Why is Denver Christianity so thin?

The old doctrines seem to be the most important and contested doctrines. This should not surprise us, as modernity itself has proven an attempt to redefine the foundations rather than debate the particulars.

So, let's consider Creation and Incarnation, but I think Atonement should be in there too.

Creation:

Has God made the world a particular way - all the way down? Is the world simply a neutral palette on which God imposes an arbitrary law as a sort of test to mankind? Is God's Law - all of his commands, a description of a righty ordered life and society specifically mapped to the creation He made - or, again, is it simply divine command given to creatures living in a world that could work any number of different ways? Put one more way - Do God's laws actually reveal something about creation? In one specific arena: are men made something *as men*, such that they are fit and unfit for particular offices and roles? Are women made something *as women* such that they are fit and unfit for particular offices and roles? In other words, is God's command that the office and vocation of minister being given only to men something arbitrary or does it reveal something about the nature of man and woman? Is it some supernatural command superimposed on the neutral creation - or is it a part of the created order itself?

The assault in our day (say, the last 200 years or so) has been at this very point. It is not for nothing that the compromise in our day began with debates about the meaning of Genesis 1-2. For most evangelicals - and I mean even the complementarian ones, God's commands are simply supernatural commands superimposed on a neutral creation. There is no created *order*, at least not functionally. The secular and the sacred are divorced almost entirely. A state is a state. A family is a family. A school is a school. A man is just a man and a woman is just a woman. The phrase often used in the Christian Nationalism debate is that "only individuals can be Christians" - but even that isn't quite right for this erroneous view. More accurately to say, "only souls (stripped of their nationhood, family, maleness and femaleness) can be Christians." Men nations and households are just secular things that Christians’ souls might or might not inhabit. For most evangelical Christians, not really knowing what to do with God's law otherwise, it is simply a thing that we should try to generally keep (but not too carefully) because, well, God commanded those things - but they are largely unrelated to how the world or men or women or families or nations or schools *actually* work. This isn't new, by the way. It is simply repackaged gnosticism, the earliest heresy in the Dragon's long (and doomed to fail) assault on the church.

But the historic and biblical teaching is far richer and more glorious. There is a reason we read the old theologians selectively. We love Augustine, Calvin, and the Puritans when we think they are talking about the redemption of our *souls*. But we find them intolerable and severe when they start talking about Christian nations, Christian magistrates, Christian families, and even Christian households. There is a reason why Denver Christians bristle at the imposition of God's explicit commands spoken from pulpits or a minister and call it "legalism" or "harsh." Part of it is simply the nature of sin - but sin that takes on the pseudo-intellectual skin of a gnosticism that claims God has no real claims on our actual bodies and our actual institutions.

God made the world with a grain. God's law graciously teaches us how to live life as men and women worship in our churches, build nations, structure households, raise children, and do fruitful work with that grain, not in a way that splinters the wood and ruins the work. When we maintain that the world can work just as well most any old way, and God's law and wisdom are simply something for our our individual souls, we wreck everything, eventually. Churches that find creative ways (or some less-creative ways) to disregard God's specific commands regarding men and women's offices and vocations undermine the very nature of what it means (in accordance with creation itself) to be man and woman - and therefore undermine everything those things are connected to: the household (marriage, children, and generational life), and society itself. Years ago, as the Gospel Coalition was founded, John Piper got roasted for insisting that men and women's roles in the church and home be put into the defining documents. His response was puzzling to me at the time, but it is loaded with wisdom as I look back now. He defended the move by arguing that it was an upstream issue and a kind of litmus test for how one reads the bible. Now many complementarians have found a creative way to have their cake and eat it too, saying things like: "Men and women aren't really different, but God has given us this random command in 1 Timothy and 1 Corinthians - don't know why he did that, but He did." Soon, we do this with any of God's commands that contradict the moral codes of our day, and we have thus attempted to sever heaven and earth.

Incarnation:

This is sort of the twin of the Creation question - simply adding the element of redemption. Did God come to save and restore the created order, or did he come to save us from it? Its the same question that often divides the novel eschatology of dispensationalism from the more historic eschatologies of the church: Who is moving in Revelation 21-22? Heaven moves to earth. Glory *fills* the earth. Jesus doesn't put on a human skin suit to show us how to pass the test. He redeems humanity - he redeems Creation by becoming a man, dying and rising, and then ascending with our humanity - our created humanity - to the right hand of the Father - the office we were created to occupy. In other words, the Incarnation is not merely about a rescue operation for humanity to escape our created-ness and our maleness and our femaleness - but a restoration of all those things and with it, the whole of creation, work, families, and nations. Jesus comes to save us from our sins is true in the most profound way imaginable. He saves us from the wrath and judgment our sins deserve in light of God's law. He saves us from slavery to those sins. He saves us from the death those sins inevitably lead to. He saves us from a world marred by generations of humans cutting against the grain. He saves the whole world from corruption and death. The incarnation pulls *everything* into the salvation work of God. He did not come merely to save individual souls off to some unnatural state. He came to save men and women, just as he came to save manhood and womanhood. He came to save families, just as he came to save the household as a created institution. He came to save particular nations, as he came to save nation-ness. Jesus came as the second Adam, not to destroy the created order, but to save it - to restore it. This means that a robust and maturing embodiment of that salvation must mark the church. Sins have been forgiven. We have been freed from slavery to sins. And so we are now free to "put on Christ" as Paul said - and to disciple families and nations and particular men as men and particular women as women.

We must return to these foundations and then let them reshape our worship, lives, politics, families, and churches. They are doctrines that touch everything else: every other doctrine, every other ethical issue, and, more importantly, our day-to-day lives with husbands, wives, children, and the work we do. They hit at the biggest questions in the world as well as the most mundane: From "What is the world?" and "What are we *for?*" to "What do I do when my two-year-old won't stop throwing her carrots on the floor?" Christian life and doctrine are a marvelous fabric woven from a single thread, and they shape everything. We have attempted to sever that thread for too long, cutting off bits we find embarrassing or passé. But to do so is to miss its beauty and its glory, and it is to transform Christianity into a threadbare patchwork quilt with most of its patches gone when what God has given us is a marvelously beautiful, insulated wool blanket for when the days are cold, as our nation’s days seem to be creeping towards winter.

Some Thoughts on Lent, Both Good and Bad

This coming week marks the beginning of the traditional church season of Lent. I thought it might be helpful to give some encouragement and some warnings about what this season has meant for the church and what it can be for us. 

Lent began as a season of fasting and cleansing for new families coming into the church. Having believed in Jesus, and many of them coming out of a life of paganism and idolatry, these 40 days leading up to our celebration of the resurrection were to be set aside to examine one's life, put aside all remnants of paganism, fast and then come to be baptized. The season grew into a time for the whole church to renew the practice of repentance, to remember their own baptisms and to remember all that God has saved us from - chief among them being death and judgment. We can see problems with this practice right from the start. Baptism and the promises of God given to us in our baptism are not the result of our own self-cleansing. The stubborn fleshiness of our sin can't be scrubbed off through our own efforts to somehow make us worthy of baptism. But we can also see the potential good: As Luther famously said, "The whole of the Christian life is a life of repentance." 

Lent and Ash Wednesday - which initiates the season at its worst, has become a season of somehow restoring God's favor to us by fasting from various things: meat, social media, alcohol, sugar - and other things. Christians put ash on their heads, announce their absence from social media ("for this season"), and find other ways to "cleanse" themselves. In other words, the whole season becomes a rather ironic deep dive into self-promoting self-righteousness. We take up the ages-long sin of trying to cleanse ourselves in order to earn God's blessings. 
In other circles, evangelicals have used the season as a kind of trendy yet traditional attempt at a cleanse or detox. They don't drink odd mixtures of lemon juice, vinegar and Tabasco, instead they somberly announce their seasonal cleanse from things they find distracting, indulgent, or delightful. 
It all amounts to the same thing: an attempt to do "good works" in order to be made worthy of God's forgiveness, love, and covenant blessings. 

But Lent at its best can be quite wonderful. As we remember that God has saved us from our sins, from his judgment of those sins, including death itself, it matters how we mark this season and if we mark this season at all. It can be a season where the regular practice of repentance for our sins and believing the good news of the cross and resurrection of Jesus is renewed as central to what it means to be God's people. It can be a marvelous season of preparation to sing even louder and more joyously on Easter morning. It can be a season marked most centrally by the remembrance of God's grace - not a grace that waits for us to prepare ourselves, but a grace that captures us, cleanses us, and renews us; bringing us to repentance, forgiving the sins we commit, and transforming us daily. 

And so I offer a warning and a hope for our church during this coming season - May you be renewed in the daily work of pulling up the weeds of indwelling sin in your life. Not pulling up weeds merely by your own efforts, but by bringing those weeds before the Lord in repentance, trusting in his justifying and sanctifying work given to us in Jesus, and then pulling them up. May this season be marked by a fascination with the gospels themselves and perhaps chiefly the final weeks of Jesus' earthly ministry leading to his final supper with the disciples, his trial, his death, and his resurrection. Most of all, may you become convinced even further that it is God who saves, God who forgives, God who cleanses, God who has put to death our old man, and God who has raised us with Christ. 

A Few Possible Things to do during this season:
- I find it helpful to spend a little time each morning and evening reviewing my day and considering ways that I have sinned against God and against others - both in what I've said and done and in my attitudes. Confess these to God, read a glorious passage of Scripture like Romans 8, and be reminded of God's mercy and forgiveness of those actual sins. Some of you will face the temptation to minimize your words or behaviors, to pass over sins of omission in favor of considering only sins you've actively participated in. Some of you will be tempted to parse your motives with an increasingly cynical eye. Avoid both ditches. Confess real sins, defined by God in his Word, and immediately trust in his mercy.
- Pray these Psalms: 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143
- Read the narratives of Jesus' final week and resurrection from all four gospels - take one a week: Matthew 26-28, Mark 11-16, Luke 19-24, John 12-21
- Listen to music - particularly classical music written to help the church reflect on the passion of Jesus:
    - Arvo Part: Misere and Passio
    - Bach: St. John's Passion
    - Bach: St. Matthew's Passion
    - Allegri: Misere
    - Gorecki: Misere
- Sing hymns and psalms this season - as a family and as a parish, that help us to fix our attention on the work of Jesus in his death and resurrection. Here are some recommendations:
    - Nothing But the Blood of Jesus
    - Jesus, What a Friend of Sinners
    - How Sweet and Awful is the Place
    - O Sacred Head Now Wounded
    - O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus
    -  What Wondrous Love
    - Were You There?
    - Rock of Ages

It's important that in addition to taking up some of these personally if you are married and have children, you do some of these things with your family. Pick a night a week to read from the gospels or Read from Romans 1-8. Sing a hymn together. Put on a piece of classical music and talk about how it reflects the sorrow and hope of the cross. Doing these things together helps build families and parishes grounded in the same reality - the great work of Jesus in the cross and resurrection.

In the end, our prayer for all of us during this season is not for morbid introspection but a deeper delight and gratitude for the person and work of Jesus. He is our King. He is our Savior. He speaks to us a better word than all other words. May we be particularly tuned to hearing that word this season, celebrate that word when we gather on Sundays, and be overjoyed by that word when we gather on Good Friday and Easter.

New Covenant Church Launches Public Worship on February 4

We believe that God is making all things new, and that all things will be brought under the good reign of Jesus. To that end, we love the starting of new, faithful churches that love God above all things, love His Word and love the authority of Jesus and His Gospel.

