leviticus 11:22 tells us that locusts were ‘clean’ and ok to eat but still they cannot have been preferable to eat. Wild honey was a gift from God for dealing with eating locusts.

Part II

Verses 7-8 are the main topic of JtB’s preaching and extol the ‘one to come’. John does not focus on himself but the king who is coming. For John, it is not the preaching or the baptism that is primary – but the one yet to come. John was not the ‘groom’ but the ‘best man’; not the star but servant. Imagine a matron of honor who stops a wedding to complain that the bride is getting too much attention and it is, after all, the matron’s special day too! Imagine a best man who gave the speech at the reception and extolled his own virtues and did not speak of the groom at all.

JtB realizes his role as ‘best man’ to the groom, Jesus. We, too, often make it about ‘us’ and not about ‘Him.’

John says the baptism of Jesus is greater than his own, John is a big, strong, tough, guy (you don’t live in the desert eating bugs and wearing camel hair and be a wuss) but tells us the coming one is even more mighty.

Again, in the ancient near eastern world of that time, the job of unlatching sandals was for the lowest of the low. Contemporary proverbs point to the difference between a slave and a disciple being none. They were identical in every way – save one. A disciple was not to undo a master’s sandals.

And yet, JtB puts himself below even the most menial, lowly slave. Even less than the scumiest servant is JtB compared to Jesus. John goes out of his way to raise Christ and lower himself.

Wilderness living then:

• Lowers dependance on self

If the land is too poor to farm, to lousy to sustain animals, too miserable to hunt ad you don’t even have a box for your camel hair robe – you increase your reliance on God.

• Lowers reliance on stuff

And increases reliance on the provider of stuff. And don’t we get bored with stuff? To a rich man, water is boring. The thirst is for soda or milk or beer or wine. He sneers at water. Yet, in the desert, water is a delight and bountiful provision from God.

• Heightens the Emptiness of Earth

And instills a greater longing for heaven. In the Badlands, you don’t mistake earth for heaven. Hard living …

• Emphasises the Lustre of heaven

And brings an appropriate awe of the divine. Who reads Revelation 22 with greater awe – a king used to being surrounded by jewels and gold and luxury – or a pauper? We live in the middle of luxury and protest that this luxury does not affect our spiritual walk. The spirituality of the United States tells us a different story.

The lights of the city dim the brilliance of the stars – and the lights of this world dim the glory of heaven. Life in the wilderness shows us heaven in new glory. And not even new – in true glory.

• Focuses our eyes more clearly on Jesus

And brings about a life lived with Christ at its center. John’s whole existance was Jesus-focused. He was there to increase Christ and decrease himself. Moses and David had wilderness experiences before they entered into their ministry – but for John the Baptist, the wilderness WAS the ministry! Life for John was wilderness & his view of the wilderness day in and day out focused his eyes more and more on Christ.

Part III

A). Consider that earth for the unregenerate is as close as they ever get to heaven. It’s heaven on earth for them. For the saint, then, earth is as close as they ever get to Hell. Earth can be hell on earth.

What is our wilderness? Are we called to a wild place? Not all are. But what is it if we are? Identify your wilderness.

B). Then accept it. Let God use it to focus dependance on Him, bring Jesus into sharp view and let Him highlight our need for a saviour.

C). Now – embrace it. Let the badlands be our good lands. John accepted where God had him. The wilderness was all around him and the wilderness can be a gift. CS Lewis in the ‘reverse view’ of faith in his Screwtape letters makes the point that God relies on the troughs to shape his people far more than the peaks. There is nothing so dangerous to the enemy as a believer in a pit who, despite having lost sight of God, continues to obey anyway.

Is all going well? Is life a breezy song? Beware of self-pride and self-reliance rather than reliance on Jesus. Whatever you think the ‘needle’s eye’ is in Scripture, the point is that it is easy for those who are rich, in money or ease, to not see their need for salvation by another and ascribe it to themselves. It is correspondingly hard, then, for them to enter the kingdom.

Thank God for the locusts.

  So I figured out what is not fun. Mostly, for me today, it’s a 3.5 foot solid steel bar embedded nicely in the front of my car – running all the way up and punching into the radiator. In a similar vein, collecting it at 60 mph on the freeway is likewise not fun.

My car now sports a jaunty 1940’s debonair smoker look – with the cigar hanging out of it’s mouth grill.

In fact, it’s jammed inside the hood so tightly, I’m unable to dislodge it alone.

It was mildly annoying to collect an extra 15 pounds of steel on the way home, especially since it was not copper – which I could probably scrap to recoup the cost of the repairs I am sure I’m about to uncover.

“Oh, sir. How silly of you. It might LOOK relatively unscathed but your hydadit converter has clearly been damaged and you wouldn’t want your water piston to rupture the myaletic solanoid, would you?”

No – I most certainly would not! At times like this, Greek seems a lot less useful than say, auto shop, as an academic focus. All in all, I’m grateful it is stuck in the radiator and not in me.

