Here is a summer science project. Do this one at your own risk.
Choose an afternoon when the summer sun is burning down, get a magnifying glass and a pile of some dry combustible material. Dried leaves will work just fine. Gun powder will be more exciting.
Put the burning material down on the sidewalk and then use the magnifying glass to focus a beam of sunlight onto the material. You will be amazed at how quickly smoke begins to curl away. My boys and I do this and we think it great. Jamie rolls her eyes.
You know: the magnifying glass does not provide any power of its own. It serves only to direct the power of the sun. But, when it does, it brings light to a burning focus and things ignite.
That is what the local church is supposed to do. By itself, the church, God’s people, do not offer any power. But, a church is like a magnifying glass that God uses to focus and direct His power. Paul says in Ephesians 3:10 that God is pleased to make declaration of Himself both to people and the Heavenly realms by means of the church.
Maybe in your life, the presence of Christ does not seem powerful. You keep waiting for change and power to ignite in your life but it’s just not happening. If that is the case, then try another experiment this summer. Look for a church that centers on the Lord Jesus and His Word. Put yourself right underneath the magnifying glass on a warm Sunday and wait for Spirit and Truth to ignite in your heart.
It is Pentecost Sunday when we celebrate the pouring out of the Spirit and the inauguration of the New Covenant.*
Think prayerfully and deeply about Pentecost. It is an epochal Sunday!
In his book, The Holy Spirit (Contours of Christian Theology)
,Sinclair Ferguson convincingly demonstrates the gracious correspondence between Pentecost and the judgment of Babel:
On the morning of Pentecost, the disciples began to speak in other tongues so that visitors to Jerusalem heard the message of the gospel in their own language (Acts 2:4
). Luke’s statement here is accompanied by a ‘table of the nations’ (Acts 2:8-12), just as the Genesis record of the confusing of human language is accompanied by a ‘table of nations’(Gn 10:1-32). Part of the answer to the question ‘What does this mean?’ (Acts 2:12), therefore, seems to be that here we have the reversal of Babel, the founding of the community of the reconciled. I.H. Marshal has pointed out that the number 120 (Acts 1:15) was the minimum number of men required ‘to establish a community with its own council’, so that these early Christians were able to ‘form a new community’. On the Day of Pentecost that new community became the sphere in which the eschatological reversal of the effects of sin began to appear in a reconciled people consisting of both Jew and Gentile, possessing one Lord, one faith and one baptism (Eph. 4:1ff.), united by the Spirit.
The effects of Babel were thus arrested. Now the word of reconciliation will be preached in many languages, since the disciples have received the promised power of the Spirit to enable them to be witnesses to Christ all over the world (Lk. 24:28; Acts 1:4).
*This post repeated from Pentecost 2009.
Why not spend some time on Friday and Saturday plowing the ground in your life in preparation for Sunday?
We are told men ought not to preach without preparation. Granted. But we add, men ought not to hear without preparation. Which, do you think needs the most preparation, the sower or the ground? I would have the sower come with clean hands, but I would have the ground well-plowed and harrowed, well-turned over, and the clods broken before the seed comes in. It seems to me that there is more preparation needed by the ground, than by the sower, more by the hearer than by the preacher. Charles Spurgeon.
Quoted in the recommended, Expository Listening, by Ken Ramey.
Published on
May 12, 2010 in
Church.
As a farm kid from the GSOI, I appreciate this one. Eugene Peterson (Under the Unpredictable Plant) on the nature of pastoral work:
Pastoral work consists of modest, daily, assigned work. It is like farm work. Most pastoral work involves routines similar to cleaning out the barn, mucking out the stalls, spreading manure pulling weeds. This is not, any of it, bad work in itself, but if we expected to ride a glistening black stallion in daily parades and then return to the barn where a lackey grooms our steed for us, we will be severely disappointed and end up being horribly resentful.
It is worth reading Stuart Briscoe’s book, Flowing Streams: Journeys of a Life Well Lived, if only to read the final chapter, “Stones from the Stream,” where he summarizes five basic principles that may be helpful to Christians and local churches. Here is a quote from that section.
