The Apology of Socrates

Last evening I picked up Plato's Five Great Dialogues (Walter J. Black, inc. 1942). I opened to Plato's recording of Socrates' last defense before his death while on trial in Athens. Socrates is a prophetic hero of sorts, pointing to many things that the Christian faith also commends. Let me quote for you a passage that I found particularly intriguing:

"If you say to me, Socrates, this time we will not mind Anytus, and you shall be let off, but upon one condition, that you are not to inquire and speculate in this way any more, and that if you are caught doing so again you shall die; if this was the condition on which you let me go, I should reply: Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet and saying to him after my manner: 'You, my friend--a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens--are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all?' And if the person with whom I am arguing, says: 'Yes, but I do care;' then I do not leave him or let him go at once; but I proceed to interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no virtue in him, but only says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the greater and overvaluing the less. And I shall repeat the same words to everyone whom I meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren. For know that this is the command of God; and I believe that no greater good has ever happened in the state than my service to the God. For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person. But if anyone says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not; but whichever you do, understand that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times."

7. The Mystery of Glory in Suffering

This is my eighth and final segment in my sermon entitled, "The Mystery of Christ".

7. The Mystery of Glory in Suffering

(Eph 3:12-13) "in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory."
-Our faith in him leads to boldness and confident access to his presence. In our suffering and in our trial we can trust his eternal purpose, so we can cast all our cares on him, so we have boldness to talk to him about it. And it works like this: If you don't trust someone, you won't question or dispute with that person. If you don't like your boss, because he's just a fickle kind of guy and you never know how he's going to react, you're probably not going to come to him often with your problems, you going to just want to go it on your own and figure it out. In the same way, if your going it on your own and not coming to God in your suffering, if you're losing heart in the midst of the struggles of life, that's probably a sign that you're not trusting God fully, you're not having boldness and confidence in your access to him.
-Paul doesn't want the church to lose heart over his suffering in particular because it's their glory. When a gospel minister suffers for the gospel, that's not reason to be discouraged but to exult in the mysterious triumph of the gospel. Because it's through the mystery of Paul being a prisoner-apostle that gospel looks so mysterious, so altogether different to the world. When you understanding the mysterious nature of God's eternal purpose in the world, then it makes sense that God wants to use suffering in the life of a minister of the gospel to make himself looking great, to make himself look so much more worthwhile than anything that this world has to offer. And this doesn't just apply to ministers like Paul, it applies to every Christian. We are to rejoice in suffering, we are to glory in our suffering because of the mystery of Jesus.
-How do you and I deal with suffering, suffering is one of the great mysteries of our world. The mystery of Christ revealed reveals the answer to the mystery of suffering. Since Christ suffered in the flesh, Peter says, arm yourselves with the same attitude because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sins. This is a mystery but it is the undeniable experience of true Christians. Track and Field story; the experience of glory in suffering. How do you react to suffering? God does not always give this strange sense of elation; it is not always easy to rejoice in our various experiences of suffering. But one of the ways to cultivate this ability to glory in suffering is to contemplate the mystery of Christ.
-We make the gospel mysterious to the world when we live this way. When you glory in suffering, when you see Jesus as so great and marvelous a mystery, that suffering in the body means nothing to you, comparatively, if you can have him, you are a complete mystery to the world, and hopefully some of them, as many as God has called, will want to pry deeper into the mystery of Christ. They'll want to search it out and to find the answer to the cosmic mystery, and having searched with all their heart, they will find Jesus. And that's what we want, right, more people to find Jesus.

6. The Mystery of God's Eternal Purpose

This is the seventh segment in my sermon entitled, "The Mystery of Christ".

