Fighter Jets, Aircraft Carriers, and The Church

What’s that in the ocean? It’s a fortress! No, it’s an airport. No, it’s a hotel. Wait, I think it’s a hospital.

It just so happens that an aircraft carrier is all of those things and then some. If you’ve ever walked on the deck of the USS Yorktown, retired at Patriot’s Point in Charleston, SC, you know how overwhelmingly enormous those things are.

Just think about a floating hotel where hundreds of sailors and pilots live for weeks and months at a time, while also carrying I don’t know how many airplanes in its hangar. Those fighter jets literally takeoff from a ship, fly into enemy territory, do their thing, and return only to land on that same ship. If that’s not mindboggling, you watch too much TV.

Well, have you ever thought about comparing the church’s Lord’s Day activities to an aircraft carrier? While I’ll grant you that New Testament isn’t remotely concerned about swarms of jets or floating airports, this is a reasonable comparison.

Christians live their lives out in the world which is, by definition, enemy territory. OK, creation declares the glory of God (Psalm 19) and there isn’t “one square inch of creation over which Christ doesn’t say, ‘Mine’” (Abraham Kuyper). But we are commanded to put on the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6) for a reason – we are at war, spiritual though it may be. And in that sense, we Christians are like fighter jets being sent out to complete our assigned mission(s) each and every week. We may not have the same assignment. But we all have an assignment.

What happens to those planes at the end of their mission? Where do they go and what do they do when their assignment has been carried out for that day? They return to the carrier to be checked for damage, patched up, refueled, and prepared for the next mission.

That’s exactly what worship on the Lord’s Day is intended to accomplish for the believer. We need to be checked for damage, patched up, refueled, and prepared for another mission, another week of battle. In that regard, the Lord’s Day activities of the church are like an aircraft carrier.

This has practical applications and implications, doesn’t it?

For example, what is a Benediction at the end of the service except a “good word,” a blessing from God to His people, promising his presence and care with them as they fly their respective missions.

Another implication serves as a warning – why would we skip that? Imagine the plane that calls back to the Chief Officer and says, “Nah, I’m just gonna keep flying a little longer. I don’t need to come in yet.” You’d take his wings the moment he landed and charge him with insurrection and endangering the fleet. But how easy it is for us to excuse irregular participation in the life of the church?

One more implication is a question – Why would a fighter jet want to take off sooner than necessary? But isn’t that what we do when we only give half the Lord’s Day to worship and rest and the remainder to our work or to our pleasure? Would we only fill half of the fuel tank in a fighter jet preparing for a mission? Would you only bandage half the of wound or only give a portion of the mission assignment to a pilot and still expect him to be successful? Why, then, do we check the box, having only attended morning worship, as though we’ve done enough? How much more would we be equipped for our weekly mission if we give the whole of the Lord’s Day to God’s glory and our spiritual nourishment!

It’s in worship that believers are repaired, refreshed, and refueled. It’s a joyful and diligent use of the Lord’s Day and the ministry of the local church which equips us for serving in our various and respective areas of kingdom work throughout the week. It’s worship, therefore, to which we ought to give our best energy and delight.

Creative License and the Sufficiency of Scripture

from January 13, 2023

 
Have you ever known anyone who couldn’t keep “watch” and “warning” straight?  They were never sure when to run to the closet or when to just be prepared.  “Watch,” to them, means something closer to “watch out, there’s a tornado coming” than “just keep an eye and ear to the news because conditions are favorable for tornados.”  
 
Well, I’d classify this as a watch and not a warning – be wary, but you don’t have to hide in the hall closet yet. 
 
Mel Gibson, Francine Rivers, and whoever is leading the way on The Chosen are among the many who have taken creative license when it comes to writing stories or movies about the backstories of events and people in the Bible. We understand creative license – it gives the writer freedom to imagine, to suppose possibilities, to fabricate where facts or reports are lacking.
 
And, I suppose, it gives us things to think about. This practice might even make the events and people seem more real to us because we get to consider, even if only for a moment, what might have been.

However, there are dangers to this creative license when it comes to adding to the Bible. For example, there’s a warning at the end of Revelation 22 not to add to or take away from the Bible. Oh, I realize that Mel Gibson doesn’t think of himself as adding to the Bible. In fact, I’m guessing he’d vehemently deny such a charge. But if our engaging with these works causes us to reimagine the people or events according to the creative license taken by these authors, then we might be in danger of adding to Scripture.
 
There are, of course, at least with Gibson’s movie and The Chosen, second commandment issues at stake, but that’s another article for another day.
 
Perhaps better, let me remind you of a favorite verse – Deuteronomy 29:29. What comfort to know that the secret things belong to the Lord! But the “secret things” are the very curiosities we seek to satisfy by reading modern works that take creative liberties to invent a background that may or may not be true but that certainly God has, in his perfect infinite wisdom, chosen not to reveal to us. In other words, if we let Francine Rivers inform our understanding of Hosea (which, by the way, she misses by a mile), then we are suggesting that what God revealed (see the rest of Deuteronomy 29:29) is somehow inadequate or insufficient.
 
