Jesus in the Infrequented Text

And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. - Luke 24:25-27 ESV

The church I serve has a Sunday morning class called "Bible 101." I launched the class soon after my arrival with the initial objective of reading through and discussing the first five books of the bible, called the Pentateuch. So far, this intrepid group has studied the entirety of Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus. Three years into the class, we have now made it almost all the way through Numbers.

One of the things I try to do in the class is to demonstrate how these texts fit into the overall flow of salvation history. A paraphrased St. Augustine put it this way, "The New Testament is in the Old Testament contained, while the Old Testament is in the New Testament explained." I've taken this approach because of Jesus' critical teaching in Luke 24, where he explains to his disciples how the entire Old Testament is about him.

Every now and then, however, I need to be reminded of this truth, especially when examining infrequently studied texts.

Last Sunday was a case in point. The group studied Numbers 30, a chapter containing the law regarding oaths made to God. Remember the last time you heard a sermon on Numbers 30? Me neither.

Basically, the structure of the chapter is like this: Men are prohibited from making vows and then backing out of them when the underlying circumstances behind the vow change. The rules for women differ because they are understood to be under the authority of a head-of-household. For example, in the case of a never-married woman, her father has the right to cancel her vow if he so chooses. If a woman marries, this ability to cancel her vow becomes her husband's responsibility. Numbers 30 also gives instructions about vows to folks in other situations. An example would be cases where a woman is divorced or widowed and no longer attached to a head-of-household.

I walked the class through the text, and the biblical structure of the household. One of the things I pointed out is that women get the better deal in this chapter because, unlike the men, it is possible for them to get out of unwise, rash oaths made to God.  Having made this observation, which I thought was very astute, I asked if there were any questions. One of the participants then raised her hand and asked, "So what does this text tell us about Jesus?"

My immediate response was two-fold. First, I was thrilled that she asked the question, because it showed me that she had thoroughly learned that Jesus was serious in Luke 24 about everything in the OT pointing to him. My second response was one of dismay. How come I hadn't asked myself that question before showing up to teach that morning?

After giving it some thought I gave what I hope is an answer faithful to the story of salvation.  I remembered that the church is the bride of Christ and Jesus has the authority to loose and bind all things related to His Bride. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus not only fulfilled all of God's vows to His people, but also that he bore the full iniquity of every rash vow we have made with God and have broken due to our sinful forgetfulness and neglect. Jesus perfectly fulfilled Numbers 30 on Calvary.

Remember that Jesus is in every text. In some cases, we may not see Him, especially in those infrequently considered texts that we gloss over because we erroneously believe them to be superfluous or unimportant. But He's in those texts, too. We should not be fooled into thinking otherwise because of our inability to see properly.

The Faculty Speech - You Are Not Special

David McCullough, Jr. (son of historian and author David McCullough) recently gave a facinating faculty commencement address at Wellesley High School, where Dr. McCullough serves as an English Teacher.

The video of the address is just over 12 minutes in length and it's worth watching in its entirety:



One of the most compelling parts of the speech is where Dr. McCullough said, "[We] have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement." He continued:

We have come to see them as the point — and we’re happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that’s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole.  No longer is it how you play the game, no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or learn or grow, or enjoy yourself doing it…  Now it’s “So what does this get me?”  As a consequence, we cheapen worthy endeavors, and building a Guatemalan medical clinic becomes more about the application to Bowdoin than the well-being of Guatemalans.  It’s an epidemic — and in its way, not even dear old Wellesley High is immune… one of the best of the 37,000 nationwide, Wellesley High School… where good is no longer good enough, where a B is the new C, and the midlevel curriculum is called Advanced College Placement.

As I read that poignant phrase, "building a Guatemalan medical clinic becomes more about the application to Bowdoin that the well-being of Guatemalans," my mind went to the church. We need to be careful that the church not succumb to the unhealthy desire for accolades rather than the faithful obedience to Christ's commanded mission to make disciples. We cannot be satisfied to simply be seen as helpers, or to be "missional" (whatever that means) in order to be "relavant." Relevance isn't the point. Faithfulness to the gospel of Christ is. If any pastor, church member, congregation, denomination, or other group seeks to be "missional" for the sake of gaining eyeballs, or penetrating that hard-to-reach "youth demographic," it runs the risk of compromising the truth - that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Indeed, "faith apart works is dead," (James 2:26). But so are works without faith.

