Phillip Jensen asks Mark Dever – When is it ever right to leave a church? from Audio Advice.

Good advice for members and, I would argue, for Shepherds.

1. St. Patrick:

Dr. Moore has a good post over at his blog on the relevance of Patrick for evangelical (dare I say, Reformed?) Christians tempted to despair by the dour outlook of the times. In reviewing Philip Freeman’s St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography, he says

This biography gives contemporary evangelicals more than a pious evangelist to emulate. It also reconstructs a Christian engagement with a pagan culture, in ways that are strikingly contemporary to evangelicals seeking to engage a post-Christian America.

2. St. Patrick Redux:

Mark Driscoll offers very helpful insight into the missionary call of Patrick – with a brief biographical sketch of his life. Mark, I am unashamedly stealing large portions of your post to rework for my Kid’s Club kids tonight! Thanks for a very helpful resource that will let me unpack to my youth that St. Patrick’s day is more than just green drunkenness – but a man called by God to bring Christ to those written off by the “church” as irredeemable. Grace will give me a great landing point tonight with these 2-9 year olds.

In the end, the Roman Church should have learned from Patrick, who is one of the greatest missionaries who has ever lived. Though Patrick’s pastors and churches looked different in method, they were very orthodox in their theology and radically committed to such things as Scripture and the Trinity.

3. R.C. Sproul Jr. & the Census:

I know I’ve run into my share of folks who are advocating bloody revolution over the notion that the Goverment is conducting a census. Is there some merit to the idea that the Government is ‘out of order’ in conducting the census? Sure! Does it equate to the histrionics that are issuing from the usual quarters? Not really, no. Little R.C. is awesome on this:

My conviction, informed by the collective wisdom of almost every Reformed Bible commentator, is that Romans 13 calls us to submit not just to government as it ought to be, but as it is. That means governments whose authority is on shaky grounds, as well as governments whose activity is on shaky grounds, if they are the ones in power, are to be submitted to, unless or until they command us to do what God clearly forbids, or forbid us to do what God clearly commands. The census is a nuisance. It is not authorized by the Constitution. It is one more fruit of the state’s self-aggrandizement, one more affectation to demonstrate that it is God. And I will be filling mine out. I’ve read the whole Bible and no where does God tell us, “Whatever else you do, be sure not to tell the state how many toilets you have.”

Brilliant!

HT: Justin Taylor

VII. The seventh lesson by which Christ teaches contentment is the burden of a prosperous outward condition. One who comes into Christ’s school to be instructed in this art never attains to any great skill in it until he comes to understand the burden that is in a propserous condition.

Objection.You will say, ‘What burden is there in a prosperous condition?’

Answer.  Yes, there is certainly a great burden, and it needs great strength to bear it. Just as men need strong brains to bear strong wine, so they need strong spirits to bear prosperous conditions, and not to do themselves hurt. Many men and women look at the shine and glitter of prosperity, but they little think of the burden. – Jeremiah Burroughs: The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment ch. 6

There – I’ve said it! I was raised Roman Catholic and by the time I had woken up to the call of the Holy Spirit in my mid-teens, and abandoned the faith of my parents for the Faith of my Fathers, I was in no way equipped to learn the SC. Besides which, I was not introduced to it at that time.

Our Kid’s Club at GRC takes our elementary school kids through a version of the Shorter Catechism. I am sometimes asked if I think we should not be doing something more ‘fun’ with the kids. Aside from the fact that the curriculum is very well written and supported with activities, coloring and all sorts of stuff the kids enjoy (not to mention that learning about God and ‘fun’ are not mutually exclusive) – it occurs to me that even if it was miserable and resulted in many tears – I would still want our kids to go through it.

I always have a secret New Year’s Resolution to finally learn the Shorter Catechism. I say secret because I know I’ll probably fail and it’s just too depressing (i.e., humbling) to consider that is was meant

‘to be,’ as the Scottish General Assembly puts it in the Act approving it, ‘a Directory for catechizing such as are of a weaker capacity,’ as they sent out the Larger Catechism ‘to be a Directory for catechizing such as have made some proficiency in the knowledge of the grounds of religion.’

Weaker capacity! Children and the mentally deficient got the Shorter Catechism. I don’t even pretend to think that I might someday like to learn the Larger…

B.B. Warfield had a similar love of the catechism. When he was confronted with the ‘So what?’ of the use for the Catechism, in addition to the above quote he wrote the following:

What is ‘the indelible mark of the Shorter Catechism’? We have the following bit of personal experience from a general officer of the United States army. He was in a great western city at a time of intense excitement and violent rioting. The streets were over-run daily by a dangerous crowd. One day he observed approaching him a man of singularly combined calmness and firmness of mien, whose very demeanor inspired confidence. So impressed was he with his bearing amid the surrounding uproar that when he had passed he turned to look back at him, only to find that the stranger had done the same. On observing his turning the stranger at once came back to him, and touching his chest with his forefinger, demanded without preface: ‘What is the chief end of man?’ On receiving the countersign, ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever’ — ‘Ah!’ said he, ‘I knew you were a Shorter Catechism boy by your looks!’ ‘Why, that was just what I was thinking of you,’ was the rejoinder.

