The Gospel Coalition

These chaplains, many of whom were soldiers, decided to go back to the frontlines of the conflict without their weapons to minister as clergy. Some chaplains have been killed already and all the chaplains know the dangers they are facing. In the despair and darkness of the brutal realities of Sudan, there is hope.

Mama, Don’t Let Your Boys Grow Up to Think Like ‘Transformers’

There’s a lot of debate about how Ephesians 5:21-22 should be interpreted, but I’m sure we can all agree that it doesn’t mean women should be equated with machines. Bay may be in awe of the female form, but his line of thinking is about as far away from the understanding of imago dei as one can get.

The label “charismatic”, sadly, is not only used pejoratively and often as a condescending slur, it is theologically ambiguous and bears cultural implications as well. One need only note that it is used to describe people as different theologically as Wayne Grudemand Gordon Fee, at one end of the spectrum, and Benny Hinn and Oral Roberts at the other. Has the term outlived its usefulness? Perhaps, but I suspect that it is probably here to stay, whether we like it or not.

Some of the leading authorities on the web had no idea how to do what they were doing when they set out to teach people.

Nicholas Lash, All Good Reasoning Proceeds from Prior Commitments and Beliefs

Many theological tasks can be done, quite competently, by a non-believer: much of church history and biblical exegesis, for example. But the very heart and centre of theological investigation is reflection before the face of the transcendent mystery which we call God.

A Letter to My 18-Year-Old Self

Read more Scripture. Pray more. I am not good at prayer and I think it has something to do with repetition. It is not legalistic to develop disciplines as long as you don’t confuse success with God’s favor. Be involved in a church, but don’t base your worth on that. Don’t make church a business. It’s about people.

The Spiritual Dimensions of Work and Unemployment

a theological understanding of work is important to consider alongside a psychological understanding, especially as communities of faith look to treat the effects (and causes) of widespread unemployment. A theological perspective considers how the Bible prompts us to consider connections between the work we do and a healthy sense of self and purpose.

Collin Hansen, Failure Is Not an Option

Your kids will fail. This is both inevitable and also necessary. Apparently not many parents today want to hear this uncomfortable fact. And they certainly don’t want to implement it in how they discipline their children.

(For more links, check out Marc Cortez’s blog.)

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. (2 Tim. 4:3-4)

When we come across these words from the apostle Paul to Timothy, we tend to see this verse as a description of our day and age. How else do we explain the elegant churches whose liberalism has overtaken their once-glorious heritage? Or the masses that fill stadiums to hear prosperity teachers tell us how good we are and how much God wants to bless us financially?

Preaching that tickles the ears. We nod our heads in agreement and pray …

Lord, deliver us from the liberals who don’t believe anything and don’t preach the truth.

Lord, deliver us from those who give good advice and moral platitudes without the Good News of individual salvation.

Lord, deliver us from the stand-up comics who fill stadiums with ear-tickling, side-splitting sermons that are all about us and not about God.

Then, we sit back on Sunday mornings with a smile, satisfied in our assurance that our ears don’t itch.

But are we deceiving ourselves? Do we truly believe we have escaped the temptation to listen to pastors who tickle our ears? Is it possible to preach harshly against certain sins and yet still be an ear-tickling preacher?

The prophet Jeremiah tells us the human heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. We think that if we attend a church where the pastor consistently preaches hard messages with hard truths, we will never succumb to the “itching ears” syndrome. But such is not the case. Paul tells Timothy that itching ears accumulate for themselves teachers who will tell them what they want to hear. Itching ears desire teaching that suits their own passions.

Many laypeople hope to listen to a preacher who every week will tell them what’s wrong — with everybody else.

The congregation of teetotalers wants a pastor who, week after week, condemns alcohol from the pulpit.

The anti-war congregation hopes to hear a rousing sermon against those warmongering conservatives.

The congregation of staunch Republicans smiles as their pastor rails against “the gays” and “the liberals.”

The Calvinist congregation wants to hear a theologian/pastor who will preach against the errors of those Arminians.

The congregation of door-to-door soul-winners hires a pastor who will mock the namby-pamby “lifestyle” conversations that pass for evangelism in this day.

The charismatic congregation loves when its pastor tears into the dry, ritualistic worship of their liturgical neighbors.

And the liturgical congregation nods approvingly at critiques of their neighbors who manufacture emotionalism.