6. The Mystery of God's Eternal Purpose

(Eph 3:11) "This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord,"
-All these mysterious things we've been talking about were according to God's eternal purpose. They're new, in that they weren't known fully before to the sons of men and now they're fully revealed, but they're not new to God. He's been planning this all along, from eternity past God knew he would choose Paul for this purpose, reveal himself through his word and the prophets and climatically reveal himself through his Son Jesus, break down all the barriers between the peoples of the world (whether linguistic or cultural, barriers that he put there to graciously restrain the evil of the human race at Babel), graciously grant a people repentance and belief in his son and then graciously grant them his Holy Spirit equipping them with spiritual gifts to serve the church, and that he would do this through the proclamation of his gospel
-God realized his eternal purposes for the world in Christ Jesus (Revelation 4-5), Christ's perfect life and death purchased God's loving interaction with the world, both in salvation and judgment.
-This Christ is our Lord, his purpose is enough for me. Do you remember when Jesus is brought to the temple when he's only a baby? And there's this man Simeon, who was righteous and devout and had been waiting, Luke says, for the consolation of Israel, and it was revealed to him that this baby that this poor peasant maid was bringing in to the temple was that consolation, and I love what he says: "Lord, now dismiss your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen the your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel." Just to be the least messenger boy of a Lord like this, who has this eternal purpose for our salvation, is enough for me. He's confronted with the mystery of God's eternal purpose in this little baby boy, and all he can do is worship and praise God. Whatever the station he may put me in, whatever the service he may assign me to, whatever the trial he may ask me to endure, I am content under such a Lord. I can trust his eternal purpose.

5. The Mystery of Gospel Proclamation

This is the sixth segment in my sermon entitled, "The Mystery of Christ".

5. The Mystery of Gospel Proclamation

(Eph 3:8b-10) "to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places."
-God doesn't have to use gospel preachers to proclaim his truth, he could have done it himself, he could have used angels to do it. This should change our understanding of evangelism. God has delighted to grant this ability to us his people. Now it is true that some like Paul are called to this as a vocation, in a more particular way, and they are gifted accordingly with a unique ability, but don't worry, that is not an absolute distinction. You get to participate in this too, even if it's just by bringing a friend you know to church or this ministry, sharing your testimony, talking about the gospel, bragging on the unsearchable riches of Christ. You get this privilege; God is pleased to give you the ability to cooperate with him in his work of saving souls. What could be more glorious! And yet all too often we make this into a duty. You don't have to do evangelism. You get to do evangelism.
-We don't preach ourselves, we don't proclaim our goodness or how we're such good Christian people, but the unsearchable riches of Christ, Christ's mysterious glory which is far more than we can fathom, his depths we cannot plum, it is more expansive than the heavens. His riches our unsearchable.
-Preaching is bringing to light the mystery of Christ, of God's plan in Christ, Christ is the key to unlocking every unanswered question in the human heart. This is the climactic age of salvation. Now is the day, now is the time. Life, the world, your existence, is a mystery no more. The gospel brings everything to light. This is so important for when you share the gospel with people. Use the gospel to answer the mysteries, use it to answer the big questions that people are dealing with. Is it the problem of suffering, then tell of the God who became incarnate, entered our world and suffered with us and for us in human history.
-The church's mission to make known the multifaceted wisdom of God to rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. We are to be taking back strongholds. The Gospel proclamation is not just about saving souls, it's about casting down demons from their positions of authority in the world. Some interpreters, Calvin is one of them, think that this is talking about good angels not knowing fully about the gospel and finding out about it through the church. That presents the problem to me of wouldn't the angels know about God's plan before we would, but then again you do have the verse in First Peter, where he's talking about the OT prophets prophesying about the messiah to come, and he says that "even angels were longing to look into these things". So, it's possible, but I think in the context of Ephesians that the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places are demons and not good angels because Paul uses the same language when he talks about our spiritual warfare in chapter 6, verse 12: "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." You see he uses the same words "rulers" and "authorities" being "in the heavenly places" and yet he's clearly talking about dark and evil spiritual forces, so I think Paul's got to be thinking about the same thing in chapter 3 verse 10. And so Paul's point is that in a mysterious way it's God's plan to use the gospel proclamation by human preachers, and the collective work of the body of Christ, regular Christians like you and me, to actually bring to bear the victorious death of Jesus over demons who are still holding people in this world captive with their lies. Demons are out there, and people are worshiping them in the form of idols of sex, money, pleasure, morality, romance, physical fitness or beauty. They are in positions of authority over the world, and our work is to dethrone the idolatrous demon-worship of our culture through proclaiming the gospel. Whatever sets itself up in the hearts and minds of people in the place of God (even if it seems like a good thing) you can be sure that the spiritual forces of evil are at work to enslave people to it. You have the privilege of working with God in the process of liberating the captives from this oppression.

4. The Mystery of God's Gracious Gift

This is the fifth segment in my sermon entitled, "The Mystery of Christ".

4. The Mystery of God's Gracious Gift

(Eph 3:7-8a) "Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given,"
-Paul was first given the gift of God's grace in the forgiveness of his sins and the adoption into God's church.
-Second, Paul was made a minister by the gift of God's grace. Spiritual regeneration comes before spiritual service.

