Theology

Treasure Shifts

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TrippI am currently enjoying Paul David Tripp’s Dangerous Calling.  This is my book of the year, so far, and once I finish it I will be sure to review it on here.  There is so much good stuff in this book, but just as a taster, here is a list of five “treasure shifts” that can occur in the heart of a pastor/preacher (this is straight quotation from Tripp):

1. IDENTITY: Moving from identity in Christ to identity in Ministry.

In pastoral ministry, it is very tempting to look hirzontally for what you have already been given in Christ. . . . Rather than the hope and courage that come from resting in my identity in Christ, my ministry becomes captured and shaped by the treasure of a series of temporary horizontal affirmations of my value and worth.  This robs me of ministry boldness and makes me all too focused on how those in the circle of my ministry are responding to me.

2. MATURITY: Defining spiritual well-being not by the mirror of the Word, but by ministry.

Biblical literacy is not to be confused with Christian maturity.  Homiletic accuracy is not the same as godliness.  Theological dexterity is very different from practical holiness.  Successful leadership is not the same as a heart for Christ.  Growth in influence must not be confused with growth in grace.  It is tempting to allow a shift to take place in the way that I evaluate my maturity as a pastor.  Rather than living with a deep neediness for the continued operation of grace in my own heart, I begin, because of experience and success in ministry, to view myself as being more mature than I actually am.  Because of these feelings of arrival, I don’t sit under my own preaching; I don’t preach out of a winsome, tender, and humble heart; and I don’t seek out the ministry of the body of Christ.  This allows my preparation to be less devotional and my view of others to be more judgmental.

3. REPUTATION: Shifting from a ministry shaped by zeal for the reputation of Christ to a ministry shaped by hunger for the praise of people.

. . . My heart begins to be captured by the desire to be esteemed by others, the buzz of being needed, the allure of standing out in the crowd, the glory of being in charge, and the power of being right.  This makes it hard to admit I am wrong, to submit to the counsel of others, to surrender control, to not have to win the day and prove I am right.  It makes it hard to accept blame or to share credit, and it makes me less than excited about ministry as a body-of-Christ collaborative process.

I will finish the list tomorrow.

(NB. This list is found on pages 105-107)

Wide View Application 2

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WideViewLast time I suggested that too narrow a view of a passage can lead to burdensome and non-gospel application.  In narratives we need to make sure we are seeing God’s role and the humans as living in response to Him (both in faith and rebellious self-trust).  In epistles we need to read the imperatives in light of the doctrinal gospel sections that inevitably have preceded the commands and applications.

Last night I was at a prayer meeting where we sang “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy” . . . an old hymn with a few great verses:

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea; there’s a kindness in His justice which is more than liberty.

For the love of God is broader than the measures of man’s mind; and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.

But we make His love too narrow by false limits of our own; and we magnify His strictness with a zeal He will not own.

If our love were but more simple we should take Him at His word; and our lives would be illumined by the presence of our Lord.

So to avoid imposing a “strictness” God would not own, we must preach good news and not turn it into burdensome law.  Here are a few thoughts to keep stirring our thoughts:

1. In narratives like the gospels, observe the growth in faith among characters as the stories unfold.  The same is true in other narrative sections of the Bible.  We are not given much concerning most characters, but what we are given enables us to get a sense of their trajectory towards God in faith or away in rebellion.  Tracing that broader story can help to make sense of a particular pericope (individual story).

2. Be careful to identify the link between doctrine and application.  It is often more of a “this is what a life looks like that is gripped by that truth” rather than “so you must now do this!”  Is the application an implication?  Is it a natural outworking?  Is it an appropriate response?  These are all very different than a self-moved obligation.

3. Turning response into responsibility is to turn gospel into legalistic burden.  Many really struggle with this, but it is so important.  A captured heart that is stirred will flow out in far greater commitment, sacrifice, integrity, holiness, etc., than a person pressured to obey by the apparently self-moved determination of their own will.  If the heart is not stirred, then the motivation will still be about love, but a misplaced love that is a weaker motivator.  That is, if it isn’t love for Christ that stirs a person, then maybe they will obey commands out of love for self in respect to conformity to community expectations – a love-driven action, but not in response to the greatest love of all.