Can you hear the hearty “Amens” coming from the pews? Yes, Lord! Thank you for showing us what real Christianity is! Lord, help us not be like those Christians who are too blinded by their biases, who have been co-opted by the culture!

Of course, there are times when a pastor should address the issues above. Church members should expect pastors to preach boldly, to condemn sin, to faithfully exposit the biblical text, and to speak to the current issues of the day.

But let us not underestimate the evil intentions of the human heart. We crave a message that puffs us up. We read Jesus’ parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector and rightly condemn the Pharisee for his pompous prayer, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people — robbers, evildoers, adulterers — or even like this tax collector.” Then we thank God that we’re not like the Pharisee.

Ironically, the very message that is supposed to cut us low, the message of the Cross, can be delivered in such a way that people walk out of the sanctuary patting themselves on the back. Thank God I’m not like those people!

Somewhere in the darkest places of our hearts, we take joy in preachers who put us on a pedestal, who remind us who all the bad guys are, and who assure us that we’re okay. We sing and read and preach about grace, but too often, our talk about grace is simply another method of preserving our self-righteousness.

The preaching we listen to on Sundays may be truth-filled and Bible-centered, but if it only points out the problems of everyone else in the world, it misses its target. Our ears are tickled, but our hearts are unchanged. Ear-tickling preaching may step on toes, but they’re never the toes of the people in the pews or the pastor in the pulpit.

Next time, your pastor preaches a challenging message that convicts you of sin, say “Amen.” If your church is not of the Amen-shouting variety, meet your pastor at the door and offer a word of encouragement. Allow the Sword of God’s Word to perform surgery on our own hearts before wielding the Sword in the faces of everyone else.

- first published in Christianity Today as “Our Ears Still Itch” - March 2008

O Lord,
we ask that you would strengthen us with your Holy Spirit,
that we may faithfully fulfill our vocation without fraud or deceit;
and that we may seek to follow your holy order,
rather than satisfy our greedy emotions or desire to gain.

And if it pleases you, O Lord, to prosper our labor,
give us a mind also to help those in need.

And knowing that all good things come from you,
give us humility before our neighbors.
Do not let us lift ourselves up above those who have not received so generous a portion.

And if it pleases you to try and grow us by greater poverty and need than we would desire,
grant us grace to know that you will nourish us continually through your generous love.
Amen.

- John Knox

“The motto of all true servants of God must be, ‘We preach Christ; and Him crucified.’ A sermon without Christ in it is like a loaf of bread without any flour in it. No Christ in your sermon, sir? Then go home, and never preach again until you have something worth preaching.”

- Charles Haddon Spurgeon, 1876

HT: Mike Neglia

1. The Baby and the Denominational Bathwater – or, why denominations still matter.

2. A recent study addresses the question Is Facebook Killing Your Family?

3. 10 Questions Leaders Should Be Asking

4. Michael Hyatt, An Interview with Sir Ken Robinson

5. Jim Hamilton, Can You Identify with Judas?

6. A look at The Man Who Hunted Osama Bin Laden

7. Wired Magazine, Harnassing the Power of Feedback Loops

These links are provided by Marc Cortez.

Today’s post is contributed by Brent Osterberg, who blogs at From Pew to Practice.

I am a Protestant and I assume that most of the readers of this blog would say the same.  The word “protest” is the first part of our religious designation, and the truth is that many of us have whole-heartedly embraced our namesake… but, at times, perhaps we have turned that embrace into an all-out submission hold.

A quote I heard recently from Paul David Tripp led me to evaluate our sometimes wolverine-like tenacity in protesting.  He said, “You know why you like to protest? Because whenever you protest, you’re saying you’re not the problem!” (How People Change DVD Seminar Introduction).  Before we explore this quote further, let me first say that, as Christians, I strongly believe we must draw hard theological lines and name names as Paul did in the face of false teaching and apostasy (1 Timothy 1:19-20; 6:3-5; 2 Timothy 2:16-18; 4:10).  However, protesting is not all we do, and it’s certainly not the main thing.

The objects of our protesting, as Christians, most often fall into one of two categories:

1. doctrine we believe to fall short of the scriptural standard or
2. behavior that we deem immoral.

