His Head

See, from His head, His hands, His feet,

Sorrow and love flow mingled down.

Isaac Watts

We do well to heed these words of Isaac Watts – to fix our eyes on the head, hands and feet of our Lord on “the wondrous cross”, and to consider what these bleeding body parts communicate. And God, using Watts's call to consider these parts of Jesus' body at Golgotha, has put it in my mind that it would also be beneficial to consider and learn the lessons of Jesus’ head, hands and feet from other times and places, too … and to learn from some of the other parts of His body, as well. So I propose to put together a few articles, over the coming weeks, looking at Jesus’ head, hands and feet (at Golgotha, with Watts; and elsewhere, too), and at a few other parts of His body as well.

And we begin, first of all, with Jesus’ head.

And let me remind you, in the first place, that Jesus had “nowhere to lay” it. “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head” (Luke 9:58). Jesus went about preaching, healing, and doing good for those three years, staying here and there, with no home of His own. He never ‘slept in His own bed’, as most of us so prefer to do. He never put His head on His own pillow at night. Why? Because He was committed to His mission – committed to doing the Father’s will, and bringing good news to the masses. Praise God for such a Savior!

And praise God, too, for that occasion when “a woman came to Him with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume, and she poured it on His head” (Matthew 26:7). This lavish gift speaks to us of the great value she saw in the Savior – and that we should see, too! He is worthy of all the blessing and generosity we can pour on His head! Her gift also (Matthew 26:12) points us forward to Jesus’ impending death – “she did it to prepare Me for burial.”

And, as Watts's words remind us, as Jesus made His way toward that death, His precious head was pounded with a reed (Mark 15:19), and crowned with thorns (John 19:2), as part of His suffering for the sins of His people. And He went through with these things because He loves His church! Indeed He loved us so much that He finally “bowed his head” in death for us!

So, my friends, consider the head of our Lord Jesus, learn its lessons, and lavish it with your praise!

Glad That We Came

“I was glad when they said to me,

‘Let us go to the house of the LORD’”

So wrote David in Psalm 122. He was glad when it was time to go to worship! Similarly, I have often prayed, in my pulpit prayers, that God would enable us to leave our Sunday gatherings ‘glad that we came’ – glad to have made our way, that day, to the house of God. And I do hope that that is your experience of Sunday worship – that you are glad to go to God’s house, and that you leave glad that you went! So let me give you three suggestions to help you be glad to go, and glad that you went, “to the house of the LORD” from week to week.

“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.” It will be much easier to be glad to go to worship, and to be glad that you went, if you are not thinking about getting get back home to watch the game; if you are not mulling what you need to pick up at the store that afternoon; if you are not stewing over a list of chores you hope you might complete by Sunday’s end. In short, you will be much more likely to soak in the blessings of the day if you don’t have anything else on which you are fixated, anywhere else to be, or anything else to do on the Lord's Day; if you’ve organized your Sundays such that soaking up spiritual blessings is the order of the day. The less your bread is saturated with distractions, the more capacity it will have for sopping up the honey of the things of God!  See Isaiah 58:13-14.

Walk with God the rest of the week. Enjoy the honey Monday through Saturday, and you will be all the more eager to come to the honey festival on Sunday! “Taste and see that the LORD is good” all week long, and you’ll have a hankering for the big meal on Sunday. But if you satisfy your taste buds with other things all week, don’t be surprised if you feel rather meh about coming to the Sunday feast.

Pray for your Sunday services. Describing the childhood church-going experience of the great missionary John G. Paton and his siblings, John Piper has said that “the meat at the temple was so rich, they were eager to get there.”* Pray that your church services will be like that! Particularly, pray for those who prepare the meat – for those who select and lead scripture readings and songs, and for your pastor and other teachers as they prepare the sermons and lessons for God’s people – that they would prepare and serve you an absolute feast, week by week! Pray that “the meat at the temple” would be “so rich” that you would be “eager to get there” … and then glad that you went!

_______

*Taken from Piper’s biographical message, You Will Be Eaten by Cannibals! Lessons from the Life of John G. Paton.  Piper is describing, in his own very memorable words, what Paton himself says about his childhood church-going.  The quote is found in the audio version of the message, though not in the written manuscript.

Why a New Hymnal?

If the Lord is willing, Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church will be transitioning to a new hymnal in the next few days. I am excited to begin using Hymns of Grace! And I thought it might be profitable, in this space, to offer some reasons why.

First I should note that we aren’t changing hymnals just for the sake of change. In other words, we didn’t first decide that we needed a new hymnal, and then go shopping, as it were, to find one we liked. What happened, rather, was the opposite. Scott (our deacon for musical worship) and I came across three new hymnal projects that really caught our attention, and which (by their quality) posed to us the possibility of a change. Hymns of Grace was one of the three, and the one we felt was the best fit for us. So it was not a desire for change that brought us to a new hymnal, but the quality of these new hymnals that brought us to a desire to change!

And here are three reasons why I am excited to begin using Hymns of Grace.

1. Selection. The hymnal has an excellent selection of theologically sound hymns, old and new. And the theology is important! God’s people often learn a good deal of their theology from the songs they sing! So we are thrilled that Hymns of Grace is chocked full with solid, singable theology! It also helps that the hymnal has a good balance of the great classics, alongside many newer selections as well! We are living in a kind of hymn-writing renaissance right now, with many wonderfully solid new hymns being written which, like Watts and Wesley, will (I believe) stand the test of time. We’ve been blessed to learn many of them already, and will be blessed to learn even more by means of the new hymnal! And it is a great boon to have these modern classics, along with so many older ones as well, all under one cover!

2. Music. Speaking of those excellent newer hymns, while we have been singing many of them from a projection screen already, it will be good to now have the music to go along with them, for those who are able to make use of it.

3. Take-Home Format. It is a great blessing (maybe the greatest of all, in my book) that all of this solid, singable theology is now available in a format that our people can take home with them, for use in personal and family devotions. We can’t do that with the songs on the screen, but we can with a hymnal! And so we are making a copy available to each PRBC household. And, as our folks make at-home use of them, this will surely add richness to our Sunday singing, introduce families to wonderful theology, and enrich private and family devotional times all with one resource!

So then, those are a few reasons I’m excited for the days ahead, and for this new opportunity in the life of our church. Pray for us in this transition, and check out Hymns of Grace for yourself.

Hymns of Grace from The Master's Seminary on Vimeo.

