Tag: ReformedWorship

The Rest of the Story

The term ‘community’ has become fashionable.  Everyone talks about its importance and how to create it.  We speak of shared vision and mission, of breaking down barriers and distinctions, and of inclusion and tolerance.  Yet community is created neither by the obliteration nor exaltation of individualism.  Real community depends upon something objectively transcendent to the individual and the group to which he belongs.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together expresses this pointedly.

Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone… We recognize, then, that only as we are within the fellowship can we be· alone, and only he that is alone can live in the fellowship. Only in the fellowship do we learn to be rightly alone and only in aloneness do we learn to live rightly in the fellowship. It is not as though the one preceded the other; both begin at the same time, namely, with the call of Jesus Christ. Each by itself has profound pitfalls and perils. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair. Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.

Christianity declares that the only transcendent reality powerful enough to create lasting community is the resurrection of Jesus and the life that comes through believing in Him.  Often the gospel is viewed simply as a path for personal, individual redemption.   But it is much more than just that.  God has reconciled us to himself through the cross and, consequently reconciles us to one another.  Sin is a breaker and divider.  The gospel restores community.

John’s gospel holds a surprising ending.  The story of Jesus appears to end in John 20 with an invitation to the skeptical to examine the strong evidence for the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and a final summary of Jesus’ life and work,

“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”  John 20:30-31

Then, unexpectedly, we find a postscript in John 21.  One more vignette of the risen Jesus with his disciples, not to further prove the reality of the resurrection, but to answer the question “What’s Next?”  How does the resurrection powerfully change the lives of those who believe in it?  What does following Christ mean in light of the resurrection?  What does it look like to experience life together?

Join us this Lord’s Day, April 8, as we examine the John’s postscript and consider what it looks like to live in light of the resurrection.  We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock.  Click here for directions.

Come with a friend you and join us for fellowship and conversation. We look forward to seeing you there.

Skeptics Welcome

We live in an age of flourishing skepticism, particularly when it comes to religion.  Science is seen as the new arbiter of absolute truth and the “scientific-method” the only test of the believe-worthiness of any idea.  The incredible popularity of thinkers such as Stephen Hawking underscores this flowering of the enlightenment enthronement of human reason.  Hawking, who once quipped that “heaven [and the afterlife] were fairy-stories for people afraid of the dark,” nevertheless frequently left his own pay-grade in the narrow confines of mathematics and observable physics to declare metaphysical absolutes.  It was this dimension of his writing and thinking that made him a pop icon.

Many skeptics today view religion, in general, and Christianity, in particular, as afraid of rational inquiry and apologetic challenge.  From the view of the secularist, Christianity has circled the wagons, arrogantly assuming the “fairy tales” of the Bible are true while closing its eyes to all reason and evidence.   Yet nothing is further from the truth.  Real and vibrant Christianity hangs out a shingle that says, “Skeptics Welcome.”

Nowhere is this seen more dramatically than in the Biblical accounts of the resurrection.   No point of Christian doctrine has been more thoroughly assaulted by skeptics than the resurrection.  Yet every assault strengthens credibility.   When the accounts are critically examined, it seems God took great care to surround the crucifixion, death and burial of Jesus along with the subsequent discovery of the empty tomb with a vast body of evidence which can only be satisfactorily explained by Jesus’ resurrection.  In many respects, the empty tomb is a sign that reads “Skeptics Welcome.”  The stone was not rolled back to let Jesus out but to let skeptics in.

Join us this Lord’s Day, April 1, as we examine the account of the empty tomb from John 20 and consider an invitation to skeptics to examine and believe in the resurrection of Jesus.  We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock.  Click here for directions.

Come with a friend you and join us for fellowship and conversation. We look forward to seeing you there.

Who Is This?

Who Is This?

When someone mentions Jesus, what comes to mind?  Religious revolutionary? Social justice warrior?  Ethical teacher?  Failed Zionist leader?  Founder of a yet another world religion? Who is this Jesus?  For many it is a caricature, influenced by pictures you have seen or by clichés which permeate our cultural ideas of “the historical Jesus.”  Or perhaps you remember him from a collection of anecdotes or parables you heard as a child in some Sunday School.

Jesus’ own disciples struggled to understand who he was and what he came to do.  From time to time glimpses shined through their own preconceived notions of Him.  In a poignant moment, as they were crossing the Sea of Galilee, a furious squall sprang up and threatened to sink their small fishing boat.  Half of Jesus’ disciples grew up on these tempestuous waters, fishing with their families from their childhood.  Yet even they were convinced that they would not survive the trip.  They woke Jesus, who was asleep in the back of the boat.  They did not ask him to save them – for what miracle working teacher was a match for a force-ten gale?  They only asked, “don’t you care that we are about to die?”   Jesus stood up in the boat and with a word, brought the waters from tempest to mirror.   These seasoned seamen were almost speechless.  The only thing they could say of Jesus was, “who is this?”   They perceived there was much more to Jesus than even their imaginations could anticipate.

