by Michiana Covenant | Nov 4, 2013 | Parenting
I have been convinced for quite some time of the importance of gospel-centered parenting — namely, that what my children need most is *not* a heavy dose of the law, but the regular and steady encouragement of the gospel. One of the great “ah-ha” moments came last spring when I was at my wits end with one of my children, and I was about to launch into one of those regrettable “you’re going to lose every privilege known to man” speeches — when God gave me just enough grace to ask, “So what are you thinking about all this?” (possibly even in a gracious tone!). The result was that I discovered that my child was far more disgusted with sin than I had realized — at which point it dawned on me (again) that what my children need is the gospel — the good news that Jesus has done what we could not possibly have done for ourselves.
Our tendency is to relapse towards the law — a standard that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear, yet for some strange reason we seem to think that our children can succeed where Adam and Israel and David all failed. Do we obey God the first time? Yet we expect “first-time obedience” from our children! Do we get everything done on time the way it is “supposed” to be done? Yet woe to the child who falls short of our standards!
Now, it is true that God expects obedience of us — and we should expect obedience of our children. God’s standard has never changed. God never says “Oh, it’s okay to sin — I don’t mind if you mess up here and there!” No!! God says that sin is repugnant to him and he calls us to be holy as he is holy. Sin is not okay. But when we fall short, God does not say, “you’re going to lose every privilege known to man!” Rather, when we fell short, God sent his Son to die for us — to “lose every privilege known to man” — so that we might be restored to God’s favor.
So who says, “You’re going to lose every privilege known to man?” That would be the accuser — the adversary. Adversarial parenting — law-centered parenting — is fundamentally Satanic. Satan is the one who accuses us of falling short — who says that we are not good enough — who constantly reminds us of how we fail. And when we as parents take an adversarial approach to our children, we are imitating him.
Gospel-centered parenting (like gospel-centered marriage and gospel-centered life!) does not say that sin is okay. Far from it! Gospel-centered parenting says that sin is so awful that God had to send his Son to pay the penalty for sin. And so therefore my children and I both need Jesus — and so we repent, and we forgive, and we rejoice that we are no longer slaves to sin and death, and then we try again to love God and love one another and grow together in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
by Michiana Covenant | Jul 25, 2013 | Breckinridge, Preaching
April 10, 2010
RJB was a Christ-centered preacher. I include below selections from my notes on a sermon he preached around 1850 while he was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Lexington, Kentucky. It was published in Elijah Wilson, The Living Pulpit: or Eighteen Sermons by Eminent Living Divines of the Presbyterian Church (Philadelphia: William S. & Alfred Martien, 1865).
His text was one of my favorites: “Christ, who is our life” Colossians 3:4. I’ll give you a few excerpts to show that R. J. Breckinridge, for all his faults, had a firm grasp on the gospel!
“The grand point of view in which we should habitually contemplate the Scriptures, is as a divine revelation of the only mode in which lost sinners can be saved. As a history…As a spiritual system…As a code of morals…As a source of support, of consolation, of peace, and of joy…it can avail us nothing, except as we receive its precepts, and accept its doctrines, and believe its statements, as one and the other bear directly upon the grand conception of the Gospel—salvation for lost sinners. Every thing short of this is little better than trifling with our own souls. Every thing inconsistent with this is little else than handling the word of God deceitfully.” (263-364)
“Amongst ten thousand other passages, my text is all alive with this precious Saviour, and this great salvation. To him as our life, and to the nature of the life we enjoy in him, in our spiritual, or mortal, and our eternal being, the apostle, in this passage, directs our thoughts…” (266)
Then RJB took them through a brief summary of the history of creation, fall and redemption, before showing three aspects of our life in Christ:
First, Everything else in scripture hinges on this new spiritual life created by the Spirit in our regeneration. Warns against low view of the Spirit, because “the life of God in the soul remains the fundamental necessity of every renewed heart, as it is the first and simplest element of practical Christianity.” (274-275) And Paul “does not content himself with saying, that we have a life derived from Christ, nor yet that Christ has bestowed on us a life essentially like his own; but he mounts to the loftiest height, and declares that Christ is himself our life! Christ is found in his people, the hope of glory. In receiving, accepting, and relying upon him, there is a lofty and hallowed sense in which they are nourished by him.” (275)
