A couple of recent exhortations…..
Lent is the season of the church year that highlights spiritual warfare. Jesus came as a great warrior. He fought our battles for us. He won the victory over Satan and his temptations in the wilderness. He won the victory over sin and death at the cross. He has trampled the skull of the serpent under his feet. Through suffering, he has entered glory.
Today we are going to sing the classic Lent hymn, “O Lord Throughout These Forty Days.”
Verse 1
O Lord, throughout these forty days
you prayed and kept the fast;
inspire repentance for our sin,
and free us from our past.
Verse 2
You strove with Satan, and you won;
your faithfulness endured;
lend us your nerve, your skill and trust
in God’s eternal word.
Verse 3
Though parched and hungry, yet you prayed
and fixed your mind above;
so teach us to deny ourselves
that we may know God’s love.
Verse 4
Be with us through this season, Lord,
and all our earthly days,
that when the final Easter dawns,
we join in heaven’s praise.
The genius of this hymn is that it connects Christ’s victory to ours. Because Christ has defeated Satan’s temptations, we can too. Jesus strove with Satan and won, so we can as well. He shares his victory with us.
I especially like the line in verse 2: “lend us your nerve, your skill and trust…” Wouldn’t you love to have Jesus’ nerve? Jesus had nerves of steel. When Jesus was under pressure, he did not fold, he did not cave, he did not collapse. He was couragous and steadfast. He did not budge from his stand on God’s Word.
Wouldn’t you love to be the same way? Wouldn’t you love to be as strong as Jesus in the face of temptation? Jesus is willing to lend us his nerve, his strength, his courage, his skill in battle. Jesus never had a failure of nerve and you do not have to have a failure of nerve either. You can stand firm in times of trial and temptation. Jesus is with you.
Verse 3 connects Jesus’ life of self-denial with our practice of self-denial. The secret to self-denial is found here: When you seek to imitate Christ, you do so not as one who is separated from Christ but as one who is in Christ. We are enfolded into his life and power and love. We do not practice self-denial on our own, but as those who are united to Christ. We can live lives of cross-bearing because Jesus lives in us.
As gather for worship today, let’s ask God to lend us Jesus’ virtues and make us more like Jesus….
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Every Lord’s Day, the Lord of lords and King of kings commands us to present ourselves before him in his throne room.
We present ourselves to him for inspection. We confess our sins to him in humility.
As a gracious King, he declares us to be his forgiven people and then he speaks words of life, wisdom, and comfort to us from his Word so we can grow in our likeness to the King and fulfill his will in our lives.
The King collects our tribute, our gifts. These tithes and offerings and dedicated to building his kingdom. We get the joy of knowing the King accepts our service as we seek to further his purposes in the world.
Finally, the King feeds us at his royal table, strengthening and equipping us us to fight for his rule in the week to come. He is the Master of the Feast who offers us his own self as food, as we celebrate in the peace and joy he gives us.
That’s what this gathering is: We are summoned into the King’s presence to receive his gifts. We put on a command performance before the throne of the King. This is why we insist on a reverent service. Our goal is not our own comfort, as is the case in so many casual “worship services.” We want to do things in a fitting and honorable way, appropriate to the occasion. There is a reason why Christians traditionally wore what they called their “Sunday best” to worship services. There is a reason why we encourage you to sing vibrantly, to raise your voice and your hands, to throw your whole self into the work of worship. We sing more challenging but more beautiful hymns and our prayers use “high” language because in the presence of the King aesthetics matters. Our King is worthy the most glorious worship we can give him.
If we say we are gathering for worship, but then focus on being entertained, our worship is sham. If we have all the right outward liturgical forms, but we do not pour our hearts into the work of worship, our services are a fraud. As we gather today, let’s give our great and glorious God the best we have to offer. Let’s give him our whole selves. Let’s give him our all.
I sent these notes out to the congregation recently (2/28/24) on our state’s IVF ruling and my sermon on Saul:
Our state has been in the news a lot lately, because of a recent Alabama Supreme Court decision ruling that embryos are fully human, and should be protected as such. The logic is simple: If life begins at conception (which both Scripture and science testify to), then embryos (even those in Petri dishes) must be granted the full protection of the law and their destruction must be criminalized, just as we criminalize all wanton destruction of human life. You can check out the details of this fascinating case here. What I appreciated most about the ruling is not just that the court got the issue right, protecting the lives of the unborn as God’s law requires, but that the opinion made appealed to great Christian theologians and philosophers, such as John Calvin, Peter Van Mastrich, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and William Blackstone. It is wonderful to see high-ranking officials in our state who know and understand traditional Christian ethics and are willing to bring those truths into the public square to shape policy. (Incidentally, this is exactly the kind of thing I had in view in my recent TPC Conference talk where I made the point that the Bible must be treated as public truth). Let us give thanks for Justice Jay Mitchell’s opinion and let us continue to pray for our state, especially our governor, legislature, and judges, because the battle for the lives of the most vulnerable among us is far from over, as seen in the fact that Big Fertility is already fighting back. (Sidenote: If you want to read a very helpful overview of the ethical issues involved with IVF, I suggest looking at chapter 7 of Katie Faust’s book Them Before Us.)
In my sermon on Sunday, we looked at the seeds of Saul’s apostasy. Saul is a warning to us all. It is not enough to start well, we must run our race to the end if we are to be saved. There is no question that Saul gets off to a good start, before his anointing, and even immediately after he is installed as king. There are unmistakable signs of faith and obedience in his life. He is a respectful and dutiful son, who goes on to be a dutiful king, at least at the beginning of his reign. In 1 Samuel 10, the Spirit comes upon him. He is made a new man and given a new heart. He joins the company of the prophets. He is adopted by Samuel. Everything looks great. But then tragedy strikes. Saul falls from grace. We might wonder how we can square Saul’s apostasy with the sovereignty of God in salvation. If Saul was made a new man and given a new heart, why didn’t he stay true to God? Why didn’t he endure to the end in faith if the doctrine of the perseverance/preservation of the saints is true? How do we make Saul’s case fit with the claim of Jesus that he will lose none that Father gives to him (John 6, 10)? This is an issue I have wrestled with theologically and pastorally for many years. I think Saul can be compared to the stony ground hearer in the parable of the soils Jesus taught in Matthew 13. We have probably all seen people who appeared to be very faithful at one point in their lives, and then sadly fell away fell away later on. I have wrestled with this issue, especially through the warnings given in the book of Hebrews; if you want to do more research, you can go here, here, and here. Of course, we will look more at the anatomy of Saul’s apostasy and his slow-motion descent into idolatry and unbelief as we examine chapters 13, 14, and 15 in the weeks to come.
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