Liturgical Legos and Gospel Logic

Liturgy on the Lord’s Day, if biblically formed and properly ordered, is an experiential participation in the gospel. I have been in many worship services where every element of worship was biblical and appropriate but the arrangement of the whole was like a box of Legos, disconnected and subject to arrangement into whatever shape the pastor may have desired. This is not the way worship was structured in the Bible.

When an Israelite brought his sacrifice to the Tabernacle or Temple, there was a gospel-logic to the sequence of events. First he laid his hands on the animal, confessing his sins and identifying with his sacrifice who would die in his place. The sin offering would be followed by an ascension offering, often translated as the burnt offering because the entire animal was consumed in the fire. Here the worshiper’s consecration to God was visibly enacted. The sacrifice stood in the man of Israel’s place on that altar. It was not only the bull that was being given to God but the believer who brought him. Present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable worship. Finally a peace offering would be presented. In this sacrifice, a token portion of the animal was placed on the altar, but the greater part was given to the worshiper and his family to be eaten in the presence of the Lord. The worshiper, having been cleansed and consecrated, now enjoyed communion with the God who had made peace with him.

This same pattern is seen repeatedly in the OT in corporate gatherings and covenant renewal. It is the same order found in sections of the NT: cleansing, consecration, and communion. This is how the Church ought to come before God. We confess our sins and receive his pardon. We sit under the reading and teaching of his Word as we are made holy by the God who declared us to be so by the righteousness of his Son. Then we celebrate our redemption and reconciliation. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. The body of the Lamb whose blood marks the doorpost of our house is now eaten by the worshiper and his family who are hidden safely inside. We know the Destroyer will not visit this house, because it is God’s house, and he sees the blood and remembers his promise to his people.

There are many reasons to use this pattern in the Church’s weekly worship, first and foremost because it is the way we find worship structured in the Word of God. I am not claiming that all churches who do not are in explicit disobedience or unfaithful to the Lord. But this pattern is biblical, pervasive, and purposeful. It has a gospel-logic, so that no matter the subject of the sermon, no matter how well or poorly the congregation sings, no matter the clarity of the Scripture readings, the congregation will be evangelized every week, led once again through the gospel that first called them to Christ, cleansed, comforted, and confirmed in the grace that is theirs in the Lord Jesus.

In many churches, the success and value of the service depends entirely on one or two features. “How was church today?” means was the sermon interesting and powerful, was the singing loud and beautiful, were there enough Boston Creme donuts or did we have too many of the Lemon Filled ones? When worship is arranged by a biblical model of covenant renewal, these individual pieces are placed in the larger context of the Church’s experience of grace in the presence of God. No longer does the service seem to depend on the man up front or the congregation’s participation. “How was church today?” God met with us, forgave us, assured us of his love, encouraged us in our faith, and reminded us that he remembers his promise to save us. We experienced the goodness of our Lord again in the gospel. Thanks be to God. --JME

Feeding the Sheep

One of the greatest challenges in weekly preaching is remembering that you must meet your audience where they are and help them in their daily walk with Christ. The typical Reformed pastor spends a lot of time with books, reading old volumes of theology and sermons written by men who have been dead for many years, sometimes centuries. He may also spend time online or actively corresponding with other men about current theological controversies and the latest issue which has been designated the true test of orthodoxy. But when it comes time to write his weekly sermon(s), if he is a good pastor, he must remember that he was sent by Christ to shepherd a particular flock of sheep. He is not pastoring an audience on YouTube. He is not enlightening the broader presbytery by the brilliance of his exposition or saving his denomination by the power of his elocution. He is a shepherd sent to lead, feed, water, and protect particular sheep, and most of those sheep have very different priorities than their theologically attuned pastor.

Reformed churches are, rightly, critical of evangelicalish churches where the sermon is always something like Seven Ways to Have a Better Marriage or What Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Can Teach Us About Loving Jesus. Such preaching neither edifies saints nor points the unbeliever to Jesus Christ. But Reformed churches can easily make an equal, if seemingly opposite, error by concentrating on theological minutiae or the kinds of issues that, while important, do not truly serve the needs of the sheep struggling to follow Christ in the world today. This is how we get multi-year sermon series on “the error of the Federal Vision” or multiple lessons on “the implications of the 16th century Council of Trent for assessing the Church in Rome.” Some Reformed churches are so intent on preaching justification, and so averse to anything that seems like moralizing, that they cannot bring themselves to preach the third use of the Law. I have visited churches where the preaching was solid and Christ-centered and utterly devoid of any practical application.

