Yesterday at Resurgence was fabulous.  First, Mark Driscoll spoke about “Putting the Pastor In His Place.”  This was a fantastic biblical-theological look at the call to preaching in the context of the local church.  I challenge all to go on the Resurgence site and listen to the message.  If pastors over all Missouri heard this call, there would be massive revival.  And, if you hear it and still think Driscoll is “emergent,” well…. I suspect you’ll still think he is, because that’s what you want to think is true.  The fact that young evangelicals all across America are throwing their hat in with him makes you very nervous.  But this is what you have been praying for– men who would preach with boldness and clarity.  Driscoll points out the clear calling to preach from the Bible in an era where people are thinking “conversations” are what is needed.  He also challenges people who embrace preaching to think about how to shepherd and discipline those people.  In other words, preaching must be linked to the church.

Second, C.J. Mahaney spoke about loving the church as a pastor.  He preached out of 1 Corinthians 1, showing how we should see the calling of God upon the lives of our people (past), the grace of God upon their lives (present), and the faithfulness of God in their lives (future).  This message powerfully moved me.  The primary challenge was this: if Paul saw this in the church of Corinth, with its plethora of problems, how can we not see these things in ours?  Do we default to seeing God’s grace upon the lives of those around us, or do we mainly see the areas of correction needed?

Third, John Piper spoke about “Why I Trust the Bible.”  It will be a bit hard to do a recap here, and, believe it or not, the timezone change and a sleepless previous night made me pretty tired.  But it was super stuff.  Listen with me, as I do so again, to the Resurgence podcast.

I’m sitting here with about 5 minutes until the morning session starts.  This auditorium of Mars Hill probably holds 1000-1500.  I would say 90% of the people are 35 and younger.  This is good news for the American church.

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I”m up here in Seattle at the Resurgence Conference.  Mark Driscoll is about ready to come on and preach.  But I just sat through an excellent pre-conference session entitled, “Building Missional Worship Teams” with Tim Smith, Mars Hill’s worship guy.  He did an excellent job of laying down the biblical basis for worship, and then showing how it should be missional, as well.  He then concluded with some practical suggestions for how they go about putting teams together.  One interesting thing he said: Mars Hill defaults to using music that they have written or dead guys have written.  People in the evangelical world still having the traditional versus contemporary arguments are missing the point.

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The MBC Pathway just put up the article about our “Theology Weekend” on their website.  Check out the story written by Karis member Aarik Danielsen.  Lacking in the online version is the accompanying photo of the site of our Sunday lunch session– the infamous “Forge and Vine.”

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My heart has been heavy all day today after hearing this news:

Icy Missouri roads blamed in 5 traffic deaths By Kim Bell ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 02/22/2008 Two teenage sisters from Paris, Mo., were among five people to die in the last 24 hours in Missouri traffic crashes. Icy road conditions may be to blame, the Missouri Highway Patrol says. Alicia G. Carter, 17, was driving on an ice- and slush-covered highway in rural northeast Missouri about 4 p.m. Thursday when she lost control on a curve. The car skidded off Highway 15 in Monroe County, hit a concrete culvert and creek embankment, then overturned. The car landed on its roof. Alicia Carter died a short time later at a hospital. Her only passenger — her older sister, Kayla A. Carter, 18 — died at the scene. Jim Reinhard, owner of Agnew Funeral Home in Paris, said the Carter sisters from Paris were homeschooled. They were heading to town when they crashed. Reinhard said the girls’ father, Mark, works as a music director for the First Baptist Church of Paris. Their mother, Bonnie, teaches Bible study and volunteers with youth at the church. The girls are survived by their parents and their 5-year-old brother, Jeremy. “They were a couple of the greatest Christian girls I’ve ever known,” said Cathy Gibbs, the First Baptist Church’s administrative assistant. “They had a heart of gold.” Paris is a town of about 1,600 people. It is situated about 50 miles northeast of Columbia, Mo. Reinhard said the fatal crash is the third tragedy in five months for the community. In November, two girls, ages 7 and 15, died in a house fire near the town of Madison, about 12 miles west of Paris. In October, a tornado hit the area, and two people from Paris who had sought shelter in a mobile home were killed. The bodies of Kent Ensor, 44, and Kristy Secrease, 25, were found 400 feet from where the mobile home had been.

