Thoughts on Discipleship During Advent

Verse four of “O Come, All Ye Faithful” says,

See how the shepherds, summoned to his cradle,
leaving their flocks, draw nigh to gaze;
we too will thither bend our joyful footsteps;
O come, let us adore him, O come, let us adore him,
O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.

A disciple is a follower and a learner. A disciple of Jesus Christ learns from the Person, Works, and Words of Jesus. But they do more than learn from him; they follow him. This can be costly. Perhaps that is why Jesus taught such things as:

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. (Mark 8:34)

And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:27)

In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:33)

Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. (John 12:26)

The shepherds were the first to see Jesus. At the bidding of the angels the shepherds dropped everything so that they might welcome the Savior of the world.

The words of the hymn beckon us to come and adore Christ the Lord. “Lord” is a very important name, not to be passed over. The title “Lord” was given to Jesus by his heavenly Father to signify that his name was above all names and that all authority in heaven and on earth was given to him. Thus, “Christ the Lord” has the right to our allegiance and an expectation that we will follow him. It makes no sense to call him Lord, or to call yourself his disciple, if you do not follow him.

And yet our commitment to Christ the Lord should not be a dry, lifeless obedience. As countless Christmas hymns remind us, there should be radiant rejoicing, life-transforming heralding, awe-inspiring worship, exuberant gratitude, and humble self-forgetfulness as we take our focus off ourselves and turn our gaze upon the babe in the manger. For it was that tender infant, lying in the straw, who was born to take away the sins of the world. And it was that Savior whom God named Lord of heaven and earth. O come, let us adore him.

Come Lord Jesus,
Dale

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His Life for Ours

Hebrews 9:26b-28

Hebrews 9:26b-28 – But now [Christ] has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. [27] Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, [28] so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

At the end of the ages, our Lord Jesus Christ appeared once and for all to do away with sin by offering himself as a sacrifice – a lamb without blemish. In so doing he ushered in the beginning of the end – the eschaton – the last days. We foolishly think to ourselves that because it is now 2,000 years later, that Christ’s day could not possibly have been part of the last days. But what’s a thousand years to an eternal God? Make no mistake about it, Christ ushered in the last days indeed!

And how did he do so? As a once-for-all sacrificial atonement for sin. No longer did a high priest have to offer animal sacrifices for the temporary appeasement of God. God’s own Son, our High Priest, settled the issue once and for all by offering himself in our stead.

Because of this, those who are in Christ no longer face condemnation. We all will die. We all will face God’s judgment. But for those who are in Christ, our sin has been covered and our punishment has been taken by Another. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).

Christ will come again. Even so, come Lord Jesus. This has been part of the liturgy of the Church for two millennia. At the end of all things, Christ will appear yet again, and with him will come a new heaven and a new earth for those who are new creatures in Christ. He will not return as a Lamb but a Lion. He will not come in humiliation but glory. He will come and claim the victory he won at the cross and gather those who have waited on him, are waiting on him, and those who will wait on him. And he knows each of them by name.

As followers of Christ, and heirs of his covenant, there is a sense in which we have been saved, and a sense in which we are daily being saved as we become more and more conformed to his likeness. But when our Lord and King appears we will be saved in glory and will rule with him in his Kingdom that knows no end. Isn’t this incredible news more than enough to bring us to our knees in humble adoration, gratitude, and submission in the here and now? Where is our boasting? We boast only in our King.

Finally, if Christ ushered in his Kingdom two thousand years ago, and the spoils of his victory belong to those who are in Christ, then doesn’t it make urgent sense that we who are his joint-heirs should labor, as long as it is called today, to extend our Lord’s Kingdom into every sphere of life – so that those who do not presently know him – and the goodness, truth, and beauty of his rule and reign – might have the opportunity to bow before him and call him their Lord?

Let us make great haste, for no man knows the time of our Lord’s reappearing.

Grace and Truth,
Dale

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Are You A Practical Atheist?

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. (Romans 1:21)

Much has been made over the last few years about the emergence of militant atheism’s evangelistic crusade to rid the world of ignorance. Specifically, these crusaders want to enlighten the minds of the masses who still believe that God exists. For these spokesmen for atheism, belief in God is intellectually unsustainable and should by all means be abandoned. Not only that, these atheistic evangelists believe that a person’s commitment to belief in God is actually harmful to children as well as to civilization as a whole.

Thankfully, their charges have been more than sufficiently answered at every turn by faithful Christian apologists. The atheists are getting all the press, but their arguments are unable to stand up to the Light of Truth.

