The 2nd Commandment – A Jealous God

September 22, 2013 in Bible - OT - Exodus, Marriage, Meditations, Mosaic Law, Ten Commandments, Worship
Exodus 20:4–6 (NKJV)
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
Since our rebellion against God in the beginning of human history, it has ever been a strong temptation to fashion God in the image of some creature and fail to maintain the Creator/creature divide. Tragically, in the history of God’s people, the gravitational pull toward some form of idolatry has been strong and persistent. Rachel hid the idols in her tent; Aaron fashioned the golden calf; Jeroboam erected an idol in Bethel; Ezekiel saw the priests bowing before idols in the temple storehouses; and to this day both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy sanction the veneration of images.
Sacred Scripture indicates for us how seriously God takes this matter; how seriously he takes the worship of His Name. He declares to Moses, For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God… God is a Jealous God – he is jealous for His own glory, jealous for the truth, and jealous for the joy and satisfaction of human beings. All this necessitates that God take worship seriously – for in worship we express that which has highest worth, that which brings highest joy, delight, and purpose to us as human beings. Such praise belongs only to God. He will not permit the glory which is his alone to be given to other gods. “I am Yahweh, that is My name; and My glory I will not give to another, nor my praise to carved images” (Is 42:8). God’s glory and our good are serious business – hence, worship is serious business.
God likens Himself elsewhere to a jealous husband. He takes the purity of His bride, His Church, seriously. When his bride starts scattering her favors to other gods, he takes this seriously – he begins sending judgments, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Him. The Lord is the perfect husband and does not simply turn a blind eye when his bride starts taking up with other lovers. He vindicates His honor and glory.

So as we come here to worship, God wishes to awaken you from your slumber, awaken you from your complacency, awaken you from your idolatry. God takes His worship seriously – how seriously are you taking this morning? God takes His Word seriously – how attentive are you this morning? God takes His glory seriously – so whom are you here to worship? If you are not here to hear from the Lord of glory, the Lord of all the earth, the Lord whose glory fills this place, fills heaven and earth, then beware – the Lord is a jealous God. He knows your heart; he knows whom you are really here to serve. So let us seek his face and confess that we find ourselves prone to worship other gods; prone to find our meaning and delight somewhere other than in Him. Let us kneel as we confess together.

The 1st Commandment – The Unholy Trinity

September 15, 2013 in Bible - OT - Exodus, Meditations, Mosaic Law, Ten Commandments
Exodus 20:3 (NKJV)
3 “You shall have no other gods before Me.
We are all religious beings. As creatures made in the image of God, we cannot help but be religious. We all worship or obey someone or something. Some voice is ultimate – and it is this voice, this voice that governs and directs our life, that is our god. And the most popular deity today is the sovereign self. Eugene Peterson explains:
“Here’s how it works. It is important to observe that in the formulation of this new [religion] that defines the self as the sovereign text [or voice] for living, the Bible is neither ignored nor banned; it holds, in fact, an honored place. But the three-personal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is replaced by a very individualized personal Trinity of my Holy Wants, my Holy Needs, and my Holy Feelings….
The new Holy Trinity. The sovereign self expresses itself in Holy Needs, Holy Wants, and Holy Feelings. The time and intelligence that our ancestors spent on understanding the sovereignty revealed in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are directed by our contemporaries in affirming and validating the sovereignty of our needs, wants, and feelings.
My needs are non-negotiable… My need for fulfillment, for expression, for affirmation, for sexual satisfaction, for respect, my need to get my own way – all these provide a foundation to the centrality of me and fortify my self against [all threats].
My wants are evidence of my expanding sense of kingdom. I train myself to think big because I am big, important, significant. I am larger than life and so require more and more goods and services, more things and more power. Consumption and acquisition are the new fruits of the spirit.
My feelings are the truth of who I am. Any thing or person who can provide me with ecstasy, with excitement, with joy, with stimulus, with spiritual connection validates my sovereignty. This, of course, involves employing quite a large cast of therapists, travel agents, gadgets and machines, recreations and entertainments to cast out the devils of boredom or loss or discontent – all the feelings that undermine or challenge my self-sovereignty.
In the last two hundered years a huge literature…has developed around this new Holy Trinity of Needs, Wants, and Feelings that make up the sovereign self… The new spiritual masters assure us that all our spiritual needs are included in the new Trinity: our need for meaning and transcendence, our wanting a larger life, our feelings of spiritual significance – and, of course, there is plenty of room for God, as much or as little as you like. The new Trinity doesn’t get rid of God or the Bible, it merely puts them to the service of needs, wants, and feelings. Which is fine with us, for we’ve been trained all our lives to treat everyone and everything that way. It goes with the territory. It’s the prerogative of sovereignty, [the sovereignty of self].
What has become devastatingly clear in our day is that the core reality of the Christian [faith], the sovereignty of God revealing himself in [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit], is contested and undermined by virtually everything we learn in our schooling, everything presented to us in the media, every social, workplace, and political expectation directed our way as the experts assure us of the sovereignty of self. These voices seem so perfectly tuned to us, so authoritatively expressed and custom-designed to show us how to live out our sovereign selves, that we are hardly aware that we have traded in our Holy Bibles for this new text, the Holy Self.”[Eugene Peterson, Eat this Book, pp. 31-34]