Or, as in the case of Redeeming Love, the focus is on an aspect of the story that is merely an aspect of a larger story and not the focus of Hosea. Rivers has Michael Hosea setting his desires on Angel before even knowing who she is. That’s not at all how the prophet Hosea operated. And the two only diverge more from there. 
 
I think this is what I dislike about these works – they lead us to believe that what God actually told us wasn’t sufficient, that we need more, that it would be better for us if we made up a backstory or filled in the gaps with possibilities. The creative license required to make the books and movies interesting simultaneously puts us in danger of diminishing what God has chosen to reveal.
 
We have to make sure that Scripture drives our understanding of and confidence in these modern works and not the other way around. They should not be determining our view of the Bible. God’s revelation is sufficient for our salvation, for our spiritual growth, for equipping us for service in His Kingdom and nothing that shows up on the New York Times bestseller list or that Hollywood can produce can add to what the Creator of heaven and earth has said in His Word.
 
The next time you want to read a fiction work that purports to be about the Bible or to illustrate events from Scripture, be on your guard and watch how these works influence your understanding of God’s revelation.

Considering Creeds and Confessions...

As you might imagine, many of our Christian creeds and Confessions of Faith grow out of conflict and debate in the church. When teaching in the church began to split into camps, as it were, councils were called for the purpose of resolving the source of the divergent teaching. We even have an example in Acts 15 when a council met in Jerusalem to determine, from Scripture, whether or not Gentiles needed to be circumcised in order to become Christians. 

There are more Councils called throughout the ages for a similar purpose. Councils met, for example, in Nicaea (325 AD), Constantinople (351 AD), and Chalcedon (451 AD), and more. They each served a particular purpose. The Council of Nicaea, for example, addressed the particular heresy of Arianism that taught that Jesus was not fully divine. It didn’t produce a thorough doctrine of the person and work of Christ because it wasn’t supposed to, that wasn’t its purpose.

Something we might not consider but that makes perfect sense, there’s always a chance that a decision made at one Council, since it wasn’t designed to say everything possible, will lead to different confusing and erroneous teaching later.

The Council of Chalcedon was called for the purpose of addressing the question of how the humanity and deity of Jesus Christ are supposed to…work (for lack of a better word). On one side was the temptation to blur all lines between his humanity and his deity. On the other side, there were those who wanted to drive too large a wedge between the two natures of Christ, even to the point of contending that Jesus was basically two persons sharing one body. If you’re familiar enough with the Westminster Shorter Catechism (written nearly 1200 years after the Chalcedonian Creed), we affirm that Christ “the Son of God became man and so was and continues to be God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever” (WSC 21). Well, we can say that with confidence because the Council of Chalcedon formulated that kind of language back in the 5th century.

Since we’re about to launch into a new sermon series in the Gospel of John and will be considering John 1:1-18 this coming Lord’s Day, I really wanted to use the Chalcedonian Creed (click here to read it). What it teaches about the nature of Christ is incredibly thoughtful and thorough. However, it’s also wordy and a little too cumbersome for reciting corporately. Therefore, I’m giving it to you here to that you can take a look and learn and grow and then rest easy knowing that we will affirm our faith together this Sunday with the Nicene Creed instead.

How to Recognize a True Church

If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it’s a…yep, a duck. Surely, you’ve heard that saying before, one typically used, I believe, to make an accusation stick. However, it goes beyond just that one use. On the surface, something that has all the qualities of a duck must be a duck, whether you’re trying to get an accusation to stick or just trying to figure out what something is.

What if you changed the word “duck” to “church”? How would you recognize what a church is? Or, to ask it another way, what makes a church a church? Is it the name on the sign out front? Is it a certain status with the IRS? What are the indicators that an organization is actually a true church and not simply a club?

Well, think about it this way. If the church is the body of Christ on earth, then how will the church be the body of Christ? What would it look like for Christ to be faithfully and accurately represented by the church? If we ask it that way, then we’re left with the three offices of Christ – prophet, priest, and king.

Just as Christ is our Prophet, so to the church, the local expression of the body of Christ, should be marked by faithful commitment to the preached Word of God (Acts 2:42). Just as Christ is our priest, then the local church, in order to be a church, must be committed to a proper administration of the sacraments (Matthew 28:18-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23 32). And, just as Christ is our king, so too the local church should be marked by the practice of church discipline (Matthew 18:15-20; Hebrews 13:17).

Preaching and sacraments we understand, more or less. However, lest you get the wrong impression, discipline isn’t merely punitive, but instructive also. Sure, church discipline can involve the elders having conversations with a church member about unbiblical views or practices, but technically anytime the edicts of the king are handed out, we are exercising discipline. In that sense, then, discipline takes place in Sunday school and worship and Bible study. When the King speaks, his subjects are being trained for obedience, which is positive and preemptive discipline.

