…An Unworthy Manner July 20, 2010

“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason, many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged” (1 Cor. 12:26-31).

In this passage, Paul is writing in the context of a conflict among the Corinthian believers as to the physical abuse of the Lord’s table during communion. Certain believers were gorging themselves on the bread and wine to the point of drunkenness (12:21), leaving others out of the celebration altogether. Obviously, this would qualify as an “unworthy manner,” tantamount to taking God’s name in vain. The part that confuses us is the pronouncement of sickness and death as a consequence of these actions (12:30). To our sanitized sense of church, this seems very “Old Testament”, and out of character with the grace represented by communion.

Passages like this bring us face to face with an imagined conflict between holiness and grace. Christ came to fulfill the law, but the law is not a stand-alone. The law served to show us our sin in relation to God’s uncompromising holiness. When Christ’s sacrifice fulfilled the law, He allowed his blood to cover our sins and permit us to fellowship with Him in His righteousness. The holiness of God is unchanging, before, during, and after the law.

When those who claimed to be brothers and sisters in Christ trampled one another and indulged in the Lord’s supper with a self-focused, gluttonous attitude, they were spitting on Christ’s sacrifice. They were casting aside the significance of the observance for their own gain, forgetting who God is. They were taking Him in vain, demonstrating that, at best, they had not allowed the Spirit to reign in their hearts since professing Christ, or, at worst, that they did not know Him at all.

Does the same principle and punishment apply to us today? Our modernistic worldview has so sequestered disease and death in a scientific construct that, if it is occurring, we aren’t noticing. The principle, however, holds true in any instance of worship (read: life as a believer). Whenever we seek to magnify ourselves (whether openly or only in the attitude of our hearts), we are not honoring Christ. When we do it under the guise of celebrating Him, we are inviting judgment. When we become involved in the church to improve our social standing or to feel good about ourselves, when we do good deeds for the recognition of men, when we give of time and money for the wrong reasons, we make light of God – we take Him in vain. We invite judgment on ourselves in this way because we are tarnishing the name of Christ. Rather, we should, as Paul commanded the Corinthians, “. . . proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”

Posted by Justin Lonas

Faith of the Faithless? June 3, 2010

That God answers prayer is an essential article of our faith. We know that He answers according to His perfect will and His mercy (not according to our desires and finite plans), and in His time (which is not ours). We even know that He answers at least some of the prayers of the unsaved, as He answered the first prayer of each believer for salvation (which was prayed from “outside” of His family). He is not deaf, and He is active in the lives of men.

What about, however, the prayers of those who neither know God nor worship Him? In Genesis 24, we see an interesting display of the prayers of a man seemingly in such a position. The scene opens with Abraham, advancing in years, concerned for the spiritual well-being of his son Isaac and the perpetuation of His line according to the promise of God. Abraham wants Isaac to marry from among his own people, not from among the pagans in the land of Canaan, and so he asks his servant (whose name is not given in this passage) to swear to travel to his relatives and find a wife for Isaac. The servant obliges, and sets out on his errand.

Upon his arrival in Mesopotamia, he utters a prayer that belies 1) his position outside of Abraham’s beliefs, 2) his confusion at Abraham’s orders, and 3) his worry that he cannot complete his task. “O Lord, the God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today, and show lovingkindness to my master Abraham. Behold, I am standing by the spring, and the daughters of the men of this city are coming out to draw water; now may it be that the girl to whom I say, ‘Please let down your jar so that I may drink,’ and who answers, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels also’–may she be the one whom You have appointed for Your servant Isaac; and by this I will know that You have shown lovingkindness to my master” (Gen. 24:12-14). He sounds unsure of himself and detached from the God to whom he prays. He prays not so much for himself but according to Abraham & Isaac’s faith and makes an outlandish “damp fleece” request of the Lord–but he prays! He steps out in the faith he has seen modeled in his master’s household and calls out to God with at least some recognition that only the Lord could accomplish the task he was sworn to by Abraham.

God not only answers the servant’s earnest plea for a successful completion of his mission, He does so immediately. “Before he had finished speaking” (v. 15), Rebekah walks up to the well and performs exactly the unusual set of actions he had prayed for as a sign. “Then the man [the servant] bowed low and worshipped the Lord. He said, ‘Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken His lovingkindness and His truth toward my master; as for me, the Lord has guided me in the ways to the house of my master’s brothers” (vv. 26-27).  He proceeds from there to seal the deal with Rebekah’s family and bring her back to marry Isaac, praising the Lord for His provision (vv. 42-49).