Who is Jesus?  The accounts of him at the end of the gospel of John are really very unexpected.  As he faces an unjust arrest, trial, and execution, we seem him not as a failed revolutionary swept up in the unstoppable tide of Roman tyranny and religious jealousy.  What we see is that Jesus is the one in complete control of everything that transpires.  He told his disciples, “no one takes my life from me.  I lay it down and I will take it up again.”

Think you know who Jesus is?  Come and find out as we walk through the final days of Jesus’ earthly life, from John 18-21.  Join us this Lord’s Day, March 18, as we examine John 18 and consider just who Jesus is and what he came to do.  We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock.  Click here for directions.

Come with a friend you and join us for fellowship and conversation. We look forward to seeing you there.

Providence

In 1973 a quarter was very valuable.  As children, we were worked hard – taking out the trash, washing the pets, raking leaves – to earn the quarter that would give us purchasing power for the weekly bike trek to the 7-11.  The lure of that quarter was great — so great, indeed, that my sister once sold me to a neighbor for just that princely sum.

Mr. Bailey was a kind man and he drove a school bus.  On warm spring days I would help him wash his bus.  His driveway was steep and perfectly suited to the task.  It was my job to man the hose.   I would mount the front steps of the bus and turn the hose, full blast, on the seats and the floor.  The sheer ecstasy of hosing out the inside of a school bus was something only a seven year-old boy can fully appreciate.

As dinnertime approached, my sister came to collect me.  No doubt, to my sister, I was a tedious and trying lad.  When she arrived, Mr. Bailey made an unexpected proposal.  What if he kept me and gave her a quarter instead?  She did not hesitate.  She gladly accepted the quarter and left me with Mr. Bailey.  My sister certainly did not hate me, it was just that she was sure a quarter was worth more than a little brother.

For Joseph, things did not turn out quite that way.  Though the youngest son in his family, he was given the privilege and the status of a firstborn.  His father, Jacob, loved him above his eleven brothers and gave him a princely robe that stood constant witness to his father’s favoritism.  To make matters worse Joseph was careful to report his brother’s misdeeds to their father.  He shared with his brothers his dreams that he would one day rule over them.    His brothers hated him with murderous rage and at the first opportunity seized him and sold him into slavery in Egypt.  As often happens in Scripture, however, their evil action towards God’s chosen man becomes the very act which leads graciously to their salvation.  Remarkably, many years later, Joseph meets and forgives his brothers, recognizing that “what you meant for evil, God meant for good.”

But Joseph’s story is not a mere illustration that bad things sometimes work out, rather it is a picture of God’s promise of a savior in Jesus Christ.  It is this promise that forms the focal point of God’s Providence.  Join us this Lord’s Day, March 11, as we examine Genesis 37 and consider how the story of Joseph anticipates the unfolding of God’s promises to rescue and deliver us from our deadly enemy.  We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock.  Click here for directions.

Come with a friend you and join us for fellowship and conversation. We look forward to seeing you there.

Why Solus Christus Still Matters

As a student of theology, Ralph Erskine made the rounds to many of Edinburgh’s notable churches to hear the great preachers of his day.  In his journal he recorded notes and assessment of each sermon.  In one entry he noted only, “not very good  — no word of Christ.”   I wonder what assessment Erskine would make of preaching in our day?   Would he hear a word of Christ or merely a moralistic prescription for self-improvement?

Scottish divine, Thomas Chalmers noted the spiritually fatal effect of the entertaining, self-help, power-of-positive-thinking type preaching of his day that lacked a word of Christ.   He aptly remarked that  such preaching was

“like a winter’s day, short and clear and cold. The brevity is good, the clarity is better; the coldness is fatal. Moonlight preaching ripens no harvest.”  

The Middle Ages, steeped in superstition and error, had no lack of interesting preaching.   Its art and rhetoric; its value as entertainment was without rival in the frivolities of Medieval life.   Yet it lacked the sunlight of the gospel.  It had the form of godliness but was bereft of gospel power because it spoke no word of Christ.   Calvin describes this preaching.

“Indeed what one sermon was there from which old wives might not carry off more fantasies than they could devise at their own fireside in a month?  For, [these] sermons … contained smooth stories, or not unamusing speculations, by which the people might be excited to cheerfulness.   Only a few expressions were thrown in from the Word of God, that by their majesty they might procure credit for these frivolities.   But as soon as the Reformers raised the standard, all these absurdities in a moment disappeared from among us.”

The Reformation grew in the soil of expository, gospel preaching.  Preaching that proclaimed salvation by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone.   Today’s preaching often aims merely to excite the hearers to cheerfulness and tell a few smooth stories.   Yet such moonlight preaching ripens no harvest.

Why does the Reformation still matter?  And why does Solus Christus, “In Christ Alone,” still matter?  Join us this Lord’s Day, October 22, as we consider these questions. We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock.  Click here for directions.

Come with a friend you and join us for fellowship and conversation. We look forward to seeing you there.