There is a balance. The sheep need to be warned of errors and taught how to think biblically and christianly. The saints may not always recognize why a certain issue is important or how a particular topic may be valuable to them. Faithful preaching involves laying one brick at a time, week by week, year after year, hoping and praying that the Lord will use it to build his Temple and that it will not look like the tower in a game of Jenga on round twelve.

Biblical preaching is practical, and practical preaching in Christ’s churches should always be first and foremost biblical. That is why the Reformed churches’ commitment to systematic exposition of Bible books, as a general model, is so helpful and markedly superior to the preaching in many other traditions. If the pastor is faithfully preaching his way through Bible books, the Holy Spirit will get the nutrients to the sheep that they need, whether the pastor realizes what they are or not.

Good preaching is not just teaching what to do this week or how to think about a single issue. It is forming us in the likeness of Christ. It is a means of grace used by the Spirit to chip away the remaining sinfulness and carve us more and more in the form of Jesus. It is training discernment, teaching us not only how to view one thing but learning how to look at everything through the lens of creation and covenant, Scripture and the life of our Savior, cross and future crown. Faithful preaching is an exercise in forming the christian mind, bit by bit, step by step, from the youngest child in the congregation to the oldest saint waiting on the doorstep of eternity to see Christ for the first time. --JME

Making Excuses for Evil

Two people groups are at war in the Middle East. The conflict is longstanding and complicated by multiple generations, and centuries, of political, social, and religious history. Grievances are claimed by both sides. Arguments are made for the righteousness of each one’s cause and for the injustice of the other.

One of these groups is an organized nation. The other is an acknowledged terrorist organization. One side allows members of the opposing ethnic and religious group to live in their society, participate in their economy, and even serve in their parliament and government positions. The other is openly committed to eradicating their opponents from the earth, not just destroying the nation, but annihilating the people as an ethnic group. One side is charged with the “sin” of occupation and colonization. The other explicitly states their commitment to genocide.

Whenever there is war, there will be collateral damage, innocent casualties, and various atrocities. Even in the most just war, prosecuted according to the strictest standards of justice and martial ethics, innocent men, women, and children will be harmed, intentionally or unintentionally. In this conflict, one side works to limit collateral damage and casualties and is committed to punishing evil and injustice within its own ranks. The other side films the atrocities its soldiers commit and publishes them on official social media platforms, celebrating the horrors which are that organization’s ordinary means of warfare, not exceptional or regrettable departures from the standard.

Hamas is deliberately, systematically, and openly making war on a civilian population. Women raped publicly and repeatedly, children decapitated, civilians taken as hostages, bodies mutilated, unarmed communities burned. How do we know these things are happening? Because Hamas films them, publishes them, celebrates them. These are not aberrant and regrettable actions set within a larger program of just war. These are war crimes, hundreds of them, terrorism and barbarity adopted as official strategy.

How did America get to the point when legislators and leaders of executive agencies would be so morally bankrupt as to offer sympathy, “context,” and patience for such evil? “Hamas’s actions are unacceptable, but we must remember the larger context,” or so we are told. “Yes, decapitating babies and serial raping and sodomizing women is bad, but Israel should suspend all military action and enter into peace negotiations.” Really? These are the same people who lecture us about blaming the victim when it comes to sexual assault. If they didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all. Similarly, how did the American Church get to the point that we would tolerate such moral equivocation from its leaders? Pastors who hem around the edges of this issue demonstrate that they have no moral discernment.

You do not have to be a Zionist, neo-con, or dispensationalist to support Israel in the war with Hamas. You simply have to have a brain, a functioning moral conscience, a soul that is not entirely hellbent and darkened by self-deception and demonic lies. The State of Israel is largely secular, and even its religious population overwhelmingly rejects Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah. But  the conduct and stated mission of Hamas is explicitly, indefensibly evil. There are no mitigating circumstances, no excuses, no room for context, nuance, or negotiation. The Arab-Israeli conflict may be complicated. The Israel-Hamas war is not.

This is not a political disagreement. It is evil incarnate. Evil must be recognized for what it is and eradicated. Every leader, soldier, and financial supporter of Hamas should be identified, hunted down, and executed. Every apologist and sympathizer for Hamas should be ashamed, publicly denounced, and removed from any position of government power and influence. This is what is right. It is what is just and necessary to protect the citizens of Israel, both Jews and Arabs. And it is what is necessary for the well-being of the Palestinian people. Their hope for peace and place in the Middle East requires the destruction of Hamas and terror organizations that practice violence in the name of freedom. –JME

See also: "Thinking Christianly about Israel"