Jonathan Helvoigt has been helping to direct our music over the last few months and is headed out now as New Covenant Church starts their gatherings on Sunday mornings at Denver Christian School. Please pray that God might establish this work in Lakewood and that the Word would go out from this church to bear much fruit in our city.

New Covenant Church

Jonathan and I sat down for a short interview for him to share more about New Covenant, partnering with us, and what he hopes God will do.

The Culture War Will Be Won in the Trenches

There is a rather enlightening, if depressing book entitled *Degenerate Moderns* by E. Michael Jones that demonstrates that most of our modern ideological woes - the constant pull towards leftward social and moral ideas - are largely an elaborate attempt to cover over and justify sexual immorality. His examples run the gamut from espionage rings in the British Security Service in the 40s to sociological studies in Samoa to Kinsey's theories which arose out of the University of Indiana. All in all the book is largely about sexual misconduct happening in private that swung the whole ideological norms of the West.  

Rousas J. Rushdoony argued similarly in the opening chapters of his marvelous *The Politics of Guilt and Pity*. There he makes the case that since humanity needs atonement, knows it needs atonement, *and* wants nothing to do with Christ, we come up with elaborate political schemes for justifying our cultural sins. But at the bottom of our secularized moralizing is something quite simple: guilt. We are desperate to cover things up with the latest social cause. Perhaps now we can atone for our sins with this new one - whether its a country (or countries) collectively agreeing to wear masks, destroy all their jobs for CoVid or marching in the streets and burning down Targets for "justice" vaguely defined, or our increasing obsession with protecting everyone's feelings - we need atonement. 

I think that thesis bears a lot of fruit and could use a lot more applications to current events. But a thread I'd like to pull on grew out of some reflections on the stories in Jones' book. Some women in our church are reading Jim Wilson's *How to be Free from Bitterness*. It's a marvelous little book I try to pick up frequently because its so practically helpful. It dawned on me as I was listening to the discussion unfold above my head (literally, I was in the basement), that all of our big culture war level issues can be tied quite nicely to some fairly basic sins in the bible. Much ink and tweets (or X's?) are spent addressing vast conflicts on a culture-wide scale. We often put our efforts confronting big Moral Vision questions - and we should. But do you know where they come from? They didn't come *from* Freud and Nietzsche and Marx - that horrid little triad just named something that was already in the water. They come from everyday normal sins like greed and lust and envy and bitterness and pride. These sins get blown up on a massive scale, politicized, protected and then, well, destroy civilization. Pastors, the biggest problem in your church is not the feminists. It's not the porn industry. It isn't the alphabet lobby. Don't get me wrong, those things should be fought tooth and nail. But often we're in danger of confronting big cultural ideas instead of confronting actual people and our own actual sins. The biggest problem in your church are bitter and envious wives who don't think they need to repent of their envy and bitterness. The biggest problem in your church is lustful and proud men who will not submit to the rule of Jesus and love and lead their wives and kids. The biggest problem in your church is parents who won't discipline their kids. And the biggest problems are people controlled by their passions - their emotional life, and then calling it love and compassion and empathy. And because they are the biggest problem in most every church, they are the biggest problem in the cities we minister in and in the nation we live in. These little bitternesses, these prickly little envies, those hidden lusts, they get coddled and excused and redefined into virtues. But they build up a head of steam and become culture-shaping laws and parades and film production companies. They become our confusions over words everyone has known for centuries like "love" and "justice". And they grow into world-shaping ideologies that justify unknown horrors and petty but wicked behaviors.

The abortion industry is the fruit of a million people's envy and lust and is designed to make such sin possible, livable. The Red Pill (Black-pill, I don't know I get all the pills mixed up) pick-up artists is the collective fruit of a million people's hubris and bitterness - excused as natural and manly and "reclaiming masuclinity". Ideologies too, not just policies and weird niche groomers. Marxism, feminism, a big part of the therapeutic culture of our day - all built to feed or defend or accelerate those little sins. 

I preached a wedding homily a couple weeks ago where I told the bride and groom that the most important battle in the whole culture war would be fought for their marriage - to obey Jesus, to trust God's words, and to navigate sins from within, temptations from without, and well, the Devil too. Christians - the war over a God-honoring, fruit-bearing, joy-filled culture is real. Its not just in your heart. It will be fought in the public square with laws and elections and by Christians learning to tell better stories on pages and screens. It will be fought in church position papers and denominational meetings. **But the most significant battle** will be learning to put all these things to death in ourselves and one another. It will be wives coming to terms with why they hate Ephesians 5:22 so much - is it bitterness? envy? It will be husbands coming to terms with why they are impatient with their kids or why they avoid their duties in the home with any escape they can find - even work. Is it pride? lust? greed? Yes, the culture war will be fought on big stages, but mostly it will be fought in the trenches of individual homes and hearts - with families and roommates and over careless words spoken in haste that Jesus said we'd be judged for. It will be fought by people who have been forgiven in Christ and so are eager to forgive others and to seek forgiveness. It will be fought by people who do the daily work of tending to the garden of our own souls and the garden of our family - pulling up weeds, trimming branches, protecting the fruit.

How Much More... Some Reflections on Hebrews 2 and Christian Discipleship in Denver

“Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.” - Hebrews 2:1-4

Don't Separate What God Has Joined

One of the central hindrances to the work of discipleship in our city is a failure to recognize how Jesus relates to everything else -- everything under the sun. We have failed to teach one another to obey everything Jesus commanded and that what He commands regards everything in life. While much of fundamentalism did this woodenly and often in ways that went beyond the Scriptures, too many modern evangelical churches either don't do this or do it very badly. But if the central confession of the Christian church is the Lordship of Jesus, and the foundational mission of the church is to baptize the nations and teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded, then we must get this right. For too many Christians and the churches they attend, the central claims of Christianity have little bearing on how we actually conduct our lives - in our work, in our homes, in our politics, and in our public witness. There are millions of Christians in America, and there have been for quite a long time, but our society is increasingly pagan and secular in its cultural life. This is because our churches are increasingly pagan - if not in creed (though it is apparent that theological fidelity wanes in many circles), then in their worship and life. Holiness - both personal and cultural, has become a lost emphasis. Not the pietistic sort of holiness wherein we simply pray or read our Bibles and make sure to fit our religious commitments into our otherwise secular lives. But holiness as a fullness of life lived in glad obedience to God's law and grateful dependence on God's grace. The sort of holiness that fills dinner tables with wine, gladness, and thanksgiving. A holiness that raises children to fear God, love God, obey God, and walk in his wisdom and mercy. Holiness that cannot abide the public idols of our day - demanding the souls of our families, the capitulation of our church's worship, and the constant refrain in response to the commands of Scripture, "Did God really say?"

Two Premises:

- Jesus is Lord (of Everything.) As Abraham Kuyper famously said, "There is not one square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is Lord over all, does not exclaim, 'Mine!'" Therefore, all of our human existence - including our social and political lives - should be lived in glad obedience to him, in covenantal communion with him, and grateful reliance on his grace. We are to do everything he commanded.

- What Jesus commanded is in the whole of Scripture, and Scriptures addresses everything in life.

Some Obstacles and Some Places to Go

- We have separated the Religious and the Secular - Francis Schaeffer spent his life fighting what he saw as the central problem in modern society. We had divided the world into two different stories or floors - an upper story of morality and religion and a lower level with everything in our day-to-day lives. This division runs through every corridor of life, be it public life or in our personal lives. Religion has been torn from the public square (theoretically) and relegated to some place in our hearts. **We must regain the biblical vision of reality**. The Bible does not give us separate religious and secular spheres in which the world operates. His law does not simply address matters of private morality and spiritual devotion. His salvation is not an other-worldly salvation. The gospel comes to save us in our totality. It comes to save the nations. It comes to save the law. It comes to save the created order. It comes to save us in our maleness and femaleness.

- Neglecting the actual teachings of Scripture concerning the world, we've adopted the "virtues" of secular thinking and called them holiness or the "way of Jesus". For too many Christians, "Christlikeness" has come to mean something like apologetic, empathetic, and uncertain. The severity and clarity of Jesus in places like John 6-10 are ignored or downplayed. Instead, we have a globalist democratic Jesus adopting therapeutic categories for sin, justice, and righteousness. This is all done in the name of "grace," but it is the end of grace. Grace is terrible and glorious. It names sin and evil with clarity and offers forgiveness and sanctification. As the teaching of God's commands has diminished or disappeared, it has been replaced with a different law. This "law" is governed by feelings and extols the importance of "impact" over intent. We've adopted the values of DEI offices as our standards for righteousness. We've defined the law of love in shallowed therapeutic terms: Love is to do nothing that might elicit negative emotional responses from the object of our love. We must forsake our idolatrous "laws" and trust again the righteousness that comes from Jesus and is taught by the Scriptures. We must learn again that faithful witness and genuine love for our neighbors will often smell like death to them (2 Corinthians 2:15-17)

- Pastors have neglected the hard places. We've tread softly, if at all, in the contested areas - particularly in places that might make us unpopular in a secular city like Denver. We whisper where God shouts. We minimize biblical distinctions where they run afoul of cultural orthodoxies (What exactly does it mean to be a "soft" complementarian?). The net effect is to disciple our people into not knowing what the Bible says concerning these things, how it says them, and why it says them. Many pastors are happy to toe the line on particular biblical positions but fail to teach these things the way the Bible teaches these things and refuse to glory in what the bible glories in. Our task is not to teach the bare husk of what the Bible teaches - merely the concept, but to speak as the Bible speaks. And we must do this where the battle rages most fiercely. These controversies are where the Lordship of Jesus is most contested. It is also likely the places where conversion and discipleship are most opportune.

What we believe will always come out of our fingertips. You and I will live what we truly believe, whatever creedal commitments we make or don't make. The reverse is also true. How you live, navigate the world, and worship week in and week out will shape what you believe. Disobedience to God's word sows unbelief, and that unbelief will grow. It is vitally important that we treat the words of God with blood-earnestness. - every single iota of it. It is a grace-saturated book - grace that forgives and grace that gives life, the real kind. This Word has enough life for your family, your work, and all the glorious ways that the nations of the earth will flourish under the good reign and commands of Jesus.

Watered Down Whiskey and the Glory of the Gospel

The Protestant Liberalism of the early 20th century often spoke of finding the kernel at the heart of the Bible's teachings while removing the accretions of religious myth and miraculous language. This reductionism was their attempt to salvage the Christian message in a scientific age where things like a 6-day creation or resurrection from the dead were offensive to reasonable secular people. J. Gresham Machen wrote his masterful Christianity and Liberalism in response to this movement redefining American Christianity. He observed that what was left was an entirely different religion, not to be confused with historic Christianity. With those "accretions" stripped out, the remaining kernel had been distorted and reshaped according to modern man's thinking such that there was no Christianity left but something else. 

This pattern has continued with much preaching and teaching in modern Evangelicalism, though the stripped-away portions have changed. There are a variety of opinions and debates about what one is allowed to remove and what kernel of biblical teaching should remain. But the effect is the same; what's left is something different than Christianity. What's left is an entirely different sort of thing than what has been passed down to us in the Creeds, Confessions, and most notably in the Scriptures themselves. What is no longer of much concern is the materialist problems in the text of Scripture and the teachings of Christianity - things like miracles and resurrections and God's remarkably efficient six day creation. These things are of little concern to modern pop culture. What is always stripped away in these scenarios is what our neighbors find offensive or unsettling. In our day, that means essentially two things: 1) The Bible's teachings on sexuality and sex, and 2) the troubling language of judgment, the infinite divide of the antithesis, and the death of the myth of neutrality. Regarding the first, we must strip it or water it down because it does not fit our age's flat, egalitarian emphasis. Or perhaps better to use the Bible's language here: It does not serve our lusts. and the Second must be stripped away because, in our therapeutic age, such distinctions make everybody feel bad - as though there might be people we know at enmity with God. 