We have to address these people where they are and then do one thing – - lead them to Jesus by introducing them to who Jesus is (eternally), what he has done (historically), what he is doing (contemporaneously), and what he plans to do (finally and irrevocably),and them show them how to live in the conscious enjoyment of his work on the cross for them, the reality of his presence within them, and the certainty of their promised future with him in eternity (constantly)! . . . At all costs, whatever developments and innovations come the way of the church, we must stay on message. His message—all of it. Stuart Briscoe (page 197)
Would you pray for the preaching of the Word in your church tomorrow?
The efficacious empowerment of the Spirit of God is indispensable to the ministry of proclamation. Arturo Azurdia
With my sermon complete, I sat down in my study on Saturday evening to read the thoughts of others who have preached on Ephesians 4:1-16. My reading included Bryan Chapell’s commentary on Ephesians. Chappell is the president of Covenant Seminary and he wrote one of my favorite books on preaching (Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon
).
While reading Chapell’s exposition of the importance of each member of the Body of Christ, I was so blessed to read him tell about the role his third grade Sunday school teacher played in his life.
Gene Mintz was my third grade Sunday school teacher in a large church in Tennessee. Not many men volunteered to be third grade Sunday school teachers when I was growing up. And I confess that I remember very little of Mr. Mintz’s classroom teaching. What I remember is that when my parents were struggling in their marriage, making our lives awkward in the church, Mr. Mintz always greeted me—a little third grader from a troubled family—in the church hallways. Even when I went on to fourth grade, and fifth, and sixth, Mr. Mintz never forgot me. And when my family moved away when I was in seventh grade, Mr. Mintz sometimes still would write and ask how I was doing. I even got a letter or two when I was in college. And when I became president of Covenant Seminary, I got a letter from Gene Mintz that I will always cherish. “Bryan,” he wrote, “I have prayed for you all of these years.”
I believe that I am a living testimony of the truth of Paul’s words: “From him [Christ] the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” Because Gene Mintz did his part faithfully, I have been able to serve God and teach others to do the same. I believe that. I hope that others will, so that we will make every effort to keep the unity of Spirit in the bond of peace, and we will use whatever gifts God has given to us to further equip the people for the work of the ministry. Bryan Chappell, Commentary on Ephesians, 199-200.
Sunday (D.V.) I will preach on Ephesians 4:1-6. The focus in this passage is to walk worthily of our call in unity. Thinking about this stress on the unity of the Body of Christ, we must mourn over the number of denominations.
Our response should be to strive to unify in a way that is worthy of our call. Here is a careful statement by Bryan Chappell. Notice that he not only emphasizes unity, but also stresses that we are not permitted to unite with those who abandon the truth.
We are called out of our separateness not to do as we please, but to direct our faith and practice toward the truths given to us by the testimony of Scripture. This calling also causes us to honor brothers and sisters of other churches and denominations who unite their thoughts and actions to Scripture. In doing so we must affirm that there are differences that are honorable but not vital; there are believers with whom we differ on matters important, but not essential; and even as were are correcting ourselves by Scripture, we are called to seek ways to come together with those who are with us in their testimony of one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. What we are not permitted to do is unite ourselves with those who have abandoned these truths affirmed in Scripture.[1]
[1] Bryan Chapell, Ephesians, 184-85.
I am thankful that during my sabbatical I leave our pulpit in the capable hands of men like Mike Wittmer, Bob Bixby, and Jeremy Scott. I remind our flock that we need to hear the Word preached, even to our dying day.
A quote from Calvin:
But St. Paul tells us that so long as we are in this world, we must continue to profit in God’s school, and have our ears beaten daily with his Word, that we may on the one hand be checked, and on the other hand be strengthened and set forward more and more. . . Therefore God’s vouchsafing to have his Word preached to us even to our dying day, serve to make our faith firm and steadfast. John Calvin[1]
[1] John Calvin, Sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians, Rev. translation. ed. (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1973), 377.