So, if it preaches like a church and biblically observes the sacraments like a church and disciplines like a church, then it’s a church.

If ever you’re looking for a church, make sure you’re looking for a church.

The Orthodoxy of Community

Art by Nancy Hooker

Ligonier article by Burk Parsons

The love language of all marriages is self-denial. When both husband and wife are consumed not with their own immediate happiness but with the happiness of one another, they will enjoy a happy marriage. The same is true for enduring friendships and for authentic community.

With the disintegration of marriage has come the dissolution of community. As such, community has fallen on hard times. What every generation in every society in all of history has enjoyed, the rising generation will have to fight for. With the rise of online communities, online church, and online everything, face-to-face, eye-to-eye, shoulder-to-shoulder community has become increasingly difficult to find. Moreover, many don’t know what real community is and thus don’t know what to look for. Real community doesn't happen on its own—it takes time, patience, repentance, forgiveness, and love that covers a multitude of sins. The church community is not just a crowd of people on a Sunday morning; it is the gathered, worshiping people of God in a congregation where masks aren’t needed and where real friends help bear the real burdens of one another. Community is not just getting together; it is living together, suffering together, rejoicing together, and dying together. continue reading...

Israel, Palestine, and The Church

It seems like just a land conflict. And it’s not even a very big piece of land. What’s more, it’s 6500 miles away from Athens, AL. However, it’s caused quite the stir in the church in our neck of the woods.

Now, I’m not qualified to interact with all the ins and outs of the Israel-Palestine relations, nor am I qualified to interject my opinions into the political relationships between the US and all groups involved. Besides, those things won’t help here anyway. There is one question, though, that some of you have asked, that has come up in a variety of contexts, that needs at least a little bit of interaction. To be fair, in this setting, it can only receive a little bit of interaction and not a thorough examination.

It seems that the default position of the broadly evangelical church in the United States today holds that Israel is the true people of God and the Church age is just a parenthesis in the timeline of God’s dealings with human history and salvation. There’s this assumption out there that everyone agrees that God is protecting Israel because they're his chosen nation, that God is obviously going to ensure that his special nation will win this latest conflict because he’s on their side. And this even spills over into the voting booth – the US is obligated to support Israel no matter what, precisely because and only because they are God’s people.

However, the New Testament epistles go out of their way to say that the true Israel doesn't consist only of those who descend from Abraham genetically, but who, like father Abraham, believe the promises of God and to whom it is counted as righteousness. To say it another way, all Christians are the sons of Abraham because all, like Abraham, are saved by grace through faith. True Israel is the Church and the Church is Israel. Israel was always about, not bloodline or genealogy, but about salvation by grace through faith. Just go read Romans or Galatians or Hebrews.

There is only one people of God, not two. There is only one plan of God, not two. There is no other way of salvation for anyone, Jew or Gentile, except through faith in Jesus Christ.

Want some resources to help you think more biblically about this issue? I’ll give you two, not one.

The first is a brief video, a snippet from a Q&A session at a Ligonier Conference, featuring Drs. Derek Thomas and Stephen Nichols.

The second is a book by O. Palmer Robertson called The Israel of God: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Do you remember the TV show, Cheers? There were very few episodes that didn’t take place exclusively and completely in that bar in Boston. Cheers, as in the bar, was operated by has- been baseball player Sam Malone and Ernie Pantusso, aka “Coach,” who had been Sam’s coach along the way. There were, of course, the regulars who spent every evening in that bar.

But now that I think about it, how many customers, apart from Norm, of course, ever drank more than one beer in the course of the evening? In my memory, most customers were given a new mug before they had consumed much of the first. Nobody (well, except for maybe that old guy at the other end of the bar who only made occasional appearances for comic relief) was getting drunk.

Well, if they weren’t there to drink a lot, why were Frasier and Cliff and the rest hanging out there every evening? 

I think it’s the theme song that gives it away. Remember? “You wanna go where everybody knows your name.”Ultimately, that’s why the regulars were regular – they had a place where everyone in the room knew them. They were known by name (“NORM!!”). They had connections with the others around the bar. They became regulars because they wanted to go where everybody knew their name.

Maybe we should change the name of our church to Cheers Presbyterian Church. I’m kidding, of course, but the concept is good. Our church is a place where everybody knows your name, or where everyone should know your name. I can only think of two reasons people wouldn’t know your name. The first is that they aren’t trying. The second is that you aren’t trying. Sure, we’re a small congregation right now, but the regulars are known precisely because they are regular. If you’re infrequent and irregular or you don’t plop yourself down on a stool and stay a while, it’s no surprise people wouldn’t know you.

It’s tough to hide at GCPC. It’s hard to sneak in and out. You will be known at GCPC. But that’s part of how the church should operate. The church should be a place of regulars, a place where everyone knows your name.