Oct
31
Reformation Day
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On October 31, 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Castle Church in Wittenburg, Germany. In those days, the Church door served the same function as what is now a bulletin board or web forum. It was a place to raise questions and start discussion. The discussion that Martin Luther began that day would ignite the continent of Europe aflame in controversy centered around the question: “How can a man be saved?”. Luther had no intention of creating a new church but rather wanted to reform the church. It was this focused desire for reform that earned Luther and the men who would follow him the title of Reformers. The theology that flowed from their pens would be named Reformed Theology. First Presbyterian Church, Kosciusko certainly would not be here were it not for the work of Martin Luther calling the church back to the inerrant, infallible, and holy Word of God in order to revive the doctrines of grace. And so, on this day, October 31, we’ll take a brief look at the results of the Reformation.
As we consider Reformed Theology we can summarize the basics under five alone-statements or “solas” which flowed out of the Reformation. These “solas” form the basics of biblical Christianity and particularly the basics of salvation.
We are saved by:
Christ Alone
There is no other mediator between God and men. There is no other name by which a man may be saved. Jesus is the only way to the Father. This is the benchmark of the gospel - the work of Jesus Christ alone to provide atonement for all those who are saved from their sins and ushered into the Kingdom of God. None of our works can add to our salvation. No matter how sincere you think your religious works are, they do not add in any way to God’s acceptance of you. No matter how zealous your works of charity to men are, they do not add in any way to God’s acceptance of you. No matter how much money you give to the work of the church, it does not add in any way to God’s acceptance of you. You cannot appeal to any other person, living or dead, for any modicum of righteousness before God. Salvation is in Christ alone. It is important that we keep alive this word “alone”. To say today that there is salvation in Christ is a perfectly acceptable statement. After all, as the world says, anyone is welcome to find their own personal expression of “salvation” in whatever spiritual way they wish. But for us to say Jesus Christ alone is able to save is to make an exclusive claim to the deity and saving efficacy of Christ’s work on the cross. To make a statement like that is to call all men and women to find salvation in Jesus or not at all. That is exactly the kind of exclusivity that is at the heart of the gospel. The gospel is salvation in Christ alone.
Grace Alone
We are saved by grace alone. We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. In saying Christ alone we are saying by what person a man may be saved. In saying grace alone we are saying by what merit a man may be saved. Again it is important that we cling to the word “alone.” Grace is not the back up plan for those that can’t hack out salvation on their own. God’s law was never meant to be a means of salvation for fallen men, though many have taken it to be just that. The law was given to show us our depravity. Read more
Oct
26
Unhindered
Filed Under Evangelism, Missions, The Church | Leave a Comment
With our World Mission Conference behind us, I want to think again about the theme: Unhindered. The word is the final word of the book of Acts. Paul is in Rome, under house arrest, just coming off a rather unsuccessful meeting with the local Jewish leadership. We know from history that this about the time that Nero begins his rampage to ‘cleanse’ the city from the blight of Christianity. Paul will soon be a victim himself. Yet Luke describes Paul as preaching the kingdom of God and teaching concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all openness, unhindered.
Unhindered (Greek, akolutos) seems a strange word to describe the situation. The situation of Acts 28 sounds pretty hindered to me. But does this not tell us something about the kingdom of God? Does it not tell us that we judge things wrongly if we judge by what we see, that what we consider hindrances to the gospel’s advance do not really constitute hindrances? I think of Paul writing to Timothy, Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound! Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory [2 Timothy 2:8-13]. The Word of God is not bound! Christ cannot be contained! The gospel cannot be silenced! The salvation of sinners cannot be stopped! This message is for everyone!
We look at obstacles: lack of laborers and money, uncertainty about vision and purpose, resistance and barriers in the community, hostile governments and religions. In the closing service I realized that the real hindrance is inside of me. I need the kingdom of God to get inside of me more and more so that unhindered becomes a reality in my life: content and relaxed, confident and humble, ready to spend and be spent, welcoming and bold, self-forgetting and Christ-remembering. Oh, that this would be the mark of our fellowship to increasing degrees! If the World Mission Conference is to be successful, it will be seen in more of all openness, unhindered among us. Oh, that Christ would open our hearts, our mouths, our homes, our checkbooks, and our fellowship.
Oct
25
Missions, messiness and love
Filed Under Christian Living, Missions, The Church | Leave a Comment
We’re in the final day of First Presbyterian Church’s 51st World Mission Conference. We have certainly felt anew the welcome of God and the call of God in being a part of his beautiful and hilarious mission. You ought to download Steve Malone’s sermons at fpckosciusko.org (or better yet, get your free iTunes subscription to all FPC sermons for automatic download onto your computer! Instructions are on the FPC website too.).
I can’t help but think about how messy it all is: church planting in another culture or in the U.S., campus ministry, mercy ministry, training pastors, pastoring a congregation. Even putting together a missions conference gets messy! The Church is never an engine that one can build, then pull the cord and watch it run. Things are always going wrong. Plans are frustrated. Goals aren’t met. People fail to deliver what they promise. Committees don’t work efficiently. Roofs leak. Relationships are fragile.