The troubles with this are legion, but I want to focus on one: This approach to Christianity strips it of the richness, beauty, and joy that is given freely by our God. It is of particular concern to me because it leads to the anemic Christianity that has rooted itself in and around Denver, Colorado. The sort of Christianity grown up in the front range of Colorado is like watered-down whiskey. Not whiskey with a drop or two of water added to unlock the flavor, but the sort of "watered-down" where you can't taste the whiskey. Like a high schooler's Jack and Coke, the Coke is present in quantities sufficient to drown out any taste of whiskey. But what you're left with is simply flat cola with a funny taste. 

Instead of homes filled with the cheerful tumult of children chasing dragons, the smells of warm bread, and the joys of marriage, we have the never-ending frat scene of 30-year-olds sipping cocktails, gutting themselves for a feeble and impotent promiscuous sexuality. Instead of the glory of the church gathered to sing with artistic beauty and wonder, the thundering of God's word, and the feasting joy of God's table, we have smoke machines, professional musicians, and therapeutic messages designed to avoid offending the sensibilities of the people who aren't in the room yet. Instead of strong men and beautiful women embracing the full range of God's diverse and often gendered wisdom, we have an increasingly genderless monoscape sipping well-made coffee (Why is it that no matter what else is dying in a civilization, the coffee just gets better?) 

Most of all, we are left with a domesticated god. A God who rarely offends without extended qualifiers. Preachers who spend 15 minutes warning their audiences and qualifying with all the linguistic nuances before they mention a text like "Wives submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord" or "I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man" or "The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers." God is no longer free to offend us. He is no longer allowed to frighten us. He is no longer allowed to contradict us. He is only allowed to delight and comfort us. The gospel bids us to come and die, but instead we celebrate a gospel where the God revealed in Scripture must hide himself lest we feel unsafe or uncomfortable. But in domesticating this god, we have killed any chance at the sort of fullness of life, joy and glory Jesus promises us. We live in an age of unbearable lightness, lacking the weighty substance God created us for. We have what we have demanded of God and Christianity, a thin, comforting accouterment to our modern, largely secular lives. We've drowned our whiskey in store-brand cola, forsaking the difficulty and the glory of what God has given us. 

The road forward entails a rebellion of sorts. We must rebel against every instinct which winces when it reads the text of Scripture. An older, faithful minister sat in my living room a few years ago, answering questions from a room full of younger pastors and church-planters. He was asked what one bit of advice he would give the young pastors in the room. He responded, "Resolve now, before you ever step into the pulpit, to follow the text of Scripture wherever it leads." One young guy in the back blurted, "But everyone will leave my church!" The older pastor responded, "Follow the text wherever it leads." 

This is no mere fundamentalist rigidity. This is the path to savoring the very fatness of life. It is simple, but it is hard. Most glorious things are difficult. Raising children with joy and to know and fear the Lord is difficult. Worshipping with God's people, in the beauty of holiness is difficult; it involves things like learning music and learning how to use our voices together. Warm hospitality with rich food and wine is difficult, but it is marvelous. Learning to trust and delight in every word that proceeds from the mouth of God is hard, but it is the fount of real faith. Stop looking for the kernel that does not offend. Stop watering down your whiskey. Drink it straight, share it straight. Eventually, you'll stop wincing, and with some practice, you'll begin to taste the richness and its multiplying flavors. 

Foundations and Skyscrapers, some Reflections on Moscow and New York City

I was sitting in my son's "Lordship" class (he's a college freshman at New Saint Andrews in Moscow, ID and it was Joe Rigney's class), listening to a far-ranging discussion stemming from Joe Rigney's *The Things of Earth* to Augustine's *City of God* and Edwards' *Religious Affections*. The students were asking Rigney questions from their reading and related topics. The question of cultural reformation and the best location for such high-minded goals: the city or rural areas. He didn't answer that question, but he did draw our attention to a distinction that had me scribbling notes the rest of the class time. He observed that the two best known pastors committed to a Kuyperian vision of cultural reformation from the past 20 years are Tim Keller and Doug Wilson - two men that normally one wouldn't put in the same sentence. He then pointed out a key difference between them: Keller focused primarily on the arts, white collar business and other things normally associated with cultural success and influence. Wilson has focused primarily on what he has called "repairing the ruins" - restoring the Christian household and Christian worship.

It struck me that this explains far more about the current state of evangelicalism than we'd like to think.

If one is primarily drawn to evangelizing cultural elites (I hate the term, but go with me a bit), then of paramount importance is not offending prevalent cultural sensitivities. Keller wasn't above offending certain sensibilities - but has been criticized for being too delicate in this offense giving, a criticism that I think sticks. 2nd generation ministries out of Redeemer have a far worse record on this than Keller himself did. The fundamental idea is that cultural reformation comes from the influencers - geographically (hence the emphasis on cities) and in terms of power and wealth. Questions of sexuality, men and women, and other secular orthodoxies have to be treated delicately or not at all, lest we lose the opportunity to really see churches grow, and people come to some sort of Christian faith. Cultural renewal or reformation happens as we build on the foundations (no matter how rotted they actually are) already in place. It's a kind of trickle-down mission. Get the urbanites (I am one), the rich and powerful (I'm not one) to believe in the basic tenets of the gospel and then reform will happen from the top-down. Culture is what happens when people learn new stories and new ways of living within an existing cultural framework.

Wilson begins in almost the exact opposite place. Culture arises on the foundations of worship and the life of the household. Nothing will be right if we don't get those foundation stones in the right place. While the goal isn't to throw everybody into a tizzy, when you get to the foundations and start rebuilding stuff, you have to tear out some stuff. This will upset all the folks in the skyscrapers whose buildings are shaking and falling overhead. Wilson built his ministry talking and writing about godly marriages, husbands who lead, wives who joyfully submit to that godly leadership, raising children to love and fear God, and re-establishing Christian worship. He talks about other stuff. Politics seems to be a kind of entertaining hobby for him, while Keller almost never touched politics. But that's not what he was/is aimed at. He has aimed at fruitful, godly, and joy-filled homes. He has aimed at restoring orderly, biblical and joy-filled worship. The theory at root is that cultures are built, not by political engagement nor by winning over hollywood execs, but cultures are reformed by Christian households and Christian worship.

Both men preached the same gospel. Both men have spoken to culturally taboo subjects. But the focus of their ministries was worlds apart and I don't think there is a third way between them. One will be severely limited in most halls of power if one speaks too loudly about issues of sexuality or the household. On the other hand, the same gospel preached to the "rich"man can kill him and make him alive - and then the foundation-laying discipleship work begins. But this is why Jesus said its incredibly difficult for the "rich" man to enter the kingdom of heaven - particularly when you start defining "rich" in cultural terms and not merely economic ones.

This is not meant to be a Keller-trashing observation. I learned much from him. But his style of ministry is attractive to a particular kind of evangelical who wants desperately to be liked, to enjoy the lifestyles afforded by a modern secular city (read: likes to be cool), and has largely bought into the relative lack of importance our culture places on family life. Wilson attracts some people who like the sky-scrapers shaking who haven't bought into the work of foundation-laying (these stones are soooooo heavy!) The modern evangelical looks at what's happening in Moscow and similar ministries and scrambles to find some way to discount all that heavy fruit (sounds FV, "racism!", "abuse!", and my favorite, "He's so caustic!"). But I think this is the way. I like cities. We are going to stay in ours for awhile. But the work to be done here (and everywhere) is not to impress the elites. Its to build churches filled with godly homes, warm hospitality with all the necessary accouterments (Christian schools, sound theology, holy worship) and continue the work for a bunch of generations.

If one takes a look around, not just since 2020, but in the decades preceding one will find that the foundations are in big trouble. If you were looking to buy a house and it had cracks this big, you’d pass, no matter how sexy the big spacious kitchen was. The challenges we’re facing are not to fill a decent house with better stuff and happier and healthier people. It is to rebuild the foundations. None of this will happen apart from the redeeming work of God’s Spirit, wielding His word to save - bringing death and resurrection to individuals currently sipping lattes, thinking most things are fine - and bringing death and resurrection to churches everywhere. Death is a scary prospect, but its the only way to resurrection.

I have a bunch of Acts 29 brothers (formerly of that particular club) looking around after a few decades and trying to find something more meaningful and lasting than a well-attended church service sitting atop the cultural ruins. It is time to get to work building brothers. Die first. Then grab a shovel, we need to get some foundations laid.

Doctrine and Drinks - Introduction

On September 13th we kicked off a monthly class at Trinity, working through the Westminster Confession of Faith. Each month we’ll study a few chapters from the Confession, examine the Scriptures supporting those chapters and then focus on two questions applying that doctrine to our specific circumstances.

Why Study Doctrine at All?
The Westminster Catechism opens with its famous question and answer: “What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” We exist to glorify God and to enjoy God and this is why we study doctrine. To glorify God and to enjoy God we must know God and know what God has said. In other words the study of doctrine is pertinent to our very existence, for what we were made for. In a world in which we are bombarded with words and ideas and assumptions, steady and focused attention to what we believe about everything, grounded in the bible is essential to knowing what up and down is and to learn to truly love what is beautiful and do what is good. Time spent studying the scriptures and considering what they teach us is always time well spent, it will always bear good fruit.

Why the Westminster Confession of Faith?
Fairly simply, we are using the WCF because it is our church’s confessional standards. The WCF was written in 1646 out of a desire to reform the nation of England and its churches. It was also written as an attempt to see the great fruit of the Reformation in Europe and Scotland break out all over England. What’s fascinating is that the Westminster divines believed that for the nation to be reformed, doctrinal reformation in the pulpits as well as the homes was essential. The Confession and its subsequent catechisms were meant to be taught in homes around fireplaces and around dining tables. This was not meant to be merely some heady doctrine carried by ministers, but delivered by fathers to their families. Its aim was not merely theological accuracy but cultural renewal and reform. As we pray for and work towards reformation and renewal in our day this Confession can help serve those ends in our church and city.

How will we do this?

Each month I’ll ask you to take some time to read through the assigned chapters of the Confession before coming to the meeting. Review the listed proof-texts, learning both to see how the authors derived their doctrine from the scriptures listed, and how they were reading the scriptures themselves. Summarize each section of the assigned chapters in a sentence or two and then consider two questions in the light of the whole chapter:
1 - Where does this doctrine conflict with the prevalent culture of our day?
2 - How does this doctrine make a difference, specifically, to me and my life right now?

Finally, read through the assigned questions and answers from the catechism.

When we come together, I’ll introduce the topics we’ll cover and then we will have a robust discussion about the doctrines, the scriptures and your answers to the two questions.

What Will We Discuss October 11?
WCF Chapters 2, 3, 4 & 5
Larger Catechism Questions: 1-21

Recommended Resources to Help you along the way:
Westminster Systematics by Douglas Wilson
The Westminster Confession: A Commentary by AA Hodge

A Cheesy T-Shirt and the Power of God

Everything hinges on who you think you are standing before - whom are living before. Years ago, working at a camp, a director there had shirts printed that said “Audience of One.” And like so many things from cultural Christianity, I found it cheesy at the time but have come to appreciate its simplicity and for our purposes this morning, its absolute accuracy. For understanding ones’ audience establishes what success and failure mean, it determines whom you are supposed to please, and it gives a clarity and a specific kind of authority.