So what of you? Are you here today to worship the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? To listen to His voice and be shaped by His Word? Or are you here to worship the unholy trinity of your needs, wants, and feelings? The first commandment strikes our ears, You shall have no other gods before me. Reminded that God is the center of all reality and that we often act as though we are the center instead, let us kneel and confess our sin to the Lord.

Preface – God our Redeemer

September 8, 2013 in Bible - OT - Exodus, Law and Gospel, Meditations, Mosaic Law, Ten Commandments
Exodus 20:1–2 (NKJV)
1 And God spoke all these words, saying: 2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Today we begin a series of exhortations on the Ten Commandments. Jesus declared, Do not think that I have come to destroy the law and the prophets; I have not come to destroy but to fulfill. Jesus came to reveal the character of God as it is displayed in His perfect law. He insisted that the sin of the scribes, Pharisees, and Saduccees of his day was not that they esteemed the law of God too much but that they loved it too little; they had substituted their own traditions in place of God’s law. God’s law is, as Paul reminds us, holy, just, and pure.
It is appropriate, therefore, that we consider what God would teach us through the law – and the first thing that He teaches us is that He saves us not because we obey His law but in order that we might obey His law. The giving of the Ten Commandments starts not with an imperative, not with a command telling us what we must do. Rather it begins with a grand indicative, a statement of what God has done. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Even as God spoke these words of old to Israel, He speaks now to the New Israel, to His Church, to us. Egypt was a mere type, a shadow of the sin and death in which all of us as human beings are enslaved by nature. We all are born dead in our trespasses and sins; inclined toward selfishness and deceit. Pharaoh of old was a mere type, a shadow of the Evil One himself who endeavors to keep the world in darkness and despair. He is a roaring lion who prowls about seeking whom he may devour.
But glory be to God that God did not abandon us to sin and death; did not choose to leave us all in darkness and despair. He looked down from heaven and saw that there was none righteous, no not one; he saw that there was no one strong enough to save; and so his own arm brought salvation; his own fury against evil sustained him. He sent His Son Jesus Christ to endure the curse of sin, to swallow death, and to bind the Evil One – and glory be to God, Jesus rose up victorious and now gives life and salvation to all those who trust in Him. God declares to His people, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the darkness of sin and death, out of slavery to the evil one.
And so the first word of the Ten Commandments is not law, not demand, not requirement but Gospel, good news, grace, deliverance, and salvation. That which we could not do, weak as we were because of our sin and rebellion, God did, sending His own Son in the likness of human flesh that he might deliver those who through fear of death were subject to bondage all their lives. This is our God and He has saved us; this is our Lord and He has delivered us. So ought we not to give thanks and praise Him?