Second, it shows that the imputation of Christ’s righteousness is necessary (and the imputation of Adam’s sin). “you will perceive how absolutely our life depends on Christ, and how completely the whole scheme of the resurrection rests upon him and terminates in him. Since the fall, we are as essentially mortal as we are depraved.” (283) But in Christ, “Death and resurrection will produce on the bodies of the righteous a change so far analogous as is possible to the change wrought upon their souls by regeneration and sanctification.” (284)
Third, “Christ as the life of our eternal being. The Scriptures hardly recognize what we ordinarily call life, as an estate worthy of that name.” (286) God alone has life in himself – which is also in the Lord Jesus. Turns to the glorious resurrection of the just, and then the judgment of the just made perfect – not to ascertain whether they will be saved, nor worthy of eternal life-“for every one of them has already received it at the hands of Christ.” At this judgment all the good and ill of his life are revealed – and the glorified savior pronounces them blessed and welcome. And then the judgment of the unjust. (291)
RJB concludes his sermon by summarizing the rest of Colossians 3 in the light of this central truth. “We ought, says he, to seek those things which are above, and set our affections on them, and not on things on the earth; remembering that we are dead, and that our life is hid with Christ in God. We ought to mortify our members which are upon the earth; for the lack of doing which, we are prone to fall into those sins, for the sake of which the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience, and in which we once lived ourselves. But now, seeing that we have put off the old man, with his deeds, and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him; we ought continually to shun all evil, and pursue all good; under the fixed and felt conviction, that to us Christ is all and in all.”
I am beginning to understand why Breckinridge was so well beloved by the congregations where he preached, and by the young men who studied under him (whether at Jefferson College in 1845-1847, or at Danville Theological Seminary in 1853-1869). As a preacher he always sought to hold forth Christ. He once commented that he preferred not to divide the “exposition” from the “application” but tried to weave the two together.
by Michiana Covenant | May 19, 2013 | Pastoral Notes, Worship
Carl Trueman opens a recent article on worship with the following line:
“The problem with much Christian worship in the contemporary world, Catholic and Protestant alike, is not that it is too entertaining but that it is not entertaining enough. ”
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2013/05/tragic-worship
What is missing? Tragedy. “Tragedy as a form of art and of entertainment highlighted death, and death is central to true Christian worship. The most basic liturgical elements of the faith, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, speak of death, of burial, of a covenant made in blood, of a body broken. Even the cry “Jesus is Lord!” assumes an understanding of lordship very different than Caesar’s. Christ’s lordship is established by his sacrifice upon the cross, Caesar’s by power.”
I’ll let you read the article for yourselves — but I will add here his conclusion:
“Bonhoeffer once asked, “Why did it come about that the cinema really is often more interesting, more exciting, more human and gripping than the church?” Why, indeed. Maybe the situation is even worse than I have described; perhaps the churches are even more trivial than the entertainment industry. After all, in popular entertainment one does occasionally find the tragic clearly articulated, as in the movies of a Coppola or a Scorsese.”
by Michiana Covenant | May 12, 2013 | Marriage, Pastoral Notes
John Milbank always has interesting things to say on ethics and religion. Here is his latest on the gay marriage discussion in Britain.
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2013/04/23/3743531.htm
He suggests that the push for gay marriage is really “a strategic move in the modern state’s drive to assume direct control over the reproduction of the population, bypassing our interpersonal encounters. This is not about natural justice, but the desire on the part of biopolitical tyranny to destroy marriage and the family as the most fundamental mediating social institution.”
He argues that “Heterosexual exchange and reproduction has always been the very “grammar” of social relating as such. The abandonment of this grammar would thus imply a society no longer primarily constituted by extended kinship, but rather by state control and merely monetary exchange and reproduction.”
