faith for faith

In honor of James & Elizabeth Cooper and Paul & Meredith Bradley
who, by God’s grace, will be married tomorrow.

Marriage is indeed a gift from God. For marriage, from its consummation in the Garden, was created to be a shadow of the depths of the Messiah’s love toward his elect and of his headship over her. The depths of Christ’s love was demonstrated in that while his bride was yet comprised of sinners, Christ put forth his figurative heel to be bruised so that he might by that act crush the head of the Adversary for the sake of the church’s lawless deeds and for her righteousness (cf. Rm. 5:8; Gen. 3:15; Is. 53:12). Likewise, marriage was created to be a picture of the oneness that Christ shares with his bride the Church. Just as the church is one with Christ through her submission in love to him who is her Head, so too in marriage, when a wife willingly submits to her husband and to his God-ordained headship, a household that was once comprised of multiple wills becomes one. These realities, among many others, make marriage a holy bond that should never be entered into lightly nor abandoned for the sake of personal preferences or conveniences. For marriage is never merely about mere persons, nor is it about one man and one woman, but it is always about God and his faithfulness to his people whom he foreknew. Just a thought. Congratulations, y’all!

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me (John 17:20-23).

In being a part of a good ol’ Southern Baptist church and having outlasted several professors at Southeastern Baptist Seminary, I have heard a great deal said on the Great Commission and foreign missions. And before you hear me incorrectly, I believe that that is a good thing. The Southern Baptist Convention sends out more missionaries than any other denomination in the world (even though it is well below our means as Americans), and for that I praise God. However, as is often the case, emphasis on one front often leads to neglect on another, which is one reason why I believe the American Church is in such dire straits as it is.

Our problem is that we do not see the American Church’s state as dire, and even if we do, we do not see it as our fault. We are much more likely to place the blame on the wickedness in the country and on evil politicians than on ourselves. Yet it is not the world’s fault that Baptists are more likely to get divorced than atheists and agnostics (Source), and it is not their fault that we tolerate immorality in our congregations and say nothing against popular antichrists (e.g. Joel Osteen, T. D. Jakes). And it is not the world’s fault that ninety-nine percent of the American Church is in love with the world and money, and go to “church” on Sunday for a show rather than to worship the Almighty.

In spite of all this, we send out missionaries all the same. But what we do not realize is that our neglect of the American Church is stifling our global missions. Christ, in his prayer in John 17, prays twice for the unity of the Church, and each time that he prays for its unity it is so that the world will know that God sent Jesus Christ into the world. Earlier in John 13, Christ makes a similar statement: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Therefore, according to Christ, our effectiveness in evangelizing the world flows directly from our demonstration of love and like-mindedness within the Church.

I know what you are thinking: “How does the moral state of the American Church have anything to do with its unity?” Much indeed, for all of our problems in the American Church come from our disunity. As Christ demonstrated in his prayer to the Father that they were united by his perfect submission to the Father’s will, so we would be united if we submitted perfectly to Jesus Christ, our Lord and Head. Yet we do nothing of the sort. Our disobedience to the Word proves it; our denominations prove it; our divorce rate proves it; our total lack of Church discipline proves it; our new cars and big houses prove it; and our lack of love for the Church proves it.

Therefore, our greatest commission as Christians is the unity of Church, for the Great Commission is dependent upon it. If we as a Church do not submit to Jesus Christ in everything and do not love one another as we ought, why should we expect anyone in our country or in the world to submit to the Gospel that we ignore?

Thanksgiving Day in America could be more accurately renamed “National Gluttony Day.” The holiday to us is more a day to feed our mouths and to overfill our stomachs than it is one where we reflect on the goodness of the Lord revealed in the abundance that he has given to us and to thank him for it.

This Thanksgiving season, I challenge you (as I am challenging myself) to think of and to pray for the saints abroad who do not share in our abundance. I challenge you to think of them as they starve out of their poverty or imprisonment, and to remember their starvation while you gorge yourself. I challenge you to have a broken heart for those saints who for the Gospel’s sake do not get to eat turkey & dressing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, etc., and to have a broken heart for yourself knowing that those who starve have a better understanding of the Gospel than we who glut.

I would also challenge you not to forget the saints after you have remembered them this week. Remember them throughout the year, and aspire to help them with your abundance. Remember from the Scriptures the Macedonians who gave out of their extreme poverty with great joy to the relief of the saints in Jerusalem. Cannot we who know nothing of extreme poverty sacrifice a bit of what we have to aid our brothers and sisters who are starving, who have no place to live, and who have no clothes on their back?

