Dear Church Family,

We had a meaningful time of worship on Sunday in the context of some very tragic news. Stuart has written a personal note from him and Celia below for those who would like an update on Alys’s recovery from a recent car accident. Suffice it to say, this was very fresh on Stuart’s mind when it came time to share from the pulpit. I have not posted the recording of his remarks on the accident online as this is a fairly personal matter, but you can read about it below.

But it was also mother’s day, and in the midst of Stuart’s Father Series, he led us through a number of passages which focus on mothering images of God. Our Fathering Lord is also revealed in Scripture as the one who broods over His children like a mother hen or mother eagle broods over their young. The image of the mother’s wings and feathers was particularly striking to me, serving as a reminder of God’s tenderness in his care for us.

The message was relatively short, and for those who weren’t able to be with us on Sunday, I would strongly encourage you to take 25 minutes this week to listen for yourself. Blessings to you this week, especially mothers!

Your brother and son in Christ,
Ben

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Dearest friends,

How amazing is the family of God! How brilliant are the relationships of spiritual kin! How great is our God! How exalted is our Jesus! How brooding and blowing is our Holy Spirit! Thanks to all of you for every expression of love and prayer and counsel for us at this time. The prayer covering has been extraordinary and the superintending pastoral care of Jesus has been brilliant. I heard that tens of thousands of people prayed for Alys at the World Prayer Assembly in Jakarta, and I'm grateful for the way so many of you have sent the news down your intercessory networks. Thank you. The morning service with our local church family yesterday morning was awesomely fortifying and healing. The love and ministry of our church elders and family has been tailor-made to fit the shape of our need. Thank you again. Hallelujah! Pursuant to my last communication, here is an update.

Celia, accompanied by our daughter Christa, arrived in New Zealand yesterday. God bless all the Air NZ staff who absolutely did everything possible to assist and facilitate that trip. As they pulled into Rotorua in their rental car, they stopped at a traffic light, rolled down the window to ask the lady next to them if she could give them directions to the hospital. The first question out of her mouth was, "Are you one of the families of the Boston Students?" When Celia told her that was so, she said she owned a hotel in Rotorua and they were to come to it as her guests!! Isn't the provision of the Lord perfect!

They had a precious time with Alys, broken in body and spirit, but her relief to see them was able to bring some thaw to her heart. The present situation is this. They have done all they can do on the reconstructive surgery on her elbow. They think it has gone well, and we are praying she will recover full extension. The remaining concern is her foot and ankle which was so badly fractured that the surgeons said they had not seen anything like it, and that they had never done the kind of surgery that would be needed, but they were willing to have a go. However, they are prepared to discharge her as soon as possible so we can get her med-vac-ed back to the USA and get her in for the required surgery here which will have her home for the rehab. Through our wonderful family physician this morning, she has been referred to a DC surgeon who is one of the leading foot orthopod's in the nation so the Lord has provided. She is badly bruised inevitably and we also want to get further checks on her head and eye.

I have spoken to the insurance company this morning and everyone is working throughout the day (16 hour time difference with NZ) to try and effect this evacuation for Alys so that Celia and Alys will be able to return on the same flight to DC that Christa has to come back on, on Wednesday afternoon. Please pray this is so. If this works out, then when she wakes in a few hours time, Celia will be heading up to Auckland to help Alys clear out her room, which is in the same apartment, next to Daniela's room, her close friend who was one of the three who perished in the accident. She will probably be participating in a memorial service there so we will trust for the Lord's enablement.

Prayers are requested for continual ministrations to Alys as she is healed from this trauma. The story has been headlines in UK and USA as well as NZ and she was named on our DC news on all channels this weekend. So far, we have been protected from having to respond to journalists and producers. She really needs to be covered.

Another similar story broke in the Washington Post this morning. Ron Luce is the founder and leader of Teen Mania, a big youth missions organization. Yesterday, his daughter and a young man were the two survivors of a light plane crash on the way to a youth event in Kansas. The three other passengers died. The young man later died of his injuries and Ron's daughter is in a serious burns unit. Please pray for her and her parents. Let's continue to pray for the protection of this next generation at this crucial season of preparation for them as they move into the extraordinary season of "exploits" that the Lord has prepared for them. We have found ourselves in intense spiritual warfare for this, that nothing will loosen them from their traction with the will of God for their life and generation.

Once again, thanks to all of you, our friends and family, in the more than 30 nations that we have heard from. We have been the recipients of the Lord's love and wisdom through you. We will always be grateful. Praise the Lord for his delivering mercies. May the Lord's protection, from dangers seen and unseen, be your portion daily, and for all your families.

Please forgive this general letter as time is presently limited to answer you all with the same personal care with which you have written to us. The Lord's hand to give to you, is bigger than mine, so we will ask that hand to be upon you, and stretched out to you.

With much affection and appreciation and esteem,
Stuart and Celia

Dear Church Family,

In the next section in our Philippian series, 4:1-3, Paul pleads with two women in the church to be in agreement. We have referenced this several times so far as part of what Paul has in mind when he calls the Philippian church to unity. We are not told the nature of the disagreement, but it is obviously known to Paul and the entire church. Imagine how it would feel to be Euodia and Syntyche and have your disagreement addressed before the whole church in the context of what Paul has written in the letter so far. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others (2:3-4), the example of Christ’s humility and servant hood (2:6-11), and an attitude and perspective that embraces current sacrifice and suffering for the sake of the prize of knowing Jesus (3:12-21). How much of the justification for all disagreements and division within the body of Christ would melt away in light of these considerations and attitudes? Yet Paul does not command them to be in agreement. Instead, he pleads with them. He also realizes that they might need help in being reconciled. We do not know who the loyal yoke fellow was that Paul calls on to help them, but we do see that others are not to sit in judgment over Euodia and Syntyche, but rather to help them.

The disagreement between these two women must have been significant for the entire church for Paul to address it in this way. Consider how else Paul could have handled this. He could have advised Epaphroditus on what to say privately to each woman. Or he could have written them a private letter. The fact that he handles it in such a public manner points to a situation in which these women appear to be important leaders in the congregation. How else could their disagreement have such an effect on the entire church that Paul chooses, and is able, to address it so publicly? Further, if they are not leaders, it is difficult to understand how Paul is being pastoral by exposing the disagreement between two members in such a public manner. And Paul does name them as fellow workers, who have contended at my side. That image of contending side by side presents a picture of equal status rather than one of subordination.

When it comes to men and women in the church and the question of roles, leadership and authority, Paul is best known for the passages in 1 Cor 11, 1 Cor 14:33 and 1 Tim 2:12-14. From such passages, we would certainly expect that all church leadership and all prominent ministers would be male. Yet there are passage like this one and Romans 16 where Paul talks about women as if they are prominent leaders and ministers in church bodies. In Romans 16, Paul commends Phoebe to the entire church to be received in a manner worthy of the saints, mentions the wife’s name Priscilla before the husband Aquila (which is true 4 out of the 5 times this couple is mentioned in the New Testament), and names a woman, Junias, as an apostle. In this listing of fellow workers, Paul includes men and women and there is no indication of distinction in roles or authority. In fact, it is the women, Mary, Tryphaena, Tryphosa and Persia who are specifically commended as hard workers. This is the same term that Paul applies to ministers who he calls people to respect for their work (1 Thess 5:12). Why does Paul assign this praise to only women in Romans 16? Perhaps women were the harder workers, but it is more likely that Paul is seeking to establish women as fully capable of ministry in a culture where they were considered inferior.

The issue of women in church leadership is controversial and was not the topic of my Sunday message. Instead, I focused on what is indisputable from Philippians 4:3 and Romans 16: Paul ministered alongside women and highly valued and appreciated their contribution to the work of the gospel. To focus on this while the women are away on the Women’s Retreat is a message primarily to men. Do we as men appreciate and properly value the necessary contribution of women to our own spiritual growth and the growth of our church body?

I remember the Sunday service on the first Women’s Retreat after my wife Sharon died. Stuart made the point that while men and women’s retreats are great and a valuable part of our church, we should never lose sight that it is men and women together that reflect the image of God, not men and women apart. He was referring to Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Later in chapter 2 we see that Adam by himself, without Eve, is deemed not good. And so Eve is created out of a part of Adam, and different from Adam as female. It is only when the two come together in one flesh, in relationship, that the image of God is fully manifest. Stuart then talked about all that he had gained spiritually from women in his life, Celia of course, but also sisters and mothers in the Lord. This idea of men and women together applies to marriage but also applies to the fellowship of men and women in the body of Christ. At that time, my own loss of female companionship had given me a deeper appreciation for women in my life.

Since God designed us to fully manifest his image as both male and female, a unity that was shattered at the Fall, it follows that the cause of the gospel, the work of redemption, requires both men and women contending side by side. As an expression of the body of Christ, we should be a fellowship characterized by a deep appreciation and respect for the opposite sex. And as we grow in this, we will be “children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation in which we shine as stars in the universe.”

Since the beginning, Satan has been at work to disrupt this unity that brings God glory. And history, including church history, is a tragic testament to his effectiveness. We looked at some fleshly attitudes that disrupt healthy relationships amongst men and women. Obviously God-given sexual attraction operating outside the boundaries of marital covenant is a problem. In a culture that views consent and not covenant as the only prerequisite for sexual relations, all relationships become potentially sexualized since there is always the possibility of consent. This is disastrous for healthy male female relationships. The most important thing that Christian men can do to contend against this is to refuse the temptation to look at or think about anyone sexually other than their spouse.

Another fleshly attitude is to view the differences between men and women as areas of competition rather than complement, or more of a trial than a treasure. This comes from our need, having lost our sense of identity in relationship with God, to establish in ourselves our sense of worth or value. When people are different, we need to see their difference as inferior. To view them, in their difference, as honorable and valuable is a threat to our own sense of value and honor because we are not like they are. So, between men and women, there is the tendency to ridicule and criticize the opposite sex for how they are different or not like us. Instead we ought to recognize the complementary role of the opposite sex, viewing the differences as needing each other and benefiting from each other.

As we prepared for communion we looked at Paul’s well known communion passage in 1 Cor 11. Paul’s warning to the Corinthians to not take communion in an unworthy manner is not a reference to personal sin, but rather to a community that was not properly valuing one another and thus not recognizing the body of the Lord. For our focus, to recognize the body of the Lord is to recognize the value of men and women and our need for each other.

In Him with you,
Bo

Dearest family,

Let me begin with words of thanks to all of you for being such supportive and committed members of our spiritual community. It was so wonderful to have a full house on Sunday for our remembrance of the person, not the church, Christ Our Shepherd. The common loaf and cup just say afresh to us what Jesus said of himself: “I am the good shepherd…I lay down my life for the sheep.” Our focus was not on people, though we do honor those who have faithfully served this body over the years, but on Jesus, who invites us to his meal of celebration. Nothing could possibly embody more effectively what church is all about, and has been all about these past 25 years as communion: about waiting for and on Jesus, and about waiting for and on one another.

Thank you for being one of those sheep in this fold, this flock, this pasture, that is committed to do the two things that Jesus said his sheep would always do: hear his voice and follow in his footsteps. I also want to give a special thanks to those who attended the all-night of prayer from 10:00pm-6:00am. What a great and essential way to celebrate an anniversary. As usual, no one could believe how quickly the time sped by, as the prayer burdens were shared by all, and intercession was non-stop. There was a particularly intense two hours of prayer for the children and the next generation, which is only fitting as we consider the next 25 years. I would also like to express thanks to all of you who have spoken to, texted, emailed or phoned Celia and I with your words of encouragement, and your response to Sunday. As you’ve often heard me say, we are all in need of encouragement. It has meant so much to us and strengthens us to continue to “press on”. Although we are “under-shepherds” at best, the most important designation of our lives is less the descriptor “pastor” than it is “sheep”. Together with you, over all these years, as we have raised our six children in the context of this community, it has been the experience of being “just another family” in a loving context of kind, nurturing and supportive fellowship and friendship, that has blessed us and formatively shaped our lives and loves.