Keep it Simple

A Bible. A church family. Maybe a songbook and a catechism. And plenty of time. Can you think of anything else you absolutely need in order to walk with and grow in the Lord? Other things can be beneficial, of course (like good Christian books, which would be a big bonus item on the list!). But we really don’t need all that many resources, events, activities, and plans in order to bask in the gospel and move forward in the faith, do we? Indeed, there is a tipping point at which addition eventually becomes subtraction! A kitchen, or a tool shed, can only be so full of equipment before the clutter begins to be unwieldy and inefficient. Now, with more gear, you’re actually getting less done!

The same is true with our Christian endeavors. Too many resources, activities, and irons in the fire is a recipe either for burnout, or for hop-skipping from thing to thing without ever drinking all that deeply at any of them. Either way, you end up with diminishing returns – more activity, but less fruit. Which is better – to dip your toe, week-to-week, into a dozen different books, reading plans, devotionals, studies, small groups, podcasts, and blogs? Or to drink steadily, deeply, and (sometimes) even slowly at the same life-giving streams at which the saints have found their thirst quenched for century upon century?

Many of us, of course, are hustling and bustling over things far less valuable, even, than the spiritual game of hopscotch I’ve just decried. And when we realize that we are chasing our tails, the tendency is to think that, instead of all this secular busyness, we need to get spiritually busy instead! But the solution is not to just baptize your frenzy. The solution is not to just leap onto a different and more spiritual sort of hamster wheel! Delightfully, the solution to the delirious pace of modern life is to take a deep breath and slow down; and to clear out the tool shed, so to speak – to streamline; to get back to basics!

So what are the basics? What do you really need to be doing, on a regular basis, to bask in the gospel and to grow in grace? Space forbids me elaborating, but (fitting for an article about simplicity!) how about a bullet-point list?

• Corporate worship and teaching, weekly (Heb. 10:24-25)
• Corporate prayer, weekly (Acts 2:42)
• Meaningful Christian fellowship, weekly (Acts 2:46)
• Meaningful Christian service, periodically (Eph. 4:11-12)
• The Lord’s Supper, periodically (1 Cor. 11:23-26)
• Family worship, daily (Deut. 6:6-9)
• Personal worship, daily (Mark 1:25)

I hope the simplicity here is refreshing! Very few resources are required for such a regimen, right? A Bible. A church home. Maybe a songbook and a catechism. And then a few other incidentals, like maybe paper, pen, etc. Other things may be helpful. But they are not usually needful!

But what definitely is needful is time! You cannot follow through on these basic biblical commitments if your life is so frantic that you only have 5 and 10 minute windows in which to try and wedge your spiritual disciplines. You must have blocks of time – uninterrupted and unhurried! Time! This is the resource that we moderns need to stock up on most of all! All the other resources are easy enough to get our hands on. But will we carve out time for using them? Will we stop running the American rat-race, or sitting down all night in front of our American TV’s … and streamline our schedules so as to drink deeply at Christ’s well? We’d find such simplicity refreshing if we did!

And, while we’re talking about the refreshing streamlining of our lives, can I say that so much of our time and busyness problems would be solved if we would only “remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.” If we’d set Sunday aside – free from work, shopping, laundry, chores, ballgames, TV, and so on – we’d have all the time in the world for the first five bullet points above! Even if we hadn’t time to get together with other believers, or visit the sick, or serve the church during the week … we’d have a whole day for doing so every Sunday! We’d often have time for the ‘bonus’ resource of good Christian books, too!  And so, if the seven bullet points above seem like a lot ... the reality is that, if we just kept the sabbath, most of these blessings we would be able to provide for ourselves in a single, unhurried, restful day!  That's why the Puritans called Sunday 'the market day of the soul'!  Because, if we use it as it was intended, we will be able to garner, in one trip to market (so to speak), so much of what we need to live on for the rest of the week!  Talk about simplifying our lives!  And if we trained ourselves to say ‘no’ to the hamster wheel on Sunday, then we’d find it even all the easier to jump off of it, at the appropriate times, during the rest of the week as well … making family and personal worship not so difficult-to-find-time-for as we might currently think!

There is a rhythm to the Christian life – both daily and weekly. And it’s generally far less like the frenetic beat of techno music, and far more like the gentle, steady lapping of waves upon the seashore. I hope that’s a relief to you! Jesus’ yoke is easy, not hard-driving; and His pace is usually steady, not hurried! And so get into His steady, slow, and simple rhythm, and you will find that the Christian life is not all that complex. Difficult sometimes, yes! But not complicated! Just keep it simple.

Sing Lustily

John Wesley, the 18th century evangelist, once wrote down seven “Directions for Singing.” Considering how his Methodists were known for their singing, and how great an era of hymnody the 18th century proved to be, Wesley’s directions are worth noting.  Let me mention just one of the seven:

Fourth on his list, Wesley instructed his people as follows:

Sing lustily [heartily, we would say] and with a good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half-dead or half-asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sang the songs of Satan.

This is good advice! Some songs are laments, of course … and will be sung differently. But when it comes to the songs of God’s praise, they ought to be sung heartily, in such a way that it is clear that the noise we are making is a joyful one!

It may very occasionally even be that the pastor or song leader may need to stop the singing mid-song and remind folks of these things, when the congregation slips into singing as though ‘half-asleep'! Not how you’d want someone to sing Happy Birthday to you, right? And not the way, surely, that we want to sing to our Maker, Redeemer, and King! Or think of when you’re trying to teach your child how to say ‘thank you.’ You don’t let him get away with mumbling it under his breath, all while looking down at Mrs. so-and-so’s shoes, right?  Indeed, sometimes you even make him start over ,because you want him to look her in the eyes, to speak clearly, and even to actually seem glad!  Let’s be sure we show at least as much honor, attention, and enthusiasm when giving thanks to our God!

I write these things, not to scold you, but to stir you up – so that you don’t sleep-walk through the first half of Sunday worship! Let it be that visitors to your church remember the earnestness of the singing (not just the musicians, but the singing!) almost as well as they remember anything else!

To get yourself ready, give close attention to the Scripture readings that precede the singing, letting them rouse your heart to praise. And, even if your heart is not always roused, train yourself to rouse your voice, at least … and perhaps the trumpet of your voice will help awaken the rest of you as well! ‘Lift up your voice with strength,’ my friends! ‘Sing lustily and with a good courage.’ “Shout joyfully to the LORD, all the earth” (Psalm 100:1)!

Celebrate Well!

The craze of ‘the holiday season’ is nearly upon us. And I must confess that, as a child of American culture, I really do prize it as ‘the most wonderful time of the year’! The unique traditions, the broccoli casserole, the time with family, the carols and hot chocolate – all of them make the five weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s loads of fun. Indeed, though I don’t usually buy all that much, I even enjoy maybe an hour stroll around the mall with giant nutcrackers situated here and there, and Kenny G’s Christmas album playing in the background. I can only imagine if I lived in Europe with its open air Christmas markets! And it’s all about to hit!