Our Father in Heaven, you have been most gracious to us in this country. You have given us much more than our daily bread and have provided for us beautiful homes and closets full of clothes. I pray, dear Lord, that our abundance would not be a snare and a trap to us, but that we would look at our riches as gifts to be given to the saints on whom you have set your love abroad. Burden our hearts with their plight for the rest of our lives so that we might love you rightly by loving your saints and thereby store up for ourselves treasure in heaven. Amen.

Be appalled, O heavens, at this;
be shocked, be utterly desolate,
declares the LORD,
For my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jeremiah 2:12,13).

Dear Members of the Acts Forum,

You have joined this group because you have witnessed a great atrocity. You have read the Holy Scriptures breathed forth by the very Spirit of God, you have also observed the practices of the Church in America, and you cannot any longer with your imagination fill the chasm that divides the two. You witness on the one hand that the Spirit of God through Christ declares, “Fear not little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom; sell your possessions and give to the poor,” and on the other the American Church declares, “The tithe is God’s; the rest is yours.” You also witness on the one hand the Spirit of God through Christ commands, “Store up for yourselves treasure in heaven,” and on the other the American Church declares, “Live the American Dream; buy for yourself SUVs and large and beautiful houses in safe neighborhoods.” You have also witnessed on the one hand the Spirit of God through Christ declares, “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on…Seek the kingdom of God, and these things will be added to you,” and on the other hand the American Church declares, “Build bigger barns and retirement funds so that your soul might rest easily.” You witness these things in the American Church, and you, with great lamentation, witness them in your own soul.

By the Spirit of God, you have come to realize that the God of the Bible and the God of the American Church are not the same God. You have come to realize that the God of the Bible is a holy and untamable God and that the God of the American Church is a corny and well-contained God. You have come to realize that the God of the Bible is a God that provides sufficiency in himself alone and that the God of the American Church provides sufficiency in possessions. You witness these things, and you, like the convicted at Pentecost, are cut to the heart by the very Spirit of God and cry out, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

My brothers and sisters, there is no easy remedy for our ill. It is a sophisticated cancer that has been silently progressing for decades, cunningly injecting into our veins the pleasures of the world all the while sucking out the joy that is in God. It has transformed the American Church not into a shrine for unadulterated Materialism but into a shrine for Materialism with cross and steeple upon it. She has the oracles of God within her walls, but has not its convictions. She has a Christ and a Savior, but he has no power to save. She has a God, but he is petty and mutable. And again your heart cries out, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

Brothers and sisters, take heart, for we do have a divinely appointed course of action. First, we must pray. We must pray that the Spirit of God that dwells within us will convict us of the things of God. We must pray that our hearts and minds, through the power of the Spirit, will submit to all the declarations of Scripture. We must pray that our misconceived thoughts about the Almighty will be nullified and replaced with proper ones. Second, we must be diligent students of the oracles of God. We must test every nook and cranny of our hearts, minds, and lives against the clear commands of Scripture and destroy all of our inconsistencies. Third, having prayed and having come to a proper understanding of God and his commands, we must proclaim these to the Church. A medicine that remains in the cupboard is of no benefit to the dying soul, “For how are they to hear without a preacher?” Finally, the Church must be purged of those who resist the will of God. These steps might take a lifetime to accomplish, or, if the Lord so desires, might never be accomplished in our lifetimes in our churches. And yet we must try for his name’s sake.

The first step is a crucial one. We must pray. Therefore I propose that those of us who are willing meet weekly for prayer for the American Church. There is no power for change apart from the working of the Spirit of God, and we must seek his power and implore him for wisdom. I propose that Saturday mornings be designated for such a time of prayer, but other times can be proposed and considered. Your input is desired.

To God Alone Be the Glory,

Matt Brown

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Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness” (Matthew 7:21-23).

In a weekly worship service, a not so well known man quoted a fairly well known man as saying, “America left God when she disallowed praying in her public classrooms.” At another time in the service, a man prayed (in the context of Barack Obama’s winning the presidency) “Lord, America is walking away from you.” At another time, a man designated to pray prayed not his own prayer but recited Thomas Jefferson’s at his presidential inauguration. “What’s your point?” you ask.