Reminded that we are unable to deliver ourselves from our sin and rebellion; reminded that God alone is He who saves us and delivers us; reminded that we cannot stand before God on the basis of our good works; reminded that  it is only through the mercy of God revealed in His Son Jesus Christ that we can worship Him and please Him; let us kneel and confess our sin to the Lord.

Communicating Face to Face

September 1, 2013 in Bible - NT - 2 John, Ecclesiology, Friendship, Meditations
2 John 12–13 (NKJV)
12 Having many things to write to you, I did not wish to do so with paper and ink; but I hope to come to you and speak face to face, that our joy may be full. 13 The children of your elect sister greet you. Amen.
Today we bring to a close our series of exhortations on the second epistle of John. John closes his letter with a warm greeting from his own congregation. The children of your elect sister greet you.
In the midst of his conclusion, John writes words that rattle our increasingly depersonalized interaction with one another. John writes, Having many things to write to you… John informs us here that his second epistle isn’t short because he had no more to say – he had many more things he wanted to communicate to them. So why didn’t he include them? …I did not wish to do so with paper and ink; but I hope to come to you and speak face to face, that our joy may be full.
As wonderful as it is to get a letter – John reminds us that it is yet more wonderful to have the person. And John’s awareness of this important distinction was built upon his years of fellowship with God Himself in the Person of our Lord Jesus. As wonderful as the written word of God is and as much as John treasured it, it was in Jesus that the light of the knowledge of God shone. Knowing Jesus enabled John to know the Word of God in its fullness. And so John wanted to speak with these folks, not just correspond with paper and ink.
So what is the equivalent of paper and ink today? Certainly we have stationery, but we have many other communication tools. Email, facebook, twitter, instant messaging, the telephone, even face time – all are substitutes for personal interaction, face to face communication. Many of them are wonderful tools, gifts from God that enable us to communicate with others when we are not face to face. But let us remember that none these things are a true substitute for the personal contact that John desires and that we desire. For it is that personal contact, modeled on the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, that makes our joy full.

One of the dangers of the many new technologies that we possess is that they can subtly separate us from one another by giving us the illusion of face to face contact. And so though they apparently bring us together, they can in actuality separate us further and spread the plague of loneliness. So John reminds us to pursue one another face to face, that our joy may be full.

And as we meditate on these things, let us remember that the origin of separation in our relationships with one another and with God is our own sin. We hid from God lest the light of His countenance reveal our rebellion. So as we come this day into God’s very presence in worship, let us not flee, but let us confess our sins and ask Him to forgive us through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus. Let us kneel as we confess together.

Embracing the Truth

August 18, 2013 in Bible - NT - 2 John, Ecclesiology, Heresy, Meditations
2 John 7–10 (NKJV)
7 For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. 8 Look to yourselves, that we do not lose those things we worked for, but that we may receive a full reward. 9 Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son. 10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house nor greet him;
For the last two weeks we have explored John’s second epistle and seen that John unites things that many of us often attempt to divide. Today John tackles the topic of truth and informs his readers that truth matters and that Christianity has propositional content that enables us to evaluate false teaching.
The particular false teaching that John rejects was called docetism – docetists taught that the body is evil and that salvation is escape from the prison house of the body. They insisted, therefore, that Jesus could not have assumed a body – that would put him in the same dilemma as the rest of us. Jesus only appeared to have flesh and bones – he really was a spirit instructing us with secret knowledge on how to escape the body.
This, John tells us, is a damnable lie. If we do not get the identity of Jesus right, if we do not articulate the truth about Jesus, then we have neither the Father nor the Son. John informs us that the critical issue is not whether one believes in a person named Jesus but what one believes about him. Who is Jesus? Both Scripture and Christian tradition have always insisted that Jesus is God Himself in human flesh, the Second Person of the Trinity. He is “God of God; Light of Light; very God of very God…being of one substance with the Father.”(Nicene Creed)
Those who modify, twist, distort, or pervert this doctrine are neither Christians nor allies. Whether Unitarians who insist that Jesus was just a great man, or Muslims who insist that Jesus was just a great prophet, or Jehovah’s Witnesses who teach that Jesus was just the greatest of all god’s creations, or Mormons who teach that Jesus was just a man who earned his way to godhead – we are not to consider these nor their like as Christians or allies. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house [church] nor greet him [consider him your ally in the work of the Gospel].
Maintaining this stance is challenging in our day – we live in a religiously pluralistic society full of neighbors and friends who do not embrace historic Christianity and who consider such a devotion to truth out of touch. And so we often find ourselves tempted to compromise or downgrade Jesus’ claims. We are ashamed of the truth rather than embracing the truth.