Three Possibilities Preaching Psalms

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

OpenScroll16PsalmsAs I am reading through the Bible I am currently in the Psalms – what a great book!  Sadly, for some, Psalms seems to be preached only as filler material in the summer holidays.  There is so much potential for preaching in the book of Psalms.  Let me offer three possibilities opened up by preaching from this book:

1. You can introduce new treasure to people.  People tend to be familiar with some Psalms.  Probably 23.  Perhaps 24, 1, 110, 121, 127, 51, 8, 73, 37, 27.  But what about Psalm 36?  Or 33?  There is a whole host of Psalms that tend to get ignored in the annual audition for three filler sermons.  And don’t just stick to the filler sermon approach.  Why not preach Psalm 34 at the start of a series on 1Peter?  It certainly was in the mind of the apostle as he wrote his epistle.  Why not preach Psalm 118 in connection with Easter?  It might add a new set of thoughts to the Easter considerations since Jesus would very likely have sung that with his disciples at the last supper.

2. You can connect with a different group of people.  It may be a stereotype, but some have suggested that engineers enjoy epistles.  They like the truth statements, logical flow, direct discourse.  So if that is the case, who might appreciate the Psalms?  Artists?  Sure, and there are more of them than we tend to realise in every congregation.  How about the suffering?  Certainly.  Psalms connects with different people at different times in the complexities of each personal biography.

3. You can offer a more vulnerable sermon.  When David wrestles with spiritual realities, why not be more open that we do too?  Personal sin struggles, doubting God’s goodness, tendency to trust in ourselves, feelings of extreme fatigue, etc.  We don’t preach to preach ourselves, but we ourselves do preach.  The Psalms opens up the possibility of greater vulnerability from the preacher, and hopefully stirs vulnerability in the congregation.  The Psalm writers didn’t treat God as delicate or fragile, they blasted their prayers at Him.  Perhaps we can stir greater prayer in churches that tend to pray religiously, and Psalms would be a worthwhile workshop for that kind of goal.

Impossible Application

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PenPaperAs we preach the Bible we have to make sure we don’t simply offer historical and theological instruction.  Part of our responsibility is to present what difference the message should make in a life.  We need to give a sense of what this truth looks like dressed up in everyday clothes.  But therein lies a challenge.

How do we present practical application without promoting an outside-to-in simplistic copyism in the church?  Here are some thoughts:

1. The human fleshly tendency will be to perform in order to maintain autonomous distance from God.  I know that we tend to think of fleshliness as rebellion alone, but we need to see how the flesh can also play up to a religious role.  The essential impulse remains the same as it did in Genesis 3 – I can be like God.  This is why we need to be so careful in our preaching.  Simply pounding the pulpit and demanding greater morality does not avoid the problem of rebels becoming religious, but still keeping God at arms length.  The older son in Luke 15 matched his brother in viewing the father as employer and purveyor of benefits, and went beyond his brother in resisting the father’s extreme desire for relationship.

2. Practical preaching can give people lists of things to do, but not address the heart issue.  Notice that I wrote that it can, not that it must always do that.  I think preaching should be practical.  But if we think that adding practical suggestions to historical explanation amounts to good expository preaching, then we know neither our Bibles nor our listeners very well.  We need more than practical instruction.  We need heart transformation.  And that requires an awareness of the difference between response and responsibility.  Consistently presenting responsibility to people will not auto-generate any sort of responsiveness in people.

I will continue the list tomorrow…

Book Review: Jonathan Edwards, A Life

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

51QLzAKPcZL._AA160_Written by George Marsden, 2003, Yale.

Mammoth?  Maybe.  Magisterial?  Absolutely.  Marsden’s 505 pages plus notes on the life of Edwards is an absolute joy to read.  He neither falls into the culturally critical Edwards bashing of years gone by, nor into the presentations of Edwards as if he fit every theological mold of his tradition.  He certainly avoids the bizarre agenda of separating Edwards’ genius from his vibrant faith.

The Edwards offered in Marsden’s work is the Edwards of history, a man profoundly gripped by the glory of the triune love of God, a man who remained resolute in his disciplined life of study and ministry, yet who progressively grasped the captivating wonder of God’s gracious intratrinitarian love and grew beyond a self-determined resolution approach to spirituality.

