Sanam Doctrinam

Then it happened in the spring, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they destroyed the sons of Ammon and besieged Rabbah.
But David stayed at Jerusalem.

2 Samuel 11:1

Easy times are dangerous times. I’ve discovered that the most dangerous periods in my life from a spiritual standpoint are not necessarily those times fraught with difficulty and trial. Instead, the most dangerous times are when things are going well. Quiet periods can be the most treacherous.

King David certainly found this to be the case. His enemies had been largely subdued. His kingdom seemed secure. He was comfortable and happy, with all Israel under his skillful rule. This peaceful picture, however, was shattered by the events of 2 Samuel 11. In that well-known text, David committed adultery with Bathsheba. The very act causes us to ask, “Why, David?” We wish we could gain some insight into what was going on in David’s life that he would do such a thing. Present, but rarely noticed, the first verse of 2 Samuel 11 gives us a clue: very little. David had sent Joab off on a military campaign, leaving the king with little to do, back in Jerusalem. And it was in this time of quiet inactivity that David had his greatest failure.

Spiritual disaster awaits periods of inactivity. We must guard our leisure. There is nothing wrong with leisure, but if it is not vigilantly guarded, leisure quickly degenerates into occasion for wickedness. The old saying proves true in this regard: An idle mind is the devil’s playground.

How do we keep from falling into danger during downtime? I’d suggest an important key is that we monitor our thoughts. Sin begins with a thought. By properly focusing our mental energy, even during the easy times, we will guard against spiritual disaster. The way we focus our thoughts is probably two-fold. Two things should occupy our thoughts, thereby protecting us from falling off the cliff in our relationship with God. The first I would suggest is prayer. Prayer creates a protective canopy of sorts, shielding us from the dangers of the world, the flesh, and the devil. If we are absorbed in the process of talking with God, it will make spiritual failure more difficult. It’s hard to sin in the midst of a conversation with the Lord.

A second means of protection from the danger downtime produces is, not surprisingly, God’s Word. The psalmist writes in Psalm 119:11, “Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You.” Immunizing ourselves with God’s perspective on life, sin, holiness, and everything else is a powerful deterrent to keep us from getting into dangerous spiritual territory, especially in the easy times.

In his time of ease, had David neglected these means of protection? It’s hard to say. It appears from the text that he had neglected his responsibilities to a degree. Perhaps the Psalmist of Israel had also neglected his relationship with God. Whatever the case, David would have done well to avoid the situation entirely by drawing close to His Shepherd during the easy times.

Today’s verse is a timely warning to all of us. If King David could fall into sin in such a dramatic way, so can we. It may not be adultery for us, but it could be anything in a great host of other possibilities. We don’t want to go there in the easy times, or in the difficult ones. Let’s protect ourselves from such danger with the influences of God’s Word and prayer.

This is, obviously, Memorial Day weekend.  Many will be packing up the family and heading to not-so-far-off destinations, as I did with mine.  Others will betaking part in picnics and meeting up with family or fellow believers to memorialize the fact that we do this every year.  OK, I know it is to remember our fallen war heroes and those who fought bravely for the freedom of our country.  Honestly, how many of us actually remember that on Memorial Day?  I am not saying this to discount it’s importance, but to simply make a point.  I believe we should make mention of this fact on a day, when most people just see it as a day off for celebrating, well a day off.

This anticlimactic response to the day’s supposed meaning is a parallel to the way in which we treat the memorial known as Communion or the Lord’s Table in the Evangelical Church. (For those who want to start in on the Calvinistic vs. the Zwinglian  meaning, you know where I stand by my use of the word memorial, let’s please leave it at that and get to the point.)  Many unknowing people treat this ordinance with the same disinterest as remembering the fallen War Heroes on Memorial Day.

For many Communion or the Lord’s Table was known as Mass for most of their lives.  Others may simply see it as wrote religious practice that must be done every Sunday, once a month or once a quarter.  Does it have significance in the life of the Christian today?  I would say yes and it all depends on two questions…

“What is Communion?” and “Who Instituted It and Why?” (I guess you might categorize that as 3 questions, but I’ve never been that good at math!)

