Author: revheff

The Trouble with Community

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That’s easy.

Christians. Saints by position in Christ who still act like pagans in sin. No matter how spiritual believers become, while in the flesh, the potential for relapse ever remains a threat.

In my role as a pastor, occasionally I take the heat for the local church body by receiving complaints about real and/or perceived breakdowns in its expression of community. These trouble me, especially the ones I cause by my own lapses into gospel amnesia that lead to legalism or license in my own life. I pray and labor to find ways to correct our imperfections.

I think a sermon series like The Graces of Gospel-Shaped Community like we are giving ourselves to for the rest of this year at OGC can tend to spur us on to greater heights and depths of community. Certainly I pray and labor for that in multiple ways. But the downside of such an emphasis is that it can serve to highlight our failures and weaknesses in community too. And that can lead to discouragement, if we don’t take care to keep things in perspective.

Something helping me in that regard is to remember the nature of the first century church. We really can’t afford to romanticize the experience of the New Testament church. That kind of thinking tends to reveal itself in comments like, If we could only be like the church of the first century, that would fix everything wrong with our church.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. The fact that we have so many one-another passages in the New Testament is due to the fact that the assemblies of the first century experienced their fair share of sinful dysfunction and more. In fact, we wouldn’t likely have some of the precious one another passages of the Bible, if it weren’t for the troubles of a church like Corinth for example.

This Sunday’s text from 1 Corinthians 11:17-34 illustrates this perfectly. The Corinthian saints got so out of whack in their fellowship that they abused one another in the taking of the Lord’s Supper. God got so miffed at them for their offenses that He judged some with sickness and death (v. 30)! If you want to know the cause of the Lord’s wrath on this occasion, don’t miss this Sunday’s sermon – The Grace of Waiting. I know, I have no shame, but I refuse to let the exegetical cat out of the bag before its time.

I could cite similar historical and contextual instances from other books of the New Testament, but I think you get the point.

So while we take seriously our failures in community with a view to allowing the gospel to shape us more thoroughly toward improvement, let’s remember that we have ample evidence from the New Testament that sinners living in community will trouble one another.

And that’s exactly why we need to be in community — gospel-shaped, grace-laden, Christ-exalting, Spirit-empowered community.

37 Ways to Love One Another

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Someone sent me a link with a thorough list of the one another passages of the New Testament confirming my notion that they all constitute intricacies of the ultimate grace of loving within our relationships in the body of Christ.

The author introduces the list with this provocative assertion:

A local church is not built by one man, or even a few men, but by every believer being actively involved in ministry through evangelizing the lost people in their lives and serving their fellow Christians. A quick glance at the practice of the New Testament church reveals that they thought very little about programs and very much about relationships.

For more of his thoughts as well as the complete list of the one another passages for your study and prayer click here.

More Bonds of Brotherhood TT This Sunday

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I was not prepared for the post-service rush last Sunday.

At the close of my message I offered a give away of about ten copies of a recent issue of Tabletalk magazine on fraternity called The Bonds of Brotherhood.

One of my brothers, a football coach in our community, almost took me literally about the tackling thing. I saw my life flash before my eyes as he rushed the pulpit!

Anyway, those copies disappeared faster than Dan would have flattened me on the offensive line. But I have good news! My beloved source from Ligonier has graciously offered to make another thirty to forty copies available for distribution this Sunday.

So if you would like the full treatment on brotherly community in one of the best Tabletalk issues I have read, see me (no tackling please) and I will be happy to gift you one. Please give some serious thought to becoming a subscriber. You won’t regret it.

To whet your appetite, here is a sample from Pastor Burk Parson’s opening article:

Even though many men are completely content with the community and companionship of images, games, and voices on a screen, men desperately need the camaraderie and fraternity of other men. Men are made to experience intimate and authentic, loyal and enduring friendships with other men — on the battlefield, in the foxhole, at the gates of the city, and at the coffee shop on the corner. And while no wise and truly humble man will ever consider himself a hero, each and every man of God by His grace is called to strive to conquer this world, his flesh, and the Devil, shoulder to shoulder with other men who together serve one another in a company of heroes as husbands and dads who serve by leading their wives, families, churches, and communities into fellowship with God.