Reading  an attitude of skepticism into the servant’s prayers may be a bit “Western” of me (the language is such that He may have been simply honoring Abraham as his master even in prayer), but his amazement at the Lord’s sudden and exacting answer is palpable in the text. God will answer whom He will answer, and whether or not the servant was a partaker in Abraham’s faith “reckoned to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6), the Lord showed up in response to his earnest request. To say that the Lord answers the prayers of the faithless is, in any case, misleading–there are no faithless prayers. All true prayer is born out of a person’s honest belief “that [God] is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (Heb. 11:6)–a request made from any other attitude is just hollow and meaningless talking to the ceiling.

Prayer is faith in action.

Posted by Justin Lonas

Thursday Thoughts April 29, 2010

O for a Thousand Tongues
by Charles Wesley, 1740

“O for a thousand tongues to sing
My great Redeemer’s praise,
The glories of my God and King,
The triumphs of His grace!

My gracious Master and my God,
Assist me to proclaim,
To spread through all the earth abroad
The honors of Thy name.

Jesus! the name that charms our fears,
That bids our sorrows cease;
’Tis music in the sinner’s ears,
’Tis life, and health, and peace.

He breaks the power of canceled sin,
He sets the prisoner free;
His blood can make the foulest clean,
His blood availed for me.

Hear Him, ye deaf; His praise, ye dumb,
Your loosened tongues employ;
Ye blind, behold your Savior come,
And leap, ye lame, for joy.”

What a great Savior we serve–not only has He cancelled our sin by His sacrifice, but He frees us from its power in our lives by His indwelling presence! How can we adequately offer gratitude for so marvelous a gift? To quote from another great hymn (Isaac Watts’ “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”), “Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all.”

What greater praise could we render to the Lord than to “spread through all the earth abroad the honors of [His] name?” The end result of redemption should always be missions. God’s greatest glory is the praise of His name by sinners redeemed from rebellion–the more He redeems, the more glory He gets. We proclaim His name both out of gratitude and out of a desire to see His name glorified above all other names. No other act of Christian service is more precious to God.

Posted by Justin Lonas

The Sin of Boredom March 10, 2010

Did you ever stop to wonder why in an age where the entire world is quite literally at our fingertips through the internet and other digital media that we (I’m extrapolating from my own experience here) spend so much time being bored? We have so many choices that we can’t possibly decide what to do in any given situation without a nagging doubt that we’re missing out on something better. The end result is a something of a shutdown of our ability to make decisions and our desire to act–just look at the proliferation of devices whose appeal is based on randomization. We set our music players to “shuffle” because we have so many songs we can’t possibly decide what to listen to; we have iPhone apps that will select a restaurant for us; Wikipedia will pull up random articles for those craving information without direction; “Can’t make up your mind? Let us do it for you.”

We tend to view the inevitable dissatisfaction and boredom that our way of life brings as something that plagues us, something external to be removed (by what, more choices?) rather than something deeply wrong within ourselves. Are we bored because there truly is nothing exciting or meaningful to do, or because we know what to do and we know that it places demands on our lives that we are unwilling to accept? Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop in more ways than one. Boredom can open our hearts to sin, sure, but the boredom itself can be just as effective a tool for Satan to keep us from obedience to the Lord.

Perhaps boredom is God’s way of calling us back to Himself and reminding us that nothing of this world can satisfy our souls. Perhaps He is using boredom to open up an empty space within our souls to be filled with prayer and meditation on His Word. Are we listening when that still small voice creeps into the void (in spite of our best efforts to squeeze it out with entertainment and the noise of life) or do we run from what it calls us to in pursuit of ever more unfulfilling “pleasures”?

Maybe you found this post because you’re surfing the internet out of boredom, no shame there, but I’d encourage us all to listen when the Lord is trying to get our attention. When those “lulls in the action” of your day come, take it as a cue to take your soul off “shuffle” and bow your heart to God in prayer. Take time to read and re-read His Word. Spend a moment reflecting on the magnitude of His blessing and sincerely ask Him what He would have you do with your time, talent, and treasure. You may just find that boredom only exists when you actively ignore God’s presence, and that there is nothing in life quite so exciting and consuming as prayerful obedience to Him.

Posted by Justin Lonas

The Twofold Great Commission February 24, 2010

The longer I work in ministry, the more I realize that there are two primary tasks for the Church, both encapsulated in Christ’s great commission in Matthew 28:19-20.

The first gets all the airtime, and we are right to be concerned with it: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the son, and the Holy Spirit.” Loving and being loved by God our Savior should be something we shout from the housetops, but our faith has to go deeper than that to be effectively proclaimed.

The second task, which tends to be somewhat glossed over, provides that depth and balance. “Teaching them to observe all that I commanded you,” doesn’t have the same glamour as missionary work, but is just as crucial to the Church. Without the follow-up work of “training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16) through faithful exposition of Scripture, the work of missions and evangelism loses its way and devolves into a social gospel that is no gospel at all. The work of the Church is founded on both of those tasks, and neither can be accomplished when divorced from the other.

