Tag: Theology

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The Voice of Yahweh

In the Psalm we are reciting this morning we will hear a lot about the voice of Yahweh. Psalm 29 says some spectacular things about what the voice of Yahweh accomplishes. It literally transforms the landscape of the desert, makes animals rejoice, and makes us cry out His glory.

The words of God change the world. When he speaks the world respond. We will consider Luke’s account this morning of the baptism of Jesus and we hear those precious words uttered in the the baptism of Jesus from God the Father: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased!” The words of Yahweh are repeated also in our baptisms. In baptism God is affirming his love for his sons and daughters and marking them with His name. We are recipients of the blessings of the voice of Yahweh over us.

But also we hear the voice of Yahweh in this worship service. He invites us with the call to worship and He dismisses us with His benediction. The voice of Yahweh changes our lives. The Psalmist concludes:

Yahweh gives strength to his people;
             Yahweh blesses his people with peace.

And this is the purpose of Yahweh’s words: to give us all His peace. Let us then be changed as we hear His voice.

Prayer: May We reply to the voice of Yahweh with these words:

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,

to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might

and honor and glory and blessing!”

Receive our praise, O Gracious King Jesus Christ, for in your name we pray. Amen.

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Children in Worship

Two fellow pastors have contributed to this important discussion. Pastor Rob Hadding writes:

One would be hard pressed to find examples in the Bible of where parents are instructed to exclude children from worship or the feasts. In fact, there are many places where the Bible explicitly instructs the people of God on how to include them. But, and this is the root of the matter, it is not our practice in American Evangelical culture to look to the Bible to see how we ought to be doing things. Rather, we look to the culture, asking the world for its wisdom. Where is our biblical theology of children? Where is our biblical theology of family? Where is our biblical theology of worship?

Pastor Toby Sumpter also touches on this in his piece, and concludes:

All I mean is that God designed worship to include other people and especially other little people, children. Real worship includes those people next to us, in the row behind us, and in front of us. It’s certainly true that without discipline or teaching, they can become distractions, but the fact that they are there, needing attention, smiling, waving, drawing pictures, and doing their own best to worship is glorious and nothing to be regretted or despised. And you, parents, if you are holding their hands and lifting your hearts to the Lord, then your worship is accepted. You are received, loved, rejoiced over by your Father in Heaven. You are worshiping, really worshiping.

It is time that we restore our little children to worship! They have been exiled long enough!

{For a more extended article on this topic, see Pastor Randy Booth’s Little Children and the Worship of God}

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Luther’s Interpretation of I Timothy 2:4

There is a great history of Reformed interpretation of I Timothy 2:4. In this one verse the question of human will, the extent of the atonement, and the desire of God for the salvation of man comes to play. Luther, Calvin, Erasmus, and others offer sufficient hints to conclude that there was little agreement on this text. Erasmus argued that salvation had been offered and that it was up to man to respond. Calvin–following Augustine–understood that God’s desire is to save men from all classes of people (kings and such). Luther translates verse four in this manner:

God our Savior who wills that all people should be helped, and come to the knowledge of truth.

Luther did not see this text as a reference to salvation (as in soteriology), but rather to the health, or well-being of an individual. He understood this text to refer to God’s divine provision for all his creatures, “whether man or beast, and whether believer or unbeliever.”*

*Universal Salvation (I Timothy 2:4) according to the Lutheran Reformers by Lowell C. Green

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Brothers, We Should Stink!

Thabiti Anyabwile is at it again. According to Thabiti:

These days pastoral ministry has become more glamorous, fabulous, fashionable than ever. We hear nowadays of pastors driving expensive cars or being chauffeured, owning private jets, and living in opulent mansions. Once only the “prosperity preachers” and bona fide hucksters touted such lives; now your neighborhood “orthodox” super-pastor does the same. It’s all so pretty, perfumed with the world’s “best” of everything.

Pastoral ministry has lost its wilderness motif. She is no longer invested and involved in that labor of caring, shepherding, and defending the sheep. Pastors no longer live among the sheep for their sake, rather, they prefer the green pastures of the golf course, or spending time with the elite membership. Baxter would be shocked! How much time do we spend with your people? Do we smell like them? Do we stink because of their problems? Do our clerical clothes smell like their cigarettes? Thabiiti writes:

The apostle understands that shepherds should smell like sheep. The sheep’s wool should be lint on our clothes. Our boots should be caked with their mud and their mess. Our skin ought to bear teeth marks and the weather-beaten look of exposure to wind, sun, and rain in the fields. We belong among the people to such an extent that they can be called on to honestly testify that our lives as messengers commend the message. We should be so frequently among them that we smell like them, that we smell like their real lives, sometimes fragrant but more often sweaty, musty, offensive, begrimed from battle with the world, the flesh, and the devil.