Sometimes we get this backwards. We think somebody's natural gifts make them a great teacher or preacher, but without God's work to regenerate that person so that they really get the gospel that would make them a really diabolical teacher. How many men are there out there that think because they are outgoing and personable and can communicate well to others and they are smart and knowledgeable that this means they should be a pastor. And then they go years operating a ministry that may look positive to outsiders, but really ministers death unto death to others and leads people astray from the faith because they never really got the gospel themselves. The natural man can only preach a natural gospel; and a natural gospel is not the gospel of Christ. This is the mystery of God's gracious gift of his Spirit. Only those who have the Spirit of God can understand spiritual things for they are spiritually discerned. We must all learn this lesson. All your giftings, all your ministering, all your advice-giving, all your serving, all your administrating, all your foot-washing, is nothing to God unless you are spiritually made new. This was the mystery that Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel, couldn't understand: You must be born again. And then spiritual service and spiritual gifts become meaningful.
-God's grace is given by the working of his power, both gifts of regeneration and service are given to magnify Christ, not you. They are to be done in the operation of his power, not your own, in order that he might be glorified, made to look as great as he is, in the work and not you. This is a mystery because we are so inclined to want our use of God's gifts to make us look great. And then when they don't make us look great, when we don't get as many compliments as we want, when the people around us don't continually sing our praises, we are disappointed, mystified, angered. We need to learn to pray with the hymn, "May they forget the channel, seeing only you."
-God's grace is not based on merit. Spiritual gifts do not determine status. Many who are first will be last in the kingdom. Success is faithfulness to God, not the size of one's ministry or influence. Paul, on the basis of his past life, could rightly have a very low view of himself as the least of the all the saints, because he persecuted the church of God. And the fact that he was an apostle did not change that and make him think highly of himself. He was very willing to make much of his office, to make much of his calling, so that he might serve God by it. He has no problem pulling his rank as an apostle at multiple times in his letters. He commands that the office he has been put in be respected. But at the same time he retains great humility about his person. He views himself as lower than the least of all the saints. How Paul does this balancing act is mystery that is only explained by the nature of God's gracious gift, first of regeneration, and second of apostleship. It is only possible because of the mystery that salvation is by faith alone, through grace, and this is not from ourselves or our own merit or work, it is the gracious gift of God.

3. The Mystery of Broken Barriers

This is my fourth segment in my sermon entitled, "The Mystery of the Gospel".

3. The Mystery of Broken Barriers

(Eph 3:6) "This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel."

-This isn't much of a mystery to us unless we get into the Jewish mindset of the time. Israel was the chosen people, and the way she had gone wrong was by mixing with the other peoples. It was them, the outsiders, that had seduced Israel into their pagan idolatry and therefore if Israel was going to be saved it was going to be by rigorously separating herself from all that was unclean and impure. And what could be more unclean or impure than the Gentiles. The Pharisees even separated themselves from fellow Jews who weren't fully keeping the Torah. Of course, they wouldn't have anything to do with Gentiles. But then, mystery of mysteries, Jesus comes along and begins eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners, calling them to repentance and faith in him the same as anyone else. And then after Jesus dies and rises again, he tells his disciples to go into all the world and preach this gospel and baptize people from every nation, no restrictions! And then Pentecost comes along and the Spirit falls on them in tongues of fire, and they tell the mysteries of God in different languages, and Peter preaches and 3,000 come to faith. And then, just a few chapters later in Acts, Peter gets this mysterious dream of a sheet coming down from heaven with all sorts of unclean animals and God telling him to kill and eat, and that he shouldn't call unclean what God has made clean. And then Gentiles come with news that Cornelius has had this revelation about Peter coming and preaching the gospel to him, and Peter goes into his unclean house and preaches the gospel and the Spirit falls on them and they speak in tongues just like the Jewish disciples had. The answer to this mysterious string of events is pretty obvious. The Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. The old barriers, the old dividing wall of clean and unclean, Jew and Gentile, they have all been knocked down. The Jewish mindset of how salvation works is completely upturned.