Oh that God would make us a community of such men at OGC!

The Grace of Serving (Part 1)

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Today’s message from Galatians 5:1-15 is now on the web. You can listen to the audio here.

I articulated the main theme of the text this way:

So here is my main take away from this text in terms of what it means through love serve one another. Beware turning liberty in Christ into license to sin by serving others through love by practicing biblical peacemaking. Love one another well through a devoted bondslave-like service in so-far-as-it-depends-on-you-live-peaceably-with-all (Rom. 12:18), God-glorifying, Christ-imitating, biblically-informed conflict resolution at every turn.

As promised, here is the link for the September 22-25, here in Orlando, Peacemaker Ministries National Conference, with the theme of Hope in Brokenness.

Help for Expositional Listening

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In his little book on healthy church membership, Thabiti Anyabwile promotes expositional listening as the first mark of a healthy church member. He defines expositional listening this way: listening for the meaning of a passage of Scripture and accepting that meaning as the main idea to be grasped for our personal and corporate lives as Christians (p. 20).

He gives six suggestions for cultivating this habit:

  1. Meditate on the sermon passage during your quiet time. FYI, tomorrow’s text is Galatians 5:13-15.
  2. Invest in a good set of commentaries. These would aid your study in your quiet time prep.
  3. Talk and pray with friends about the sermon after church. I supply discussion questions in every bulletin to help with this.
  4. Listen to and act on the sermon throughout the week. We upload the audio recording normally every Sunday afternoon after the message is given that morning.
  5. Develop the habit of addressing any questions about the text itself. Be active not passive in your reading and study.
  6. Cultivate humility. Beware knowledge puffing up as opposed to building up.

Will you seek tomorrow to develop this mark of a healthy church member? Pray that all who attend will.

The Profile of a Gospel-Centered Person

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Every third Thursday of the month I travel down south to attend what’s called a Gospel Cohort. About thirty guys, many of them church planters with the Acts 29 Network, and most of them way younger than I, gather for refresher lessons on the centrality of the gospel in our lives and ministries. It is one of the most important things I do in my schedule to ward of the regular onset of gospel amnesia.

Today’s talk covered the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, what John Stott called Jesus’ manifesto of the kingdom. The presenter described a profile of a gospel-centered person from the opening words of the sermon in Matthew 5:2-12. The first four aspects he referred to as Living at the Foot of the Cross. The second four he called Loving from the Foot of the Cross.

Here they are:

  1. A Gospel-Centered person is keenly aware of their spiritual poverty (v. 3).
  2. A Gospel-Centered person is quick to mourn their sin (v. 4).
  3. A Gospel-Centered person lives a life of meekness (v. 5).
  4. A Gospel-Centered person hungers for righteousness and the One who is righteous (v. 6).
  5. A Gospel-Centered person pursues a life of mercy (v. 7).
  6. A Gospel-Centered person pursues a life of purity (v. 8).
  7. A Gospel-Centered person pursues a life of peace (v. 9).
  8. A Gospel-Centered person pursues mercy, purity, and peace regardless of the cost (vs. 10-12).

The cross is the great equalizer. At the foot of the cross all stand on the same footing and in the same condition – spiritual beggars entirely dependent on God’s mercy. From the foot of the cross, captivated by the gospel and motivated by its mercies, all can live a life of mission in this world characterized by mercy, purity, and peacemaking no matter what the cost.

Are you a gospel-centered person? Live moment-by-moment at and from the foot of the cross and God will make you one.

Beautiful Feet

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These don’t look so hot to me today.

But they dazzled with beauty on Friday, August 5, in the village of Mrima, Kenya. I mean with an Isaiah 52:7 kind of beauty.

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

I got to do that with this man, among others.

Allow me to introduce you to Tandara, the village chief and local Muslim imam of Mrima. He hosted us for the dedication of the well OGC funded to have dug in this unreached community of Eastern Africa. You can see the well pump in the background. In this photo Tandara had just accepted a copy of the Digo New Testament.Pray he reads it!

During the dedication ceremony, with all the village surrounding us and Tandara seated at my feet of all things, I found my anxiety growing about the words I would say in preaching the gospel to this man and his people – people who likely had never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ before. To say the least, this was not my normal Friday morning agenda!

