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The Nicolaitans Today

Written by Rick Shrader

The Nicolaitans Today

by Rick Shrader

The job of doing Bible exposition not only involves interpretation (finding what the passage means) and illustration (highlighting the meaning with real life situations) but also application (exhortations to action based on the truths found in the text).  The application of a text can easily be ignored because this is the harder thing to do.  No one feels pressured by Bible study or story-telling, but reproof, rebuke and exhortation may bring antipathy from the hearers.  The angel told John that the Scripture would be sweet to the taste but would grow bitter as it is digested, processed and lived out (Rev. 10:1-11).

In a day of relativism, positivism, syncretism and diversity, direct application of Biblical principles to specific situations in people’s lives is the first thing to go.  Confrontation becomes a real deterrent to the success game these days as people, Christian and non-Christian, do not like spiritual truths presented in such a personal manner.  However, in the second chapter of Revelation the Lord Himself directly applies familiar Old Testament truths from the life of Balaam (2:14) and Jezebel (2:20) to the compromises and sins of the churches in Pergamos and Thyatira.  He also applies a newer label, the Nicolaitans, to the sins of Ephesus and Pergamos in the same manner, even adding that their practice was something that He Himself hated.

The Problem

The church at Ephesus had been the strategic center of Asian evangelism since Paul founded the church in Acts 19.  It is probable that most of the Asian churches were started as mission projects from Ephesus.  But in the thirty years since, while remaining busy and active in good works (nine different expressions of their Christian works are given in 2:2-3), they had grown cold toward what should have remained as their first love—the Lord Jesus Christ and His Church.  Unless they took specific steps (2:4) to remedy the problem they would lose their place of blessing.  Part of the pressure brought upon the Ephesian church was the growing doctrine of the Nicolaitans.  Ephesus still “hated” this contemporary expression of worldliness while Pergamos had begun accepting it and Thyatira had fully incorporated it into the church.  Wm. M. Ramsay, in his notes on Pergamos explains,

The honourable history and the steadfast loyalty of the Pergamenian Church, however, had been tarnished by the error of a minority of the congregation, which had been convinced by the teaching of the Nicolaitans.  This school of thought and conduct played an important part in the Church of the first century.  Ephesus had tried and rejected it; the Smyrnaean congregation, despised and ill-treated by their fellow-citizens, had apparently not been much affected by it; in Pergamum a minority of the Church had adopted its principles; in Thyatira the majority were attracted by it, and it there found its chief seat, so far as Asia was concerned.1

As Paul left the Ephesian elders in Acts 20, he warned them For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.  Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them (Acts 20:29-30).  By AD 95 these wolves had come to be known as Nicolaitans.

The Definition

It is not entirely clear where this group of deceivers got their name.  History has given us a few choices, one of which or a combination, is probably correct.  1) One view, which goes as far back as Iranaeus, relies on the ancient writer Epiphanius who wrote that the name is taken from Nicolas, one of the first deacons (Acts 6:5), who fell into immorality and apostasy which was still affecting the church at that time.2 2) A second view was that Nicolas himself was a good and moral man who used an unfortunate expression for “abusing the flesh,” by which he meant to mortify the flesh but which his followers perverted into “indulging the flesh.”3 By this time they were practicing having common wives and idol worship as morally acceptable.  3) A popular view is that the name “Nicolaitan” comes from nikao, “to consume” and laos, “the people.”  In that case it would be the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew name “Balaam” which also means “to conquer” or “consume the people.”4 4) Some take this to be a Gnostic group which followed Cerinthus and was being propagated by a local man whose name happened to be Nicolas.5

A highly possible conclusion is that this was a licentious group who had mixed with the pagan practices of the day including eating meat offered to idols and committing fornication (2:14, 20) and came to be associated with the name “Nicolaitans” because of local history and closeness to other similar groups.  They seem to be equated with the doctrines of Balaam and Jezebel by context and the text (verse 15, houtos, “thus you have”).  The following descriptions of the Nicolaitans and their beliefs are worth repeating here.

Albert Barnes describes them:  “By plausibly teaching that there could be no harm in eating what had been offered in sacrifice—since an idol was nothing, and the flesh of animals offered in sacrifice was the same as if slaughtered for some other purpose, it would seem that these teachers at Pergamos had induced professing Christians to attend on those feasts—thus lending their countenance to idolatry, and exposing themselves to all the corruption and licentiousness that commonly attended such celebrations.”6 Alan Johnson quotes Fiorenza, “The Nicolaitans are according to Revelation a Christian group within the churches of Asia Minor and have their adherents even among the itinerant missionaries and the prophetic teachers of the community.  They claim to have insight into the divine or, more probably, into the demonic.  They express their freedom in libertine behavior, which allows them to become part of their syncretistic pagan society and to participate in the Roman civil religion.”7 William Smith is more specific in his application when he writes, “Mingling themselves in the orgies of idolatrous feasts, they brought the impurities of those feasts into the meetings of the Christian Church.  And all this was done, it must be remembered, not simply as an indulgence of appetite, but as part of a system, supported by a ‘doctrine’ accompanied by the boast of a prophetic illumination (2 Pet. 2:1).”8

We should note again, that what was adopted by the entire congregation in Thyatira had just become a doctrine for a few in Pergamos.  In Ephesus, however, the decision was still being made whether  this teaching that they had always hated (and no doubt Pergamos and Thyatira had also at one time) would be allowed in the church.  Ramsay adds a note that sounds familiar where worldliness pushes its way into the church:  “It is clear also that the Nicolaitans rather pitied and condemned the humbler intelligence and humbler position of the opposite section in the church; and hence we shall find that both in the Thyatiran and in the Pergamenian letter St. John exalts the dignity, authority and power that shall fall to the lot of the victorious Christian.”9

The Application

As I have noted, the Lord makes an application from Balaam and Jezebel directly to the worldliness of Pergamos and Thyatira.  The label of “Nicolaitan” was a modern description of the growing worldliness and dying love in Ephesus.  We ought to be able to make the same kind of application from the first century directly to our day as He made from Balaam and Jezebel to their day.

1) Worldliness had become a doctrine in the churches.  They had found a way to justify their practices with a teaching that the culture and customs of the Greeks and Romans were not something to be shunned.  Ramsay writes:

It was evidently an attempt to effect a reasonable compromise with the established usages of Graeco-Roman society and to retain as many as possible of those usages in the Christian system of life.  It affected most of all the cultured and well-to-do classes in the Church, those who had most temptation to retain all that they could of the established social order and customs of the Graeco-Roman world, and who by their more elaborate education had been trained to take a somewhat artificial view of life and to reconcile contradictory principles in practical conduct through subtle philosophical reasoning.10

Our churches today have established a “doctrine” that the world’s culture is morally neutral except where an overt sin is specifically mentioned by name.  All other applications of Scripture to culture and life have become out of bounds.  To our generation music in all its forms must remain morally neutral, only the words can be right or wrong; the body can be uncovered by parts, and as long as the whole body isn’t uncovered all at once, it can’t be called nakedness (if it is it conveniently becomes the looker’s “problem”); crude language of any kind is now allowed as long as God’s name isn’t specifically mentioned—and even then it is permitted as an exclamation; all worldly places of amusement, revelry and exhibition are allowed as long as a person’s thoughts don’t get too carried away; separation is now seen as an historic mistake foisted upon the church by extreme fundamentalists!  If challenged by anyone about these or similar issues of worldliness, the apologetic is always to point out that no one can be 100% consistent and therefore it is wrong to “judge” the sin at any level.

Just as Nicolas’ statement of mortifying the body was turned into indulging the body, our churches have turned separation from outward things into separation of the mind only; where our use of methods was within a Christian life-style, it now includes anything the world also uses; where worship meant falling prostrate before a sovereign God, it now means screaming, dancing, waving, laughing and applauding before a God who changes as we change.  Surely this is the doctrine of the Nicolaitans!

2) Idol worship had become a harmless cultural adventure that believers could take or leave because of their superior understanding.  John Gill wrote, “Dr. Lightfoot conjectures, that these Nicolaitans were not called so from any man, but from the word Nicolah, “let us eat,” which they often used to encourage each other to eat things offered to idols.  However this be, it is certain that there were such a set of men, whose deeds were hateful.”11

How can we doubt that today’s churches are eating the meat offered to idols when they attend all the places of worldly and ungodly entertainment, watch things like American Idol, cheer for the most ungodly heroes, and then bring such “meat” back into the churches by copying those “idols” with their own Christian singers, preachers, entertainers and self-centered showmanship.  Surely this is the doctrine of the Nicolaitans!

3) Immorality became a commonly accepted practice.  The Jerusalem council knew that fornication went hand in hand with eating things offered to idols (Acts 15:28-29).  Balaam knew that if the Israelites fell for one they would fall for the other.  Alan Johnson writes, “The prevalence of sexual immorality in first-century pagan society makes it entirely possible that some Christians at Pergamum were still participating in the holiday festivities and saw no wrong in indulging in the ‘harmless’ table in the temples and the sexual excitement everyone else was enjoying.”12 Today’s polls and surveys will continue to flood in that show immorality as high in the church as out of the church. We cannot keep feeding our young people the idol meat of the world without it resulting in copying the indulgences of the flesh.  Surely this is the doctrine of the Nicolaitans!

The Solution

The Lord’s formula for recovery is simple:  Remember, Repent, Redo or Remove! (vs.5)  The probability of the Asian churches all following it was as remote as it is today.  It is this writer’s opinion that our culture is not more innocent than it used to be, nor is it more morally neutral, nor has today’s church become spiritually stronger than their first-century counterparts.  Within my life-time alone conservative churches have made an obvious 180 degree turn while using the same terminology and printing the same literature.  But saying it doesn’t make it so.  Ephesus, Pergamos and Thyatira were all commended for their good works.  But these did not nullify God’s judgment for their participation in worldliness.  God is not a pragmatist.  His means and ends have always been equal.  These are the warnings of a Savior who walketh among the seven golden candlesticks (2:1); the One which hath the sharp sword with two edges (2:12); the One who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet like fine brass (2:18).

Notes:
1. Wm. M. Ramsay, The Leters To The Seven Churches Of Asia (New York: Hodder & Stoughton, nd) 298.
2. See Barnes’ Notes and Wm. Smith’s Dictionary for examples.
3. See John Gill’s Commentary for an example.
4. See Alan Johnson and John Walvoord for examples.
5. See R.C.H. Lenski for an example.
6. Albert Barnes, Notes on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1980) 76-77.
7. Alan Johnson, “Revelation” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1981) 435.
8. William Smith, Dictionary of the Bible (Hartford: S.S. Scranton & Co., 1899) 626.
9. Ramsay, 301.
10. Ramsay, 299.
11. John Gill, Exposition of the Bible, vol. 6 (London: Wm. Hill Collinridge,1853 ) 941.
12. Johnson, 441.

 

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The Disinterested and Complacent Love of...

Written by Rick Shrader

The Disinterested and Complacent Love of God

by Rick Shrader

The older writers often used terminology in a way that sounds odd to us.  Two common theological descriptions of God’s love include “disinterested benevolence” and “complacent love.”  They sound odd to us only because we tend to think of both of these terms in a negative way.  To be “disinterested” to us would be to not be interested.  To be “complacent” to us would be to be indifferent.  But in standard theological books of not many years ago, “disinterested” meant to be discreet and lacking in self-acknowledgement while  “complacent” meant to be satisfied and lacking in selfish desires altogether.  There is a scene in an older novel where a rich man discreetly lends a poor family his carriage.  When another discovers the good deed she replies “what disinterested benevolence!”

Is not this attribute of love described by our Lord when he instructed, But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly (Matt. 6:3)?   The same is applied to our practices of prayer and fasting.  We are instructed to do these secretly and discreetly, “disinterestedly” if you will, knowing that our reward is not in this life but in the next!  In Luke 14:12-14 Jesus instructs us not to invite guests to dinner who are able to repay us by returning the invitation, but rather to invite those who cannot repay us at all so that we shall be recompensed at the resurrection of the just (Luke 14:14).