I guess we might have to answer the second (& third, oh never mind you get what I mean) in order to answer the first.  In Matthew 26:26-30 (as well as the accounts in the other Gospels) Jesus inserts new meaning into the tradition of passover.  He takes the bread (the Afikoman), breaks and distributes it to the men and tells them to take it and eat it, and Luke adds, in remembrance of Him.  He took the after dinner wine (the fourth cup Hallel) and in the same manner told them that it was an emblem of His blood and that they should drink in remembrance of Him.  Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 that we are to do this as often as we do in remembrance of Christ, until He returns.  So, there is the Who and the why.  In this we get the answer to the “why” question.

It is not as the Roman Catholics put it, that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ.  In that they eat and drink condemnation unto themselves, supposing that they earn favor with God in the re-sacrificing of Christ (in which the priest commands Christ to come down and be sacrificed again for sin.)  No, we are remembering what Christ did, in the fashion in which He asked us to.

Understanding this remembrance is of utmost importance!  We cannot let it go the way of other ceremony, somehow only giving a nod to it’s intent and purpose, while religiously adhering to its practice.  It is one of the activities that God has called us to and one in which we must obey with not only doing, but thinking as well.

I don’t know why it has taken me so long to finish up this three part series, unless it was providential so I could find this quote from a Time article on tweeting in the worship service, “It’s a huge responsibility of a church to leverage whatever’s going on in the broader culture, to connect people to God and to each other,”  Wait for it…..Wait for it….WHAT IS THIS GUY TALKING ABOUT?!

This is exactly where assimilation/ contamination thinking takes us.  It is our “responsibility to leverage!”  Where is that in the Scriptures?  We have taken this mentality so far that we believe it is our “responsibility to leverage” (the power to influence a person or situation to achieve a particular outcome) the “broader culture to connect people to God and others.”

First of all; How exactly is tweeting during a worship service going to connect me to God?  Really, how is it going to connect me to others?  Isn’t the fact that I am there with the body going to connect me to others?

This is just further evidence that we have abandoned the essentials of community and have made church an event rather than who we are.

I’m not saying that tweeting is evil or that we have no clue what is going on in the culture, but we are becoming contaminated by the culture, rather than being holy!  It’s just that plain and simple.  We have no regard for the sanctity of worship, we have no desire to be in fellowship with God and other believers in the Biblical way, if we allow culture to mandate the terms of worship.  Worship and the Christian lifestyle is not me focused.  It is, indeed, God focused.

Why do we need a five year moratorium on what we believe about homosexuality?  Can’t we clearly read what the Scriptures say?  Why do we need to believe there is a hole in our Gospel, doesn’t 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 clearly state what the Gospel is?  Do we really need to use sexual euphemism  to make our point?  You see, it’s not even assimilation anymore, it is clearly contamination.  Is this legalism?  No.  It is what we threw out, when we threw out legalism.  It’s what the Bible calls, sanctification and it is what the Bible calls us to! (1 Thes 4:3a)

So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.

Matthew 10:31

In previous musings, I have pointed out that I strongly believe that the two cornerstones of our confidence in God are His care and control.

I recently had a bit of a crisis of faith with regard to these two cornerstones. I had to ask myself if I really believed them.

One Christian author speaks of “believing what we believe.” That resonates with me. I understand what he means. There are times in life where our professed theology comes up against our practical theology. It’s easy to sign off on a doctrinal statement, but in the daily realities of life, where the rubber meets the road so to speak, it is quite another thing to confidently rest upon these truths we profess.

During my little crisis of faith, I had to ask myself, “Todd, do you really believe that God is in control of your situation and really cares about it?” That may sound a bit theoretical right now, but at that moment, that was the most searching of questions. And I found that how I answered that question was going to determine whether I was going to experience peace in the midst of a mental battle, or whether I was going to be tortured with the question of whether God was interested in the least way with what was happening in my life.

