Shepherd the Flock

Friends-

I haven’t gone anywhere; I’ve just been taking a break from blogging and contemplating the direction I want to take things here. With the advent of Facebook and Twitter, I began to wonder if this format is outdated –and I think it is to some extent. Thus, I’m working on a few things here at Shepherdtheflock, a few things that will simplify things to match communication in 140 character (Twitter) world.

Lord-willing, I plan to resume posting, and posting regularly, by the end of this month. So stay tuned (and I see the comment section has been quite busy!).

Grace and peace~

Prophesying of the New Covenant, the prophet Ezekiel says in 37:24-26,

“My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes. They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children’s children shall dwell there forever, and David my servant shall be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

If you are familiar with the various covenants in scripture, they should jump out at you from this passage. Consider:

• “My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd” – this is an allusion to the Davidic Covenant, which is fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ in the New Covenant.

• “They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes” – this is an allusion to the Mosaic Covenant, which is fulfilled in the writing of the Mosaic Law upon the hearts of believers in the New Covenant, as well as in the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to believers by faith.

• “They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived” – this is an allusion to the Abrahamic Covenant, which will ultimately be fulfilled in the new heavens and the new earth.

• “I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them” – this is an allusion to the New Covenant.

Commenting on this passage, O Palmer Roberson says:

“The new covenant, promised by Israel’s prophets, does not appear as a distinctive covenantal unit unrelated to God’s previous administrations. Instead, the new covenant as promised to Israel represents the consummate fulfillment of the earlier covenants. Now all three ancient covenants combine into a single divine ordering. By the new covenant, all the promises of God find their consummation.”

I love that last sentence, ‘all the promises of God find their consummation’. That is, all the promises and blessings of God to Adam, Abraham, and in the Mosaic and Davidic covenants, will all find their fulfillment and consummation to ALL believers through Christ, in the New Covenant. The covenants of God throughout the ages are indeed one.

As we preach and share the gospel of Jesus Christ to our congregations and to those outside of Christ, why do we press upon them the urgency of submitting to Christ in faith and repentance?

Growing up, I always heard the same tired reasons for ‘choosing this day whom you will serve’: choose today, lest you die in a car wreck on the way home! Come to Christ without delay, because you don’t know if you’ll live another week!

More often than not, particularly when I was in the youth groups, these pleas for decisions were joined to horrific stories of sudden death, young people dying here and dying there, unexpectedly, etc. The stories were emotional, they hit me hard as a young, very impressionable kid, but they rarely produced any lasting change.

Why the Gospel is Urgent

I would submit to you that the gospel isn’t an urgent message simply because the unknowns of life and death. Obviously, statistically speaking, the vast majority of the people we preach and witness to will go on to live many more years after hearing our message. And people know this. They’re not stupid. Most can recognize when a preacher is manipulating their emotions and playing to our natural fears of death and dying.

Instead, we must understand that the gospel is predominantly an urgent message because the unbeliever listening may never hear it again. The scriptures say that ‘Faith comes by hearing…the word of Christ‘. And ‘how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?‘ In other words, it is the hearing of the gospel that is the means to salvation. And when someone hears the gospel, they are not guaranteed to ever hear it as clearly, ever hear it with the same conviction of the Spirit, ever hear it with the same understanding, or to ever hear it again.

When we press men to avoid even resting until they have closed with Christ, we need to impress upon them the reality that they simply cannot repent and be saved just whenever they feel like it, and that turning away from the gospel even one time could be the last opportunity ever afforded them to hear it clearly, with understanding, and with the conviction that they now feel.

Pressing men to turn to Christ because they might face death tomorrow is indeed a valid argument, but it becomes completely invalid if it isn’t couched in the truth that they cannot simply repent and believe whenever they choose. Why? Because telling men that they can repent and believe just whenever they choose is precisely what will cause them to delay.

“It is to be feared that Calvinistic doctrine becomes most evil teaching when it is set forth by men of ungodly lives, and exhibited as if it were a cloak for licentiousness; and Arminianism on the other hand, with its wide sweep of the offer of mercy, may do most serious damage to the souls of men, if the careless tone of the preacher leads his hearers to believe they can repent whenever they please; and that, therefore, no urgency surrounds the gospel message.” – CH Spurgeon, Lectures to my Students

Recently I came across a few comments in Terry L. Johnson’s book Reformed Worship that caught my attention. Specifically, I was intrigued in reading that, “For Lutherans the enemy of faith was works. For the Reformed, the enemy of faith was idolatry.” (P18)

As he goes on to explain, it was John Calvin who insisted that there were two elements that constituted “the whole substance of Christianity“. These two elements are “a knowledge first, of the right way to worship God; and secondly of the source from which salvation is to be sought.”