When we turn to 1 Kings 17 we find ourselves at the front end of two notorious Old Testament characters’ public lives. Ahab and his wife Jezebel are recorded along some of the darkest days in the history of Israel. They promoted idolatry among God’s people and sought to destroy the last vestiges of faithfulness from the land. Elijah’s work as a prophet (and his heir, Elisha) is one of the strangest ministries recorded in the Bible. His ministry is filled with prophetic foreshadowing of both the work of John the Baptist and Jesus himself. 1 Kings 17 records a number of things it would behoove us to pay attention to:

1. First, Elijah tells the wicked king Ahab that there will be no rain. For years. But in Elijah’s declaration there is an important little phrase that informs the rest of the chapter, indeed it grounds the whole of Elijah’s ministry. Elijah says, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand…” God sends Elijah to confront the rulers of the day, to speak a word of judgment. This is, in fact what the whole story of Elijah is about: confronting the powers who were refusing the word of the Lord. What’s notable is that Elijah doesn’t present himself as a fellow sojourner trying to make sense of the world and finding some solace in an old religion. This is, far too often, how modern Christians and pastors present themselves. He speaks with a kind of off-putting authority that sounds odd to our ears. He speaks the word of God to the most politically powerful man in the region, and the result will be that he becomes the most hated man by the most powerful person in the region: Jezebel. How can he speak this way? He speaks this way because the whole of his ministry, the whole of his prophetic work is done standing before the living God of Israel, the Lord. 
   Far too many Christians, for that matter, far too many pastors have forgotten that we speak on behalf of the living God of Israel.
   
   And we forget before whom we stand. It can be confusing. There are all kinds of people listening to you, watching you, considering your words - reacting to your words. But your words are not judged by men. Your life is not evaluated on the basis of whether or not people like you. Your authority is not in your ability to persuade or to be well liked. Your authority is grounded, like Elijah’s, in the authority of the one you speak on behalf of. Your authority is grounded in understanding before whom you stand and you stand before the Living God of Israel, the One who is the Lord. The widow who appears at the end of the chapter will testify to Elijah’s words: “I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.” Far too many pastors stand in pulpits sounding mealy-mouthed and apologetic. Some wax eloquent with their own best thoughts. But you stand before the Living God of Israel, sent to speak on his behalf. You have no quarter to speak your own words, or to speak apologetically. Whether declaring a word of grace and peace, a word of warning, or a word of judgment, so long as you speak His words, your authority is not your own and you have the authority to speak to kings - and their wives.
   

2. A theme develops in the chapter that we should take note of: In verse 4, God says, “I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.” In verse 9, God commands Elijah to go to a gentile region and that he has “commanded a widow to feed you there.” The language is the same: God commands widows and he commands ravens. The thing that must strike us is that God commands and it is done. God commands and the world is ordered. God commands and ravens drop off bread and meat. God commands and there is bread and oil. God commands and a widow’s son is raised from the dead. But don’t miss the point for the action: God commands and his commands, his words, reorder the world - all of it. Rain stops, birds deliver food, a dying widow and her son have food to give.
   
   The parallels of this section with Jesus’ own ministry are telling. Jesus cites this incident as a warning (and promise!) that as God’s judgment comes against Israel, his mercy will spread to the Gentiles (his hometown tries to kill him for that). Jesus deals mercifully with widows, even raising sons from the dead. Jesus multiplies bread and fish in the midst of a drought of God’s word, echoing this story, but adding the glory that he is multiplying both Jews (the bread) and the nations (fish) in his hand. But undergirding all of this is the command, the word, the power of God’s words. And this is the secret sauce guiding us to the difficult calling outlined above. We know both whom we stand before and what his words do. His words make alive. His words kill. His words command reality itself. We are not offering one religious set of practices and philosophies to compete in the marketplace of ideas. We speak the words of One whose words order the world, history and the lives of widows and their kitchens.
   

3. The widow’s progression is worth paying attention to as well. Her son dies and she says, “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son!” Now, this brings to mind all kind of scenes from the ministry of Jesus - when he tells the disciples that Lazarus dies so that he can show them the power of God or when the widow’s son is raised in Luke 7. But don’t miss the widow’s own words: Elijah has come and brought her own sins to remembrance and he brought about the death of her son. We tend to skip past this part to the nice part where God raises the son from the dead. But the widow’s experience of Elijah’s ministry is something we shouldn’t skip over: He brought her sin to remembrance. He is the source of grave trouble for this poor woman. So it is for those who stand before the Lord. We bring sins to remembrance and for many the experience of God’s word is tragedy. God will raise the dead. God will provide bread and oil. But God will also bring buried sins to the surface. He will expose. He will judge. He will destroy even as he makes alive.
   
   Christian, remember before whom you stand. Pastor, speak with the authority of God’s own words and stop expecting your words to be well received. God’s words kill. God’s words make alive. God’s words provide bread and God’s words expose sins.

What We Sing When We Sing

Trinity is hiring a Director of Music! If you are interested, send your inquiry to Brian@trinitychurchdenver.org

People get kind of weird when they talk about music styles, particularly when it comes to church music. People have preferences and inevitably attempt to devise a moral or theological argument for their preferences. These are rarely “lightly held” preferences, either. I’ve heard of far more people leaving churches because they didn’t like the music than I have about theological concerns, the integrity and leadership of a church’s elders, or a church’s adherence to biblical teaching. The Bible speaks often and clearly to these other issues but scant a word about what instrumentation or which time-signature should mark a church’s singing. While the Bible commands us to sing Psalms (Ephesians 5:19), I’ve met one family in 20 years who left a church because the church wouldn’t sing Psalms. I think there are a few cultural reasons for this historical anomaly. I think much of it has to do with how we’ve been trained to equate real worship with how a church service makes me feel. In a culture where feelings are determinative for almost all standards, people will often leave a church that doesn’t make them feel good - and music is where we’ve been trained to measure our feelings. Worship has become a passive activity in the church. It is something that happens to me and then I measure whether it was good or not based on how I feel about it. In Christianity, feelings shouldn’t determine much of anything - rather they should be directed, disciplined and commanded. We are to be like the psalmist in Psalm 42 - commanding our souls to praise God, to hope in God, to rejoice in God. The emotions are to be compelled by faith.

The Bible commends to us music that should define the content of that faith. We are given the songbook of the Psalms. We are given many hymns sung by the apostolic church. We are given the full range of the Scriptures to shape and guide what we sing.

So where does that leave us with regard to musical styles?

The breadth of musical instruments we find in the Bible is startling. Harps, something-like-banjos, horns, drums, pipes, and a whole lot more. But at the center of all this music is the voices of God’s people, of angels, and of armies. The most important thing to note from the Scriptures is the central place of the gathered people of God singing. This should dominate our worship, regardless of the accompanying instrumentation or the time signature. We are instructed to sing Psalms, hymns, and “Spirit songs.” Music that is saturated with truth and beauty and goodness. Music that instructs the mind and the heart.

At Trinity we’ve employed a number of different styles over the years with all manner of instruments to help. We’ve sung from the Cantus Christi with piano. We’ve sung with a full band of modern instruments. We’ve sung accapella. We’ve sung music written by CityAlight, hymns arranged by Sandra McCracken, and music passed down from the reformation. We’ve had guitars, violins, and hand drums. We’ve experimented with modern arrangements of Psalms written by Brian Sauve and we’ve chanted some of those same Psalms in unison. But as we sit here as a 5 year old church in Denver, Colorado we want to sing music that our church can actually sing. We don’t believe any particular century of musical style has a corner on the right musical arrangement or the correct instrumentation. Much of our music will have modern instrumentation. Some of our music will be old. Some of our music will be newer. But undergirding all of it will be music that is true  and beautiful and a desire that our singing be offered in the presence of God in the light of His grace. And as people visit our church, we want to sing and play music that isn’t a foreign language musically or emotionally. So we’ll play with guitars, pianos, violins and we’d love to find the occasional banjo. We’ll always look to stretch our people musically, but mostly we just want to all head in the same direction, singing together loudly, believing what we sing and inviting those around us to come and sing to God with us.

A Vision for Worship at Trinity

We are hiring a Music Director. Below is a vision for Worship at Trinity. If you are interested in applying please contact brian@trinitychurchdenver.org

The aim of this document is to establish a clear theological vision for Covenant Renewal worship that can be used to do a few things: a) establish a clear strategy for how to reform our Sunday worship - both liturgically and musically to reflect this vision, and b) a philosophical guide for evaluating the elements of worship (song selection, musical style, congregational singing, confessions of sin, etc.) We’ll begin by establishing what the worship of the church is followed by the particular ways this should be expressed whenever we gather for worship on a Sunday. 

Some Obstacles to Start With

In order to understand what we’re doing when we gather for worship, we need to first understand what the church is and then, what the church does. Far too often we begin by assuming we know what the church is supposed to do, without first stopping to consider, theologically speaking, what the church is. 

In addition to the trouble of jumping ahead of ourselves, we have been troublingly influenced by modern conceptions of the ‘self.’ We live in the age of expressive individualism wherein many Christians have lost the category of covenant altogether. The loss of covenant categories for understanding ourselves as well as the almost unavoidable adoption of individualistic notions of the self has left us with a privatized Gnosticism. Worship is something I do in my own little heart and is largely an expression of my personal relationship with Jesus. (Read Carl Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self)

This has left the church largely impotent with regards to building and sustaining a real Christian obedience that is both public and social. We have incidentally become precisely the thing that the early church in Rome refused to be: a private religious institution. Rome permitted private religions that did not challenge the authority of the Emperor or the ethos of the republic/empire. Early Christians got into trouble because they made claims about the authority of Jesus in every sphere and because their theology came out their fingertips. They lived what they confessed and it put them into conflict with the surrounding society and its ethics. 

If worship is the most formative thing that the church does in discipling its people, then we have adopted philosophies of worship over the last century that have left people largely indistinguishable from their unbelieving neighbors. I believe that this is because we have practiced a form of worship that is framed as a collection of individuals experiencing God in a room together rather than organizing and defining worship as the covenant community - the church of the living God, together bringing her offerings before the face of God. We have made what was decidedly objective, public, and communal into something that is private, subjective, and personal. We just all happen to be in the same room together.  

This has led us to substitute one sort of joy that must be cultivated (and therefore requires patience and sustained effort) for another sort of joy that can be, and often is, manufactured and manipulated. We are impotent because we have begun to live as though the authority of Jesus is private and over me rather than public and over the nations. It is a substituted joy - we sacrifice communal joys for private ones.  

All of this is reflected in the aesthetics of modern worship - no matter the particular musical style used. Dark rooms eliminate perceived distractions - namely other people. Children are excluded from worship, again for the same reason, their squeals remind us that there are other people here. Music is performed by a band of professional or highly skilled musicians, and the church simply sings along. Everything is designed to drown out the presence and the work of God’s people. We listen to the musicians, we forget that anyone else is there, and we try and experience the presence of God conceived not objectively or on the basis of faith in God’s promises, but primarily as an emotional experience. This becomes the measure of whether a church is worshipping, or has the Spirit, or if God “showed up.” 