These two attributes of God give a unique addition to our thoughts at Christmas.  God has given His Son to us disinterestedly, without thought of either pain or applause, because it was the just and holy thing to do.  Jesus found, in obedience to the Father, a complacency of love so that He neither desired nor needed men’s approval but was wholly and completely satisfied in His fellowship with the Father.

Charles Finney gives the most complete definitions:  “This love is disinterested in the sense that the highest well-being of God and the universe is chosen, not upon condition of its relation to self, but for its own intrinsic and infinite value.”1 He also defines complacency, which as “a phenomenon of will, consists in willing the highest actual blessedness of the holy being in particular, as a good in itself, and upon condition of his moral excellence.”2 Long before Finney, John Gill had objected to these terms being used of God,

“Some talk of a love of benevolence, by which God wishes or wills good to men; and then comes on a love of beneficence, and he does good to them, and works good in them: and then a love of complacency and delight takes place, and not till then.  But this is to make God changeable, as we are: the love of God admits of no degrees, it neither increases nor decreases; it is the same from the instant in eternity it was, without any change.”3

The objection to God’s love having a “feeling” or an “ought” was that this would attribute to God a “passibleness” or the position of being in a passive mode and therefore being influenced by something outside of Himself.  Such would mean that God had changed.  Therefore it could not be an attribute of an immutable God.

But other theologians have disagreed with Gill, maintaining that for God to feel sympathy or good will toward His creatures is not out of keeping for an immutable God.  Strong  asks the question and then answers,

But does God feel in proportion to his greatness, as the mother suffers more than the sick child whom she tends?  Does God suffer infinitely in every suffering of his creatures?  We must remember that God is infinitely greater than his creation, and that he sees all human sin and woe as part of his great plan.  We are entitled to attribute to him only such passibleness as is consistent with infinite perfection.  In combining passibleness with blessedness, then, we must allow blessedness to be the controlling element, for our fundamental idea of God is that of absolute perfection.4

Therefore for God to see our plight within the time and space of this world and to love us in the sense of feeling holy sympathy toward us, is truly a “disinterested” benevolence.  In disagreeing also with Gill, Charles Hodge is even more bold,

Here again we have to choose between a mere philosophical speculation and the clear testimony of the Bible, and of our own moral and religious nature.  Love of necessity involves feeling, and if there be no feeling in God, there can be no love.  That He produces happiness is no proof of love.  The earth does that unconsciously and without design.  Men often render others happy from vanity, from fear, or from caprice.  Unless the production of happiness can be referred, not only to a conscious intention, but to a purpose dictated by kind feeling, it is no proof of benevolence.  And unless the children of God are the objects of his complacency and delight, they are not the objects of his love.5

Thiessen also says, “But immutability does not mean immobility.  True love necessarily involves feeling, and if there be no feeling in God, then there is no love of God . . . . By the benevolence of God we mean the affection which He feels and manifests towards His sentient and conscious creatures.”6 Finally, Buswell gives a fitting conclusion,

Unless we wish to reduce the love of God to the frozen wastes of pure speculative abstraction, we should shake off the static ideology which has come into Christian theology from non-biblical sources, and insist upon preaching the living God of intimate actual relationships with His people.  God’s immutability is the absolutely perfect consistency of His character in His actual relationships, throughout history, with His finite creation.7

A note should be made at this point to caution us against any attempt to make this attribute of the love of God into some kind of support for the novel view of the “openness” of God.  As Strong points out, God’s blessedness or perfection becomes the controlling factor in His moral attributes.

A Christmas Application

As Christmas is increasingly under attack in our country, Christians are implored even more to display the unique attributes of God’s all-giving love.  God’s agape love asks nothing in return but rather gives of itself entirely for the sake of the one in need.  Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10).  But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8).  In a real sense, sinners do not want to hear of God’s agape love.  Other loves that involve a give-and-take at least say to the sinner that he has something worthy to give in return.  But agape love is truly “disinterested” in any gain to self.  Indeed, as we have seen, God does not need anything in return and cannot accept the sinner’s recompense for His love.  He has given us His love in an all-giving manner.

We may speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15) and find that the world hates us, as it did Jesus, because we testify of it that its works are evil (John 7:7).  But since we did not speak of the agape love of God in order to receive anything in return, it does not affect us in any way.  We have learned to be “complacent” with the love of God that  is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5).

David wrote of this dilemma in the Psalm, They rewarded me evil for good to the spoiling of my soul.  But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth: I humbled my soul with fasting; and my prayer returned into mine own bosom.  I behaved myself as though he had been my friend or brother: I bowed down heavily, as one that mourneth for his mother (Psa. 35:12-14).  The apostle Paul wrote, I have coveted no man’s silver, or gold, or apparel.  Yea, ye yourselves know, that these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me.  I have showed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:33-35).

I suppose it is a “natural” thing for us to give that someone may give to us in return.  Sometimes we give because we have been made obligated to return someone’s charity.  There is no doubt that “giving” has now become a matter of cataloging, returning, upgrading, exchanging, and even registering so that no intention is left to anonimity.  Perhaps, rather than growing  disinterested and complacent in our attributes of benevolence, we have grown self-interested and conceited.  For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? For sinners also love those that love them.  And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye?  For sinners also do even the same.  And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye?  For sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again (Luke 16:25).

Where would we be if God had not loved us with a disinterested benevolence and a complacent love?  We ought, therefore, to strive for what James described:  My brethren count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.  But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing (James 1:2-4).  To “want nothing” is to have a complacent love of the Savior and to say with the Psalmist, The LORD is my Shepherd; I shall not want (Psa. 23:1).  This is where we may begin to love as He loved and to desire to give entirely for the benefit of others without thought to our own situation.  So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me (Heb. 13:6).  This is the quality we gravitate to in Christian leaders:  Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation.  Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever (Heb. 13:7).  Perfect complacency in the One that gives when it cannot be given unto Him again (Rom. 11:35)!  How refreshing that would be in this day of corporate successes, personal vision statements, leadership seminars, how-to-do-it formulas, that we might humble ourselves in true servant ministry as our Lord did.  For though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich (2 Cor. 8:9).  For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God.  For we also are weak in him, but we shall live with him by the power of God toward you (2 Cor 13:4).

And So . . . .

The Christmas season is the time for the recipients of God’s love to  renew their commitments to His service.  How could we do less than return the same unselfish love that has been shown to us!  Spurgeon, in his Morning and Evening, records this entry.

Christian, pause and ponder for a moment.  What a debtor thou art to divine sovereignty!  How much thou owest to His disinterested love, for He gave His own Son that He might die for thee.  Consider how much you owe to His forgiving grace, that after ten thousand affronts He loves you as infinitely as ever.  Consider what you owe to His power; how He has raised you from your death in sin; how He has preserved your spiritual life; how He has kept you from falling; and how, though a thousand enemies have beset your path, you have been able to hold on your way.  To God thou owest thyself and all thou hast—yield thyself as a living sacrifice; it is but thy reasonable service.

Notes:
1. Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology (Minneapolis:  Bethany House, 1994) 144.
2. Finney, 148.
3. John Gill, Body of Divinity (Atlanta: Turner Lassetter, 1965) 81.
4. Augustus Strong, Systematic Theology (Old Tappan:  Fleming Revell, 1970) 266.
5. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol I (Grand  Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977) 429.
6. Henry C. Thiessen, Lectures in Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968) 131.
7. J. Oliver Buswell, A Systematic Theology of the Christian Religion (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980) 56.
8. C.H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1948) 44.

 

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Received With Thanksgiving

Written by Rick Shrader

Received With Thanksgiving

by Rick Shrader

Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.  For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer (1 Timothy 4:3-5).

Many Americans will begin their Thanksgiving Day meal with giving God thanks.  Some will even do it again at Christmas.  For Christians, the giving of thanks to God is not something reserved for “special” occasions but is rather a matter of utmost importance at every meal, common or special.  To lack this Christian attribute is to be as Ravi Zacharias described, “Thanksgiving Day has now been reduced to Turkey Day.  That ironic caption may well be more descriptive than we ever intended.”1

Thanksgiving is a state of being for the Christian.  He realizes that whatever has happened is under God’s sovereign care:  In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you (1 Thes. 5:18); He knows that other believers are God’s gift of encouragement to him:  We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers (Phil. 1:2); He knows that his daily provisions are provided by the Creator:  He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks (Rom. 14:6); He knows God opens doors of opportunity:  Withal praying also for us, that God would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ (Col. 4:3); and he knows that the greatest gift of all is given by the grace of God:  Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift (2 Cor. 9:15).

The Christian state of mind is often illustrated by the true story of Matthew Henry, the well-known seventeenth century commentator, who related the story of being robbed and later wrote in his diary, “let me be thankful first, because I was never robbed before; second, because, although they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed and not I who robbed.”2

The Improper Use

Not all who claim to be guided by Christian principles are to be followed.  Paul had to warn Timothy of those who forbid the eating of certain foods for religious reasons as seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry . . . . (1 Tim 4:1-3).  Lenski calls this “vicious asceticism,” a kind of spiritual status achieved by strict renunciation of the flesh.3 William Barclay describes these in church history:

Irenaeus, writing toward the end of the second century, tells how certain followers of Saturninus ‘declare that marriage and generation are from Satan.  Many likewise abstain from animal food, and draw away multitudes by a feigned temperance of this kind.’ (Against Heresies, 1, 24, 2).  This kind of thing came to a head in the monks and hermits of the fourth century.  They went away and lived in the Egyptian desert, entirely cut off from men.  They spent their lives mortifying the flesh.  One never ate cooked food and was famous for his ‘fleshlessness.’  Another stood all night by a jutting crag so that it was impossible for him to sleep.  Another was famous because he allowed his body to become so dirty and neglected that vermin dropped from him as he walked.  Another deliberately ate salt in midsummer and then abstained from drinking water.4

These days we may abstain from certain foods or eat voluntarily for various reasons.  Doctors and dieticians may advise us to abstain or eat for health reasons; our conscience may cause us to fast for spiritual reasons; poverty may cause us to abstain because of economic reasons; vanity and pride may cause us to diet for selfish reasons; gluttony may cause us to indulge from lack of self-control; even testimony may cause us to abstain for the sake of another person, but in the end, food itself does not inject spirituality or sin into the body.

Our Food is Given by God

The giving of thanks for the food we eat is of special importance to the Christian because he knows it has come directly from God’s hand.  Paul says of food, Which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth (1 Tim. 4:4).  God gave Adam and Eve food in the garden (evidently not animal meat).  To you it shall be for meat . . . . And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good (Gen. 1:29, 31).  After the Noahic flood, God allowed the eating of animal meat, Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things (Gen. 9:3).  God reminded the Israelites, When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the LORD thy God for the good land which he hath given thee (Deut. 8:10).

The Apostle Paul, in illustrating God’s provision to the believer in grace giving, uses God’s creative design in food provision.  Now he that ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness (2 Cor. 9:10).  The farmer can eat the grain and it will be gone, or he can put some of it back in the ground.  Then he will get more food, more seed, more results because of the seed, and more thanksgiving to God by those who have planted and eaten.  Man lives because living things die whether that is plant life or animal life.  We don’t eat non-living things.  Therefore we give thanks for what has been planted (i.e. died), sprouted (i.e. resurrected) and then had its life taken for our benefit.  Then by transference we accept the dying and resurrection of our Savior for our eternal life. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand (Isa. 53:10).