But when it hits, along with all the delights of the holidays will also come all the busyness, the added obligations, the mania, and maybe even our own inner humbugs – much of which can suck the life, not only out of the season, but of the soul. And the soul is too valuable to be run over (or treated merely as someone’s target demographic) for the final five weeks of the year! And, indeed, the opportunities of this season are too valuable to be lost in the shuffle and the mad rush. So, a few tips for celebrating well instead of wearily …

Schedule wisely. You don’t have to do everything, be everywhere, see absolutely everyone, and make every party. Rejoice, yes! Get out of the house, to be sure. Eat well! But make sure you temper your schedule so as to eat with, rejoice with, and get out of the house for those who really need it most, those who really need you most – your children, your spouse, your siblings and parents, your church family, your close friends, and “the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind” (Luke 14:12-14). Don’t get caught in a holiday rat race. Slow down enough to enjoy the people that God gives you this holiday season! Give your energy to moments, and not mania.

Give generously. Douglas Wilson has written marvelously about why it is a good thing indeed to lavishly celebrate the birth of Christ! “Use fudge and eggnog and wine and roast beef. Use presents and wrapping paper.” We are celebrating after all! And thus presents under the tree (within the bounds of sanity) are a good thing! And it is an especially good thing if we lavish such gifts on those who need them most – the poor, the outcast, the gospel-starved. That is why inviting someone on the fringes to your holiday feast, and shopping for Operation Christmas Child, and giving to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering® are so fulfilling – because they allow us to celebrate and rejoice and give gifts … and do so, at the same time, with eternal purpose! So give generously over these final weeks of the year – to those near, who already celebrate Christ with you; and for the sake of those far, whom you long to see, someday, join you in the heavenly banquet hall.

Worship intentionally. Sometimes, like Martha (Luke 10:38-42), we can get so busy with all the preparations for the event that we forget why we’re having the event in the first place (or for whom)! So celebrate, yes! But don’t focus so much attention on the tinsel, and treats, and toys that you forget that there is a reason for all this merry-making! Pause, rather, amid all the pure fun … and turn your attention to the manger in Bethlehem, and to the God-man who lay there that He might live, die, and live again to “save His people from their sins.” Carve out time for real thanksgiving on Thanksgiving, and for the Christmas story on Christmas, and for caroling and praise throughout December, and for a family trip to a Christmas service (on Sunday this year!). This will feed your soul, and make all the delights of the body all the more meaningful and sweet.

Celebrating with you ...

Family Worship

“You shall teach them diligently to your sons”

Deuteronomy 6:7

“Bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” 

Ephesians 6:4

One of the best (though surely not the only!) way to do the above is to build into your life a regular, daily habit of family worship. What is family worship? It’s simply a time when your entire household gathers together to do, in brief, many of the same things that we do as a church family on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. It’s a time for the head of the household to gather those under his care to worship the Lord together. And not just when the children are small, or when there are kids in the house. This is a habit that can and should be taken up by single people living together as roommates; by couples with no children; by empty nesters; and by any other collection of people living together!

You may do it in the morning, to start the day; or around the dinner table, once the evening meal is complete; or just before bed; or any other time of day when everyone is available and alert. But whenever you do it, I suggest that we are exceedingly wise if we make this an everyday routine … such that both parents, and children, and other household members as well, can’t imagine going through the daily routine without it. Get going for a month, and you’ll soon find that you no longer have to remind yourself to worship God together as a family, but that it will become as natural to you as eating dinner, or taking a morning shower, or brushing your teeth!

But what to actually do during these 10-15 minutes or so per day (or more, if you wish)? Well, let me just introduce you to the four items that we include in our nightly routine:

Scripture. Depending on whether there are children in the house (and their ages), the portion may be shorter or longer. You might read more of the narrative portions of scripture (gospels, Acts, OT history) when the kids are small. They’ll follow these more easily than they will Galatians or Leviticus! But whatever you read, create a plan whereby you are going to read through a particular book or portion of the Bible for several days or weeks (rather than hunting up something new every night), and then take the book or portion in bite-sized chunks, a little each day … reading aloud, and then (crucially) talking about what you read. If you’re reading longer portions, maybe stop for discussion at several appropriate points throughout the reading, rather than trying to discuss 10-15 verses or more all at once. And if you’re just getting started, may I suggest the gospel of Mark as a very good place to begin? But wherever you read … read the scriptures together as a family!

Praise. After reading and discussing the Scripture portion (and before prayer), offer a moment for any family member who wishes to share a praise concerning the Lord’s work in or for them. The praises could be as simple as God helping someone find their lost keys, or as profound as thanking the Lord for what you’ve been learning about justification and the gospel in the book of Galatians, or about the Trinity in your own reading. But, whatever the praises, it is important that we give voice to our gratitude for who God is, and for all He has done for us.

Prayer. After Scripture and praise, spend a few moments in prayer. When the children are younger, this time might be primarily led by an adult. As they get older, the prayer might be disbursed among different members of the family. But pray! Offer prayers of praise for the items just mentioned under the previous heading. Pray about what you read in the scripture portion. Pray for people and events connected with your family and church family. Pray for missionaries. Pray for specific requests that may be collected just prior to the prayer time. But, whatever the requests, pray together as a family!

Song. We close our family worship time, each evening, by singing a verse or two together. Our particular practice (since we have small children) is to sing the same song for an entire week, so that the children really have a chance to learn it. You could do it that way, or you could select a different song each night. But sing! Get a hymnal (here or here), and maybe a psalter as well, and sing together each day with your household! It will give even further voice to the kinds of prayers and praises that you’ve already lifted, and will also make you more and more familiar with solid materials of praise that may begin to fill your mouth at more spontaneous times throughout the week as well!

So that’s it! Pretty simple … and yet of profound effect on your life (and on the life of your family members) if worshiping the Lord in your home becomes as much a part of your daily routine as changing clothes before bed.

Sundays in Narnia

I’ve been thinking a little more than normal, in recent weeks, about what we might call church culture – and particularly how a local church’s culture / ethos / first impression affects those who walk into our Sunday gathering for the first time or three.

Of course there is a sense in which guests should walk in and feel somewhat comfortable with their Sunday morning surroundings. The language we use should be intelligible English. Our building shouldn’t be dingy or bizarre or difficult to find. Our welcome should be warm. Their children should be safe. And so on. Church shouldn’t be a forbidding, or unwelcoming, or completely unintelligible place for the first time guest. And I hope our churches are not any of those things. Let’s continually work to ensure that they aren’t … but are, rather, just the opposite!

