On Neglecting The Assembly

In 1781 John Newton wrote a letter to the members of his church in London.  One of the main reasons he wrote this letter was to address a burden he was facing as a pastor: his parishioners were not coming to worship services.  This is something that pastors still face today.  Some Christians miss worship services for valid reasons (illness, emergencies, etc.).  But many Christians simply neglect worship services.  In other words, they don’t really have a good, biblical reason for not assembling with the saints.  In the following paragraphs, I’ve summarized and edited Newton’s letter in which he pastorally addresses this problem.  (Note the lines on entertainment.)

“The only cause of grief that you have given me is that so many of those to whom I earnestly desire to be useful refuse me the pleasure of seeing them at church every Sunday.  I’m not troubled because the pews are empty.  If a large congregation could satisfy me, then I would already be satisfied (the pews are full).  But I must grieve because I see so few of my own parishioners in the full pews.  God has not been pleased to place me elsewhere, he saw fit to fix me among you.  This appointment gives you a preference in my regard and it makes me studiously attentive to promote your best welfare.”

“If I am a servant of God, a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ, if I speak the truth in love – how can I not be pained at the thought that many to whom the word of salvation is sent refuse to hear it and reject the counsel of God against themselves (Acts 13:26, Luke 7:30)!  Most of you agree with me that Scripture is God’s revelation. But do not some of you act inconsistently with your acknowledged principles?  Your business and entertainment indispose you for due observation of our church services.  You have other things to do, so you miss many sermons.”

“I have done my best to avoid whatever might give you needless offense.  I knew that if I would be faithful to Scripture and my conscience, that some of my hearers would be displeased.  But, though I was constrained to risk your displeasure, I have been careful not to needlessly provoke you, or to lay any unnecessary difficulties in your way.”

So that I may not weary my hearers by the length of my sermons, I carefully endeavor not to exceed forty-five minutes.  Many people can give their attention to trivial entertainment for several hours without weariness, but their patience is quickly exhausted under a sermon where the principles of Scripture are applied to the conscience.”

“I am not a polished orator nor do I wish to capture your attention by the elegance of my words.  If I had the ability to use elegant words and capture your attention with them, I would not do it.  I speak to the unlearned and the wise, so my principal aim is to be understood.  Yet I hope that I am not wrongly charged with speaking nonsense, with flippancy, carelessness, or disrespect.  But alas! There are too many hearers who seem more desirous of entertainment than of real benefit from a Christian sermon!”

“My heart longs for your salvation; but whether you will hear or whether you will not, I must take your consciences to witness that I have been faithful to you.  If after this warning any of you should finally perish, I am innocent of your blood (Acts 20:26).”

“You know the difficulty of my situation and will assist me with your prayers.  I trust likewise you will assist me with your conduct, and that your lives and godly speech will constrain the ungodly to acknowledge that the doctrines of grace which I preach – when rightly  understood and embraced – make a person peaceful, content, loving, and full of humility.”

This is obviously the summary of a longer letter.  Here’s who needs to read this letter today: 1) those of you who neglect regularly assembling with the saints and 2) those of you – pastors and elders perhaps – who wish to lovingly admonish Christians who neglect the assembly.

Newton’s pastoral heart comes out in this letter.  He is straightforward, blunt, and biblical.  At the same time, it is very evident that he simply wants his parishioners to hear the sermons for their own Christian good and growth in godliness.  Newton certainly wasn’t a legalist looking to make people proud of their church attendance.  He was writing in the spirit of 1 Peter 5:1-4 – as an undershepherd who loved Christ’s sheep.  Or, in other words, this letter is a pastoral commentary on Hebrews 10:24-25.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Edward Welch: Running Scared

I’ve been reading Edward Welch’s masterful Running Scared: Fear, Worry and the God of Rest in an effort to minister better to brothers and sisters struggling with worry and anxiety.  It is a truly marvelous book for several reasons.  It is easy to read (good prosody, short chapters) and thus easy to recommend to lay people, it is full of rich biblical insights that focus on the spiritual aspects of worry and anxiety without downplaying their physiological results, and it is richly redemptive-historical in its answer to the idolatrous core of worry and anxiety: the answer is the resurrected and ascended Christ, seated now in his glory, enthroned in a new heavens and new earth that is already breaking into the present!

If anyone thinks that a robust redemptive-historical eschatology and biblical-theology downplays concrete pastoral applications in counseling situations, Running Scared is a fine way to disabuse them of that error!