In these approaches to worship what is paramount is what is felt. This has a helpful (truly!) emphasis on the affections. Worship trains us in what to love and how to love. But it has the unhelpful side effect of making my feelings the measure of all things.  Such approaches to worship (helpfully!)  tend to be more accessible to laypeople and visitors. But the accessibility is a catch-22 if it is merely a further extension of unbelief’s worship of the self and my feelings.  We may even find ourselves training people to evaluate the love of God in terms of their own feelings rather than news that calls for faith. 

So while the affections matter deeply, they must be the by-product of the work of worship and not the measure of the work itself. Our hearts should align with the realities we talk and sing of, but our hearts are still being trained and should not be manipulated. I am not the measure of whether worship was meaningful or “good”, God is, and as I am trained in the work of worship I will learn to love and enjoy what God loves and enjoys. 

What are we doing when we gather, as a church for worship on the Sabbath?

The book of Ephesians teaches us that the church is the Temple of the Living God. Jesus, through his death and resurrection and subsequent sending of the Spirit, promised to build a Temple made without hands. The author of Hebrews uses temple language to describe what happens as the church gathers for worship. These are not simply metaphors but foundational descriptions of what the church is. The church is the temple of the living God. While the book of Revelation provides the church with the larger context of where it is that we worship (in the Holy of Holies and before the throne of God), it also provides us with a cosmology that defines the church as the Temple or the dwelling place of God. This language describing the church as God’s Temple is not meant to be taken as a kind of metaphor as though the church is merely like the temple from the Old Testament. Rather, this language teaches that the church is the fulfillment or the substance of what the tabernacle and temple of the Old Covenant were always pointing to. Rather than thinking that the gathering of Christians in a room for worship is, in some mysterious way, a reflection of the substance of what would’ve been seen in Jerusalem in Jesus’ day - we are to see it quite the other way round. The temple in Solomon’s day and Jesus’ is the shadow pointing to the substance of the church gathered for worship. 

There are a number of implications that we can draw from this as we consider the forms of the church’s Sabbath worship. Notably, we should look to the order of worship in the old covenant to inform and shape worship in our day. When we consider worship in the New Covenant, we aren’t considering something brand new, but as something more developed or mature. We should recognize liturgical continuity even as we think through the implications of the coming of Christ, the institution of the Lord’s supper, and the end of blood sacrifices at the cross. 

Foundationally we must understand what we are doing when we come to church. We are coming to the temple. The Temple is where the offerings for God’s people are made. It is where the sacrifice for sin is made. It is the place where God dwells and where he instructs the people in his word. It is where God’s people were fed, given the outward signs of belonging to God’s covenant people, and where they learned to sing God’s songs as blood offerings were accompanied by and eventually replaced by singing. Most of all it was a place of feasting and celebration, where the great grace of God in redeeming and instructing a people was remembered and embraced. This is what we do when we worship. We gather as God’s people to bring offerings to God in song, for God to instruct us in his word, to feast with God, and to be sent by God. 

This means that liturgically we follow the steps in the worship established by God. We begin with a Call to Worship in which God commands his people to gather. Next, there are three offerings: the Purification Offering, the Ascension Offering, and the Communion or Peace Offering. The people of God are purified, ascend into God’s presence and there they eat and drink with the Lord. These offerings are established in Leviticus 9 under the priesthood of Aaron. These are expressed through our own Confession of Sin and Assurance of Pardon, the Reading and Preaching of the Word, and Communion. Our liturgy ends with thanksgiving and a benediction. We give thanks for God’s provision and He sends us as his people into the world.

All of our worship should be according to the bible and our worship itself should be saturated with the Bible. We should sing, read, preach, and instruct with the bible. Furthermore, our worship should be marked by prayer, publicly acknowledging and speaking as those who are doing everything we’re doing in the presence of God and unto God. And all our worship should be done together. People and children (especially!) are not distractions from what is going on inside of you. They are the context in which all the action is happening. These people are the collection of living stones that make up the walls and entryways in the temple God has constructed for us. This is where God is, out here in the midst of all these people and all these kids and all these babies making yelping noises. It is their voices and their prayers and their creaky knees and noisy slightly off-key singing that constitute the substance of worship. 

The offerings are marked by singing. We pray in song, together in God’s presence. None of this is done merely as individuals, but as the covenant community built together into the dwelling place of God. So, what sort of offerings should we bring? What kind of singing should we be doing as we move through these offerings?

Paul tells us that we should sing together with Psalms, Hymns, and Spirit songs. There is some debate on what these three designations mean. Some have argued that they are simply three different titles given to different parts of the psalter. They argue for exclusive psalmody in the church’s worship. Others have argued (I believe persuasively) that these labels refer to different categories of music taken from the psalms, instructional hymns (some of which are recorded in different parts of Scripture), and songs arising in the history of the church as the Spirit leads us into singing music growing out of the testimony of Scripture.  So, with regards to what kinds of songs should mark our offerings, Scripture would instruct us to sing Psalms and Hymns and Spirit Songs. But what about style?

There have been many debates about contemporary vs. traditional music. I don’t think these designations are terribly helpful. What makes a piece of music traditional? And traditional to who? Instead, I believe we should aim at a few other markers for our music that I would organize around truth, beauty, and goodness.

1. Truth: Does our music express biblical and confessional truth? Does our music, aesthetically speaking, appropriately reflect the content being sung and the context in which we sing it (in the presence of God)? Our singing should be about correspondence to reality. The bible describes the world and defines what is happening in the worship of the church. We should sing true things in true ways. 

2. Beauty: Is our singing excellent (not necessarily professional)? Does it give expression to the unified diversity of Trinitarian joy (Ha!) by which I mean do we hear diverse voices and instruments singing the same song but with unique voices? Beauty is visible glory - reflecting the glory of God. Our worship should reflect the beauty and holiness of God.

3. Goodness: Does it involve the whole community in the work of singing? Is it understandable (both musically and lyrically)? Does it form us as members of the living covenant community? Does it help to stir the affections of God’s people for the things of God and move us to love and obey our Lord in this time and place? Is our worship marked by hospitality and clarity towards outsiders? Worship that is good will involve the work of all God’s people and will be both an expression of the church and formative for the church. Worship will faithfully maintain the tension for outsiders of clearly communicating what is true and exhibit the hospitality of the gospel. 

We gather in God’s temple as God’s people to worship God in the manner that God has graciously instructed us to in his word. We give our very lives to him in offerings that respond to the grace he has given to us in the work and rule of Jesus. This worship is work. Good work. Renewing work. But it is work that we do together in his presence. 

But What Should it Look Like? Some Strategic Suggestions:

• It should follow the pattern of Call to Worship, Confession of Sin and Pardon (Purification Offering), Scripture and Preaching (Ascension Offering), Communion (Peace Offering), and Doxology and Benediction.

• There should be a healthy dose of Psalms. While exclusive psalmody goes too far, the need to “reclaim psalm-singing” seems to indicate that our problem lies in a neglect of the Psalms, not an over-emphasis. We should learn how to sing all of them. 

• Our musical selections should live in the tension of being accessible and requiring us to learn how to sing them together. 

• Given the age in which we live, our music should generally aim to lift us out from introspection and move us towards a kind of militancy. It is not that all the church’s music should be militant, but a good deal more of it should be than is currently prevalent in evangelicalism. And by militant, I mean that it should move God’s people out towards faithful witness.

• Much of the music we sing should do well around a dinner table, an elder’s table, and a group of men gathering to smoke cigars and drink whiskey. In other words, the accompaniment should aid the singing of God’s people, not be a necessary component of the worship of God’s people. Hymnals employ a certain kind of music that does well both acapella and with accompaniment. Much modern music is dependent on accompanying musicians. 

• There should be a great deal of scripture in our service - besides the reading of scripture before and during the sermon. Prayers should be marked by scripture, exhortations should be marked by scripture, scripture should drip from everything we do.

• We should teach our people to pray corporately - or covenantally. Prayers should be offered on behalf of the people and on behalf of the city and the nation. If we are a nation of priests sharing citizenship with other Coloradoans and Americans, then we should pray like it. Elders should pray with,  in front of, and as representatives of the people. 

• Joy should be the overarching feel of the worship service. There should be heavy moments, holy moments, but overall the worship should feel like a feast. We do not come to condemnation but to a savior who is full of grace and truth. Our worship should not be informally happy-clappy but should be marked by a kind of sober and rich joy. The heart should be lifted.

• This means everyone leading the service - from liturgists to musicians to preachers to elders passing communion must lead emotionally as well as pursue proficiency in the acts being performed. Musicians should train us how to lift our hearts as we sing. Show us both how to sing and how to express the emotional content of what we are singing.  Liturgists should teach us how to respond when pardon is pronounced, how to confess our sins in the faith that God has promised to forgive us, and to feel the weight and the joy of both. The steps in the liturgy are not simply boxes to be checked, they are movements of body and soul. 

• Singing in parts - practicing the unified diversity of Trinitarian joy, should be possible much of the time. Even if most of the room only knows the melody - we should provide people with the possibility of learning to sing in parts. 

• Our worship should be discernible to contemporary culture, but it also should require the learning of new skills - like how to read music or how to engage in every part of a service. Worship should not be spectator-friendly or make complete sense to seekers. It is work, specialized work that it’s okay to take time to learn how to engage in this kind of labor.

• We are aiming at joy. It is a joy that is cultivated as we learn to do this work, it is not automatic and it is dependent on a room full of people and it cannot be controlled by singing the right chords. But never forget that we want to move the affections not simply do the work.

Finding Ourselves

When my wife and I approached my in-laws, letting them know our plan to return to Chicago and to school, I remember my father-in-law’s quip, “Well, at least you aren’t going to travel Europe trying to discover yourselves.” It was a well-placed joke in the midst of a conversation where they offered to help us avoid debt and work slightly less arduous hours during our time in school. At the heart of his quip was an important observation about our current age and our understanding of what it means to be a self. We have entered an age that has radically redefined the nature of what it means to be a human person and how we relate to the various social and religious structures around us. This has had the effect of cutting us off from most of what is meant to define us as human beings, creating enormous and unsustainable pressures we were never meant to carry. It has also had the terrible effect of making a whole generation of group-think slaves. 

I write this in the midst of a season where I sit with a group of teenagers (3 of which are mine) on Sunday nights working our way simultaneously through Carl Trueman’s excellent Strange New World and the Heidelberg Catechism. What has been surprising about our conversations is how clearly these high school students feel the unbearable weight of what’s being hoisted on them by the present age and how relieving it is to hear the wonderful truth of Heidelberg question no. 1 - “That I am not my own, but belong body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.” If one accepts the modern mood, such words sound oppressive. I don’t belong to myself. I belong to another. It flies in the face of Eddie Vedder’s screed in Pearl Jam’s anthem, “I am mine.”

But there is an unbearable weight to carry in our modern approaches to the self. It is a weight none of us can carry and a weight none of us were meant to. You see, I am not mine. I never was. I remember the self-esteem training that plagued much public education in my youth , “You can be whatever you want to be.”  In those words are the recipe for the disaster that surrounds us today. Despair and depression is on the rise, particularly among our nation’s youth. Anxiety cripples millions. We are told, “just be yourself.” And never told precisely how to figure out what “yourself” means except to look within, to ones’ emotions, ones’ desires, and ones’ fears. These are paramount. And so we are to take the twisted and contradictory desires of our youthfulness and do what no other age before ours has done - fulfill them, realize them, be unhindered by anything except for consent and not causing anyone else to have negative emotions. We are left to invent ourselves - our sexual preferences, our responsibilities, our appearance - just be your own authentic self. But that project requires a complete remodeling of the world and how it works. We must be remade to suit our own desires and so must the world. But we can no more reinvent ourselves than we can make men into women and women into men. For the world is simply there filled with design and hierarchy and things that work and things that don’t. We can pretend that the created world is simply infinitely malleable just as we can pretend that we are infinitely malleable but we aren’t. We are creatures. The world is created. The world is ordered and we are placed in that order. To resist this, to ignore this is to fight the wind. We were not made to fight the wind and our current epidemic of despair is a society-wide exhaustion growing from decades of trying. 