Some of us will run to our Facebook and Twitter accounts to rip on the deviation of the week, while others will spout off disapproval to our closest friends over a latte.  It’s not that this is wrong in and of itself.  In fact, protesting is a necessary part of the Christian life. But as Tripp suggests, it can be a smokescreen we use to keep us from seeing the sin that is setting up camp in our hearts.

Jeremiah was right when he said that our hearts are hard to understand (17:9), but one thing we know about them is that they are crafty.  Our hearts know that it’s difficult for us and others to argue the holiness of a strong stand on Christian truth when we protest.  So, if we’re not walking in the light, a strong defense of our favorite doctrines can give cover to our idols so they can freely go to work on our affections and wills.  What a clever ploy our hearts (and Satan) have constructed: keep us arming ourselves at every whiff of Arminian doctrine or old-earth creationism so that there is little time and attention left to examine our motives and desires.

When I was in seminary, research papers were plentiful. For lack of wanting what was best for me, I would almost always wait until the last minute to write them.  During the times when I knew I should be working on a paper, all of the sudden I remembered that the floor needed to be mopped or that I needed to call my Grandma who I hadn’t spoken to in months. So I’d get busy doing those things when I should have been chipping away on an explanation for why women are saved through childbearing (1 Timothy 2:15).

I fear that we have the same approach when it comes to doing the gritty work of finding our idols and replacing them with Christ.  We grasp for any other good thing to keep us from what requires our immediate attention… in this case, something crucial to spiritual growth.  Protesting is often one of these other good things, but with potentially more danger due to the commitment, passion, and even heroism that is perceived by fellow Christians when it is practiced.

I realize that in writing this post I am, in fact, protesting our tendency to protest, which is why I also need to be wary – even as I write this sentence.  That’s actually why I’m writing this… because we all need to be cautious of such tendencies.  It doesn’t mean the answer to the problem is refusing to protest or call ourselves Protestant.  Rather, the knowledge that protesting can be used as a smokescreen should cause us to evaluate our hearts to see if there are any idols at work there. If there are, let’s protest our idols, and then submit afresh to Christ, the only One with a rightful place on the throne of our lives.

Brent Osterberg is the associate pastor at Calvary Bible Church in Fort Worth, TX where he has served since 2004.  He is a graduate of Sam Houston State University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.  He and His wife, Keri, have two sons and a baby daughter who is due in August. He blogs at From Pew to Practice.

The debates that the Jewish Christian apostle Paul had with other Jewish Christians in Antioch and Galatia was stimulated by this very question: Is Jesus merely an add on to the Mosaic covenant? What is precisely new in the new covenant?

Cherish the Book Publishers

Shouldn’t we be grateful that it’s someone else’s job to weed out the inane, the insipid, the incompetent? Not that they always do such a great job of it, given some of the books that do get published by actual publishers. But at least they provide some buffer between us and the many aspiring authors who are like the wannabe pop stars in the opening weeks of each “American Idol” season

Building Matter because Bodies Matter

Buildings and other forms of human making shape us, then, because our bodies affect our souls as much as our souls affect our bodies. While evangelicals have rightly focused on the interior life, the interior life has a particular shape based on whether and how we “present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice.” While architecture may not be the main thing for evangelicals, the main thing isn’t the only one that matters.

(For more links, check out Marc Cortez’s blog.)

Today’s book review is contributed by Adam Parker, who blogs at BringtheBooks.Org.

Perspectives on the Sabbath: Four Views
ed. Christopher John Donato
Released: April 1, 2011
Publisher: B&H Academic
For Purchase at Westminster Books
420 Pages

I would venture to guess that most Christians have not thought about the issue of the Sabbath before. Many, like myself, have always assumed that they ought to attend worship on Sundays out of tradition, but maybe haven’t considered what it really means, theologically speaking. A large contingent of the church thinks that Sabbath observance is fulfilled if one attends religious services.

Thankfully, if you haven’t thought much about this subject, there is a solution. Chris Donato has edited a new volume devoted to letting the four major views on the Sabbath duke it out. The format is familiar, with the first chapter being devoted to the author defending his view. In the next chapter, each of the remaining three views have an opportunity to weigh in, and then of course, the original author is given a chance to respond to the other three in a few brief pages, wrapping things up. To the editor’s credit, enough space is given (400+ pages total) to deal substantially with each view. As a point of reference, other volumes from the same series are less than half the size of this one.

