Song of the Drunkards

JESUS FACED A CONSIDERABLE AMOUNT OF OPPOSITION FOR HIS HARD WORDS AND UNFLINCHING DEVOTION TO YAHWEH. NO SURPRISE THEN IF WE FIND OUR NAME FESTOONED IN BARROOM BALLADS (CF. PS 69:12).

Salvation is of the Lord

June 20, 2021 in Bible - NT - Philippians, Meditations

Philippians 4:4–7 

4Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice! 5Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. 6Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. 

One of our distinctives as a congregation is what we sometimes call Sunny Calvinism. What do we mean by this label? Just this – Calvinism, rightly understood, is nothing but the declaration, as Charles Spurgeon once said, that salvation is of the Lord. And that is supremely good news – news that should make us joyful not grumpy.

Salvation – the glorious glad tidings that though we rebelled against our Creator and brought upon ourselves and all creation ruin and destruction, God acted to deliver us from our folly and rescue all creation from the darkness of death. He sent His Son to bear the punishment for our sin; He raised up His Son victorious over the grave; He gave His Son, as the Exalted Ruler over all creation, the right to pour out the Spirit and renew the face of the earth. What we could not do, weak as we were, God did. Salvation is of the Lord.

But there’s more. After all, for Christ’s work of redemption to apply to us individually more must happen. Each of us by nature is a child of wrath, devoted to the service of other gods, selfish, self-centered, worshiping the creature rather than the Creator. We are, as Paul announces, dead in our trespasses and sins – unable to rescue ourselves from our folly, unwilling to turn from our sin and embrace Christ. Christ’s death on the cross, His resurrection to the right hand of God – neither would benefit us if not for the work of the Spirit. God doesn’t just set up some mechanism of salvation and then say to us, “OK, put the coin in the slot and pull the lever and make it work.” No! Salvation is of the Lord. The Spirit must make us willing to turn from our sin and turn to Jesus. So if you are in Jesus, if you believe in Him and rest on Him for forgiveness and newness of life, then the Spirit of God has done this for you. Though you were stubbornly set against God by nature, by grace He has given you new life. Salvation is of the Lord.

And not only this – not only has God rescued and redeemed us – we know also that our Sovereign Lord governs all things and holds us and all things in His hands. Whatever the Lord pleases He does – in heaven and on earth, in the seas and in all deeps. He is sovereign. Not one hair falls from our head apart from our Father’s will. No enemy of ours shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. No plot of the wicked shall upset the righteous reign of our Christ or thwart His determination to establish justice in the earth. Salvation is of the Lord – the Ruler of all and whose purposes none can frustrate. 

So what ought to be our response? Joy! Rejoicing! Delight! Sunny Calvinism. In the words of Paul, “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.” The Lord – He who rules over all things and reigns supreme for the benefit of all those who are in Christ – is at hand. Hence, the fruit of the Spirit is joy. God has rescued us; God has done that which we were not able to do for ourselves; so how can we be anything but joyful? Salvation is of the Lord.

But often rather than reflecting such joy – joy that we have been redeemed, joy that God has us right where He has us for some good purpose – we grumble, complain, grow sour, live anxiously. So today as we enter into God’s presence, let us confess that we have failed to rejoice always; and, as you are able, let us kneel as we confess together. We will have a time of silent confession followed by the corporate confession found in your bulletin.

Glorify God with Your Body

June 13, 2021 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Liturgy, Meditations, Worship

Psalm 95:6
6Oh come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.

Psalm 134:1–2
1Behold, bless the Lord, All you servants of the Lord, Who by night stand in the house of the Lord! 2Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, And bless the Lord.

One of the most frequent questions visitors have about our service of worship, one of the questions that you may also have, is this: What’s with all the different postures? We sit, we stand, we kneel, we bow heads, we lift hands – why all the variety?

The answer to this question is threefold: first, God did not create us as mere spirits but as creatures with body and soul. As those who have bodies, God expects us to use them for His honor. Paul writes, “…you were bought at a price; therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor 6:20). Our bodies belong to God and so what we do with them is important. This is especially true of our sexual conduct; but the principle applies more broadly. All our actions should reflect our reverence for God and our knowledge that one day Christ will return in glory to raise these very bodies from the grave. Our bodies matter.

So this leads us to the second answer to our question: why all the variety? The answer is that in worship there are a variety of things we do. We praise and thank the Lord; we confess our sins; we hear the assurance of forgiveness; we listen to the reading of God’s Word; we confess the creeds; we present our tithes and offerings; we pray; we learn from the Scriptures; we feast with God at His Table. This wonderful variety demands a variety of responses – both verbally and bodily. There is no “one size fits all” bodily posture for worship.

And this is why, third, the Scriptures invite us and, at times, command us, to worship God with a variety of postures – standing, kneeling, sitting, lifting hands, etc. So consider our texts today from the psalms, “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker” (95:6). And again, “Behold, bless the LORD, All you servants of the LORD, Who by night stand in the house of the LORD! Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, And bless the LORD” (134:1-2). These are just a few examples of bodily postures described in the context of worship.