Robert Godfrey comments that “Remarkably Calvin put worship ahead of salvation in his list of the most important elements of Christianity.” In other words, worship, and a right worship at that, “is not some peripheral matter, but ‘the whole substance’ of the Christian faith.” (P19)

Wow! That caught my attention!

Pertaining to Evangelism

As I contemplated Calvin’s comments and his emphasis on idolatry, it struck me just how ‘Lutheran’ we tend to be in our evangelism and teaching now days. That is, Luther was chiefly concerned with justification by faith alone in distinction to justification by good works or any sort of personal merit. And don’t get me wrong, this is a very good thing, for legalism and self-righteousness are everywhere in the world and church today.

However, it got me wondering whether we’re leaving a very important aspect of Christianity out of our evangelistic messages. Not to say that specific evangelism against legalism doesn’t already exclude any notion of idolatry, but how often do we explicitly mention it? How often do we preach against it? In our churches, where any faithful minister should repeatedly warn against legalism, works-righteousness, and holding onto any supposed personal ‘merit’ in their profession of faith, do we likewise warn people of idolatry and the mortal dangers of holding onto idolatry in their acts of worship?

The Apostle Paul to the Galatians certainly emphasized faith alone and the absolute worthlessness of any human merit in regards to our justification, but what about his presentation on Mars Hill in Acts 17? There we read of a decided emphasis on their idolatry in verses 22-29, with a call to abandon idolatry and worship in truth in verse 29:

“Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.”

Paul was talking with a very religious culture, but a culture which had very distorted worship. He doesn’t start by going to the Law, convincing them of their sin, or warning them about trusting in their own righteousness (though these are very necessary things and were probably emphasized shortly thereafter); he starts with their idolatry, and he calls them on it. It was from this spring of idolatry that he opens up the way of faith and repentance in Christ.

What about in our day?
I fear that, because we (particularly my generation) have grown up around legalism, that all we do is watch out for and speak out against legalism in the world (evangelism), and legalism in the church (warning to those who profess). But there is certainly another aspect to the culture in which we live in. And yes, this includes the church culture. We are surrounded by idolatry, both professing Christians and pagan alike. And we need to rightly combat this thinking with the true worship of God as is revealed in His word.

In other words, just as even a hint of legalism in our faith is enough to damn us, even a hint of idolatry can do the same. Wouldn’t you agree?

Here’s hoping that more and more of us will get familiar with Calvin and the dangers of idolatry that he saw all around.

Here’s a post I sent to the Reformed Baptist Discussion List today. My good friend and brother Mark disagrees with me on this subject (see his post here), and today we have been engaged in a nice little debate via Twitter. Here’s a general synopsis of my views concerning using rap/hip-hop, and some other forms of music to attempt to communicate the gospel.

I don’t pose this question to discuss worship styles (in church) or to debate whether music is amoral or not. Rather, I have some concerns with ‘Reformed Rap’, and I’d like to get some feedback.

If you’re not familiar with some of the new hip-hop artists, there is a Reformed rapper named Lecrae, and others, like Shai Linne and Voice, the latter of whom Mark Dever recently interviewed: http://media.9marks.org/2009/10/01/christian-rap-with-shai-linne-and-voice

I haven’t listened to the interview, but I am familiar with these new Reformed Rappers. They have become popular in reformed circles because of their Calvinistic lyrics, sound theology, and reformed-celebrity endorsements. From what I know, these Christian artists have excellent lyrics, theologically. They sing about the gospel, God’s sovereignty, the reformation, etc., with the same in-your-face lyrics as say, our beloved friend Steve Camp. So I certainly don’t think there’s anything wrong with their music lyrically, nor do I necessarily see anything sinful in their style.

