If you’re like me, though you are loathe to admit it, you find Hebrew poetry less than satisfying. While sophisticates know better, most us like a poem to rhyme. Hebrew poetry does not when translated, nor even in the original, rhyme words. Instead it rhymes ideas. David, in Psalm 22 laments that “O my God, I cry in the daytime but You do not hear; and in the night season, and am not silent” (verse 2). Twice David notes that he cries out to God, first in the day, and then at night. This is what passes for rhyming.
Rhyming, however, isn’t the be all and end all of good poetry. Good poetry, in any era, in any language, is replete with powerful images, just like this one, “But You are holy, enthroned in the praises of Israel” (verse 3). How’s that for an image, that God sits on a throne built not of ivory or gold, but of the praises of His people? It touched me this morning I believe, because I have seen this.
I’ve seen it when my precious wife and I take time morning and evening to open God’s Word, and then open our hearts before Him in prayer. I’ve seen it when we are sitting around the table with our boys trying to unpack the mysteries of the book of Revelation. I’ve seen it even in cyberspace as God’s people sing together from different homes, all while being called together to the true Mount Zion. I’ve seen it when we are blessed to gather together in an earthly building and our hosannas are raised.
Could it be though, not so much that I believe it because I see it, but that, by His grace, I see it because I believe it? When we come to God’s poetry our first inclination, because we are modernists at heart, is to turn it into prose, and so, we diminish it. That God is enthroned in the praises of His people becomes not something we are mesmerized by. Instead we turn it into, at best, “God likes it when we praise Him” and at worst, “We’re supposed to praise God.” When we take His poetry and diminish it we push Him farther away. When we enter into His poetry, we enter into Him. And that is ever and always a blessing too deep to be measured, too ethereal to be packaged, too powerful to be denied.
God sits enthroned on our praises. Or, to rhyme images, when we praise Him together, oil pours down on Aaron’s beard. We live in a wretched world, one that yet groans under the weight of sin. We have broken relationships. We have roots of bitterness choking out the fruit of the Spirit. We have distractions and burdens. But God in His grace, from time to time gives us glimpses beyond, tastes of eternity. Mark these moments well. Give thanks to the Giver of these good gifts. And give thanks to the gifts as well.
Thesis 24- We must elect elders based on biblical criteria rather than cultural criteria.
Ideas, Richard Weaver sagely reminded us, have consequences. They are neither discreet nor inert. We ought not to be surprised when our brilliant new insights beget sundry ripples that we myopically didn’t plan on. Nor should we be surprised that there is nothing new under the sun, that our new insights are often old folly, and the ripples have all lapped up on the shore before, often undermining our foundations.
Consider for a moment the church growth movement. Did Bill Hybels invent the idea that we ought to market the church, rather than proclaim the gospel? Would not Simon the Sorcerer fit in this same mold? How about the believers to whom James wrote, warning them against putting the rich and powerful into seats of honor? These two issues intersect in how too many of us choose our elders. When we adopt a business model for the church, it ought not surprise us that we adopt a business model for choosing elders. And would not that model suggest something like this- if the church is a business, should we not have men who are successful in business running things? In many of our churches we do just that. Our elder boards look more like the local chamber of commerce than living examples of the qualifications listed in I Timothy 3.
There we are told that elders should be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach; not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous, one who rules his own house well. Notice that nothing is said about being successful in business. Notice as well that not a word is said about being a person who delights to argue obtuse theological issues, or who has an advanced degree. This is the biblical model, not a cultural one.
We elect elders based on what we value. Because we are a part of the broader culture, success in business is high on our list. Because we are a part of a more narrow subculture, wherein spiritual maturity is measured by the number of volumes in our libraries, being up to date on the latest theological controversies is likewise high on our list. What we ought to value is godliness. What we ought to value is men who rule their own houses well. What we ought to value is spiritual maturity, which cannot be discerned by the size of ones bank book, nor the size of ones bookshelves. The business of ruling over the church is not business, but shepherding the flock, guarding the very family of God.
Reformation will come only when we reform our thinking, no longer having it conformed to the patterns of this world. When we cease looking for new insights, and go back to ancient wisdom, we can be confident that there too we will see ripples. These ripples, however, will make known the glory of our King. May God be pleased to renew our minds, and to give us shepherds more faithful than we deserve.