In light of the modern discussion of Intelligent Design, we can also thank God when we eat our food because this potential for life within a single seed can only be explained by the presence of a Creator.  William Dembski illustrated this difference between what man can design out of existing material, and what God alone can create:

Nature and design therefore represent two different ways of producing information.  Nature produces information, as it were, internally.  The acorn assumes the shape it does through powers internal to it–the acorn is a seed programmed to produce an oak tree.  But a ship assumes the shape it does through powers external to it–a designing intelligence imposes a suitable structure on pieces of wood to form a ship.5

Because of this, the believer must thank the Creator for the food-producing cycle of the earth.  In the final process, at the dinner table, he realizes that though he has worked in the garden or field, God is the One who has provided his food.  “Summer and winter, and spring-time and harvest, sun, moon and stars in their courses above, join with all nature in manifold witness, to thy great faithfulness, mercy and love!”  Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness (Acts 14:17).

It is Sanctified by the Word of God and Prayer

“Sanctified” should not be taken to mean that there is some sacramental power in the Bible or prayer to make food healthy to us or to keep bad food from hurting us.  “Sanctified” is the word for “holy” in the present indicative passive, meaning “being set apart” or “rendered a sacred thing.”  Our recognition that everything that sustains us comes from God is in itself a sanctifying process to our souls.  But this recognition is displayed in an important way:  the word of God and prayer.

These two things are not to be separated into two legalistic steps (“put your hand on a Bible and pray”), but are a single recognition of God’s provision as well as permission to eat.  A.T. Robertson says “it is almost a hendiadys [translated] ‘by the use of Scripture in prayer.’”6 “Hendiadys” means “one through two” (hen + dia + dyoin) and Walter Kaiser, Jr. explains that a hendiadys is “the use of two words when only one thing is meant (‘It rained fire and brimstone’ = burning brimstone).”7 In applying this principle, Henry Alford wrote:

It would generally be the case, that any form of Christian thanksgiving before meat would contain words of Scripture, or at all events thoughts in exact accordance with them; and such utterance of God’s revealed will, bringing as it would the assembled family and their meal into harmony with Him, might well be said agiazein the brwmata [“bless the food”] on the table for their use.8

If we do think of these two elements separately, we simply mean that 1) God’s Word has declared that various kinds of food are permissible.  In the post-deluvian world that would mean the permission to eat animal meat, and in the post-Mosaic age that would mean the permission to eat what was pronounced unclean under the law.   God showed Peter that he should not call any man common or unclean (Acts 10:28) by permitting him to eat all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air (vs 12).  Paul wrote to the Romans that I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself” (Rom. 14:14), and in our text Paul has said, For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused (vs 4).

In addition, 2) Prayer of thanksgiving acknowledges the truth of God’s Word as it is about to be applied in the meal.   John Gill wrote, “For it is not by bread or meat only, but through the word of God commanding a blessing on what is eaten, that man lives.”9 Calvin goes further and holds that through prayer we acknowledge a restored cultural mandate through Christ to eat of the fruit of the ground that was lost in Adam’s disobedience.10 Regardless of the technical understanding of the person praying, God accepts our words as they acknowledge His Word.

And So . . . .

Acts 27 & 28 record the journey of the Apostle Paul from Caesarea to Rome on board ship.  He was a prisoner among unbelieving sailors and soldiers.  Off the coast of Crete the ship encountered the Euroclydon wind that blew the ship off course and endangered the life of everyone on board.  The pagan crew responded by fasting for over two weeks (vs. 33) so they could please the gods and elements of the storm.

The Apostle responded differently.  God had already appeared to him (vss. 23-24) and assured him that no one would be lost but that the ship and crew would be marooned upon an island (vs. 26).  Therefore Paul stood up in the midst of the storm and declared, This day is the fourteenth day that ye have tarried and continued fasting, having taken nothing.  Wherefore I pray you to take some meat; for this is for your health: for there shall not a hair fall from the head of any of you.  And when he had thus spoken, he took bread, and gave thanks to God in the presence of them all; and when he had broken it, he began to eat.  Then were they all of good cheer, and they also took some meat” (vss. 33-36).

That was truly a meal “sanctified by the Word of God and prayer.”  Trusting in what God had said, and testifying to all present of his own faith in God’s promises, Paul gave a simple but enduring example of meal-time prayers.

Notes:
1. Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God? (Dallas:  Word Publications, 1994) 86.
2. Given by Paul Lee Tan, ed. Encyclopedia of Illustrations (Rockville, MD: Assurance Pub. 1984) 1456.
3. R.C.H. Lenski, Interpretation of Timothy (Minneapolis:  Augsburg, 1961) 625.
4. William Barclay, The Letters To Timothy (Philadelphia:  The Westminster Press, 1975) 94.
5. William Dembski, “An Information-Theoretic Design Argument,” To Everyone An Answer, J.P Moreland and others, eds. (Downer’s Grove:  IVP, 2004) 83.
6. A.T. Robertson, Word Pictures, vol. IV. (Nashville:  Broadman Press, 1931) 579.
7. Walter Kaiser, Jr. Toward an Exegetical Theology (Grand Rapids:  Baker, 1983) 124.
8. Henry Alford, Alford’s Greek Testament, vol III (Grand Rapids: Guardian Press, 1976) 338.
9. John Gill, Dr. Gill’s Commentary, vol. 6 (London: William Hill Collingridge, 1853) 606.
10. John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries, vol XXI (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981) 105.

 

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The Emerging Church (part 2)

Written by Rick Shrader

The Emerging Church (part 2)

by Rick Shrader

The primary tenet of the Emerging Church has been that we must a) recognize that our culture has become postmodern and b) we must immerse our churches much more into this postmodernism if we are to reach this generation with the gospel.  It has been my contention that “a” is true but “b” is false.  Increasingly Christian apologists are sounding warnings that this movement has gone over-board in their love affair with the postmodern culture with little or no warning of its inherent dangers.  I have already suggested reading D.A. Carson’s stinging rebuke of the Emerging Church1 for their unbridled adoption of postmodernism.  I might also suggest Douglas Groothuis’ chapter on Postmodernism2 from this month’s book review.  Also Millard Erickson’s Truth or Consequences, part 3.3 All of these strongly warn churches of the dangers in using postmodern methodologies to such a degree.

1. EPIC of the Emerging Church

In his 2000 book Post-Modern Pilgrims4 Leonard Sweet outlined his vision for the new Emerging Churches with the four-fold epigram EPIC, which he gives in a catchy postmodern way, “E(xperiential),” “E-P(articipatory),” “E-P-I (mage-Driven),” “E-P-I-C (onnected).”  By these four adjectives Sweet presents the case for churches adopting a much more serious postmodern mindset.

Experiential.

It takes little proof to show that the current culture puts much more stock in experience and feeling than in rational thinking.  Sweet writes,  “Postmoderns don’t want their information straight.  They want it laced with experience (hence edutainment).  And the more extreme the better” (p. 33).

Two of the most common expressions of this in churches are the replacement of “testimonials” with the sharing of “experiences,” and the replacing of music that relies heavily on the message while the music brings the participants into an experience. For support he enlists a Barna study which “found that 32 percent of all stripes of regular churchgoers have never experienced God’s presence in worship.  Forty-four percent have not experienced God’s presence in the past year” (p. 45).  Sweet advocates, “Total Experience is the new watchword in postmodern worship.  New World preachers don’t ‘write sermons.’ They create total experiences” (p. 43).

In 1985 Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death in which he described a “Sesame Street” generation that has been entertained in school and church since infancy and is now holding us all hostage with the demand, “Entertain me and I’ll learn.”  Sweet’s assessment of the postmodern generation merely describes this phenomenon as inevitable.  He makes no attempt to offer suggestions for combating it but rather only offers ways to “go with the postmodern flow.”  (These are the ones who have always criticized Conservatives  for their failure to confront the culture!)   This appears to be a capitulation to postmodern feeling over fact, or rather, feeling that creates the fact!

Participatory.

It is not hard to show that the postmodern culture is one of participation, of two-way communication not one-way.  Sweet calls this the Karaoke Culture because people don’t want to merely listen, they want to participate in the music.  Television is mostly a one-way communication whereas the computer forces one to interact.  Older Radio broadcasts were one-way communication whereas talk-radio allows the listener to participate.  Sweet criticizes the old “representative” culture in a severe caricature (needing to be controlled, have decisions made for them, etc.) but praises the Participatory Culture for broad-mindedness and fairness.

In his 1994 book, Postmodern Times, Gene Veith pointed out that postmodernism was replacing the “representational” art of premodernism, and the “self-centered” art of modernism with a “participatory art” of postmodernism that is socially constructed.  Again, it may be astute to recognize what is happening, but it is a lack of biblical stewardship to fall head-over-heels for the culture’s immaturity and baseness.  We have always recognized that the younger the child, the more he needs sensory participation.  But we also realize that growing up and maturing means to “put away childish things.”

Image-Driven.

It is not a secret that today’s culture believes that “image is everything.”  Sweet writes, “The lesson for the church is simple: images generate emotions, and people will respond to their feelings . . . . Images come as close as human beings will get to a universal language” (p. 86). Sweet makes much of the word “metaphor” as opposed to the old word “proposition.”  A proposition has connotations of dictionaries, linguistics, logical deductions and the like.  But metaphor has the connotation of symbols, stories, feelings and other image-driven communication.  Sweet says,  “Postmodern culture is image-driven.  The modern world was word-based.  Its theologians tried to create an intellectual faith, placing reason and order at the heart of religion” (p. 86).

Metaphors, similes, parables and other language tools all have a legitimate place in Scripture and other literature.  But there is a definite demarcation between using these language tools to illuminate propositional truth and using them to create propositions!   Carson writes, “Yes, postmoderns are more open to nonlinear thinking than moderns, and they probably appreciate imagery and metaphor more than the preceding generation. . . . But there are plenty of dangers with ‘image-driven’ witness.  While it can fire the imagination, it may prove so subjective that it leads people astray from what the text actually says.”5

Connected.

I doubt that anyone denies the obvious fact that the world is a smaller place because of modern communication tools.  But the point here is not merely communication but connectivity.  Sweet writes, “the web is less an information source than a social medium.  Both [Amazon.com and eBay] are becoming the new town squares for the global village” (p. 109).  The contention is that people are hungry for personal connections and are not getting them in the traditional places.  “The paradox is this: the pursuit of individualism has led us to this place of hunger for connectedness, for communities not of blood or nation but communities of choice” (p. 109-110).  Sweet goes even further when he writes, “Jesus is the Truth.  Truth resides in relationships, not documents or principles . . . . Not until the fourteenth century (at the earliest) did truth become embedded in propositions and positions” (p. 131).

Again, no one doubts the fact that this is a connected world and few doubt that people are hungry for relationships.  But where does the local church, made up of born-again believers and responsible for the precepts of God’s Word, open its doors indiscriminately to whomever wants to “feel connected?”  The Emergent Church puts “belonging” before “becoming” (i.e. sharing in the family’s benefits before committing to its membership) even in matters of salvation and church membership.  Unbelievers must never be “disconnected.”  In addition, the “global community” emphasis widens the door for ecumenical and social gospel participation that conservative local churches have until now cautiously avoided.  To avoid these things is seen as sectarian and narrow-minded to today’s “connected” generation.

2. Some Further Thoughts

It has been a generally accepted conclusion by conservative writers that postmodernism has many more negatives than positives.  For a new movement to advocate using more of it, not less, should sound a strong note of warning to Biblically conservative churches.  In addition to my comments above I would add two thoughts that keep coming back to me as I read more and more of this literature.

The Return to an Old Testament Form of Faith and Practice

The appeal for support of contemporary worship is almost always from the Old Testament because the New Testament says very little about it.  New Testament worship is centered on our High Priest in heaven who continually intercedes for us.  It is by necessity more cognitive than emotional.  The writer of Hebrews often contrasts the temple worship on earth with its “participatory” and “symbolic” services with that of faith, which understands what is happening before God’s throne in heaven.  Chapter 12 reminds us that we are not come to Mt. Sinai that was full of sights and sounds, but to Mt. Zion and the things of a heavenly worship.