So reminded of our call to embrace the truth and that we have at times compromised the truth instead, let us kneel and confess our sin to the Lord.

Love and Law

August 11, 2013 in Bible - NT - 2 John, Law and Gospel, Love, Meditations, Mosaic Law, Ten Commandments
2 John 4–6 (NKJV)
4 I rejoiced greatly that I have found some of your children walking in truth, as we received commandment from the Father. 5 And now I plead with you, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment to you, but that which we have had from the beginning: that we love one another. 6 This is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, that as you have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it.
Last week we observed from John’s second epistle that while we often pit love and truth against one another, they are actually fast friends. Love and truth are like flesh and bones.
Today we observe John uniting again two things which in our day and age are often divorced from one another: love and law, love and the commandments of God. John writes that he wants us to love one another. And what is love? This is love, that we walk according to [God’s] commandments.
In the Word of God, love is tangible and concrete – it manifests itself in a wholehearted embracing and implementing of God’s righteous law. What does it mean to love God? It means to be loyal to Him, to not make any idol, to reverence His Name, and to observe the Lord’s Day faithfully. What does it mean to love others? It means to honor those in positions of authority, to preserve the lives, vows, property, and reputation of all men, to speak the truth, and to rejoice in the good gifts that God has given them. Love rejoices in God’s commandments and puts them to practice in the nitty-gritty of life.
John learned this lesson from our Lord Jesus. This is My Father’s commandment, Jesus declared, that you love one another as I have loved you. greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.
Many of our countrymen, many of our fellow Christians want to pit love and law against one another. But the end result of this is cruelty and oppression. Love for God that has no bounds is not love – it is idolatry, blasphemy, and profane living. Love for others that has no bounds is not love – it is disrespect, murder, adultery, theft, slander, and covetousness.
So, brothers and sisters, our caling is to love one another and to love all men by keeping the commandments of God – even as our Lord Jesus did. I have not come to do My own will, Jesus said, but the will of the One who sent Me.

Often, however, we do not want to love others as God tells us to love, we want to love according to our terms. And so we have need of God’s forgiveness and grace. So let us kneel and confess our sins to God in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Truth and Love

August 5, 2013 in Bible - NT - 2 John, Ecclesiology, Meditations
2 John 1–3 (NKJV)
1 The Elder, To the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth, and not only I, but also all those who have known the truth, 2 because of the truth which abides in us and will be with us forever: 3 Grace, mercy, and peace will be with you from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.
The Apostle John wrote his second epistle to a Christian congregation whom he poetically calls “the elect lady.” His words to the congregation are in many respects a summary of his first epistle and help us to identify the author of both letters as the same man. In these first few verses John highlights his two primary concerns for this congregation – truth and love.
He loves this congregation “in truth” together with all those who have known “the truth” – because “the truth” abides in us and will be with us forever. Doctrine, John insists, accurate teaching about the Person and Work of Christ, is essential to the Christian faith.
But so too is love. John “loves” the elect lady and her children and prays that God would pour out “grace, mercy, and peace” upon them. Love too is essential to the Christian faith.
Unfortunately many have attempted to pit these two virtues against one another. On the one hand we have churches that are so committed to “truth” that they treat others mercilessly and harshly, failing to love them as they have been loved. On the other hand, we have churches that are so committed to “love” that they refuse to stand for the truth, refuse to stand for what is good and right.
But truth and love are not competitors – together the two shape and mould biblical wisdom as we see them displayed in our Lord Jesus. Truth and love are like the twin components of bones and flesh. Truth by itself is like a skeleton without flesh – stark, frightening, lifeless. Love by itself is like flesh without a skeleton – a big blob of goo with no structure. But together the two unite to form the living body of Christ.

