Thoughts On Being Made in God’s Image

More than once I’ve had folks ask me about what is meant when we are said to be made in the image of God.  After, God is a spirit, not a physical body, so how can we say we are made in His image?

Generally I will say that we are the only creatures that can have a relationship with God and so therefore we must be in some way in His image.  Cats do not relate to God.  Pigs do not relate to God.  Kangaroos do not relate to God.  Only people.

However, I had another thought this week while reading a book by Robert Sherman called Covenant, Community, and the Spirit.  Early in the work Sherman writes about the relationship between the Persons of the Trinity and how we have been made by God for life in community.  Now Sherman doesn’t connect the points like this but it occurred to me that being created for community by a God who is one God of three Persons, who has always and ever been in communion within Himself, gives us another definition of being made in the image of God.

I am told a growing number of people profess Christianity but want nothing to do with the organized Church.  I have never understood this idea personally, but after thinking about our call to community as being a part of being made in the image of our Creator, I find myself very hostile toward such a view of a life of faith.  It is contrary to our creation and, indeed, it is contrary to the Word of God found in the Scriptures.

The Lord has said it is not good for us to be alone.  We generally think of that in terms of marriage, but it is also true about living the Christian life.  Outside the embodied Church we are alone in a hostile world and our faith will be tried and tested over and again with no support from other believers.  That’s a very hard life to live, especially since it really isn’t who we are.

What Good Is Merry Christmas?

Once again I’ve been quite negligent in writing on this blog.  I don’t know why exactly, business, laziness, both–whatever.  However I have returned today with some thoughts on the so-called “war against Christmas”.  You know, the argument that everyone who says Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas is being banal or politically correct, or dissing Christianity, or something.

Well I had a thought about it this week.  I decided I am no longer bothered by people who say Happy Holidays, and that’s for several reasons.  First, Merry Christmas is itself kind of meaningless phrase.  What do they mean by “merry” and what do they mean by “Christmas”?  You might think merry is the same as jocular or pleasant or some other adjective.  I guess they leave it to us to decide which applies.  And then there is the question of Christmas itself.  Do they mean the festival of the Incarnation of our Lord, or maybe Santa Claus and festive food? If they mean the Incarnation I would contend that rather than merry, we should be reflective and filled with a sense of awe and astonishment.  If they mean Santa and the food–well, I couldn’t care less.

I also think there is a good lesson for Christians when they hear someone say “Happy Holidays.”  There is among a subset of American Christians the idea that this country is a “Christian country.”  Hearing “Happy Holidays” should remind us all that it is clearly not a Christian country.  In fact, it never was a Christian country and it never will be a Christian country because there is no such thing as a Christian country in this world.  The Kingdom of God is the Christian “country”, the only Christian country that will ever exist.  All the faithful are citizens of that country and resident aliens in this place in this age before the Lord’s return.

What most people call Christmas is neither about Christ nor does it involve a mass, it is instead a thoroughly secular holiday.  And that is a great shame, but the more the culture moves away from a true celebration of the Nativity the more the Church can cling to it and give it a real meaning for those who know Christ as Lord.  And in that counter cultural celebration the Name of Jesus will be lifted up and His chosen people will be edified.

Blessed Incarnation to you all.

There’s a Hurricane Coming!

Our daughter and son-in-law live just west of Myrtle Beach, SC.  The governor of that state has just ordered an evacuation of that area.  Kate says they will probably stay unless the storm changes trajectory, which is now over 50 miles north of their location.  They’re going to ride it out as they’ve done before.

That got me thinking about how life in our degenerating culture is a lot like a hurricane.  It’s unpredictable.  I don’t know about you, but I am constantly surprised at the crazy things I read, hear and see in the world around me.  It’s as if everyone has gone bouncing off the walls insane.  I can’t even keep track of all that comes down the track anymore. (Not that I want to)

Like a hurricane our cultural shifts are often accompanied by a lot of wind.  People spend huge amounts of time talking about what to wear this week, what to listen to this week, who is the next big thing in the world.  And then, of course, there are those like me who spend a lot of time bemoaning all of this.  Lot’s of wind and words blowing around.

And then there’s the rain.  Way too much rain for the ground to hold, so it runs off and the streams flood and homes and fields are damaged.  I’ve been through several of these things and they’re never fun.