He concludes that “a gay relationship cannot qualify as a marriage in terms of its orientation to having children, because the link between an interpersonal and a natural act is entirely crucial to the definition and character of marriage.”
by Michiana Covenant | Feb 17, 2013 | Catechesis, Pastor Peter Wallace, Pastoral Notes, Pastoral Practice, Psalmody, Sabbath
Jamie Stoltzfus linked to this article on Facebook (though it was Jacob’s comment, “Trying to picture Peter Wallace in plaid and skinny jeans” that called my attention to it and convinced me to read it!):
http://marc5solas.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/top-10-reasons-our-kids-leave-church/
It is a good reminder of why we are doing what we do — and a challenge to work on doing it even better!
1) Why do the catechism quiz every week (10:10 a.m.)? Because we are working on instilling within ourselves (and our children) the basic grammar of Christian doctrine. Don’t assume that this is only for children. I never memorized the catechism until we started doing it at MCPC, but I find that the repetition is really helping me to get it stuck in my head and heart (especially as we have added the scripture memory verses). And for those who may say, “Yeah, I did that once,” — I would ask, “Do you still know it?” If not, come back, let’s do it again — and again — and again! Is it perfect? No, but if we wait for perfection we’ll never do anything!
2) Sing. Paul says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” (Colossians 3:16). Notice that in Colossians 3, Paul isn’t talking about what we do in public worship — he’s talking about what we do in daily life! Do you know these songs well enough to sing them in your daily life? Do you incorporate them into your daily life? These are the sorts of customs and practices that sink deep into a person’s soul. If the only place you ever encounter this is on Sunday morning, then don’t expect it to get any further than one day a week in your life!
But Sunday morning is still a good place to start. Come and sing at 10 a.m. We generally sing through the most challenging piece of music that we’ll be singing in the morning service and work on it part by part. And as your children get older, bring them along to work on parts as well (and for those without kids, find a kid — or an adult who wants to learn how to sing — and take them under your wing to help them along). If you want to know how to sing better, stand next to [or in front of] someone who sings well.
And yes, we are planning on making sure that we have enough copies of the new psalter that you can have copies at home!
3) Talk with others about the sermon. Go deeper. Think together about what the scripture says about who Jesus is and what he has done. Let his story become the center of your conversation (it is, after all, the center of everything else!). Use the order of service throughout the week to encourage your daily prayers at home and with others. I include it here in the pastoral notes so that you can make use of it. Obviously, if you already have a thriving family worship time, then there is no need to alter it for this — but if you are looking for a place to start, it may help.
4) Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. The point of the Sabbath has to do with how we think about time. God said to work for six days and rest on the seventh. Do we set aside our labors for a whole day? God did. This was the pattern of creation. No, we don’t keep the same Sabbath as Israel (and we shouldn’t think about the Sabbath in terms of the whole Mosaic code — any more than we should think about theft in the same way as the whole Mosaic code!), but how do we use time? In the same way that we give to God the first of our produce, we should give to God the first of our time. Are we calling the Sabbath a delight? Or are we so focused on our own agendas that we squeeze God’s time out? Again — these sorts of practices and customs are crucial for shaping our life together before God.
Obviously, if these practices and customs do not really touch the core of our lives, then the children will see it — and will decry it as the hypocrisy that it is. But if they see the joy of the Spirit in us — if they see our thankful obedience reflected in our grace-filled walk, then perhaps by God’s grace they, too, will walk with us in the way of Christ.
by Michiana Covenant | Feb 10, 2013 | Pastor Peter Wallace, Pastoral Notes, Pastoral Practice, Psalmody, Worship
What shapes us? What forms us? What is it that makes us “who we are”? Are we shaped mostly by ideas (our intellectual beliefs) or by our practices and customs?
I grew up Baptist — but I became Reformed because I was convinced by the *ideas.* Did that make me Reformed? Sort of. I was a Reformed Christian *intellectually* — but as my friends noticed at the time, I was still fundamentally a Baptist in my ways of living, as one friend told me as I was grumbling about the problems of individualism in American church culture: “Peter, you’re the biggest individualist I know!”