QOTD: Examples of a "Too Small" Gospel

From the terrific book The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything:

A gospel which is only about the moment of conversion but does not extend to every moment of life in Christ is too small. A gospel that gets your sins forgiven but offers to power for transformation is too small. A gospel that isolates one of the benefits of union with Christ and ignores all the others is too small. A gospel that must be measured by your own moral conduct, social conscience, or religious experience is too small. A gospel that rearranges the components of your life but does not put you personally in the presence of God is too small.

Emphasis added for the contemporary American churchgoer.

QOTD - A Malnourishment that Leads to Death

From Dale Bruner's Matthew: A Commentary. Volume 1: The Christbook

A church that is not nourished yesterday, today, and tomorrow by the wholesome food of the Word of God in Scripture - a church not ruled and dominated by exegesis - is on her way to death. For too long the mainline churches in Christendom have illustrated this death march by teaching and preaching a Bible that has been only marginally appropriated (witness the death of the biblical-language requirement in many seminaries and denominations) because, it is said, there are in fact so many other imperative issues. (What is Hebrew in a hungry world?) We have become churches without doctrinal passion (for doctrinal passion would be "fundamentalism," the kiss of death), and a result has been people leaving our churches in droves and flocking to what are called independent or Bible churches where, at least, they are given doctrines served with fire. A return by mainline churches to a responsible christocentric biblical passion will be a return to apostolic-catholic-Reformation Christianity with all of this Christianity's perennial sources of spiritual and social renewal."

Bruner's words were first published in 1987, and yet most mainline denominations persist with their marginalization of the Word of God with predicable results. For example, on July 1, the stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) announced, in a classic Friday-night-news-dump kind of way, that the denomination lost 61,000 members in 2010 alone.

Craig's Catechism (1581)

The Difference Between the Law and the Gospel

Q. Where does the difference come from?
A. From the Spirit who is joined with the Gospel, and not with the Law.
Q. What follows from this?
A. The Law commands, but it gives no strength.
Q. What does the Gospel do?
A. It freely gives all that it requires of us.
Q. What other difference is there between them?
A. The Law has no compassion on sinners.
Q. What about the Gospel?
A. It offers mercy only to sinners.
Q. What other difference is there?
A. In the manner of our justification.
Q. What does the Law demand in our justification?
A. Our own perfect obedience.
Q. What does the Gospel demand?
A. Faith only in the obedience of Christ Jesus.
Q. Does the Gospel favor the transgression of the Law?
A. No, it gives strength to obey the law.

The "Sin-Damning" Institution Called the Church

Why is the preaching of the law necessary in Christian churches? Here's Dale Bruner's response to that question, from the first volume of his magnificent two-volume commentary on Matthew:

The ministry of the law is being restored to our preaching -- not as a people-saving institution but, first of all, as a sin-damning institution. There has been too much "accept ourselves" (or "God-loves-us-as-we-are") preaching that ignores the tough notes of God's law and even of Jesus' gospel. We need John [the Baptizer]; we need the law of God. "For through the law," writes the great preacher of the gospel to the Gentiles, "comes the knowledge of sin" (Romans 3:20). Consequently, if Christians, too, are to experience salvation from sin, then we Christians must again and again allow ourselves to be addressed by the stinging indictment of God's law. This law has the cheek to tell us that we are the enemy, that the enemy is not primarily other people. The law warns us; it condemns both the spiritually serious and the socially sophisticated in the people of God, the religious right and the religious left. (pp 91-92)

When was the last time you heard the church referred to as a "sin-damning" institution?

It is important to emphasize that Bruner is not calling upon the church to squelch anything, but to unsquelch our preaching about sin. People who are by nature enemies of God must first become aware of the dreadfulness of their sin before they will ever be able to know the infinite worth of a Savior.