The Lord was gracious to me as he brought to mind the promises of His word, especially the one above about lovely feet. I claimed that as I stood to preach the gospel from John 7:37-38 with as much boldness and courage as I could muster with the help of the Holy Spirit. Rarely have I felt such anointing from the Lord. I was so grateful for His help. I felt so privileged to accomplish such a mission.

Do you think of your feet as beautiful when it comes time to share the gospel with someone? You should. Last Sunday I put forth an appeal at the end of the service to look for opportunities to share with others and to let me know when the Lord opens the door.

God has been so gracious to me already this week. And it is only Wednesday! On Monday I met with a young man who is new to our church. He is on fire for evangelism and practically begged me for outlets to share his faith. I put him in touch with some folks in the area who go out on Friday nights and he was so grateful. On Tuesday I heard about another brother in our fell0wship who plays basketball in his neighborhood on a regular basis. He recently invited some of his unbelieving friends to church and they accepted his invitation. Another brother shared with me how he and his wife have been befriending neighbors who are Mormon. Recently he had a discussion with the husband about how the Old and New Testaments fit together in terms of the covenant faithfulness of God.

I felt like the Lord encouraged me to see that we have many beautiful feet in the congregation at OGC!

Do you see your feet in such a light? Are you praying for open doors for the gospel where you live, work, and play? When you feel the anxiety hit you in such situations, remember the promises of God, especially that your feet are most lovely when you proclaim the good news of the gospel.

The week is only half done. I would love to hear from anyone else in the body about your exquisitely beautiful, most lovely, gospel feet!

Time for a Check Up?

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Spiritual that is.

Thabiti Anyabwile has written a 9Marks book to help church members assess the state of their spiritual health. It’s called What Is a Healthy Church Member? He proposes that you can identify a healthy church member by ten marks.

  1. Expositional listener
  2. Biblical theologian
  3. Gospel saturated
  4. Genuinely converted
  5. Biblical evangelist
  6. Committed member
  7. Seeks discipline
  8. Growing disciple
  9. Humble follower
  10. Prayer warrior

How do you fare a first glance? Would you call yourself in excellent health spiritually or do you have some deficiencies to ask the Lord to help you with? This little read will help you. I’m taking a chapter a day in my quiet time and using the marks as prayer fodder for working my way through our directory. Care to join me?

Christ's Love the Source

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I continue to read through the Free Grace Broadcaster edition of Loving One Another as I launch our new series The Graces of Gospel-Shaped Community.

In a reprint of one of Charles Spurgeon’s sermons, I came across this powerfully motivating paragraph:

Do you feel the love of God shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Ghost? Knowing is [good], but enjoyment as the result
of believing is better. Does it not sometimes force the tears from your eyes to think that Jesus loved you and gave
Himself for you? On the other hand, does it not at times make you feel as if, like David, you could dance before the
ark of the Lord? To think that the love of God should ever have been set on you? That Christ should die for you?
Ah, think and think again: For you the bloody sweat, for you the crown of thorns, for you the nails, the spear, the
wounds, the broken heart—all, all for love of you who were His enemy! In proportion as your heart is tender and is
sensitive to this love, it will become a constraining influence to your whole life. The force of this influence will also
depend very much upon the grace that dwells within you. You may measure your grace by the power that the love
of Christ has over you. Those who dwell near their Lord are so conscious of His power over them that the very
glances of His eyes fill them with holy ardor. If you have much grace, you will be greatly moved by the love that
gave you that grace and [will be] wondrously sensitive to it. But he who hath little grace, as is the case with not a
few, can read the story of the cross without emotion and can contemplate Jesus’ death without feeling. God deliver
us from a marble heart, cold and hard!

What he said.

No Sermon Upload Today

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Due to security reasons attached to the sensitive nature of the material and locations presented by our guest speaker today, there will be no sermon upload for August 14, 2011.

Lord willing, we will post the next sermon in the series The Graces of Gospel-Shaped Community, as I resume the series next Sunday, August 21, 2011.

We appreciate your understanding for our need to be discreet in this regard.