However, having seen a few of their videos and heard some of their songs, I am not convinced that their style of music coincides with the message. For example, Lecrae sings a statement: “Lord kill me If I don’t preach the gospel”. Having grown up (an unbeliever) listening to this style of music, this just seems to be right in line with the hyperbole and gangster ‘get rich or die trying‘, ‘me against the world‘ attitude that has characterized hip-hop and made it as popular as it is. I mean, please, are we really supposed to believe he actually means this (or that we should actually mean it) while he’s busting a rhyme on-stage? I would akin this to hearing a clown, or a puppet show, or an advertising jingle sing about the wrath of God. The medium, IMO, just seems inconsistent with the message, to the point where the message itself is obscured.

I’m not saying that the music style itself is sinful, but I do believe the medium itself promotes an attitude that is antithetical to humility, reverence, and worship, as some other forms of music do as well. And it also seems to fail to account for the weight and seriousness of what the singer is communicating. My concerns are even furthered when I view videos from these concerts where, despite many holy, excellent, and humble truths being shouted, it’s a party, dancing atmosphere that (again) seems completely contradictory to the words being sung (and I realize that this is subjective, so its just an observation from my perspective).

I heard a story one time about a young minister who had the opportunity to preach at the Metropolitan Tabernacle (Spurgeon’s church). Knowing the evangelical beliefs of the congregation, the young man preached his hardest and best message on hell. After the sermon he expected to be greeted with hearty approval, but instead an older man approached him and said, ‘I don’t know how you can preach that message without tears in your eyes’. This is what I’m talking about. Just as it’s inconsistent to be forceful, cold, and academic about hell, it is inconsistent to be freestyling, casual, and urban (in the cultural sense) about matters of such importance.

I’m sure more than a few disagree with me, and that is fine. But I’d appreciate hearing thoughts. I’m just concerned that we’ve been quick to embrace something because of its content that might end up having devastating effects on the actual message itself.

Add to this a quote by Terry Johnson in the excellent book, Reformed Worship – Worship that is According to Scripture:

“It may be permissible for a church to begin its worship with the song “Deep & Wide”, then sing as its second hymn “Zaccheus Was a Wee Little Man”, and conclude the service with “The B-I-B-L-E”. ‘Scripture does not forbid it’, a strict Biblicist might say. But such would be doubtful propriety…we say that, not because there is a bible verse that forbids these children’s songs, but because of a more general sense of what is appropriate in light of nature…

“Not every question in worship or life can be answered by a direct application of a Bible verse. Indeed it is legalistic and fundamentalistic to expect to do so. Right living rarely consists of simply applying the Bible’s rules to circumstances. Rather, right living requires the illumination of the Holy Spirit and wisdom in applying general principles to daily choices. Pharisees limit the Bible’s application to the specific words -you shall not kill, commit murder, and so on, and ignore the broader application…

“The Apostles regularly appeal to what is ‘fitting’ or ’suitable’ or ‘proper’ in light of Scripture’s explicit commands, and yet without spelling out exactly what these things mean. (1 Cor 11:13,14; Titus 2:1; 1 Tim 2:9,10, Eph 5:3,4)”

And lastly, here is a video from one of their recent concerts here in Atlanta:

I’ve read a lot of treatments/books on the 10 commandments, but J. V. Fesko’s The Rule of Love surpasses them all. It’s wonderfully Christ-centered; it continually views each commandment through the the gospel –through the lens of Christ’s fulfillment of the Law on our behalf; it’s precise yet broad in its application; and it’s even concise in its length (132 small pages).

First, Fesko begins by examining the Prologue to the 10 Commandments (Ex 20:1-2), brilliantly demonstrating how this introduction is absolutely vital to a proper understanding of what follows –specifically because the prologue and a proper understanding of what it refers to in Israel’s history is a proclamation of the gospel before the Law is ever administrated. If we miss the prologue, we miss the gospel, we miss Christ, and we will misinterpret the Law that follows. Moralism/Phariseeism/antinomianism abounds because this prologue is neglected and ignored when so many come to interpret the 10 commandments.

From there Fesko breaks down each commandment in its historical, covenantal, and redemptive context, as well as its vertical dimension. Regarding this last perspective, Fesko stresses that although we may loosely identify the ‘two tables’ of the law as the first 4 being our duty to God and the last 6 being our duty to man, he rightly identifies that each one of the commandments has both vertical and horizontal dimensions. The 4th commandment, for example, is directed towards God but also has specific application towards man and animals. Another example would be the 5th and the 7th commandment, which David upon committing declares to God that “Against you, you only, have I sinned”.