Yet there is a more prevalent form of atheism that lurks in our land. Indeed, it can even be found in the church. It is what Cornelius Van Til called, “practical atheism.” A practical atheist is a person who professes to believe in God, and yet the God whose existence is professed does not seem to make any meaningful difference in that person’s daily life. His beliefs, values, morals, etc., are not prioritized by his supposed belief in the existence of God. Put another way: If this person was to wake up one day and decide that he no longer believed in the existence of God, his life would change very little. This is practical atheism.

In Romans 1:21, Paul describes the person who has suppressed the truth he knows about God. Paul says that in truth, all people know God exists. In fact, they even know things about his power and majesty. Yet, in order to maintain a certain way of living, they alter their belief system to accommodate their lifestyle. Like the hard atheist who formally declares that there is no God, the practical atheist denies God by the way in which he leads his life. Paul teaches us that “although they know God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him…”

We glorify God when we seek to live purposefully and intentionally for him each day. We glorify God when we live to please him, honor him, obey him, love him, seek to be like him, and tell others about him. That’s what a God-glorifying life looks like. It’s also a life that is grateful to God for his goodness. However, this is more than tossing out a “thank you” every now and then at the beginning of a meal. Instead, it’s more of an all-encompassing attitude of gratitude. It becomes pervasive in one’s personality. This attitude glorifies God because it exalts God as the One who is worthy of such affection and appreciation.

How are you doing with this? Are you seeking to glorify God and be thankful to him in all things? Of course, none of us is perfect at this. We can all get fairly self-absorbed and self-centered in the goings on of our lives. We all, from time to time, become too preoccupied with lesser interests.

Yet the One who should be our greatest interest has told us that we are to have no other gods before him. We are called to seek him first and foremost. We are instructed and encouraged to be holy because God is holy. His existence, in other words, should play a profound role in the lives of those who profess to believe in and follow him. He should be our ultimate Influence and his influence should saturate every sphere of our lives…for his glory and for our good.

Grace and Truth,
Dale

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Jesus is Lord… and Why it Matters

Augustine supposedly once said that if Christ is not Lord of all, then Christ is not Lord at all.  To understand Christ as the Lord of all the universe, and not merely of the religious spheres of life, has been a revolutionary idea in my life. I believe this truth has profound implications for Christians and the Kingdom of God.

At the very least it means that followers of the Lord Jesus Christ must understand that their faith is not only for Sunday mornings but for the rest of their lives as well. The Christian faith is a complete world and life view. There is no area of one’s life about which Christ is unconcerned. Therefore, Christians need completely overhauled or renovated lives.

Becoming a Christian, and then living out that life, means far more than a morally cleaned up personal life. Of course, that’s included, but it means so much more. Understanding Christ as Lord means that we must learn to think Christianly about every aspect of our lives… how we behave toward our family, how we handle our checkbook, how we think about current events, how we exercise integrity at work, how we respond to injustice or immorality – all of these things, and more, radically and naturally flow out of our understanding of Christ’s Lordship. Such things are (or should be) the fruit of a kingdom disciple. (Keep in mind that I am presupposing a person who has come to genuine faith in Christ and who is now living in the power of God’s Spirit.)

If Christ is Lord of all, then that also means that Christians need to expand their spheres of influence. We must not be content with isolated Christianity. We, as Christians, are a community who lives in a broader community. Christ is not only concerned about our Christian circles, but is also passionately interested about those outside our circle. The church which believes in and embraces the Lordship of Jesus Christ is the church which seeks to invade the world with the good news of the Kingdom of God. And this Kingdom changes everything.

I think of John Wesley’s England that was so thoroughly transformed by the preaching of the gospel of the Kingdom of God. It is said, even by secular historians, that were it not for Wesley’s influence, England would have experienced the same bloody revolution as France. Wesley, however, influenced by the Lordship of Jesus Christ, preached the gospel and turned England upside down through the lives of transformed men and women marching under the orders of their Savior and King.

The Lordship of Jesus Christ is fundamental to Kingdom Discipleship.

My understanding of Christ’s Lordship has been broadened and, yet, more keenly focused. I no longer teach a secular/sacred distinction. I do not teach a Christ who is unconcerned about our culture or our world. I do not tell people about a Jesus who makes no demands upon every sphere of their lives. Jesus is certainly my precious Savior, full of grace and mercy, but as Lord, he beckons me to submit all of my life to him so that I may become more fully a new creature in Christ. And because I love him… what else can I do (John 14:15, 21, 23)?

Grace and Truth,
Dale

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By What Standard?