As a very brief meditation, we noted some of the constituent elements of Paul’s stock-taking in Phils.3:12-14: his humility in inviting a true evaluation of his life; his intense focus on what mattered most; his consuming longing and desire for God’s future on God’s terms. He could stretch and strain for what was ahead because he was also standing firm and anchored in the non-negotiable realities of what Christ’s cross had accomplished in the past, and of what Christ’s coming would accomplish for the future. Our dependence is not on our history or what we have established in terms of constituted church life, but on the same verities that Paul depended on. We have never allowed any talk about “founders” at COSC. We don’t have any “aristocrats” or “landed gentry”! As scripture tells us, there is no other foundation laid than that which is laid in Jesus Christ. Our church life began with a three year exposition of the book of Ephesians, known as the “queen of the epistles” because it is the heart of Paul’s exposition and experience of the church. This was key foundation-laying for COSC. What could be a better and more desirable description of us than this: “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him too you are being built up together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.” (Ephs.2:19-22) Sounds like a church I would want to be part of, and we still want to become and remain!

Anniversaries are wonderful events if they serve to recover a God-worshiping, Christ-exalting spiritual remembrance rather than just a self-affirming sentimental reminiscence. I mentioned that there are two equal and opposite, necessary responses to the past according to scripture: knowing what and how to remember, and knowing what and how to forget. So we find ourselves at a moment like this, after 25 years, on a very fine pivot. The holy remembrance of the past provokes worship and thanksgiving, maybe tears as well as laughter; but to ensure that we don’t just become complacent or self-satisfied, there is a forgetting of the past, including victories and successes, that spurs us to consider only what is yet to be attained, the work that is yet to be done, the incompletions that we strive to yet see fulfilled, the immaturity that we yet long to mature, the latent that we yet want to become patent, the future hopes and expectations that we yet want to become the experience of our present reality That describes how I feel at a time like this, exactly.

Talking of maturity, after 25 years, how mature are we? After Paul encourages us to take inventory: to have a correct evaluation of ourselves, to have a concentrated focus on God’s future, to have a consuming desire for Jesus, he adds: “All of us who are mature should take such a view of things.” (Phil.3:15) My prayer is that our response to the past we that have been so blessed to experience these past 25 years, in both our holy remembering and holy forgetting, will indeed be the mark and the manifestation of our maturity. Indeed we’re on the way, and not arrived. Indeed we’re looking forward and not back. Indeed we’ve had our lions and bears, but we want God to give us our Goliaths.

Finally, let’s take heed to the maternity ward of this work of God that is COSC. It was originally born out of a prayer meeting in the basement of a DC apartment building, as a few scattered sheep fervently asked God to plant churches in DC. 25 years ago there was no where near the variety and diversity of church life that we have now. God has answered those prayers. COSC was born out of a prayer meeting in 1987 with a distinctive call to the District. The acquisition of our present building, our placement in this geography was born out of an all-church period of 40 days of prayer and fasting 11 years later, in 1998. Every step over these years has been a walk of faith in response to a word from the Lord, not a decision made on the basis of resources we had. As we walked, God provided. Nothing has changed church! We cannot lose either God-revealed vision or this DNA of faith. The remembrance of our roots reminds us of what will be as crucial for future advances and possession. What is obtained in prayer can only be sustained by prayer. What is born in miracle can only be maintained by miracle. What is the work of faith can only continue to work by faith.

One of the foundational scriptures the Lord gave us way back at the beginning was Isaiah 37:31: “Once more a remnant…will take root below and bear fruit upward.” What is true for private personal life holds good for public corporate life: take care of the hidden life and God will take care of the evident life. If there’s no root there will be nothing but leaves and no fruit. Maybe I’ll see you at the next night of prayer as we seek God together for this next season of COSC’s life. The three priorities for COSC’s life are: ASK, ASK and ASK!

And don’t forget….we’re going to remove the pews so you may want to donate a chair so you have something to sit on. There’s nothing worse than sitting cross-legged on the floor through one of Bo’s long sermons!

Still pastorally yours,
Stuart

Dearest family,

I began my message on Sunday by saying that I would only be able to cover half of what I wanted to, but then I ended up only covering half of that half! Apologies, but I also think that what was communicated was sufficient, and what the Lord wanted for the day’s portion. I have been so encouraged by the many responses I have received from so many of you about what the Holy Spirit applied to your hearts. When you are teaching and preaching, you just have to trust the Lord with the process and the outcomes, especially when you are more aware of the challenges and weaknesses of the presentation. How relieving that it is always His Word and that He determines that it will not return void. Hallelujah!

As part of our “Finding Father” series I was arguing that if scripture describes Abraham as our “father” in faith, then as true sons and daughters of Abraham, we should learn something about our sonship by observing what scripture presents as his spiritual fathering DNA. This is an exposition that is first made by Jesus himself as we saw in John 8 when he challenges the Pharisees about a true understanding of what it is to be a true descendant of Abraham, and thus lays the foundation for Paul’s treatment of the matter in Romans 4. Similarly, Paul concludes that the key issue is not about the physical family of Abraham but about the spiritual faith of Abraham that then defines the family likenesses. Thus this text shows us the key marks of father Abraham that will be the disposition of those who are his sons and daughters - that’s you and me. The spiritual fatherhood of Abraham is emphasized: “He is the father of us all…He is our father in the sight of God…” And lest someone says that this is only applicable to the Jews he was addressing, sandwiched between those two statements we read: “I have made you a father of many nations” which affirms what has already been said in v11: “so he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised.” So what is it about Abraham as a spiritual father that will be characteristic of his spiritual sons and daughters, his “offspring” as Paul describes us. I only had time to make some brief comments about one of the four characteristics I wanted to point out, and that was about the persuasion of faith: “…being fully persuaded…” (v21)

Because of the trustworthiness, the guarantee of the heavenly Father’s grace, sons can live free from doubt, free from anxiety, free from uncertainty, free from fear about anything that could possibly separate them from the love of the Father, or the will of the Father. If the Father was fully persuaded, so should and so could the sons be. This is compelling because for Abraham there was literally no conceivable hope. Faith was not gong to be assisted by Viagra, or by fertility treatment. But Abraham did not allow the feelings of hopelessness (the subjective) to overcome the facts of faith (the objective). The text says that he did not do two things: he did not weaken in his faith (v19) and he did not waver (stagger) through unbelief. Biblical faith is utterly realistic and true to circumstance. The text gives us a father’s lesson to a son in what to do when there’s nothing that can be done. Note these two responses:
He examined the facts: Truth is not a threat. Tampering with it is, because that means that if we adjust the reality of the circumstances and the need, we are actually less likely to trust God and seek God because we have rationalized it, taken the measure of it, managed it, marginalized it, minimized it, or just ignored it, or denied it. Why do we want to make things appear not as bad as they really are? These are not my words but scripture’s: v19, “He faced the fact that his body was as good as dead” which of course is not good at all. And then there’s more reality to cope with. Sarah isn’t a spring chicken bursting with eggs either. Anything else to add Abraham? “Sarah’s womb was also dead.” Womb, tomb, doom, gloom. Game, set and match. I guess it’s all over. God will have to rethink redemptive history! The whole eternal plan for the universe, forget just my life, is scuppered. To face the facts is the very stuff of faith, not the denial of it. Facing and stating the facts is not a negative confession. It is bringing the reality of a son’s life to the love of the Father.
He exercised faith: “Abraham in hope believed…” The reason we need the shield of faith is precisely because of all the fiery darts of doubts. But that which would seek to quench faith becomes the very fuel that serves to provoke our continuing quest to know the Father’s will in all circumstances. The worst that can happen is that we’ll end up spending a lot of time asking the Father about these things in the Son’s name, and as we’ve seen from my last series on asking, this presses us into intimacy with the Father. In Jesus’ words. It invites us to abide in Him more. Whatever happens is good for our experience of sonship, whether it’s what we want or what we would not choose.

The point is that Abraham was not threatened. It was Calvin who cut to the chase and said: “Everything by which we are surrounded conflicts with the promise of faith.” Our inadequacies may well be a threat to ourselves, may well be an embarrassment before others, but they are not a threat or a disqualifier to Father God. Did we not bring them with us into his presence when we first came and did he not accept us just as we were. In the words of the old hymn, “I came to Jesus as I was / Weary and worn and sad.” Our weaknesses, the places where faith is tested, become what someone has wonderfully described as “the arenas of his power.” The text says that our father did not weaken, but he understood that the circumstance was in fact not a death threat edged in black, delivered by a dark gloved claw, but an invitation to be strengthened. Abraham was not threatened.

On the contrary, he thrived. The text says in v20 that he “was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God.” We want to tell Abraham not to be so hasty on the glory bit! No need to be too trusting, too hopeful! But of course, the glory was not grounded in the satisfaction of his circumstances; his worship was not a response to prayers answered but to the one he knew had heard his prayer. That was enough. His worship did not need a changed circumstance in order for it to be fueled, but only the changeless character of God. Likewise, every son’s weakness is an invitation to Father’s strength; all barrenness is an invitation to His fertility; all desert is an invitation to his forestation program; all chaos is an invitation to his order; all inability is an invitation to his power. So the result was two-fold: Abraham was edified – he got strong by simply refusing to weaken; and God was exalted – there was no room for the enemies of faith, because the test strengthened trust. I love the way that Martin Luther put it with such typical earthiness: “Faith grips reason by the throat and strangles the beast. Venture no more to criticize the word of God. Sit thee down. Listen to His words and believe them.” Or how about the hymnal words of Charles Wesley:
Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees,
And looks to that alone;
Laughs at impossibilities
And cries ‘It shall be done!’
So the first thing we note about our spiritual father that will characterize our sonship is the persuasion of faith. But what was Abraham’s faith persuaded about, that true sons and daughters of the Father should equally be persuaded about? That’s for the next message in the series!

Pastorally yours
Stuart

Dear Church Family,

In Philippians 3:12-4:1, Paul continues to encourage the Philippians by sharing his perspective on his Christian life and calling on them to imitate him and stand firm in their faith. Coming off of our celebration of Holy Week , we remember the cry of Jesus on the cross, “It is finished.” Jesus completed his work, his sacrifice which was necessary for our reconciliation with God. We owe our salvation to the finished work of Christ. But here in Phil 3:12-14, Paul, in talking about his own life, is saying, “It is not finished.” When Paul says he has not already obtained all this he is referring to all the suffering and resurrection power that is involved in knowing Christ Jesus. He considers that to be a work in progress. Paul wants to take hold of something, knowing Christ, and it is crucial that he does not consider to have it completely yet. Since he does not yet have it completely, he continues to put forth great effort in pursuit of it.

Here Paul is using the analogy of a distance runner in the middle of a race. His perspective is looking forward to the finish line and expending the effort necessary to get there. The word translated “press on” is the same word used for “persecute” or “persecution”. It has the idea of active pursuit, never giving up or relaxing. So Paul, who zealously persecuted Christians, now applies that same zeal to the effort of knowing Christ. Consider the perspective that would be the opposite of what Paul is presenting here. This would be a runner who is not in a race; is just out for a jog or has finished a race. This person would be focused on relaxing, either running at an enjoyable pace or resting from the exertions of a race. They would not be pushing themselves toward the goal of the finish line.

Distance running is a sport that puts a premium on effort and straining. The whole point is to expend yourself completely during the race to reach the finish line. This is not easy to do. During a race there is a struggle between the natural desire not to suffer and the desire to win or be your best. Pressing on requires embracing the suffering, pushing yourself more in order to gain at the finish. You have to care more about how you will feel at the finish line than how you are feeling during the race. There is a sense of abandon in pushing yourself in a race. It feels like you will not be able to sustain the pace. That somehow you will finish but you do not know how.