Even in the matter of salvation, the Emerging Church places “belonging” before “becoming” i.e. practicing the things of Christianity before actually accepting them.  Paul’s formula for “the righteousness which is of the law” (Rom 10:5) is “that the man which doeth those things shall live by them” (taken from Lev 18:5) rather than the New Testament order of faith before works.  Liberal Christianity has always down-played personal conversion and focused on teaching a person to try to live the Christian life.  The seeker-sensitive model is to bring the lost person into the church first with a lot of “Christian” activity, and then hope that conversion will follow.

The simple Christian life with its walk of faith, not of sight, has no appeal to this carnal world (nor should it).  But a religious life of good works with a lot of activity to keep the contemplation at a minimum appeals a great deal.  Baptists, of all believers, have been champions of a simple, direct New Testament form of worship. Even D.A. Carson says “The emerging folk have reversed the order.  Invite people to belong, welcome them aboard, take them into your story, and the ‘becoming’ may follow” (p. 146).  Then, sadly, he adds, “Over against this ‘Believers Church Tradition’ to which they are normally thought to belong, some Baptists are now openly advocating belonging before becoming” (p. 147).  That’s because a desire for popularity will always gravitate to the base desires of the lost which will always be a works-based salvation, what Paul calls “the righteousness which is of the law.” Ironically, this becomes the real “legalism.”

The Reversal of the Fundamentals from a Century Ago

Having read the entire set of The Fundamentals last year, I’m convinced that many who think they are still in that mold are not, whether they still choose to use the title or not.  As I have written before, the most obvious reversal in thinking is the misconception that these volumes present an irreducible minimum of doctrines that make one a “fundamentalist.”  The opposite is true.  They propose that all of the Bible must be defended against the modernists who were minimizing almost all parts of it for rationalistic reasons.  To minimize parts of it today for pragmatic reasons is no less (and perhaps more) dangerous.

I made a list of references from The Fundamentals that speak to almost all of the concepts in the EPIC outline above.  Space keeps me from being detailed.  My intention was to illustrate how far we’ve moved away from what our forefathers in the faith defended.  One example would be from Howard Crosby on “Preach the Word.” He writes,  “Churches are filled by appealing to carnal desires and aesthetic tastes.  Brilliant oratory, scientific music, sensational topics and fashionable pewholders, are the baits to lure people into the churches, and a church is called prosperous as these wretched devices succeed” (Vol. III, p. 169-170).

I’ve also read (and reviewed) the volumes on The Fundamental Baptist Congresses fifty years after that.  They are not as detailed nor doctrinal as The Fundamentals but still show the same true fundamentalism.  Now, at another fifty year interval, we need another world-wide voice for the fundamentals of our faith.  As one said of those early days, “There were giants in the land in those days.”  They were truly men who stood against the world and cared not for its praises.  God help us to have some today.

Notes:
1. D.A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 2005).
2. Douglas Groothuis, “Facing the Challenge of Postmodernism,” in To Everyone An Answer, edited by J.P. Moreland and others (Downer’s Grove, IVP, 2004).
3. Millard Erickson, Truth or Consequences: the promise and perils of postmodernism (Downer’s Grove: IVP, 2001).
4. Leonard Sweet, Post-Modern Pilgrims (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2000).
5. Carson, 126.

 

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The Emerging Church (part 1)

Written by Rick Shrader

The Emerging Church (part 1)

by Rick Shrader

There is no rut so deep to fall into as the need for constant change.  Already we are being told that “postmodernism” is out of date and we are now living in a “post-postmodern” time.  Spurgeon described the shifting sands of his own day in this way: “It will have no creed because it can have none: it is continually on the move; it is not what it was yesterday, and it will not be tomorrow what it is today.  Its shout is for ‘liberty,’ its delight is invention, its element is change.”1 Whether the issues are the same or not, such rushing to ride the latest religious wave must be as old as the waves themselves.

The Emergent Church

Many today feel that the Evangelicalism of the twentieth century has long outlived its usefulness (Fundamentalism being long since dead!).  They are tired of traditional church and seeker-sensitive church.  They are done with propositions and books and proofs of God’s existence, even with the Bible as a final authority for faith and practice.  They are stepping away from all of that and emerging into a much more fluid and relevant type of worship.  D.A. Carson describes the testimony of one such pilgrim:

In 1998 [Spencer] Burke started TheOoze.com.  The name of the active chat room is designedly metaphorical: Burke intends this to be a place where ‘the various parts of the faith community are like mercury.  At times we’ll roll together; at times we’ll roll apart.  Try to touch the liquid or constrain it, and the substance will resist.  Rather than force people to fall into line, an oozy community tolerates differences and treats people who hold opposing views with great dignity.  To me, that’s the essence of the emerging church.’  For several years, the Ooze hosted ‘a learning party called Soularize,’ where members of the ‘online community’ shared with each other—and in 2001 they went out on a limb and offered a Native American potlatch—i.e., ‘a spiritual ceremony of gift giving and grace giving’—as part of the conference.  ‘More and more, my heart is about creating safe places for leaders to ask questions and to learn from each other.’2

The Emerging Church may take the form of chat rooms and blogs, or it may take the form of liturgical church services with candles, incense and sacraments.  More than the Seeker Church could imagine, the Emerging Church has placed the individual as the highest authority for the worship experience.  In a sort of existential way, truth claims are treated as suspect and absolutes are unknowable even to the church!  “Unless we can know something absolutely and infallibly, we can’t know anything truthfully.”  This is what Carson calls the “manipulative antithesis.”3 For the Convergent believer, the church of the last two centuries is more modernistic than historical because it has fallen for the modernistic approach to knowing things, i.e., that they can be known.  To them, Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism were both “modernistic” because they settled into the “modern” age too comfortably, and argued, preached, wrote and reasoned from the “modern” perspective of knowing truth.  The Emerging Church will do away with all of that because now all “are being swept up in a new new world (p. 12).”

Some Emerging Church Writers

The list of writers, pastors and speakers representing this new worship is growing day by day.   I will review four of the more prominent names who have written books that come highly recommended if you are into this sort of thing.

Brian McLaren, The Church on the Other Side (Zondervan, 2000)

McLaren, as much as anyone, is pushing for churches to quit fighting postmodernism and embrace it.  “The book is for people who don’t think we can go back to the old world—and don’t want to.  It is for people who want to help define and shape the church of the future” (p. 15).  In the process of arguing for this, many alarming statements are made.

? His view of the new emerging church is one which will not be very tied to biblical mandates:  “The new church does not view the New Testament as a ‘New Leviticus’—a law book of strict rules—nor as a fixed, detailed blueprint to be applied to all churches in all cultures across time.  Rather, the New Testament serves as (among other things) an inspired, exemplary, and eternally relevant case study of how the early church itself adapted and evolved and coped with rapid change and new challenges” (p. 23).

? To emergent churches, the Bible isn’t necessarily the rule for faith, and definitely not for practice:  “In the old church, wineskins were mandates.  They couldn’t be changed. . . . In the new church, we will not only be open to a new program but will loosen up about programs altogether” (p. 44).

? As is true of seeker-sensitive churches, emergent churches see the need to turn out the older saints and whoever else cannot make the change.  In a section called “Practicing Systems Thinking,” McLaren gives fourteen analogies of new systems that must rid themselves of older baggage (organisms fighting disease, the rain forest, recycling, vomiting, etc).   Then in a clear reference to people who resist he says, “A system will discontinue if it loses the ability to neutralize or discharge baggage, toxins, stress, germs, and waste products.  Many churches languish or die because they have no way to rid themselves of destructive elements that have invaded or developed in the body” (p. 47).  He is not speaking here of necessary church discipline, but of older thinking that holds back the new thinking.

? In addition, doctrine statements will be “traded up” for more eclectic beliefs (p. 56); keeping to a denominational name is merely “clinging to our little histories” (p. 57); even “premillennial eschatology of immanence, urgency, and cataclysm . . . final judgment and heaven and hell” are only as useful as “going to the dentist for a root canal, you will feel better when it’s over” (p. 150).

Robert Webber, Planning Blended Worship (Abington, 1998)

Webber writes more about the effect of emergence on the style of the worship service (see my May 2005 article in Aletheia).  He believes “the two movements of worship renewal, liturgical and contemporary, had independent histories until the 1990s when a form of blended or convergence worship began to develop” and among other objectives has “a radical commitment to contemporary relevance” (p. 16).

? The arts are restored to their “rightful” place in worship as in “medieval era communication” though “Protestantism rejected visual communication in favor of a more verbal approach to worship” (p. 18).  Drama, dance, pantomime are among the more prominent new art forms in emergent worship.

? “Table Worship” is being introduced even in Evangelical churches.  This specifically is the Eucharist in its sacramental form.  Webber believes that “the form of table worship in most Protestant churches originated as a reaction against Roman Catholic Table worship” (p. 150).  This is seen as unfortunate because it robbed the churches of such a rich ceremonial message.  “An intense encounter with God’s supernatural presence takes place in the receiving of bread and wine, but this experience has been terribly damaged by modern thinking [read: Fundamentalism & Evangelicalism] . . . .  The new appreciation of the mystery of Christ’s saving and healing presence at bread and wine is captured in Cyril of Jerusalem’s speech” which Webber quotes at length (p. 136).

? Interestingly, Webber makes much of distinguishing between message and methods, content and style, etc., echoing many fundamental voices today (see p. 28).

Barry Liesch, The New Worship (Baker, 2001)

Liesch is writing more specifically about contemporary worship music.  Though I don’t believe “convergence” is specifically mentioned, that may be due to the fact the this book first appeared in 1996 and again in 2001.  The arguments and reasons for “The New Worship” are found in almost any book supporting convergence.

? Liesch says, and quotes Clinton Arnold for support, that “the pluralistic culture of Colossae suggests the use of a variety of materials” since the city was a blend of many cultures.  Arnold says that since Christians at Colossae coexisted with people who worshiped “Anatolian, Persian, Greek, Roman, and Egyptian deities” as well as Jews, “Their music probably reflected their multicultural environment, an aspect our pluralistic society in North America has in common with the early church” (p. 41).

? Liesch argues that the three participles in Colossians 3:16 (teaching, admonishing, singing) should be taken as instrumental (“by”) rather than imperative (followed by a period), circumstantial (“as”) or resultant (“then”).  That is, he believes  these things themselves (especially singing) produce the filling of the Spirit, rather than being products of the filling.

? Increasingly convergence writers use and quote neo-orthodox and existential thinkers to support their emotionally charged view of worship.  Liesch actually includes a section called “Kierkegaard and Performance” in which he praises what the father of existentialism calls “worship performance.”  From this Liesch promotes the idea that in worship we are the “prompters” and “players” and God is the “audience” which makes worship seek an emotional response from God.  If, rather, we are the audience, waiting on God to speak through His Word, worship is cognitive (an idea convergence people think is “modernistic”).

Leonard Sweet, Post-Modern Pilgrims (Broadman, 2000)

Along with McLaren, Sweet is one of the most vocal and recognized emergence speakers.  He admits to dedicating his ministry “to moving the church back to the future” an idea he calls “ancientfuture faith” (p. 46).  He says, “Postmodern culture is my here and now.  I will take the church back to the cyberage, or will perish in the attempt” (p. 47).  Earlier he had asked, “Why can’t we kiss the postmodern culture?” (p. 6).

? The old culture is “book-centric” while the new culture is “web-centric” (p. 140).  “Postmodern hermeneutics of participant-observation”. . . .  is “dethroning the old epistemological pretensions of knowing” (p. 143).  The western way of knowing is modern (occidental) while the eastern way of thinking (oriental) is “more biblical” (p. 145).

? “Truth resides in relationships, not documents or principles . . . Not until the fourteenth century (at the earliest) [Read: Reformation] did truth become embedded in propositions and positions” (p. 131).