The four perspectives being shared in this book could be separated into two units: those who say that the Sabbath commandments are still binding, and those who say that the Sabbath commandments are no longer binding. The first half of the book covers the two views arguing for a continuing Sabbath.

• Skip MacCarty begins by defending the Seventh Day Sabbath view.
• In Part II, Joseph Pipa defends what he calls (to the chagrin of the other contributors) the Christian Sabbath view.
• After this, we are introduced to the two views who say that Sabbath Commandments are no longer binding. In Part III Charles Arand spends his time laying out Luther’s view of the Sabbath.
• Finally in Part IV, Craig Blomberg lays out the Fulfilled Sabbath view.

Skip MacCarty: Seventh Day Sabbath View
MacCarty emphasizes the permanency of the Sabbath as being rooted in the opening chapters of Genesis and argues that it is a persistent observance instituted at the beginning of creation, rooted in the creative act and resting of God after that creation act. For MacCarty, it is significant that the Sabbath is never explicitly overturned, and that there is no explicit command in the NT for the Church to begin worshipping on Sundays.

A large amount of MacCarty’s essay is devoted to establishing distinctions between the New and Old Covenant, since an obvious conclusion to draw from the smoother continuity found in MacCarty’s view would be to suggest that MacCarty does not see a difference between the Old and New Covenants. MacCarty adeptly demonstrates that one can hold to the persistence of the Sabbath and still clearly distinguish Old and New.

The differences between MacCarty and Pipa’s view are really very minimal, relative to the other contributors. However, the discussion over which day the worship ought to take place on was quite exegetically involved, as is appropriate for two views which differ in so few other respects. They are both arguing for the permanency and the persistence of the Sabbath as it is presented in the Ten Commandments. Their entire struggle is over the question of whether the command is to have a day or the (seventh) day for Sabbath rest. In the end, MacCarty ably defended the Seventh Day Adventist perspective on these matters and demonstrated that his is a view which is not to be dismissed out of hand.

Joseph Pipa: Christian Sabbath View
Joseph Pipa’s chapter set forth the view that the Sabbath is a permanent and persistent aspect of the creation. Hermeneutically speaking, the Christian Sabbath view determines what OT laws are still binding by using the threefold Civil/Ceremonial/Moral distinction and by accepting that the moral teachings of the OT are what still persist in the NT era, since the Apostles rescinded the civil/ceremonial aspects of the law in the book of Acts. According to Pipa, the Sabbath is a part of the persistent moral law, as are the other Ten Commandments. (Blomberg implies that this is legalistic/pharisaic on Pipa’s part, but I see nothing legalistic about saying that one ought to obey God’s revealed will.)

Although the Apostles did move the Sabbath day to Sunday, Pipa argues that since the beginning, the command was always for a day of worship. Thus, when the Apostles began to institute worship on Sundays, Pipa finds no incompatibility with the Sabbath command of the Ten Commandments. As I said, this is the point of contention between Pipa/MacCarty. Pipa holds the Puritan view as expressed in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and quoted the Westminster to buttress the theological underpinnings of his view. Blomberg was put off by Pipa’s repeated use of the Westminster Standards, though he mistakenly saw Pipa as depending on them when, in fact, he merely utilized them to articulate his view on Scripture’s teaching.

For my own part, after reading the whole book, I came out favoring Pipa’s view, though I’m a bit biased since we’re both confessionally bound to Westminster. I did notice that near the end of the book, Pipa took a step a bit too far and basically accused Blomberg’s view of leading towards Sabbath Day antinomianism (387). Blomberg responded forcefully to this, of course, calling his comments “inaccurate, unnecessary, offensive, and inappropriately polemical” (408). Blomberg is right, since he does see Scriptural commands for weekly worship, though he doesn’t equate Sabbath commands with commands to worship. This conflict was the only area of this volume where one detected even a hint of animus, however.