Paul is presenting an attitude toward life in which he is focused on what it takes to achieve the goal, which is the future finish line where he knows Christ fully and completely. To get there, he knows that he will need to embrace suffering rather than pursuing the comforts and pleasures of present life. And then he says, All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. This is sobering because I do not think that we, as Christians in an affluent and tolerant nation, do take such a view of things.

In verses 18-19, Paul refers to Christians who are living by a different pattern or perspective and is concerned that the Philippians will be influenced by their perspective. We are not sure who these people were exactly. But it is significant how much we can see aspects of modern day American Christianity in Paul’s description. They are enemies of the cross, which is the opposite of taking up your cross. This is a view of Christianity that wants nothing to do with suffering. All the emphasis is on how God wants to bless and provide and make our lives more fulfilling. They reject the work of the cross and any experience of losing their lives and instead focus on building up their lives in the present. Therefore, their destiny is destruction. They are on the wrong side of Jesus’ statement about discipleship, “If anyone would come after me, he must take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Luke 9:23-24) They live to satisfy their appetites, the needs and longings of the flesh: “their god is their stomach”. These are not Christians living completely debauched lives. They are Christians whose mind is on earthly things. Their entire focus is on how God wants to bless them in the present and they look to experience God in that way. Therefore, they wrongly interpret their own lives as to what is godly and what is not. Their glory is in their shame. Imagine the prosperity gospel in all its various forms. Glorying in one’s wealth because it is believed to be a sign of God’s blessing when it will bring shame because it reflects a failure to realize and live out God’s perspective on worldly wealth.

This is not about bashing a particular brand of American Christianity, although I believe that Paul would certainly bash it. It is about looking at ourselves and realizing how much we too have been influenced by a perspective and pattern of living that is too focused on earthly things and not our future in heaven. We are susceptible to this because in our affluence we have the opportunity to focus on and pursue what will make us feel good now. When we do this, our race toward the prize of knowing Christ is hindered. And we can easily lose sight of God’s presence and working in our lives because we are focused on earthly things and he is not.

If taking up our cross is a major part of discipleship and our race is not finished, we can expect to encounter hardship and suffering in our lives. This does not mean that God has forgotten us or that he is failing to love us. Nor does it mean that we are not progressing in our Christian lives, as if Christian maturity resulted in less suffering and more triumphant victories (this was not true for Paul). But these times should result in growing in our relationship with Christ. We may be losing from a perspective of what has earthly value but we are gaining in the life of knowing Christ.

What does taking up our cross… participating in Christ’s sufferings... becoming like him in his death… actually look like in our lives? This is an excellent question to be asking ourselves and one another. Sometimes we experience this as suffering circumstances and hardships that come into our lives and are beyond our control. They make our lives harder, are experienced as loss, but if we face them with faith, we can grow closer to God. Such things have a way of getting our minds off of earthly things and increasing our hope in heaven. And sometimes we need to choose to forsake that which promises value and gain in our earthly lives because we value knowing Christ more. It is realizing that there is a cost to these decisions but choosing them because we are not living for this life. We must not assume that a choice that enhances our earthly lives is always the right choice in following Jesus. In fact, we should assume there will be choices to sacrifice rather than gain if we are on the path of true discipleship. We need to trust God to guide us and help us recognize these choices. And we need one another to help us be faithful to this aspect of discipleship.

I close with a quote from Gordon Fee’s commentary. “So certain was Paul that [Christ had risen]… and that Christ’s resurrection guaranteed his own, that he could throw himself into the present with a kind of holy abandon, full of rejoicing and thanksgiving; and not because he enjoyed suffering, but because Christ’s resurrection had given him a unique perspective on present sufferings as well as an empowering presence whereby suffering was transformed into intimate fellowship with Christ himself.”

May we know that transformation in our suffering,
Bo

Dear Church Family,

In our Philippian series we have come to Phil 3:10-11, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” And so, on Resurrection Sunday, we looked at what it means to know the power of his resurrection. This is not a factual knowing for Paul, as in having a belief in the truth that Jesus rose from the dead. There is something personal and deeply meaningful to Paul’s life that is the power of his resurrection. What does this mean for Paul and what does this mean for us? To answer this, we need to pay attention to the two things that accompany this desire of Paul to know the power of his resurrection: to know Christ and to know the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. We cannot go straight to the power of the resurrection without first engaging these other two emphases.

I want to know Christ. This is the primary desire of Paul’s life. Knowing Christ is not a means to accessing power for his life. It is not about gaining God as a powerful ally in his pursuit of happiness or fulfillment or significance or anything. This is why Paul can say in chapter 1, “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” The prospect of facing death does not bother Paul because the threat of death will not threaten what he values most, his relationship with Christ. In fact, because he believes in the resurrection, death is gain because he will then be with Christ more fully. Paul talks of the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. So whether it is facing death or experiencing the loss of things that had given him status and significance, he is unphased because they pale in comparison to knowing Christ.

This begs the question for his readers, as I believe Paul intended: do I value Christ as much as Paul does? Do I consider knowing Christ to have surpassing value in comparison to anything else I might possess or pursue? And what if the answer is that I do not? What if I look at my life, my concerns, my pursuits and realize that much of it is oriented toward goals other than knowing Christ? Perhaps I do not have Paul’s deep appreciation of the value of knowing Christ and therefore I do not match his passionate commitment to know Christ.

What would Paul say if I confessed this to him? Would he dismiss me as uncommitted, not worthy of the gospel? No. Paul, like Christ, is mindful of our weaknesses and that we are a work in progress. But neither would he placate us by telling us everything is okay and we need not concern ourselves with our lack of passion or commitment. Paul is clear in his writings that he spends a great deal of effort and striving in his own pursuit of the goal of knowing Christ. And he presents his striving as a model for all disciples.

How do we become like Paul? We looked at two necessary and complementary factors that need to operate in our lives so that we grow in our passion and commitment to know Christ. The first is fairly obvious. We need to gain more of an appreciation for the riches of knowing Christ. The more we appreciate what is ours in knowing Christ, the more we will value Him. These riches include a righteousness before God, God as our Father, a future inheritance, and the love of God to name but a few. We need to feed off these truths so that they become more and more foundational in our lives. And it is encouraging to know that God in Christ and the Holy Spirit is working in us to help us gain in this knowing. In Ephesians, Paul prays, “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.” The wonderful complement to our desire to know Christ is Christ’s desire to know us. This is what Paul is talking about in Phil 3:12 when he says, “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”

Along with growing in our appreciation of the value of Christ, meditating upon, experiencing and grasping the riches that are ours in Christ through faith, we also must forsake anything that would compete with knowing Christ as the most important pursuit if our lives. This is when we experience the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. This echoes Jesus’ cry to all who would be his disciples to take up their cross and follow him. To take up our cross is to become like him in his death. In Luke 14:25-33 Jesus explains what it means to take up your cross and his main point is that knowing him has to be of surpassing value in our lives if we are to follow him. This is a taking up of our cross because we must be willing to suffer the loss of other values, even to the point of death. Jesus’ illustrations of building a tower or a king going to war show that he is not talking about earning the right to be a disciple. He is talking about what it takes to successfully walk the path of discipleship.

We know that for Jesus, the path of obedience required first the loss of his divine status and eventually the loss of his life. At Easter we celebrate the salvation that we gain from Christ’s obedience. But Paul reveals that we are not just benefactors of Christ’s obedience. We are to be imitators, to share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. This was true for Paul’s life. He faced the loss of everything in his life that gave him status when he came to Christ, and he is facing the possibility of execution for his allegiance to Christ. Luke 9:23-4, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lost it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” Consider all the biblical characters who faced loss in their lives on the way to fulfilling God’s purposes (Abraham with Isaac is a prime example).

To take up your cross means that all disciples will face the choice of suffering loss for Christ’s sake. The power of the resurrection means that though we experience loss, we believe that we will find life on the other side. We may not be able to see it, but we trust by faith that it is there and that we will experience it; possibly here in our lives in this age and certainly in the age to come. We need to have the knowledge of the power of the resurrection to choose the sacrifice. Hebrews 11 tells us that Abraham was able to offer Isaac as sacrifice because “he reasoned that God could raise the dead.”

We are a people who believe in the resurrection of Christ. We are called to be a people who believe in the power of the resurrection for our own lives. Therefore we are ready to take up our cross and follow our crucified and risen Savior. Let’s explore further what this means for us next Sunday.

In Him,
Bo

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Stuart led us into communion this past Sunday, Palm Sunday, by sharing with us the importance, not only of remembering the events of holy week, but of listening to the words spoken by Jesus during the time leading up to his crucifixion.

Jesus’ ministry was marked by three periods of emphasis in his teaching. From the time of his baptism to the feeding of the fie thousand his teaching was dominated by parables of growth, describing the coming kingdom in terms of a harvest, of agriculture, and similar images; from that point until the transfiguration, Jesus teaching was characterized by parables of grace (consider the lost coin, lost sheep, and the prodigal sons); finally, after the transfiguration and leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion, we repeatedly find parables of grief, in which Jesus warns his hearers about the judgment to come and the folly of unbelief.

At the transfiguration, in the face of a glorious visual transformation of the Son of God before the eyes of Peter, James and John, it is not this visual display of glory that the Father takes most effort to emphasize. When the Father speaks from heaven, he does not say “This is my son, look at him”, but rather, “This is my son… Listen to him!” (Matt. 17:5). So it was with a sense of sobriety that Stuart highlighted this final stage in Jesus’ teaching, the parables of grief. During this period we find the seven woes against the teachers of the law and the Pharisees (Matt. 23); the parables of the wedding banquet (Matt 22), the ten virgins, and the talents (Matt. 25) warn of the folly of treating the coming King lightly. Again and again we hear the warning of coming judgment.

But we can’t properly understand these warnings of judgment unless we are convinced of the pure grace which precedes them, and the grace which permeated even this final stage of Jesus’ walk to the cross. As Stuart described it, with every step toward his own death, Jesus took a step to heal, save and deliver those around him. Zacchaeus was redeemed by Jesus’ simple, gracious invitation to dine with him. Lazarus, dead in his grave, was beyond any imaginable possibility of healing; but even as Jesus marched toward his own death, he spoke a word of life over Lazarus to raise him from the grave. As Stuart put it, “Jesus doesn’t approach our graves to read our custom designed epitaphs of helplessness and hopelessness. He doesn’t come to leave flowers of condolence.” He comes to raise us up to life again!

But there is another theme that permeates the words of Jesus on holy week, namely the Fatherhood of God. Stuart encouraged us to begin with John 12 (the Triumphal Entry) and read straight through to the end of the gospel and note how many times Jesus makes reference to the Father (or to “the One”, also a common reference to the Father). In his three final cries to the Father we can learn a great deal about who this Father is and how we are invited to relate to him.
1. Abba, Father… not what I will, but what you will (Mark 14:36). Jesus exemplifies what it means to yield to the will of the Father.
2. Father, forgive them (Luke 23:34). Jesus assures us of the grace we have been given by the Father, enabled by his sacrifice.
3. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (Luke 23:46). The Father can be trusted, even in the middle of hell’s hurricane.

After his resurrection, Jesus made clear what he saved us for; he said to Mary Magdalene at the tomb, “I am returning to my Father and your Father” (John 20:17). Jesus saved us to make us sons and daughters of his Father.

May we, this Holy Week, listen to the words of Jesus, heeding both his warning against treating the advancing kingdom lightly, and his invitation to know and experience the heart of the Father.

