The stuff of the promises
The other day I picked up volume one of William Tyndale’s works. A few pages in I am struck by this quote:
“NOW IS FAITH UNDER THE PROMISES, WHICH DAMN NOT; BUT GIVE PARDON, GRACE, MERCY, FAVOR, AND WHATSOEVER IS CONTAINED IN THE PROMISES.”
This expression appears in a discussion about law and gospel. The former requires perfect love and works; the latter, faith and faith alone.
What strikes me is the way he talks about faith in relation to God’s promises, that faith grabs “whatsoever is contained in the promises.” Faith, entering into the living promise of God itself, takes ahold of what it offers. It gets its hands on the stuff of it. This puts us in a mightily blessed position as children of God. For, whatever he offers us by way of promise (which is a whole universe of good things), we can have, and enjoy now.
It seems to me that when we think of God’s promises, we usually think of promised things to come, such as going to be with the Lord when we die, the resurrection of our frail bodies, our glorification, and the age to come in the new heavens and new earth. However, many of God’s promises offer us things right now. The peace of God, a cleansed conscience, strength to know his love, energy to serve him, love for one another and for all, earthly provision in all things, and much, much more.
Are you well familiarized with God’s manifold promises to his children? Acquaint yourself with this treasury of utterances standing ready to impart very substantial graces to you, and take hold of whatever you need today by faith, for he who promised is faithful.
Latent Anti-Churchism
“the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” Eph. 3:9-10
The Lord Jesus Christ famously uttered that his redemptive work would produce one people of God, with one Shepherd over them. The exact nature of this grafting in of the Gentiles has sparked endless debates in recent years (say, the last 150 or so). Older generations of Christians were wiser, and generally understood that the latter days fulfillment of all God’s promises to his people centered upon the church, the body of Christ. Even if there remain outstanding promises of God for ethnic Israel, they will only find their fulfillment as the ethnic children of Abraham become believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thus find their way into the fold of the church. And so it comes to the same thing: one flock with one Shepherd.
Paul is apostolically clear: “For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one…that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two…that he might reconcile us both in one body through the cross” (Eph. 2:14-16). I don’t suppose it can be stated any more forcefully than that: one new man in place of the two. For in the eschatological appearance of the Seed of the woman, he has brought about all things promised, fulfilling that ancient word to Abraham that in him and his Seed all the families of the earth would be blessed.
There lies within the belief we call dispensationalism a kind of built-in anti-churchism. If we maintain that the church is merely a sort of parenthetical work of God in history, while he waits to fulfill his “original” promises to natural Israel in the future, we have asserted, whether we realize it or not, a second-class citizenship within the kingdom of God. Incidentally, this is exactly how racism works, and how the black American population came to be the disenfranchised, shadow population that it has historically been (see my work, Lemuel Haynes: The Black Puritan). As it is, only equal citizenship in the kingdom of God can eliminate the very kinds of divisions that Paul is obliterating in the text. In fact, equal standing in the commonwealth of God’s eschatological people is the only answer to racism of any and every sort. What our Lord said of the poor may also be spoken of prejudice (and every other brand of sin for that matter): “The racists you will always have with you.” For while souls remain outside the covenant community of God, there will necessarily be such things.
Rather, let us rejoice in the astounding work that God has accomplished through Christ to create this new people, his people, the church. For we are those upon whom the end of the ages has come, and we stand on the brink of eternity. The present form of this world is passing away, and the only hope that anyone, Jew or Gentile, has, is the finished work of the Messiah on behalf of sinners. What our ancient sojourning brethren before us hoped for, we have seen and heard, and this is what it means to be grafted in.
Heaven on earth
“To you I lift my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens!” Psalm 123:1
Mankind has always been fascinated with the skies. Who has not looked up at the nighttime tapestry with transfixed awe, gazing at the marvels it holds forth, and wondering what secrets it keeps for itself? And with good reason. For these things have been built into the heavens by God, as a testimony to his majesty.
The heavens as God’s dwelling place
Scripture constantly speaks of the heavens as the dwelling place of God. He looks down from heaven upon all the sons of man, knowing all their ways and searching their hearts to the very bottom (Psalm 33:13-15). Of course, heaven cannot contain God. He fills all things to overflowing (1 Kings 8:27; Jeremiah 23:24). But heaven is the place of his special dwelling (Isaiah 57:15). And while this dwelling place is what the Bible calls “the third heaven” and “the paradise of God” (2 Corinthians 12:2-4), it is also true that the first and second heavens (earth’s atmosphere and the physical universe, respectively) direct our attention to him.