The point is American Christianity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries looks much more like the Christianity of Constantine than it does the Christianity of the Apostles. Just like the Christianity of Constantine and the Judaism of the Scribes and Pharisees, American Christianity is a political facade more than it is a life devoted to one’s own death; it is a cake of paganism topped with a vague semblance of Christian icing. We bicker and grumble over prayer leaving a public classroom, when it is the husband and father, not the public school system, who is designated by God to lead his family toward holiness. We distress over a democrat winning the presidency of this puny, temporal country when Christ has been, is, and will be reigning as Sovereign King over the universe forever and ever. We lament over the “loss” of America’s Christian foundation, when the persons who founded this country were no more followers of Christ than the plane hijackers of Nine-Eleven.

We bicker and stress over these things because we have been brought up to do so. We have been brought up to think that America is somehow different than every other country in the world. We have been brought up to think that America is God’s second shot at a chosen nation. We have been brought up to think that we, as God’s choice nation, have some exemption to the Apostles’ Christianity and to certain fundamental aspects of Christianity.

Disagree? Poll American Christians about the ethics of the American Revolution, and ninety-nine percent will justify the Revolution in spite of Jesus’ command to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and Paul’s discourse on a Christian’s duty to submit to authorities in the fourteenth chapter of Romans. Ask the typical American Christian about Jesus’ command to sell all for his name’s sake, and he will slither around the point and justify his prosperity as if he has been doing it his whole life. Ask the typical American Christian about his 401k’s and his IRA’s and retirements in light of the rich fool’s bigger barns in twelth chapter of Luke, and you will get the typical, “Christ was not speaking of everyone, just the rich fool.” Show the typical American Christian your plan for selling all that you have to give to the poor and thereby store up for yourself treasure in heaven and inherit eternal life, and you will get a snicker and an, “Are you serious?”

Why is American Christianity this way? It is because American Christians have found contentment in disobedience. They feel content and justified ignoring the laws of Christ because they have replaced them with a set of christian-esque laws that they have created for themselves. Just like the Pharisees and hypocrites of Jesus’ day, American Christians are too busy keeping their own agendas to worry about God’s agenda. They are too busy working to pay for their plush lives to worry about meditating on God’s law. They are too busy fighting to keep the Ten Commandments nailed on the wall of the courtroom to worry about actually keeping them with their lives. They are too busy studying up on the backgrounds of a hundred politicians who promise to fight for prayer in schools all the while their children, who are glued to the television, know nothing about God. They charge into battle, like Constantine, with crosses painted on their shields against the people of the world, all the while Christ is saying, “You are not fighting for me.”

Our dire plight as the American Church will only start to be remedied when we realize, as the disciples did after Jesus’ crucifixion, that Jesus is not a political Messiah. His desire then as it is now is not to create a Christian nation in America but it is to call a people to himself who will love him and keep his commandments. I suggest that we in the American church, who are more ingrates than Christians, stop whining that our tax dollars are going to support the undeserving and remember that Jesus’ blood was spilt for us who are thousand times more undeserving.

We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints—-and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us. Accordingly, we urged Titus that as he had started, so he should complete among you this act of grace. But as you excel in everything—-in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in our love for you see that you excel in this act of grace also(2 Cor. 8:1-7).

A big problem with American Christianity is that it is all supposing and no practice. We suppose that if we were persecuted for the sake of Christ that we would keep the faith. We suppose that if Christ called us to forsake our family and friends and to follow him that we would drop our nets and follow him. We suppose that if Christ commanded us, like he did the rich young ruler, to sell all of our possessions and give them to the poor that we would. And we suppose that if we found ourselves impoverished, that we would be satisfied with Christ as our portion. At least so we suppose.

Our problem also is that we view these Scriptural “supposals” as the circumstances of a niche and not as demands for the whole. We cannot be persecuted, for example, because we live in a free country. We do not have to sell our possessions, because Jesus was simply making a moral point. And we do not have to worry about being happy in poverty, because, obviously, impoverishment isn’t our calling as Americans.

But then we encounter the impoverished Macedonians. These saints could have easily looked at their poverty and concluded that the Lord did not bless them with the gift of giving. They could have easily been content with praying for the needy saints and with tending to their own physical needs. But they were not content. They heard of the church’s plight and chose to give to the saints according to their impoverished means–that is, whatever little they had in excess. And yet they were not content with that. Scripture says that the Macedonians begged the Apostle to allow them to give beyond their means to the relief of the saints. What does this mean? It means that the Macedonians became creative. They looked at their present impoverished way of living and asked themselves what they could do as a church to consume less so that they might give more. Perhaps they decided that they could live okay on one meal a day instead of two. Perhaps they decided to squeeze multiple families into one home to cut their housing expenses. Perhaps they decided to make do with the clothes on their back though they were worn and torn. Whatever they did, they did it with joy-filled hearts, because they gave all of themselves to God and his purposes.