It is worth while to be a Shorter Catechism boy. They grow to be men. And better than that, they are exceedingly apt to grow to be men of God. So apt, that we cannot afford to have them miss the chance of it.

Perhaps next year I shall learn the Shorter Catechism.

wild presbyterian hair

I’m not sure exactly what Presbyterian hair is … but I just know that if it was Presbyhair, it would not be wild – but combed ”decently and in order!”

1. Announced – John has proclaimed the coming Messiah.
2. Annointed – Jesus has undertaken the baptism of water and also that of the Spirit
3. Acknowledged – The voice has spoken from Heaven
4. Approved – through passing the test of temptation in the wilderness

In our pericope (or two) this morning we see two things:

1. The Message
2. The Method

That’s nice and tidy as an outline, but it is important to see why this structure matters to us. It is because:

1. We see the substance of the message we should proclaim
2. The method demonstrates the manner in which we should live this out.

In other words, we have here a model of evangelism and discipleship.

There is little doubt that Americans are comfortable. Tim Bascom writes in a book called ‘The Comfort Trap‘ words to the effect that:

We often feel we grow best in comfort but nothing is more difficult than to grow spiritually when we are comfortable

Solzhenitsyn’s exile to the Gulag became a blessing in his life, because it was there that he discovered

… the meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul.

The message and method shows us the foolishness of our obsession with comfort.

The Message

After John was arrested: A void existed after John was arrested that helped ‘catapult’ Christ into his ministry. Remember, Mark was not writing in a vacuum but in Rome at a time under Nero when Christians were being cruelly oppressed and it is not difficult to see a link between Mark speaking of the need for the message and method after John as being a parallel with the need for Christians to persevere in the message and method even as they herald Christ amongst the cultures of the world.

Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God: Do we have death, arrest, he seems to say, and we might add, cancer, hardships? Yes. But alwaus the truth of the Good News is there for those in Christ.

Christ comes to the poor and broken and to those he brings good news. euangellion in the Greek. In the LXX, this same word is used, and especially in II Sam, several times to refer to the report of victory from the battlefield. In Isaiah 61 it is used to refer to the fact that God is invading history to bring about his plan of redemption.

In Mark, too, it more than a formalized collection of beliefs and truths – but is the certainty that the Kingdom breaks into History in the flesh. Christ is the “Kingdom-Bringer” and now, he had arrived! He was here and he brought with him the Kingdom of God.

So what was this ‘good news’ about the Kingdom and the Kingdom Bringer?

saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

There is a sense of parallelism in this verse:

• The time is fulfilled
• The kingdom of God is at hand

are in the perfect tense in the Greek and tend to indicate a finality of completeness. Given that these things are ‘perfectly’ realized, then:

• repent
• believe

and these are imperatives. Not handy suggestions for living or ‘take it or leave it’ spiritual advice – but commands from God to all peoples everywhere and are predicated on the truths that precede them that here and now (fulfilled and at hand) is the time required for repentance and belief.

The Method

The inaugural event of the ministry of Christ was calling four fishermen to be his followers. We can observe three things as we, too, follow Christ.

1. These guys were called to follow by Jesus
   This seems kind of a ‘duh’ moment, but we should be aware in the ANE world, the rabbi, the spiritual leader never called people. Followers would get together a “resume” of why they should be allowed to be followers and would present it to the teacher. The teacher would consider this ‘application’ and either accept the new disciple or reject him. The teacher did not do the calling.
2. They were called into service
   By being made into fishers of men. These guys were no strangers to physical labor. They knew how to work. They were not called into comfortable seating on a bench somewhere being exalted by the unwashed masses. They were called back into fishing. Service is hard, but when we need to lift our eyes to another, it takes our gaze off of ourselves.
3. It changed what they valued
   These guys left everything to follow Christ. Our own doctrine of vocation calls us to minister where we are placed by God. We’re not called to throw everything away – and there is some evidence from the Gospels that these 4 guys retained access to their boats and nets etc. We have examples of them fishing with Christ, rowing about on the Galilee Lake and such as well – but the pre-eminent focus and relationship for them in their lives was now Jesus.

Jim Elliot:

He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose

The Kingdom is here.
The Good News has come.

Jesus calls us and leads us and shapes us into fishers of men and winners of souls. He gets us out of our ‘boats’ – our comfortable places. He calls us into fellowship and not as single disciples but one amongst many. Our vision of Christ should drive us from comfort to be ‘Kingdom Bringers” in our own spheres of influence.

Mark seems to do everything in a hurry. We’ve already seen his ‘vision statement’ in the preceeding two OT quotes and the ministry of John the Baptist who was to live his life as a sign pointing to Christ.