So this is the challenge for us as a body of believers – to unite love and truth so that we be a light to the world and embody in our congregation the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. But often we pit one against the other – and so let us confess our distortion and pray that God would enable us to experience His grace, mercy, and peace in truth and in love.

Destroying the Wisdom of the Wise

June 30, 2013 in Bible - OT - Obadiah, Coeur d'Alene Issues, Homosexuality, Marriage, Meditations, Sexuality, Wisdom
Obadiah 8 (NKJV)
8 “Will I not in that day,” says the LORD, “Even destroy the wise men from Edom, And understanding from the mountains of Esau?”
This week the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the Defense of Marriage Act and further advanced the perverse agenda of those who would obliterate all vestiges of Christianity from the laws and institutions of our once great nation.
If you, like me, find yourself scratching your head and wondering, “How in the world did we get here? How is it possible that otherwise intelligent men and women could argue that the Constitution protects the rights of men and women to do that which is perverse and unnatural? Particularly when the Constitution was written by those who would be shocked and appalled by the uses to which the document is being put?” If you find yourself asking these very reasonable questions, let me direct your attention to our text today.
Edom was a people descended from Esau and had shared, like their namesake, in covenantal unfaithfulness. When the Israelites were suffering at the hands of the Babylonians, the Edomites mocked Israel’s suffering and assisted the Babylonians in plundering the land despite the covenant oaths that had joined Edom and Israel together. So God sent the prophet Obadiah to prophesy against Edom and announce the judgment that would fall upon the Edomites. What was the judgment?
“Will I not in that day,” says the LORD, “Even destroy the wise men from Edom, And understanding from the mountains of Esau?
Brothers and sisters, God still rules and reigns in the affairs of men – and the proof of His reign is that we are witnessing this same judgment on our land. Our wise men are being destroyed and understanding is being removed from the ruling centers of the land. Washington D.C. is a den of fools and charlatans. It seems that our leaders can no longer tell a man from a woman – and yet we expect them to calculate our tax burdens and administer justice?

We stand in desperate need of the grace and mercy of God – and the only way that we can expect God to pour out His grace and mercy upon us is if we bow before Him and confess our sin and rebellion against Him. As the Church, our calling is to lead the way in this confession. So today, let us kneel and confess that we have as a people rebelled against God and let us ask Him to have mercy upon us and our nation.

Homosexual Christians?

June 28, 2013 in Baptism, Coeur d'Alene Issues, Homosexuality, Politics, Sexuality

One of the editors of Touchstone Magazine wrote an excellent article on homosexuality and the Church. Go here to read his thoughts. It is critical that we saturate ourselves in the Word of God and the testimony of the sacraments in the midst of a culture askew.

The Coeur d’Alene Press covered the SCOTUS overthrow of the Defense of Marriage Act earlier this week. One of the things that struck my wife and me after reading the “word on the street” section of the paper was that most people’s opposition to homosexuality has been simply a matter of bigotry and tradition – not conviction based on Scripture and the way the Creator has hard-wired the universe. Those quoted simply didn’t express any measurable conviction other than, “Hey, whatever they want to do is fine. If the Supreme Court said so it must be okay.” As though the Supreme Court is the deity and the things others do have no measurable affect on the rest of society. The doom this spells for us as a people is sobering.