Now, let’s take a look at ourselves. Do we even give according to our means to the relief of the saints of God and to the spreading of his Gospel? I must confess that I do not, and I am sure that most of us, if we were honest, would admit that we do not. We certainly do not give beyond our means and are, for this reason, robbing ourselves of the same joy that the Macedonians had in Christ alone. Let’s for the sake of our joy challenge each other to be like the Macedonians and to think of creative ways that will minimize our consumption and maximize our giving.

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. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm (Ephesians 6:12,13).

Our Adversary is a crafty enemy. For millennia, he has been diverting the attention of the people of God from their true enemies and shifting them to those who are not. Take for example the life of Joe the Christian. Tomorrow Joe the Christian, like thousands of other Christians, will line up with others at the polls, adamant in his belief that he is fighting for God and against the Adversary. He will go and vote against the evils of liberalism and socialism, against the evils of injustice, against the evils of high taxes and large government, and then return to his job to pay for his home in Suburbia, surrounded by a white picket fence with 2.3 children running around in the back yard. He returns to his normal life, having fought the good fight for now and waits until he is called upon again in another four years.

For the next four years, Joe the Christian will live the typical American Christian life. He will go to work each week, working fifty to sixty hours to support his family and lifestyle. He and his wife will continue to send their 2.3 children to public schools, because Mrs. Joe, like Joe, has to work a full-time job to help pay for their $250,000 mortgage and their country club membership. Joe and his family somehow find time to go to church several times during the week, on Wednesday nights, Sunday mornings, and the occasional special event. Joe coaches Upward Basketball on Saturdays during Upward season, gives a tithe of his pre-tax income, and occasionally gives a generous contribution to the church’s building fund. Joe also serves as a deacon at his church and is respected by the people there. Joe the Christian is a great American Christian.

Joe the Christian also gets up early every day and reads his Bible. There is a great deal of the Bible that Joe feels like he understands, but there is quite a bit of it that he just cannot grasp. He doesn’t understand, for example, how the Macedonians in 2 Corinthians gave joyfully out of their extreme poverty to the saints in Jerusalem and how that applies today to him today. He doesn’t get how the Church in the book of Acts had all things in common and had time to pray and to fellowship daily. And he really doesn’t get what Christ was trying to say when he told the rich young ruler that he must sell all of his possessions to inherit eternal life or when he said that one must lose his life to gain it.

Joe the Christian prays that the Holy Spirit might reveal the meaning of these things to him, and then he starts his day. He grabs a cup of coffee, hops into his BMW, puts on his seat belt, turns the radio to the local religious station, and drives off to work. On the radio, Joe hears a preacher talking about the persecution and the needs of the Church in Asia. He hears of their running and hiding for their lives, their impoverishment, and their financial woes. Joe’s heart is burdened for these people, and he begins to calculate his budget in his mind to see if there is any money to send to aid the saints in Asia. He begins to subtract from his household income the payment for his home, his car, Mrs. Joe’s SUV, the camper, and the boat. He then subtracts his country club dues, his time share payment, his cable bill, high-speed internet, and utility bills. He then subtracts his and Mrs. Joe’s student loan payments, and their monthly contributions to their 401k’s and Roth IRAs. He subtracts his tithe and his commitment to his church’s building fund, and Joe realizes that he just doesn’t have any money left to send to the Church in Asia. Joe’s conscience is relieved by his quick budgeting, and he soon forgets about the poverty of the Church in Asia.

Joe the Christian doesn’t know it, but he has been utterly defeated by the Adversary. The Adversary has tricked Joe into thinking that his greatest duty is to vote for presidents and to grumble about the godlessness of the country. The Adversary has tricked Joe into thinking that God only wants ten percent from his people. The Adversary has tricked Joe into thinking that the American Dream and Christianity can exist together in harmony. The Adversary has tricked Joe into thinking that Christ is pleased with him all the while Christ is ready to spit him out of his mouth for his lukewarmness.

I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked (Revelation 3:15,16).

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love (Ephesians 4:15,16).

In a society where tolerance is a virtue and offending a person is a crime, telling the truth at times can be tough. And, like it or not, our society’s “morality” has influenced the church’s reaction to the truth. How can we know this? Take this passage from Ephesians 4, for example. Ninety-nine percent of the time when this verse is quoted it is quoted because someone ruffled someone else’s feathers. The expression, “in love,” is taken to mean, “without offense,” in spite of the teachings of this passage. Knowing this passage and understanding its implications are essential to understanding how we are to love one another in the Church.