There’s a prophetic and sobering verse at the end of the book of Judges. I think it speaks directly to us today. Judges 21:25 says,

“In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.” Other translations say, “in those days Israel had no king, and everyone did that which was right in his own eyes.”

The truth expressed in those words was that there was no authority over the people of Israel (though God should have been), and therefore, the people did whatever they wanted to. It seems that we too live in a culture that shuns the whole notion of authority. We all know parents who have no authority in their homes, schools where countless students refuse to recognize the authority of the teachers, and communities where many citizens no longer respect the law as an authority over their lives.

The Church is not immune to this trend. It no longer commands the respect of its spiritual authority that it once did. How many times have you heard these words: “Well, my church believes this, but I don’t believe that.” Perhaps most sadly, the Bible, the Holy Word of God, is no longer held up as the authority for our lives. How often have you heard someone dismiss something that the Bible says because, according to them, the Bible is nothing more than what ancient people wrote a long time ago, and therefore, isn’t relevant to our day and age?

There’s no authority in our day, and “each person does what is right in their own eyes.”

Our culture is confused. English journalist, Steve Turner, put a humorous spin on this. He wrote what he called the modern day “Apostles’ Creed” to illustrate where he thought we are today: He writes:

“We today believe in Marxfreudanddarwin. We believe everything is O.K. as long as you don’t hurt anyone to the best of your definition of hurt and to the best of your definition of knowledge. We believe I the therapy of sin. We believe that taboos are taboo. We believe that everything is getting better despite evidence to the contrary. The evidence must be investigated, and you can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there’s something in horoscopes, U.F.O.’s and bent spoons. Jesus was a good man, just like Buddha, Mohammed and ourselves. He was a good teacher, although we think his good morals were really bad. We believe that all religions are basically the same, at least the ones we read were. They all believe in love and goodness. They only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God and salvation. We believe that after death comes the nothing– because when you ask the dead what happens, they say,– nothing. If death isn’t the end, and if the dead have lied, then it’s compulsory heaven for all- except Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan.

We believe in Masters and Johnson, what is selected is average; what’s average is normal; what’s normal is good. We believe in total disarmament. We believe that there are direct links between warfare and bloodshed. We believe that man is essentially good, it’s only his behavior that lets him down. This is the fault of society; Society is the fault of conditions; and conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man should find the truth that is right for him and reality will adapt accordingly;– the universe will re-adjust, history will alter. We believe that there is no absolute truth, except for the truth, that there is no absolute truth. We believe in the rejection of creeds and the flowering of individual thought.”

He then adds this important postscript:

“If chance be the father of all flesh– disaster is his rainbow in the sky. And when you hear a state of emergency: sniper kills 10; troops on rampage; bomb blasts school:– It is but the sound of man, worshipping his maker.” (Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God, pp. 42-44)

When there is no authority over a people, then man becomes the measure for all things. Thus we are forced to ask the same question of the late Francis Schaeffer: “How should we then live?”
It’s not my intention to depress you by stating what I suspect you already know. Instead, my desire is to wake you up to these important truths. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke of two builders who built two homes which looked basically the same. Yet there was a profound difference between them. One man built his house upon the shaky foundation of sand. The other built his house upon the sure foundation of rock.

Jesus essentially said, that we are all builders of lives. And we’re either building our lives on the sand or on the Rock. Furthermore, when Jesus spoke of the sure foundation which should lie beneath every area of our lives, he had something particular in mind. He said the only foundation that can give us the strength needed to withstand the raging storms of sin and crises is his Word.

Francis Schaeffer compared this to the small bridges in Europe built by the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago. He said these small bridges have lasted centuries and centuries because they were strong enough to support people and even horses and carriages. Yet he said they would immediately crumble if a modern day 18-wheeler were to drive across one of them. They are strong enough for the light load, but the heavy load will destroy them.

I want to suggest that God’s Word is the sure foundation we need for every sphere of life. Paul wrote to Timothy, his son in the faith, to make this very point. Paul reminded Timothy that he knew Paul’s teachings and his way of life. Timothy knew how badly Paul was persecuted and suffered for the faith. Timothy knew how God rescued Paul from all of that. He then reminded Timothy that all Christians would likewise be persecuted, and false teachers would continue to run rampant, and even become more blatant in their deception.

However, Paul told Timothy to continue in what he had learned from the Holy Scriptures. Paul then explained to Timothy why the Holy Scriptures should be Timothy’s authority for his life. Paul wrote,

“The holy Scriptures are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:15-16).

John Wesley beautifully expresses this idea. He says:

“I want to know one thing– the way to heaven, how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach me the way. For this very end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it: Here is knowledge enough for me. Only God is here.”