What used to be a foundational feature of the pastoral ministry has now become a forgotten tradition. Perhaps we ought to smell ourselves at the end of our weeks, and ask whether our clothes have the scent of our people, whether they are messy from those long pastoral trips, whether they are stained from coffee, and whether they reflect the shepherd’s calling.

There are profound dangers in the “pastor as academician” phenomenon. All pastors are scholars, but all pastors must use their scholarship to comfort, encourage, rebuke, exhort, and love their people. Scholarship apart from the stinkiness of pastoral ministry is an unused scholarship.

So have we identified ourselves with our people? Do they know us? Do they know we care for them? What is our boast? Is it in the well-delivered homily? In our power and giftedness? If so, we need to change our clothes and put on those well-worn garments of a shepherd and truly cherish the aroma of pastoral ministry. As Thabiti concludes:

Brothers, we are shepherds down in the fields of life — and we should stink.

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Book Endorsement from Peter Leithart

Families are founded on death―the separation of a man and woman from their families of origin. Families end in death―the dispersal of children and finally the death of parents. Like seeds in the ground, families must die to bear fruit. There are hundreds of books on the Christian family on the market today, but few that get these basic truths right. The Church-Friendly Family is a rare exception. With biblical insight and pastoral practicality, Pastors Randy Booth and Rich Lusk show how the Father can use our families to fulfill the promises He spoke to our father Abraham.
―Peter Leithart
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Trinitarian Hospitality, A Parishioner’s Reflections

On reflecting on my sermon on Biblical Hospitality, one of my parishioners, Gracie Scott, offered some thoughts and applications based on her study of the issue framed by a Trinitarian model:

God, the three in one, is hospitably life giving, so how are we to be also?

Triune God – Father, Christ, Holy Spirit

FATHER: Breaths life into man (6th day)

Man: Gen. 1:28 Christians are to be fathers as well (parenting as a type of hospitality)

CHRIST: Justification, He awakens the soul through His blood

Man: Welcome the lost into our homes that they may see and hear the Good News (eating with the tax collectors who are in need a Physician, Mark 2:17)

HOLY SPIRIT: Sanctification – aids and speaks throughout our life after justification

Man: Fellowship with fellow believers. “Iron sharpening iron” (Prov. 27:17) throughout sanctification.

Another parishioner, Kandace Trotter, summarized in her senior thesis the contrast between selfishness and the God who delights in hosting:

The selfishness pervasive today does not take into account that God is hospitable, and each person of the Trinity acts selflessly toward the other, always serving one another in love (Smith 22, 41). Just as the Trinity is serving one another in love, so we should be serving with hearts overflowing with love. Hospitality is an act of physical and spiritual selflessness, so let us take this virtue and apply it in our daily lives, seeing that selflessness and hospitality flow out of love and respect for the Triune nature of God (Peterson 17).

Well done, ladies!

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Political and Evangelical Theology by Brian Mattson

One of the fearful manifestations of modern evangelicalism is the embarrassing witness of evangelicals towards a manifestly evangelical political theology. This is exactly what Brian Mattson is not afraid of in his new book: Politics and Evangelical Theology: A Guide for Concerned Christians and Political Progressives. The book opens with a few illustrations, which prove the author’s thesis that political neutrality is impossible. Religion and politics do mix, and those who are most opposed to the connection between God and the Republican Party need also oppose those who would very easily associate Jim Wallis’ “charitable” Christianity with God’s agenda for the world.

It is true that God is not a Republican nor a Democrat. But the inconsistencies need to be pointed out. And when the political analysts decry the over-religious tone of the politicians on the Republican side while overlooking the conspicuous religious tones uttered in liberal churches under liberation theology’s worldview, then this bizarre inability to be consistent needs to be observed.

Since I know a little of Dr. Mattson’s work, I am fairly certain I will come to slightly different conclusions in a few of these matters, yet, his thesis is to be applauded. The Bible does provide a political agenda, and the political agenda needs to be framed by the Bible.

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Tolkien and Lewis

In the preface to Colin Duriez’s Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship, he writes that “It was Tolkien who helped to persuade Lewis, for many years as an atheist, that the claims of the Christian story, in its humble setting in first-century Palestine, should not be ignored, appealing both to the intellect and the imagination.” (preface, x)

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Mercersberg Theology Summarized

Brad Littlejohn offers this concise definition:

…but if we may attempt to capture it in a nutshell, we might describe it thus: the Mercersburg Theology was a distinctively American yet cosmopolitan nineteenth-century theology— catholic, sacramental, both modern and ancient, Romantic and Reformed. Its eclecticism and historical awareness in an age of rigid orthodoxies, its ecumenism in an age of confessional quarrels, its theological seriousness and lofty speculation in an
American landscape dominated by anti-intellectualism, set it apart from the crowd of competing American theologies.

{Series Introduction}