Looking upward
We are wont to pray with our heads bowed and eyes closed. This is certainly a lawful posture for prayer—a downward gaze, such as the justified tax collector exhibited (Luke 18:13). However, there is also the looking up to heaven. Jesus did this when he prayed for the loaves and fish (Luke 9:16). I think we ought to do it as well, for even the psalmist does so in the present verse, as he directs his prayer to the living God.
As we consider the sun and the stars, the clouds and the galaxies, we are to think of the one who fashioned them, who rides upon the heavens, the great Helmsman of the universe (Psalm 8:3; Psalm 19:1). For though he is everywhere present, he is uniquely revealed in the skies, a wonder-work to man, and it humbles us (Psalm 8:4).
But, something has changed. For, while God is omnipresent spirit, there is now someone physically up there, so to speak, and seated on a throne. In fact, it’s a human, like us. For that is where our elder brother Jesus is seated in victory at the right hand of Power, directing the course of all things and ever interceding for us.
Now we look up to him, as we await his return, and we find our hearts stirred when we think that this God-Man will soon blast through the universe and ride on the clouds of the sky to harvest the earth with the great sickle of judgment and redemption. For then it will be that heaven, real heaven, comes to earth, and men may regret having prayed so often, “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus! Crack the sky and take us home, for we long for our adoption as sons of the living God.
Year in review
I thought it would be beneficial for us to pause and reflect on the past year as a church. Here are seven encouraging things that happened at Redeeming Cross in 2018.
Moved to Anthony
In years past we have been as the patriarchs, dwelling in tents and not knowing whither we went. We have, however, been guided by a strong Hand every step of the way. We are so thankful for our time meeting at the Bridge Center, and, when we felt it may be time to move on, we spent months in prayer and deliberations as elders and with all the members. We are thankful to have reached a decision together and on April 1 we began gathering at Anthony Middle School in the Kenny neighborhood of South Minneapolis. It has been a challenging but beneficial move for us. We hope to continue growing at this new location, and it has certainly made our gatherings more efficient. We have done some door-to-door evangelism in the neighborhood and need to do more. We must continue to pray that God will use us in this part of town and beyond.
Pastor Marty
After years of prayer, the Lord has finally sent us a third elder! Pastor Gottfried and myself were absolutely thrilled when Marty Pagano and his dear wife Barb began visiting Redeeming Cross a couple years ago. I myself have been praying for an elder brother to come along ever since my mentor Bob Bert passed in 2014. We installed Marty in April and he has been a tremendous addition to the elder board. His experience and giftings compliment Gottfried and myself and add great wisdom to the team. Continue to pray for Pastor Marty and for all the elders. We are ever in need of grace.
Suffering well
This last year has been a time of trial for several of our members. From losing a precious child to suffering marital unfaithfulness and divorce to being out of work, I am so very proud of the ways in which the saints have endured in faith and joy in Christ. I don’t particularly preach on suffering, but I do preach Jesus Christ and him crucified as the treasure and gladness of his people. The Holy Spirit is blessing this kind of preaching to make our people strong.
Planting a church
Our dear friend and former Redeeming Cross member David Torres approached the elders this summer with a church planting idea for Mesa, Arizona, where he lives with his lovely family. It is a largely unreached part of town with a giant Mormon population. We are honored to affirm David in his godliness, gifts, and calling, and are so very thrilled to be the official sending church of Christ Church North Mesa. The process has not been entirely free of hand chopping and eye gouging, as we have sent one of our own beloved members, Nick Larson, to be part of the planting team. The new church is set to launch in May of this year. Please pray for dedicated members and more elders to help David. You can learn more about the church here.
Preaching through Numbers
Pastor Marty and I broke up the monotony of my infamous stand alone sermons to preach through Numbers this year. We emphasized seeing the great object of our faith, Jesus Christ, in the ancient book and were both challenged and strengthened by our times of study. The sermons were, we trust, encouraging and eye-opening to the people. It is always a special treat to trace out that blessed Emmaus Road through the Old Testament. The sermons may be found here.
Wrath and Grace Publishing
My writing ministry with Wrath and Grace Publishing continues to grow. This year I was approached by our friends at Desiring God to write an article based on my published biography, Lemuel Haynes: The Black Puritan. You can read the article here. This year we also published our first work by authors other than myself. My dear friends Nicholas Alford and Nick Kennicott wrote a tremendous book for young ministers entitled In Praise of Old Guys. Our friend Conrad Mbewe, the African Spurgeon himself, was kind enough to write a foreword. “This book,” he wrote, “may be small, but its potential for good is incalculable.” We are also adding several more authors to the team for 2019. Please pray for this ministry.