Counterintuitive to this view of the world is the real crime here - such living (expressive individualism as Charles Taylor has called it) is the basic ingredients to slavery. Cut off from our Creator, cut off from our families and especially our fathers, cut off from the communities designed to shape and constrain our desires with wisdom and godliness we are ravaged by an ambiguous society that rewards godless conformity. Add the cheap (and thin) fulfillment of our sexual lusts and you have created a despairing and shamed population ripe to be controlled and blind. Rene Girard wrote extensively about the concept of mimetic desire. At its root is the rather simple idea that no one knows what they want until they see what someone else has. Our desires are never original - they are copies, often drenched in envy and now manipulated by vast corporations, government agencies and social media bots. Our desires are not our own. What we believe will make us happy is often simply a series of images and narratives hoisted on us in the name of selling a certain brand of toothpaste. And so buried in the chocolate candy bar of our perceived autonomy and sexual liberation is the razor blade of tyranny and manipulation. In the name of freedom we have abandoned all real freedom. We walk through an ordered world pretending it is not really there. We reject the great estate God has built for us in the name of building our own hut in the desert. And so we have become slaves to the powers that spend millions of dollars in order to reap from our desires billions. We think ourselves original and independent, but we are told what to desire and how to feel and obliviously obey. We are slaves carrying burdens we can’t bear. 

But where to begin? 

We must begin with the Gospel: “I am not my own, but belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.”

We were designed to find ourselves defined by at least these four things:

1. We belong to God.
   You and I were created. We were created male and female. We were created in the image of God, designed for particular tasks in the world. You and I were redeemed (which is a wonderful legal term which indicates that we were purchased from one master by another) by Jesus. We are subject to his good laws. We are subject to his good design. We are his. And he has placed us in a world made and designed by him. There is no escape, no matter how loudly we protest and kick against the goads. But this is marvelous news, you see, you don’t have to design a world to suit your ever-shifting and often destructive desires. There is a God and he establishes the bounds of our lives. And marvel upon marvel, he has given us a book where he tells us who he is and how we can live in this world he made. More than that, he has redeemed us from our own insane and foolish rebellion against him and his designs. We don’t have to be bound any longer to the terrible burden of slavery to our own whims. Receive what God has said you are.
   

2. We belong to a family.
   All of us our sons or daughters. Many of us are wives and husbands. Some of us are fathers and mothers. These are not mere expressions of some self-directed or socially constructed relationships. They are given to us by God. They are designed to situate us within a network of responsibilities and gifts. They are designed to constrain our desires and to train us in wisdom - or how to live skillfully in the world. They are essential to who you are. This is why adultery is wicked and destructive. This is why an abusive or abdicating father corrupts generations. These aren’t merely interpersonal sins, they actually mar the design of God in how we are to receive our very selves. We are situated in a set of social relationships with the covenant of the family at the center. We belong to God and we belong to each other. Communities and nations extend the network of responsibilities beyond our own household. I find myself in a neighborhood, in a particular city, in the United States. These responsibilities differ, but I cannot know what God has made me to be if I cut myself off from my family or my neighbors.
   

3. We belong to the church.
   By the church, I do not mean some esoteric ideal. I mean the real people you worship with each week. I mean the elders charged with shepherding you with God’s word and the sacraments. I mean the rough and tumble glories of the actual local church. Charles Spurgeon famously called the church our mother. If God is our father, submitted to his rule is our mother, the actual local church. Again, the church is not simply a matter of personal tastes and preferences - another way to express your own individual desires. She is meant to be a source of real authority and real responsibility for all of us. She is bound by the faith confessed and the great work of worshiping in the presence of God, reminding us always of who we belong to. Far too often the church is treated as merely another consumeristic provider of religious goods and services, rather than the glorious covenant people to whom we belong. People swap churches for every reason under the sun: music, mood, aesthetic - but they do not acknowledge the weighty and good responsibilities we bear towards one another. You belong to God. You belong to your family. You were designed to belong to the covenant body of the local church.
   

4. You have desires. You have gifts. You have a brain.
   Lest we dismiss the precious reality that David confesses in the Psalms: you are fearfully and wonderfully made. We are corrupted by sin. We are confused by our foolishness. But as the you which God has made navigates the world God has made you have particular traits and strengths and desires that are good. I am a bulky 6’1”. I was not made to play in the NBA. I am further convinced I was not designed to do math problems with much efficiency or accuracy. These are an aspect of who I am. I despise mushy peas which means I am not likely British. All of my desires and emotions and gifts and shortcomings ought to be submitted to these other three constraints on my self. But that doesn’t mean they don’t matter. It just means that they are not paramount. And this is, in the end, remarkably good news. I am not God and cannot be.
   

And so I call on all of us everywhere to rebel against the spirit of the age. Rebel against despair and slavery. Rebel against autonomy. Instead revel in the fact that you and I belong to another. Revel in the fact that you have been freed from slavery to your own desires and emotions. Take joy in the glory that you have been made. You have been purchased. You have been given much, receive all of it with gratitude and a kind of freedom that autonomy can never give. 

Music at Trinity

Around Trinity: Hiring a Music Director

One of the oddest things a church does when it gathers for worship is our singing together. It’s odd largely because very little like it happens in any other space in our culture. People rarely gather at the bar for a hearty round of singing between beers. Occasionally you’ll catch people singing along at a concert or a few of us sing in the shower when we no one is listening. But when the people of God gather to renew their covenant with God on Sundays, we sing a lot. People who’ve grown up around the church largely take it for granted, but to the average outsider music, particularly music designed to be sung primarily by the people in the room, is a strange thing. But it is the main bit of work God’s people are to do together in God’s presence. It’s not a thing that happens to us in worship, it is a thing we’re called to do together and to do it well. But we shouldn’t just sing on Sundays. We want to sing as a people all the time: parish gatherings, classes, big parties - all the time. Singing is a kind of prayer God’s people offer to God.

To that end, Trinity is hiring a music director.  In addition to overseeing and organizing accompanying musicians for Sunday worship, selecting music from a historically broad corpus of music, our prayer is that God would bring our young church a leader who will prioritize both the actual singing of the congregation and the joy of the congregation in that singing. Music is never meant to be a merely formal affair - it must help us to give expression to and cultivate real affections for God and his ways. We sing music from hymnals. We sing Psalms. We sing some contemporary music that accords with Scripture. We’ve been led from the piano, the guitar, and the violin. We’ve sung a-capella.  But we want to learn and grow as a church to sing with more joy, more skill, and in more places. If you are interested in helping lead our young church, please send inquiries to brian@trinitychurchdenver.org

Learning to Believe what is True, Love what is Beautiful, and Do what is Good

You’ve now had a few weeks to kick start whatever plan for reading your bible this year you may or may not have taken up. I wanted to take a second, before any of you get to the usual Leviticus moment where you abandon such plans in the name of not encountering anymore discharging sores and what to do about them (both with and without hairs in them), to encourage you to keep at it, and if you haven’t started - to begin. Here are three marvelous reasons to read your bible daily:

1. The Bible is True.
   We live in an age that has lashed upon everyone the terrible burden of discovering “my truth.” We are given a task that no human being was ever meant to take up, namely the task of defining what the world is, what we are, and who God is according to our own instincts and feelings. While many would assert that such a task is the definition of freedom, it is not. It is a weight no one can carry. We were made to discover what is true. We were made to believe what is true. We were made to learn to love what is true. In other words, truth was never meant to be some construct fitted to your own imaginations, it is something fixed and objective and real. It is outside of you. The task we have been made for is to see this truth and to live with the grain of this truth. God hasn’t left us in the dark to grope around until we find it. He wrote a book. We can read it. We can know what it says. Now, to be sure you can spend the rest of your life plumbing its depths, but what is true about the world, about you, about your neighbor, God and how we ware to live in the world can be known. This is a marvelous gift.
   

2. The Bible is Beautiful.
   Here is a book that reveals to us the beauty of God, of history, of redemption. Like all great beauties we must learn to receive it, to see it, to appreciate it. Here is a book filled with marvelous vistas, and startling detail as well as horrifying beauty and shocking grace. But here is a beauty by which we can learn to see and love all beauty again. We can learn to correct our own loves as we recoil before what ought to lead us to delight and find mundane that which should shock us with wonder. Read the Bible to see and delight in the very beauty of God.
   

3. The Bible is Good.
   In a world where there is much confusion and complexity over what the good life is, we need a word - an authoritative word to dispel this fog of madness. It is the Bible’s ethical clarity and even simplicity that jars us. When there is confusion over what a man or a woman is, when there is confusion over the morality of our own desires, and we’ve lost a sense of what is just and unjust we need God to speak. In the Bible, God tells us stories, he gives us commands, he gives stark warnings and he makes promises. And all of it is grounded in grace upon grace and saturated with mercy. God has given us a book that gives rich instruction in the good life.
   

A few warnings…. The Bible is all of these things, but it is not simple in the way that it delivers these things. It is rich and nuanced and shocking and counterintuitive. A lifetime of study yields countless insights and wisdom and understanding and yet it rewards all our real attempts to understand and to see. But as with everything else in this life, it is a gift to be received by faith. God speaks and calls us to believe - every word of it - and this can seem impossibly hard. We have been taught to trust our own intuitions, our own emotions and modern, secular ways of organizing the world. But the Bible confronts us on almost every page. In this book our God calls us to turn away from trusting to our own views, preferences, intuitions and to listen to him, to receive from him, and to commune with him.

Practical Considerations

Where to start? There are as many bible-reading plans as one can imagine. I don’t think it matters much whether you read the Bible in a year or in three. What matters is that you read it, all of it. Listen to it. Read it. Slowly or quickly. But take and read. Read it aloud, read it silently. Read it as a family. Read it with your spouse. Read it with friends. If you get behind, or miss a few days or weeks, don’t wallow in discouragement or shame - begin again. As you read, learn to listen, to pay attention and to observe. Let the Bible shock you. Let it frighten you. Let it comfort you and confront you all at the same time.

There are riches in these pages that will utterly transform everything about you. Come and see. Come and believe. Come and behold the God of all the earth.

What We're Up To...

When Jesus commissioned his disciples he gave them an astounding order. He sent the church to disciple the nations, to baptize them in the name of the triune God and to teach those nations to obey everything Jesus had commanded. Here they are, 11 bewildered men, somewhere between overwhelming joy at the resurrection of Jesus and complete confusion over what had transpired. They are then given an impossibly large task: Go and proclaim the absolute and universal authority of Jesus over everything. Disciple entire nations. Baptize those nations. Teach those nations how to obey Jesus. And so, after a few thousand years we find ourselves on the other side of the world, in a remarkable and lost city named Denver, still seeking to obey our King’s orders. Seeking in a local way to do what God commanded the church to do everywhere. Working to proclaim the good reign of Jesus over everything. Calling our neighbors to know the glory of God’s grace and to fear his terrible judgments. Hoping to see our city, which has been given so much good to worship and follow the triune God who has redeemed us and reconciled us to himself in Jesus.

