St. Augustine quote

I was listen to a sermon on 1 John 2:15-17

Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.

In the sermon the pastor quoted St. Augustine prayer from The Confessions.. it goes like this:

"He loves Thee too little who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake" ~ St. Augustine

God may I love you above all! And may the other people I love (namely Karen and Rachel) and things that I love, be loved for Thy sake and the glory of Your name.

Knowing God (J. I. Packer)

I just finished reading the chapter titled "God Incarnate" in J.I. Packer's classic book Knowing God. Packer referred to 2 Corinthians 8:9 which states "You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich".

Then he stated something that I had to re-read a couple of times... it packs a good punch.

It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians - I will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Christians - go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord's parable, seeing human need all around them, but averting their eyes, and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit! Nor is it the spirit of those Christians - alas, they are many - whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the sub-middle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian to get on by themselves. The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those, who like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves porr - spending and being spent - to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others in whatever way there seems need. (pg 71)

The Importance of a Good Statement of Faith at a Local Church

I've been thinking lately about how important it is for each local church to have a sound Statement of Faith which the leaders and congregation can unite around. Then I was listening to this sermon (specifically the 25 minute mark) I heard this quote and couldn't agree more!

John Piper states (in a January 27, 1985 sermon):

We have the reputation of trying to preserve unity, not by exalting the glorious doctrines of Scripture but by avoiding them. [The apostle] John when he wanted to preserve and cultivate the unity of the fellowship got theological. When the Baptist General Conference tries to work and preserve unity it gets a-theological. And we are paying! God willing, we at Bethlehem with many other churches, will go the other way. We will be explicitly theological. We will lay our Calvinist cards on the table... Because the last thing I care anything about is attracting or keeping members by concealing the distinctives that give me fire for God... It is deadly to reduce biblical theology to the lowest common denominator of acceptability. It is the death knell of worship and orthodoxy and missions and morality and growth.

The Church, the Neighborhood and the Nations (Stetzer)

And the final plenary session I want to make comments about was by Ed Stetzer. With all of the talk these days about the mission of God, the mission of the church, being missional etc I was eager to listen to his discussion on "The Church, the Neighborhood and the Nations"

He had 3 major points which build on one another.

1) We are sent (John 20:21)

Avery Willis says:
Mission = the total redemptive purpose of God to establish His kingdom
Missions = the activity of God's people, the Church, to proclaim and to demonstrate the kingdom of God in the world
Missionaries = are people set aside by God and the church to cross natural and cultural barriers with the gospel

The problem is these are all extra Biblical terms not found defined in the Bible.

I don't think these definitions are perfect. In fact, I'd like to see the scope of Missions narrowed to be cross-cultural proclamation of the gospel and another definition of Outreach to our own culture but I won't make a big deal about it. I would however disagree with Charles Spurgeon when he said that

"Every Christian is a missionary or an imposter" - Charles Spurgeon

See my previous post about Shooting Sacred Cows. The more people we call missionary the less we recognize that some people are called by God to cross cultures as ambassadors of Christ.

Stetzer continues:

God is a sending God:
a) Father sent the Son
b) Father sends the Spirit in Jesus' name
c) Jesus comes and establishes His kingdom
d) the Church is birthed to lived sent
e) the Son builds the Church by placing people in His kingdom
f) the Spirit empowers the Church to live sent

We're all sent. If you're a missionary in Africa, you're sent! If you live in Hamilton, you're sent! We're all sent, the only question is where and among whom.

We need to give more and go more!!! But we also need to live as those who are sent here and now... A lot of churches are missions-minded but not necessarily missional.

This is a good point. I would say that PMC started as a missional church in the early 1900s, then became a great missions-minded church and now is working to blend both. God help us!

2) We are sent TO ALL PEOPLE.

"panta ta ethne" is the Greek in Matthew 28
Some say Jesus was meaning ethnolinguistic groups. Well maybe....
In the most plain reading he meant the Gentiles. In the most plain reading he meant the non-Jews. But the disciples also saw much more. It's about making disciples everywhere.

There is a thread throughout Scripture about the topic "every, tongue, tribe and nation". From Genesis 11 to Revelation 7 and at many points in between

a) God scatters making nations (Gen 11)
b) God sends Israel to bring the nations up to Jerusalem (Ps 57:9, Isa 2:2). But the plan was not accomplished.
c) God had a sign and a plan for the nations (Acts 2:1). The Spirit gave them ability to speak languages. This is a sign that reverses the direction of God's mission from "up to Jerusalem" to "going out from Jerusalem"
d) God will be praised by men and women from every nation (Rev 7:9)

Then Stetzer closed this point with a great one liner

Don't let your church be a cul de sac on the Great Commission highway.