So we worship with a variety of postures, first, because we are bodily creatures and what we do with our bodies matters, second, because we do a variety of things in worship, and third, because Scripture itself commends a variety of postures in worship. But here’s one reason we do not worship with a variety of postures: just to put on a show or go through the motions. After all, the ultimate reason that our posture changes is that we worship coram Deo, before the very face of God. He is here with us and we dare not treat Him lightly. He calls us to worship; we respond by standing to praise Him. He thunders at our sin; we respond by kneeling to confess it. He assures us of pardon; we stand to listen and enter boldly into His presence through the shed blood of Christ. He instructs us from His Word; we stand to give our attention to its reading. This is the drama of the Divine Service – but it’s a drama that is meaningful only when accompanied by hearts that love and cherish Him. We are to “glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” – one without the other is hypocrisy.

So what of you? Why do you stand? Why do you kneel? Why do you sit? Do you do it just because that’s what you’re being told to do? Do you kneel so you won’t appear out of place? Do you sit so you can take a nap? Or do you do all these things because you recognize with awe and wonder that the God we worship this Day has invited you into His very presence to worship? That He is here with us.

So today as we have entered into God’s presence He has thundered at our sin – let us confess that we have often just gone through the motions of worship; and, as you are able, let us kneel as we confess together. We will have a time of silent confession followed by the corporate confession found in your bulletin.

God Never Will Be Reconciled to Sin

June 6, 2021 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Confession, Depravity, Judgment, Justice, Meditations, Responsibility, Sin

Psalm 5:4–6 (NKJV)

4 For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, Nor shall evil dwell with You. 5 The boastful shall not stand in Your sight; You hate all workers of iniquity. 6 You shall destroy those who speak falsehood; The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.

There is a grain of truth in the maxim, “God hates the sin but loves the sinner.” The truth is that God has acted in Christ to deliver sinners from their sin and reconcile them to Himself. God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him may not perish but have everlasting life. God sent His Son because He loves fallen men and women and children who are made in His image and precious in His sight.

We must be careful, however, lest we permit this maxim to obscure God’s utter and complete hatred of sin, a hatred so holy that He had to send His Son to the Cross to turn it away; a hatred so pronounced that He will condemn sinners who refuse to repent of their sin to hell. On the Last Day, God judges both sin and sinner not just sin. Matthew Henry writes:

“[God] sees all the sin that is committed in the world, and it is an offence to him, it is odious in his eyes, and those that commit it are thereby made obnoxious to his justice. There is in the nature of God an antipathy [a natural aversion, hatred] to those dispositions and practices that are contrary to his holy law; and, though [a solution] is happily found out for his being reconciled to sinners [through Christ], yet he never will, nor can, be reconciled to sin.”

God “never will, nor can, be reconciled to sin.” While God can be reconciled to sinners through the sacrificial death of His Son, Jesus, He can never be reconciled to sin.

Believe it or not, this is good news. For if God could be reconciled to sin, then we wouldn’t know that our cries for justice, our cries against evil and wickedness, are meaningful or heard by God. We would have to conclude that evil is a normal part of the world. Perhaps, as some eastern religions teach, good and evil are just opposites that must perpetually exist in balance and we just ended up on the wrong side of the yang. Perhaps, as atheistic materialism implies, good and evil are just social constructs that different cultures can design wholly on their own without reference to a transcendent standard and we just didn’t have enough power to force others to comply with our desires. If God can be reconciled to sin, then the world is a dark and dreary place.

But thanks be to God, God cannot be reconciled to sin. Evil is always evil and good is always good. God does not take pleasure in wickedness. He abhors the one who does evil, the boastful, the worker of iniquity, the speaker of falsehood, as well as the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. He will not and cannot be reconciled to sin nor to unrepentant sinners.

So what of you? Have you reconciled yourself to your own sin? Are you making excuses for your greed? Excuses for your dishonesty? Excuses for despising the poor? For refusing to hear the cries of those who long for justice? For your racial animosity? For neglecting your children? Excuses for failing to lead your wife and children? For looking at porn? For indulging your children’s disobedience? Excuses for refusing to submit to your husband? For grumbling against God’s providence? For pitying those executed for murder or kidnapping? Excuses for disobeying your parents? For yelling at your sibling? For neglecting your aged parents? Excuses for nursing your bitterness? For coveting your neighbor’s house? For envying the rich?

Such excuses are simply ways that we attempt to reconcile ourselves to our sin. We call good evil and evil good. We attempt to define good and evil on our own terms, to pretend that we are wiser than God. But we are not wiser and the soul that sins shall die. Disaster and judgment come in the wake of excuses for sin, of reconciling ourselves to our sin. But hear the good news: “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy” (Pr 28:13).

So reminded of our propensity to reconcile ourselves to sin, let us not make excuses for our sin but let us confess it to the Lord. And as we confess, let us kneel as we are able. We will have a time of silent confession followed by the corporate confession found in bulletin.