I know Mark and Bonnie. He is the Pastor of Music and Youth at First Baptist Church of Paris, Missouri. He brought youth to serve our young plant a couple of years ago. I’ve worked with Bonnie, and she is a jewel of a Christian woman. Their beautiful young daughters are now with Jesus. But I can’t comprehend such a tragedy. As I look at my children tonight sleeping, I must confess I wonder, “Could I hold up through such a tragedy?”

Please pray for Mark and Bonnie and their young boy. Pray that God would minister to them, even sending angels to do so (Mt. 4:11). And pray that the Lord would somehow be glorified through this terrible event.

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Every once in awhile I may post this as a nice reminder.  When we switched from Grace to Karis more than a year ago now (I think), we ended a lot of confusion.  But now, a lot of people pronounce our name wrongly.  It’s not CARE-us.  It’s CAR-us.  Listen here for the correct pronunciation of the Greek word for grace by renowned scholar and textbook author, Bill Mounce.  And don’t make me go kung-fu on you and yours.  But, then again, if you do mispronounce it, I will extend you grace.

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Tim Keller and CBN are a bit of an odd match, but they recently did a spot on him, his ministry, and his new book.  Check it out here.

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I.        Do we really have a heart for people from all nations?

A.     Today, African-Americans see people locking doors when they drive by them.

B.     Today, Hispanics are made fun of and not made welcome in their workplaces.

C.    Today, people of middle-eastern descent are looked at suspiciously by average white people.

D.    And this has even come into the church.  Anthony Bradley wrote an article on World magazine’s site about the blessing of interracial marriage.  There were almost 200 negative, critical comments posted.

E.     This is all the while people around our country are rejecting Jesus.  They’re seeing Christianity as a white, middle class religion, ironically while the gospel is exploding around the world!

F.     Do we really want people from all nations to worship?

G.    We have been going through a series on “Jesus in the Margins” from the book of Luke.  We’ve mentioned how Luke emphasizes in his gospel that the good news about Jesus is for all. 

H.    We see this here in today’s passage: Lk. 3:23-38, a genealogy, the type of thing we normally skip right over. 

I.        But looking at it closely, the particulars of it, and the overall point of it, should encourage and challenge us greatly.  It teaches us Jesus is the true Son for all.  Do we really have a heart for people of all nations?

J.      Let us pray.

 

II.      Lk. 3:23-38—“Jesus is the True Son for All”: we will first look at the particulars of the genealogy, followed by looking at its overall point.

 

A.     The particulars: through ordinary and bad people over much time God brought us the Son for all.

1.      “The Death of High-Fidelity”—Recently read article in Rolling Stone about the way recording and listening to music has changed.  Regarding recording, now musicians are using lots of compression when mixing their albums.  This reduces the difference between the loud and the soft parts of music, “compressing” them, making it all seem louder.  They are doing this to compete with other bands and to stand out, or at least not seem wimpy.  Regarding listening, most of us have iPods now.  They play, as you know, songs in MP3 format, which takes a recording and compresses it, removing the high frequencies and low frequencies from recordings that aren’t as obvious to the listener.  So what we have, due to both the recording process, and, also, the MP3 ripping process, is music that doesn’t have the dynamic range that music used to have.  You don’t hear the various instruments like you used to.  And music doesn’t have the emotional energy that it once did.  It’s all just really loud.  Steely Dan frontman Donald Fagen put it this way: “God is in the details.  But there aren’t details anymore.”   

2.      Friends, but this doesn’t just apply to how we want our music now—but also our lives.  We don’t want to see the highs and lows, the ups and downs.  We don’t want to see the details.  We don’t want to spend much time on the final product.  We just want it fast and loud and now.  But the Bible doesn’t allow for this.  We see all of that as we look at the story of Scripture—we see the high parts and the low parts of human struggle.  We see the painstaking, ordinary details of every day life.  And we see it taking place over thousands of years.  We see it looking at the Bible as a whole.  But we see it in summary when we look at a genealogy like we see today.