I won’t give Edwards biography here.  However, for anyone who has only seen Edwards through the caricature of a single sermon title, Marsden is a must read.  Bridging the historical worlds of puritanism and enlightenment, Edwards is a massive figure in theological, philosophical and modern church history.  Marsden gets the Augustinian heritage of Edwards, shining light on the emphases sometimes perceived by some to be imbalanced, yet showing Edwards to be a brilliant mind coupled with, and guided by, a captured heart.

Since I suspect it is mostly preachers who visit this blog, let me suggest that we do well to spend time with the greats by means of good biography.  Marsden has also written A Short Life of Edwards, which is not an abridgement of this work, but another biography cast in an entirely new way, as it were.  I look forward to reading that now that my thoroughly marked up copy of A Life is no longer next to my reading chair.

Edwards is intriguing on many levels, and from many angles: Revival, Calvinism, Augustinian Trinitarianism, puritan theology, church polity, academic institutional history, philosophy, cross-cultural missions, religious affections, hermeneutics, and so on.  Take the time to get to know Edwards with this biography and you will find your own life and ministry stirred in many ways, all beneficial.

Not wanting to give away the ending, let me share the final paragraph anyway:

How can the creator of such an unimaginably vast universe be in intimate communication with creatures so infinitely inferior to himself? . . . Edwards’ solution–a post-Newtonian statement of classic Augustinian themes–can be breathtaking.  God’s trinitarian essence is love.  God’s purpose in creating a universe in which sin is permitted must be to communicate that love to creatures.  The highest or most beautiful love is sacrificial love for the undeserving. Those who are given eyes to see that ineffable beauty will be enthralled by it.  They will see the beauty of a universe in which unsentimental love triumphs over real evil.  They will not be able to view Christ’s love dispassionately but rather will respond to it with their deepest affections.  Truly seeing such good, they will have no choice but to love it.  Glimpsing such love, they will be drawn away from their preoccupations with the gratifications of their most immediate sensations.  They will be drawn from their self-centered universes.  Seeing the beauty of the redemptive love of Christ as the true center of reality, they will love God and all that he has created.

(To buy Marsden’s work in the UK, click here.)

Biblical Girders 4

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

GirderWhere does each girder go?  The Bible has a superstructure that holds it all together.  So the thematic element of the promised seed in Genesis 3:15 will work its way through multiple books and become overt in places like Galatians 3 at the other end of the canon.  But this poses a challenge.  How much should we be preaching Galatians 3 when we are supposed to be preaching Genesis 3?

Many preachers would see no problem with springing from Genesis to Galatians since that is the fulfillment and the clarification of what is first stated in the Garden of Eden.  I am certainly not going to criticize the impulse to preach Christ and it would be strange to leave listeners wondering who that seed might be (unless such suspense were part of a bigger teaching strategy).

On the other hand, I do wonder if we can collapse themes forward too easily and lose some of the strength of the steel at that point in the biblical story?  If the Bible were a building, then Genesis would be the foundation.  Steel starting there does go through the whole structure and holds the whole together.  Themes of creation, of relationship, of fellowship lost, of divine grace and rescue, of divine promise, etc. all work their way from Genesis on through the Bible.  That  steel girder seen in Genesis 3:15 later on turns out to be the spire at the top of the whole structure, the pinnacle of it all.  It makes sense to let folks know the significance of that, but at the same time it makes sense to help people see the importance of the foundation.

That is to say, instead of immediately looking up to the spire that caps off the whole building, when we are preaching in Genesis lets be sure to help people see how the foundation fits together, how the hope offered by God’s grace in the seed of the woman is such a striking promise in the context of a spurned relationship in that first senseless human rebellion.  That passage is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training, etc.  So let’s preach Genesis 3, not just bounce off it to go straight to the spire.  At the same time let’s not get our noses in the foundations and let people miss the grandeur of the whole.

It isn’t either/or, it surely needs to be both/and.  And with that both/and, I think it needs to be honouring to the earlier text in its own right, not just a token glance.

 

Biblical Girders 2

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GirderLast time I wrote about biblical girders, the superstructure of the Bible that folks in churches tend to hear very little about.  While not seeking to diminish the well-known passages, let’s consider whether we can help people know their Bibles better by bringing to their attention the existence and importance of some of the biblical girder passages.

