Read This! 12.05.19

Mike Leake

Announcements at Church

I find this helpful in thinking about why to keep doing announcements. We’ve put a few other rules in place surrounding them as well. One in particular is the 50% rule. If it doesn’t impact over 50% of the congregation it won’t be made from the pulpit (or rarely). We are also trying to move to more story-based and video-medium announcements. Does that impact the family feel, I wonder?

6 Ways to Help Your Kids Love Reading the Bible

I really like the idea in #3 to use arts and crafts. I think something like this would help my daughter engage a bit better. I also think something where my son can take more ownership would be helpful too.

7 Casualties of Being a People Pleaser in Leadership

I believe this is an area where God has really grown me. I’ve seen some of these casualties in previous ministry situations. Being a people pleaser really is an awful way to live your life. You’ll never be enough or do enough, but this helps us see you’re actually doing harm to others as well.

How Jesus Addressed Fear, Worry, and Anxiety

These are very good and helpful. There is one that isn’t included that was foundational in my own healing in this area. I think Jesus modeled for us how to address these monsters. I found such solace in Jesus’ experience in the Garden. It help me see that my battle was for obedience in my anxiety and not to keep from feeling anxious.

7 Reasons Tom Schreiner (Tentatively) Holds to Amillennialism

I’ve had Dr. Schreiner in a few classes. He was historic premillennial in one, amillennial in the other. That’s part of what I love about him. He goes where the text goes. I bounce back and forth myself.

Luke: Evangelist to the Rich

I think articles like this are what Kevin DeYoung does best. I’d never really noticed or thought about Luke’s audience being wealthy. This is a neat profile and I think helpful to have a full picture of how the poor don’t have the market cornered on need for the gospel or provision of the gospel.

Christmas at Block 11

Mike Leake

In preparing to preach on Hebrews 8 this Sunday I stumbled upon a quote that floored me.

“Many Jewish survivor-victims of camps like Auschwitz and Dachau remembered with bitterness that their jailers celebrated Christmas and Easter.” Guthrie, G. (1998). Hebrews (p. 285). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.

It’s not like this is the first time I’ve ever thought about the Holocaust or the atrocities at the hands of those who professed Christ. I remember in school being confronted with the horrors of Block 11. But when I read that quote this morning I pictured a beautifully decorated Christmas tree in the guards office, and it was a chilling image.

How in the world could a people celebrate the birth of the God-man, rejoice at His resurrection, and simultaneously put people of his ethnic tribe—the very ones he wept over—into a gas chamber? How can you sing Joy to the World at the same time you are working to eradicate an entire people group?

It’s easy, really. Exalt tradition and sentimentality of a thing over what the thing itself represents. Christmas wasn’t about the advent of the Savior anymore. Neither did the resurrection mean freedom from death and the tyranny of sin. It became a cultural icon instead of living truth.

The same people behind Auschwitz tied a noose around the neck of the pastor who had the audacity to say this of their Christianity:

“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” –Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Those concerned with expelling Germany of the Jewish people were engaged in their very own culture war. One could even argue that it was a war for Christian culture. Of course, it didn’t look very much like Christ but it certainly was passionate about preserving Christian traditions like Christmas and Easter. In fact many of the churches celebrated what the Nazi party was doing to preserve it’s freedom and heritage. Many took their statement concerning “positive Christianity” to be an affirmation of their Christian values:

“We demand the freedom of all religious confessions in the state, insofar as they do not jeopardize the state’s existence or conflict with the manners and moral sentiments of the Germanic race. The Party as such upholds the point of view of a positive Christianity without tying itself confessionally to any one confession. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit at home and abroad and is convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only be achieved from within on the basis of the common good before individual good.”

There’s a fallacy out there that has been dubbed reductio ad Hitlerum. It’s an attempt to invalidate someone’s view on the basis of saying the same view was held by Hitler and the Nazi’s. That’s not my intention here. All I’m attempting to do and say is that if we win the war for a Christian culture but in doing so surrender a Christian ethic, then we haven’t won a single thing. We’re just passionately preserving a type of Christianity which can erect gas chambers with Christmas trees.

When we think about a war on Christmas, I think we’d do far better to think about the war of Christmas. The advent of the son of God into history is an act of war against sin and death. That’s where the battle is found. I appreciate the words of Dean Inserra:

Sadly, in the name of tradition and good tidings, a Cultural Christian can have all the comforts of the Christmas season without being confronted with their need to follow the very One whose birth they acknowledge. (Inserra, The Unsaved Christian, 93)

I’m all for being excited that Joy to the World is playing in the mall and subtly proclaiming the One True King. But it’s not this ability to play the song which we are to be engaged in preserving, but the truth of the song. Because you can sing Joy to the World in Block 11, but you can’t consistently be confronted with the rule of this newborn King and celebrate Auschwitz.

A Christian culture without a Christian ethic isn’t truly a Christian culture.

—

Photo source: here

Read This! 12.03.19

Mike Leake

I haven’t shared a Read This! for quite some time so naturally some of these articles are older. But I still think they are valuable and I’d like you to give them a read.

Tying Up Truth With Threadbare Ribbons

What Lore is describing here is part of why I’ve found writing so difficult lately.