Welch’s discussion of how the desire-demand continuum plays a role in worry is superb.  Note how idolatry, a theme shot through good counseling literature (and even some recent biblical-theological studies), comes into play:

We’ve seen that there are words that cluster together: fear, worry, anxiety, trust, treasure, control, need.  Fear and worry reveal what we treasure.  They show where we want control but lack it.  They expose allegiances.  To use everyday language, they point to what we think we need.  We worry when our perceived needs are threatened. (Pg. 182)

We tend to give our needs very little scrutiny.  But for me to say that I need a Ferrari suggests that the word need is elastic, stretching all the way from food and shelter to personal lusts.  Where along that spectrum will I find my desire for the good opinions of others? (Pg. 183)

At one end of the continuum, these desires are normal and appropriate.  Call them mere or simple desires.  Without them you are not human.  At the other, they are complicated desires, self-serving demands that are guaranteed to damage relationships.  As you drift from desire to demand, the boundary is fuzzy but the distinction is critical.  If I simply want love from my wife, expressed according to my own idiosyncratic definition, our relationship is not in any particular danger.  But if I say I need that love, I will be angry if I don’t get it.  One reason the boundary between these two is hard to identify is because our demand is relabeled as need…. Yet veiled beneath our use of the word need are the things we treasure, even worship.  (Pgs. 183-184.)

What is the answer?  The reigning Christ who never will leave us or forsake us:

Let’s say you still have lingering doubts.  Does God really care?  Past hurts still have a hold on you.  You feel like you have been fooled once and you won’t be fooled again, so this tie you are going to trust yourself and try to control your world better than before.  Or perhaps you simply believe that what God says is too good to be true.  [Does this sound like another book referred to frequently on this blog? ~AC]  You feel unworthy of his care and protection.  Life becomes a spiritual stalemate and no one is budging.

But God, of course, is moving toward you.  When you doubt, he reveals more of himself.  When you think he is too good to be true, he reveals that he is so good that he must be speaking the truth, because no one could make up anything so glorious.

He speaks about the cross.  The cross of Christ proves his love and faithfulness.  What more can he say than that?  When you allow your own history of abuse or disappointment or betrayal to challenge the love of God, the cross continues to stand as the conclusive proof of his care.  No, it doesn’t answer all your questions, but the truth it conveys about God and his love is irrefutable. (Pg. 247)

How does this good (gospel) news play out?

If you believe that judgment still looms, then consider repentance.  Not repentance for your many sins (most likely you have done that numerous times), but repentance for believing that God is like a human being.  (Pg. 248)

Yes, when I am anxious I feel alone.  I don’t want to necessarily feel God’s presence – my feelings are too unstable to serve as a barometer for something so important.  Instead, I want to believe what God says in a way that no human threat could cause me to doubt that his name is Immanuel, God with us.

Do you notice a recurring theme?  When emotions are strong, they want to tell us what is true.  Everyone has experience that.  It happens every day.  But the fact that this experience is common shouldn’t numb us to the fact that it is a pivotal spiritual battle.

Who is in charge?  God and what he says or me and how I feel? (Pg. 254)

This is just a sampling, but I hope it is thorough enough to show-off the excellent resource that Running Scared truly is.  It has served me well as a guide for helping people struggling with anxiety, but will also serve well as a resource to give to people struggling with anxiety.  (I.e., it will make excellent counseling “homework” even for people who aren’t necessarily heavy readers.)  I’m glad I stumbled across this volume just when I did!

_________________
Andrew Compton
Christ Reformed Church, Anaheim CA

The Faith of Our Fathers

In the first of his five-volume series on the history and doctrinal developments of the Christian church, Jaroslav Pelikan evaluates, explains, and summarizes the Christian beliefs of the catholic (universal) church from 100-600 AD.  Since many people today are writing – and duped by – historical revisions of the early church and its beliefs, it is good for us to find accurate and reliable books and studies on ancient church history.  Though not perfect in every way, Pelikan’s series is both reliable and accurate.

The following quote from volume one is a quote that shows Pelikan’s level-headed approach to studying the beliefs of the early church fathers.  Anyone who has read various writings, tracts, and treatises of teachers like Cyril, Cyprian, and Augustine (etc.) knows that it can be difficult to get a detailed and orderly snapshot of early Christian theology.  Pelikan’s notes here are helpful in this area.

“Against various heresies and schisms, the orthodox and catholic church defined as apostolic doctrine that which it believed, taught, and confessed.  This doctrine, so it was presumed, had been believed and taught by the church before heresy demanded that it be confessed.  Yet the task of reconstructing it from the existing documents is a complex one.  A large part of the Christian literature which has been preserved was preoccupied either with the defense of Christianity against the cultured among its despisers or with polemics against heresy.”

“Hence the interpretation of what was Christian doctrine during the second and third centuries is likely to concentrate on these same issues, at the expense of other doctrinal themes in the belief and the piety of the church.  The methodological problems in the attempt to uncover those themes in the documents are formidable, but the documents themselves make the attempt both necessary and justifiable.”

“To cite one of the most explicit instances from the second century, Athenagoras opened his apologetic for the resurrection with a distinction between a ‘plea for the truth,’ addressed to skeptics and doubters, and an ‘exposition of the truth,’ addressed to those who were prepared to accept the truth; he noted that the exposition was more valuable and important, but that pagan hostility to the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead made it necessary for him to give precedence to the plea over the exposition.  Athenagoras’s distinction justifies the effort to supply as much as possible of the missing ‘exposition’ in defense of which the ‘plea’ was made” (p. 121).