The culture of this country is indeed like a hurricane–unpredictable and over all destructive.  But just as my daughter and son-in-law intend to ride out hurricane Florence, so we, the followers of Jesus, must ride out the cultural thrill ride that is America in the 21st century.  We can’t control the culture, but we can live as examples of what a God focused culture would look like.  We can be the light in the darkness and the port in the storm for those God is calling out of worldliness and into godliness.  We can, indeed we must, be the people of God who are different.  If we try to imitate the culture in any serious way, it will take us over.  Only when we stand beside, and yet apart, can we serve God, to whom be all the glory, now and forever. Amen and amen.

You Are Dying Right Now

Robert Murray M’Cheyne was a 19th century preacher in the Scottish Church.  I recently read part of one of his sermons in which he reminded his congregation that our time on this earth is short and that very soon other people would sit in the pews they were occupying and another man would preach from the pulpit he used.  For M’Cheyne that turned out to be very true.  He died from typhoid fever at the age of 29.

I think that, among all the problems besetting the Church in the 21st century, one of the most glaring is the lack of preaching emphasis on our short life spans in this world.  Too many preachers are bowing to the wishes of too many parishioners for upbeat messages about how God wants them to have a great life here on earth, how He wants to be our pal and help us out.  Too many people want to hear that they are just fine the way they are and go home after singing a bunch of so-called praise songs, patting themselves on the back for being good people who just gave God an hour of their life.

How many people, I wonder, sit through church services without being told they are sinners who deserve eternal damnation but, through God’s mercy, their lives will be spared because of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ for the sins of the elect.  Or maybe the words are use but the emphasis isn’t there.  Friends the exit door from this world is right in front of everyone of us and sooner rather than later we will all pass through that portal.  There is not time for us to fool around.   There is not time–no there is not time.  We stand on the very edge of eternity.  There is no more time to waste.

Against Heresies

The early Church Father Irenaeus wrote a book with the same title as this blog post.  The heresies which most concerned him were various forms of Gnosticism which were plaguing the 2nd century Church.  Gnostic teachers tried to use Christianity as a way of spreading their rather outlandish teachings.  They tried to appropriate Jesus and insert Him into their fanciful visions of divine history.  Every now and then we read of some academic with a burning need to publish something trying to say that those heretics were really a legitimate version of Christianity.

What fascinates me is the way in which all sorts of old heresies keep raising their ugly heads in the Church.  The old Arian heresy that led to the formulation of the Nicene Creed by the Church is still floating around in the form of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who might ring your doorbell this evening.  Another modern version of an old heresy was raised up a couple of years ago by some well known evangelical theologians who began to argue that Jesus was eternally subordinate to the Father.  In other words, Jesus might be God but He isn’t as fully God as is the Father.  And who knows where their speculations would take them with regard to the status of the Holy Spirit?  And then there is all sort of heresy being sown in Pentecostal circles, including the idea that the Holy Spirit is not equal to the Father and the Son. (A good reference on this is John MacArthur’s book Strange Fire) And let us also note here the Unitarianism that is really the undercurrent among many liberal theological speculations.

Yes, there are always heresies troubling the Church of Jesus Christ.  And we need to be quite candid about why that is so–Satan tempts sinners within the Church.  He holds before them the illusion that they have more insight into God’s ways than those who went before them.  It is a conceit rife in our society, that we moderns are more knowledgeable and even more intelligent than our ancestors.  What the modern heretics ignore, however, is the work of the Holy Spirit inspiring the Church to come to a knowledge of the Truth.  A knowledge which has been shared down through the centuries.  We find the Truth in the Word of God and in the Ecumenical creeds which summarize the one true faith.

If you doubt the Word of God recorded in the 66 books of the Bible or if you cannot speak the Creeds without any dishonesty, friend–you are a heretic.  And that is not a good things to be.

However, since heresies are the creations of the minds of men, we can indeed return to the true faith by spending our time immersed in the Word of God and allowing Him to guide us past the rocks and shoals our sinful minds erect to keep us from the submission we owe to the Creator, Redeemer and Comforter who is the true object of our worship.

 

It’s Not Always A Rose Garden

There was a country song out many years ago called “I Never Promised You A Rose Garden”–in other words, I never told you life would be always easy.  Right now my wife and I are experiencing a “not-rose garden”.  We live in a condo and early Sunday morning the water heater in the apartment above us broke and water came down through our walls into our bathroom and kitchen.  Now the drywall has to be replaced and the bathroom redone.  We will have to leave our home for about 10 days to 2 weeks while the work is done.  The damage isn’t too awful and the repairs won’t cost us anything, but our lives are still being disrupted and made less than pleasant.