But the redemptive context perspective is what makes this book so special. Christ is the focus from beginning to end. The believer’s trajectory of interpretation for each commandment must be through the lens of Christ’s accomplished work. We are not to look at Law-Application, but rather Law-Christ’s Work-Application to our lives.

God has saved us to reflect His image as His chosen and beloved people. Our looking into the law, in addition to it serving as a constant reminder and goad to see our need and fix our eyes upon Christ, is for us to reflect the righteousness of Jesus Christ in all our obedience, as He is the exact impersonation of the Law of God.

This is a very special book. It’s concise, easy to read, and its application reaches far and wide. It will make both the antinomian and the legalist sqirm with discomfort, which what makes it such a special treatment of this subject. Not only that, but this book will continually point people to the cross and to Jesus Christ, on every page and with every point made. The gospel-centered approach makes this book really a book about the gospel, even an expounding of the gospel at that, as the Christ-centeredness transcends and even swallows up at times the book’s main subject matter, the 10 commandments.

Also see:

• How Jesus Transforms the Ten Commandments, by the great Ed Clowney
• Law of Perfect Freedom: Relating to God and Others Through the Ten Commandments, by Mike Horton

Update:

I made a comment in the meta below that I thought would be a beneficial part of this post. My thoughts here are related to the book recommendation only in that it’s a little of my own thinking on the subject. The author never explicitly comes to the conclusions I do below.

Let me give a further example of the love and Christ-centeredness of the Law:

The New Testament teaches that there is no greater love than laying down our lives for a friend. Pure love, as it were, is absolutely selfless, up to the point of death if necessary. And in the NT Jesus Christ is given as our supreme example in this sacrificial love. But when we look at His act of love, we understand first that He came to earth to ‘do the will of His father’. That is, His sacrificial death was in obedience to His father’s will, even as He wrestled in the garden with following through with it.

Thus, the 5th commandment commands us to honor and obey our parents. Jesus, in the greatest act of love in the history of the world, was actually obeying His Father’s will first and foremost (obeying the 5th commandment) in laying down His life. So if we look at the 5th commandment isolated from the rest of scripture, we will see nothing different than what pagan nations since the beginning of time have agreed with, and we will undoubtedly setup this command in a moralistic/legalistic/secularistic manner. But if we look at this commandment in light of Christ and how He fulfilled it, only then can we truly understand the ‘love’ that is at its root. In other words, Christ obeyed His father first and foremost, but it was through this obedience He subsequently performed the greatest act of love towards us as well. Therefore, the purest form of love always has obedience to God’s law (the Ten) at its root; and the purest act of obedience to God’s law always has love towards God/others at its root. The two are interchangeable, and cannot ever be separated, otherwise we will become legalists.

The issue of love and its relation to both God and man is explicit when we come to the 4th commandment (and even the 10th). For we not only obey our God in keeping the Sabbath holy, but we obey as an act of love towards our neighbors, family, foreigners, and even animals. This is one reason why the notion that the 4th is ceremonial cannot be biblically supported. Foreigners and animals don’t have anything to do with Jewish ceremonies/the covenant, and violating the command, per the text, is sinning against both God AND man. In other words, it is a failure to love God and a failure to love our fellow man when we break the 4th commandment. It’s not one or the other. Breaking the 4th commandment always results in a failure to love. And it is only when we throw out the notion that the Law=love do we then misunderstand and misapply (annul or legalize) the 4th commandment.

Thus, the Law serves as an explanation of the perfect life of Christ, as a demonstration of perfect love towards God and man. We don’t jump directly from the Law to application to our lives; we look at the Law, look at it in relation to Christ as an expression of love, and only then do we move towards application in our own lives.

Let me make myself clear before I explain my concerns with Sunday School: I love Sunday School; I believe Sunday School is vital to the health and growth of Christ’s church. I love the interaction, discussion, questions, one-on-one, teaching, depth, and encouragement that comes from a regular participation in a Sunday School group.

But I must admit, I believe many churches are taking Sunday School to dangerous and unhealthy levels –to the point where they are detrimental to the spiritual health of the Church. Let me explain:

Because of the explosion of mega-churches in this generation (churches with more than 2000 attendees), there has been a significant push in these mega-churches to get their attendees involved in a small group, Sunday School type of program. The necessity of such small groups is quite obvious: with a church so numerically large, the pastor(s) do not have near enough time to personally teach, counsel, lead, pray with, or correct individual members –especially on a week to week, regular basis. In many cases, even life and death circumstances are not enough to garner a meeting or one-on-one time with the ‘big guy’, the senior pastor of the mega-church.