-But really its not just a Jewish mindset, it's our own. Almost every culture or nation throughout history has thought that it was the best in the world, that it had the answer to the world's problems, we Americans are no exception, but this is really just self-righteousness based on race, heritage or culture. What are our barriers, what is your dividing wall? Perhaps you draw the line between good upstanding moral people, whom you'll converse with whether or not they're really Christian, and those untouchables, the rebels. Perhaps it's even between those who practice your particular brand of Christianity and everybody else. Just think about who you think is least likely to receive the gospel? And ask yourself why? Why is any person more or less likely to receive the gospel than any one else?

-You know our world is a broken and divided place. Our societies are fragmented in so many ways, race, gender, nationality, the haves and the have-nots, the rebels and the moralists, Democrats and Republicans, those who use apple computers and those who use macs, the son or daughter who's the goody two-shoes and the one who causes trouble. And you know most of the time, you and I just tend to blame everything that's wrong with the world on the other side of what we are. But you know, until we stop for a moment and look at ourselves, it's going to be hard to see this mystery. The only real answer to the dilemma of how to achieve peace and unity in our families, communities, peoples, among the nations is Christ, not our culture, not my way of life, not the UN, the answer to breaking down our barriers is the body of Christ.

-The gospel breaks down all barriers and dividing walls, it is the ultimate leveler and the only thing that really truly does level the playing field, not equal opportunity, or human rights, or better education. It's the Gospel mystery of Broken Barriers.

2. The Mystery of Final Revelation

This is the third segment in my sermon entitled, "The Mystery of Christ".

2. The Mystery of Final Revelation

(Eph 3:3-5) "how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit."

-The mystery is by revelation, not human knowledge or ingenuity, not men grasping up to God but God coming down. This is entirely backwards of the way the world thinks about getting to God, and of the way we also still as believers tend to think about going deeper with God. The secular philosopher says, "How can I unravel the mystery of whether or not there's a God, if there is, what he's like, using my own reason?" The Christian says, "What does the Bible say about God? What does this book reveal about him?" And this isn't just non-religious people who think this way. You see a lot of people that believe in their own form of man somehow reaching up to the divine and tearing the answers to the mysteries out of the heavens. There are tons out there who claim to have done it, and they've written a book on the subject to let you in on it. The 5 secrets of the highly effective and spiritually satisfied person, who gets exactly what they want when they want it. And we tend to think this too, that if I just pray enough or if I just pray in the right way, if I just get this secret path to God, some sort of secret knowledge to being a holy Christian, or the secret for effective evangelization, or for ensuring that my children grow up to be good Christians, then I will have reached God and torn the mystery out of the sky and made him give me what I want. But instead, Paul is saying that God has revealed to us all we need to know right here in the Bible. Instead, the real secret, the real mystery is that God has revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the mystery revealed. And Paul didn't wrench the answer out of God by his zeal or performance, God graciously made it known to him.

-The mystery is revealed to apostles and prophets by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

²⁷Daniel answered the king and said, "No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked,²⁸but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days.

This mystery that Paul proclaims in Ephesians is revealed to him by God the Holy Spirit, just as Daniel received the miraculous revelation of what Nebachadnezer dreamed while he was sleeping in his kingly bedchamber, something he could never know by normal human means. And none of the other wise men, magicians, astrologers, or philosophers, or scientists, could have ever figured it out.

-The mystery of revelation is new, Paul says it was not known to the sons of men in earlier generations. Now what does Paul mean by this? How can he say that it is new when Jesus said that the whole OT spoke of him. Well, Paul doesn't mean by this that the OT hadn't spoken at all of Christ and so it was a complete surprise when he came, not foreseen at all by the prophets. But he does mean that it legitimately was not made fully clear in earlier ages until Christ came. Yes, Jesus fulfills the whole law and the prophets. But these were hints and foreshadowings about the nature of the mystery until the final climactic last chapter, which we call the NT, when Jesus comes and all is revealed.

-The mystery that is finally revealed is of Christ, it concerns the nature of the messiah, and constitutes the closing chapter of the Biblical mystery story. This is the final revelation. Notice that I said final. Jesus is the final, only, once for all revelation of God to us. He is the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father but through him. There is no enlargement or improvement that can be made after him. That is why we have a closed canon and we're not adding anything. It's not because solid Christian preachers and Bible teachers are not likewise inspired by the Holy Spirit. It's because the revelation in the NT is final and therefore the authoritative measuring line by which all our preaching and teaching is to be judged. You are to measure every sermon you hear by the revelation of God's word. And not just every sermon but every teaching that's out there anywhere, whether it seems to be religious or not.

