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).

Preaching Coram Deo

August 13, 2017 in Bible - NT - 2 Corinthians, Bible - NT - 2 Timothy, Judgment, Lord's Day, Meditations, Preaching

2 Timothy 4:1–2 (NKJV)
1 I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: 2 Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.

Last week we considered Paul’s charge to Timothy, Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. For the next few weeks I would like us to consider other portions of Paul’s exhortation that we grow in our love for the Word and become ever more humble before our God.

So this morning let us consider why Paul charges Timothy to preach the word. The answer? Timothy will answer to God. Paul writes, I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom… Why must Timothy be careful to preach the word in season and out of season? Because God is going to demand an accounting from Timothy for how he executed his responsibility. Did he preach the word faithfully? Did he encourage the fainthearted, rebuke the hardened, convince the doubtful, exhort the sinful?

Paul’s words remind us that we all live Coram Deo – we all live before the face of God. Consequently, we shall give an answer for every rash word that we have spoken, for every wicked action we have committed, and for every sinful thought we have entertained. It is appointed unto men to die once and after this to face the judgment. We shall answer for the foul words we spoke to that other driver; we shall answer for our cowardice in the face of opposition; we shall answer for our use of porn, our indifference to our spouse, our waste of our employer’s time. While such judgment will not result in the condemnation of those who are in Christ, neither will such judgment be a warm and fuzzy encounter with our best bud; it will rather be a sober evaluation before our Lord and Master.

Consequently, Paul charges Timothy to remember that this evaluation is coming and not to take it lightly. As Paul writes to the Corinthians, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Cor 5:10). This reminder was to fill Timothy and us with a due sense of reverence and diligence.

I want to take a moment to thank you all for your continued prayers for me and for my family as we await the results of the biopsy taken on one of the enlarged lymph nodes in my neck. Lord willing, we will receive the results the middle of this next week. The mere possibility that this may be some form of terminal cancer has reminded me vividly of the shortness of life, of how dependent we all are, each and every moment, on the sustaining hand of our Creator and Preserver, and of how critical it is that we be prepared to stand before Him cleansed by the shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, robed in His righteousness, and adorned with good works by the power of His Spirit.

So reminded this morning that we shall all appear before our God and His Christ, let us remember that on this Lord’s Day we also appear before Him to hear His voice. And having heard His voice rebuking our complacency and our sinfulness, let us confess our sin in Christ’s name, beseeching His forgiveness. And as we confess, let us kneel together as we are able. We will have a time of silent confession followed by the corporate confession found in your bulletin.

Preach the Word!

August 6, 2017 in Bible - NT - 2 Timothy, Ecclesiology, Meditations, Preaching, Word of God

2 Timothy 4:1–2 (NKJV)
1 I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: 2 Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.

This morning witnesses the happy confluence of several different streams. First, as you know I am returning to preaching today following my month out of the pulpit in July – and it is good to be back. Second, as you have no doubt noticed, we are blessed to have a new pulpit up front. This is the fruit of much urging and planning and craftsmanship and we are grateful to dedicate it to the Lord’s service. Finally, today happens to be the 10th anniversary of my full-time preaching at Trinity Church. Ten years ago this Sunday I began preaching in Coeur d’Alene. Today’s sermon is around number 435.

So the elders thought it fitting that the exhortation this morning (1) remind us why we place such emphasis on preaching the Word and (2) summon us to a renewed commitment to the Word. So why do we devote such attention to preaching and learning the Word? Quite simply because Paul commands it. Note his exhortation to Timothy: Preach the Word! The imperative here is not a one-time duty but a perpetual obligation; not the, “Pick up that towel!” of your mom who saw your towel on the bathroom floor, but the, “Stand up straight!” of your dad who saw you slouching. Do it now and keep doing it!

Paul commands Timothy, “Preach the Word! Be ready in season and out of season.” Preach the Word in the times of Nehemiah when the people are rejoicing to do the will and work of God – those are the “in season” times. Thankfully, I can report that at Trinity Church we have experienced years of this “in season.” You have joyfully listened to the Word of God and routinely asked for more pointed application of the Word to your specific situations. Praise God!

But Paul called Timothy to preach not only in the times of Nehemiah but in the times of Jeremiah – times when the people are hard-hearted and uninterested in the Word of God. Unfortunately, preaching the Word is “out of season” in our broader culture, even within our broader Christian culture. Rather than receive God’s Word preached in faith, kneeling before Him as our rightful Lord and endeavoring to implement His precepts, we raise our fists and declare that God and His Christ will not reign over us. “You can’t preach that,” we say. So we accumulate to ourselves preachers who tickle our ears rather than challenge our hearts.

And so we pray this morning that this pulpit may ever be used for the faithful preaching of the Word of God. May the Spirit of God so move those who preach behind it with a reverence for God and His Christ, that no syllable be expressed save that which fosters the worship of the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. May the Word preached from this pulpit soften hardened hearts, comfort afflicted souls, and enlighten darkened minds that the glory of God may be displayed to our entire community. And may this pulpit’s stain fade away, its wood rot, and its seams burst should it become an instrument of advocating falsehood.

Reminded this morning of our calling to preach and to listen to the Word of God with reverence, let us confess that we have often hardened our hearts, closed our ears, and handed our pulpits over to false teachers rather than listen to the voice of the Sovereign Lord. And as we confess, let us kneel together as we are able. We will have a time of silent confession followed by the corporate confession found in your bulletin.

Why shouldn’t you get rebaptized?

July 31, 2017 in Baptism, Ecclesiology, John Calvin, Quotations, Sacraments, Word of God

There are actually many answers to this question – but consider the following from John Calvin:

“Our opponents ask us what faith we had for many years after our baptism, in order to show that our baptism was in vain, since baptism is not sanctified to us except by the word of promise received in faith. We answer that although we were blind and unbelieving for a long time and did not embrace the promise which had been given us in baptism, yet the promise itself, since it was from God, always remained steady, firm, and true. If all men were false and liars, still God continues to be true; if all men were lost, still Christ remains a Savior. We confess, therefore, that when we totally neglected the promise offered to us in baptism, without which baptism is nothing, we received no benefit at all from baptism… Yet we believe that the promise itself never expired…. By baptism God promises the forgiveness of sins and will certainly fulfill the promise to all believers; that promise was offered to us in baptism; let us, therefore, embrace it by faith.”

In short, Calvin reminds us, baptism is not primarily my word to God, my promise to God, but God’s promise to me. Baptism is a visible word. It invites me, summons me to believe the One who has promised to cleanse my sins through the death and resurrection of Christ. The “solution”, therefore, to someone who has not believed his baptism thus far is not to get baptized but to repent and to believe and receive the promise symbolized in that baptism.