In the ordinary course of nature, tornadoes can only exist if three elements, temperature, pressure, and humidity, all come together in the ‘right’ combination to allow the tornado to form. So, too, in the ministry of Christ, certain things had to come together:

• The Ministry of the Old Testament Prophets (which was completed in the person and work of John the Baptist)
• Baptism of Jesus
• Three signs given

The signs were:

1. The heavens open
   Note that this is the same word in Greek for the tearing of the veil in the temple at the Crucifixion. The Kingdom of God ‘rent asunder’ the heavens here.
2. The Spirit descended
   If this was a baptism for sin, why did Jesus need it? Because of the Gospel. Jesus DID have sin – on the cross – our sin. This baptism was the resolution to take the call of the Father. It was, in a sense, an inauguration of ministry. In His submission at Calvary, God is able to expunge His wrath. And leads us to see the doctrine of double imputation. Our sin is imputed to Christ and Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us. Jesus, even here at the beginning, is setting His face toward Jerusalem and was saying “In this baptism, I promise to be the lamb who takes away the sin of the world.”
3. Voice from Heaven
   Some err in saying that up to this point, Jesus had been fully man and only man – and here, in the baptism, was ‘adopted’ by God. They quote from Ps. 2 “Today, I have begotten you.” They promote the heresy that Jesus ‘put on divinity’ at this point. But God is not establishing a relationship. Rather, in speaking, He is confirming it. Just as baptism exemplifies the covenant and does not establish the covenant when we baptize. So, also, with us. We are not children because of what we do – we are children of God because of who we are.

The baptism of Jesus, then, was not some willy-nilly, random event but was a highly intentional one. In Ch. 11, when the lawyers demand by what authority he does certain things, He points back to His baptism as evidence of heavenly authority.

His second preparation was His Temptation

Immediately, Jesus is thrust into the wilderness. We are told that the Spirit drove him forth for fourty days. We see a reminder back to the fourty years of Moses in the wilderness and the 40 days of Elijah with no water.

Satan is a character in this part of the narrative. So, too, are wild animals. The wilderness is a dangerous place to be. And, yet, angels are there, too, ministering to Him. The other Gospel accounts fill in the picture a bit with the idea of Jesus spending much time in prayer for protection.

Satan tempted Jesus. We are not immune from that attack. He may confuse us intellectually. He may manipulate us at a more hidden level: Our desires, impulses, prejudices, instincts, fears can all be assaulted. We know that the ‘old self’ can rebel in sin and we know that God tests his children. This can lead to anger, self-pity, and even unbelief. But God gives us a different model. “Count it all joy, brothers”. (Jm 1:2) Why? Because testing should produce steadfastness and steadfastness brings forth maturity. We must take responsibility in temptation and arm against them. We don’t need to shrink from it. We even see that temptation itself is not equivalent to sin. Jesus was God, but fully man and endured temptation even as we do – and yet was without sin. Therefore, we have hope at those united to Christ that we can overcome temptation. We have power in our High Priest to do just this. (Heb 2:18 Heb 4:15-16 Heb 7:25)

Storms do come. Tornadoes upset our world. Fear can overwhelm.
Do we have confidence that our sins are imputed to Jesus? Do we really believe it
Are we just asd confidence that we have the righteousness of God and have forgiveness?

If so, we have hope and a friend in Christ, who interceeds ever for us before the Throne.

It is “Heart Aflame: Daily Readings from Calvin in the Psalms” and it puts paid to any silly talk of Calvin being less than pastoral.

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are disjointed: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. Ps 22:14

We see, then, that David was not buffeted with the waves of affliction like a rock which cannot be moved, but was agitated within by sore troubles and temptations, which, through the infirmity of the flesh, he would never have been able to sustain had he not been aided by the power of the Spirit of God. How these sufferings are applicable to Christ I have informed you a little before. Being a real man, he was truly subject to the infirmities of our flesh, only without the taint of sin. The perfect purity of his nature did not extinguish the human affections; it only regulated them, that they might not become sinful through excess. The greatness of his griefs, therefore, could not so weaken him as to prevent him, even in the midst of his most excruciating sufferings, from submitting himself to the will of God, with a composed and peaceful mind. Now, although this is not the case with respect to us, who have within us turbulent and disorderly affections, and who never can keep them under such restraint as not to be driven hither and thither by their impetuosity, yet, after the example of David, we ought to take courage; and when, through our infirmity, we are, as it were, almost lifeless, we should direct our groanings to God, beseeching him that he would be graciously pleased to restore us to strength and vigor. (Emph. added)

Amen and amen!

That aside, here’s a great post on adoption, contentment, and why happiness is a sham.

HT: Challies

While imbalances such as now found in China and India are unknown in the West, the practice of sex-selection abortion is found here as well. Indeed, there is no current law against the practice in the United States, where abortion is legal for any reason, at least in earlier stages of pregnancy. In reality, sex selection abortions happen here, too. After all, proponents of abortion in the United States infamously insist on a woman’s unrestricted right to an abortion “for any reason, or for no reason.”

Required Reading