3.      Look with me at two aspects of the particulars of this genealogy.  See ordinary guys and bad guys.

4.      First, ordinary guys.  One thing you’ll notice about this list is a whole bunch of Joe Schmoes—people you’ve never heard of.  Let’s just take three of the names:

i.        Who is Matthat in v. 24?  Heard of him?  This would have been Joseph’s grandfather.

ii.      Who is Amos in v. 25?  You’ve heard the name, but this isn’t back far enough to be the prophet.  No, it’s some random guy named after him.

iii.    Who is Josech in v. 26?  We have no idea.  That’s the only time we see his name in the Bible.

iv.    You get my point, don’t you?  There are a lot of no-names in this passage.  In fact, as scholar Bock puts it, “Most of the people mentioned in 3:24-31 are unknown, until one reaches the name Nathan in 3:31.”  These are a bunch of Joe Q. Publics and Jane Does, but they all play a key role in God’s plan.  Do we see that God uses ordinary people? 

v.      I’ll never forget my senior year here in college at Mizzou.  It was 1994, and during that year, our basketball team went undefeated in the Big 8 and almost went to the Final Four.  They had couple of good, exciting players.  But mainly they were a group of ordinary guys.  Two examples would be forwards Kelly Thames and Lamont Frazier.  What did those guys do?  They played defense and rebounded a bunch.  They were ordinary players.  But we won a championship.

vi.    Brothers and sisters, in our compressed, loud world, the Lord uses ordinary people.  I want this to encourage you and challenge you.  I want it to build Your faith in the Lord.

vii.  First, let it encourage you.  If you seem pretty common, pretty ordinary, and not too spectacular, it’s exactly a person just like you whom God will use in His plans.  See 1 Cor. 1:26-31 (p. 952).     

viii.But, second, let it challenge you.  Embrace being ordinary.  Let us not always pursue being big and flashy and a celebrity.  God usually looks for those kinds of people.  See Jas. 4:7-10 (p. 1013).

ix.    And that’s the primary sin associated with this truth.  In our culture where celebrities rule and where we learn about the bowel patterns of Lindsay Logan, we must fight again pride.  Individually, we must resist pursuing the limelight, so that we might receive honor.  And, as a church, we must fight against creating our own celebrity culture, where the flashiest and the richest and the most gifted get all the pub.  We must cultivate humility in our hearts and in our congregation.

5.      Second, bad guys.  Take just three examples from this list.  I could say things about David, Abraham, and others, but let’s look at some less common guys.

i.        Consider Obed in v. 32.  He’s the son, as it says of Boaz.  He’s the product of his father disobeying God’s law and hooking up with a pagan woman, a woman from Moab.  That was a no-no, as you likely know.  But he’s in the line of Jesus.  God used Boaz.  

ii.      Look at Perez in v. 33.  If you read Gen. 38, Judah slept with a prostitute who ended up really being his daughter-in-law, and that’s how we got Perez.  Judah was a sinner to the core, but God still used him.  He’s in this list.

iii.    Look at Noah in v. 36.  Of course, we know Noah for being faithful and building the ark.  But we also see in Gen. 9 him getting really drunk and laying around naked with his sons making fun of him.  He had his issues.

iv.    So God used some bad people, and we could talk about David the adulterer or Jacob the deceiver or Abraham the liar or Adam who only had one simple rule and couldn’t keep even that.  Do you see that God uses what we would call bad people?  Do you hear, “Jerry, Jerry!?”

v.      I mentioned several weeks ago about a former Liberian warlord who has confessed to killing over 20,000 people and is seeking forgiveness.  What I didn’t say then is that he was called “General Butt Naked,” and he went around in killing people with his “Butt Naked Battalion,” killing people in the nude.  But now he’s an evangelical Christian preacher, who now claims to be walking with Jesus.  Can God forgive such a person?  Does God use bad dudes like him?  Let it once again comfort and challenge you.  Let it build your faith in God.

vi.    First let it comfort you.  Look in the mirror, as you should, and see a sinner, a broken, messed up person, and embrace that.  God will use even you.  He has forever.  No matter what you’ve done.  He is about saving and using sinners.  Trust him.  Singer Bono said, “The fact that the Scriptures are brim full of hustlers, murderers, cowards, adulterers, and mercenaries used to shock me.  Now it is a source of great comfort.”

vii.  But, second, let it challenge you.  Our tendency is to look in the mirror and let it cripple us.  We think, “Woe is me,” and “God can’t use me,” and blah, blah, blah.  We just sit there and do nothing, whining and crying.  My word to you is: get up and work.  Don’t let it paralyze you.  Girl, so you’ve had premarital sex.  Get over it.  Boy, you looked at porn this week.  That’s not good.  But get over it.  God uses messed up people.

viii.What we tend to do is sin again with pride.  We live in this world where in the church and outside, the goal is to be a good person so we can think highly of ourselves.  But we must fight again that—individually, by looking at our worthiness only in Jesus and humbling ourselves before God.  There is a type of false humility that says, “woe is me,” and ends up slapping Jesus and his atonement in the face.  In the church, we must stop preaching this moralistic, legalistic gospel of “measuring up” that is no gospel at all.  We must preach a God who is holy and people that are sinners and a Jesus that reconciles the two.  We must pursue holiness but not as a pathway to pride.  It must be an expression of gratitude.  And where we stand each day in terms of growth must never be seen as the ground for God’s approval or of our ultimate joy.  The Lord uses ordinary, even wicked, people.  That statement applies to each of us!  That is His amazing grace.