? In a shocking admission of the convergence agenda in worship, Sweet insists on “The importance of shifting worship from the exegesis of words to the exegesis of images if we are to birth and build churches that last” (p. 95).  Again, “Divine revelation has occurred.  There are universal moral truths.  Yet knowledge about these truths is socially constructed.  We both discover and construct knowledge” (p. 146).  Sweet says we are “awakening to a postmodern world open to revelation and hungry for experience” (p. 29).

? Sweet’s book is largely outlined by the acrostic EPIC:  Experiential, Participatory, Image-driven, Connected.  This is his formula for success in the postmodern age in which we live.  My analysis of this will follow in next month’s issue.

And So . . . .

D.A. Carson writes, “Most of the emergent writers have gone to great lengths to say that unless Christians make the kinds of adjustments they are calling for—adjustments that they think are mandated by the assumptions of postmodernism—they will confine themselves to obsolescent enclaves.”  He then frankly says that those are “the shrill cries of sectarians.”4 And I surely agree!

Footnotes:
1. Charles Spurgeon, The Downgrade Controversy (Pasadena: Pilgrim Publications, nd) 71.
2. D.A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 05) 19.
3. Carson, 104 (see also his refutation of this concept)
4. Carson, 155.

 

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Growth and the Local Church (part 2)

Written by Rick Shrader

Growth and the Local Church (part 2)

by Rick Shrader

We have noticed in part 1 that (1) the church is a called out group of people who have voluntarily believed, not a kingdom of people who have been conquered against their will, and (2) the Great Commission is to preach the gospel, not convert the nations.  We continue in part 2 by emphasizing the effectiveness of bold preaching and dignity of the small congregation.

3) The New Testament preacher is a herald of God’s message, not a diplomat to negotiate with his hearers.

In his pastoral epistles, the apostle Paul described himself to Timothy as a “preacher” (1 Tim. 2:7; 2 Tim 1:11).  This description (khrux) gives us the idea of the minister as a “herald” of the truth of God.  This picture comes from the secular world of biblical times when kings had messengers that would deliver his words to the subjects of his realm.  This person was specially chosen for his integrity and faithfulness to the message as it was delivered to him.  In the lengthy article defining this term in Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Gerhard Friedrich writes,

In many cases heralds are very garrulous and inclined to exaggerate.  They are thus in danger of giving false news.  It is demanded, then, that they deliver their message as it is given to them.  The essential point about the report which they give is that it does not originate with them.  Behind it stands a higher power.  The herald does not express his own views.  He is the spokesman for his master. . . . Heralds adopt the mind of those who commission them, and act with the plenipotentiary authority of their masters. . . . Being only the mouth of his master, he must not falsify the message entrusted to him by additions of his own.  He must deliver it exactly as given to him.7

Delivering a message through the herald was like today’s letter writer sending an email.  Once the writer hits the “send” button, the message will be delivered exactly as it was written and it is too late to change at that point.  The herald should be that faithful to the message of the king.  It was not his position to negotiate with the hearers for a more acceptable form of the message.  This is why the term is so appropriate for the New Testament minister.  He is to preach the Word (2 Tim. 4:2) declaring to the hearers all the counsel of God (Acts 20:27).

There is a great temptation today to conform the message to the desires of the hearers rather than preaching to conform the hearers to the message of God.  Paul asked the Galatian believers, For do I now persuade men, or God?  Or do I seek to please men? for if I pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.  But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.  For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:10-12).  The New Testament herald is to please God and persuade men, not to please men and persuade God.

In our desire for growth, acceptance and success, many church leaders have found that it is easier to bend the Word of God slightly or to add and subtract from the Word.  John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard Movement, wrote, “I assumed that Bible study, especially as approached in evangelical seminaries, was the key to being equipped and empowered to do God’s work….but I no longer see it as the sole avenue to being equipped and empowered to do God’s Work.”8 Peter Wagner, long-time professor and guru of church growth, wrote, “In the early years. . . . I focused mostly on Bible study. . . . Now I know more about worship, reverence, and praise.  I seek a daily refilling of the Holy Spirit in a way I can actually feel his presence. . . . I am beginning to distinguish the voice of God from my own thoughts and to allow him to speak to me directly.”9 Brian McLaren, leader in the “Emerging Church” movement, wrote,

The new church does not view the New Testament as a “New Leviticus”—a law book of strict rules—nor as a fixed, detailed blueprint to be applied to all churches in all cultures across time.  Rather, the New Testament serves as (among other things) an inspired, exemplary, and eternally relevant case study of how the early church itself adapted and evolved and coped with rapid change and new challenges.  In place of a fixed structure that is to fit all, the new church advocates a flexible, adaptable, evolving structure that is developed to meet the current needs.  The key word is adaptability.10

In an interesting twist to the concept of a New Testament herald, McLaren says, “Organizational structure is like a pair of shoes.  You fit the shoes to the feet; you don’t make the feet fit the shoes.”11 This comes as a surprise to generations of preachers who have understood their responsibility to be “cobbler preachers,” that is, to just make the shoes (i.e. preach the Word as it is) and if they fit the audience, they are to wear them!  Now we are being told by the new generation of “emerging preachers” that we must make the shoes to fit the audience.

How different we sound today than even a generation ago!  A.C. Dixon, who helped edit “The Fundamentals” at the early part of the 20th century and also pastored Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, described the responsibility of a preacher quite differently:

Every preacher is, or ought to be, a prophet of God who preaches as God bids him without regard to results.  When he becomes conscious of the fact that he is a leader in his church or denomination, he has reached a crisis in his ministry.  Shall he be a prophet of God or a leader of men?  If he decides only to be a prophet insofar as he can without losing his leadership, he becomes a diplomat and ceases to be a prophet at all.  If he decides to maintain his leadership at all costs he may easily fall to the level of a politician who pulls the wires to gain or hold a position.  He who would prophesy or speak forth the message of God is careful of none of these things but only that he shall speak the message that God gives him, even though he be in a lonesome minority.12

When John Bunyan wrote his autobiography, he titled it Grace Abounding To The Chief of Sinners.  Bunyan was willing to spend almost twenty years in jail to keep the message of God’s Word pure.  If today we could see ourselves more as the chief of sinners rather than the chief executive officer, we would be better heralds of God’s truth!

4) The church is a body of worshipers who meet for spiritual purposes, not a corporation to do worldly business.

The church of Jesus Christ exists to worship Him and to follow His commandments.  Those commandments amount to holding fast the Word of God in every part.  As we have already shown, the believer is a worshiper of God and has been equipped by God with all the ability and tools necessary to worship Him.  According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue” (2 Pet. 1:3).  In the context of forgiveness and church discipline, Jesus said, for where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20).  The Scripture does not place numerical requirements on our ability to worship or to do His business.

Today’s consumer mentality is contradicting this biblical priority.  People are wanting beautiful facilities, fully staffed and functioning ministries for children and youth, the latest technology and the most professional musicians.  If more time is spent by professional staff on how to create the right effects in the service than in seeking the Lord’s pleasure and blessing through the Holy Spirit, it is no wonder that we cannot be satisfied with biblical worship.  Os Guinness relates the comment of a Japanese businessman to a visiting Australian:  “Whenever I meet a Buddhist leader, I meet a holy man.  Whenever I meet a Christian leader, I meet a manager.”13 Guinness then adds,

The two most easily recognizable hallmarks of secularization in America are the exaltation of numbers and of technique.  Both are prominent in the megachurch movement at a popular level.  In its fascination with statistics and data at the expense of truth, this movement is characteristically modern.14

There is a necessary part of the local church which calls for good business procedures and proper planning.  But when the worship is manipulated by professional procedures to gain the desired results, anything but worship is happening.  True worship does not need manipulation.  In fact, it must not be manipulated at all except by the Word and Spirit.  For we are not as many, which corrupt [literally, “to hawk or peddle”] the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ” (2 Cor. 2:17).  True worship, then, can take place anywhere there are sincere believers seeking God.

The most memorable experiences in our home have been those times when we gather, with a few friends or relatives, around the piano and sing hymns and speak openly of spiritual things.  This is also true in the church.  In most mid-week church services, the saints will spend time praying together, singing together, giving testimonies and studying God’s Word.  Often the joy found in those “prayer meetings” far exceeds any other service for worshiping in Spirit and in truth (John 4:24); and serving Him acceptably with reverence and godly fear (Heb. 12:28).  That is not to say that such worship is not possible in larger gatherings, but only that it is just as (if not more) possible in the small setting.  If that is what most believers were really seeking, the church growth movement would lose its glitter next Sunday!

And So . . . .

We should not despise the day of small things.  Zechariah the prophet encouraged the returning remnant in his day (Zech. 4:10) to not be discouraged because the temple they were building was not large.  The reason for optimism was because the Lord’s work is not by might, nor by power but by my Spirit, saith the LORD of hosts (Zech. 4:6).  We live in a day when small churches are made to feel inferior for their lack of size and are seen by today’s success-oriented generation as failures.  But they are not.  In fact, ten churches of one hundred each can do more than one church of a thousand.  They have ten pastors, more people involved in serving and teaching, a greater geographical outreach, and probably more potential for evangelism.  The small group concept has been a good thing that larger churches have used.  But small churches are power-packed small groups already!  They live or die by the necessity of every-member participation and especially for the reliance on the Spirit of God for power.  We ought to praise God and rejoice for the day of small things!

Notes:
7. Gerhard Friedrich, “Khrux”  Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. III, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, ed. (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 1978) 688.
8. John Wimber & Kevin Springer, Power Evangelism (San Francisco:  Harper Collins, 1992) 91.
9. Peter Wagner, The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit (Ann Arbor:  Vine Books, 1988) 129.
10. Brian McLaren, The Church on the Other Side (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000) 23.
11. McLaren, 101.
12. Quoted by Vance Havner,  In Times Like These (Old Tappan:  Fleming H. Revell, 1969) 103.
13. Os Guinness, Dining With The Devil (Grand Rapids:  Baker books, 1996) 49.
14. Guinness, 49.

 

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Growth and the Local Church (part 1)

Written by Rick Shrader

Growth and the Local Church (part 1)

by Rick Shrader

The church growth movement, in its effort to help the church accomplish the Great Commission, may have actually done more to hinder than to help.  What started off as an effort to get as many people under the sound of the gospel as possible, has often ended with churches full of merely professing believers whose lives remained unchanged by the faith they profess, while the church itself is nothing more than a gospel tabernacle designed more for the lost than the saved.  Franky Schaeffer, in seeing this change take place in churches wrote,

However, the constant activity-oriented nature of the church today, which is more like some combination health club-golfing society-bowling tournament-Sunday school service-inspirational message-fellowship-Jesus advertising machine-growth program all rolled into one, does not seem to have very much to do with the institution we read about in the New Testament.1

Whether one agrees with the solutions the younger Schaeffer preferred to follow or not, his observation of the problem was acute.  Evangelism, which is to take place in the world (since the field is the world, cp. Matt. 13:38), now only takes place as we can coax unbelievers into the church.  Since unbelievers have no abiding interest in the things of God, it takes more and more stimulation to get them to come and then to stay for any length of time.  There are many brighter and more exciting lights on the boulevard if the church fails to meet the challenge.  What started out as a desire to win the lost ends up with the lost people holding the church hostage to unconverted desires, demands and direction from the world.

Many have observed that this phenomenon may also be the result of the church’s own self-centered desire for fame and fortune.  For almost half a century now, books have been published advertising the fastest growing churches and Sunday Schools; pastors of these large churches are invited to speak in impressive settings; large budgets allow gifts to be given to institutions which in turn reward the leadership with recognition.  As a result, the church’s main goal is to keep the cycle going so that it does not lose its place at the table of important persons and churches.  Never have the apostle Paul’s words to the Corinthian church been more appropriate: For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise (2 Cor. 10:12).