New members
As my faithful readers will recall, we were praying for 30 new members this year. The Lord did not see fit to provide us with the number, but has instead given us about 12 new additions. We have learned to calculate our size by spiritual weight rather than head count. Besides, it seems a special sized group, for with that very number our Lord turned the world upside down. They have just completed new member classes going through the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession and will begin interviews soon. We hope to install this exciting new group of folks sometime in February.
Please pray for the ministry of Redeeming Cross Community Church as we seek to preach Jesus Christ and him crucified as faithfully and effectively as he will grant us, for the glory of God in all things.
He is what he is
“But God, being rich in mercy…” Ephesians 2:4
These are famed words of the apostle Paul: But God. Exploring in some detail (and not without chilling effect) our fallen condition in the first first three verses of the chapter, these words are the great pivot of grace upon which the chasm between what we were and what we are can be felt. And it is often felt by believers, which is why these words are so famous.
What I would like to consider very briefly is the words which follow. What they come to is this: God did what he did because God is what he is. He set himself in glorious conjunction with our fallen state, making us alive with Christ, because of what he is, namely, rich in mercy. You may have noticed that I did not say God is who he is (which is true, and really just another way to say it), but God is what he is (which seems to drive the point home). This is God’s being, his eternal essence. And what God is is merciful, very merciful. It is, as it were, the stuff he is made of.
All God’s saving acts in time and space hang upon and flow out of what God always is, for here is One who does not change. And so you see that the glorious gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ always leads us back to the One from whom it came bursting forth: God, in all his incomparable fullness. We are what we are because he is what he is: rich in mercy toward sinners.
Zombie Christmas
“you were dead” Ephesians 2:1
Inspired penmen cast our salvation in the imagery of life and death. “But God,” says one of them, “being rich in mercy, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (v. 5). If salvation is life, being lost is the state of the dead. And a strange kind of death this is, for these dead move, walk, and even live, after a fashion (v. 2, 3). The undead crawl into one’s mind at this point.
And that is exactly what you were before Jesus Christ was revealed to your soul. Let’s think about this for just a moment. Say the words: I was dead. Recall your former manner of life; the one thing I can say about that whole season is, you were dead. And you didn’t know it! Sure, you knew you were a cosmic criminal, and worthy of judgment. But dead? “Not I.” That, it seems to me, is the real terror of it all. You would have woken up in a real living death, but God…
“Most people,” said Aslan, “have [died]. There are very few who haven’t.” Apart from Christ, all people are dead, even now. Jesus came to live among the dead and to raise the dead. We are all of us lepers by nature; Jesus came to make the lepers whole. So, when you gather with your families and friends this Christmas, remember the undead, and ask God to make them alive.
Godbody
“the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” Ephesians 1:22-23
We hear a great deal today about incarnational ministry. It usually comes to us in the form of missional neocalvinism and its incarnational life groups and non-Sunday focussed churches. If we’re being quite honest, it is in many cases the modern echo of the old heresy, Preach the gospel at all times, if necessary use words. After all, if our good deeds to our fellow man, our works of faith, are themselves expressions of the gospel to others, then our evangelism need only take the form of words and sentences and definite assertions, as Denethor says of using the One Ring, at the utmost end of need.
But there is a true idea in the incarnational. When we talk about Christ’s body, we distinguish. First, there is Christ’s body proper, his physical body, in which the Father is exposited for all to see through the Person and work of the Son made flesh (John 1:18). Second, there is what is called the mystical body of Christ, which is his people, his church. This is the body of which the apostle speaks in these lofty verses.
If we take Paul very seriously, it’s hard to imagine the mighty chapter of Ephesians 1 coming to its crescendo in us. For he speaks of such things as God’s eternal purpose and the angelic majesties, the rule and authority and power and dominion of verse 21. But the reason is that, in all God’s cosmic work, it is in us, the redeemed children of Adam, that the fullness of God is expressed. For, he who made all things dwells in us, and in us, as the redeemed, the full range of his divine attributes is on brilliant display.
Indeed, he fills all things, but the particular, special presence of Christ is found in his people, in his church. And not just individual believers here and there, serving him truly in the world, but in the church proper, the church gathered. When we come together in corporate worship before God, sitting under the means of grace, we are the main event in the universe.
That certainly puts being on time to church in a different light, doesn’t it? So prepare your heart before God for this coming Lord’s Day, when the fullness of him who fills all things will be on display in our little gatherings. For truly it is then and there that our cup runneth over.
Supercharged
Paul wanted the faithful Ephesians to move from concepts to communion. There is knowing the truth of God, and then there is knowing the God of truth, through his truth. This is his prayer for them, and for all believers, in the second half of chapter one.
There are three truths he wishes believers to know in this way:
“the hope to which he has called you”
“the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints”
“the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe”
I would like to take a moment to reflect upon the third item on this apostolic prayer list.