Sometimes it’s helpful, particularly at the end of one year and the beginning of another, to stop and consider the big picture of what we’re up to. While the above summary sets the big picture - what’s the long picture? What sort of goals and actions come into play as we think about doing what Jesus commanded his disciples to do 2000 years ago?We hope to do five things:

1. Proclaim the good news of Jesus, teach everyone to obey the Scriptures, and counsel people with those same Scriptures. And we want this Jesus and our take on the Scriptures to be deeply unoriginal. We want to be old and marked by the aroma of centuries. And then, with that news, we want people to do something that may sound relatively simple, but is missing from a lot of Christian work in our day. We want to help people live like Christians. Real Christians who really believe all the marvelously crazy stuff in the Bible and seek to live in faith-filled obedience to everything Jesus commanded. The discipleship of our city cannot be accomplished without that city being filled with and served by people who worship and pray and live and work like Christians.

2. We want to continue building a church that worships joyfully and faithfully every Lord’s day and we want to help start and partner with lots of churches throughout our city who will do the same. The life and worship of the church  shapes every part of our life in the city. It is the heavenly city that fills the earthly city with grace. But we need lots of churches to do that. Our hope is to formally partner with and plant lots of biblically sound, worshipping churches throughout our city. This will involve training men to be pastors and supporting the pastors and churches we partner with.

3. We want to support the foundation of all this culture shaping: families. Our hope is that an inordinate amount of our effort will be helping husbands and wives be godly husbands and wives and to raise children who love God, who fear God and who obey God.  While singleness can be a wonderful gift - one that we hope to support and nurture, the overwhelming attitude of our secular culture is a general disdain for one of the most beautiful institutions God created. We want to champion the beauty of a husband leading his family in joyful obedience to God and a wife who finds great joy in glad submission to her husband. We don’t believe this is oppressive or some patriarchal left-over. We believe it is God’s design and it is both good and produces marvelous fruit.

4. We want to support and encourage Christian education throughout our city and region. God instructs parents to raise their children in the paideia of the Lord. We believe education is always discipleship into a particular way of believing, loving and worshipping in the world. As we partner with and plant new churches, our hope is to find opportunities to start and support new schools, as well as supporting existing schools and parents who’ve chosen to educate their children in the home. Schools, at their best, are not a partnership between the government and families but a partnership between churches and families. We want to go back to this rich and forgotten history.

5. Lastly, and informally, we want to encourage entrepreneurs, business leaders and all Christians at work in the city. One of the great rediscoveries of the Reformation was that all work is, in some way, holy to God. The mission of the church is not divorced from the work most people do 9 to 5. Rather, our worship on Sundays serves as the foundation for all the work God’s people do throughout the city. We also want to help Christians to do their work in increasingly faithful and fruitful ways - in ways that honor God and love their neighbors. Furthermore, our city is increasingly difficult to afford, for Christians and for everyone. Business is a way that our city can become increasingly hospitable and affordable. Our hope is that more Christians will do more good work in our city together that results in tangible good.

This is what we’re up to. It’s a long term vision and one that won’t be finished in any of our lifetimes. We hope to be building all of this, not just for ourselves, but for our grandchildren and beyond. Over the course of the coming year, we hope to take some decisive steps forward - some larger than others. One important step for our young church is to grow in our skill as worshippers. This is one reason why the elders of Trinity have set a goal to hire a worship director in the coming months. The bigger vision is always tied to faithfulness in the foundational work we’re called to. And the most foundational thing the church exists to do is to worship our God and King.

As we approach the end of the year, we also ask you to prayerfully consider an end-of-the year gift to Trinity Church. (You can use this link here.) We hope to grow the work we’ve been doing in our city in the coming year and are dependent on end-of-year giving to expand what we’re up to. Our elders have set a goal of $50,000 to help us with a number of initiatives including finding and hiring a worship director. Please pray for our church as we continue to call our city to believe and live in the light of the reign of Jesus over all things.

Coexist?

Several years ago a bumper sticker started popping up on the back of Prius’ everywhere. It said “COEXIST” and featured all manner of symbols representing various religious traditions and non-religious traditions. On that bumper sticker was an entire worldview. A worldview utterly at war with the hope of Advent and the surprise of Christmas. Here was something more than a simple plea that people of different faiths and non-faiths should stop killing each other. It was the assumption that God should be happy to just exist alongside the other gods or the varying implicit claims to godhood in our world. It was also a claim that God is largely irrelevant for the everyday life of the world. This is not simply a statement about pluralism, it is an attempt to put God and the whole of Christianity in a particular place, namely just deep down in your heart. In this view of things, God has no place in the public square or in politics or in our social life. The gods are there to make you feel better, make you feel loved, help you deal with your anxiety or shame, but they aren’t there to tell us how to do anything in the real world. The problem is that there is nothing in the Bible to indicate that God is happy to just coexist and to just sit peaceably deep down in your heart.

Isaiah 44:6-8 stands in stark contrast to the spirit of our age. It poses a fatal risk to the spirit of secularism exemplified by these stickers and the limitations put upon where God is allowed to speak and act. God is having none of it. And Isaiah 44 sits in the center of the promises of Isaiah 40-66 and thus the promises we are called to glory in during Advent in anticipation of Christmas. In other words, Isaiah 44 helps us to understand the spirit of Advent and Christmas and it isn’t very warm and fuzzy. We here find God himself speaking in the midst of the nations, declaring things, and showing us something of what he’s like. He instructs us with regards to how we’re supposed to think about the gods of our nation and how we’re supposed to behave in relation to the gods of our nation - well, the gods of all the nations but we should think particularly with regard to the gods wooing us into compromise and calling for a kind of false peace.

After promising to pour out his Spirit on his people (like water on thirsty ground), he says:

“I am the first, and I am the last; besides me there is no God.”

In other words, He isn’t running for election to the office of God. He isn’t trying to earn your vote. He’s not wanting you to consider the advantages of His particular policies and then give him your support over against the other potential gods. He is declaring something about his own unique supremacy. Besides him, there are no gods at all. No one else to consider at all. Then, He starts to get a little spicy:

“Who is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and set it before me…”

It’s important to hear the spirit of these words. God doesn’t gently woo here. He defies someone saying otherwise. If there is someone like Him, anyone who has a claim to god-ness, let them stand in front of Him and declare it to his face. Prove yourself. If you believe you are a God if you believe your own god can stand before the face of the God of all the earth, say so. If the secularist god of Demos can stand before the God of Israel, the God of the Bible, then declare it to God’s face. Here is a UFC fighter standing in the middle of the ring and calling everyone out at the same time. If you think your god or version of God can stand before Him, God is more than happy to hear your claims. He goes on in vv. 9-20 to make fun of all the other supposed gods and the inherent nature of idolatry. He mocks your secular, individualistic self-realization. He mocks your government-as-savior confusion. He laughs at your attempts to embrace your inner deity and to presume to remake the world as you see fit. Do you believe yourself to be a god? You can’t even feed yourself. Do you think yourself a bold, unique counter-cultural icon? You do the same dances as everybody else on Tic-Toc. You get tired. You bought your Che Gueverra shirt from Amazon. You get terribly confused. You believe the will of the people can save you? Have you seen how much time the will of the people spent scrolling photos on Instagram last week? You guys spent hours looking at pictures of latte art and looking at pictures of women in bikinis. You aren’t gods. Your gods aren’t gods. You still can’t make stars appear or move the planets or invent cool animals like crocodiles. And then He goes on:

“Since I appointed an ancient people. Let them declare what is to come, and what will happen.”

This bit gets spelled out a bit further on in verse 25 where He says: “…who frustrates the signs of liars and makes fools of diviners, who turns wise men back and makes their knowledge foolish….” In other words, our God is the God who runs the world on behalf of His people and loves to do so in a way that makes fools out of those who do not heed His words. To the self-appointed diviners and wise men, God says, “Let them declare what is to come and what will happen.” He will act in history in such a way as to make their supposed expertise foolish and will frustrate their intentions for the world. Again, hear the spirit of these words. He not only defies the supposed gods of our age but dares those who follow them to tell us what they think the world should be like and how history ought to go. He loves it when they put their cards on the table because it shows them to be fools as He subverts their great wisdom. He continues, now turning to us, his people, and instructing us on how we ought to live in a moment where everything seems to have gone mad:

“Fear not, nor be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? And you are my witnesses! Is there a God besides me? There is no Rock; I know not any.”

What does this all mean for the people whose God is the Lord? Do not be afraid of anything. Do not be afraid of what your neighbor will think of you. Do not be afraid of being called a bigot. Do not be afraid of the stock market. Do not be afraid of insane government policies. We are to live as witnesses to the utterly unique supremacy of our God. Step one in such a vocation: Don’t be afraid of anything. There is nothing that can challenge His plans. There is no one to thwart his purposes. There is no new secret insight into how the world ought to be. There is no other Rock but him. There is no God besides Him. Bear witness in the first place by not being afraid.

What does this mean for those of you who do not worship the God of the Bible? Come and worship. Forsake weak gods, forsake pretended atheism or agnosticism. There is one God, and He can be known, and He is strong. Your gods cannot save, be they from the religious traditions or our more sophisticated secular sort. Come and worship the God who is good and strong, so He is capable of saving. Forsake that which, in the end, will make a fool of you and your children. Instead, turn to the only God who is, worship, and be saved.

This is the glory of Advent. In the midst of what seems to be growing darkness and madness - confidently let your hope rest in the God who has not gone to sleep, hasn’t abandoned his people nor his promises. He is the Lord of heaven and earth, of all of history, and all the nations. He cannot be thwarted. The spirit of Advent and the surprise of Christmas go hand-in-hand. It is the end of fear and the ground of a courageous and defiant confidence. All these seemingly gigantic gods that surround us are nothing. The god of sexual and gender madness? Nothing. The god of secular humanism and endless self-actualization? Dust. The god of communitarian and socialist ambitions? Powerless. Islam? Incapable of saving. Buddha? Too fat to stand up. The pantheon of Hindu gods? Pathetic. The God, the Father of us all, King Jesus our Redeemer, and the Spirit of Holiness defy the gods and are the permanent ground of our hope and confidence. We are His witnesses. The witnesses of the God who will not simply Coexist but will and does Reign over everything that is and defies all the gods to say otherwise.

Gratitude Washes Everything

“For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.”

1 Timothy 4:4-5

We are a couple of weeks from Thanksgiving, well into Advent, but I think there is always something more to be said for gratitude. My wife, whose zeal for seasonal correctness, will likely approve of the sentiment but ask why it hadn’t come when there were fresh leftovers in the fridge. So consider this meditation preparation for the celebration of Christmas.

At Christmas, we celebrate the incarnation of our Lord. The Son takes on flesh and dwells among us. Lest we rush past this wonder in haste to get to the soteriological meat of Good Friday and Easter, let us first stop and consider the one glorious ramification of this profound miracle. Here in the wonder of discovering that God can eat fish, drink wine, and travel with a guy like Peter is the sanctification of all the things you find yourself surrounded by. Here is the sanctification of tables piled with food. Here is the blessing of enjoying a good soccer (yes, even soccer) match. Here is the sanctification of good laughter and hope-filled weeping. Throw it all in: enjoy a good hike in the mountains, the rhythm of the ocean trying desperately to wash the beach of its sand, and all the varying spaces in between (including the long flat drive across eastern Colorado. Throw in wine and sex and ruddy masculinity and glorious femininity, too (which one must, of course, acknowledge objectively exists in order to enjoy). In other words, the coming of the Son in the flesh means that this stuff is no distraction from the glory God has made you to love and enjoy - it’s part of it.