Biblical Covenant Passages – A strong case can be made for seeing the biblical covenants as a skeleton on which the Bible is built.  God’s promise and subsequent covenant with Abram/Abraham in Genesis 12, then 13, 15, 17 is critical.  Then there’s the Mosaic content in Deuteronomy 27-30 (how often do we stumble across “who will ascend?” or “who has descended?” allusions in the New Testament?)  Then God’s covenant with David in 2Samuel 7 and 1Chronicles 17.  And, of course, the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 36 and the latter part of Isaiah.  Being unaware of these covenants is crippling if someone is wanting to grasp the Old Testament, or the development in the New Testament.

Biblically Quoted Passages – Some passages are quoted with a significant frequency.  Sometimes the quote is actually just an allusion, but that doesn’t diminish its significance.  Sometimes it proves the writer assumed hearers would spot it more easily.  God’s spoken self-revelation in Exodus 34 runs like a refrain through the Old Testament.  Psalms 2, 69 and 110 get their fair share of airtime once you get to the New Testament, as does Psalm 118 in reference to Jesus and Psalm 8 plays a key role in Hebrews.  Genesis 15:6 comes out three significant times, as does Habakkuk 2:4.  The lesser known part of Isaiah 6 does some heavy lifting, as does the allusion to Daniel 7.  And in the passion of Christ, where you might expect lots of references to Genesis 22 (Abraham & Isaac), instead you find lots of Davidic Psalms and Zechariah quotes.

Structurally Significant Passages – Some passages seem to serve a key purpose in the structure of a book or a section.  Joshua 1 serves a key transitional function between the Torah and the Kethubim.  Psalm 73 seems to provide the hinge for the turn in the flow of the whole collection.  John 11-12 offer a significant transition in John’s Gospel.

There are many more that could be listed.  The point is that many of these are less familiar to most people in the church than David’s slaying Goliath, or Naaman dipping in the Jordan, or Daniel in the den of lions, or Jesus calming the storm, or Paul in prison in Philippi.  All important, but in terms of grasping the flow and message of the whole Bible, perhaps there are too many gaps at critical points.

Prayer and Preaching

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

PrayingThe sermon is coming and the preacher is praying.  Sometimes this can be really passionate prayer.  Sometimes there can be a sense of a spiritual breakthrough.  Praying for the message, for the church, for the people, for the lost!  This can be a time of great excitement and great expectation.  And this can be a time of intense battle.  We fight not against flesh and blood, but against the forces of evil.  And in the intensity of battle the expectation for devil-destruction in the power of the glorious grace of the gospel can increase.

Then comes the sermon and it can all feel so, well, normal.  The sermon goes ok, and the listeners say nice things, but this wasn’t what you prayed for and longed for and hoped for.  It is just normal.

It is easy to let the normal-ness of ministry diminish our sense of expectation.  After a while it can become as if  we don’t really expect people to be transformed or the Spirit of God to be at work.  This is understandable, but it is wrong.  As Haddon Robinson once put it, “we’re handling dynamite, and we didn’t expect it to explode!”

The Spirit of God is at work, the Word of God is powerful, and whether we see it or not, we should prepare and pray with great expectation.  (What about the disappointments and struggles that come internally after we preach?  We pour them out to God and then press on, daring to dream again, daring to pray big and preach big for a big God!)

Preach the glorious gospel into the normal world of life and church.  Preach the wonder of God’s grace so that it connects with people in normal world.  But don’t preach as if preaching is just normal.  It is not.  It is a moment where the character of God is held forth in His self-revealing Word to draw hearts and lives into profound transformation.  This life changing process may feel normal all too often, but it is not normal.  It is supernatural.

Bridge Protection 3

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BridgeStream2Yesterday I pondered clutter from our current context.  But there is always another source of debris that will harm our bridge-building ministry – ourselves.  What are some of the personal clutter issues that could be dangerously weakening the bridge?  As I described on Wednesday, when the debris causes the bridge to do more than it is designed to do, it will be dangerously undermined.

Issues of Integrity – This seems obvious, but so important to keep in mind. Serious breakdowns in morality, sexuality, financial impropriety, etc., will totally undermine a preaching ministry.  But what about the small stuff?  A twig won’t destroy a bridge, but in combination with other twigs, and some time, the bridge could well be weakened.  As we dealt with the clogged footbridge the other day, it was mostly small stuff in combination that had caused the water to run up over the bridge and lead to potential gradual rotting of the wood.