Let me address the question to you. Maybe you’re in a crisis of faith right now. Or maybe things are calm and you can evaluate the following questions with the cool consideration of an ivory tower theologian. Whatever the case, the day will come when your answers to these questions will be the sole determinants in how you respond to God and whether you make it through the battle with a firm confidence in God.

So let me ask: Do we truly believe God cares about us and our situation and that His intentions for us are for our ultimate good? Or are we just another number that for all intents and purposes, He has forgotten? The way we answer these questions will literally define our relationship with God. The very way in which we live in this world will be informed by the way we address this question. I quickly searched the Scriptures to find where we read about God forgetting someone. What I found instead was a considerable list of verses where people—God’s people—forgot Him. I humbly submit that from what Scripture says, the danger is not that God will forget us, but rather that we will forget Him.

Do we truly believe that God is in ultimate control over all the circumstances through which we pass? Or is the God we worship really just the Deist’s watchmaker, who is otherwise engaged as our lives are dashed against the hard rocks of life? It is easy to find these questions difficult when we are tossed about in the sea of life, but I have to tell you that Scripture is clear on the issue. In Matthew 10:29 Jesus said that the little birds don’t die apart from God’s providential care. If His eye is on the sparrow, then we can know He watches us. Not as a detached observer, but as an intimately involved, loving God who personally involves Himself in our sorrows and who is touched by our griefs.

Your faith will be tried as was mine. And it will happen to us again and again, at many different junctures in our lives. We need to deal with these questions before the days of circumstantial famine come. What we’ve put in the storehouses of our minds will sustain and nourish us then.

Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.

Acts 20:28

Have you ever had a belly full of church?

If you have ever been involved to a significant degree in the life of a local church, you know how challenging churches can be. Churches, after all, would operate much more smoothly if it weren’t for the people. Not necessarily evil people with malicious intentions, but rather people who have personal agendas, who have divergent perspectives on what a church needs to do and how it needs to operate. Those who’ve been “ground up” in the machinery of church life can quickly find themselves asking, “What’s the point?” and, “Why should we bother?” There is a great host of church dropouts out there. It may seem at times that church is more of an impediment than an encouragement in our relationship with God. There is, however, a very good reason to maintain involvement in a local church.

I could go any number of directions with this topic from this point, but I’d like to direct my observations in one direction: The local church is the fellowship of the redeemed. This world’s people are made up of those who have been purchased by Christ’s saving work on the cross, and those who have not. No matter how foul, annoying, and exhausting our experience in the local church may be, it still has a corner on the market as the means in which redeemed people come together in the structure ordained by God.

I used the word “structure.” It is apropos that we examine the structure of a church. As we approach this topic, I believe it’s critical that we define what, exactly, a church is. I recently heard about a missions organization that has defined a church as a group of Christians who regularly meet together for Bible study. That may be the definition of a Bible study, but not of a church. A biblical concept of a church is a group of believers in Christ which: 1) has clearly-defined leaders—called elders—to whom it is subject; 2) where discipline for erring believers is practiced; and, 3) where baptism and the Lord’s Supper are administered. Until you have these things, you may have something, but you don’t have a church.

Someone may say that they are content to merely be a member of the universal church. To be sure, being part of the universal church is wonderful, but the means in which the universal church finds visible expression on earth is in the local assembly, which is to have the biblical structure I just mentioned. It is also the one of which Paul speaks in today’s verse. He speaks of the local assembly because he was addressing the elders of a local assembly (in Ephesus).

So why should we be integrated into this thing called the local assembly? The best reason I can think of is the one Paul cited in Acts 20:28: God the Son bought it with His own blood. We are called to treasure the local church because God treasures it. He treasures it so much, He bled and died for it. We endure the difficulty, frustration, and exhaustion of involvement with a local assembly because it is part of Jesus’ grand project He said He would build (Matthew 16:18). He wants His children to come together in the context of the structure He has ordained.

One wag has observed that the church is like the ark: We wouldn’t be able to tolerate the stench inside, if it weren’t for the storm outside. There is wisdom in this. The church becomes tolerable when we recognize that it is the single context Jesus ordained for those He redeemed to gather.

The local assembly of saints is precious to God. Is it to us?