Looking back, if I had continued to be an *ideas* person, who knows where I’d be today. What was it that formed me as a Reformed pastor?
1) Every Sunday morning and evening for more than two years I sat under the preaching of Lendall Smith at Bethel Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Wheaton, participating in their well-crafted liturgy — and coming to the Lord’s Supper (as I began to grasp intellectually what the Lord’s Supper really was, and trembling as I partook of Christ’s body and blood, as I realized that Paul’s warning really meant something!). And then I spent many Sunday afternoons — and other times — with the Larsons, the Brinks, the DeJongs, and other families — learning and watching their practice of being a Reformed family.
2) Every month for nearly five years (two at Wheaton and three at Westminster) I gathered with other students at the home of Darryl and Ann Hart to talk about what it means to be Reformed. Yes, there was deep theological discussion — but it was embodied in the lived practice of a community.
3) At Westminster I was frequently in the Powlison home (usually on the third floor with David and Sharon Covington). Again, the intellectual found its context in a vibrant fellowship of life together. For two years I lived with Steve and Lynn Igo — and their bouncing boys — participating in their family life and worship (our family worship bears considerable resemblance to theirs!), learning to put into practice the counseling paradigm that we were taught in our relationships with each other.
4) My first year at Notre Dame, I gathered with the Deliyannides and Devlins practically every Sunday in the Allison’s tiny 525 square foot apartment — where we always sang a half dozen Psalms. I had been convinced intellectually for years that we should sing more Psalms — but I had never done it! Ben Allison made sure that it happened. The rituals and practices of those few short months shaped me in ways that my ideas never had.
5) As I was licensed and ordained in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, I was enculturated into a particular way of being Reformed — the boundaries and norms of the Midwest Presbytery shaped me both in explicit and implicit ways — some of which were significantly challenged when Glenn Jerrell walked into my life and gave me another way of being an OPC pastor. Two years of sitting under his ministry at Walkerton reshaped me in many ways (some of which I probably do not even realize!).
6) Plainly the content of what I learned and read has been crucial — but also who I learned it from! When you have learned Union with Christ from Dick Gaffin, Judges from Al Groves, Genesis from Doug Green, and when you have heard Sinclair Ferguson pray his lectures every day before he preaches them, you will never be the same again.
But all of this runs into another way of being and knowing and doing — one that is well-articulated by Matthew Vos’s article on the Super Bowl.
http://www.cardus.ca/comment/article/3864/prizes-and-consumables-the-super-bowl-as-a-theology-of-women/
[Thanks to Mark Hanson for the link — and to be fair, I should note that I watched most of the Super Bowl.]
Vos points out that the customs and practices encouraged by the Super Bowl embody a fundamentally idolatrous way of being human (an Ezekiel 16 sort of culture — for those who weren’t at MCPC a couple years ago, Ezekiel 16 could be summarized as, ‘Cinderella becomes a porn star’).
So much of the church today is trying to make Christianity more palatable to our culture by trying to put the content of Christianity into the forms and customs of our culture (see Vos’s comments on this). I once spoke to a young man from Muncie, Indiana, who said he was looking for a church down there. I asked him, “What are you looking for in a church?” He answered, “I just want to be entertained.”
I was dumbfounded at his honesty (so I didn’t quite know what to say!), but it got me thinking. There are two things that I do not want to do:
1) I do not want simply to entertain him (it would only cheapen the good news of what Jesus has done);
2) I do not want to bore him (that would also cheapen the good news of what Jesus has done!).
Rather, I want him to see that there is something so much more grand and glorious that God has done in Jesus! And that’s where the customs and practices of our life together are so essential. If what we do on Sunday morning is disconnected from what we do the rest of the week, then yes, it will feel jarring (and so if that young man would ever come to MCPC, I don’t doubt that he will find it strange — but by the Spirit of God he should see a strange and beautiful power revealed there!). But if what we do on Sunday morning begins to shape what we do the rest of the week, then we will begin to find the practices of our culture to be strange and jarring.
The ideas are relevant to all this — but disembodied ideas are a mere fantasy!