It is a common thing for Christians to side with non-Christians against other Christians. The reason for this is that we are sinners, Christians, non-Christians and the other Christians. That is, Christian A listens with a sympathetic ear while non-Christian B recounts how he was terribly mistreated by Christians C. Christian A, you understand, could be sympathetic because he rightly feels bad about the mistreatment non-Christian B received. Or, Christian A could be sympathetic simply because he wants non-Christian B to like him, and Christians C did nothing wrong at all. Sin, blame shifting and a craven hunger for approval are as commonplace as ABC.
The point is that non-Christians get hostile against the church for all manner of illegitimate reasons. They accuse Christians of things they are not guilty of. They themselves feel guilty for things they are guilty of, but prefer to blame the Christians. Non-Christians also get hostile against the church for all manner of legitimate reasons. The church, after all, if full of sinners. Sinners sin. To assume that only one of these things could be true is to assume that only one group of people are capable of sin.
That said, I suspect the best argument the non-Christian has against the Christian isn’t that the Christian is too judgmental toward others, but that we are insufficiently judgmental toward ourselves. People, as a general rule, are reasonably comfortable having their sins pointed out, so long as we acknowledge the full depth and scope of our own sin. “You and I are miserable sinners” goes down much more easily than “You are a miserable sinner. I am good.” Better still, “You and I are miserable sinners” is true and “I am good” is not.
There is, however, yet another option. Sometimes I suspect that non-Christians have nothing but contempt for the church because we are so weak. Our hunger for their approval may just bring down on us their disapproval. No one admires a sniveler. When we insist that we never say a word that might offend them we demonstrate to them that we fear them. They may rant and rail against us for the moral stances we take, but at the end of the day, caving just makes it worse. Worse still, it offends the One we ought to be seeking to please.
The solution? What if we were altogether eager to affirm both the sins of the non-Christians and the sins of the Christians, all while being careful to define sin as God does? What if we honestly and sincerely responded to that old complaint from outside our walls, “The church is full of hypocrites!” with “No, not true. It’s not full. There’s always room for one more.” What if, instead of trying to decide whether to stand with the Christians or the non-Christians we determined to kneel before Christ? What if we humbled ourselves not before them, but before Him? What if the church were that place where we competed to see who could be the most open, the most honest about our own failures, and then the most open and most honest about His provision? There is no good plan, for those inside the church or those outside, where we don’t talk about sin. Never has been and never will be.
It was the coldest day of the winter, as I trudged through the parking lot of the local Wal-Mart. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the young man, nicely dressed, approach the young lady as she was headed to her car. I silently thanked God that he had chosen her and not me, and before my prayer was through, I was approached by the second young man, “Sir, can I share with you the good news of Jesus Christ?” As I opened my car door I replied, “No, what you need to do is repent.” “Repent for believing in Jesus?” he asked. “Yes,” I said, “if He’s not God.” “Are you a Christian then?” he asked.
As I drove away I said a prayer for the young man, that God would be pleased to grant him new life, that He would give this blind fool eyes to see. I also prayed that God would tie the young man’s tongue, lest anyone fall prey to his folly.
The Bible gives us two perspectives by which we ought to see men like this. On the one hand, we are enjoined to compassion. Such once were we, walking by the flesh. There but for the grace of God go we. Men like this are in chains, enslaved.
If we would but look to their master, however, we would begin to understand the second perspective we are called to. It is because we are still susceptible to the swaying power of this slave master that we don’t see him enslaving men like this. That is, we tend to divide the world into three kinds of people. There are the Christians, who have the truth. There are adherents of other religions that are false. And then there are those who love the devil, who are wicked. There are, however, only two kinds of people in this world, the seed of the serpent, and the seed of the woman. Those who do not serve our King serve the serpent, no matter how respectable they might look. Those well dressed young men in the Wal-Mart parking lot are not merely pitiable, misguided fools. They are likewise preying lions, looking for sheep to devour.
This may be hard to swallow, precisely because Latter-Day-Saint missionaries are so clean cut. After all, these folks put those family friendly ads on television. They vote pro-life. They look just like us. On the other hand, we may find this believable because, at least so far, Christians still talk about this group as a cult. Our antennae are all aquiver when we run into these proclaimers of their bad news.