Your brother,
Ben

Dearest family,

I know you thought we were through with the parable of the prodigal sons a long time ago in this series, but because you are so familiar with it now, it is a good place to start. They are both sons. Their identity as sons has never been reclassified by the father. It’s how he sees them, how he loves them, how he provides for them. But both of them make equally bad choices in their relationship with the father, and both choose a different persona. Though a son, the younger wanted to be a “hired servant”, the very person that Jesus said could not live in intimacy with the father, or be taken into the father’s confidence. The older brother betrays himself in his angry outburst when he describes his life as “slaving for you”. What this does tell us is that though a son, you can in fact end up living as a slave or a servant, and consequently, you will only see the father from a slave’s or servant’s perspective. There are so many who are called and loved as sons and daughters who are “hardly sons” but in fact living as servants and slaves. Fundamental to all healing and deliverance is the recovery of the assurance of our sonship and God’s fatherhood.

But what about this “hired servant” idea? If you remember, there were three levels of enslavement or service and he happened to choose the best of the three, the one that had a little more give and benefit than the bondsmen and the slaves – but whether you eat cake in prison or dirt, you’re in prison! No matter how you dress up or rationalize your bondage, you’re a slave. You can give slavery a good name if you really work at it. You can try all you want to make it sound good, feel normal, but it’s a world away from being in the father’s embrace and living in the father’s house. Being a son is about being both near and dear. Why this hired-servant thing? Because he believes he has forfeited being a son, by killing the heart of the father. He has believed the lie that he is now excluded from that kind of intimate relationship, or that having once sinned against it, it cannot be recovered. Somehow he still thinks he can make a deal with the father that will at least be better than the slavery of the pig-sty but still some kind of servitude that could never be the sonship that once was. The only thing that could possibly change this for him would be a revelation of the true nature both of fatherhood and sonship – the same way there are thousands sitting in pews who need a revelation of the running father, who is unashamed by the tunic up around his waist, unashamed of the way he is revealing his fatherly needs and passions for the son, welcoming them home again to an experience of sonship, sealing their deliverance from the slavery of that pig-sty, and assuring them that they will never be a slave again to fear and bondage. We have not been healed and delivered from the enslavement of Satan, to become a hired hand for the Father.

Being a hired servant was what the son knew best to be, apart from his father’s grace. But hear me: the love of the father will not allow us to be or become what we are not. In any case, his idea that by working he was somehow going to be able to earn to pay back, or save to recover what was lost, was unattainable, plain impossible. It turns out that just as the father was always the father, so the son, despite all that had happened to disfigure his identity or appear to disbar his sonship, was still a son, was always a son. Maybe a dead son, but still a son and not a servant. Maybe a disobedient son, but still a son and not a servant. Maybe a delinquent son, but still a son and not a servant. The father has no other desire or intention but to have a son: he can raise a dead son, he can restore a disobedient son; he can redeem a delinquent son. So how does the father respond to the son who has chosen to be a hired servant, not a son? He reinstates him to every vestige of sonship: the robe, the ring and the roast.

The older brother was no different. In his anger he exposes himself. “I’ve been slaving for you.” Long before Paul wrote to the Romans or to the Galatians about being slaves again to fear, the contrast between a slave and a true son is presented by Jesus. The two sons are equal in their estrangement from the heart of the father, whether through license or whether through legalism. Here is the tragedy of living in the father’s house as a slave. But it also shows us some of the bad fruits of this slavery, the evidences of this bondage.

As I shared on Sunday, pursuant to the last message I preached in this series, Jesus not only said that he would not leave us as orphans, but that he no longer even called us servants. Furthermore, having said that everyone who sins is a slave to sin, and pointing out that a slave has “no permanent place in the family” (Jn. 8:34-36), Jesus said that if He as the Son set us free we would be free indeed, just as He was as a true son of the Father. How amazing is the Spirit of adoption, but how virulently does the enemy of our souls want to deny us living with the rights of sons, and therefore the inheritance of sons and daughters.

Please find attached the summary of the powerpoints I showed on Sunday, that are Jack Frost’s presentation of some of the major differences between the heart of orphanhood and the heart of sonship. I do so hope that this helps you.

Finding Father together with you my brothers and sisters,
Stuart

Dear Church Family,

Philippians 3:1-9 ends up being a counterpoint to what we focused on last week in 2:12-13, “work out your salvation…” In this section of chapter 3, Paul is dealing not with salvation understood as sanctification but salvation as the foundation of our relationship with God through Christ. He is concerned about a group of people (known as Judaizers) who threaten the heart of that foundation. These were Jewish Christians who believed that Gentile believers needed to follow the Jewish law, primarily expressed in circumcision and adherence to dietary rules, in order to truly be the people of God. It is best understood that the Philippians were not currently being influenced by these people. Paul writes here very differently than he does to the Galatians who had been influenced. This is preventative and it is something that Paul has warned them about before.

Paul’s language in describing the Judaizers is intended, in the words of one commentator, “to turn the tables on them, as to what they think themselves to be about in contrast to what he thinks.” The term “dogs” was used by Jews to refer to Gentiles to indicate that they were unclean in God’s eyes. Paul is saying that these Judaizers, who believe that they are making the Gentile believers clean through circumcision, are in fact the dogs in God’s eyes. They think they are doing good, working for God’s righteousness, but they are in fact doing evil. And the word translated “mutilators” is used to talk about the ritual cutting of pagan priests, which was forbidden in the Law. Thus Paul characterizes their insistence on circumcision as pagan, having nothing to do with true worship of God. This is a bitter and scathing characterization from Paul. Does he really need to be so harsh? Consider that Gentile believers would easily be intimidated by Jewish believers. They would have been regarded as the spiritual heavy weights who knew the ways of God. Paul is deliberately tearing down any respect or awe that Gentiles might assign to the Judaizers and thus be led astray. And so it is helpful for Paul to talk about himself personally. He is not like Gentiles in comparison to Jewish believers. He has all the credentials and expertise of these Judaizers and more. So his rejection of their teaching and understanding carries weight.

Why is Paul so adamant against the understanding and ministry of these Judaizers? We see in Gal 2:11-14 that Peter does not share Paul’s perspective. Peter eats with Gentiles, but when some Jewish believers come, he withdraws and eats only with the Jews. It is likely that Peter understood dietary laws to be of little value, but to keep the peace he ate with the Jewish Christians who arrived. Peter had a viewpoint similar to Paul’s perspective on meat sacrificed to idols, as expressed in 1 Cor 7:8, “But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.” For Paul, the Philippians (and Galatians) would be much worse off if they adopted or were influenced by the understanding and teaching of the Judaizers. This dealt with the very heart of their relationship with God in Christ. And that is why Paul confronts Peter at Antioch.

For Paul, it is all about righteousness: “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ.” Our righteousness is what makes us acceptable or worthy of God’s approval. It is our basis for belonging to God. As we talked about before, Adam and Eve had an innate sense of righteousness that they lost at the Fall. In our flesh, we want something we do or something about us to be the basis of restoring that acceptance and sense of approval (remember Cain and his offering). We want to have a righteousness of our own. Paul utterly rejects this desire. He considers all of his former credentials of righteousness as a Jew not just completely worthless, but harmful as well. Any value that he places on these things is in direct competition with the value that he places on his relationship with Christ. He is talking in terms of what he is trusting in for his righteousness. To look toward any of these things is to take away from his trust in Christ. When he states, “I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ”, we need to realize that to assign them any value for righteousness would be to lose Christ. He states this clearly in Galatians 5:2, “Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.” This is why Paul is so concerned.

We looked at two different biblical images of foundations and buildings. One is presented by Paul in 1 Cor 3:10-15. Here the foundation is Jesus Christ and it has already been laid. What is built upon that foundation are works that will be proven to be worthy or unworthy when the Day brings it to light. But those works are not a part of the foundation; they are built upon the foundation. The other image is presented by Jesus in Matthew 7:24-27 and it is about building upon a rock versus building upon the sand. When we commit ourselves to obedience and working out our salvation, we are building upon our foundation of righteousness in Christ. But if we begin to see any of those works as being part of our rightouseness, we have shifted our foundation from the rock of Christ’s righteousness to the sand of our own righteousness.

We do not face the threat of Judaizers today. No one is telling us that we need to be circumcised or adhere to certain dietary laws in order to be fully righteous before God. But are there other things that we are tempted to look toward for our righteousness, a sense of approval? These may well be things pleasing to God that are a necessary part of building upon the foundation we have in Christ. But there is a problem if they become a part of the foundation itself, if we look to them not as a means of pleasing God but as enhancing our righteousness before Him, giving us a righteousness of our own.

A sound and healthy understanding of “being found in Christ, not having a righteousness of my own… but that which is through faith in Christ”, is absolutely necessary for a healthy commitment to obedience and working out our salvation with fear and trembling. Unless we are solid in our faith that our righteousness is established completely on Christ (and not any aspect of our performance or works), any attempt on our part to pursue obedience will likely falter. We will adopt a form of legalism, a superficial definition of righteousness that we are able to accomplish and therefore have confidence in. Or we will neglect obedience because it causes us too much anxiety when we fall short because we believe that our fundamental righteousness before God is at stake.

We are familiar with the image of a race in Hebrews 12 and the call to “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.” This image is also used by Paul in Gal 5:7-9, only here it is not sin, but the influence of the Judaizers that is the hindrance. “You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. ‘A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.’” Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to reveal where that yeast might be in our own lives and celebrate anew the foundation of righteousness that we have in Christ.

In Him,
Bo

Dear Church Family,

“Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed – not only in the my presence, but now much more in my absence – continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13-13). This is one of the famous theological passages of Philippians. It talks about the power of God working within us, which we recently celebrated in our generational Eucharist. And it also talks about our responsibility to live obediently, to work out our salvation. This phrase has caused considerable consternation because it sounds too much like salvation by works. In Ephesians 2:8-9, Paul writes, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” So why does Paul seem to imply here that we do have work to do in relation to our salvation? And that is the key question, why is Paul making this theological statement? Recall the idea that Paul’s theology is task oriented and has a specific purpose related to what he is addressing at the time. When we understand why Paul makes this statement, we understand how to accurately apply it to our own lives.

The main difficulty with this passage is the use of the word salvation associated with something that we work at. When we see that word (soteria in the Greek) we think about being saved, becoming a believer, being born again at the moment that we put our faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for our salvation. To talk about working that out implies that we do not yet have it, it remains something that we need to attain by our own efforts. But commentators have noted that Paul uses this word soteria in different ways and has a broader, more comprehensive, multi-tiered concept of salvation. One tier is the one that we tend to focus on. It is about what has happened to us when we come into saving relationship with Jesus Christ. But there is a future element to Paul’s understanding of salvation reflected in passages like Rom 13:11, “The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.” So Paul can talk of salvation that is not yet but is nearer than when we first believed. This is what we tend to call glorification, when we become all that we should be at the second coming of Christ. For Paul, salvation includes us being reconciled into relationship with God, but it also includes us being redeemed and restored to what we were meant to be. It is about becoming like Christ in our character and conduct, becoming holy. This will ultimately happen at the second coming of Christ, but it is an ongoing work of sanctification (or should be) in our lives. It is this aspect of salvation, our sanctification, that Paul has in mind in Phi 2:12.

It is the context that makes this clear. This is part of Paul’s call for them to conduct themselves in a manner worthy of the gospel, focusing especially on unity. And he continues in 2:15-16, “so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life.” So, when Paul then talks about their salvation, he is not talking about being saved from Hell. He is talking about God getting what He wants in our salvation, a holy people who conduct themselves in a manner worthy of the gospel. Paul is concerned that the Philippians become such a people. It is not enough that so many have come into saving relationship with Christ through his ministry. If those people fail to conduct themselves in a manner worthy of the gospel, Paul will consider his ministry to be a failure. And this is not all dependent on the work of God. If Paul believed that, he would be content to pray from Rome for their unity. Surely he did pray, but he obviously felt that it was also necessary to do something to exhort them to play their role. That is why he sends Epaphroditus back with this letter and plans to send Timothy to learn if they are in fact progressing toward unity.