Only one church in the New Testament, the church at Jerusalem, was anywhere near the size of today’s mega churches.  Five thousand members by today’s standard would hardly qualify for the term “mega” church.  The other churches described in the New Testament would not rank large enough to be given any preferential treatment today.  Beside this anomaly, the real difference between the church at Jerusalem and today’s mega churches is that the church did not seek to be large, and there were certainly no other churches to which they could compare themselves.  Rather, they sought diligently to be what God wanted them to be, and they happened to grow.  Other churches at that time did the same but without such growth.  Growth was not considered as a factor for how the churches evangelized, operated, or behaved among the lost.  They saw themselves as stewards of a truth for which they would give their lives when necessary.

When the church had to deal with sin among the members and God took the life of Ananias and his wife Sapphira, the book of Acts records, and they were all with one accord in Solomon’s porch.  And of the rest durst no man join himself to them: but the people magnified them.  And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women (Acts 5:12-14).  Unbelievers wanted nothing to do with such a religion as that, but true seekers were drawn by the conviction of the Holy Spirit. When the apostles returned to the church after being beaten for preaching the gospel in public places, the book of Acts records, And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.  And daily in the temple and in every house they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ (Acts 5:41-42).

The New Testament shows that this activity was normal for all the churches but did not result in the growth which the post-Pentecost church had experienced in Jerusalem.  Christ commends the church at Smyrna for their similar faithfulness to the Word of God, and assures them, I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.  Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life (Rev. 2:9-10).

Similarly, the apostle John, who was their brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called  Patmos for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ (Rev. 1:9).  Growth and success in the world’s eyes could wait for heaven, faithfulness came first.  And, of course, what we know is that such faithfulness was what was truly successful for the gospel in the long run.

What is it, then, that has happened in our own day and age?  Why have we departed from this simple stewardship of the gospel and the Word of God?  There are no doubt many reasons to be given, but I will list some that ought to be obvious to us.

1) The church is a called out group of people who have voluntarily believed, not a kingdom of people who have been conquered against their will.

The word “church” is somewhat of a misnomer to our understanding of the New Testament organism.  The study of the church is called “ecclesiology” because the New Testament word for the church is “ecclesia” (ekklhsia) which means “to call out.”  It is used one hundred and fifteen times in the New Testament and almost always refers to the local assembly of saints in a given locale, such as the church of God which is at Corinth (1 Cor. 1:10).  It can also refer to the entire body of believers who have been called out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9).  Our English word “church” is a substitute for the Greek word, coming from the old English “Circ” or the Scottish “Kirk.”2

Premillennialists have not generally equated the church and the kingdom of God.  If they have, they never lose sight of the great difference between the two.  W.B. Riley wrote, “The discrimination between the Church and Kingdom voices itself not alone in the matter of time—the one the institution of the present, and the other the institution of the future—but equally in terms and phrases.”3 The kingdom of God will come to earth when Jesus Christ returns and sets it up; the Church exists now and is currently being built.  His kingdom will be universal over every person on earth, converted or unconverted; the Church exists within the world as a called out assembly of believers. The kingdom will be a theocracy ruled with a rod of iron in universal righteousness and peace; the Church is an organism ruled by the Word and Spirit of God and is persecuted by the world.  We are not building the kingdom of God today except in the sense that we are inviting people to make reservations to be there.  The kingdom itself will only come when the Lord comes.

The New Testament does not speak about church properties or buildings, nor does it regard the size of an assembly important.  There is no passage where instruction is given as to how the church should enlarge itself or grow to a certain size, or set a goal for growth.  This is not to minimize evangelism, but rather to emphasize that the preaching of the gospel was considered a sacred task to keep people out of hell, not as a means of enlarging someone’s ministry.  The size of the mixed multitude of believers and unbelievers on Sunday morning is not the size of the church.  That can only be equated to truly born again people.

Where ever the gospel has gone, God has been calling sinners to Himself.  When they respond, they become part of the called out group of people.  This group is always smaller than the populous.  Even the five thousand in the Jerusalem church was miniscule compared to the general population of Jerusalem.  Though the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to any who believe, it is hidden from those whom Satan has blinded.  As C.I. Scofield wrote, “This world, so far as we know, has never seen a converted city, or town, or even village.”4 It is simply not the Church’s purpose to make earthly citizens conform to Christianity’s standards by teaching, training, coaxing or coercing.    Entrance into the Church is only through conversion.

2) The Great Commission is to preach the gospel, not convert the nations.

The Lord’s commission to His church is to preach the gospel to every person in the world!  Go ye therefore, and teach (lit. “disciple”) all nations (Matt. 28:19); Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature (Mk. 16:15); But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth (Acts 1:8).  As incredible as this request seems, we should not misunderstand the Lord’s intention.  He did not command His disciples to convert every person, but to preach the gospel, to be a witness to every person.  Our job is to take the good news to people, it is up to them and the Lord whether it will be accepted or rejected.

When the kingdom of God comes, His “will” will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  The world will be converted by the coming of Christ’s kingdom.  It will be changed spiritually, governmentally, economically, and in almost every other way possible.  But it is the church’s job to take a message to every person; a message which can be, and usually is, rejected.  When Jesus commanded the disciples to “baptize them,” He did not mean to baptize the nations (as infant baptism attempts to do) but to baptize those who fully make their own decision to become disciples.

The church does not fail when people refuse to be converted.  Paul wrote to the Romans, from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.  Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man’s foundation (Rom. 15:19-20).   He had “fully preached” the gospel, but obviously not everyone in those parts had been converted.  But Paul had fully evangelized them!  Shortly after he wrote those words, Paul passed through the area of Ephesus and said to the leaders of the church, And now, behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more.  Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men (Acts 20:25-26).  Not because everyone had been converted, but because he had faithfully given them the truth regarding the gospel of Christ and His coming kingdom.

Scofield writes, “The evangelization of the world, then, and not its conversion, is the mission committed to us.  To do this, to preach the gospel unto the uttermost parts of the earth, to offer salvation to every creature, is our responsibility.”5 We pass through this world as sojourners and pilgrims headed for our final destination, the kingdom of God.  Along the way we are to evangelize the world though we will not see its conversion until that kingdom comes.

We would not minimize the church’s responsibility to teach and care for those who come to Christ and are under its care.  The local church, the body of Christ existing as a holy temple within a hostile world, is the most wonderful place to be in this age!  There the believer finds brotherhood, acceptance, fellowship and help.  There he can find the joy of the Lord among brethren who also have repented from the old life and are striving to become like their Savior in this life.  But it is because they all possess the Spirit of God that this can be accomplished.

The church growth movement often attempts to accomplish in the world what only the kingdom of God will be able to accomplish.  John MacArthur writes,

Contrary to the thinking of many people, the true church of Jesus Christ is not a visible human organization run by a hierarchy of officials.  It is not a social agency to meet the needs and demands of the community or simply a convenient place in which to be married, buried, or baptized.  It is certainly not a religious social club in which people of like-minded beliefs and standards get together for fellowship and occasional service activities.6

And So . . . .

The church need not gage its success on the size of the congregation or the number of people who have truly been converted, and certainly not on the number of people it can gather into an auditorium on Sunday morning.  Its success or failure is measured by how it built on the foundation, not how many; whether it evangelized, not whether it converted the nations.  The most effective means for the true success of the church, then, is to be light in darkness, holiness among ungodliness, awake to righteousness in a world that is asleep in unrighteousness, salt in a world that is mundane to the things of God.  Salt is effective, not because it is so much like food, but because it is so unlike it.

Continued next issue!

3) The New Testament preacher is a herald of God’s message, not a diplomat to negotiate with his hearers.

4) The church is a body of worshipers who meet for spiritual purposes, not a corporation to do worldly business.

Notes:
1. Franky Schaeffer, Addicted To Mediocrity (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1981) 86.
2. The word “church” refers more to the building than the people.  The Greek “kuriakon” means “the house of a lord.”  The English “circ” means “circle” and may refer to the circular shape of those houses of worship.  See Emery Bancroft, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1968) 259-265.
3. Wm. B. Riley, The Evolution of the Kingdom (New York: Charles Cook, 1913) 43.
4. C.I. Scofield, Addresses on Prophecy (Greenville:  The Gospel Hour, nd) 21.
5. Scofiled, 22.
6. John MacArthur, First Corinthians ( Chicago:  Moody Bible Institute, 1984) 277.

 

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Guess What Has Not Changed?

Written by Rick Shrader

Guess What Has Not Changed?

by Rick Shrader

Perhaps the most difficult problem in dealing with a postmodern culture is defining our terms.  I doubt that a generation has ever been so flexible with language as this one.  One hundred years ago W.H. Griffith Thomas, combating German Rationalism, said, “We cannot in any degree be sure of the thought unless we can be sure of the word.”1 Unfortunately that battle for context is all but lost on this generation.  Consider the familiar proverb, “A rolling stone gathers no moss.”  It doesn’t occur to us today that such a truth is not meant to be a good thing, but rather a warning!  Notice G.K. Chesterton’s comment from a past generation:

In the heated idleness of youth we were all rather inclined to quarrel with the implication of that proverb which says that a rolling stone gathers no moss.  We were inclined to ask, ‘Who wants to gather moss, except silly old ladies?’  But for all that we begin to perceive that the proverb is right.  The rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rolling stone is dead.  The moss is silent because the moss is alive.2

What had always been accepted as a bad thing: to be a rolling stone with continual motion but no purpose or life, has now become a good thing:  to be continually moving so as not to become stale and grow roots.  But as Chesterton noted, what some consider to be alive (because it is always moving) is only a misconception of what is really dead, and what some consider to be dead (because it is stationary) is actually the thing that is alive.

The Scripture always confronts the world’s thinking in similar ways.  What the world considers weakness, God says is strength; what the world believes is the way up is actually the way down and the way down is actually the way up; what the world concludes as folly is actually the wisdom and power of God.  We always have to be on our guard not to read a popular concept into a text and thereby come up with an almost opposite meaning.

We have read and studied the book of First John all of our lives in church.  We do it because it is short and to the point and speaks to a number of important issues such as love and assurance.  But the longer we read it or even translate it, the deeper it becomes and we wonder if we will ever get to the bottom of it (which, of course, we never will).  Chapter two gives the reader four tests for the sincerity of his faith.  At first these seem simple enough, but the more we read and reread them the more they take our thinking in the opposite direction from the thinking of the world.

The worldling would rather be a spiritual rolling stone, landing nowhere  in particular than a stone with Biblical moss on it, planted in a solid place, amid the raging stream of culture (so he thinks).  What he considers to be moveable and flexible God says is permanent, and what he considers to be accepted and factual God says will change with the power of His Word and Spirit.  What the worldling believes is new and fresh is actually as old as mankind and void of any spiritual life.

The Postmodern Mindset is Old

John’s first test of spiritual life and vitality is whether we keep God’s commandments (1 John 2:3-8).  But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.  He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked (vs 5-6).  Though love is one of the commandments, it is not all of the commandments of God.  The Living Word has come to us in the form of the Written Word and the believer that claims to be walking in the Light will be seeking to live as He lived and also to be abiding by every precept that he finds in the Scripture.

The new mindset toward the commandments of God is as old as John and probably as old as Adam.  The DaVinci Code/Jesus Seminar mentality of our day or the Rationalism of a hundred years ago, that God’s commands are not definite nor perceptible, leaves one in the old world and bars him from discovering new life in Christ.

Many Evangelicals (and some Fundamentalists) are flirting with the lure of being free from all of God’s commands.  They do this in many ways including creating unscriptural dichotomies between belief and practice; by claiming individual vision from God leading to para-biblical ministry; even exalting technological capabilities over textual priorities.

Douglas Groothuis insightfully observed, “Because postmodernists decry the tyranny of the author over the reader, they rejoice in these technologies.”3 He also quoted Benjamin Woolley saying, “Artificial reality is the authentic postmodern condition, and virtual reality its definitive technological expression….The artificial is the authentic.”4 This is to say that the old attempt (by Gnostics of John’s day) to separate the commandments of God from the life of the believer is nothing new nor refreshing.