1. Understand the Goal of the Truth
Paul’s instruction to speak the truth in love is not a call to hold hands and sing Kumbaya. The instruction has a very particular end, namely, to grow up the Church in every way into Christ who is the head. In other words, the instruction does not have an individual objective but a corporate one–unity of the Church under the Lordship of Christ. Therefore, our objective for speaking the truth in love should always be Church-centered. The reverse is true as well; if we are Church-centered people, we should speak the truth in love.

2. Dare to Speak the Truth
Like a physician who would be deemed negligent and hateful for withholding a bitter cure for a terminal disease from an infected person, so should we be deemed negligent and hateful when we refuse to speak the truth. The only remedy that we possess for the heterodoxy and sacrilege that has infiltrated our churches is to persistently apply the truth of God’s Word. We must dare to speak the truth, because when we do, we will be singled out dissenters and as haters of the unity of the Church. People will talk behind our backs, and people who we once thought were our friends will turn against us. But we must persist, because unity that is based upon falsehood and heterodoxy is a not unity from Christ, but it is the appearance of unity from the devil.

3. Dare to Love
Every instance of speaking the truth should be imbued with love. If we do not weep for those to whom we speak the truth, we have no business speaking it. The truth is never a tool for personal gain, and it is never ended by an “I told you so.” Before we ever open our mouths, we need to make sure that, one, our ultimate goal is the sanctification of the Church and, two, that we actually know the truth. These two things coupled with the power of the Holy Spirit are sufficient to cure all the ailments of the Church.

Peace is a blessing from the Lord. Aside from the occasional ridicule that Christians experience from time to time, the Church in America resides in a relatively friendly and peaceful environment. The evidence of this can be seen in where the Church expends most of its energy–divisions. When the Church does not have to worry about hiding underground to avoid being lined up and shot, two things happen to the Church. First, the Church is infested with false teachers and unregenerate converts. When Christianity becomes a low risk lifestyle and social network, people who get invited to church on Sunday might stick around for a few Wednesday night dinners, teach a Sunday School class, and help out with a barbecue fundraiser, all without submitting themselves to King Jesus. Persecution is the refinery of the Church and is extremely effective at removing the insincere. Second, is linked to the first, and that is, divisions in the church become the subject of jokes. So often we find ourselves jesting about how most new churches form from an argument about carpet color, when we should instead be brokenhearted over the disunity in the Bride of Christ–a disunity that is so natural that a church would actually split over the color of carpet.

Even in the innumerable cases where the issue of division is orthodoxy, the greatest teaching and commandment that Christ gave to us is placed on the backburner while we fight and despise each other over minutiae–”Love one another as I have loved you.” While orthodoxy in all spheres is weighty and worth fighting for, no orthodoxy is worth sacrificing the love that we are to have toward one another. And until that fateful day when concerns over carpet and music styles become ash in the refinery of persecution and the tares are removed from the wheat, so long as one names Jesus Christ as Lord, God, and the sole-giver of Reconciliation, we are to love him without question as a member of the Body of Christ.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5:25-27).

What’s in a name? We give them to dogs, cars, cows, and I’m sure someone somewhere gives them to trees. And even when we name our children, we care much more about how the name sounds with our surname than what it means. It is obvious, however, that names in the Bible had a much greater significance than they do now; in fact a person’s name was the very definition of that person. When Jacob was born, he was given the name “heel catcher” that literally described the manner in which he was born and also the deceptive nature by which he would live. When God revealed to Jacob that his life would be much more that heel-catching, he gave him the name Israel–”he who contends with God.”

We also hear in Scripture of praying in the name of Jesus, calling on the name of the Lord, and not taking the Lord’s name in vain, and we react to such statements much more foolishly than the Jews did who would refuse to utter, “Yahweh,” out of fear of transgressing the commandment. We flippantly tack on “In Jesus’ name” at the end of prayers, not realizing that it is when we pray in accordance to the very being and character of Christ that our prayers are answered not when we add a magical phrase. You will find much more success in your prayer life if you pray, “Conform me to the image of thy Son for thy glory; amen,” than “Lord, please give me a new car, in Jesus’ name; amen.”

All this is to say that when God gives something a name, he does it for a glorious and holy purpose. When God gave the name, “church,” to those he would call out and redeem, a certain reverence should have been granted to that name for his naming it thus alone. Furthermore, when Christ hung on the cross and shed his precious blood for the church, the price of the name “church” went up a million fold. I don’t know about you, but if the very God of the Universe died for the sake of something, I would be sure that I knew and used the correct definition of that for which he died.