And yet, some reading I’ve been doing* has me more and more convinced that, while a church’s culture should not at all be inhospitable, yet it should also be quite challenging, in many ways, to the man who comes in off the street (or out of a less biblically thoughtful church culture).

Walking into a truly biblical (not perfect, but biblical) church should be something like walking into a whole different culture; a whole new world, really – one that (intentionally) does not put the newcomer to Christianity immediately at ease in every way.

Now, many a church leader will be uncomfortable with a sentence like that. Because many a modern church leader has gone out of his (or her) way to create a Sunday morning ethos that looks and sounds very much like what the man on the street experiences at the theatre, the ballgame, the concert, the restaurant, and so on. Often out of good motives, churches attempt to create a Sunday morning aesthetic that feels as familiar and palatable as possible to the outsider. Sometimes churches have even styled themselves as ‘a church for people who don’t like church.’ To put it plainly, churches are bending over backwards to create a Sunday morning experience that doesn’t feel all that other-worldly and strange and different from everyday life.

But here is the problem. God is other-worldly. He is holy, holy, holy! And, thus, to the sinner, He is strange, too! And so are His ways and (purportedly) His people. “Our citizenship is in heaven.” And therefore God calls us to a whole different set of values than what we find promoted in our news media, TV commercials, movie theatres, public schools, literature, and so on. He calls us to stand out as lights “in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.” And so you would think that, when people like that gather to worship a God like that …you would imagine (wouldn’t you?) that their meetings would look and sound and operate on a plane that would make them, while not unwelcoming to the newcomer, immensely different, and challenging, and other-worldly!

The Sunday morning worship gathering should be – both for the newcomer, and for the long-time Christian who finds Sunday meeting an oasis from the hubbub and glitz and temptation of the other six days – like stepping through one of C.S. Lewis’s portals and into an entirely different world … with different values, and different assumptions, and different anthems, and different customs, and an altogether different sort of inhabitants. We ought to be, in some ways, as strange to a newcomer as a snowy wood inhabited by talking animals. Lucy understood the trees, and the snow, and even the English language of Mr. Tumnus. But there was no doubting that she was no longer in England! And such should be the experience of the man on the street when he steps into the new world that is the gathered church of Jesus Christ. There will, of necessity, be much with which he is familiar. But the differences ought to be profoundly obvious and challenging and (we hope) intriguing to him!

And yet the difference is not to be the trading of one earthly culture for another. This is not a plea, in other words, for the church to go back in time – singing, dressing, and speaking as though we were from a different era. That is mere traditionalism – the attempt to replace modern American culture with the culture, for instance, of the 1950’s. That sort of strangeness is of no avail! No! The man or woman who walks into our services ought to feel, not like he’s entered a different era, but a whole new world! And in any number of ways …

For instance, the modesty of people’s dress should be an immediate sign that one has entered a new realm. Note that I didn’t not say ‘the formality’ of the dress (for God cares little for that). But in a world where people show way too much, the church should look altogether different on a Sunday morning. And when it does, the guest is immediately struck with the realization that she is on more holy ground than she usually dares tread.

And the praise, too, should be a great challenge to the outsider’s worldview. Here are a bunch of people voluntarily singing aloud together … and without the necessity of a great band, a humming beat, or any alcoholic lubrication? Where else on earth can you find a scene like that? And there seems to be a reverence about their singing … and an intenseness about the words more so than the pulse of the tune. And the words themselves are not about everyday themes; not so much about horizontal loves (like the standard fare on the radio); not much about the singers at all, in fact. The lyrics can only be described as vertical, self-effacing, other-worldly!

And observe how parents and children sit together, and how the children are learning to actually sit still for over an hour, and how the teenagers don’t seem to be embarrassed by their parents, and how the men are actually present with their families on a Sunday morning (and singing, too!).

And then there is the preaching. Can people really sit, in 2015, for 45 minutes … listening intently to someone explaining the Bible? With no moving pictures? And no theatrics? All the more interesting because the message seems to be, not about a cause of some sort, but about a Person. Indeed, they talk so much and so well of this Jesus that it’s beginning to seem like they actually do mean it when they speak of Him being alive, and their only hope.

And are they really listening to this man telling them, week by week, that they aren’t actually good people; that they are sinners; that they are hopeless without God’s miraculous and merciful intervention in their lives? What on earth would coax people to put up with such? Or is it that they are in tune with something (or Someone) that is not actually on earth?

And the prayer meeting! Even many church-goers will find this a whole new experience! People actually circling together and sending all these pleading words heavenward … and truly believing that there is someone out there who is listening? Seeing a group of Christians earnestly praying together is perhaps the most other-worldly sight that a modern American will ever see!

But, you see … the man on the street will never see these things; he will never be challenged to enter, himself, into a different world and take up a new citizenship if the church continues to trip over itself trying to look more and more like the culture with which such a man is already familiar. We think we are doing people a good turn, by dressing the Sunday meeting in more culturally ‘relevant’ garb. But we’re actually shooting ourselves in the foot – we who are called to woo people out of their allegiance to this kingdom, and into citizenship in an entirely different realm … “the kingdom of [God’s] beloved Son.”

Truly, one of the best things we can do for our neighbors is to strive to create a church culture that is not immediately recognizable and comfortable to them … but attractively other-worldly; appealingly (and biblically) strange; intriguingly unlike anything they have ever encountered before. Like they have, in walking into our gathering, crossed the border into an entirely different and better kingdom.

____________________

*Specifically, Rosaria Butterfield’s The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert and Terry Johnson’s chapter “Restoring Psalm Singing to our Worship” (in Give Praise to God; Philip Ryken, Derek Thomas, and Ligon Duncan, eds.).

'Or ... nothing at all'

In an RP [Reformed Presbyterian] church, you will get no show, no comedian pastors, no rock bands, no videos, no interpretive dancing.  Either Jesus comes to worship with us and the Holy Spirit fuels and fills us and God is honored or we have, simply, painfully, nothing at all.

Rosaria Butterfield

The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert

Read it again, slowly.  Then read it a third time and plug your church name into the first sentence, along with whatever ambiance, aesthetics, traditions, or experience you have come to believe necessary for you to 'really worship.'  And then ask if you can still leave the second sentence as-is.

May God give us more pastors, elders, and congregations with the heartbeat of Mrs. Butterfield and the Reformed Presbyterians. 

Family Worship, Re-Booted

For parents with children still at home, summer time inevitably brings a bit of upheaval with it. Schedules change dramatically – or, in many cases, they end up going mostly out the window. Bed-times are different, vacations are on the calendar, family is in town, and yard work has to be done. And then there all softball games, swim lessons, Bible clubs, and so on. And so there just seems to be a good bit less normalcy in the summer time.