6.      But, I also said at the beginning that “over much time, God brought us the Son.”  We see in v. 23 that God is in no hurry.  He brought Jesus into the world and then waited 30 years.  But, of course, what are 30 years, when you’ve been slowly working your will for thousands?  In this instant world of convenience and disposability, we lack patience all the way around.  But God takes His time.  And we should learn to trust Him in the daily grind that is totally in His hands.

7.      And see that.  He is a God of providence.  Through all of this time, through all of the ordinary Joes and the terrible Toms, God was working His will, even in the evil, even in the mundane.  It was all totally in His hands.  We must have faith in God’s providence over the details.  

8.      In our world, we don’t want high-fidelity.  And we’re not trained to see it.  But may God give us the grace to see the particulars, the details of life and rejoice in His grace over all of them.  Through ordinary and bad people over much time God brought us the Son for all.

 

B.     Second, the point.  Through Israel and for all nations, God brought salvation through His Son. 

1.      As many of you know, I’m a big fan of the FOX program 24.  I heard good news this week that the writer’s strike is over.  It sounds like season 7 will begin in January of 2009.  What is so enjoyable about the show, of course, is that it is played out in real time.  Each show is an hour of a long, intense day for hero Jack Bauer.  The details do unfold slowly, and, only by seeing the last episode alongside the others can you see how the details fit together.  Well, we just discussed some of the people that lived out this genealogy in slow, real time.  But here, in Lk. 3, we can look over all of it and see how it was linked in God’s providence. 

2.      I want you to notice four key names in this genealogy, and then we’ll narrow it even more to just two and focus just a bit more.

i.        First, see David in v. 31.  As we saw last week, Jesus is the promised Son, the one in the line of David, the King.  In 2 Sam. 7, God promises to make one of His descendants an eternal king.  Jesus is that Anointed One, that Messiah, that Christ.

ii.      Second, see Jacob in v. 34.  His name gets changed to Israel in Gen. 35, and He is the father of the 12 tribes, the nation of God in the Old Testament.  As we’ll see in a second, Jesus’s whole ministry was geared toward that nation and was about creating a new nation. 

iii.    Third, see Abraham in v. 34.  That man is the father of the Jews.  In fact, the book of Matthew, written to Jews instead of Luke’s Gentile audience, uses a genealogy that has the purpose of just linking Jesus back to father Abe.  God again met him in Gen. 12 and told him that He would make him into a great people and give him great land and bless the whole world with both.  Jesus is tied to that amazing promise.

iv.    Fourth, see Adam in v. 38.  He is the first man God created and put in the garden.  God put him there and told him to obey, and he didn’t.  So the curse came upon the world and all its creatures.  Jesus is tied to this first human being, and to all of God’s creation. 

v.      So, Jesus is tied to the king, the nation, the promise, and the human race. 

3.      Now, let’s now zoom in further and look just at Israel and Adam.  First, Israel. 

i.        As I said, salvation came through Israel.  We know from the gospels that Jesus went first to the Jews.  In Mt. 15:24, Jesus said He was sent only to the “lost sheep of Israel.”  When He sent His disciples out in Mt. 10, he told them, in v. 6, that they should not go to the Gentiles or the Samaritans, but rather to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  God brought salvation through the Jews.  And it came to them first. 

ii.      We emphasize Jacob here because Luke does.  If you look at the passage before, that we saw last week, John the Baptist came preaching to just the Jews, telling them to ready themselves for the King Jesus. The Father, in anointing Him with His Spirit and calling Him His beloved Son, tells those Jews that Jesus is the Messiah they had been looking for.

iii.    In addition, we’ll look next week at Lk. 4, where Jesus goes into the desert and is tempted.  This clearly ties Jesus to the nation of Israel, who, in the Old Testament, goes also into the wilderness, and they are tempted.  The results, as we’ll see, though, are totally different.

iv.    Jesus came to that nation.  Salvation, as the Bible says, is of the Jews.  But, although they forfeited God’s covenant, Rom. 9-11 seems to indicate that Israel will one day experience revival and will join all the nations worshipping Jesus the King.  So the answer isn’t to persecute them like Mel Gibson or Adolph Hitler or countless others—it’s to love them and tell them Jesus is the Messiah they’ve awaited.