The New Generation is Old

John’s second test of spiritual life and vitality is whether we love the brethren (1 John 2:9-14).  He that saith he is in the light and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.  He that loveth his brother abideth in the light and there is none occasion of stumbling in him (vs 9-10).  We have let a new generation totally steal John’s words from their meaning.  Today we are told that the ones remaining in church, the ones retaining their convictions, the ones going on doing what they have always done by God’s Word, are the ones not loving the brethren!  And why?  Because they, supposedly, are not accepting the change that the new generation is demanding.  But John obviously means (throughout this book and others) the opposite! Those who do not like what godly Christians do in church (and argue for a less demanding path) are the ones who do not love the “brethren.”

A few years ago (October 2001) I wrote an article titled, “Why Those Old People Won’t Change.”   I made the point that the older folks are rightly offended by a younger generation accusing them of not changing.  The fact is that the older generation DID change when they came to Christ and they have remained changed ever since.  The irony is that the new generation, which is demanding change, has never changed from their worldly ways and has no intention of changing even within the church.  The old truth is that such a new generation does not love the “brethren” (i.e. what Christians really are) and recoils at their very life of faith!

John’s example of this truth is in chapter three with Abel and Cain (3:10-16).  Cain is the one who did not love Abel and in fact killed him because his own works were evil and his brother’s righteous (12).  So John adds, Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you (13).  Today we still have the Cains not loving the Abels because the Abels have lived and done righteously, and the Cains have no intention of making the same sacrifice.

Isn’t it interesting that we start out instructing “children” (2:13-14) to be like Christ, pointing them to a life of maturity and wisdom, praying that godliness will grow with the years, but at the same time we dishonor the “fathers” (2:13-14) in the church when they arrive at that very goal!  One church father wrote, “This, then, is undoubtedly the genuine, legitimate rule of progress, the established and most beautiful order of growth: mature age always develops a person’s part and forms that which the wise Creator already framed in the infant.”5 How tragic then is the old truth that the new generation’s attitude is unloving toward “the brethren.”

The Contemporary Technique is Old

John’s third test of spiritual life and vitality is whether we do not love the world (1 John 2:15-17).  Love not the world, neither the things in the world.  If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world (15-16).  The black and white nature of John’s statement is shocking to our generation.  We have let the abnormal Christian life become the normal.  Love of the world has become an accepted spiritual plateau, perhaps even an accepted theological position!  By a verbal sleight of hand we have replaced the Biblical word “world” with the non-Biblical word “culture” and have even (against history) made culture morally neutral.

The new technique is to draw people into church with “culture” and to embrace it ourselves as an artist embraces his work.  We hear, for example, things like, “there is no such thing as Christian music” and “God made all music” as if man has never put his sinful hand to anything and “made” it.  The fact is God doesn’t make art, man makes art!  And it is an expression of our natures which we rightfully call “culture.”  It has always been a godly man’s duty to change and improve the culture of the world, not embrace it.  Donald Whitney wrote, “The world finds the church and the things of God the most boring things imaginable.  At best it finds them much less meaningful than other things.  And the people of the world can’t understand why we don’t get as excited as they do about the things that turn them on.”6

The Ecumenical Spirit is Old

John’s fourth test of spiritual life and vitality is whether we do not love the antichrists (1 John 2:18-27). Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist will come, even now are there many antichrists (18).  Anything that neutralizes our doctrine is aiding and abetting the flow of the age into the final antichristian religion and person.  Doctrine is being down-played in favor of cooperation.  Separation has become a nadir of the faith rather than a badge of courage.  Denominating your faith honestly with an honest title has become hateful and prideful.

Pergamos and Thyatira have become the models for Christian ministry, active and busy in works while allowing things which God hates.  These things still bring success with the world and in our pragmatic day we have learned to ignore the leaven and enjoy the growth.  In chapter four John demands that we “try the spirits” (4:1) not “try them out.”  He said of the false messengers, They are of the world, therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.  We are of God: he that heareth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us (4:5-6).

And So . . . .

Guess what has not changed?  The world has not changed!  Whether outside the church or inside, it will not and cannot live by the Spirit.  Even carnal believers will continue to walk after the flesh, desiring only milk but carrying the baggage of the old life like strong men!

Guess what has changed?  The church of Jesus Christ has changed!  She is as a bride adorned for her Husband, as a chaste virgin to Christ, waiting to be removed from her present surroundings and transported in the skies to her Father’s house, where she will reflect the glory of her Lord forever!  She is not of them that turn back!

Notes:
1. W.H. Griffith Thomas, “Old Testament Criticism and New Testament Christianity” R.A. Torrey, A.C. Dixon & others, eds., The Fundamentals (Grand Rapids:  Baker Books) 144.
2. G.K. Chesterton, Heretics (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2000) 23.
3. Douglas Groothuis, The Soul In Cyberspace (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1997) 69.
4. Quoted by Groothuis, 27.
5. Vincent of Lerins, “Spiritual Maturity,” Sharrer & Vanker, eds. Day by Day With the Early Church Fathers (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999) 243.
6. Donald Whitney, How Can I Be Sure I’m A Christian? (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1994) 56.

 

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Local Church Methodology

Written by Rick Shrader

Local Church Methodology

by Rick Shrader

Every time I read advocates of contemporary worship, I can see why many have said things like, “Every time a new book is published, read an old one.”1 The old truth that you are what you read becomes true in those who spend their time reading about the contemporary church scene.  You can only digest so much love of the world, disdain of the brethren, thrill of the crowd and loathing of anonymity until you start to become what you read.  An older writer well described the phenomenon,

A spirit of zeal is therefore incompatible with a frequent intercourse with the world; you will find less to reprove in proportion as you familiarize yourselves with what is reprehensible; attention to religious books will become a disagreeable and wearisome occupation to you; you will soon lose a taste for them; and in place of serious study and such as is adapted to your calling you will substitute vain and frivolous reading, if not such as is indecent and dangerous, because this will make you appear better in the view of men of the world.2

Now such an introduction to this article may receive the accusation of begging the question, since I have assumed from the beginning that the contemporary church scene is worldly.  I can’t speak for everyone who is attempting to read in this area, nor for everyone who is already adopting those practices, but I can speak for what I have read and observed.  It seems obvious that those who are leading thinkers and writers in the contemporary church scene are intent on shutting up the conservative churches and relegating them to the silent backwaters of church history.  Only some will actually say so, but it is difficult to reach a different conclusion in most of their books.

I have read The Church on the Other Side, by Brian McLaren, a leader in the “Emergent” movement.  This is a reprint of his book, Reinventing Your Church.  McLaren’s position is that we have crossed over into a postmodern world and we had better like it because there’s no turning back, not even for the church and in fact, most churches will not survive.  “Either they are creating time warps where the past will be preserved so reactionary folk can flock there for a safe—temporary—old familiar haven; or they are among the learners at the top who are surfing change into the new world and transitioning old churches of yesterday into the new churches of the other side.”3

This “transitioning” is sometimes overt and sometimes covert.  I have seen and read email chat rooms for youth pastors of fundamental Baptist churches who were discussing how to bring about this change in their church without the pastor or people realizing it.  It would start in the youth department and then gradually work its way through the whole church.  As often as not, the pastor was not of a mind to resist the change.  (At some time our churches will have to face the biblical teaching of respecting our elders and listening to their wisdom, if it is not already too late.)

Other contemporaries are less caustic and propose a blending of traditional and contemporary.  Robert Webber, professor of theology at Wheaton College and President of The Institute for Worship Studies, has written Planning Blended Worship in which he attempts to show that traditional, contemporary and blended churches all practice the same essential thing.  But by “traditional” he means liturgical and this may be any mainline denominational service.  He is content to retain words such as “sacrament,” “Eucharist,” “confirmation,” “genuflecting,” and even the use of the “Book of Common Prayer.”  One wonders if Bunyan’s imprisonment for refusing to use the Book of Common Prayer is now seen as unnecessary fundamental fanaticism!4 Interestingly, Webber approvingly sees the contemporary church as a newer form of the older liturgy, the screens and bands being a newer form of icons and priests.  I recommend to the reader my article from January and February, 2003 titled, “The Generic Church:  The New Formalism” (2 parts).  In it I described the contemporary church as a new kind of tradition (it certainly has no room for diversity!) that will eventually lead back to the old denominational Traditionalism with its liturgies, icons as well as music.  Of music Webber says, “Music provides the emotional substance of worship.  Since worship is now understood as a rehearsal of our relationship with God, music is seen as the wheels that move the gathering of the people into the presence of God” [or the “mysterium tremendum” what he calls the “journey into the dazzling light of the transcendent otherness.”5]  Notwithstanding the strange existential language, this type of liturgy (old or new) will eventually dismiss personal faith and replace it with conformity of physical posture and mental assent.

My purpose for this article is to give the conservative, traditional (in the “normal” sense) church some hope that remaining a simple, reverent, body of believers that meets together to do the “normal” things believers have always done is not only good but biblically sane!  As Bunyan said in his defense, “The prayers in the Common Prayer-Book were such as was made by other men, and not by the motions of the Holy Ghost, with our hearts; and as I said, the apostle saith, he will pray with the Spirit, and with the understanding; not with the Spirit and the Common Prayer-Book.”6 Or as secular postmodern analysts have said, “Texts produced in the postmodern temper display a tendency to efface the boundaries between the past and the present in a way that situates the subject (and the viewer and the reader as well) in a perpetual present that is flooded with signifiers from the past.  This is postmodern nostalgia, which shows no respect for the integrity of the past.”7 Neither will the new traditionalism nor the old satisfy those who worship in Spirit and truth.

Here are a few of the biblical methodologies with which believers have always been satisfied.

The Scriptures

The Word of God is a living Word that does supernatural things within the believer, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Heb. 4:12).  The first believers in Jerusalem were sitting and listening before the day of Pentecost.  In Troas, the believers sat all night listening to Paul explain the Scriptures.  Bruce Shelley describes our forerunners as, “Little groups of Anabaptist believers gathered about their Bibles.  They discovered a different world in the pages of the New Testament.”8 The Bible must remain the center of our worship, preferably in our hands, being led through its chapters verse by verse.

The Holy Spirit

Though there is much talk about the Holy Spirit in worship today, we manipulate and limit Him to the kind of work we want Him to do.  When we slight the Scriptures, we slight the work of the Author of Scripture.  R.A. Torrey said, “The Holy Spirit works His prayers in us through the Word, and neglect of the Word makes praying in the Holy Spirit an impossibility.”9 It is hard enough to be quiet and wait on our divine Guest to do His work within us without offending Him by our commotion, but doves like stillness and we are commanded to let Him abide… and remain in us (1 John 2:24).

Preaching

We cannot forget that preaching is the divine methodology for communicating God’s Word.  J.I. Packer said, “I have nothing against books, films, tapes, and study groups in their place, but the place where God sets the preacher is not their place.”10 J.S. Whale wrote, “Instead of putting off our shoes from our feet because the place we stand is holy ground, we are taking nice photographs of the burning bush from suitable angles:  we are chatting about theories of Atonement with our feet on the mantelpiece, instead of kneeling down before the wounds of Christ.”11 Shame on us Baptists for letting Anglicans remind us of these things!

The Ordinances

We believe that baptism and the Lord’s supper are memorials and not sacraments.  They remain the best testimonies of a simple form of worship.  In the days of the Reformation, Baptists and other independents were called Sacramentschwärmer, a derogatory term which meant they were  “sacramentarian” and not “sacramentalist.”12 They kept the ordinances as a simple object lesson of their doctrine, and not a participatory means to the grace of God, and refused to participate in the idolatry of bowing to a morsel of bread.    It was sad to see Catholics and Evangelicals, and perhaps some Fundamentalists, take communion together at the Atlanta Promise Keepers rally in 1996, a sober reminder that familiarity breeds consent to things we would otherwise hold in contempt.