And, between the trips, and the company, and the fuller evening schedules, one of the routines that may lag behind is that of family worship. Perhaps you’ve seen it happen in your own house over the last 2-3 months. With the sun in the sky until late on into the evenings, it has perhaps been a challenge getting everyone gathered around the table or on the sofa to praise the Lord together before bed. But now that school is beginning again, and life settles back into its more familiar rhythms, let me encourage you to make sure that you make family worship among the most important rhythms of all!

Begin, this fall semester, gathering the family again for praise, and prayer, and scripture each evening. Or, if you’ve never yet begun, now is a good time to start a brand new habit! You don’t have to be a great bible scholar, or have some profound plan, in order to do this moms and dads. Just:

• Pick a book of the Bible (Mark is a great place to begin, or to begin again).
• And read a brief portion each evening (based on your children’s attention span!).
• Then talk briefly about what you read (especially what it teaches us about Jesus).
• Then pray briefly together about what you read, and about any other concerns that seem pertinent (family needs, lost friends, missionaries, etc.).
• Then sing a hymn, or psalm, or chorus together (perhaps learning the same one for an entire week).

All in all, this should take about 15 minutes, give or take. Maybe a little less when the tots are tiny, and a little more as they get older and increase in their capacity to discuss the passage with you. But however long it takes, these minutes will be invaluable – perhaps the most important block of time in the entire day. You will be communicating to your kids, every day of their lives, where your family priorities lie. And that will probably rub off! If you do this all the years your children are at home, there’s a really good chance that they’ll just think it normal … and never think twice about whether or not they should continue the practice when they have families of their own! And furthermore, if you truly want to see your children know and follow Jesus, then there is nothing better that you can do for them than to make sure that they are exposed to the word of God every day of their lives! You cannot open their eyes to believe on Christ. But the Holy Spirit can! And the instrument He uses to cause people to be “born again” is “the living and enduring word of God” (1 Peter 1.23).

So crack it open each evening as a family … and pray and sing together, too! Re-boot your family worship routine, if it has gone the way of many other habits during the commotion of summer. Or boot it up for the very first time, if you’ve never tried it before. And don’t give up! Don’t let little ones with bad attitudes stop you from doing what is best for their souls. Don’t let three or four missed days turn into two weeks or a month. And don’t allow life to become so busy – summer or not – that you squeeze God out of the family routine in favor of something more ‘exciting’, but far less permanent. Worship God together as a family … every. single. day.

And then … when your kids are grown, keep it going, even in the empty nest. After all, you need the Bible, and the gospel, and prayer, and praise just as much as ever your little ones did!

So what's the singing like?

This is a frequent question for many people as we discuss various local churches. And it is not an unimportant one! God has commanded us to sing – and so how we do it is an important consideration. Do we actually sing, or just murmur? Are the singing and music done reasonably well? Even questions of style, while not fundamental, contain a layer of importance. Singing is a big part of what the church does when she gathers to worship her King Sunday by Sunday. And so it’s not wrong to ask: What’s the singing like? And if we are going to ask the question, we should not only want to know what the answer is in a given local church … but also what the answer should be! What should the singing be like? And, boy, are there some good answers in Colossians 3.16:

“Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”

Looking at that verse (and a couple of others), let me piece together a brief philosophy of singing in the local church. (Note: Italicized emphases within scriptural quotations are mine, and not original to the biblical text).

So then, our singing should be:

Biblical: “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you … singing.” That is to say that the content of what we sing ought to be word-driven – not based so much in the sensory perceptions of the song-writer, but seeking to put into poetic language the truths and emotions and ways of thinking and praising that we find on the pages of “the word” (including the “psalms”, Paul says)!

Christ-Centered: “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you … singing.” Not every song needs to be directly about the gospel and the cross of Christ. But we do well to be sure that we do sing of these matters consistently. Christ crucified, risen, and reigning – these are the high water marks of biblical revelation, and ought to be so in our singing as well.

Vertical: “Singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” Our chief goal in singing praise to God is to sing praise to God – not merely to gratify our own desires. That’s not to say that our singing and music should be deliberately unappealing to the human ear! It should be beautiful – but primarily as a gift to God, and a reflection of His own beauty; not for the sake of entertainment.

Edifying: While we sing primarily to God, we should also sing in such a way that, by our very singing, we are “teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” This is where, once again, scriptural lyrics are important; and where beautiful singing can help us remind each other of our beautiful God!

Simple: It seems to me that New Testament worship did not come with very many accoutrements – the human heart and voice being the instruments of praise upon which Paul places his emphasis in Colossians 3 (and Eph. 5.19!).

Congregational: “Singing with thankfulness in your hearts [plural] to God.” Paul’s emphasis seems to be on singing together … not merely listening to the singers on the stage, but joining our hearts and voices in one song.

Reverent: “God is in heaven and you are on the earth” (Ecclesiastes 5.2). So let us beware of flippancy or gimmicks, but approach the throne with reverence and humility. As A.W. Tozer has said, you don’t go into "the presence of the Queen of England" and start "telling jokes about queens"! How much less, he says, in the presence of the King of kings!

Joyful: After having spoken of reverence, let us also say very clearly that reverence is not the same thing as formality or tedium! Let us sing with gusto and passion and joy! “Shout joyfully to the LORD all the earth” (Psalm 100.1).

May the Lord bless us as we sing is praises together from week to week!

Sermons from Psalms 91-100

We recently finished another installation of sermons from the psalms.  Enjoy, and be encouraged!

Psalm 91 - Security
Psalm 92 - "It is good to give thanks to the LORD"
Psalm 93 - "The LORD reigns"
Psalm 94 - "God of vengeance, shine forth!"
Psalm 95 - A Call to Worship
Psalm 96 - "Sing to the LORD, all the earth"
Psalm 97 - Psalm 97
Psalm 99 - Psalm 99
Psalm 100 - Psalm 100

Psalm 98 was preached back in 2010, and may be found on our website.

And here are links to some of the previous segments: Psalms 51-60, Psalms 71-83, and Psalms 84-90. Nearly all the Psalms, from 31 forward, have been digitally recorded and are available on the church's website. So check in there to find sermons not linked above.

Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations in these sermons are taken from the NASB®.  Sermon titles in quotation makes are also quotations from the NASB®.

The Bible's Hymnbook

Part of a series of articles, entitled 20 years a Christian, recalling some of the important lessons I have learned in nearly two decades as a believer in Jesus.