4.      Second, Adam.

i.        But, that nation, of course, rejected God’s grace in Christ, at least most of them, crucifying our Lord.  So, as part of His plan from the beginning, God opened it up, welcoming people from all tribes and tongues and nations.  We see this come to pass in Luke’s next volume, the book of Acts, as the gospel is spread by Paul and others to the Gentiles. 

ii.      As I mentioned before, Luke in his gospel emphasizes that the gospel is for Gentiles.  It’s for all nations.  This is something he wants to get across.

iii.    And I think it’s the ultimate point of this genealogy.  That’s why it goes back to Adam.  Like I said, Matthew wants us to see Jesus tied to Abraham and the fulfillment of the nation Israel.  Luke wants us to see Jesus tied to Adam and the fulfillment of the whole human race.  Jesus is not just the King of the Jews.  He is the King of the earth.  Just as Adam was given the charge to be king under God, over the garden, so Jesus is king, and one day He will completely reign over the entire world.

iv.    Salvation is for the entire world, for people from every people group.  So, as the Bible teaches us, in Acts 1:8, for example, our task is to be witnesses “to the end of the earth.”  We have been given this amazing mission of God.

v.      And the opposite of that is the sin we can so easily struggle with—prejudice toward, and distrust of, and lack of respect for, people from those other nations.  We must fight that in our hearts, weeding it out.  And we must pray and take action to see that our churches reflect what heaven will be like.

5.      Let me now take another angle.  I said at the beginning that through Israel and for all nations, salvation came through Jesus.  Let me tell you how that salvation came, how Jesus fulfilled both Israel and Adam.

i.        First, I said last week that Israel is called in the Bible God’s “Son.”  For example, in Ex. 4:22, God tells Moses to tell the king of Egypt, “Thus says the LORD, ‘Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, ‘Let my son go that he may serve me.  If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.”   

ii.      As we’ll see next week, Jesus came and obeyed, unlike Israel.  He is the Son that did what God said and resisted temptation.  And in doing this, He created a new nation, a new Israel, the church.  He is making a group of people rightly living as a people before God, reconciled with Him and each other, as intended.  Those that are united to Him by faith become a part of that new people of God. 

iii.    Second, Adam is called here the “son of God” in v. 38.  Obviously, he’s not God’s son in some physical, biological sense.  Neither is Jesus.  But he was created by God as the first human, as His son.  He was made in God’s image to rule under Him over His creation.

iv.    And the key thing to remember here is that, unlike Adam, Jesus never broke God’s law.  Adam, in Gen. 3, disobeys God’s command to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  So the fall happens.  Jesus, again as we’ll see next week, doesn’t bite the temptation of Satan.  He stands strong.  And in doing this, He created a new humanity made up of people from every tribe and tongue and nation who are rightly related to God.  He is making a people who are being remade in God’s image, living as they were intended to live, ruling rightly under the Lord.  Those of us who have faith in Jesus are made a part of that new race.

v.      Jesus is the true Son.  He’s the true and ideal Israel.  He’s the true and ideal human.  Unlike Israel and Adam, Jesus totally obeyed, and by God’s grace and through faith, the Lord applies the righteousness of Jesus to us.  We put it on, like a garment of white, that allows us to stand before God.  Through the love of our Lord, we have been given salvation.

vi.    Again, the sin that we so easily tend to is a lack of faith.  We try to measure up to God’s holiness, trying to show off our own righteousness. But God is not impressed.  In fact, He’s offended.  He wants us to look to His Son.  He hates our prideful unbelief in the gospel.

vii.  But Jesus, again, did not just obey.  Last week, I used the illustration of a chalkboard.  I talked about how Jesus writes His righteousness on the chalkboard, so that the Father looks at it and sees His righteousness counted to us.  But, before that, it has to be erased of all our sins that are written there and to which our enemy, Satan, points, accusing us.  On the cruel, cold cross, Jesus died there, absorbing the punishment of God we so much deserved.  And our sins were erased by the grace of our Lord. 

viii.Jesus is the Son who brought salvation—through His obedience and sacrifice.  The point again?  Through Israel and for all nations, God brought salvation through His Son

6.      But, let me add something else that we can’t ignore.  Jesus is the Son, but of another order.  We see this back in v. 23.  Luke says of Jesus that he was “being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph.”  This ties us back again to the first two chapters, our Christmas story.  Jesus is born of a virgin.  So He isn’t the son of Joseph.  He is the Son of God.  Put another way, He is God the Son.  This is the second person of the Trinity, fully God, yet distinct from the Father and the Spirit.  As God, Jesus could obey and satisfy the Father.  He could die as a perfect sacrifice.  Jesus isn’t just a man.  He’s God.  And only through that truth can we be saved.