Stetzer's final point was

3) We are sent to all people WITH A MESSAGE

Luke 24:46

How am I going to do all these things?
- reach out missionally where I am?
- reach out to the nations?
- preach the gospel?

Only by the power of God (see Acts 1:8 "you will receive power")

He closes by saying something I pray the church I'm a part will be:

A missional, missions-minded, gospel-centered, Spirit empowered church!

God let me be a missional, missions-minded, gospel-centered, Spirit empowered man!

Courage, Christ, and Finishing the Mission (Ramsden)

One of the other plenary sessions from the Desiring God 2011 Missions Conference I listened to was by Michael Ramsden titled "Courage, Christ, and Finishing the Mission"

At the 47 minute mark he states:

"Is it possible that we have ordered our church life and our Christian life so that its convenient for us. To look after our children, to do things that we wouldn't like to do, to pay the occasional missionary 1% of our total income, so they can go do things that we'd rather not do, so we can have an easy life here. I wonder..."

I wonder too. God help me not to order my life to be convenient but to serve and honor you my Master and King.

The Glory of God, The Lostness of Man, the Gospel of Christ (Platt)

In October I listened to a few of the plenary sessions from the Desiring God 2011 Missions Conference. I wish I could've gone but Minneapolis is pretty far away...

One of the talks was by David Platt titled "The Glory of God, The Lostness of Man, the Gospel of Christ"

Here are some quotes:

The glory of God among the nations is not just the reason for which we have this conference. The glory of God among the nations is the reason for which we have breath!

We have an indescribably urgent mission.

At the 43 minute mark Platt develops 3 reasons answering to the question why must we go to them?

1) Because there knowledge of God is only enough to damn them to hell

"Every man in the African jungle or in an Amazon rainforest, every woman in an Asian village... all of them have the knowledge of God... It's clear in Romans 1. The knowledge they have shows them that God is glorious and they are guilty and that's all they've got.
You say well what happens to the innocent guy in Africa who never hears the gospel?
My answer to that is easy, based on the authority of God's Word, the innocent guy in Africa will absolutely go to heaven. Even though he's never heard the gospel... The only problem is, the innocent guy in Africa does not exist!
If he were innocent, which is the way the question is normally asked, why would he need the gospel? If he has no sin, of course he'll go to heaven. The problem is there are no innocent people in Africa waiting to heard the gospel. There are guilty people all over the nations, ready to hear the gospel that's why we must go to them!"

Platt's other points were that we must go to them...

2) Because the gospel of God is powerful enough to save them for heaven

3) Because the glory of God is good enough to satisfy them forever.

It's a good message.

The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Carl F.H. Henry)

This short, 80-page book titled "The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism" was written in 1947. According to Bruce Ware in his Systematic Theology lecture on Liberalism, Neo Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism this was one of the key books that shifted the church from being "fundamentalist" to "evangelical". For those of you like me who aren't sure who Carl F. H. Henry is, he:
- was born in 1913
- rejected the rigidness and cultural disengagement fundamentalist Christians
- began the publication of Christianity Today magazine and was its editor from 1956-1968.
- helped establish Fuller Theological Seminary
- took part in the launching of the National Association of Evangelicals.
- died in 2003
Not a bad resume eh?

Here are two quotes from the "Foreward" updated in 2003 by another Christian author...

There are some books that are important to keep in print simply because they serve as instructive museum pieces. They give us glimpses into bygone eras, helping us to grasp the insights of creative thinkers who once wrestled with questions that are very difference than the ones we presently face. The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism is no mere museum piece. (pg ix)

[Henry had] a hope for a more open evangelicalism that would transcent the barriers that had been erected by a separatistic mentality; and a profound desire to engage culture in all of its created complexity. (pg x)

Then Carl F. H. Henry gets into the nuts and bolts of his argument.

First by saying the church for too long has just sat watching the world go by, or obsessing about one type of sin over another.

Fundamentalism is the modern priest and Levite, by-passing suffering humanity. (pg 2)

But the sin against which Fundamentalism has inveighed, almost exclusively, was individual sin rather than social evil... conservative churches have clustered about such platitudes as "abstain from intoxicating beverages, movies, dancing, card-playing, and smoking" (pg 7)

This sentence made me smile but then made me think. At first I thought he was just an "old guy" upset with the new drums and guitar in the church... but I'm hoping it wasn't that he was upset with. If Henry was against the songs that have lyrics that don't even mention "God", "Christ", "Jesus" or "Saviour" then I am with him!!!! God, raise up more composers who will write Christ-centered songs for the modern church!