The Bible is authoritative for us, Paul says, because it is God’s book. It is God-breathed. Some translations say “inspired,” but the N.I.V. here translates the Greek correctly. The idea is not that the Bible is inspired the way we might say, “that was an inspired performance in a play.” Instead, the meaning of the words “God-breathed” literally mean the breathed out words of God. The idea here is that the words of Scripture are literally God’s words to us.

And, what did God, as John Wesley said, “condescend to teach us?” Well, in addition to the way to heaven through Christ, Paul declared that all Scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. We’ve been given Scripture for a reason. Paul is saying that Scripture is sufficient to be our comprehensive guide and authority for life.

The first thing he says is that Scripture is useful for teaching. Here he’s not concerned with style or method, but content. Timothy’s primary responsibility is to use the Scriptures to give sound instruction in the gospel to God’s people. The truths of God’s Word are spiritual wealth that we should continually be putting into our minds and hearts. Like deposits of money in our bank account, the deposits of divine truth become spiritual assets that we can draw on readily when confronting temptation, when making moral choices, and when seeking God’s will and guidance for our lives.

Paul next says that Scripture is useful for rebuking. This is the other side of the coin. Timothy must use Scripture to expose the errors of the false teachers and their teachings. Scripture is our lamp for our feet and a light to our path. It steers us away from sin and toward righteousness. But the idea here is that it is impossible to genuinely seek righteousness and truth if we don’t hate and renounce sin and falsehood.

Thirdly, Paul says Scripture is useful for correcting. This is a companion word of rebuking, except that it emphasizes the behavioral and ethical side of things. Correction is Scripture’s positive provision for those who accept its negative rebuke. In correction, Scripture sets us on the right track again.

Finally, Paul tells Timothy that Scripture is useful in training us in righteousness. This expresses the idea that we are to be built up by God’s Word. The teaching, rebuking and correcting are tools through which believers are trained in righteousness. What Paul is telling us in this text is that as our authority for life, Scripture with its convincing and convicting power of the Holy Spirit, is God’s provision for every spiritual truth and moral principle that we need to be saved and to be equipped to live righteously. Through Scripture we receive the marching orders from our Lord.

R.C. Sproul tells the story of a time when he was preaching on the authority of Scripture. After the service was over he saw a familiar face walking toward him. It turned out to be his college roommate. Sproul had not seem him in years. His friend had gone to the mission field for three years after college and then came back to the U.S. to attend seminary in New York. Sproul had attended seminary in Pittsburgh and then went to Europe for doctoral studies and they had lost contact.

The reunion was a happy one, and they decided to catch up over dinner. During dinner, Sproul’s friend said to him, “R.C. before we begin visiting, I want to tell you that I heard your sermon tonight where you affirm your confidence in Scripture as our authority for life. But I have to tell you, after having been a missionary for three years where I learned about all these other religious books, and after going to Seminary in New York, and learning all about biblical criticism, I don’t believe in the authority of Scripture anymore.”

Sproul said he was a bit surprised to hear his old friend say this, so he asked him, “well what do you still believe?” His friend said, “Oh, I still believe that Jesus is my Savior and my Lord.” Sproul said he was delighted, of course, to hear that. However, he asked his friend, “You say that Jesus is your Lord. Well, how does Jesus express his Lordship over you? That is, a Lord is someone who issues commands. How does Jesus, as your Lord, give you your marching orders?”

His friend said, “through the church.” Sproul said, “What church? The Presbyterian Church, the Methodist Church, the Lutheran church, — what church?” His friend said, through the Presbyterian church.” “Which Presbyterian church,” Sproul asked, “the one in New York or the one in Dallas or the one in Atlanta?” “The General Assembly for the Presbyterian Church,” his friend responded. “Which General Assembly,” Sproul asked, “the one that voted one way last year, or the one that voted a different way this year?” “Well, I guess I have a problem,” his friend conceded. “Yes,” Sproul said, “You have a Lord who is unable to exercise Lordship over you.” (from Sproul’s video: “Hath God Spoken?”)

Is Jesus your Lord? Is Jesus the authority over your life or is he impotent? If he is your Lord, then let us say with John Wesley, “O give me that book! At any price, give the book of God! Here is knowledge enough for me.” Only the Spirit of God working through that book, the Bible, will bring you to spiritual life and save your soul. Only that book and the Spirit of God working through it will sanctify you, making you like Jesus. In a world full of people and things competing for your allegiance, seeking to be your authority, there’s only one standard worthy to be your sure foundation. May it be for you the Word of God.

Stand Firm,
Dale

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