Contra the gnostics (both ancient and modern), God made this world good, and our sin didn’t leave it unclean and black to its soul. Jesus had skin. He wore clothes. He drank wine. He laughed. He wept. He walked. He told some good jokes…and you should too (especially the wearing clothes bit).

But here is where I want to bring Paul’s encouragement from 1 Timothy 4:4-5 into view. He says, “nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving - for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.” The foundation of receiving and enjoying all these gifts is thanksgiving.

The soil out of which all go the good life grows is gratitude. It is the abiding recognition that you have been given, well, everything. Such gratitude grows from the fear of God and hope planted in the gospel of Jesus. Gratitude is the ground itself of all joy. Gratitude is a kind of reorienting disposition that charges the whole of one’s world with grace. And all this gratitude is gratitude that finds us constantly looking to the Maker and Redeemer as thanksgiving’s object.

But there is an unsubtle war going on against such gratitude. Envy corrupts everything: driving political movements, destroying relationships, and unraveling joy. Rather than marveling at the enormous gifts, you have been given (and you have been given many), we long for what we do not have. Pride suffocates the air of gratitude. We look not to the gifts God has given us but to the earnings of our own work. The secular left takes the gifts you have received and renames the blessings of God “privilege,” staining everything with the stench of envy and pride. The secular right has no one to give thanks to and fails to see the created nature of all our numerous gifts. A society incapable of giving thanks to God for his many gifts will be a society starved of joy, overrun with envy, and decimated by pride. And so, we look around and find ourselves amid a cultural moment scrambling to find joy in any dark corner it can, a society where the exaltation of the self and its feelings is paramount and where we are at one another’s throats in a constant swirl of envy (as it’s been said - it’s all in Girard, man.).

But the Christian people are to be a grateful people. A people marked by wonder at God’s kindness not only in our redemption but in a glass of wine, the laughter of our children, the coldness of the water we drink, and the loaf of bread we share. The mark of all Christian communities must be love, but such love can only grow from a people who constantly marvel at the kindness of God towards them. Cultivate such gratitude and express it to our Creator. Teach it to your children. Declare it to your neighbor. Root out all envy by considering God’s gifts. Go to war with pride by acknowledging Gods remarkable kindnesses. And not just the kindnesses and gifts you feel naturally grateful for - but for the objective goods you barely notice or don’t even want. Learn to be like children - learning to give thanks for everything on our plate - even the steamed broccoli. Our God makes all things holy with thanksgiving, cultivated by His word and expressed in prayer. Our worship culminates in the eucharistic meal. We share bread and wine in gratitude to our God. It is the capstone of each and every gathering of God’s people. It is the most fundamental mark of our worship and of the community redeemed by Jesus. We are a people whose highest good and most fundamental work is that of gratitude - to receive from God and confess our thanks.

When in Rome

How are we to live as Christians in an age that seems to be increasingly at odds with what fealty to Jesus demands? If the local public schools are teaching kids to take on novel and strange ideas about the nature of gender - should we say anything? Should Christians simply keep their mouths shut and start quiet enclaves of traditional Christian ethics elsewhere? Should Christians try and adapt the Bible's teaching to these new ideas? Should Christians loudly protest what they see as the dehumanization and rebellion at the heart of these teachings? How are Christians to live, to speak, to interact with neighbors and a society that teaches these sorts of things? What's a Christian to do when so many trends in the public square are squarely at odds with what the Bible actually says?

We've entered an interesting age of the interactions between Christianity and Western Culture. For decades now a number of theologians have warned that the greatest divisions the church would see would be over how the church should relate to an increasingly secular culture (see notably Niebuhr's Christ and Culture and Carson's follow up, Christ and Culture Revisited). The cracks they saw coming in the church's future were not over classical theological debates, say baptism or predestination, but over how the church would relate to a culture increasingly and self-consciously in denial over God's actual existence and authority. Kevin DeYoung and others have written helpfully about different postures faithful Christians can take in these discussions. He breaks them down into charitable descriptions: Contrite, Compassionate, Careful, or Courageous - helping us to see the appeal of the various approaches. Niebuhr's classical categories of Christ against culture, Christ of culture, Christ above culture, Christ and culture in paradox and Christ transforming culture is another way of breaking down the question. But what a number of these writers have seen is that often in the history of the church theological and biblical compromise hasn't come first, but instead have followed a pre-disposition to how Christians should interact with the world around them. We are often more prone to allow our theology to be formed by these varying postures rather than letting our understanding of the bible and its theological truth determine how we should relate to the world's life around us.

And these questions are no longer speculative in nature. We are no longer merely considering postures and attitudes generally, but real relationships with neighbors, with co-workers and with family members. How do we obey Jesus' commands to love our neighbor, seek the lost and to abide in the Word of God? Answering these questions faithfully is one of the fundamental questions of discipleship in our day (perhaps it always has been.)

For the next few weeks at Trinity we want to consider how the Bible frames these concerns. It does so with incredible wisdom and clarity. God calls us into a life in the world marked by conflict, love, humility and biblical clarity. Jesus' own promises concerning the suffering of God's people does not come in a kind of religious vacuum, but as the often necessary expectation of seeking to live faithfully in societies that will often (if temporarily) be in conflict with God's commands and with the way that God has made the world.

We're going to look at four texts in the coming weeks, and explore their implications for faithful worship and living in Denver during our days:

1 - In John 17 Jesus prays for his people to be united in a world where the Evil One is still very much at work. He grounds that unity and God's keeping of his people in two big ideas, namely in God's very words and in a covenant identity grounded in the name of Jesus. He does not allow for his people to be taken out of the world, blissfully ignoring the trajectory of our cities and neighbors. Rather he calls us to a kind of faithfulness in the midst of the world that is committed to every word of God and in his saving work on our behalf. We'll start here on August 14.

2 - In Ephesians 5, Paul takes for granted that life in society's still opposed to the reign of Jesus will often be a war. There is no avoiding a very real war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. But we want to look closely at what sort of warfare the people of God are to wage. It is a fight of faith - to believe and to wield the word of God as the lone weapon of our assault. We declare what as true, and hold fast to the person and work of Jesus as our defense against the rulers (and ideas, and politics, and media onslaught) of this present age.

3 - In 2 Corinthians 5 we gain an understanding of how the good and gracious reign of Jesus will be received. It will bring life to some and death to others. The people of God, conquered by Jesus are led through every city by our Lord and Savior and Brother - bearing witness to his supremacy. Paul warns us in this text that this will always engender two very strong responses in all the places we go: the joy of life and the ridicule of death. The response of those who see and hear the truth and beauty of the rule of Jesus is not the measuring stick of faithfulness. Our faithful following of Jesus in grace is.

4 - In 1 Corinthians 5 the people of God are called to a particular kind of holiness as a community, even as they live and interact with a world that will often be hostile to that holiness and love. Christians are to live holy lives together that seek to love and demonstrate hospitality - even to those who are their cultured despisers.

At the heart of faithful living in our time is a seeming dichotomy. We are at war and we are to love those with whom we are at war. We are to be humble and stubbornly committed to the truth of the bible. We are to show generous hospitality to those who may believe our deepest commitments are hostile and unloving. Let's consider what it means to live this way in our cities and neighborhoods in the coming weeks as we pray that God would use us to demonstrate the conquering hospitality of Jesus.

The End of Roe

On Friday, June 24th the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Roe v. Wade. I was sitting on a tarmac at the Norfolk Airport when I got the notification. Next, I found myself weeping for joy. I turned to Jenny sitting next to me and told her the news, then I confessed, “I told you ten years ago that this wouldn’t happen in our lifetime, I was wrong.”

I was sitting there remembering the first time I tried to explain abortion to my children. We were driving down hwy 6 and my daughter innocently asked (After hearing why I couldn’t vote for President Obama and listing abortion as a primary reason) “What is abortion?” I remember trying to explain to my kids how the federal government protects the right of a woman to kill a child in their womb. I distinctly remember my daughter looking at me horrified and concerned that I was telling a terrible lie. As though such a thing couldn’t be possible. Why would the government protect such a terrible thing? We sat as a family on a deck this past Friday night and I retold that story and then we prayed, sang, drank and celebrated the end of Roe. It is not, of course, the end of abortion in the United States. But it is a good and necessary first step. We celebrated. The kids made fun of dad for crying, but we celebrated such a grave and wonderful thing.

I have three things to say at this point about this moment for our young church and for us as Christians:

1) We must learn to celebrate the righteousness and justice of God whenever it appears. It is a tragic irony that the same culture that shouted “No Justice, No Peace” two years ago is protesting, burning down pregnancy centers and enraged by the court’s decision. Democratic mayors are shouting from stages, “F*ck Clarence Thomas!”  There has been no greater injustice committed than the unabated fruit of abortion in our country. If justice has to do with protecting the weak, innocent and vulnerable - and it does - then the murder of unborn children by the tens of millions over the last 50 years is among the most rank injustices in history. It is a societal wickedness almost beyond comprehension. While the court’s decision may not have eliminated abortion in all 50 states, it did remove any federal protections on this heinous evil. Christians must learn to celebrate, with wine and food and joy every good gift of God and this is surely a gift from our God. We must also learn, in this particular moment, to celebrate such a good thing when it is called evil and vile names by unbelievers. Good is good. Beauty is beauty. Truth is truth. We must learn to revel in these things, especially when our neighbors do not approve. Love demands it, but most of all, loyalty to our just and righteous God demands it. Celebrate justice and righteousness, no qualifiers. No “and, buts.” Nothing but joy and smiles that our God has begun to push back on such darkness and death. He commands us to hate evil. He commands us to rejoice when righteousness is done. Celebrate.

2) We must marvel a bit at this moment. We have one of the most pro-abortion administrations in the history of the United States presidency. We have one of the most pro-abortion legislatures in the history of this country. We are in the middle of a month in which a good portion of our society is celebrating their own sexual destruction flamboyantly and with pride. And in the midst of all of it - rainbow flags and all - God said “enough.” God loves to speak loudest and most decisively when by all human appearances righteousness and justice is lost. He chose Pride month to put forward light. He did it most clearly through the wise and brilliant voice of a black Supreme Court justice that Black Lives Matter secularists hate and this justice pulled no punches. Our God is a marvel at letting things get really dark and then turning the lights on. Marvel at that. Feel small in the face of that. Rejoice in a God who loves to demonstrate his unassailable power in the face of human presumption.

3) We rejoice and we get to work. Much ink has been put to paper discussing the role of evangelical Christians in their support of mothers and children over the past few days. Prior to this ruling no other group spent more money and more energy supporting mothers and adoption and helping mothers choose life. This work must continue and grow. Furthermore, our work to see this evil put away everywhere must increase. Laws should be passed. Just officials should be elected. Life should be fought for in every biblical way possible. Colorado recently passed the most egregious abortion legislation in the nation. Those of us who live here must mourn such wicked laws that oppress the poor and the powerless. We drink our God’s victory tonight, but in obedience to his word, we hold up our cups and ask for more, work for more and entrust our work to the God who makes all things right and tells us none of our work done in Christ is in vain.

So may we not be Christians who shrug our shoulders in the face of such goodness. May we not be Christians who huddle in the corner afraid to celebrate righteousness for fear that those who hate it may be sad or angry. Rather, may we rejoice, may we ask God for more and may we worship with every ounce of our being the God who defends the orphan and the defenseless.