That’s the way life is in this sin saturated world we live in. Nothing is perfect, everything is distorted by sin and all manner of bad can happen to anyone–even saved saints of God.  Now some people try to tell us that if we just have true faith nothing bad will ever happen to us, we’ll all be healthy, wealthy and wise, to quote Benjamin Franklin.  There is a whole segment of the Christian Church that teaches what is sometimes called a prosperity gospel, which is indeed no Gospel at all but a bunch of malarkey thought up by people who are generally the only ones who seem to become wealthy.

Christians are not immune to the ills of this world.  What we are is forgiven and rescued from our sinfulness by the blood of Jesus, and that is worth far, far more than anything this world can give us.  Our future is assured because Christ did for us what neither we nor anything in this world could do.  That is what we hold to in times of difficulty.

But still–I can’t wait to get my place back in order.   🙂

Beware of Life Celebrations

I had an experience this week which really bothers me.  One of our members went home to the Lord.  This was not unexpected given her advanced age and health issues, but it was still painful for those of us who loved that person.

I was contacted by one of the person’s children and asked to refrain from speaking about sin or the fact that their parent had been a sinner during the service.   They wanted to keep everything “upbeat” and happy.  I said that the Gospel is only good news if you know what the alternative is–eternity in hell.  Sinners who know Christ as Lord and Savior are not bound for punishment but for an eternity in the presence of the Lord.  That’s what makes the news good for believers.  That, however, wasn’t good enough.  There could be no discussion of such things because they were a “downer”, I guess.  I also pointed out that funerals always have people in attendance who have not heard the Gospel and it is an important part of a funeral service to witness to those folks, especially when the deceased had a saving faith.

Well, none of this was good enough and so we’re not having a funeral.  The family is sponsoring its own celebration of life at a civic building.  That’s okay, I know where the deceased is and I rejoice in their salvation.

Despite being disturbed by this one incident, I have to say that I have been put off for some time about these so-called celebrations of life that have become popular.  I’m especially put off when they take place in churches.  Oh, I know that the family and friends want to hear good things about the one they mourn, and I have no objection to that at all.  There is a place in our service for a Life Sketch where that is done.  But there is also the proclamation of the Gospel in readings, prayers, hymns and a sermon.  What is taking place here is not about the person’s life in this world, however long that may be.  It is about the person’s life on the other side of the door–the really long part of life, not the short one.

St. Paul writes that we are not to grieve as do those who have no hope.  Grieving is normal, but it becomes abnormal when it is either stuffed down in our gut, kept and massaged in our minds, or when people try to assuage their grief with a big party.  Only faith in Jesus and in the eternal blessings bestowed on His elect people can truly give us hope filled grief, a bearable grief which has with it a true sense of victory over sin, death and the devil.

As a pastor I have responsibility for the care of the souls whom I serve.  I won’t allow that to be diluted by worldly views.  If that makes me a bad guy, I guess I’m a bad guy.  But I will always care much more about the long future of my parishioners than about their short past.

Vacation and Worship

My wife and I returned yesterday from a two week vacation.  I’ve found as I’ve aged that it pretty much takes two weeks for me to really feel rested, one just won’t do the trick.

While we were gone we worshiped twice at a church in South Carolina.  We’ve been there before and we have always heard the Gospel proclaimed in that place. It’s good, especially for pastors, to spend time under someone else’s teaching.  For those of us who preach regularly it gives us an opportunity to hear maybe another perspective on a text or another take on a topic.  For those who spend Sunday morning in the pews it’s also gives them a view of something a little different from their regular Sunday morning fare. (Let’s face it, pastors, we all have our hobby horses and our styles and, since none of us are Jesus, none of us are perfect preachers).

I confess I don’t understand those who think that a family vacation also means a vacation away from Sunday worship.  Every time we enter a sacred place, we enter into an immediate interaction with the God of the universe.  And every place where the Gospel is proclaimed in its purity is indeed a sacred place–whether in a store front or pole barn or a 200 year old church like the one I serve.  As Christians we should long for that weekly fellowship before the living God with our brothers and sisters in Christ.  And yet so many of us use excuses for why we aren’t in church on Sundays–vacation being one of those excuses.