Do we see the serpent at the end of the chain, that the devil is still the puppet master, when we confront adherents to one of the “great world religions?” I’m afraid we have an even more collegial view. We may have our squabbles, but like Harvard, Yale and Princeton, we also have things in common. Christianity, Judaism and Islam stand, dignified, far above the riff-raff of modern day cults and sundry manifestations of New Age goofiness.
The truth is that both Judaism and Islam have far more in common with the church of latter-day-saints than they have in common with the Christian faith. First, they are all false. They are all lies. Second, they are all lies because they are of their father. When we look back in history to the seventh century, and we see there the birth of Islam, we would do well to recognize the nature of that event. This is not an occasion where a man, in a dispassionate pursuit of truth, fell into some error, and accidentally created a religion that is false. This is neither merely the occasion where a man determined to create a new religion in order to garner political power, as an excuse to go on a bloody rampage. No, this is the Serpent driving jet planes into the very towers of Christendom.
Though our political leaders would have us think so, Islam is not a nice, clean, respectable religion. It is dirty, however, not because it is bloody. To give the devil his due, at least in Islam we have a religion that has the courage of its convictions. It is dirty because it is a lie from the devil. It is a false Christ, an anti-Christ. There is one God, but Mohammed is a prophet of the devil.
Islam, if it is not there already, is coming to a neighborhood near you. Whether those who practice this faith are rabble rousing militants, or gentle and middle class members of the local PTA, they are still slaves of the devil, practicing and promoting devil worship. Whether they demand respect at the end of a sword, or demand respect by acting respectable, Christians are called to recognize and honor the image of the living God in them. We must also remember, however that we are at war, not with terror, but with the devil. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the day of evil, and having done all, to stand firm” (Ephesians 6:12-13).
I’m no behaviorist, but I don’t need to be to understand this truth- that which you punish you get less of, and what you reward you get more of. We don’t like punishment, and seek to avoid it. We do like reward and seek to find it. In God’s economy, however, nothing fails like success and nothing succeeds like failure. The question is, will we do things our way, or His way?
The church too often sees itself as in a competition with the world, that it is one option among many that claim to provide the good life. To win that competition we need to lift up, put center stage those who are living the good life. This is how we frame our testimonies. “Before Jesus came into my life everything seemed great, but it wasn’t. Then the façade came crashing down and Jesus rescued me. Now, everything really is great.” Sure, we’ll cop to the reality that we still have small troubles and challenges, but nothing to worry about.
On the other hand, when things get really ugly we hide them. Why do you suppose #metoo has come home to roost in the evangelical church? Not because of systematic underground embracing of sexual abuse. No, because of cover-ups. When a pastor seduces a sheep, when the youth leader exploits the troubled child our first thought is to protect not the reputation of Jesus, but of our church. Any church found to be unsafe has already shuttered its doors, whether it knows it or not.
The church, however, if it has any reason to exist, is to be that place where we who are not safe go. It is the assembly of sinners. Not former sinners, not purified sinners, but sinners. To be sure, not unrepentant sinners, not complacent sinners, not comfortable sinners, but sinners. It is supposed to be the place where we acknowledge what we are. It’s supposed to be that place where we confess our failures, not trumpet our faux victories. It’s supposed to be the place where the desperate know to go for healing.
How do we get there? We celebrate His victories while confessing our failures. We rejoice over the forgiveness of sin while laboring for the cleansing from sin. We acknowledge not just that men are totally depraved, but that I am a sinner, saved by grace, that my sins were, and are so grievous, so ugly, so damnable that only the agony of Christ’s passion could pay for them. The message of the church should never be, “We can help you win.” It must always be, “Jesus has already won.”
That smiling guy beside you in the pew? Three days ago, again, he looked at porn. That woman in the row in front of you, the one holding her husband’s hand? She drank herself to sleep last night. That man up on stage singing his heart out for Jesus? He knows where to find anonymous sex with men. The one they are worshipping? He died for them all. The church is not where we go to learn how to have a good life. It’s the place we go to hear what to do about the truth that in our sin we destroy our own lives- that we run to the One who gave His life for us.