I know we’re not there yet, but I’ve also peeked how the Gospel works out, and I know the disciples are just around the corner. I know, too, that they must have felt at times much like I do today – a bit ill-equipped for the realities of life as it smacked them about the head and shoulders. Yes, yes – it’s all very well saying “From fishermen to fishers of men” – but I can imagine a life of bait, hooks and nets while it might offer some pithy one-liners and great sermon illustration – pales somewhat when faced with winning souls to Christ. Three years these guys spent with Jesus and still the managed to fumble as they dealt with the completely new circumstances of their lives.

Well, I’m a dirty sinner. That’s really at my core who I am. I don’t wake up each day singing a Psalm in Hebrew, eager to be a servant to all and knowing just all the things I can do to please God today. Usually, I wake up in desperate need of a caffeine hit, reminding me how really useless I am to be hooked on coffee, with bleary eyes, a foreboding dread of the next 8-10 hours of work and a resigned acceptance that my life really is not going to be everything I wished it would or could be when I was a fool younger man.

Death will come to me much like that steel bar. Out of nowhere at 60 miles an hour whilst I’m off doing something mundane. It’s not likely to come to me whilst I am feeding staving orphans or from falling on a grenade to save my fellow comrades from certain harm.

in Mark, we open with urgency. There was a messenger that came who proclaimed the coming of the Great King. We’ll unpack that, I’m sure, in the weeks ahead in the book of Mark. But it will be historical biography. It’s fascinating to a guy who loves to collect facts and even who likes to know his intimate friends better. Understanding who Jesus is and what he wants is no small matter.

But there is another voice. It too proclaims the coming of a Great King. It will be the second time he’s dropped by. Unlike the first time, this time, He’s come for a  reckoning. I’ll be just like I am today – knowing Greek but needing auto shop. I’ll know sin but need grace. Aside from the odd strange case like Enoch, basically – we all die. I know that’s coming. I’ve been told. I’ve gotten the message.

Have I prepared? Have I made my way straight here in the wilderness of my life? I’m not talking about saintly perfection. I’m not talking about some sort of spiritual Buddhist detachment from fleshy things – I’m talking a personal grip on grace. Or, rather, grace’s grip on me personally. God does speak to us in the broken, hurting, wilderness we live in. If you’re thinking you have it all together, friend, you’re doing it wrong. You’re deluded. You sin. Oh, not like I do in manner or intensity, I’m sure – but enough to alienate yourself from God forever and incur his displeasure when Christ comes back.

I have been thinking about that bar. I saw something from the corner of my eye, but I did not know what it was. I noticed it but did not see it. Then WHUMP – I hit it. As I look back, I can see that the odd shape that bounced out from the car ahead of me was the thing lodged in my car. I can see that there were signs and portents of the event that happened. I imagine my death or the return of Christ will be the same. I will notice the signs but not until after will they fall into place. Unlike the accident yesterday, however, death won’t be a shock. I’ve been warned that it lays ahead for me. I’ve been warned that there is some consequences to it – and how to mitigate those consequences. In life, it will not do to be studying Greek and needing auto-shop. To speak plainly, being a student of sin instead of a student of righteousness will leave you defeated and helpless. Don’t rely on making a last minute change in your major because your graduation will come up on you like a steel bar on the freeway doing 60.

It’s been a while, but basically, I wanted to prove the concept to myself and then wait out the end of our Ten Commandment series, the usual ‘State of the Church’ and ‘Sanctity of Life Sunday’ sermons and pick up fresh with the Gospel of Mark. That time is here!

There’s no way for you to know, but for me – the Old Testament is, perhaps, the most exciting part of the Bible for me. The narrative is visceral and gutsy, the poetry sublime, the people scandalous and real – my neighbours and myself. But, that said, I am so excited to be in the New Testament – and a Gospel at that.

A reminder that Sunday are my notes of the Pastors’ sermon and not a manuscript nor my own notes. I may have misheard or misnoted what he said and error is assumed to be mine and not his. Also, since they are primarily just what they are – my notes, they form a monologue block and will not be open to comment. Save that for Wednesday.

Mark 1:1-3 “Behold Your King”

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,
  “Behold, I send my messenger before your face,
who will prepare your way, 
the voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’ ”

Randy woke to chirping one Saturday as the 9 volt battery expired in the smoke alarm and sent its 9 second blast deep into his slumber. Removing the battery didn’t help and, of course, there was no replacement battery to be found. He drove to the Shell station – the only thing open at 3:30 am – and got the replacement silencing the clarion call and slipping back into a little more sleep.

Perhaps you’ve been startled from slumber or perhaps we’re in cruise mode in our lives when something suddenly shocks us awake.

Most who encounter Jesus in this Gospel are also surprised or startled by him. Mark 4 tells of the storm on the lake, after which his disciples ask “Who IS this guy?”

People are drawn to Jesus by his authority but often don’t ‘get’ him. Mark tells of the struggle transitioning into faith throughout his Gospel.