Sometimes picking a church to attend on vacation can be a little dicey.  We generally don’t know the congregations or the pastors in the places we visit.  We’re not always sure what is being taught there.  So I have some suggestions.  First, pay attention to the denomination.  That won’t be a sure fire answer to the question about what we can expect, but it will help.  Of course there are orthodox congregations and pastors in even the most unorthodox denominations as there are unorthodox congregations and pastors in the most orthodox denominations.  Still, the denomination is a generally good guide.  Second, don’t pick a church solely on the time of service, whether early or late.  Going to the local “community church” because it’s time fits your schedule best is a roll of the dice at best.  Third, be open and friendly to the people who are members there.  I know the people are supposed to be friendly to visitors, and I hope they are everywhere, but visitors shouldn’t just be passive receivers of greetings–after all, these are people of our family in Christ.  Finally, make a joyful noise unto the Lord and learn something about Jesus.

Happy vacation worship.

What We Preach Matters

I am a big advocate of expository preaching.  This style of preaching involves going through the Biblical text verse by verse (or something close to that).  I most often preach straight through a book of the Bible.  Right now I’m preaching through Deuteronomy and I must admit it is occasionally taxing my ingenuity because it is not always easy to make sermon material out of some of the laws.  I started this method some years ago because I believe many people miss too much of God’s Word when we stick solely to the assigned texts for the church year.

I read an article recently which reminded me of the danger of expository preaching–I could miss the proclamation of the Gospel.  For example, if I proclaim God’s Word from Deuteronomy this Sunday but fail to connect what is taught there to Jesus Christ who was crucified and risen for me, then I have debased the pulpit,, for Jesus and Jesus alone is our Savior.  The Old Testament speaks in progressive revelation of the One who would rid us of the stain of our sin, and it is our duty to bring that out in its fullness.  What the Law meant to people in 1800 BC is irrelevant in the light of Christ and I must make sure the people in the pews before me understand what the text means now that the fullness of the revelation of God has been made known to us.

Preaching is a great privilege but it also carries with it great responsibility.  As James points out, those who teach in the Church will be judged by a higher standard.  We who have been given this privilege must remember we have been called to speak of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  Our opinions on most things don’t matter.  Historical information may be interesting, but it is of little purpose if it does not contribute to the proclamation of Christ for us.

Like many other things, preaching styles are subject to fads.  Recently there was this experiment with telling stories rather than preaching sermons.  From reports on sermons I’ve received, it seems to be pretty much a failure because it strays from the Word too easily.  But even the best preaching style can fail miserably if the preacher forgets why we’re really here and Who we really serve.

School Shootings Aren’t The Problem

Terrible things have been happening in our country.  Multiple attacks made on schools by young people have made everyone nervous and every politician is fighting to get in front of a microphone so they can “deplore” and “promise change” and fix what so far seems unfixable.  Everyone has a program or a policy that they claim will solve the problem and absolutely every single one of those programs or policies will fail.

Of course guns are said to be the culprits.  But guns are inanimate objects.  They are incapable of doing anything on their own.  If you lay a gun on a table and never touch it nothing will happen except a layer of dust will decorate it.  Guns are not responsible for shootings, people are responsible for shootings and if we outlawed all guns of all types people who wanted to kill would find another way to do it.  My understanding is that a bomb can be made from things any of us could buy at a hardware store.  What are we going to do–outlaw fertilizer?

The problem we are facing is one caused not by the availability of weapons but by the desire of people to use those weapons.  There is the problem.

We are all born sinners.  I believe that any one of us is quite capable of committing an evil act, given the right circumstances.  A well ordered society which promotes behavior that encourages community and interpersonal relationships that are both deep and continuing will have fewer outbreaks of violence and evil than an atomistic society that speaks only of “rights” and hardly ever of “responsibilities”.

Friends we live in that very atomistic society in which everyone proclaims their “rights” (real and imagined) frequently and loudly.  American culture is today sick unto death.

I have no hope for the future of this nation if God does not send another Great Awakening among us–an Awakening that will last through multiple generations so that the rot that invests our public and private lives will be beaten back and replaced by (dare I say it) personal virtue and public responsibility.

The politicians can’t fix what is wrong with this country.  The courts can’t fix what’s wrong with this country.  The schools can’t fix whats wrong with this country.  Don’t waste your time looking to them.  If this nation will survive at all it can only do so when Christians begin to take God’s Word seriously–when the Sermon on the Mount becomes our standard–when a biblical worldview guides our lives–when we who claim to follow Christ begin to live His way, showing the world around us the superiority of God’s way of life in this world.  All too often it’s hard to tell the difference between Christians and non-Christians in how we live, how we speak, how go about our work, how we behave.

So let those who claim to follow Christ be the difference.  Even if we can’t save America, we can witness to the One who can.