So this working out of salvation is applied to their attention toward being unified. But this theological statement can be applied to all aspects of obedience in our lives. This working out of our salvation is all about obedience and Paul clearly sees obedience as central to the Christian life. This led me to the observation that we have developed a much more casual approach to obedience than is presented here, especially when we note the phrase “fear and trembling”. There are multiple sources for this. One is our fleshly desire for the freedom to be our own masters, to focus on our own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But there is also a negative view of obedience that comes not from our flesh, but rather a misunderstanding of how obedience relates to our salvation. For many who have struggled with legalism, obedience is wrongly connected to earning God’s acceptance and favor. A strong grace teaching, which emphasizes that acceptance and approval by God is found in Christ and not in our obedience, is a needed and welcome relief to them. But there can be a problem with the teaching on grace, or how it is received, particularly when it comes to obedience. It is easy for any talk of obedience to be associated with the old life of performing to gain God’s acceptance. And so obedience is perceived negatively, as the enemy of grace. And the whole idea of obedience in the Christian life is deemphasized in the name of properly emphasizing grace.

However, Paul, the apostle of grace, does not present the Christian life in terms of passive believers who have ceased from striving in obedience in order to enjoy the grace of God. Grace does not negate or reduce the importance of obedience. As expressed by Gordon Fee, “for Paul faith in Christ is ultimately expressed as obedience to Christ, not in the sense of following the rules, but of coming totally under His lordship, of being totally devoted to Him.” Jesus, in John 14:23-24, says “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.” We looked at other scriptures that give us a fresh understanding of how important obedience is to our relationship with God. Not in establishing that relationship, but in maintaining and growing in that relationship.

So our salvation, understood in the sense of being reconciled into relationship with God is entirely based on Christ’s obedience, not our own. Praise God. But our salvation, understood as becoming the people who God wants us to be to reflect His glory does depend on our obedience. This is another reason why we are more casual about obedience than we should be. We focus more on grace because that is where we gain the most for ourselves. The more we focus on God getting what He wants from us, pleasing Him (as Paul does), the more we will focus on obedience. Grace is all about our interests, gaining what we need from God. Our obedience is more about God’s interests, God gaining what He wants from us.

We concluded on Sunday by looking at a specific command that Paul brings in light of his theology of obedience: “Do everything without complaining or arguing” (Phi 2:14). Gordon Fee writes, “Because so many of us are prone to such behavior, it is easy to dismiss this as a very ‘mundane’ matter, but the very fact that Paul spends so much energy giving biblical and theological support to it suggests otherwise.” Paul is presenting that complaining and grumbling is not becoming of a child of God. It does not edify but rather tends to bring people down by dwelling on the negative. This is especially detrimental when you are enduring some form of hardship or suffering (as the Philippians were; see 1:29). At the heart of complaining is a preoccupation with our own interests, not the interests of Christ. And there is a lack of humility, a sense that we deserve better.

Let us ask God for a fresh appreciation for the importance of obedience as an expression of our devotion to Him. And let us take this command “Do everything without complaining” as a very practical way to put this obedience into practice.

In Him and unto Him,
Bo

Dear family,

There was a precious weightiness about our Generational Eucharist on Sunday, and the bowl, filled with our genograms, represented so much conviction and repentance and prayer. You would have seen Bo and I putting them all into sealed envelopes. They were all burned after the service. As far as the east is from the west, that’s how far he has removed our transgressions from us!

In the teaching session a couple of weeks ago, I spent more time focusing on generational RELATIONSHIP (both for good and bad) but it is also important to stress generational RESPONSIBILITY. It’s important that where there is generational sin that there be an experience of generational healing. However, there is a two-fold requirement for all of us:
1. To be free of the ravages and bondages of generational sin when we perceive it or experience it and to know the healing and delivering power of the cross and the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God, for our lives and those of our children and future generations.
2. To maintain our freedom by choosing to live responsibly and obediently as we live in our generation and raise the next.
We are not only invited to be aware of the ways that generational sin can relate to us and affect our lives, and to experience the Lord’s healing and deliverance from anything in this relationship of generations (not limited to the sins of fathers) but we are also invited to godly responsibility. God’s Word addresses every generation about its God-given responsibility to the next one. The abdication of generational responsibility invites and incites terrible things in the lives of the children. The single most identifiable mark of pagan religion that God chooses to identify is presented in Dt. 12:31: “they burned their sons and daughters as sacrifice.” Can there be a more destructive visual of generational sin and its effects? How about, “they aborted their sons and daughters” as a sacrifice to their own selfishness, their own lusts, their own conveniences.

Two key injunctions are repeated:
1. TEACH my word to your children (Dt. 11:19)
2. CELEBRATE with your sons and your daughters (Dt. 12:12)
Teaching and worship, both private and personal, and corporate and communal, are the non-negotiable responsibilities. In fact, this is a three generational project. “Teach them to your children and to their children after them.” (Dt. 4:9) As a grandfather now, I have a new generational responsibility to Noah, Maliya, Micah, Caleb and Esme. These are my darling grandkids. What is interesting is that the next verse reads: “Remember the day you stood before me at Horeb.” (Dt. 4:10) In other words, don’t forget the communication of my love through my laws. His promise for obedience is unequivocal. “All will be well with you and your children.” In my next message in the “Finding Father” series I will try and briefly revisit this matter of “generational responsibility.” Having experienced the Lord’s healing for the generational stuff that has oppressed us, what does it mean for us, whether single or married, to be responsible to our generations? How do we retain and maintain what has been attained and obtained?

I want to invite you to continue to respond with me to the call of Isaiah 58:12: to raise up “the foundations of many generations” and that of course includes the establishment of your own personal foundation. What is the basis of our present and future hope? Join me in this ongoing series.

Pastorally yours,
Stuart

Dearest family,

On Sunday we took time (so sorry!) to give what amounted to a long notice about our healing prayer ministry, in which context we sometimes have to deal with issues that have generational roots as well as fruits, where the freeing, redeeming and healing work of Jesus is needed. It’s not always about the more obvious sins and traumas which I certainly mentioned on Sunday. Sometimes it has to do with patterns of passive unengagement or non-involvement that leaves a legacy of unformed and unencouraged personhood. My aim on Sunday was merely to put the headline facts before you. There is a RELATIONSHIP of influence and effect between generations. The sins of the fathers do affect the sons. Scripture talks about “like mother like daughter.” Of course, there is equally an inheritance of possible blessing and giftedness. It is not one-sided. I ran out of time so was not able to say as much about the biblical call to RESPONSIBILITY to every generation.

So here’s the summary of what we’re trying to do as we want to be those described by the call of Isaiah 58:12 who raise up “the foundations of many generations.”
1. On Sunday I affirmed some spiritual facts about generational sin and the spiritual need for generational healing.
2. On Tuesday, we’ve invited you to come and sit in the sanctuary during the Healing Prayer Service. This begins at 7:30p.m. and concludes with communion.
3. If any of you missed last Sunday and want some further help and instruction in completing the genogram tool, (GENOGRAM ATTACHED) then Celia will be leading a short session before next Sunday’s service in the Fellowship Hall at 9:00a.m.
4. Next Sunday is our Family Communion, which this month will be our “New Wine” format with extended worship. In the context of this worship, we will conduct a generational healing liturgy in preparation for placing our genograms and confessions on the altar, to put them symbolically under the blood of Christ, and to avail ourselves of the power of the cross where all iniquity was borne, and thus leave them behind.

For this venture, “What is our hope?” Here is a short response.
1. In the midst of the cycles of all these changing and changeable generations, of your generations, however they are described, or have been experienced, we need to note what has remained the same and what is good and always available for every generation. Of course, it is the changeless God of creation, God of all generation and regeneration. To the sin of a generation, his redemptive love and power brings regeneration. Listen to these texts for they establish our hope on the basis of who God is to, and through the generations without ever a millisecond break in their histories: His faithfulness is to all generation (Ps. 119:20); My righteousness and salvation will continue from generation to generation (Isa. 51:8); Though father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me (Ps. 27:10); Your dominion endures through all generations (Ps. 145:4); Your throne endures from generation to generation (Jer.2:31); God’s covenant is for all generations to come (Gen. 9:12); Your memory is perpetuated through all generations (Ps. 45:16); His name I AM by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation (Ex. 3:15); Keeping covenant of love to a thousand generations who love him and keep his commands (Dt.7:9); The plans and purposes of the Lord stand firm through all generations (Ps. 33:11); Your renown endures through all generations (Ps. 102:12); Your mercy extends to those who fear you from generation to generation (Lk. 1:48)
2. The fact that we are applying this teaching at a Eucharist next Sunday expresses the basis of our assurance, not only in who God is, but who Jesus is and what God did through Jesus’ work on the cross. All iniquity was laid on him. Iniquity is the common word used to translate the generational sin, the sin of others, that affects us, that imposes its consequences on us. Because of the cross, we can confess our generational sin, we can repent of our generational sin, we can forgive the generations and their representatives that have afflicted us, that have invited such oppression into our generational life, that have worshiped an imposter and accepted a counterfeit. We can choose to denounce and renounce that sin in our generation.
3. The basis of our assurance that there is hope after generational sin has to do with the fact that when we commit our lives to the lordship of Jesus Christ, when we come to the cross to repent of the sin for which we are accountable and responsible in our generation, something incredible happens. No wonder Jesus described it as being born again. Is there any wonder that the devil seeks to belittle and mock this description of salvation above all others, that to be called a “born again” is a term of abuse. “What is born of the flesh is flesh…” That is describing the natural means and results of human generation. But “what is born of the spirit is spirit.” This is the spiritual means of regeneration! To be born again is not, as Jesus said, to be born of blood, but of God. The whole context in which we live our personal histories now has been radically changed. One of the outcomes of being translated in to a new kingdom is that we are now part of a totally different generation. It is not the generation of our earthly forbears that principally defines our lives or our prospects, but what scripture describes as “the generation of Jesus Christ.” No longer is the main issue about our respective genealogies. We need to know that they no longer have any power over us. Their influence and bondage needs to cease, be cut off. Not only do we have a new father, we have a whole new family in this generation. Jesus said, “whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister.” The misery and depression that was contingent with our generational sin, has been transformed into a celebration shout as, by the Spirit of adoption, we all cry “Abba! Father!” Now we understand the purpose of the cross as expressed in Isaiah 53:10 “It was the Lord’s will to crush him and fill him with grief. Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have a multitude of children, many heirs.” The cross inaugurates a whole new kind of inheritance. We can be delivered from every generational sin and its judgment into the generation of Jesus Christ! Because of the cross, the curse of generational sin is past. The cross stands between us and our ancestors, our familials, and their sin shall not have dominion over us. We will not give the demonic a place in our lives to rest and roost and lay claim to another generation. We are the property of Jesus, we are his heirs, we will live as sons and daughters of the Father. Hallelujah! Abba!

Pastorally yours,
Stuart

Dearest family,

As we saw on Sunday from the story of the prodigal sons, before Paul’s expositions in the epistles on sonship and slavery, it is Jesus in this parable who puts in the mouth of the father the words of rebuttal to the slave designation of the sons. The father’s answer is simply: no, you are the heir. “Because you are sons, God sent the spirit of his son into your hearts, the spirit who calls out ‘Abba father’. So you are no longer a slave but a son: and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.” (Gals. 4:4-7) The father assures the elder brother of the truth about who he is and what his holy rights are as a son, that he does not need to grasp or does not need to fear will be taken or removed. The tragedy is to live as a slave and fail or refuse to avail yourself as a son, of all that is available in the father’s house. He could have had a fatted calf if he had wanted. The fact is, the father had already given it to him by deed and title at the beginning of the story. His blame of the father was therefore shameful, because unfounded, ungrounded, just wrong.