1. The Mystery of Paul, the Prisoner-Apostle

This is the second segment of my sermon entitled, "The Mystery of Christ".

1. The Mystery of Paul, the Prisoner-Apostle

(Eph 3:1-2) "For this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles--assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you."

-An ambassador in prison? Imagine meeting Paul in the prison in Rome. Where do you usually meet ambassadors for a great monarch? In embassies, with nice clothes and honored by people. And where is Paul? In prison. He chooses the lowly things of the world to shame the wise.

Perhaps you have something in your past for which you feel ashamed, perhaps it's a circumstance over which you have no control (someone in jail, a loved one suffering terrible), perhaps you have debilitating circumstances of some kind that make you think God could never use you to reach others. God loves to choose the weak things of the world to shame the strong, and the things that are not, to shame the things that are. Paul was a mysterious contradiction like all of us. I've got my prisons and I'm sure you do too.

-Paul, once Saul, is now a prisoner of Christ for the Gentiles? God gave HIM a special stewardship to the Gentiles! Do you see the irony of Paul being chosen as an apostle to the Gentiles? He was of the strictest sect of the Pharisees! Saul who used to persecute even Jews who believed in Jesus as their messiah would not have been very fond of Gentiles, and yet the mystery of it, God chose him to be an ambassador to the Gentiles and even to suffer greatly in prison in order to get the gospel to them.

In the same way you may have been chained to some sin, before you became a Christian that you think completely disqualifies you from ever helping anyone else with a similar problem. (Maybe it was addiction to drugs, or alcohol, or you harbored antagonism to people of other races, or you were so proud and sure of yourself that you looked down on everyone else, or maybe you were so absorbed in your work that you sacrificed you family on the altar of your ambition, or whatever other kind of idolatry it was; I'm much more worried about those of you who can't think of one than those of you that can. God may want to send you exactly because you are an unlikely candidate to be a witness to other of the mystery of how he changed you. He wants your life, like the apostle Paul's, to be a mystery that points to Jesus.

-"For this reason" points back to the end of chapter 2, which speaks of the building up the church. The funny thing is that God appoints Paul to build up the very church he once tried to destroy. In Galatians Paul says that people in Judea were hearing this news about the apostle Paul, and do you know what their response was, they praised God because of him! And so I have to ask you this question. Does the mystery of God's grace in calling some of the worst people imaginable make you rejoice and praise God? Or are we more like Jonah running away from God's call because really don't want to see God grant repentance to those people of Nineveh? Is this the reason deep down that you're not sharing the gospel with that man who gets drunk down the hall, or with the angry atheist woman, or whoever it is.

-A stewardship of God's grace - Paul is not the ultimate authority, he is manifestly being broken in the service of God, chained as a criminal. He is weak so that God might be strong. This is what it means to be God's messenger, and it is mysterious indeed. As Paul says, we have this treasure in jars of clay, earthen vessels, in order to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. And this mystery is marvelously shown in the life of the Prisoner-Apostle to the Gentiles, Paul formerly known as Saul. And yet this is the mystery that has always been at work, in Joseph being thrown into a pit and sold as a slave, or think of Gideon and his three-hundred men, or that God used Samson, who didn't actually look strong because his strength was a mystery to everyone, so that it was clear that he was empowered by the Spirit of God, or in the fact that salvation came into the world through a baby born in a feeding trough in a back water town of the mighty Roman empire, and then grew up as a poor carpenter, who went to the cross to die a criminal's death.

Introduction to "The Mystery of Christ"

This evening I delivered a sermon entitled "The Mystery of Christ" at College Church's Marion Park ministry. To keep posts from being extremely long I'm going to post my notes for this sermon in 8 parts: one for the intro and seven for the seven mysteries that I expound upon.

The text for my sermon is Ephesians 3:1-13, and you should read it before proceeding further.

Something about the human soul loves mysteries. We love to search things out. Crossword puzzles, brain teasers. Proverbs 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out. The glory for even those in the highest station is to search out mysteries. There's something about a good mystery that invites us to search out the answer. So I think that a mystery is a good thing. If a man says a woman has a mysterious aura about her, that is high praise and a good compliment. What makes mystery novels so enthralling for us? They are some of the most exciting page turners out there. The suspense that builds as chapter after chapter of unanswered questions build upon one another grows to be enormous, until that final last chapter when all is revealed. There are even many films today that follow this same pattern. There are hints all along that are never quite enough to give it all away, and so you are left thinking of the characters or the elements of plot one way, until everything is upturned during the final revelation at the end. The mystery is solved, the dots are now all connected together. And you can never watch that movie or read that mystery novel the same again. Because now you know the answer, now you know the key to it all, and you almost want to jump up and down as you see all the hints along the way.