Did you know that the Bible has a hymnbook inside? That’s right, there is one particular portion of the Bible that is meant to be sung – namely, the book of Psalms! That’s why, at the head of certain psalms, you read instructions like: “for the choir director; with stringed instruments” – because the psalms were meant for singing! The book of Psalms (or the psalter, as it is sometimes called) is a kind of Bible hymnbook, putting words into the mouths of God’s people, so that they may sing them back to the Lord!

Now, it may be that the psalter’s musical nature does not surprise you; you may already know that the psalms were meant for singing – not least because the book itself often tells us that we are looking at a song! But most of us did not grow up hearing it actually done. We grew up with the great hymns of the faith, and sometimes with more modern gospel songs and choruses. And we are thankful, today, for a new wave of modern hymn-writers like the Gettys, Stuart Townend, and so on. But many of us did not grow up learning, by example, that the psalms were meant to be sung, too! And so, while we realize that the words on the page before us were sung by David, and Asaph, and their contemporaries … it may not occur to us that they should also be sung by us too!

This was my basic approach to musical worship until just a few years ago. The Indelible Grace CD’s had introduced me to a few psalms set to music. And that was neat. But it had never occurred to me that there might even be a more thorough and disciplined way to sing from the Bible’s songbook. But then I began to listen to some preachers overseas, and to benefit greatly from their preaching of the gospel. And, by and by, I discovered that their congregations sing the psalms exclusively.  Believing, as I heard one man put it, that they are on 'safe ground' when singing the words that God Himself has inspired, these brothers and sisters sing nothing but the psalms when they gather in corporate worship. And so the psalter is, literally, their hymnbook! And they are not an anomaly in the history of the church (psalm singing having been much more of a staple in times gone by).

And so I began thinking to myself: Maybe we moderns are missing out, not singing very often from the Bible’s own hymnbook! I do not necessarily agree with the reasons my brethren give for singing nothing but the psalms. But their commitment to actually sing the inspired words of the Bible makes me realize that we are the poorer if we do not do so. Because there are so many times – maybe especially in times of sin and sorrow – when the psalter says to the Lord exactly what we were thinking or feeling, but didn’t know quite how to put it into words (or if it was even proper for us to put such thoughts into words). And there are other times when the psalms rise to heights of poetic praise that even the best hymns have trouble duplicating. And it is a wonderful thing if we can open the book of psalms and let God put words of prayer and praise right onto our lips – and doubly so if we can add the emotion, and feeling, and aid to memory that comes with song!

So try it out in your own corporate or family worship. Get ahold of a good psalter (like Sing Psalms or The Scottish Psalter of 1650); turn to a psalm that has been particularly helpful, or is particularly timely; count the syllables in each line; find a well-known tune that matches the meter you’ve just counted; and then sing back to the Lord His very own words! You’ll find yourself blessed, encouraged, and with a much better grasp of this wonderful book of the Bible called Psalms. It’s one of the greatest lessons of my nearly twenty years as a Christian – the psalms were meant for singing!

Donald Miller, Worship, and Learning Style

There is a good discussion taking place over at Reformation 21.  Both Todd Pruitt and Aimee Byrd have responded helpfully to Donald Miller's recent article in which he says that he doesn't often attend church because "it's not how I learn" and "I don't connect with God by singing to Him."

Pruitt responds by pointing out, among other things, that the worship of the church is not simply about our own learning.  Nor is it about our own "connecting with God".  Rather, Pruitt says, "Worship is about my giving God his due in the ways that he has prescribed in his Word."  Amen, Todd.

Pruitt also make some good observations as to how Miller's reasons for not often attending church are centered around me, myself, and I.  What is my learning style.  How do I connect with God?  As though I were the chief concern when determining whether I will go to church.  Preach it, Todd.

Aimee Byrd follows up with a short and helpful piece -- not only de-bunking our culture's over-emphasis on "learning styles," but also by pointing out that God Himself has actually "determined that all of us share in a particular so-called learning style when it comes to spiritual growth. He has prescribed a means to bless his people in Christ, the preached Word and the sacraments."  You go, girl!

And, maybe most central of all ... they both point out, in Pruitt's words, that "in Christ we do not have to find ways to connect with God. God has connected to us through Christ!"

Go read all three articles (Miller, Pruitt, Byrd), and you will be helped to think about the nature of church, and worship, and your place in both.

"The storehouses of the snow"

The book of Job is, on many different levels, a fascinating read. It gives us keen insights into the sovereignty of God, the suffering of mankind, and the work (and limitations) of the devil … as well as providing some very helpful do’s and don’ts of true Christian friendship. Furthermore, the final chapters are an incredible series of reminders as to just how small we human beings are; just how little we know in comparison to our omniscient, omnipotent, omni-competent God. God asks Job such questions as:

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”
“Have you ever in your life commanded the morning?”
“Do you know the time the mountain goats give birth?”
“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow?”

The purpose of such questions, of course, is to humble Job; to remind him that he is not God, and that his questioning of the Almighty has been out of place, and has been done in far more ignorance than Job has, thus far, been willing to credit to his own account. Job is not God! And if we read the final five chapters of the book, we will be reminded that neither are we!

God sees – and controls – things that happen on the tops of craggy cliffs, and at the bottom of ocean deeps, that human eyes rarely see. He keeps all the stars fixed in their constellations, and the planets in their orbits. And yes, He is the one who sends the snow … how, we don’t really understand. We haven’t entered into its storehouses!

Well, Job certainly hadn’t, anyway. But we might read the book of Job, all these centuries later, and think: ‘Well, today, there are people who actually do “know the time the mountain goats give birth.” And there are meteorologists who, by means of their equipment and scientific acumen, actually have, in a manner of speaking, “entered the storehouses of the snow.” So maybe we have caught up with God. Maybe mankind is not so small as the book of Job makes him out to be.’

Well, there certainly are people today who understand God’s world to a much greater extent than Job could have done. Such are the advances that science, plus technology, plus time have afforded us. And we’re thankful for these things, in many ways. But, because meteorologists can now explain the origin of all the winter white we have seen in the last few days, does that mean we are catching up with God? That maybe the final chapters of Job ought no longer make us feel as small as they might once have done? I think not.

So a select few individuals, with lots of study and expensive technology, can explain and even predict the coming of the snow. That’s impressive, I’ll admit … and really quite fascinating (and, indeed, very helpful when your family is travelling on a winter storm weekend!). But, for all our understanding of the snow, humankind can still do absolutely nothing to control it, or curtail it, or confine it. We’re still not God, even if we understand His working a lot better than we once did!