Charles Arand: Luther’s Radical Reading of the Sabbath
Charles Arand’s chapter defending the Lutheran view was, in some ways, the odd one out. While the other contributors chose a more textually oriented and exegetical approach in dealing with their respective views, Arand chose a more historical theological approach. In his chapter, he helpfully discussed the historical situation regarding the Sabbath during Luther’s time. He curiously devotes at least half of his essay discussing Luther’s view of the entire Ten Commandments and then spends the remainder of the time dealing with the Sabbath Commandment in light of that. In a book devoted to Luther’s Sabbath views, such a thing would be welcome, perhaps even necessary; but I got the sense, in this volume, that Arand just ran out of space. In my opinion, there should have been less emphasis on the broader commandments as a whole in Arand’s chapter and more emphasis on NT teachings about the Sabbath, since I sensed that to be an area which needed more fleshing out.

The Lutheran view sees the Ten Commandments as ultimately reducing to one (“You shall have no other Gods”), and sees them as being specifically for the Jews in the form they were presented, although for Luther, a day of rest ought to be observed for devotion to the Word. Curiously (and MacCarty points this out in his response), Luther appears to have, in the name of Christian liberty, repealed the Sabbath, but then, in very strong terms, condemned those who did not participate in it. Whatever one might say about the Lutheran view, I didn’t really feel like I got it. Arand’s approach got in the way of his view, in my opinion.

Craig Blomberg: The Sabbath as Fulfilled In Christ
Craig Blomberg presents the “fulfilled Sabbath” view, which argues that Christ has “fulfilled” (read: transformed) the Sabbath and therefore reads the commandments through a filter of sorts, using Christ’s New Testament teaching as a guide for what aspects of the OT are still valid in the NT. His hermeneutic says that an Old Testament law is still applicable if it is taught again in the New Testament. He is clear that the Sabbath is valid for Christians today, but that it is a spiritualized Sabbath that does not look at all like Sabbatarianism. The following statement fairly summarizes Blomberg’s take on things, after running the Sabbath through his NT framework:

“We obey the Sabbath commandment of the Decalogue as we spiritually rest in Christ, letting Him bear our burdens, trusting for salvation and committing our lives to Him in service, and then remaining faithful in lifelong loyalty to Him rather than committing apostasy” (351).

So we see that for Blomberg, the NT application is much more of a spiritualized version of the Sabbath. While Blomberg writes very well and very persuasively, I perceive a great weakness in Blomberg’s overall view, and that is a lack of systematic coherence. By eschewing, as he sees it, both Covenant theology and Dispensationalism (though he says he leans more Covenant), he is left with a less systematic approach than the Adventist, Lutheran, and Reformed perspectives. He seems to admit as much in his concluding response to the other three:

“My goal, at least, is always to let scriptural exegesis more than presuppositions, ‘functional nonnegotiables,’ or theological traditions determine my conclusions. And if that leaves me with a disparate conglomeration of beliefs on a variety of topics that don’t easily fit one well-known and existing label or branch of historical theology, then so be it” (409).

If you are like me and value historical pedigree and overall systematic approaches to theology, then you may follow me in leaning away from Blomberg’s clear and well-stated fulfillment view. One text which Blomberg’s view hinges on is Colossians 2:16, which is a very difficult text for Sabbatarians of all stripes. It’s texts like these that the reader will have to meditate on and study long after they are done reading this volume.

Conclusion
After reading the whole book, I went back to the editor’s introduction, and I want to share one section, because Chris Donato sums up my overall impression quite well:

“[T]he Sabbath…serves as a microcosm of much larger questions fundamental to the nature of the worshipping community of Christ itself. Hermeneutical presuppositions and the covenantal (dis)continuity of God’s redemptive plan, among a great many other elements, are at once exposed when discussing this question” (3).

It’s really the strength of a book like Perspectives on the Sabbath: Four Views that in one succinct volume most of the issues related to the topic have been laid out neatly so that the undecided reader knows what it is he needs to study on his own time in order to grasp the issues that are at stake. At the end of the day, this is a rewarding, scholarly book about hermeneutics in action that will stick with you long after you’ve read it.

These links are provided by Marc Cortez.

You’ll hear them offer several nuggets of wisdom that all Christians would be wise to follow as they call on us to criticize when possible in the context of relationship and state our opponents’ arguments in a way they would recognize and own.

Many ingrown churches become egocentric out of fear of extinction, and wind up focusing on one aspect of their church culture that makes them unique. This allows them to feel good about themselves while finding fault with other churches in the area who do not measure up.

This month’s free audio book from ChristianAudio is The Millennials by Thom and Jess Rainer.

7 Reasons Christians Should Twitter

(For more links, check out Marc Cortez’s blog.)