Well, the Bible is no stranger to mysteries. After all, Jesus taught in mysterious ways, like his parables for instance. I think he did so partly to satisfy this desire for mysteries that he put in us, but also more importantly so that those who were intrigued by the mystery, who didn't think they understood it all, could go deeper, could pry into the mystery of his words, and find the answer. Jesus said himself that he spoke in parables to hide the mystery of the kingdom from the ignorant crowds. It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of his people to search them out.

Really the Bible itself could be seen as one great mystery story. Throughout the Old Testament there are so many themes and theological realities and foreshadowings that are held in tension, remarkable tension such that many see it and are perplexed. How can these two things be resolved? Let me give you a few examples to show you what I mean. Have you ever noticed the tension in the OT between whether the covenant is conditional or unconditional? between God's Justice or Holiness and his Mercy? between whether the messiah is going to be more like a king or more like a priest? So there are a whole slew of mysteries throughout the Bible that find their tension resolved in the person and work of Christ.

Well, in the text for tonight I see 7 mysteries that all related to the grand, ultimate mystery of Jesus Christ, and here they are:

1. The Mystery of Paul, the Prisoner-Apostle

2. The Mystery of Final Revelation

3. The Mystery of Broken Barriers

4. The Mystery of God's Gracious Gift

5. The Mystery of Gospel Proclamation

6. The Mystery of God's Eternal Purpose

7. The Mystery of Glory in Suffering

Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome

I highly recommend this book, which I just finished reading yesterday, by Kent and Barbara Hughes. In it Kent and Barbara use their own experience in an "unsuccessful" (number-wise) church plant to grapple with and redefine what success in ministry looks like. During the second part of the book Kent defines success as faithfulness, serving, loving, believing, prayer, holiness, and attitude over against our assumptions of numerical growth and influence. A must read for any young man considering ministry, as well as every pastor in ministry. Families of those in ministry and even caring congregants who want to know better how to support and pray for their pastors would also gain much from this quick read.

Why Read Fantasy?

Because I spent much of my time this last week reading a fantasy series, I thought I'd take a moment to express some of the reasons why an adult Christian might spend some of their recreation time reading fantasy, rather than, say, theology. Many in our day still look down on the genre of fantasy as innately childish and without much to make it worth reading. After all, it's all so unrealistic, none of the events actually happened and it doesn't relate to real life at all. These assumptions may be literally true, but those who hold them are sadly mistaken. To that end I have enumerated here four reasons why reading fantasy can be soul food for the Christian.

1. Fantasy renews in us a sense of wonder and awe concerning the world around us. Fantasy is actually truer about the nature of our world than more adult literature in this aspect at least because the world around us is amazing. There are mysteries in the tree and the flower in our backyard that would strike us dumb if we could only see them. There are adventures to be undertaken, there are battles to be fought, and there glories to be pursued, the likes of which only the genre of fantasy can duly represent.

2. Fantasy is able to embody the cosmic fight between good and evil in a way that is more true to the spiritual nature of the world in which we live than most other genres. Few types of literature can express how much may hang upon a single decision as well as fantasy. So-called realistic fiction does not often address the real world of demonic principalities and powers against the angels. As Hamlet said, "There are more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio."

3. Even, if fantasy is non-Christian or even atheistic, by its very nature it cannot help but point to both God's grace and God's sovereignty. Let me explain what I mean. One of the major conventions of fantasy adventures is the seemingly insurmountable forces of evil, which a strangely graced character (without expectation of greatness) is miraculously able to overcome against all the odds. Aid comes to the character just in the nick of time, the character suffers several near defeats, but through really no full competence of his own he conquers by just the right alignment of (providentially) arranged events. If there is no God ensuring that the good underdog win, why does it always happen this way in fantasy?