How Does ‘Willful Sinning’ Threaten My Salvation?

I don’t fully agree with Piper here. (My view of the warning passages of Hebrews 6:4-6 is similar in Hebrews 10). But I do agree with how he frames the discussion and defines the terms on willful sinning.

What’s the Point? (Alternative Ways to Frame Your Sermon)

I absolutely agree that our sermon needs structure. And I appreciate some of the suggestions Tim gives here. I’ve thought for a long time that we aren’t really doing the text justice by trying to make it confine to three points. I believe our task is to show what the text says—how we came to that conclusion—and through the whole thing explain why it matters for us today. For me, I tend to preach what I’d call a thread.

3 Ways to Deal With Anger in Ministry

I’m not a fly off the handle in anger type of guy. I’m probably more likely to seethe. I found this incredibly helpful and realistic. The second one is the most difficult for me and the one I’m learning about the most.

9 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Arguing Online

I don’t think this would end all arguments online—some are actually necessary. But I think it’d certainly make the more civil and productive. We would also probably not have nearly as many arguments.

Your Church Needs You to Sing

Another part of this is the necessity of singing songs in church which are singable. I’m not blessed with a tremendous singing voice—and this causes me to not really sing out much in church. This is one thing I’d really like to change. Right now I passionately whisper sing.

Is God Going to Wipe Out the Ocean?

Mike Leake 2 Comments

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. –Revelation 21:1

I’ve only been to the ocean once in my life. And the particular beach that I went to isn’t one that is known for it’s beauty and grandeur. Yet, I was still taken aback. I’m not even a swimmer and I was captivated by this apparently only mediocre view of the ocean. I hope to see the ocean again. But if Revelation 21:1 is any indication I better do it now. One of the greatest elements of God’s creation is the sea, so why is he going to wipe it out? Has he got something against the ocean?

What Does the Sea/Ocean Symbolize?

It’s helpful, especially in a book like Revelation, to consider the importance of metaphor. All throughout the Scriptures the sea and the ocean is symbolic of chaos, danger, and evil. It’s not surprising, then, that the great beast will come out of the sea (Rev 13). This is the place where all that is unpredictable and chaotic comes from.

So it’s not surprising then that to a non-seafaring Israelite the sea would be happily eradicated. If God is going to create a new-heaven and new-earth where there isn’t going to be crying or death or mourning then it’s not surprising that he’d rid the earth of this nasty beast called the sea.

Philip Ryken’s words are helpful:

The sea represents everything that chafes and frets under the dominion of God; everything that is out of our control. But there is nothing like that in the new heaven and the new earth. Everything there is under the orderly blessing of God

But, Will It Be Literally Gone? Like, No Snorkeling In Heaven?

Some interpreters think the sea will be literally gone. John MacArthur actually goes further than any others I’ve read. He believes there won’t even be water but another substance in the river of life:

The sea is emblematic of the present water-based environment. All life on earth is dependent on water for its survival. . . . But believers’ glorified bodies will not require water, unlike present human bodies, whose blood is 90 percent water, and whose flesh is 65 percent water. Thus, the new heaven and the new earth will be based on a completely different life principle than the present universe. There will be a river in heaven, not of water, but of the “water of life” (22:1, 17).

While it’s certainly possible that there is literally no sea, it’s probably better, as R.D. Phillips so eloquently says, to take John’s statement here as “theological instead of topographical”.

Three Reasons I Don’t Believe It’s Literal

There are three reasons why I would lean towards viewing this as a non-literal removal of the sea.

First, consider what would happen if John had only said that we were getting a new heaven and a new earth? In a biblical worldview the cosmos is divided in three parts. The heavens (sky), the earth (land), and the sea. If God only redeems two of those three—and a great beast has already come out of sea to destroy the good—what would make us think this isn’t going to happen again? So it’s absolutely necessary that John has everything within his scope of redemption.

But what type of redemption is this? The second reason I would view this as not a literal removal of the sea has to do with the nature of the new heaven and the new earth. What God is doing is making all things new by means of renewal and restoration. So if the sea is no more, then the sea which is removed would be the old chaotic sea of the old order. Which leads to my third reason.

Consider the biblical storyline. Is there a literal sea in God’s good creation? Are ocean’s from after the Fall, or remnants of the flood? Consider Genesis 1:6. “God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.” If God is restoring humanity to an Edenic paradise doesn’t it make sense that the flowing waters of Eden, untainted by human sin, would not also be present in the new creation?

Conclusion

We cannot be dogmatic on this point because Scripture is not explicit. There is enough within the text of Scripture to push us towards a more metaphorical reading of Revelation 21:1, but not enough to be definitive. Maybe there will not be a sea.

But one thing we can be certain of. Christ, our King, has conquered and all evil and chaos has been defeated. There’s no more uncertainty or pain or any other oceanic turmoil. It’s peace. And it’s beautiful.

I can’t swim well enough to snorkel in this fallen world. The ocean still symbolizes death for me. It’s beautiful, but it’s fearsome. But perhaps some day when the “sea is no more” I’ll be able to snorkel and swim with a glorified shark.

—

Photo source: here