Believers are the ongoing subjects of God’s power. What kind of power exactly is explained in the next verse: “according to working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places” (v 20).
First, this is a resurrection power. The Bible’s nickname for being totally depraved unregenerate children of Adam under the wrath of God is being dead in sin (2:1). When you were saved, you were raised from spiritual death, or, resurrected in Christ. Your baptism pictured this. But the resurrection power of God toward you did not cease upon your conversion; it continues to work and transform you into the image of God in Christ. This is always happening by his providence, and most especially through his means of grace.
Secondly, this is God’s power toward Christ. Jesus earned this resurrection power by his perfect life and wrath-bearing death. Because the Righteous One put away sin when he died, death could no longer hold him, having no dominion over him. And so, God raised him in a breathtaking act of power which tore the fabric of creation and produced the only physical new creation stuff in existence: the resurrected body of the Lord Jesus Christ.
What this means for us is that, in Christ, we are the perpetual recipients of God’s powerful grace, which Jesus earned with his law-fulfilling life and sin-atoning death. He is the proper subject of its working; and we, in him, are its proper subjects by imputation. He did it for us.
God’s power is always working in your life if you are a believer. You can rest in his promise to finish the good work he started, and bring you to stand before him in splendor and holiness with great joy. However, if you once begin to really grasp this truth, you will find your faith so strengthened, your joy so full, and your heart so at peace, that you may come to feel that you are, even now, as Paul says in the second chapter, “seated with him in the heavenly places.” And that is something worth praying for.
Heart Eyes
“I didn’t know that my heart has eyes,” said the hater smugly. He didn’t like the song Open the Eyes of My Heart and vented his frustration thusly. While the wise man can play the part of the fool, I don’t think that was his role. I believe Ignorant was the character upon the stage. For, had he never read, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened (Ephesians 1:18)?
Yes indeed, your heart has eyes. Your head does too (well, if you’re wise it does, says the wise man — Ecclesiastes 2:14). These biblical inner optics are rather different than the pagan’s idea of the third eye—they are the truth at which the ignoble perversion grasps. After all, was it not for its ability to make one wise that Eve ate the fruit? And was it not because their eyes were opened that Adam and Eve fled from the presence of the Maker? This was an enlightenment which plunged the whole human race into death and pulled down the fabric of the universe with it. So get as woke as you like about how messed up this world and the people in it are (except you, of course)—it will solve nothing, and you will remain a fallen realm on legs, a very world of living ruin.
The Ephesians had their fair share of these magic third eye openings prior to faith (Acts 19:19). Now they needed their understandings opened. Why? Not only to grasp the concepts of God’s cosmic grace, but to handle the realities themselves. This heart work must happen before we are able to experience God’s truth—and that is the experience that counts.
Heart’s eyes means that we are in the realm of experience, of affections and desires. Yes, we must become heart-eyed emojis for God’s grace in Christ, filled with faith, hope, and love, or we have failed to taste and see that he is good. The cold-hearted psychonautical mountings of the heathen’s third eye openings feel significant, but they feel and know nothing of God’s power and amazing love for sinners.
For this reason you must pray the prayer of the psalmist every time you open God’s word: “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.” (Psalm 119:18). The old Grinch’s heart grew three times in size; may the eyes of your heart outdo the corrupted Who. Pro-tip: The wondrous things to see are the Lord Jesus Christ in all his saving splendor!
Obligatory Thanksgiving Post
Ah yes, Thanksgiving. I feel about it how the old round preacher felt about Christmas: there is certainly no religion in the keeping of Thanksgiving Day, as a holy observance, but yet we are, with the Spurgeon, glad for the extra day together afforded to families by it. On this account, to adapt his own phrasing, I could wish there were 20 Thanksgiving Days.
The giving of thanks is an exotic plant that only grows in its native soil: a heavenly heart. The giving of thanks is the mark of the child of God, just as ingratitude is the mark of Satan’s own little ones. It is that badge of dishonor given to them by the apostle: “they did not…give thanks” (Romans 1:21).
Fear not, I will not be giving you the salutary observe Thanksgiving spiritually (for this is true of all things, after its own fashion), nor its sister-exhortation, Make everyday a Thanksgiving. Rather, I simply want to observe that you are either a thankful person or you are not. No amount of exertion on your end of things can produce it, just as no amount of, shall we say, inaction can squelch it. It is either there, or it is not, because you are either it, or you are not it.
Take this week to examine whether it is so with you. How fares it with your soul? For it is the proof of nothing less than your eternal destiny, in whatever direction that may be. You are either a recipient of God’s free gift of eternal life to sinners through the blood of his Son Jesus Christ, or you are not. Secure for yourself the blessed status of giver of thanks by trusting in Jesus today.