Prayer

All of our churches are guilty of slighting the prayer services.  Leonard Ravenhill wrote, “Let twenty percent of the choir members fail to turn up for rehearsal and the choir master is offended.  Let twenty percent of the church members turn up for a prayer meeting, and the pastor is elated.”13 But there’s something those few know, however, that the Sunday-only crowd doesn’t, and that’s the sweet fellowship of believers listening to one another familiarly talking to God.  I spent ten weeks last summer at The Baptist Church in North Berwick, Scotland (Dan McCaskill, missionary).  Hearing George and Frank (two great Scottish saints) pray during those services in the old way, unhurried, with much Scripture and reverent tones, I often wished I could transport them back to our American-Lite services just to lead in prayer!

Music

If there are two things from which I’ve always recoiled, they are tinseled prayers and manipulated emotional singing.  The stereotyped contemporary music follows the old traditionalism of music manipulating people into the presence of God.  This is a marked difference in thinking from the simple, biblically-based, thankful singing that recognizes we’re always in God’s presence.  As I have written before, we do not come together to worship, we are worshipers who come together.  What we do, we do because it is an expression of what we always are, not what we will become for sixty minutes.  That is why emotional manipulation in contemporary singing has become so tiring, boring and unfulfilling.  As Spurgeon said,  “The kind of religion that makes itself to order by the almanac and turns out its emotions like bricks from a machine, weeping on Good Friday and rejoicing two days afterwards, measuring its motions by the moon, is too artificial to be worthy of my imitation.”14 By this same means contemporary music has become what it set out to remedy—lively singing without life like the church at Sardis.  Our singing should be spirit and it should be life.

And so . . . .

Conservative, traditional churches do not need to hang their heads because fame and fortune have passed them by.  Perhaps we should rejoice!  We should keep doing the things we read about in the Scripture, letting that move us to true ministry motivated by the Spirit and the Word.  Do we persuade men, or God? Or do I please men? (Gal. 1:10).  Let’s keep pleasing God and persuading men, and not let those get turned around.

Notes:
1. Quoted by Benjamin Schwartz, “New & Noteworthy,” The Atlantic Monthly, March, 2003, p. 95.
2. Jean Baptiste Massillon, “On the Spirit of the Ministry,” Orations From Homer to Mckinley, vol. 4 , Mayo Hazeltine, ed. (New York: Collier, 1902) 1720.
3. Brian McLaren, The Church on the Other Side (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000) 15.
4. Read Bunyan’s autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (Belfast: Ambassador, nd) and especially the latter portions where he is discussing with his prosecutors whether he will use the Prayer Book or not.
5. Robert Webber, Planning Blended Worship (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998) 51.
6. Grace Abounding, 200.
7. Norman Denzin in Postmodernism & Social Inquiry, Dickens, David R. & Fontana, Andrea eds. (New York: Guilford Press, 1994) 182.
8. Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language (Dallas: Word, 1995) 248.
9. R.A. Torrey, How To Pray (Chicago:  Moody Press, nd) 69.
10. Quoted by Donald Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines Within the Church (Chicago:  Moody Press, 1996) 64.
11. J.S. Whale, Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: University Press, 1963) 152.
12. Leonard Verduin, The Reformers and Their Stepchildren (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 1964) chapter 4.
13. Leonard Ravenhill, Revival God’s Way: A Message for the Church (Minneapolis:  Bethany House, 1983) 24.
14. Charles H. Spurgeon, My Conversion (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 1996) 77.
 

 

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You Shall Be Witnesses Unto Me

Written by Rick Shrader

You Shall Be Witnesses Unto Me

by Rick Shrader

No more daunting task could have been given the church than to evangelize the whole world.  Surely for such a job God would have chosen angels to speak to the world as they first spoke the good news to shepherds and caused such urgency on their part.  Or perhaps a multiplication of apostles and prophets throughout the gospel era with their miraculous power and prophetic voices would persuade far more than average Christians.  Even letting the rocks cry out would draw more interest than most preachers!  But His ways are not our ways and whether it seems like an impossible task or not, it is plain that God has commissioned His own people to reach the people of the world.

Our Lord did promise us power to accomplish our monumental task by the witness of His resurrection and the possession of the Holy Spirit.  We see that power on display in the book of Acts as the church spread the gospel around the world during that generation.  G. Campbell Morgan wrote, “The essential message of the Gospel is the declaration that through the Cross and Resurrection of Christ a new dynamic is at the disposal of men, in the power of which they may be victorious, trampling under their feet the lust of which hitherto they have been the slaves.”1 With this power at our disposal we can be successful in the stewardship to which Christ has called us.

Opposite errors in evangelistic fervor have been made on both sides of the theological ledger throughout the church’s history.  There have always been those such as John Ryland who told Carey, “When God pleases to convert the heathen, he will do it without your aid or mine.”2 There have also always been those who simply manipulate sinners into verbal professions of faith that do not last beyond the back door of the church.  Between these two extremes lies a biblical evangelism that, as Ignatius said, prays as though everything depended on God and works as though everything depended on you.3

There are at least four reasons why power for evangelism comes from God’s part and also from our own submission to His plan.

1. God’s Part:

Calvary – The most powerful message

Paul explained to the Corinthians that The preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God (1 Cor. 1:18).  Only Christianity has a message of redemption.  This plan that upholds God’s righteousness while at the same time condemning man for his sin and yet providing for his salvation will make the hearer fall on his face and report that God is in you of a truth (1 Cor. 14:25).  John Bunyan, in the account of his conversion records,

I remember that one day, as I was traveling into the country, and musing on the wickedness and blasphemy of my heart, and considering the enmity that was in me to God, that scripture came into my mind, Having made peace through the blood of his cross. Col. i. 20.  By which I was made to see, both again and again, that God and my soul were friends by His blood; yea, I saw that the justice of God, and my sinful soul could embrace and kiss each other, through His blood.  This was a good day to me; I hope I shall never forget it.4

The Holy Spirit – The most powerful Being

Paul’s gospel came to the Thessalonians not in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance (1 Thes. 1:5).  To the Corinthians he wrote, And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men but in the power of God (1 Cor. 2:4-5.  Of preaching with Holy Spirit power, Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote, “There is a cord of three strands which should not be broken.  Without the endeavor of the preacher, the reaction of the congregation, and the enabling of the Holy Spirit, whatever might result, preaching would not.”5 But if we would preach the Word as we ought, the Spirit would be freer to use us mightily in our evangelism.

The Word of God – The most powerful book

The word of God is quick (living) and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword (Heb. 4:12).  Writing in The Fundamentals, L.W. Munhall wrote, “The Bible assumes to be from God in that it meets man face to face with drawn sword and says: ‘Thou shalt!’ and ‘Thou shalt not!’  and demands immediate, unconditional and irreversible surrender to the authority of heaven, and submission to all the laws and will of God, as made known in its pages.”6 God said through Isaiah that, as the rain falls to the earth and does not return to the sky until it waters the ground and brings forth food for the eater, So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it (Isa. 55:11).

The Love of God – The most powerful emotion

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10).  Though in a real way the sinner does not want an unconditional love because he would rather think there is a virtuous reason to be loved, God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us . . . . for if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son; much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life (Rom. 5:8, 10).  When the sinner is about to be crushed under the weight of his own sinfulness, the love of God comes streaming in as a powerful morning light in a dark room.  “A human heart cannot produce love, but it can experience it.  To have a heart that feels the compassion of God is to drink of the wine of heaven.”7

2. Our Part:

The power to be witnesses comes from God but needs earthen vessels from which to be broken and spilled out that this power may truly be of Him and not of ourselves.  Therefore, we are at least four kinds of tools in God’s hands.

A Fool – The most self-effacing messenger

We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness (1 Cor. 1:23).  Paul scolded the Corinthians for their refusal to be seen as foolish by the world, We are fools for Christ’s sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honorable, but we are despised (1 Cor. 4:10).  The power of God is lost when His messengers protect their image at all costs.  We will either be willing to be shamed by the world or we will become ashamed before the world.  E. Glenn Wagner, calling for servant-leadership in our churches writes, “We must come to see that part of a pastor’s glory is being willing to accept and even to embrace the foolishness, disgrace, and shame of the cross.”8

An Ambassador – The most dependent being

Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us; we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:20).  Just as an ambassador is representing the homeland to a foreign country, the soul-winner is representing his homeland of heaven to this foreign land of earth.  He is here in Christ’s stead.  Peter declared to the Jerusalem council that God at the first did visit the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name (Acts 15:14).  God desires to go visiting in our bodies!  G. Campbell Morgan wrote, “The Holy Spirit is waiting in the far-distant places of the earth for the voice of [some] anointed man to preach, in order that through that instrumentality He may carry on His work of convicting of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.”9 We are truly a habitation of God through the Spirit (Eph. 2:22), a “habitat for divinity!”

A Herald – The most restricted reader

A preacher is a herald (a khrux, 2 Tim. 1:11) who is sent out by a King to proclaim His message.  He has no right to change or negotiate with the hearers, but must proclaim the King’s message just as He gave it.  So are we heralds of God’s Word and must preach it (khrrussw, 2 Tim. 4:2) in the way it is given so that we preserve the message (khrugma, 2 Tim. 4:17) of salvation exactly.  Oswald Chambers put it this way:

The Word of God is never without power, and as a servant of God you have nothing whatever to do with whether people dislike and reject the Word of God or purr over it.  So you preach it no matter what they think of you — that is a matter of absolute indifference; sooner or later the effect of that word will be manifested.  The great snare is to seek acceptance with the people we talk to, to give people only what they want; we have no business to wish to be acceptable to the people we teach.10

A Servant – The most demanding emotion

The love of God, the most powerful emotion, is only properly used by His servants who willingly display a selfless and giving spirit.  Our generation has taken the Lord’s words, whosoever will be the greatest . . . ., shall be servant of all (Mark 10:43-44), as a way to greatness rather than an invitation to servanthood, the greatest of occupations.  We should be as Paul and Bunyan and see ourselves as the chiefest of sinners rather than chief executive officers!  Of such an occupation the world knows nothing.  Luther said “A Christian man is a free lord over all things and subject to nobody.  A Christian man is a ministering servant in all things and subject to everybody.”11 In this day of success and achievement, the Lord chooses servants to entrust with His gospel.

And So . . . .

May the Lord help us to be instruments in His hand for the salvation of a lost world.  Moody, a man who knew something of the power of God, after searching for joy in ministry, wrote, “But I found, afterward, namely, the joy of the salvation of others.  Oh, the privilege, the blessed privilege, to be used of God to win a soul to Christ, and to see a man or woman being led out of bondage by some act of ours toward them.  To think that God should condescend to allow us to be coworkers with Him.  It is the highest honor we can wear.”12

Notes:

1. G. Campbell Morgan, Understanding the Holy Spirit (USA: AMG Publishers, 1995) 134.

2. Thomas Armitage, The History of the Baptists, vol. II (Watertown: Maranatha Baptist Press, 1976) 581.

3. Bruce Shelley, Church History In Plain Language (Dallas: Word, 1995) 277.

4. John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (Belfast: Ambassador Productions, nd) 69.

5. Tony Sargent, The Sacred Anointing: The Preaching of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1994) 175.

6. L.W. Munhall, “Inspiration,” The Fundamentals, vol II, orig. printing 1917 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000) 55.

7. L.S. Chafer, He That Is Spiritual (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1972) 48.

8. E. Glenn Wagner, Escape From Church, Inc. (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 1999) 185.

9. Morgan, 109.

10. Oswald Chambers, “The Moral Foundations of Life,” Biblical Ethics (Grand Rapids: Discovery House, 1998) 290.

11. Quoted by R.C.H. Lenski, Interpretation of First Corinthians (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1963) 374.

12. D.L. Moody, Spiritual Power (Chicago: Moody Press, 1997) 105.

 

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