Thus, because the pastor isn’t ‘accessible’, or because it’s clear that members are not sufficiently ‘growing’ from attending the main worship service (packed with 2000+ other members), the necessity of regular, small group interaction becomes apparent.

And again, this has led to a pronounced and major emphasis on one’s involvement in a small group. In fact, many people believe that spiritual growth cannot happen without being dedicated to a small group –despite the fact that scriptures never set forth such an idea.

Nevertheless, I see a great danger in these small groups, particularly in how they are setup in our day. Let me break them down line by line and we can discuss them further in the comments in you like.

Why I believe the modern idea of Sunday School is often biblically lacking and spiritually dangerous:

• Many times, regular Sunday School involvement in small groups is stressed above the regular preaching of the Word in the context of corporate worship. The scriptures, however, clearly set forth the preaching of the Word by a qualified man to be the means for all necessary spiritual life and growth.
• Many if not the vast majority of Sunday School classes in our day are taught led by someone other than a biblically qualified elder. Don’t misunderstand me: I am *not* arguing that all small groups/bible studies should be led by a qualified elder. Instead, this concern arises when, A) there is not a plurality of elders in the church, B) there is not a sufficient number of biblically qualified elders in the church, or C) the church is too large for the elder(s)/pastor to be personally accessible to all members of the flock. Thus, what you end up with is that the leader of the Sunday School class becomes the preeminent spiritual authority to each person of the class. Since the church is too large, and/or the leadership is too insufficient/inaccessible to personally meet the needs of the congregation, the small group leader becomes the *acting elder* by default, despite not being biblically qualified to do so. Instead of having an elder on-hand to teach, instruct, counsel, guide, correct, admonish, rebuke, pray with, learn from, follow after, and even set forth profitable reading/study material for private use, a small group leader must fill this role by necessity of the fact that there are no elders available to do so.
• On top of the previous point, many times Sunday School teachers are assigned as teachers on a voluntary basis (whoever wants to do it), instead of whether or not they actually have the ability and character to lead, teach, and instruct. This unfortunately leads to false/incorrect teaching, poor examples to follow, and spiritual famine.
• Segregation by gender is often a very good thing for small groups, but segregation by age, particularly with children and teenagers, should cause concern. Children need to be taught, instructed, and corrected by their parents, the authority and guide that God has placed in children’s lives until they reach an age of maturity. This does not mean that the child cannot/should not be taught by someone other than a parent, but it should mean that the parent is always close by when a child is being instructed. Children’s church, and by extension, youth groups, often have charismatic, likable teachers heading them up –teachers that are much more concerned with being cool and connecting with the young person’s culture than they are with dispensing the Word of God. Thus, with age segregation, you again end up with a youth pastor or Children’s church leader becoming the preeminent spiritual ‘authority’ in the young person’s life, rather than an elder and/or parent like God intends. And this is much more dangerous when considering how impressionable children and teenagers are to the people/teaching they are surrounded with.
• On top of the previous point, many times age segregation causes the Sunday School hour to be the preeminent hour in the child’s/teenager’s church experience. How can we expect our children and teenagers to listen to and take serious an hour of expository preaching when the previous (or following) hour was spent hanging out with friends their age, often times playing games and/or laughing at their cool youth pastor? Age segregation and youth groups, by default, undermine the effectiveness of the preaching of God’s word because they will always be much more appealing to our flesh and attention. This is a scary thing indeed when considering that preaching is the preeminent means of spiritual growth in the life of the Christian.
• Sunday School and small groups are often more like 12 step programs that help with emotional healing or fuel personal, inward experiences. Instead, Sunday School should be a time of intense Biblical teaching with the opportunity to tackle objections and ask questions.
• And on top of the previous point, Sunday School, because of its shift to personal experience and healing, has come to supersede the effectiveness of the preaching of God’s word. Thus, many church-goers come to prefer the small group much more than the corporate service –which is the exact opposite of God’s design for the church. Personal and small group study/worship should prepare us for the corporate aspect when all ages/races/genders are gathered; not the other way around.

Those are just a few of my thoughts. I voice them not to shout out at the darkness, but to hopefully point out some things that others may have overlooked.