Disbelieving Preaching

William Willimon on the disbelief in contemporary preaching:

That many of us preachers still preach using essentially secular (i.e. godless) means of persuasion borrowed uncritically from the world is yet another testimony to our failure to believe that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, thus radically changing everything. In so doing we act as if Jesus were still sealed securely in the tomb, as if he did not come back to us, did not speak to us and cannot, will not speak to us today, as if preaching is something that we do through our strategies rather than through the speaking of the risen Christ.

Resurrection is not only the content of gospel preaching but also its miraculous means. Where two are three of us are gathered in his name, daring to talk about him, he is there, talking to us (Matt. 18:20). All the way to the end of the age, in every part of the world, in our baptism and proclamation, he is with us (Matt. 28:20).

I once heard a church growth expert declare, “Any church that doesn’t have a pull down video screen will be dead in ten years.” But I believe that better technology does not make sermons work. Lack of technology cannot kill a church. Only God can kill a church. Only a living Christ can make our sermons speak to a new generation.

Can I get a hearty "amen?"  You'll want to read the whole thing here.

Posted via email from The Central Point

Quote of the Day

From Michael Horton's excellent book, "The Gospel-Driven Life: Being Good News People in a Bad News World":

We are not sick, but spiritually dead. We are not good people with room for improvement, but the ungodly. We are not children who need a little direction, but lost. The gospel comes not to help us get our act together, fixing us up for a night on the town, making us more respectable to ourselves or others. Rather, it comes to kill us and make us alive as completely new creatures. Not a new and improved self, but a self buried and raised with Christ, is the gospel's message of genuine transformation.

Posted via email from The Central Point

The Big Issues - How Can the Church Prepare?

via thegospelcoalition.org

Tim Keller has penned an excellent analysis of what the church ought to be doing to address the huge challenges it currently faces. One of his recommendations stands out in my mind - a renewal of apologetics in the church. Keller believes that the contemporary church's laxity in this area reflects a larger hole in western thinking. Keller cites two primary reasons for renewed Christian apologetics:

First, Christians in the West will finally be facing what missionaries around the world have faced for years — how to communicate the gospel to Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and adherents of various folk religions. All young church leaders should take courses in and read the texts of the other major world religions. They should also study the gospel presentations written by missionaries engaging those religions. Loving community will be extremely important, as it always is, to reach out to neighbors of other faiths, but if they are going to come into the church, they will have many questions that church leaders today need to be able to answer.

Second, there a real vacuum in western secular thought. When Derrida died I was surprised how many of his former students admitted that High Theory (what evangelicals call ‘post-modernism’) is seen as a dead end, mainly because it is so relativistic that it provides no basis for political action. And a leading British intellectual like Terry Eagleton in recent lectures at Yale (published as Religion, Faith, and Revolution by Yale Press) savaged the older scientific atheism of Dawkins and Hitchens as equally bankrupt. Eagleton points out that the Enlightenment’s optimism about science and human progress is dead. Serious western thought is not going back to that, no matter how popular Dawkins’ books get. But postmodernism cannot produce a basis for human rights or justice either.

Emphasis added.  I think this analysis is spot-on. If you are interested in apologetics, I can recommend a wonderful starter book called the Holman QuickSource Guide to Christian Apologetics by Doug Powell.

Please note that if you elect to purchase the book through the above link, I will receive a small percentage of the sale price.

Posted via web from The Central Point

From the "Unintentionally Entertaining" File

Here is an amusing article wherein Christopher Hitchens, atheist, demonstrates a deeper knowledge of orthodox Christianity that his interviewer, who happens to be a Unitarian Universalist minister. See especially the fourth question by Marilyn Sewell and Hitchens's response:

[Sewell]: The religion you cite in your book is generally the fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make and distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?

[Hitchens] I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.

I respect Hitchens, who is generally a great thinker despite his tragic disbelief. It speaks volumes that he is so informed on the apostolic faith while the "minister," also tragically, is not.