Though the discussion is detailed, Pelikan made a great point here.  Much of the early Christian literature was more of a defense of the Chrsitian faith and not a point by point exposition of it.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t find the exposition in the defense.  Though it is sometimes difficult to find the “exposition” woven in the “defense,” it is certainly right and proper for us to do so.  There is such a thing as historical Christian orthodoxy that our forefathers believed, taught, confessed, and defended!

Again, the quote was taken from Jaroslav Pelikan’s The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), p. 121.

shane lems

The Covenant of Works and the Westminster Standards

In chapter four of Scripture and Worship Richard Muller examines the relationship between the Westminster Confessions and the Reformed exegetical/interpretive methods of the 16th and 17th century.  I appreciated his section in this chapter on the covenant of works and Reformed exegesis/interpretation.  Here’s his summary of this discussion (I’ve formatted it a bit to make it easier to read on this blog).

“What can we conclude in general about the relationship of the confession to the exegetical tradition in the case of the covenant of works and, from that conclusion, about the early Reformed understanding of the reasons for arguing a covenant of works?”

“First, the confession related to the exegetical tradition in much the same way as the early formulators of the two covenant model – the foundation of the doctrine was primarily Pauline, collated to Genesis 2:17.”

“Second, beyond the sacramental understanding of the trees in the garden and the biblical datum of a requirement of obedience placed on Adam, the fundamental concept of a prelapsarian covenant of works (or of ‘nature’ or ‘life’) was grounded in the Pauline antitheses of Adam and Christ, law and faith.  In other words, the documents indicate that the interrelated series, Christ, faith, covenant of grace, was juxtaposed with Adam, law, and the covenant of works, with the prelapsarian covenant supplied as the necessary conclusion demanded by the collation of texts.”

“In effect, the confession at this point exemplifies its own statement of the Reformed method of interpretation – that Christian doctrine is to be either grounded upon the express statements of Scripture or drawn from those statements as a ‘good and necessary consequence’ (WCF 1.6).  This had been the way in which the early orthodox reformed theologians had developed their understanding of the prelapsarian covenant on the basis of Genesis 2:17 and various Pauline texts – and it remained the method of the confession and catechisms.”

You’ll have to get the book to see how Muller reaches this summary.  Again, it is found in chapter four of Scripture and Worship: Biblical Interpretation & The Directory for Worship by Richard Muller and Rowland Ward.  This book is basically a in-depth discussion on the doctrine of Scripture and the topic of worship as described in the Westminster Standards.  I recommend it for those of you who, like me, very much appreciate confessional presbyterianism and want to learn more about its background and theology.

shane lems

sunnyside, wa

Day-by-Day Devotionals: My Recommendations

I’ve been asked by quite a few different people (from my church and elsewhere) if I had any suggestions for a day-by-day devotional book.  Those little white pocket-size devotional booklets are often fluffy, moralistic, cheesy, or theologically weak – I can see why people are looking for something better.  To make a longer blog post short, here are a few I recommend.  (By the way, you can preview these books online before you purchase them.)

Holiness Day by Day by Jerry Bridges.  In this book, each day’s devotional starts with a verse from Scripture then consists of a one page reading from various books Bridges wrote.  This is a good one for most Christians – it is understandable, theologically sound, and gospel centered.  There is no fluff here!

Another one page daily devotional I recommend is J. M Boice’s Come to the Waters.  This daily reading starts with a verse from Scripture and then has a one page portion of Boice’s writing.  This book is also solid and understandable, though each devotional isn’t necessarily an explanation of the gospel. Come to The Waters is also readable for most Christians.

Here’s a day-by-day reading written by J. I. Packer: Daily Readings for Your Spiritual Journey.  This day-by-day devotional book is just like the first two I noted.  There is a verse and then a short section of Packer’s writing. This too is solid and understandable – it also covers a broad range of doctrines and application.

Another one I’ve purchased and given out is Comforts from the Cross by E. Fitzpatrick.  This devotional is a little different from the above only because it is a little longer and more explicitly gospel-centered.  Each daily reading is around two pages – and each day there is a verse and a closing prayer.  Also worth noting here is that this devotional is for one month, while the others listed here would take around one year to complete.

Finally, I should mention D. A. Carson’s two volumes called For the Love of God.  This daily, one page devotional is structured after M’Cheyne’s one year Bible reading plan.  Each day consists of a meditation on the day’s Scripture reading.  This one, like the others, is solid, biblical, and covers a variety of Biblical doctrines and application.

What we’ve done (here at church) is purchased several of these (the ones by Bridges and Boice, to be specific) and handed them out to those in the congregation who were interested in a daily Christian reading.  I think this is a good idea.  Get rid of those little fluffy devotional booklets and replace them with some (or all!) of these books I’ve listed above.  And, as always, if you have other good suggestions, list them in the comments.

shane lems

sunnyside wa