Regardless, the entire corporate church experience (every aspect of it), biblically speaking, should strive to:

• Exalt the preaching of the Word in the context of corporate worship as the chief means of grace.
• Exalt the authority of the biblically qualified elders (1 Tim 3, Titus 1) and the heads of homes (fathers) above any and all other authorities in the life of the believer. This is not to say that the elders or fathers hold absolute authority, for their authority certainly stops with scripture. But it is to say that God has specifically ordained and gifted these men to be the preeminent instructors, teachers, and spiritual authorities in the lives of His people.
• Exalt the corporate gathering of God’s people as the preeminent picture of heavenly, God-pleasing worship, and the chief environment in which we grow and please our God.

What undermines these things, my friends, should cause some serious re-evaluation. I firmly believe that it is much better to have no Sunday School at all rather than to compromise and setup a system that deflects the realities of the three points above.

I’m concerned at the direction that Sunday School has taken in our culture, just as I am likewise concerned with the direction the corporate aspect has taken as well. But with Sunday School, I find that the errors are more often overlooked and ignored because there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of biblical instruction in regards to the meeting of small groups. Hopefully, by God’s grace, we’ll keep our eyes open to some of these dangerous trends, striving to protect Christ’s church where He has set forth boundaries, while we continually examine our practices with the scriptures so as to be found well pleasing in God’s eyes

I have a trusty Catechism of the Catholic Church in my library that I consult from time to time just out of curiosity. I sometimes like to research the differences and similarities we have (protestants) with the Roman Catholic Church. Frankly, there are many things that the Catholic Church gets right or half-right, but unfortunately their errors are usually rather large ones.

Tonight I came across something interesting. In Part Three, Life of Christ, Article II.II, 1996, it states,

“Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is the favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to His call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.”

Did you get that? God helps us to be justified. God assists us in become partakers of the divine nature. God’s grace has the potential to bring out the best in us! To guide us in adopting ourselves! (wait…)

What a huge issue such a small word, ‘help’ leads to.

Sadly, I put down the catechism in contemplation, only to realize that the majority of confessing protestants would probably see nothing wrong with this statement. God helps those who help themselves, right? Jesus came to give us a better life by helping us reach our true potential, huh?

I think it’s fairly safe to say that the Roman Catholics are not as different, odd, or off base as many protestants make them out to be. That is, different from the majority of what the American church already confesses. Seems to me that we may have adopted many of Rome’s errors, but only with much fancier clothing.

How would you define the ‘grace’ of God?

I am convinced that the methods of communicating the gospel are as chosen and explicit as the content of presenting the gospel. That is, the Bible not only spells out *what* we are to teach/preach to call men to Christ, but *how* we are to call men to Christ as well.

Being faithful to the Word of God and to Christ’s church not only entails a sound doctrinal statement, but it also necessitates a manner, attitude, and method of how that doctrinal statement is proclaimed (and ultimately practiced).

John MacArthur says it very succinctly below:

“The contemporary user-friendly movement…rather than arousing fear of God, attempts to portray Him as fun, jovial, easygoing, lenient, and even permissive. Haughty sinners who ought to approach God in terror are emboldened to presumed upon His grace. Sinners hear nothing of divine wrath. This is as wrong as preaching a rank heresy.” – Ashamed of the Gospel, P63

I ask a few relevant questions here: will our teens take the gospel seriously when their isolated from the rest of the body or taken to the beach on a ‘gospel retreat’? Will our kids take the gospel seriously when it’s chiefly communicated to them through Veggie Tales and coloring books?

Will our adults take the gospel seriously when our leaders live just as materialistically as other successful businessmen? Or when the music and means of the ‘worship’ service are geared specifically to meet their felt needs? What about when our leaders stand up and tell jokes and give practical tips for living? When the church is setup like the stage of the theater rather than a place avoiding anything to take the mind of the worshiper from doing just that, worshiping?

How are men going to lay their life on the line for the gospel when the message is communicated to them in such casual, culturally-saturated methods?