4. Fantasy sanctifies the ordinary with the grandiosity of the cosmic struggle. Despite accusations that fantasy is just too good to be true or that it doesn't relate to real life, there is always a tension held between the epic moments of conflict and how the epic characters wait and endure through the lulls along the way. The time of the hero's preparation is attached the same magnitude as the moments of great conflict and victory. This is exactly how the Christian faith addresses the ordinariness of our lives, by recognizing it and then investing it with the weight of the extraordinary. In contrast I would say that much of modern literature recognizes the seeming dullness of life, but does not rise above it to the truer level of attaching it to the broader epic that can imbue life with meaning.

God is Pure Light

My sermon in the College Group at College Church on 1 John 1:5-10 is now online and ready to be accessed. Here is the College Group website. And here is the sermon archive with it. Check it out!

Pastor Wendall Hawley

Today I met with Pastor Wendall Hawley, who has come out of retirement to be interim Assistant Pastor during College Church's transition time between our Senior Pastor Emeritus Kent Hughes and our new Senior Pastor Josh Moody. Here is a photo of him and his wife Nancy from the College Church website.
Just from talking to him and hearing him lead congregational prayer in many services, I can tell that Wendall is a godly man who has served the Lord faithfully for many years. Before this position he's served College church in many capacities including many terms on the council of elders. He's also church planted and pastored churches, served as a chaplain with the military and to the incarcerated, taught Homiletics classes at a seminary, and spent many years serving on the editorial staff of Tyndale House Publishers. He and Nancy have three grown daughters and 11 grandchildren.
Besides sharing with him a little about myself and where my life is headed, I also brought a list of questions along to learn from his storehouse of wisdom. Here are some of the questions I asked him along with a summary of his answers as best I can remember from what I wrote down.

Question 1: What are some of the most important lessons you've learned over the years? both from the experience of pastoring, being an elder and a chaplain, and as a husband to your wife and father to your children?
Don't be in a hurry! Wait on the timing of God.
People don't move as fast in a congregation as pastoral staff often are ready to.
Don't be separatistic toward Christians in other denominations.
Not everybody in your congregation is going to be where you are or have all the right feelings toward God. Don't clamp down to hard when you see it. Expect it. Lovingly shepherd people who are hurting and struggling alot.
Search out mentors rather than just academic learning. There are some gains to being thrown into ministry head on before seminary as well as losses.
Too many pastors make the church their bride. You need to be devoted first to your wife and family at home. If man cannot serve his own home, how can he really serve the church well.
A man should be devoted first to his wife and children before any calling or vocation. Tend to the heart of your wife with gentleness and respect, especially in decision-making.

Question 2: What advice can you give me as I pursue God's calling toward pastoral ministry and marriage?
Wendall had basically already answered this with the last question, so I sort of skipped it.

Question 3: What was your background like and what training did you have for ministry?
Wendall told me about his days in a small fundamentalist church that did not much value education, and how from living in Oregon he got thrown into being a pastor of a church before his undergraduate education was over. He looked back at the hastily put together sermons, and reminisced about how God used him anyways. Later he did a church plant in another part of Oregon, gaining access to an old closed down Presbyterian church by finding out who had the keys, and getting students to lead Sunday school and diving right in. He then went to graduate school and later to seminary.

Question 4: What are a few books that have most impacted you and drawn you closer to the Lord? or what are a few authors in particular that shaped you?
Wendall took a long time to think about this one. Over the years he had built up more than a 5,000 volume library, and during his early years of pastoring he read voraciously, book after book. For a while when he was teaching homiletics courses, he read everything he could get his hands on about homiletics (the study of preaching, basically). He mentioned Spurgeon as one author he comes back to over and over again, and that he never gets tired of. He also suggested reading lots of biographies, since we can learn so much from other people's lives, the ways they failed and struggled along with the ways they exhibited great faith. He honestly also confessed that he didn't know where to start with that question because there was just so much.

Question 5: Since he had mentioned teaching homiletics courses and read so much about it, I figured I'd ask him what his theology of preaching was a what were some important tidbits he could pass along.
He proposed that before preparing and before preaching every sermon, that a preacher ask himself this question, "What is it I want the listener to carry away from this sermon?" Too many sermons wander around on by-roads that don't add to the main point. He also strongly suggested that every sermon should really interact deeply with the lives of the congregation. There should be a real clear connect to daily life. And in order to have that the preacher should consider all that might be going on in the lives of his people during any given Sunday morning. To know that, moreover, he needs to be with his people. He should not just spend time in the study but with the people of his congregation, knowing their struggles, counseling them, learning how to preach prophetically to them.