The other thing that the father is so concerned to communicate is that he was always there and available. “My son, you are always with me.” The son could only take himself away from the father. It is the devil’s work to steal and rob and destroy the family of the father. There is no limit to demonic envy and hatred for the intimacy of the father and son/daughter relationship. You see this so deeply in the High Priestly prayer of Jesus in Jn. 17, another crucial passage for understanding the father-son relationship. You can hear echoes of this passage in it. Jesus keeps talking about himself being with the Father “with you” (vs.5); about the Father being in Him and he being “with them” (vs.12) And then of course, this intimacy is expressed as being “in” each other, the only way to express this closeness of paternal DNA. There is nothing more awful that the slave spirit does than impose a distance, an unapproachability with God.

Jesus himself said that he would change slaves into sons. There is a deliverance from slavery, in any of its myriad manifestations, into sonship. Jesus said that he would not leave us as orphans, but send his Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Father, the Spirit of adoption. We talk a lot about the works of the Holy Spirit, the manifestations of the spirit, but there is none greater than the Spirit’s continual testimony to our spirits: “You are a son of the Father…You are a daughter of the Father…God is your Father… in you he is well pleased…”

There are so many ways and reasons why people who are sons and daughters end up living or choose to live as slaves or orphans in their spiritual identities. We’ve discussed many of them as they relate to the formative effects of human fathering. Fathers who are hard taskmasters not surprisingly impose enslavement upon the spirit. The unbelievable fall-out of parental failure and disappointment and discouragement that creates an orphan spirit that has lost trust in fatherly authority, that has closed the heart in self-protection, that sets severe boundaries on relationships and intimacies (but ironically blames others for being unwelcoming or unfriendly) that carries burdens that cannot be shared or cast on another, that chooses to live among the family of God as one who remains homeless, unable to abide, unable to make a place their abode. How raw is the orphan spirit that doesn’t find a place of belonging, that is always on the outside looking in, that ends up always having something to prove. Someone has described Satan as the first spiritual orphan – cast out of heaven his home. Ezekiel says of him, “You were in Eden…on the mount of God.” It is interesting that the demonic envy of that enslaved and orphan spirit paid a visit to a son and a daughter in Eden, that resulted in another banishment from home and the beginning of the story of redemption that is essentially all about recovering us from the slave quarters, from the orphanage, back into the Father’s house.

Your heavenly father cannot bear that you would be a slave or an orphan in any part of your being, in any part of your personhood and identity. For him to be falsely viewed by you through the lens of a servant/slave or an orphan is a grief to his heart, but it won’t stop his loving fatherly pleadings with your spirit. This is why we all need constant experiential encounters with the Holy Spirit. Our understanding of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is often, rightly, associated with the enduement of power. But any suffusion of the Spirit, any infusion of the Spirit, by definition, brings such a boldness, such a liberty, such a recovery of doing the will of the Father and the works of the Son, precisely because it is a spirit of adoption. Peter makes it clear in his Pentecost sermon that the Spirit is “received from the Father”. We are assured afresh about who we are as sons and daughters. Against all the lies and assaults and challenges and pressures and pains and disappointments and failures, the Spirit keeps coming to us, and we keep receiving him as the scripture says, and when we do, two things happen:
1. Roms 8: He testifies with our spirit that we are the children of God. But your spirit has to make that witness and confession for it to be the duet it is presented as.
2. Galatians 4: From our hearts he calls out in our voice “Abba, Father!”

There is no need to go through another message in this series bearing the spirit of a slave or an orphan in your relationship with God. Would you call Jesus a liar? He said that as the Father loved him, so the Father loved us. I want to encourage you to get as familiar as you can with your Father by calling him so. There is a spiritual power and breakthrough and deliverance from enslavement and orphan-hood when we declare the truth to him about who he is and always has been to us, who have been born again of his spirit, adopted into his family, set free from the slavery of sin to be the sons and daughters of the Father. The Spirit is the spirit of his son, and God the Father will never reject the Spirit of his son; he cannot reject you anymore than he could now reject the glorified Jesus. You see, when you confess the truth of his identity as father, you are equally expressing your identity as a son or a daughter. And you declare that in the face of every counterfeit comfort and false father – you declare it in the face of the fathering of the devil, whose intent is to separate you from the love of the Father. Your adoption is irreversible, and you have the nature of the father, the spirit of the father and all the resources of the father, that give you all the rights and responsibilities of a son.

The cry of “Abba!” doesn’t fit politely into a polished service schedule or an ordered liturgy. It broke from the lips of a suffering Jesus in Gethsemane with guttural and emotional power, with a pained and strained earnestness. It is a cry that is spontaneous, that is confident, that is expressive. Yes our assurance is rooted in our assurance about what scripture teaches us about who we are. Yes, our assurance is rooted in all the personal evidences that we know are the mark of his life within us, like love for the brethren (basically other sons and daughters!) But it is this witness of the Spirit, this stirring, this reception in our hearts of his testimony that we are indeed sons, by the cry, “Abba, father!” that is such an assurance. Slave children never used the word “Abba!” You are not a slave or orphan – so use it!

Pastorally yours,
Stuart

Dear Church Family,

Philippians 2:1-11 contains the famous passage about God exalting Christ to the highest place, giving Him the name above all names. This is often cited as the most comprehensive Christology in the New Testament. As we recognize that we are dealing with significant theology, we should remember the words from How to Read the Bible For All Its Worth; with the epistles, theology is “always task theology, theology that is written or brought to bear on the task at hand.” So we focused on that task at hand for Paul.

That task at hand is found in 2:3-4, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” This is part of Paul’s urging the Philippians toward unity, the expectation that he will hear that they are “like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.” Just like Paul gets his affection for the Philippians from Christ (1:8), the source of this unity will be from Christ. That is why Paul begins his appeal by drawing their attention to what they experience in their relationship with Christ; encouragement, comfort, fellowship with the Spirit, tenderness and compassion. It is important to realize that Paul fully expects that they do experience these things, and likely in the midst of the suffering and struggle they are currently engaged in (1:29-30). The more connected they are to Jesus, the more unity they will walk in together.

Although they cannot produce unity by their efforts, they can destroy unity by their efforts if they are doing anything out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. We can discern from elsewhere in Philippians that Paul has heard that unity is being threatened in Philippi. The language of this passage is also found in 1:15-17 and 4:2. This language of selfish ambition and vain conceit is also found in letters to the Romans, Corinthians and Galatians. This is not just a problem unique to the Philippian church. It is an aspect of the flesh that always threatens to destroy unity.

Selfish ambition is epitomized by those who are preaching Christ in order to stir up trouble for Paul. As we talked about, this is best understood as them hoping to gain more importance in the community, taking advantage of Paul’s absence. They are primarily concerned with enhancing their reputation, not with building the kingdom. Vain conceit literally means “empty glory”. This could mean that the glory sought in selfish ambition is empty. But it could also point not to the goal of selfish ambition, but that which drives selfish ambition, an acute awareness of being empty of glory, needing to fill a void. This brings in the idea we looked at before Christmas that we were designed to get our glory, our sense of honor and worth from our relationship with God. At the Fall, with the disruption of that relationship, we become empty of that glory and are now seeking to replace it. We have a self esteem problem and are trying to solve it by gaining glory in our selves.

Gal 5:26 reveals that this pursuit is essentially competitive (Let us not become conceited (same “empty glory” word), provoking and envying each other) and this is the threat to unity. When we are doing anything out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, we care only about ourselves, and view others as rivals for recognition and honor. This is operating in our lives anytime we see someone else receiving something from the Lord or others in the way of blessing and recognition and we have the thought, “why not me?” This is envy. Or we are bothered by the success or excellence of someone in our community. Instead of celebrating what they add to the community we are bothered that they might take recognition away from us. This is jealousy. And what about when we are offended? How much of that is due to feeling like we were not given the honor or glory that we deserve? This may be the hardest to accept and confess because it is precisely our felt deficit in honor and glory that is being prodded.

Paul urges this response to selfish ambition and vain conceit; “in humility consider others better than yourselves.” This idea of considering others as better or of surpassing value is not in sync at all with our culture’s approach to self esteem issues. In fact, this would be seen as adding to the problem of low self esteem. It is important to realize that Paul is not saying that this is the solution to our self esteem problem. We are to employ this perspective when we find ourselves tempted to act out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. And we can appreciate how this mindset counters our desire to pay attention to our place of status, honor or recognition in comparison to another. So think of this not as a solution to the self esteem crisis, but rather the antidote to the poison of selfish ambition that lurks within all of us.

The solution to the self esteem crisis requires that something be done to deal with that glory and honor deficit. That takes place when we are restored to our relationship with God in Christ and recover the glory that was lost at the Fall. We find our glory and sense of worth in Christ, not in ourselves or our accomplishments. This is why Paul begins in verse 1 with what the Philippians have in Christ. Unless there is a healthy knowledge (from experience) of the encouragement of being united with Christ, the comfort of God’s love and fellowship with the Spirit establishing our sense of worth, we are not capable of considering others as better than ourselves. Nor are we capable of looking out for their interests. So, we do not practice verse 3 without also paying attention to verse 1.

But we must practice verse 3 and because this is so contrary to how our flesh operates, Paul reinforces this command with the example of Jesus in verses 6-11. This passage is famous for its Christology and worship of Jesus. But Paul asks the Philippians to focus on Jesus’ attitude that is on display; an attitude that “did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped.” Most people in a position of status will take advantage of that power to secure their position or grasp for more. Christ Jesus does the opposite. He made himself nothing, literally emptied himself of that status. He takes on the lowest status, that of a servant and becomes human. That is a huge step down in status from his divinity. This humbling of himself has its ultimate expression in his willingness to be obedient to death - even death on a cross. The cross was the most humiliating way for a person to die, and that was by design. After giving up his divine status, Christ was then literally and figuratively stripped of all human dignity. Never in the history of the world has there been such a gap between the treatment a person deserved and the treatment they received.

Consider how this attitude of Christ Jesus speaks to our own attitudes when we are concerned about how we are being treated? It completely removes any justification that we might have for being offended or upset or desiring more recognition or glory than we are getting. Frankly, it is a lot easier to worship the Jesus of this passage than to be told to have His attitude. To humble ourselves and entrust our status and honor concerns to God. That is what Jesus did and ultimately He did receive the treatment He deserved. He is in the highest place and the Philippians are united with Him. What more encouragement do they need?

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. (Matthew 16:25)

Bo

Dear Church,

On Sunday, Jenn Merrill brought a personal meditation in line with our current homegroup study, the theology of everyday life. Jenn described her own journey of giving more and more of her life to the Lord, seeing it all as an opportunity to honor Him. She highlighted some specific examples from different seasons of life: college, post-college ministry, and current day. To hear the stories, check out the mp3 online.

Jenn concluded with these words from Romans 12:1-2, the Message translation:

So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

May you be blessed as you seek to honor the Lord in your ordinary life today.
Peace & Grace,
Ben

Dear Church Family,

The sanctuary is in full renovation mode, the new floor is down and the stage has been extended. Tomorrow is the day for the carpet to be laid. Although the renovation will not be complete, we will be able to meet this Sunday for communion and you can see the changes. Please continue to pray for the work.

The men had a great retreat, getting quality time together and looking at our calling to persevere. This will be a focus for the Men’s ministry for this year, so we are asking God to reveal Himself through those life circumstances that we are called to persevere in. We have much to learn and experience about this aspect of the Christian life.

One of the Men’s Ministry theme scriptures for the year is James 1:2-4, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.” Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. We consider this work of perseverance in light of Philippians 2:12-13, “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” Clearly, part of God working in us is this call to persevere. And we remember that this is the work of God our Father and it is done with the Father’s love. So we expect to find Father in these times as well.

Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,
Bo

Dear Church Family,

“Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ” (Phil 1:27). This verse has inspired our current homegroup study, a theology of everyday life. Rather than the gospel being about life after death, our focus is on what it means to live our earthly lives in a manner worthy of the gospel. We are looking at topics such as sleep, leisure, entertainment, and hospitality to name a few. Here Paul focuses on two things that will follow from conduct that is worthy of the gospel. The Philippians will stand firm against opposition, and they will stand together in unity. In 1:27-30, Paul first addresses facing opposition and in chapter 2 he turns to the topic of unity.

Paul talks elsewhere about living lives that are worthy (Eph 4:1, Col 1:10, 1 Thess 2:12), but the language he uses here in Philippians is unique. He uses a word for “conduct” that is used for citizenship. This is significant for the opposition that the Philippians are facing, as we saw. It also puts an emphasis on the gospel as a message about the kingdom of God. He is asking them to live as good citizens of that kingdom. And he is saying that conduct as a citizen of the kingdom of God will involve opposition. And not only do the Philippians face opposition, they suffer opposition, which means that the opposition has enough power to cause suffering. The Philippians might have a hard time understanding why it is that they suffer at all at the hands of those who oppose them. Does this mean that God, who is all powerful, has abandoned them or that they have done something to lose his allegiance? Paul’s own situation of imprisonment, what he has just explained to them, helps them to understand that suffering at the hands of opponents does not mean that they are out of favor with God. It is all a part of God’s plan to spread the gospel.

It would be helpful to know the nature of the opposition that the Philippians are facing. Paul does not spell it out because both he and they know exactly what he is talking about. We do not, but we can try to get a picture of it. We do know that it is similar to what they see Paul faced and hear that he faces. And we can get an understanding of that from the book of Acts from chapter 16 to the end. This has the account of Paul’s struggle in Philippi and in other places that he travels. A pattern emerges in these struggles. A group gets upset with Paul’s ministry, in Philippi it is the owners of the slave girl who are no longer going to make them money with her spirit of prophecy, in Ephesus it is silversmiths losing money from the sale of idols to Artemis as a result of some Ephesians becoming Christians, and in Thessalonica and Jerusalem it is Jews upset with Paul’s teaching. Those who are upset accuse Paul of disturbing the community and bringing trouble (although in most cases, the people who are upset stir up the trouble themselves and then accuse Paul of being responsible). In Philippi the slave girl owners offer this accusation, “These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.”(Acts 16:20-21) We need to understand something of how Rome ruled its vast empire to see why this false accusation is so effective. To preserve the peace, Rome was willing to give a great deal of autonomy and favor to those areas that pledged allegiance to Roman rule. The highest privilege, enjoyed by Philippi, was to be granted Roman citizenship. On the other hand, the full force of Roman power was brought down against any area that threatened rebellion or disruption. The most important thing for a magistrate of a city like Philippi, which had citizenship status, was to insure that nothing happened that might get the attention of Rome. Thus the accusation that Paul was “advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice” was enough to get Paul and Silas beaten and jailed.

Given what we know of Paul’s struggles we can speculate about the struggles facing the Philippians. By living out their faith, there are people who are upset with them and oppose them. The accusation brought by these opponents is that the Philippian Christians are being bad citizens, jeopardizing favorable status with Rome for everyone. This accusation is not true (as it was not true in Paul’s case) but it is enough to get them into trouble. To understand what it looks like to stand firm against such opposition, it is helpful to consider what it would look like to not stand firm. What if their main goal was to avoid this opposition that troubled their life? Then they would need to avoid whatever behavior caused the trouble. But here lies the problem. They are not directly confronting or opposing anybody. Paul followed his own teaching from Romans 12:18, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone”, yet he encountered fierce opposition. Since it is the simple living out of their faith that arouses this opposition in some people, the only way to stay out of this trouble would be to stop living as Christians. There would have to be no possible public expression or even public consequence of their faith (silversmiths in Ephesus). So they did face the choice between conduct worthy of a citizen of the kingdom of God or conduct that would avoid the accusation of being poor citizens of Philippi.

Our struggle may not be as great, but similarly to Paul and the Philippians, we will encounter opposition, and fairly vehement opposition at times, when we live out our faith in public. I offered the reactions to Tim Tebow as an example of a person who expresses his faith in Christ on the very public stage of the NFL. Although he is not obnoxious or confrontational, there are many who are offended by him and who are even hateful toward him. Interestingly, just like the authorities who answered to Rome were Paul’s protectors as well as his jailors (they invariably found him not guilty of the charges brought against him), there are secular media people defending Tim Tebow and doing it very well. One sports columnist, Sally Jenkins, writes, “When Tebow kneels on the field, his religion becomes challengingly present. Tebow doesn’t have to get into a bunch of Jesus Talk to put you or me in an uncomfortable state of mind. It’s more subtle than that. Murray [Christian professor Michael Murray] suggests, if I have a reaction to the Knee, it’s because Tebow implies ‘that there is something in the universe over and above the natural which deserves my attention, allegiance, or honor and I find that distasteful or irritating.’”

Given this dynamic, we cannot make it our goal to avoid being accused of being distasteful or irritating. The only way to avoid this type of offense would be to never express, through word or deed, our personal devotion to Christ or our allegiance and desire to honor Him. Another writer says that he finds it is annoying when someone “arrogantly believes they have followed a deeper, richer spiritual path than the poor, lost souls orbiting their universe.” No one wants to be annoying or arrogant, but consider what has earned this accusation. It is the idea that following Jesus is a deeper, richer spiritual path. So to avoid this accusation I would have to think that it is not a deeper or richer spiritual path, that I would be just as well off if I did not believe in Christ but any other god or faith or no faith at all. Setting aside the false accusation of arrogance, to not view my faith in Christ as a deeper, richer spiritual path would certainly be dishonoring of Christ. With this perspective, the phrase “conduct worthy of the gospel” loses all meaning because the gospel is not worth much. And that is the whole point of our opposition (inspired by the enemy). In the name of tolerance and with false accusations of arrogance, the goal is to devalue the gospel. To the extent that we live as if the gospel does have worth, we will be contending against these opponents and suffer their opposition.

Let’s acknowledge that the temptation to shrink back in the face of such accusations is real. We need to model ourselves after Paul who did not rely upon himself but rather the prayers of others and the Holy Spirit to strengthen him in his struggle. As we seek to live at peace with others, we need to also discern where there is opposition that we must stand firm against if we are to conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of our great and wonderful gospel.

All allegiance and honor be to Christ and the gospel,
Bo

Dearest family,

Thank you for the kindness of your attention on Sunday as I concluded a two-message unit within our “Finding Father” series in which I was concerned to emphasize that as needy as we are as sons and daughters for the Father’s blessing, our Father is equally in need of the obedient and obeisant responses of his children. The parable of “The Two Sons” in Matthew 21 is important to understand alongside the better-known parable of the two sons in Luke 15. We need to understand our worship and our work within the context of the father-son/daughter relationship. This preserves both from ever becoming a religious thing, because they will always be the fruit of relationship.

On Sunday, I focused on the matter of “obeisance”, that communication of loving honor that affirms and blesses the one being addressed. Inadequate as it was, I sought to illustrate this from my own experience of fulfillment and joy in my fathering that was completely sourced in the lovingly obedient and affirming responses of my kids, especially in their written communications. It’s really interesting that the most common context for Paul’s use of the designation of God as “Father” is that of worship – an adoring, responsive and trusting communing with God that of course includes our praying, not just our praising. Absolutely central and foundational to the scriptural liturgy of worship and prayer is simply “Our Father…” Note that when Jesus said that, it was in Aramaic, the language of the familiar, not in Hebrew, the language of formalized liturgy and sacred rites. It is the language of familial relationship, not formal religion. It is because of the assurance of His fatherhood that we can then pray, “Give us this day…” and have an assurance about his loving provision of our needs. We address more prayers to Jesus, and sometimes to the Spirit than we do to the Father. This is a faulty understanding of both worship and the trinity. Most prayer is less to Jesus than it is through Jesus, the great intercessor, to the Father. It is less to the Spirit than it is in the Spirit to the Father. Roms.8 tells us that the Spirit intercedes for us. To whom? We’ve already been told that much of the groaning has to do with our anticipation of the revelation of who the sons are. So the Spirit’s intercessions are to the Father of these sons. You will no longer ask me, says Jesus, for my father will give you whatever you ask. When the apostles worship you will often hear, “Blessed be the God and Father…” When Paul talks about the expression of worship in a gathering of believers it is about singing our psalms and hymns and spiritual songs that always give thanks to God the Father. (Ephs. 5:19-20)

So what’s my conclusion? For all our awareness of what we as sons and daughters need of the Father, let us not forget this year on our continuing pilgrimage, in our ongoing relationship with the Father, that he needs two key responses from us his children. I have suggested that I have discovered the veracity of these in my own earthly fathering – how much more with the divine fathering of spiritual sons and daughters. If the first was obedience, then I will call the second, obeisance. This is a lovely old word for worship, for adoration, for any gesture that acknowledges loving honor and respect. It is an old Middle English word but it actually derives from the French word “obeisant”. No surprise, this is the present participle of the verb “obeir” – to obey. So the obeisance, the worship, was actually inseparable from the obedience. I am not worshiped by my kids but I need their voluntary expressions of love and affirmation. Our heavenly Father is to be worshiped and that is why there are not enough hymns and songs and prayers and conversations, not enough spiritual father’s day cards, when every day is our heavenly Father’s day – a day to give him the blessing that he needs and desires from every son and daughter.

I long for you and me to live every day this year with that lovely assured consciousness that regardless of what happens, you cannot cease to be his son or daughter, any more than he will cease to be your father. Could you possibly live every day this year with a consciousness of this that will bring a freshness, an empowerment, from the spirit of adoption itself, to your daily obediences and your daily worship, in a way that you find yourself praying more, not because you are saying prayers, but simply because you are having these “on the way to the next vineyard” conversations with your father. They won’t sound much like formal prayers anymore than Jesus’ cries and groans did, but they are the stuff of a father-son, father-daughter relationship. I trust these simple observations, these obvious and even well-known truths, these headline points, will be received into your spirit at the beginning of this year in a fresh and new way, as you make the choice to be a true son and a true daughter, who will respond as such to the true Father, so that your obedience and obeisance, will not be acts of your forced will, or a coerced spirituality, but a voluntary response to his will; that your obedience and obeisance, especially when they present challenges and struggles, will always be understood within the embrace of the Father’s love. Yes, we need the Father’s blessing, but yes, indeed, he needs the blessing of his sons and daughters, so let’s resolve this year to give him what he most wants.

Pastorally yours,
Stuart

Dear family,

Having spent four weeks in the well-known parable of the two sons in Luke 15, I took you on Sunday to the other rarely preached parable of the two sons in Matthew 21. It’s one thing to acknowledge as sons and daughters our great need for the Father’s blessing and to receive it, but it is quite another to understand what the Father needs from his sons and daughters, and what filial responses bless the Father. If you missed the service I encourage you to get the CD and keep up with the series. I cannot summarize all we covered but at least let’s note something.

In its context there is a specific meaning. There are two groups of people that Jesus is alluding to, hookers and hypocrites. The former, the first son as it were, by their life style had clearly said a big “No!” to the wishes of the father for their lives, particularly to his relationship as a father with them. Their sexual sin was symptomatic of their search for a counterfeit intimacy. But despite that initial response they responded to the preaching of both John and Jesus. The second group is comprised of the very chief priests and elders who Jesus has been addressing in the temple prior to this, who had been bombarding him with pompous questions about the nature of his authority and where this authority came from, and whose authority it was. Had not Jesus already made clear that it was the Father’s? This parable is all about the Father and about sonship and about the response of these two groups of people to the authority of a loving father, who had certain reasonable assumptions about the responses of those who were his sons, to his love and authority. He assumed an obedience from them that was rooted in their love as sons for the father. The actions of the sons in response to the father would not be because the father coercively laid down the law about what they would have to do, but because he directed them out of fatherly love. His command to them was premised on his love for them.