Oh how I agree with Arnold Dallimore, in that we need:

“Men mighty in the scriptures, their lives dominated by a sense of the greatness, the majesty and holiness of God, and their minds and hearts aglow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace…Men who have learned what it is to die to self, to human aims and personal ambitions; men who are willing to be ‘fools for Christ’s sake’, who will bear reproach and falsehood, who will labour and suffer, and whose supreme desire will be, not to gain earth’s accolades, but to win the Master’s approbation when they appear before His awesome judgment seat. They will be men who will preach with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes, and upon whose ministries God will grant an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit, and who will witness ’signs and wonders following’ in the transformation of multitudes of human lives.” – Arnold Dallimore, Whitfield, V1, P16

The subject of miraculous spiritual gifts is certainly a controversial topic in the church today. Do the gifts of miraculous tongues, revelatory prophecy, and healing continue today as they did during the period when the New Testament was written?

I am under the firm persuasion that the miraculous gifts we read of in the book of Acts and 1 Corinthians are *not* normative for the church today, and that these gifts slowly ceased/died out with the completion of the canon of scripture.

There are many reasons why I am convinced that my ‘cessationist’ position is both biblical as well as consistent with experience, some of which I have written about on this blog before.

But there is one chief reason why I am a cessationist; there is one argument for the cessationist position that I consider to be insurmountable: the sovereignty of God.

Though the popular church has largely lost this doctrine in our day, God is absolutely sovereign over the affairs of men. Particularly, He is sovereign in dispensing His saving grace, and in regenerating, justifying, and sanctifying His chosen race. Within the Reformed tradition, which I myself align with, the sovereignty of God is never questioned –as scripture seems to be very clear and explicit in this area. But what baffles me is how some Calvinistic brethren (Wayne Grudem, for example) completely toss out this issue of sovereignty when it comes to the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

If the miraculous gifts were still being granted by the Holy Spirit, then we would not only see them active down through church history (which they weren’t), but we’d see them active in our churches today –and this *despite* the unwillingness of some to admit the gifts continue.

Let me illustrate by giving an example:

John MacArthur pastors a very large church. The gospel is clearly and consistently preached there as it has been for 40 years now. The church is full of thousands of real, solid, Christ-centered Christians who would never grieve the Holy Spirit willingly.

And yet, the gifts of tongues/prophecy/healings are absent from that assembly, as they have been for 40years (and more). Why, in a body of believers that large, would gifts critical to the building up of the church be completely absent?

Of course, non-cessationists will point to the fact that MacArthur is and always has been a firm cessationist, and thus the Spirit doesn’t move when He is ‘quenched’ by unbelief. But I fail to see from scripture where the sin, will, or unbelief of man has ever stopped the sovereignty of God from fulfilling His purposes. And since these gifts are absent from MacArthur’s church and thousands of bible-believing churches like them, we must come to one of two conclusions:

-The church is full of unbelievers devoid of the Spirit.
-The Holy Spirit is not sovereign over the sin/intellect/will of man.

I reject both of these premises, thus I am a cessationist. The Holy Spirit is not hindered from fulfilling His purposes. He is sovereign, man is not. He bestows gifts as He wills; man does not ‘decide’ whether he likes his gift, approves of the practice, or is open to the idea.

Consider this text as I conclude my point:

1 Sam 19:19-24: “Now David fled and escaped, and he came to Samuel at Ramah and told him all that Saul had done to him. And he and Samuel went and lived at Naioth. And it was told Saul, “Behold, David is at Naioth in Ramah.” Then Saul sent messengers to take David, and when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing as head over them, the Spirit of God came upon the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied. When it was told Saul, he sent other messengers, and they also prophesied. And Saul sent messengers again the third time, and they also prophesied. Then he himself went to Ramah and came to the great well that is in Secu. And he asked, “Where are Samuel and David?” And one said, “Behold, they are at Naioth in Ramah.” And he went there to Naioth in Ramah. And the Spirit of God came upon him also, and as he went he prophesied until he came to Naioth in Ramah. And he too stripped off his clothes, and he too prophesied before Samuel and lay naked all that day and all that night. Thus it is said, “Is Saul also among the prophets?””

Here we have Saul, breathing threats and murders on his way to kill the Lord’s servant David, and he and all his messengers are overcome by the Holy Spirit when attempting to follow through with their evil deeds.

The the will/desires/inclinations/sin of man is no match for the sovereignty of God, chiefly, the sovereignty of God the Holy Spirit. If miraculous gifts were still active in the church today, God would be dispensing them broadly and equally throughout the church –despite the doctrinal persuasions or refusal of man to accept them.

That’s why I’m a cessationist.