Question 6: Because I have been so touched and enlightened by both the passion and the theological depth of Pastor Hawley's congregational prayers, I told him so and asked him what thinking he had done about that topic and if he could speak to it at all.
Wendall emphasized that aside from the sermon the pastoral prayer is the most huge, instrumental part of the service, because through it you incorporate scripture into prayer, and thereby you teach your congregation how to pray. He said that he often will work in the concerns of people in the service whom he's talked with even that week. There are many great books out there concerning bible-saturated prayer and he referred me to Martin Luther's A Simple Way to Pray, which I think is available in full online at this link, as well as the great book of Puritan prayers, Valley of Vision.

Before ending our time I invited him and his wife to share their life story with the College Group at After Hours, which they will most likely come to sometime in August, and then asked for him to pray for me to close. He did and it was inspiring and enlivening. I look forward to continuing to see him around, learn from him, and even meeting with him again.

A Little Fun Reading

At the request of one of my students (and to the delight of them all) I have begun reading the fantasy book Eragon, which was recently made into a movie. I'm enjoying it very much as a much needed break from my other reading and work.

Week with Ashley!

I just had an amazing week with Ashley (which explains why blogging has been down). I drove up to Modena, WI last friday right after teaching at Clapham School. I arrived just before dinner time, and Ashley and I were so excited to see each other. After a great time with her family over the weekend, we drove back down to Wheaton on Monday morning. Some highlights from this week were numerous walks between Wheaton college and my house along this beautiful stretch of the Prairie path through Lincoln marsh, dinner times where my brother came to visit on Tuesday and Friday, going to Bible Study with her on Wednesday night, a super fun double date on Thursday evening with Bekah Geno and her boyfriend Kevin, and a couple late evening walks with some prayer time. Now Ashley is on the plane to LA for a summer program called SongFest for the next three weeks. It's such a great opportunity for her to work with some amazing people, like the world-renowned vocal coach Martin Katz. I'm going to miss her terribly, but I'll be praying for her and I hope she has a marvellous time.

Mini Retreat

From last Wednesday night to last Thursday night I went on a mini retreat with my good friend Zach. I've been meeting with him these past two years for the Discipleship Small Group ministry at Wheaton College, and I've enjoyed every minute of it. I've seen him grow and I've seen God at work in his life and we've shared so much together, especially this last year.
As the year ended we came up with a plan to hang out and get some good time away, expectant for God to speak to us and refresh us after a challenging year of studies. We planned to go to Starved Rock State Park for a day of hiking and enjoying God's creation together. There aren't many places better in Illinois and less than a 2 hour drive away from Wheaton!
Our time went as follows:
Zach drove up to Wheaton and attended the College Group bible study that I was leading on Wednesday night. After a great time of diving into God's word, we headed off to his house in his car (after briefly stopping in at my house to pick up a few things). We caught up and had some edifying conversation on the 45 min drive down to his house. Before hitting the sack we listened to a Mark Driscoll sermon that was both encouraging and convicting about the centrality of God's word.
We woke up about 8:30am, ate a light breakfast, packed lunches and headed out. During the drive we listened to Behold the Lamb, which I love too much to confine just to Christmas time, as well as some other good hymns and such.
After a quick peak in the Visitor's Center, we hit the trails. It was a delight to see the beauty of the vistas and to feel the fresh air in our lungs as we plodded our way through much of the park. I think we struck a good balance between getting a good workout of walking in and also going to retreat and relax. We also got to deepen our relationship and delve into more about our pasts and hopes for our futures and how God has been, is and will be at the center of it all.
Among other things, we consulted one of his plant life books to try and identify a few of the bushes and trees, read all the signs as we went along--thereby learning alot as we went along, talked to a few people (especially this one elderly man, who had Zach try and help his wife with a computer problem over the cell phone, while I engaged him in a little conversation steering it toward one aspect of the gospel, namely that who or what we worship matters immensely and may destroy or liberate us), and also read aloud (for most of it right in the middle of Owl canyon with our voices resounding) the book of Revelation starting after the seven churches.
The ride back was equally enjoyable, as was the time with his family afterward, dinner and desert, and attending his college group that evening before he took me home. All in all it was a success. God blessed and refreshed us in some meaningful ways.
Among my takeaways from this experience I would definitely have to put down the value of reading a lot of scripture and soaking in God. More than planning or journaling or trying really hard to delve into my own soul to discern myself, just reading God's word and letting it do the discerning is, I think, most wise.