 

III.                Jesus is the true Son of God for all.

A.     Again, the key point of this passage is that Jesus is for everyone.  He is tied to Adam.  God is making a new humanity, incorporating all into that new nation.  And our mission is to reach all with the gospel.

B.     The problem, though, is that we can get confused as God’s people.  We can start thinking, through the enemy’s schemes, that America is the new Israel and not the church.  We can have this type of patriotism that distracts us from our calling as Christians.  We can think we’re the best race of people on earth.  This results in a lack of love for others from other nations.

C.    But America is not God’s country any more than any other.  We are no better than any nation.  And we are connected to all people through our common ancestor, Adam.  We are Christians first, and Americans second.

D.    Our task is, within God’s church, to model a love for people in the margins, for people unlike us.  We are to reach out to the aliens and strangers.  We are to seek them out and bring them in, right here in Karis in Columbia, Missouri.  And we are to go and send to other nations to set up indigenous churches in those lands foreign to us.  It takes pursuing reconciliation here and mission elsewhere, pursuing a model of heaven here, and trying to get people to heaven across the globe.

E.     Let me close by speaking of two pictures that exemplify this to us:

1.      Take William Wilberforce, a committed believer in England back in the 17 and 1800s, who was the leader in the abolition movement, who, with God’s grace, ended slavery there once and for all.

2.      And consider the Moravians, who I have mentioned before, who sold themselves into slavery to reach the islands of the West Indies.

3.      We must repent of our lack of reconciliation and diversity in our church.  We must repent of our lack of missional zeal for all peoples.

4.      I talked at the beginning of the highs and lows and the mundane details and the great diversity of the song of the story God.  But this is the message.  This is what the lyrics and the melody are trying to convey: God who created everything is reaching out to that creation, redeeming it, and particularly its people from every tribe, tongue, and nation.

5.      Do we really have a heart for people from all nations?

 

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Tomorrow the Karis ladies will meet at 908 Walnut downtown at 8 p.m. for their Katalyst discussion.  Katalyst is a monthly Karis event designed to develop leaders by challenging men and women to become theologians who can exegete Scripture and culture and respond accordingly from a God-centered, biblical-theological worldview.   Last week the men gathered, and I discussed the following.  The women will cover similar material.  This is a summary of chapter one of Everyday Theology edited by Kevin Vanhoozer with discussion questions interspersed throughout.

 

Katalyst Session One, February 2008: “The Gospel According to Safeway”

 

1. What is culture?

a)       “a shared environment, practices, and resources of everyday life.”

b)       Culture: communicates (a vision of the meaning of life), orients (gives framework for interpreting everday life—“mind maps,” worldviews), reproduces (“spreads beliefs, values, ideas, fashions, and practices from one social group to another”), and cultivates (the human spirit, doing spiritual formation)

 

2. How do most Christians “engage” popular culture?

  

3. What are dangers of interacting with culture?

a)       Above we see two extremes: “The first is an uncritical acceptance of and fascination with the newfound religiosity and spirituality of popular culture.  The second is to write off popular culture as one more symptom of sinful rebellion” (p. 33).

b)       We can do neither of these things.  Thus the next question:

  

4. What are the reasons, however, for engaging the culture around us? 

a)       First, “popular culture—more so than the academy or the church—has become the arena where most people work out their understanding of the true, the good, and the beautiful.  In sum: Christians must learn to read popular culture not least because it has become an important locus of everyday theology” (p. 34).

b)       Second, “another reason to be able to read culture, then, is to ensure that the church at any particular place and time is serving the gospel rather than taking it hostage through acculturation” (p. 34).

c)        Third, “the most compelling reason I can give for learning to read culture is that the mission of the church demands it” (p. 34).  “Cultural illiteracy is harmful to our spiritual health.  Christians need to know how to read culture because, first, it helps to know what is forming one’s spirit.  It helps to be able to name the powers and principalities that vie for the control of one’s mind, soul, heart, and strength…  second, so that they can be sure that the scripts they perform in everyday life are in accord with the Scriptures—the story of what God is doing in Jesus Christ through the Spirit to give meaning and life to the world—rather than some other story.  Finally, Christians need to become culturally literate because we need to know where we are in the drama of redemption.  The world is our stage, but culture is the setting for our net scene” (p. 34). 

d)       Fourth, if it isn’t clear from above, we need to know what people are talking about so that we can reach people with the gospel!