Furthermore, the meteorological insights that have been gained into “the storehouses of the snow” reveal that the process of snow making is even a lot more complicated than God lets on in Job 38.22. “The storehouses of the snow” are not just simple barns, set up in the heavens, with remote control doors ready to open at God’s command. No! They are actually gigantic meteorological engines, engaged in a process that (best I can tell) seems to involve such various cogwheels as the jet stream, and air pressure, and surface temperature, and temperature aloft, and moisture, and perhaps a handful of other factors that normal people like me don’t really understand! So, by figuring out where the snow comes from; by entering into its storehouses, mankind hasn’t actually demystified the power of God, but simply realized that His working is actually far more intricate and complex than we might have before recognized!

That is the wonder of all true science, in fact. Scientific enquiry and discovery do not render God obsolete, because now we supposedly have the real explanation for things that the men and women of Job’s day did not understand (and thus blindly ascribed to the idea of ‘God’). No! The more we discover about how the world works, the more we realize just how big God must be … because the processes He uses to create the snow, or to bring the baby mountain goats to birth, are far more complex than we might have otherwise dreamed! And complexity – even complexity that human beings have finally (in measure) figured out – speaks to an even greater God than we might have otherwise dreamed. So praise God for science! And praise God for the snow of recent days! Both of them, if we see aright, tell us that God is great … and that we, even with all our discovery, are still small.

What we do at 11AM on Sundays

In the middle of 1 Chronicles 16 is a beautiful poem of David (or perhaps of Asaph, his chief worship leader). It’s a song about what God’s people should do when in a setting of corporate worship. It’s a description of how to act in the Lord’s presence, in the Lord’s house. For us, then, it’s a kind of blueprint for how we should act at 11:00am each Sunday (or whenever your church meets for corporate worship). Let me walk you though it…

1. "Ascribe to the LORD the glory due His name" (29a). In essence, we are to speak well and much of the LORD when we are in His house on His day. He should be our topic of conversation in the car, and in the hallway before the worship service. Our lips should be filled with good things to say about God all morning long. Maybe we recount what He’s taught us this week. Maybe we discuss the sermon or SS lesson. Certainly we ought all to sing with full hearts…and think about what we are saying about our God! Sundays at 11:00am are about speaking well and much about our God!

2. "Bring and offering, and come before Him" (29b). We should not come to Sunday at 11:00 empty-handed, but with an offering of money, or service, or praise. Indeed, remembering that everything we give was first given us by God, we should be offering ourselves to the LORD  all week long…with Sunday as the culmination!

3. "Worship the LORD in holy array" (29c). “Array” is another word for clothing. Here it is used in a figurative sense. In other words…worship the LORD wrapped in a garment of holiness. Come to the LORD with a clean robe on your back. Pursue godliness all week long. And when you fail (which you often will), confess your sins and be cleansed afresh before meeting with the LORD in His house. Cleansed afresh through the mercy of Christ! That’s why we pause for confession of sin during the pastoral prayer...that we might come before the Lord in the garments of holiness that He Himself has made white!

4. "Tremble before Him, all the earth" (30a). Reverence the LORD. The presence of God in the house of God is not the place for silliness and slapstick. God is in heaven. And this giant earth (on which you and I are dust mites) is His footstool. Therefore we ought to tremble at even the thought of God…much more when we enter His presence. Are you trembling today?—with both reverence & anticipation—at the prospect of meeting with God?

5. "Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice" (31a). Joy and gladness should be the theme of our times together with the LORD. We tremble at His greatness and holiness…and we leap for joy at His mercy and kindness! Yes, we may have heavy hearts some days … and the Lord knows that, and has compassion. But there can be a deep-seated, hopeful joy in our hearts, alongside the tears. So the call to joy is not a call to phony smiles. But it is a call away from self-pity, hopelessness, and (perhaps worst of all) mere religious routine. What a tragedy if our faces…or worse yet our singing…should betray that we think God is boring, or run-of-the-mill, or incapable of meeting our deepest needs. How often I am guilty of this. Let’s not be today!

6. "Let them say among the nations, 'The LORD reigns'” (31b). Did you catch that? We ought not just speak well of the LORD to one another (as in #1). We ought also to speak well of Him among the nations! We come here and are fed every Sunday at 11:00am so that we might tell the nations and the neighborhoods about the wondrous love of Jesus! When’s the last time you told a co-worker or family member something specific about the LORD, His goodness, and His plan of salvation? Maybe something you hear or see in God today will be just what needs passing along!

For all these reasons (and many more) 11:00 on Sunday is the greatest hour of the week. Let us make the most of every moment!

Cease from Man, part 2

Stop regarding man, whose breath of life is in his nostrils; for why should he be esteemed? Isaiah 2.22

“Cease from man,” as the KJV puts it. And perhaps the man (or woman) that many of us need most to “cease from”; perhaps the person we need, most of all, to “stop regarding,” is the one who looks at us in the mirror each morning! Solomon puts it like this: “Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and do not lean on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3.5, emphasis mine). “Cease from man” – including and especially yourself!

How badly I need to learn that! How many times have I found myself in a mess, or a period of uncertainty, and tried to dig my way out of it by my own ingenuity, or ‘wisdom’, or sweat? And how many times do I end up making matters worse because of it? I think back to the botched paint ‘touch up’ that I did to the church’s back door last year. Leaning on my own understanding (which, in painting with oils, is very limited), I determined to make a fix at all costs … and ended up just making matters worse; and costing myself a lot of trouble in the process. I’ve done the same thing, sometimes, with pastoral situations – interjecting my own thoughts and solutions with little prayer, and even less biblical wisdom – and often hurting relationships or laying unnecessary burdens on people in the process.

The problem in both cases – and in every case where you and I foolishly take matters into our own hands – is two-fold. First, and most obviously, we are not trusting the Lord. And then, secondly (and exacerbating the problem), we are trusting ourselves in the Lord’s place; leaning on our own understanding … which is almost always extremely limited! This is where a great deal of our worrying comes in, is it not? When we find ourselves in a tight, we start to make decisions and project the future based on a very limited amount of understanding … and we worry, and sometimes even panic, in the process.

Suppose you begin to have several medical symptoms. You begin to have stomach pain, and to have to use the restroom more frequently. You’re a bit concerned about it … so you head to Google and start trying to figure out what’s wrong. After a good hour of searching and reading the message boards, you’re convinced that you probably have some dreaded disease that will take your life within a year. But then you actually go to the doctor – the one who has a thousand times more understanding than you do (even with your Google search!) – and he doesn’t seem concerned at all. Not because there is not a problem, but because he actually knows what the problem is, and exactly what he is going to do to correct it.

Leaning on your own understanding, you panicked. But going to the expert, there was calm and a clear plan. And so it is, on an even grander scale, with the Lord. When we lean on our own understanding, there is so often fear and worry. We can only see a little sliver of the whole picture … and so we panic. But God sees the whole thing, and never has the slightest change of pulse when considering your dilemma. He knows exactly what He is doing, and will do.