As Kevin Deyoung points out in a blog post about his new book on the Heidelberg Catechism (which is what got me thinking in this direction), “The only thing more difficult than finding the truth is not losing it. What starts out as new and precious becomes plain and old. What begins a thrilling discovery becomes a rote exercise. What provokes one generation to sacrifice and passion becomes in the next generation a cause for rebellion and apathy.”

The Church has to cling to both responsibilities handed to us by Christ in this passage to truly fulfill the commission. Evangelism without training results in shallow believers who are prone to syncretism and may not hold firm in the face of persecution. When we overemphasize training, we can become so insular that we lose touch with the world we have been called to reach. That’s why Christ calls us here to μαθητεύω (mathēteuo), “make disciples,“ unifying the two tasks. 

Making disciples is not hit-and-run witnessing that moves on to the next target as soon as someone has a conversion experience; it is a process. Jesus “made disciples” of the 12 over the course of 3 years of constant interaction! The Greek term means “to enroll as a pupil,” and puts the emphasis of the action on teaching and learning–to make disciples of the nations is to continually teach the truth so that it does not become stale and lifeless to those long acquainted with it. God’s Word is never dull, it is our senses that become dull from our failure to open, explore, engage, and obey it.

Posted by Justin Lonas

The Passing Pleasures of Sin January 18, 2010

“By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God, than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin; considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward” (Heb. 11:24-26).

If, like me, you’ve grown up in the Church, you’ve probably been read that verse (and chapter) dozens of times. You may have even heard sermons built on this passage (particularly back in youth group days) exhorting you to “flee youthful lusts” and live a life of high moral character. To that I’d say, “great message; wrong passage.” Sure, there were boundless temptations appealing to all the senses in the royal palace that Moses would’ve done well to shun. However, the context says a lot about the choice Moses made to seek and do the will of God, and nothing about the licentiousness of pagan Egypt.

This reading probably comes from our American tendency to think of righteousness only in terms of “not doing bad things,” rather than in terms of life-long obedience to God’s will that His glory be proclaimed. When we sequester sin to the realm of activities “they” (”we” would never do that, right?) participate in, we wall off God as some sort of moral barometer instead of the Creator of the universe. The problem with this viewpoint is that morality is not about us. God desires that we be holy and blameless so that He can use us how He sees fit–so that we will be true witnesses of His character to a watching world.

This gives new meaning to the “passing pleasures of sin.” Perhaps they are those things–more often than not, things that, in and of themselves, are not only not sinful but useful and good–that distract us from our purpose of glorifying God by obedience to His will. Moses grew up into a sense of God’s purpose for his life as a deliverer (see Acts 7:25), and he knew that a life of luxury in the palace would keep him from that role.

In that light, everything we enjoy temporarily at the expense of participation in God’s purpose is a fleeting pleasure, and our obsession with comfort becomes a greivous sin. When was the last time you thought of your movies, music, television, or hobbies as “pleasures of sin”? How about your fridge or pantry well-stocked with an incredible variety of food, your manicured yard, or your car? Obviously, anything can be used as a tool for accomplishing God’s call to proclaim His name, but we have quite an ability to justify all manner of luxuries as ends in themselves. The theme of the Scriptures is that we are blessed to bless others (Gen. 12:2-3, et. al.), and that’s a teaching I fear we’ve lost sensitivity to. May the Lord convict us (myself chief of all) of thinking that the self-serving accumulation of wealth that distracts from obedience to His call is somehow not a sin.

When Disaster Strikes January 13, 2010

A friend of mine blogged this morning about the real tragedy of Haiti, which experienced a massive earthquake yesterday evening. She pointed out that when people are tempted to doubt God’s goodness in the face of such horrific natural disasters, we should remember that 1) all such suffering is ultimately a consequence of human sin, and 2) we should be as quick to doubt our own goodness for allowing the poverty which magnifies the disaster (through food shortages, unstable construction, inadequate communication of danger, etc.)  to go unchecked. She asked how we can process something like this theologically and practically. The following was my answer to that question:

It’s always tough to process natural disasters–especially when they’re coupled with unnatural disasters like the pillage of Haiti which has been going on since the Spanish  first landed there in the 1500s and the French turned it into a massive sugar plantation in the 1700s. For me, this particular disaster creates a struggle on a personal, emotional level too–I’ve been to Haiti; I have Haitian friends; I love Haiti.