Once upon a time such realities frustrated me. I usually felt guilty because I couldn’t make things work. If only I were better informed or a better motivator or better organized, then I could crack the whip and get everything to work. But God has taught me over the years through pastoral experience and through mission trips to Japan, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Russia and Mexico that messiness is always part of the picture. More than that, messiness is the setting for the love of Jesus to shine at its brightest. Read this from Eugene Peterson in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places:
A primary task of the community of Jesus is to maintain this lifelong cultivation of love in all the messiness of its families, neighborhoods, congregations, and missions. Life is intricate, demanding, glorious, deeply human, and God-honouring, but–and here’s the thing–never a finished product, never an accomplishment, always flawed in some degree or other. So why define our identity in terms that can never be satisfied? There are so many easier ways to give meaning and significance to our human condition: giving assent to a creed or keeping a prescribed moral code are the most common in congregations….Belief and behavior are essential, but as the defining mark of the Christian they lack one thing–relationship. They are both prone to abstractions or programs. Abstractions (learning right belief) are good; programs (learning right behavior) are good; but it is also possible to master the abstractions and carry out the programs impersonally. In fact, it is far easier if done impersonally.
Oct
24
Mission Conference Lunch Appetizer
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Today we will have Nathan Tircuit speaking at our Missions Conference lunch. Nathan is the Campus Minister for RUF at Mississippi State. Before Nathan speaks I will lead off with the following quote by James Henley Thornwell from a sermon he preached entitled, “The Type and Model of Missionary Effort”.
“When I consider the magnitude and grandeur of the motives which press upon the Church to undertake the evangelization of the world; when I see that the glory of God, the love of the Savior and pity for the lost all conspire in one great conclusion; when I contemplate our own character and relations as spiritual priests, and comprehend the dignity, the honor, the tenderness and self-denial of the office; and then relfect upon the indifference, apathy and languor which have seized upon the people of God; when I look to the heavens above me and the world around me, and hear the call which the wail of perishing millions sends up to the skies thundered back upon the Church with all the solemnity of a Divine commission; when a world says, Come, and pleads its miseries; when God says, Go, and pleads His glory, and Christ repeats the command, and points to His hands and His feet and His side, — it is enough to make the stone cry out of the wall and the beam out of the timer to answer it.
If Jesus should stand again upon the Mount of Olives and summon before Him this venerable court, as He summoned the disciples of His personal ministry and the apostles of His extraordinary call — if He should collect you and me and all the officers and all the people of His Church on earth — what, think you, would be the language in which he would address us? It would be an august spectacle - a solemn, an awful scene. The words that he would speak would pierce our souls and stir the very depths of our being. They could never be effaced from the memory. We should think of them by day and dream of
Oct
24
Packer on Pilgrim’s Progress
Filed Under John Bunyan, Puritans, Reading | Leave a Comment
I read this quote by J. I. Packer on another (excellent) blog and had to pass it along considering our ongoing series on Thursday evening with Derek Thomas on Pilgrim’s Progress. Packer writes:
“For two centuries Pilgrim’s Progress was the best-read book, after the Bible, in all Chrisendom, but sadly it is not so today. When I ask my classes of young and youngish evangelicals, as I often do, who has read Pilgrim’s Progress, not a quarter of the hands go up. Yet our rapport with fantasy writing, plus our lack of grip on the searching, humbling, edifying truths about spiritual life that the Puritans understood so well, surely mean that the time is ripe for us to dust off Pilgrim’s Progress and start reading it again. Certainly, it would be great gain for modern Christians if Bunyan’s masterpiece came back into its own in our day. Have you yourself, I wonder, read it yet?”
J. I. Packer, “Pilgrim’s Progress,” in The Devoted Life: An Invitation to the Puritan Classics , ed. Kapic and Gleason (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press: 2004), p. 198.
Remember that we have two meetings left for our Pilgrim’s Progress lectures. Even if you haven’t come yet, we’d love to have you attend the last two on November 9 and 16. Pick up a book, read through Vanity Fair, and you’ll be up to date.
Oct
20
I got to see the tail end of the KHS homecoming parade today. It was great to see so many of our covenant children scattered throughout the parade. I couldn’t help but think of Jesus’s words that the very gates of hell would not stand up to the onslaught of His kingdom. And there they were, the soldiers of Christ, with instrument in hand, football jerseys on, riding on floats, and cheering from the sidewalk. It may have looked like a typical seen from any other homecoming parade but through the eyes of faith, something amazing was happening. It happens everyday in every corner of Attala county wherever God’s people are. But today it was a high school parade. And amidst the cheers of fans I thought I heard another kind of noise. The faint sound of a panicked voice almost drowned out by the crowd. The screeches of the Evil One himself as he tried woefully to slap some spackle on the crumbling masonry of the gates of his kingdom as they fell down around him. Onward Christian soldiers…