This truth has already been established incontrovertibly in the teaching of Jesus prior to Holy Week. John’s gospel is infused with it, with over 120 references to the Father. “If you love me you will obey me.” (Jn.14:15) “If you love me you will obey my teaching.” (Jn.14:23) “If you obey my commands you will remain in my love.” (Jn.15:10) But Jesus prefaced all these comments by stating that anything and everything that he taught and commanded was not his but the Father’s. So it was all about loving and obeying the Father. John represents this in his epistles. “If anyone obeys His word, God’s love (the Father’s love) is truly made complete in him.” (1Jn.2:5) Obedience is therefore seen not as obeying rules but living in relationship with the Father as a true son and daughter. “Those who obey his commands abide in him and he in them.” (1Jn.3:24) This is all about intimacy. “You are my friends if you do what I command.” (Jn.15:14-15) Such obedience is not burdensome: not because the demands of the commands are easy, but because love delights in obedience. Your affections for the Father become the true measure of your obedience and vice versa. “This is love for God: to obey his commands.” (1Jn.5:3) Our obedience of the Father is a response of love. Our love for the Father is a motivator and encourager of our obedience as sons and daughters.

The bottom line is that it is impossible to separate love and obedience. It doesn’t take amazing insight to work out what’s going on in this story. The father, as he had every right and authority to do, came to the first son and sent him to work in the vineyard. He said, “No! I will not!” to the father. Strangely, the father doesn’t say anything to the disobedient son, but goes to the second son with the same directive. “Yes, Lord” is the immediate answer. The first son impudently contradicts the father, and the second son immediately consents. Then we discover that the one who resisted ended up by repenting and doing the will of the father, while the one who responded affirmatively ended up reneging on his commitment and not going at all. Either way, their response to the father’s authority is a sin, not against law, so much as it against the father’s love. The profession of obedience turns out not to be a necessary evidence of true sonship.

It seems to me that so many commentarians miss the point of this story, when they end up saying that it is about us doing what we say; about the consistency between profession and practice. Hold on! Jesus tells us what the parable is about. He asks a question: “Which of the two did what the father wanted?” The “wants” of the father are met by the contrary wishes of the sons. We could ask the question another way. Which of these guys acted as a true son? They both use the word “Lord”. Had not Jesus answered his own question earlier in this gospel in 7:21: “Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven but only he who does the will of my Father.”

This cannot be a cute little story just about being sure that you practice what you preach. Jesus is saying this to his murderers. The context is Holy week, three days before his death. He is on the eve of the great divine act of atonement, the greatest demonstration ever of the love and authority of the father and of the obedience of the son. Was not Jesus the son about to be obedient even unto death? No one said that obedience was easy or immediately desirable, not even Jesus. The father’s will was not first a particular holy deed or righteous act, or moral behavior. These all degenerate into religious works if they are not the fruit and consequence of something more fundamental. In Jn.6:40 Jesus said that the will of the Father was that everyone who has seen the son and believed in him would have everlasting life. The first obedience is to believe, not do. New behaviors, new work places like a vineyard, couldn’t help the hookers. They needed a restored relationship with the father, that made them true daughters. Our obedience, as in this story, is the demonstration of our change of mind, our repentance, and our sonship.

When the commentators say that both sons were equally rebellious, I’m not going to quibble, in the same way that the two sons of the Lk. 15 parable were also equally prodigal. Neither of them are good examples we are told. I don’t actually agree. When Jesus asked who the true son was, the one who did the will of the father, they replied that it was the first, the one who had initially said “No!” Jesus did not contradict them, or qualify their choice, or say he was certainly the better of the two but in no way the most recommendable or desirable son. No, he was a true son. Are any of us perfect sons, or ideal sons, who always say “Yes” and always do the right thing immediately? Is our obedience always instantly automatic? Are we programmed to obey without a millisecond of delay or denial, of pain or pressure, of fear or fury? Like the first son, we do know the right thing to do for the Father, and like him we know the power of our hesitancies, and the power of our capacities to procrastinate. It is clear that it was not because he wanted to do the work, do the assignment, that he eventually did it. The text says he changed his mind, and Jesus specifically relates that later to the repentance of the hookers. The son repented of the estrangement of relationship with the father, of the failure to give the father what the father wanted and needed from him as a son, and consequently, he obeyed.

I would argue that his obedience is not now a second class obedience that doesn’t really count because he messed up so badly first time and should have repented and obeyed earlier, and so was destined to be a second-class son with less hope for a trusting and joyful and assured relationship with his father, for how could his father now trust him? It’s interesting that despite the younger son’s prodigality and despite the first son’s initial disobedience, both are presented as true sons when they repent and choose to do the will of the father. Their obedience is the evidence if their sonship. By the way, this is all about relationship, not just authority. If it was just about the authority to command obedience, it would not be a father we are dealing with here but a slave master. The father who commands here has kindness still. The father does not stand around and lose his cool and harangue the disobedient son, or coerce him, or throw the book at him. This is a wonderful picture of a secure father who is not threatened by our waywardness or bad reactions, who in his loving security does not react badly to our bad reactions. The father simply leaves the son, no doubt with a heavy heart. The psalmist writes, “As a father is kind to his children…he knows what we are made of….” Which means he knows where we struggle in our sonship and where we dither and dawdle and procrastinate and where we find obedience costly and hard. He knows when we generally don’t look a bit like obedient sons.

There is something about that recovery of the first son that is full of hope for us in the recovery of our true sonship and daughterhood with the father. There are many calls to obedience that are unhelpful, unpalatable, and even undesirable to us. Jesus was obedient to death. Is death desirable? The scriptures (Hebrews 5:5-7) tell us that Jesus learned his obedience through the things that he suffered. It is the same context that tells us that he offered his Gethsemane petitions with loud cries and tears. It was for the joy of loving his father, and for the joy set before him that he obediently endured, but in Jesus’ example we are shown the need we have to be able to express our hearts to Father when we are struggling with the demands of obedience. There is a process of struggle sometimes. Gethsemane gives us this poignant insight in to a true father-son relationship as we see Jesus being able to talk it out with the father. He is free to ask the father if another way is possible, but the process frees him to come to that profession of a true son, “Not my will but yours be done.” Like Jesus, we have to know that we can trust the father with the credibility gap between what we would prefer as sons and what he prescribes as our Father.

At the beginning of this year, I don’t know what son you most identify with. Maybe both for different reasons. Are there “No’s” that your heart is saying to what feels like the difficult will of the Lord, and there is a delay in your relationship with father and with his vineyard, that this denial is fueling. Are there “Yes’s” that you have given, even at an altar rail, that have become mired in the procrastination that is rooted in unhealed brokenness, in unresolved distrust, or anger, or humiliation, or perceived injustice. Are you stuck and unable to move towards father’s call to trust him? And when you are tempted to think that God the father should pay for all you’re experiencing and feeling because you regard it as his responsibility, then remember that he did, but even though our disobedience crucified him, Jesus’ first words upon being hammered to the cross were to the Father to forgive. So what is the big general point? Simply to understand that our obedience is what our Father desires and needs as a father. Our obedience is the fitting response to the father of loving sons and daughters. I’m asking you to understand obedience in the context of your relationship with your heavenly father. As the psalmist said, you can trust him because he knows what we are made of, when he asks his will of us. It’s how we give the father our blessing.

Pastorally yours,
Stuart

Dear Church Family,

We used the message time on Sunday to introduce the homegroup study for this winter. This study can, conveniently, be introduced by the next verse in the Philippians series. 1:27 Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel. Paul is using this underlined phrase to talk about unity, as that is a particular challenge for the Philippian church at the time. We are going to expand the application of this phrase to every aspect of our lives. What does it mean to approach the various activities of our lives and consider how to conduct ourselves in those activities in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ? Last year we did this with our work in the theology of work series. This will be a theology of everyday life. There are any number of topics and activities we could look at. And each of these could be explored in much more detail than what we will be doing. The goal of this study is to get a taste for what doing this kind of theology is all about. Some possible topics are… Leisure (with a sub topic of Entertainment), Consumerism, Humor, Hospitality, Adornment, and Sleep. I am still working out the details, but we will start with a theology of sleep. After all, most of us spend more than a quarter of our lives sleeping. Doesn’t it make sense to consider sleep and its connection to our relationship with God?

The Biblical basis for doing this type of thinking or theology is best expressed in Colossians 1. I hope that you hear the echo of what we have already looked at in Philippians in terms of what Paul prays for them. Here is his prayer for the Colossians in 1:9-10, For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God. It requires spiritual wisdom and understanding to live lives worthy of the Lord and we want to please him in every aspect of our lives. We are applying ourselves to seeking that spiritual wisdom and understanding.

There are many good reasons for us to do this. We spend the majority of our lives in these everyday activities. If we believe that Christ is always with us and we are to serve Him with our whole lives, then we should have an understanding of how we can be pleasing Him in these areas. Paul says as we do this we will grow in the knowledge of God, grow in our relationship with Him. We will be encountering and relating to Him in so much more than church related activities. This can also provide rich ground for witnessing and personal evangelism. This is because we share common ground with unbelievers in our lives in these areas. They are much more likely to be curious about how we live out the aspects of our lives that we have in common with them than about our church related lives. When we share the gospel in order to explain why we live the way that we do, we are responding to their curiosity rather than proselytizing them with our religion. This is much more conducive to sharing the gospel effectively.

Besides these positive reasons, we also need to consider the results if we do not try to think about our lives like this. Scripture teaches that we will not only fail to progress in our relationship with God, we are likely to lose ground and be drawn away from Him. That is because we live in a world where the unexamined way of life is designed to lead us away from God. In Romans 12:2 Paul says, Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. A key biblical theme that we need to understand while we do this theology is this concept of the world. We looked at this in the Letters of John series several years ago and I tried to summarize some of that on Sunday. Scripture calls us to be in the world and share God’s love for the world, but it also warns that there is an element in the world that is opposed to God. John further warns that this negative world is under the control of the evil one. (1 John 5:19). So there is a worldly way of living that we must be on guard against. This call to be in the world but not of the world is very challenging. A key task to our theology will be to discern the worldly way of living in these areas that we must not adopt (do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world). One key to recognizing this worldly perspective is that it will view this world and this life as all there is. We are born into God’s family and live our lives here in this created world as if there is something beyond it that has ultimate significance. So worldliness does not have to be obviously sinful. It can be about wrong priorities and preoccupations because we are too focused on this world. Our two world perspective should radically reorient how we live in this world.

As we approach this task, there are several obstacles that could hinder its fruitfulness. One would be not investing enough time, thought and prayer in the pursuit of spiritual wisdom, understanding and discernment. It is true that you reap what you sew. We also have to realize that there is a part of us that is perfectly content with viewing our everyday lives as separate from our spiritual lives. This leaves us free to consider what is pleasing to us rather than having to consider what might be pleasing to God. This will involve resisting temptation (which always looks and feels desirable to us) and will involve being out of step with our culture to some degree. Finally, we can do this type of work badly. We need to keep in mind that the Pharisees were a holiness movement which means they were seeking to be spiritual in all aspects of their lives, set apart for God. Yet they ended up in legalism. They became focused on spiritual performance, characterized by pride and judgment. We must always remember that our spiritual value is in Christ, not our performance in living holy lives. If we begin to have pride, anxiety or guilt, we are on the wrong path. In communion we celebrate that God has chosen us through Christ and has made us worthy and holy in His eyes. Our commitment to live holy lives is our response of gratitude toward Him. It is about pleasing God and glorifying Him. We seek to live lives worthy of Him and what He has done for is with the gospel.

May 2012 be a year where we are more conscious of living for Him in all aspects of our lives,
Bo