Let me say again that I need to learn these lessons, not just teach them. That has been painfully evident to me in recent days. So learn the lesson yourself. “Cease from man” – especially from your own man.

Cease from Man

“Stop regarding man, whose breath of life is in his nostrils; for why should he be esteemed?” Thus said the Lord to His straying people in Isaiah 2.22. The King James Version puts the first few words of God’s plea even more memorably: “Cease from man.” Cease hoping in him; cease exalting him; cease fearing him – and, by implication, begin hoping again in the Lord; begin exalting the Lord; begin fearing the Lord!

Let me just mention a few ways that we should all “cease from man” – preaching them as much to myself as to anyone else:

1. Cease idolizing man. When we think of idols, the first thought that comes to our minds may be that of statues and images. If we’re more astute, we will realize that foods, drinks, games, money, and possessions can also be idols. But what about people? O, people can definitely be idols, can they not? We have a television show named for this very sin problem! Whether it is a celebrity, or an athlete, or a political figure, or a pastor … we are in for great disappointment if we put mere men or women on pedestals. Yes, we should recognize the giftedness that God has granted to a good many of His creatures … and even admire it! But who gets the ultimate credit for the Mona Lisa – Michelangelo, or the paint on the canvas? And who gets the greatest applause when we see a man or woman worth admiring? The creation, or the Creator?

2. Cease trusting man. This was one of Israel’s great problems in many portions of her history. When an enemy was breathing down their necks on one side of the land, they would run and seek the help of another pagan king at the other end of the border! To put it in our modern terminology, instead of turning to God in times of trouble, they immediately picked up the telephone or began scouring the internet for solutions. Am I saying it’s wrong to call a plumber when your shower head explodes, or a lawyer when you have legal troubles, or a pastor when you need counsel? No! But call on God even more intently than the plumber! Earnestly ask God to work through the lawyer or the pastor, instead of trusting in a mere man. The same should have been in place in Israel. God could have – and often did – use pagan kings to do His people good. But the point is that Israel should not have sought the kings (small ‘k’), but the King (capital ‘K’)! Let’s make sure we do the same!

3. Cease fearing man. One reason Israel often entrusted themselves to one pagan king was because they feared another pagan king! They worried, and fretted, and stayed awake at night … afraid of what so-and-so might do to them. Does that sound familiar? Don’t we often allow the fear of what others will think or do drive our decision-making? And don’t the decisions we make as a result of such fear often prove to dishonor the Lord? We’d rather displease God than Mr. or Mrs. so-and-so! But it ought to be the other way around! Seek, yes, to please and honor other people when it is legitimate to do so. But when you must obey God rather than man … “Cease from man” … “whose breath of life is in his nostrils; for why should he be esteemed?”

Is there any situation, in your life, in which you need to “cease from man” and begin afresh with God? Do it, even today. God never once let His believing people down!

You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet! - Thoughts on God and Yellowstone

For Christmas, our family was given a set of DVD documentaries called the National Parks Exploration Series – up close and personal looks at Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, the Badlands, and so on. We’ve not watched them all yet, but I have to say that the most impressive so far has been the feature on Yellowstone. The bears, elk, and bison; the mountain peaks; the lakes; the geysers (Old Faithful in particular); the Grand Prismatic spring; a waterfall that plummets farther, straight down, than Niagara – all of this, and more, seems to make Yellowstone a must-see for family fun and adventure, and for beholding the handiwork of God at some of its most breath-taking! Someday maybe we’ll load all the kids up and hit the road to see it all!

Well, actually … we won’t be able to see it all. In fact, one of the most poignant portions of the documentary was hearing a park ranger, whose career is dedicated to knowing and showing Yellowstone Park on a daily basis, say (I'm paraphrasing): ‘No matter how long I work here, every day holds new surprises. To me, that is the most wonderful thing about Yellowstone – the fact that it is too vast for me to ever fully see or know all its treasures.’

I found that to be a striking and moving statement – ‘I love the fact,’ she said, ‘that, try as I might, I will never know it all. The park is too grand and glorious!’ In a world that has oceans of information at its fingertips; in a culture where we seem to want (and be able) to know almost everything about almost anything … there are still some treasures so grand, so complex and varied, so majestic that even the experts cannot know everything there is to know about them!

Even more arresting, though, was that this particular expert finds a peculiar joy in the fact that she will never fully know it all! It pleases her to realize that, try as she might, she will never get her mind all the way around Yellowstone! She is not celebrating ignorance, you understand. Without doubt, this woman knows a great deal more about Yellowstone than 99.99% of the world – and she surely delights in knowing what she knows, and passing it along to park visitors! But what is even more delightful to her, she said, is realizing that this thing, this beauty, this glory which she knows so well is actually even more glorious than she could ever fully fathom! Her delight, in other words, is not in the fact that she doesn’t know certain of Yellowstone’s wonders, and can’t answer every question … but in the realization that she gets to go to work every day in a place whose wonders are too many to ever possibly see or count! She’ll never run out of new and thrilling discoveries to make!

And I simply make this corollary: If such wonder and amazement can be engendered by a forty by sixty mile stretch of wilderness in northwest Wyoming, how much more in the God who created that wilderness, and who, Himself, fills heaven and earth? God is like Yellowstone National Park – only on a larger-than-the-universe scale! We can never, in a million lifetimes, know all there is to know of Him! Yes, we ought to live and die trying. We ought to know more and more of Him with every passing year of reading His word and observing His world. But He is so grand, so finely contoured in His being and attributes, so majestic and complex and holy … we’ll never know it all! And, far from being disappointed with the fact that we will never master God, we delight in it! We will never grow bored of studying and knowing Him! Rather, we get to gaze, every day of our lives – and on into eternity – at a God, the many contours and colors of whose triune Person we will never finish tracing out! There will always be something more to see; something better to understand; something more delightful and majestic and thrilling than we first realized! In short, one of the greatest delights of spending a lifetime studying and knowing Him ought to be the enchanting realization, at the end of it all, that our God is so grand that (as they say), ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet!’

"The Excitement and the Anticipation"

A good word from Tim Challies re: the difference between the Christian conference, and the normal, Lord's Day worship of the church.  Here's a snippet:

The excitement and the anticipation that marks a conference is often noticeably absent in the local church. A sermon preached at a conference can have a greater impact on a person than the very same sermon preached the next Sunday morning in the context of a church service. Why? Because the person attending the conference has prepared himself to receive that message. He believes he will be blessed, he applies himself, and not surprisingly, he finds in the end that he has been blessed.

Read the whole thing here.