What are the “smaller” branches and twigs?  Issues of self-control, inappropriate spending, low-grade anger, half-truths, gossip, selfishness, false spirituality, personal inflamed ego, contempt of others, competitiveness, power-brokering, self-elevation, not following through on commitments, inappropriate TV viewing, laziness, mental fantasy, procrastination, and on it goes.

Pursuit of Personal Burnout – Or to put it another way, ministry in the traditional model of a minister doing the work of the ministry while the church is filled with “lay people” who pay for the minister to, well, minister.  There is a reason that the New Testament presents the plurality of church leadership, and apostles typically working in teams, and gifts being given to all believers.  You can’t do it all.  You might try for a while, but it is not sustainable, nor is it healthy for your church, or your marriage, or your children, or yourself.

Over-commitment is so hard to avoid in church-based ministry, but we must be willing to say no to some things in order to be a good steward of the longer term ministry.  Even if some people will misunderstand?  Yes.  Even if some will criticize?  Indeed, expect it.  We can preach that the gospel is not something to be earned, then live a life of striving that undermines the very gospel we preach.  People don’t earn salvation by attending every single meeting, and the preacher’s don’t live in a separate category.  Guard your relationship with the Lord (which is not the same as an over-commitment to “serving Him”).

Dangerous Levels of Distraction – You know what draws you away from what you should be doing.  This may not be a sin issue at all.  Good interests, hobbies, social networking, etc.  Good things can become negatives if they undermine our primary calling.  Handling both well, with the Lord being with us in both work and leisure, will make for a genuinely healthy ministry.  Yes we need to be involved in things other than work and ministry, but that does not mean these things should become distractions that undermine our stewardship of the ministry.  Ask for wisdom and clear vision here too!

Bridge Protection 2

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

BridgeStream2Debris and clutter under the wooden footbridge had clogged it up and water was streaming across the bridge. A minor inconvenience for dog walkers, or a gradual destruction of the bridge?  Pulling out the debris showed just how weak soaked and rotten wood could become, and without addressing the needs of the bridge, it too would rot to danger point.

So what are the debris issues clogging up the bridge we build in preaching?  What seemingly unimportant encumbrances are putting a strain on our messages and gradually leading us toward a rottenness that could undermine everything we do?  I don’t know which way you’d take the analogy, but here are some of the logs I see clogging up the bridges of preaching today:

1. Entertainment.  Good preaching should be engaging, and at times the biblical narrative is both gripping and entertaining.  But too easily we can start to think our role is to compete with the various entertainments of our culture, and consequently we undermine our own preaching.  Witty comments combined with powerpoint images will never compete with contemporary media banter and highly produced action.  We lose if we compete on entertainment alone, but we lose multiple times more in terms of what is sacrificed in the process.  The spiritual impact of the genuine preaching of a living Christ far outweighs anything our culture has invented to fill the void.  But if we pursue entertainment as an end in itself, our bridge will rot to danger point very quickly.

2. Political Correctness.  Like the proverbial fish that can’t see the water it is in, so we are so easily shaped by what our culture perceives to be “PC.”  My grandparents would come out with an absolute faux pas to my generation, but then be highly careful with a total non-issue (to my generation).  Too much focus on the current standard of what is acceptable will leave us dangerously weak in terms of the substance of the revelation that we preach.

3. Worship of Culture.  Every era has had its enticements.  The refinements of sophisticated living and liberal-leaning theology was a draw in the 1700’s.  Today some preachers are still drawn away by an inordinate enamoring of contemporary culture.  Don’t get me wrong.  We need to engage with culture, and we need to understand culture to engage people effectively.  But under the banner of cultural engagement it seems that some are so captivated by what attracts them that their gaze on Christ seems to fade and become something of a justifier of their interest in some aspect of contemporary culture.  Christ sanctifies their interests, and this seems to dangerously weaken their ministry.  Let’s not go to the opposite extreme of reclusive disengagement, but let’s remember that we are with Christ as He engages culture…we mustn’t disengage from Him in order to forge links on our own terms.

Tomorrow I’ll take another angle, but please feel free to comment . . .