There is also a tendency to replace great church music by a barn-dance variety of semi-religious choruses; some churches have almost become spiritualized juke boxes. (pg 5)

Then he discusses "the kingdom":

The kingdom is here, and it is not here... the kingdom exists in incomplete realization (pg 48)

The kingdom is not wholly future - Rom 14:17, 1 Cor 4:20, Col 1:13, Heb 12:28, Rev 1:9...
Yet the kingdom has a glorious future aspect - 1 Cor 15:24, 1 Cor 15:50, 2 Tim 4:1, 2 Tim 4:18, 2 Pet 1:10-11, Rev 11:15, Rev 12:10, Acts 1:6. (pg 53)

There is a growing reluctance to explicate the kingdom idea in Fundamentalist preaching, because a "kingdom now" message is too easily confused with a liberal social gospel, and because a "kingdom then" message will identify Christianity further to the modern mind in terms of an escape mechanism. Yet no subject was more frequently on the lips of Jesus Christ than the kingdom. He proclaimed kingdom truth with a constant, exuberant joy. It appears as the central theme of His preaching. (pg 46)

Did you get that "[The kingdom] appears as the central theme of [Jesus'] preaching." Van Plet would argue that in Biblical Theology the kingdom is the thematic framework for all of Scripture... but that's another blog post.

I think the following has come true regarding the previous obsession with "pre-millennialism" and "post-millennialism" and I think it may be a benefit to the church not to be obsessed with non-essentials.

There appears a tendency to discard dogmatism on details [referring to the end times]; if this continues, the eschatological preaching of the next generation will concentrate on the proclamation of the kingdom, the second coming, the bodily resurrection of the dead, and the future judgment, and will not concern itself too much with lesser events. (pg 45)

He also includes a couple great summaries of our faith. I hope you read these you can say with me "AMEN", "AMEN", "AMEN"!

Two great convictions are necessary:
1) that Christianity opposes any and every evil, personal and social, and must never be represented as in any way tolerant of such evil;
2) that Christianity opposes such evil, as the only sufficient formula for its resolution, the redemptive work of Jesus Christ and the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit (pg 40)

[Christianity]
- insists upon a purposive and moral as over against a purely mathematical universe;
- it insists upon a personal God as against impersonal ultimates whether of space-time or elan vital variety;
- it insists upon a divine creation as over against a naturalistic evolution;
- it insists that man's uniqueness is a divine endowment rather than a human achievement;
- it insists that man's predicament is not an animal inheritance nor a necessity of his nature but rather a consequence of his voluntary revolt against God;
- it insists that salvation can be provided only by God, as against the view that man is competent to save himself;
- it insists that the Scriptures are a revelation lighting the way to the divine incarnation in Jesus Christ as the Redeemer of mankind, as against the view that they stand among many records of religious experience without a difference in kind;
- it insists that history is bound up with man's acceptance or rejection of the God-man, rather than that history is primarily what happens among nations;
- it insists that the future is not an open question, but that world events move toward an ultimate consummation in a future judgment of the race. (pg 58)

Henry touches on evangelism and missions by saying:

That evangelicalism may not create a fully Christian civilization does not argue against an effort to win as many areas as possible by the redemptive power of Christ (pg 67)

The program of home-front expenditure has been severely criticized, in view of the heightened missionary needs on foreign fields... The distinction between home and foreign missions is a generation outmoded. (pg 69)

The evangelical task primarily is the preaching of the Gospel, in the interest of individual regeneration by the supernatural grace of God, in such a way that divine redemption can be recognized as the best solution of our problems, individual and social (pg 88).

I partially agree with him that the distinction between home and foreign missions is a generation outmoded. We definitely need to be reaching our neighbors and those from around the world God has brought to us, but that doesn't minimize the need to "go and make disciples of all nations". There still are thousands of people groups with no access to the good news of Jesus, and "how can they hear unless someone is sent?" (Romans 10)

Henry then goes on to discuss education and politics:

Evangelicalism will have to contend for a new order in education... For the past three centuries, the state has steadily supplanted the church as the indoctrinating agency, and today secular education largely involves an open or subtle undermining of historic Christian theism (pg 68)

The evangelical mood must not withdraw from tomorrow's political scene. (pg 72)

He briefly makes mention of church buildings by stating:

The day has now come for evangelicalism to rethink its whole building program. By tremendous outlay of funds, most church communities provide a worship structure which usually stands idle except for two Sunday services and a mid-week prayer meeting, if the latter. No secular steward could long be happy about such a minimal use of facilities representing so disproportionate an investment. (pg 70)

And a quote which summarizes the book:

A Christianity without a passion to turn the world upside down is not reflective of apostolic Christianity (pg 16)