 

5. How, then, should we go about it?

a)       First, some presuppositions:

                                        i.      When we interpret cultural texts and trends, we are dealing with matters of ultimate concern.  In other words, those texts and trends may have a surface meaning, but beneath it all is something deeper that tries to answer: Who am I?  Why am I here?  What’s wrong?  How can things be fixed?

                                       ii.      We should seek to hear and understand culture “on its own terms.”  We shouldn’t make judgments on something until we understand it somewhat.  We should work hard to make sure we understand it.

b)       Second, some doctrines:

                                        i.      Incarnation: The gospel is translatable into every culture.  But it transcends culture.

                                       ii.      General Revelation: All of us know there is a God.  Cultural texts and trends are ways people try to grasp with that sense of the divine.

                                      iii.      Common Grace: Unbelievers can grasp the true, the beautiful, and the good, in some sense, outside of their understanding of, and experience with, salvation.

                                     iv.      The Imago Dei: Made in the image of God, we are culture-makers. 

c)        A two-part method defined:

                                        i.      First, we understand the text or trend by looking at the worlds behind, of, and in front of it.

                                       ii.      Second, we look at it in terms of the creation, fall, and redemption (and consummation) understanding from the biblical story.

d)       The two-part method described (part one):

                                        i.      The world of the text: here we try to understand it by “reading” it, thoroughly and thoughtfully, while trying to suspend judgment until later.

                                       ii.      The world behind the text: here we try to understand “more fully how the work came to take its present shape” (p. 234).  We look for factors that have influenced this.  We read what others have said, see who else is involved in spreading this text or trend, consider what other trends influence it, even asking, more with trends, who stands to gain from it.  Our goal is, after this stage, to understand the text or trend and have a basic understanding of how it came to be what it is.

                                      iii.      The world in front of the text: here is where we get to talking about what it all means.  How do people respond to it?  What is its influence?  What are “root metaphors” that help us understand? 

e)       The two-part method described (part two):

                                        i.      Seek a biblical-theological understanding of the issues raised: see how we see the things we’ve found in the biblical story in order to get a biblical view of the topic.  We’re not just looking for proof texts but rather the Bible’s total take on the issue.

                                       ii.      See the issue through Redemptive History-Colored Glasses: situate the text or trend within the world of the biblical text. 

1.        Look for signs of creation: we can find positive aspects of it.

2.        Look for signs of fall: we can see how sin is present in it.  Above, we practiced a “hermeneutic of charity.”  Here, we should practice a hermeneutic of suspicion.  We look for a “theological root error.”  “In what key way does it fall short of the gospel?” 

3.        Consider the truth of redemption: “here we take the text or trend and imagine how to redeem it.”  “How can the cultural work be re-created in line with the gospel?” (p. 242).

 

6. What about the checkout lane?  What do the authors argue is the message of the checkout lane (world of the text)?  Do you agree?  How have you seen this?

a)       Buying the good life

                                        i.      Sex

                                       ii.      Beauty

                                      iii.      Health

                                     iv.      Information/Knowledge

                                      v.      Convenience

                                     vi.      Wealth

                                    vii.      Celebrity

b)       The good life: “a vision of happiness that comes from having the best physically, intellectually, and financially.  We want it quickly and effortlessly, and we find the epitome of this good life in the celebrity star.” 

 

7. What is the world behind the text?  What do you think contributed to this situation in the checkout lane?

a)       Purpose of check-out lane: sell during “down time”

b)       Sell things that “sell”

c)        These things are desired by our culture and this reinforces that desire

d)       These are desired thanks to a powerful, ubiquitous popular culture opposed to biblical values

 

8. What is the world in front of the text?  What influence do these values have in our culture? 

 

9. Turning to response, what does the biblical story teach about each of these areas?  How does the gospel redeem them?

a)       Sex

b)       Beauty

c)        Health

d)       Information/Knowledge

e)       Convenience

f)         Wealth

g)       Celebrity

  

10. How should each of these values be communicated to each other in the church?  How could they be communicated to those around us in the world?