At the theological level, I am praying that the Hatian church (particularly my friends) can rise to the occasion and be the love of God to their countrymen through this crisis. I am praying that the people of Haiti, as everything crumbles around them, will place their trust in the unshakable God. I am praying that the thousands of Americans (believers and unbelievers) who have for decades given graciously to the people of Haiti from the resources entrusted to them will continue to do so with renewed passion, and begin to invest in the lives of those people with Christlike care for the whole person rather than simply pouring money into the black hole of corruption that foreign aid to Haiti has become.

At a practical level, the quake has renewed my commitment to the work the Lord has brought in partnership with Haiti through child sponsorship and our church’s long-term commitment to one small community in Nord-Est Department. We have a natural avenue of ministry there, and though the community was not destroyed by the quake, and we want to help the church there be a help to areas harder hit. I’m sure that we’ll redouble our efforts to bring hope to that community through the preaching of the Gospel, the building of schools and medical centers, providing clean water, training in business & agriculture, and microfinance.

In short, processing theologically cannot be separated from processing practically. God has placed each of us in a sphere of influence for a reason, and we cannot believe one thing and do another–we use what He’s given where He’s placed us for His greatest glory (i.e. – people finding His salvation and the love, mercy, & justice of His character). A disaster should, if anything, strengthen our faith in God by shaking us out of the belief that we control things and redirecting our focus to obedience.

To find out more about how to partner with AMG International (our parent organization) to provide assistance to their partners in Haiti, click HERE.

Happy New Year January 12, 2010

“There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven–

A time to give birth and a time to die;
A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.
A time to kill and a time to heal;
A time to tear down and a time to build up.
A time to laugh and a time to weep;
A time to mourn and a time to dance.
A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing.
A time to search and a time to give up as lost;
A time to keep and a time to throw away.
A time to tear apart and a time to sew together;
A time to be silent and a time to speak.
A time to love and a time to hate;
A time for war and a time for peace.

What profit is there to the worker from that in which he toils? I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves. He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one’s lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor–it is the gift of God” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-13).

What It Means to Lead a Church January 4, 2010

The gist of Kevin DeYoung’s post here would make a tremendous New Year’s resolution for pastors, teachers, and church leaders.

Of Donkeys and Such December 22, 2009

Reading the other day in Jeremiah (a book, I’ll confess, that has seldom been a focus of study for me–though the Lord has been leading me in a “renaissance” of the OT of late) and came across a passage I’d never noticed before: “How can you say, ‘I am not defiled, I have not gone after the Baals’? Look at your way in the valley! Know what you have done! You are a swift young camel, entangling in all her ways, a wild donkey accustomed to the wilderness, that sniffs the wind in her passion. In the time of her heat, who can turn her away? All who seek her will not become weary; in her month they will find her” (Jer. 2:23-24).

Scripture is filled to overflowing with creative turns of phrase and vivid word pictures. I’m quite familiar with the prophets’ descriptions of Israel as a prostitute or adulteress for their unfaithfulness to God, but this one goes a step further, equating them with a wild donkey in heat. The difference is one of degree more than kind–a prostitute or adulteress does what she does for selfish reasons, standing to gain something (temporally) by her wiles; a wild animal does not reason through her actions, driven into a frenzy by chemistry and exercising no control whatsoever. In other words, the Lord is saying through Jeremiah that Israel worshipped whatever false gods came her way with no rhyme or reason, blindly following any and every path presented to her.

This is final stage of their degeneration before judgment–they didn’t get to this point overnight. In the historical books, there seems to be a progression from casually disengaging from God and distrusting His provision and plan to willful disobedience to God and turning to false gods for political, social, or economic gain (prostitution) to devoutly worshipping false gods our of spite for the Lord (adultery) to the utter degradation described here.

There is a clear lesson here for us, and not just in terms of our personal sin and wandering from the Lord’s presence. When we begin to drift from God, forsaking prayer and the fellowship of the saints, we open our hearts to deception. We are then tempted to accept false teachings (even, or especially, the subtle ones) because they are “hip” or “the new way to do things”. Eventually we come to hold falsehood more closely than truth and are in danger of completely sliding off our foundation stone. Just as the whole nation of Israel slid down this slope, so whole churches and denominations can and do take the spill.

We do well to guard our hearts and take the “dry spells” of spirituality as a call from the Lord to search our hearts and commit ourselves ever deeper to obedience to His will. As Peter cried out in John 6:68, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.” He is enough. Whenever we forget that, we demote Him in our hearts from God of the universe to “personal assistant” and begin looking elsewhere for gratification.

 “Oh to grace how great a debtor
  Daily I’m constrained to be.
  Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
  Bind my wand’ring heart to thee.

  Prone to wander, Lord I feel it!
  Prone to leave the God I love!
  Here’s my heart, O take and seal it.
  Seal it for Thy courts above.”