Background:

Author:

Technically anonymous, the title kata markon appeared early in the C-2nd. Early evidence points to John Mark of Acts 15 note. Here is the Council of Jerusalem “What do we do with the gentiles?” After, Paul wants to revisit the earlier works. Barnabas wants to take Mark. Paul wants to take Silas.

Papias: Mark became Peter’s interpreter

Internal: Consistency between structure of the Gospel and the structure of the sermon of Peter in Acts 10. Each of the Gospels  portrays the disciples as slightly thick. Mark does so especially – pointing to the fact that someone who counted themselves amongst their number would have had the temerity to do this – and even then, Peter especially so amongst them; the slowest of the slow. Again – evidence that Peter was the oral source of the Gospel.

Date:

55-65 ad, that is 25 years after Christ – first generation. As the oral tradition of Kerugma began to wane, the need for written accounts grew.

Geography:

Written from Rome -  mostly ascribed because of the date evidence. Also, internally, Mark’s Gospel is thematically and not geographically organized. Jesus is always travelling. Mark points to his visiting the remaining 12 tribes as he notes, somewhat offensively to our modern ears, to the Syrophoenecian woman.

Themes:

1. Person and work of Jesus

2. Discipleship

Excepting Christ and the disciples, few others in the Gospel are ever given names. This highlight Jesus. Mark also hurries to the Cross with ‘immediately’ occurring some 36 times in the Gospel.

1:1-8:26 Presentation of the person of Christ
8:27-16:8 Testing of the Lord

Both of these hurtle us to the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Diving In:

1. What’s in a Name?

Mark starts not with a genealogy or theological proposition, but a purpose statement: The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Mark gives here the name – Jesus
Also gives the title – Christ
Also gives the claim – Son of God

Critics point out that nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus ever claim that title for himself. They omit that nowhere does he deny it either. Mark knows that Jesus is more than mere man – and points to Malachi and Isaiah to prove it.

2. That Sounds a Little Familiar

Mark harkens back to the prophets, both of whom prophesied to a disobedient people exhorting them to look for a savior/comforter to come. The ‘voice’ crying in Isa 40:3 is the messenger in Mark 1:2. And while the wilderness may well be geographical, more than mere isolation is meant. The idea of wilderness points to a broader life implication. Where does God speak to us? In our slumber. In our wilderness.

3. The Message of the Messenger:

What is the message? “Get ready!” Today Nascar begins. The Indy 500 is also iconic in racing and immortalized the phrase “Gentlemen, start your engines.” At that command, the place resounded with a cacophony of roaring engines. John the Baptist cried out too. A sprt of spiritual “Gentlemen, start your engines’ that announced the speaking of God into History with a sound that has been heard down the centuries and around the globe. The message that God brings redemption to broken, to hurting, to wilderness people.

The King is coming. Get ready!

So this should be the “Hey, I’m rocking it with the holinezz” part of the week.

It’s not.

The thing that keeps leaping out at me over and over and over in this week’s sermon is the idea that we are a nation, a priesthood. We belong to something. We are knit together in ways that go beyond just accidental collections of people like those, say, at a movie theater. We’ve elected (if you’ll pardon the pun) to be identified as part of the post-Cross Israel. We’ve taken the awl and pierced our ear on the doorpost of Christ.

A nation allows room for differences. Color. Race. Creed. None of these things defines a nation; a state is greater than the sum of its parts. If we are a nation, surely we are also to allow for a certain degree of freedom. The bible is not a text book with a nifty index and a bunch of things to do, or not do. It contains, gasp, things that allow for differences between neighbors.

So I don’t get this sudden predilection to self-exile, willingly excommunicate oneself to find perfection of doctrine, total unity in all things. You wind up sailing very close to the wind of cult. Even in the best of circumstances, differences that would take one out of a ‘Big R’ Reformed church, consistently preaching the gospel faithfully, with biblical standards for officers, leadership and discipline – and yet understanding of the Grace we have in Christ to allow for restoration – cutting oneself away from that must be a serious matter indeed.

I think of the recent campaign for recruitment for the Armed Forces in the USA. The army has one that makes a point of saying “I am an army of one.” I think we run the risk of seeing this as a valuable and viable part of our faith. “I am a church of one.” Psalm 133 reminds us that it is good when brothers dwell together in unity. I don’t recall anywhere reading that it’s good to dwell apart but at least in utter conformity.

And this has got me in a funk. Yes, no-one is setting my clothes on fire. Yes, people are not beating me with rattan canes. But that is not my reality. My reality is trying to hold together a fracturing faith in a fracturing culture. We are a nation, a chosen nation, a nation of priests. I don’t get the desire to renounce citizenship. I’ve failed the call to be upbeat in spite of that.

And yet, God is sovereign. He is working out His will and His purposes will not be thwarted. That I can, must and always seek to cling to like a drowning man to a life preserver in a rough sea, knowing that it will bear me up until I come to calm waters and safe harbor once more.

You know, I’m half post-mil by inclination, but I’m with the amils in the call for my Lord to come back.

Soon.