 

11. How do these relate specifically to us as men/women?

12. What, again, is the importance of reflecting on the checkout lane and then formulating a response?

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Lord willing, Karis is planning to head to Kampala, Uganda this summer to serve God’s people and engage unbelievers there. Our plans appear to be changing slightly, but in a very exciting way. We will likely be parterning with missionaries Anthony and Misty Shelton who work with the poorest of the poor in Uganda. In addition, I have learned that the first ever Passion event will be held in Kampala around the time that we will be there. It sounds like we will partner with the Sheltons and with Passion for the first part of the trip and then work with Anthony and Misty and their ministry for the remainder of our time. We will do evangelism, leadership training, and relief work while there. The trip will likely run somewhere between May 25 and June 14. Contact me (kevin@karischurch.org) or Ryan Worley (ryan.s.worley@gmail.com) for more information.

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Last night, we continued to work our way through Dever’s “nine marks of a healthy church.”  We looked at evangelism, first discussing how this related to the other “marks.”  If we pursue biblical theology, we will have a right gospel.  If we have a right gospel, it will lead to a better understanding of conversion.  If we rightly understand conversion, we will go about evangelism differently.  Specifically, it means that we won’t think conversion is all up to us and manipulate people into professing faith, leading to spurious converts.

Evangelism, we discussed, is simply sharing the good news.  It’s telling people the gospel.  And it’s for all disciples, as Matthew 28 states– not just for “professionals.”  Dever does an excellent job in his main work explaining what evangelism is not.

1. It is not imposition, as we can’t make someone believe, according to the Bible, and we’re not trying to force someone to agree with our opinions, but rather the truth of the Scriptures.
2. It is not a subjective testimony.  A testimony is helpful, but it’s something different from the gospel.  We can talk about what God has done for us without ever explaining to someone the Christian message.
3. It is not apologetics or defending the Christian faith.  We can answer objections, “our defense”, without ever sharing the message, our “offense.”
4. It is not the same as social action.  People on the left and the right can get this confused.  On the left, people can think feeding the hungry is enough.  On the right, people can think fighting abortion is enough.  As Christians, we must minister in word and deed, like our Lord.  But this doesn’t mean that one is enough without the other.
5. It is not the results of evangelism itself.  What could this mean?  It means that often we don’t think of it as evangelism until someone responds.  But, evangelism is just sharing the gospel, leaving it up to the Lord for results.  If we equate evangelism with its fruits, we will pull out any bells and whistles to get people to pray some prayer.

So that’s what evangelism is not.  Again, it’s simply sharing the message.  Sure, we can do it in ways that are bad and that won’t get results, but if we understand conversion rightly, we recognize that it’s all in God’s hands.  Our task is to be faithful, and, ultimately, not great at sharing the good news.  And that is a great, great comfort.

Last night, we also read Matthew 28 and John 13.  Matthew 28 reminds us that Jesus is with us and that we are to make disciples and not just people that pray a mantra. John 13 reminds us that we have a corporate witness as a church.  How we love one another is a powerful testimony of the gospel to the world around us.

Next, we talked about how love for God is the only sufficient motivation for evangelism.  Primarily, this is because our love for others is meant to point them to an end– that of loving God.  So, personally, our evangelism should express love for our Father.  But, also, our evangelism is meant to cultivate that love in others.  Do we desire, as Piper says, for the nations to be glad in God?
We finished up with three key things that Dever argues we should also mention in evangelism:

1. It is urgent. We as Christians, if we’re evangelistic as we should be, are often very good at this one.
2. It is costly.  We are not so good at this.  There must be a healthy tension between the gospel’s urgency and its costliness.  If we push the gospel’s urgency without its cost, we will likely do whatever we must to get this person to “convert.”  However, if we forget the urgency part, we’ll wait forever to share and allow him or her to consider the claims of Christ up until the point when it’s too late.
3. It is worth it.  Yes, we must share that, despite the costs of following Jesus, the joy of being in him will far outweigh them!  Again, we are often good at this one, also.  But if we give the benefits without the costs, we’re building disciples that won’t last long.  And that’s called a “bait and switch.”  And none of us likes that at Best Buy or at 1st Church of Jesus.

Next week, we will turn to church membership.

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