Pastor, your Ecclesiology is Showing

Ecclesiology matters.

If everything is the mission, nothing is the mission.

We mustn’t mistake a potential byproduct for the immediate objective, when it comes to the mission of Christ’s Church.

The great theologian J. Gresham Machen wrote,

“For Christians to influence the world with the truth of God’s Word requires the recovery of the great Reformation doctrine of vocation. Christians are called to God’s service not only in church professions but also in every secular calling. The task of restoring truth to the culture depends largely on our laypeople.

 To bring back truth, on a practical level, the church must encourage Christians to be not merely consumers of culture but makers of culture. The church needs to cultivate Christian artists, musicians, novelists, filmmakers, journalists, attorneys, teachers, scientists, business executives, and the like, teaching its laypeople the sense in which every secular vocation-including, above all, the callings of husband, wife, and parent is a sphere of Christian ministry, a way of serving God and neighbor that is grounded in God’s truth. Christian laypeople must be encouraged to be leaders in their fields, rather than eager-to-please followers, working from the assumptions of their biblical worldview, not the vapid clichés of pop culture.”

Commenting on Ephesians 4, John MacArthur states,

“God not only gave gifts, but in order to see those gifts fully realized He had to do something else. He had to give men, ‘And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastor-teachers for the perfecting of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.’

 Even with those spiritual gifts, which we all receive at our salvation, the body of Christ is not going to be what it should be, demonstrating Christ in the world, unless there are some preachers who perfect the saints for the work of ministry for the building up of the body of Christ. That word ‘perfecting’ – it may in your translation say ‘equipping’ – is the role of those men mentioned in verse 11, the perfecting of the saints, the equipping of the saints, katartizō is the Greek verb. It basically means to be restored, to be complete, to be full, to be mature, full-grown, perfect. Not sinless perfection, but a kind of maturity, a kind of grown-up spiritual character.”

The purpose of the Church is to evangelize the lost and sanctify the saints, to maturity where Christlikeness will permeate all facets of their individual lives. Not to corporately weaponize and reorganize/prioritize the Church to address the societal ills of the moment, and thereby deviate from the Church’s primary calling.

We must not make a potential long-term outcome (collective cultural transformation) the immediate objective (individual justification/sanctification and Divine glorification.)

By all means, leverage teachable moments to bring the timeless truths of Scripture to bear on surrounding societal events, but beware succumbing to Satan’s scheme of chasing cultural relevancy at the expense of sound ecclesiology.

God’s faithfulness in 2020

As we close the books on the year 2020, the phrase “But God…” came to my mind. Amidst ever-changing circumstances of this past year, the one constant remained the character of God, in which believers find their ultimate trust (Mal. 3:6).

Corrie ten Boom, who courageously harbored Jews from the Nazis in Holland during World War II, wisely stated, “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”

Just a sampling of these words in Scripture speaks to God’s sovereignty and provision:

“But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark; and God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water subsided.” (Gen. 8:1)

 “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.” (Gen. 50:20)

 “My flesh and my heart may fail, But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” (Ps. 73:26)

 “But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power.” (Acts 2:24)

 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom. 5:8)

 “So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.” (1 Cor. 3:7)

 As we reflected, as an EA team, upon ministry amidst the unique circumstances of the past year, God’s faithfulness shone brightly:

“In spite of the pandemic, the Lord proved Himself faithful by:

  • Protecting our families and love ones, as well as strengthening our faith through the trials and providing opportunities to serve the needy in His name;
  • Opening doors for the K2:42 Church Network Development Program, by providing new technological means of training, highlighting God’s providential character;
  • Utilizing Abundant Life Program participating and alumni churches to serve the most vulnerable throughout the pandemic;
  • Serving families through the Genesis Ministry’s Biblical Counseling, regarding how to respond to emotional and spiritual effects of the lockdowns.
  • Enabling us to launch our Church-facilitated Savings Program, which provided instruction on how to deal with the financial challenges of unemployment and economic hardship, particularly among the Haitian and immigrant population most affected.”
    – Carlos Pimentel, Director of Operations

As we head into 2021 and our 9th year of ministry, we are anticipating ongoing spiritual and financial challenges, yet, trusting fully in God’s constant character amidst changing times.

End-of-year contributions have historically been a means by which God the Father has supplied Empowering Action’s yearly financial needs “according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19). So, to the extent that you are able to support EA in that fashion, please know that we covet your prayer and financial partnership.

Watch the below video to get a sampling of the approximately 2,600 individuals being discipled through our K2:42 Church Network Development efforts.

My Christmas Prayer: More Athanasius’s for the Church

Today’s church desperately needs more men like Athanasius.

Athanasius served as the bishop of Alexandria during the most intense period of the Arian controversy, which denied the deity of Christ. Condemned in AD 325 by the Council of Nicaea, Arius taught that Jesus Christ was the first of God’s creation, worthy of honor, yet undeserving of the full adoration and worship to be reserved for God the Father alone.

Conversely, the Council of Nicaea proclaimed that Scripture is clear that the Son of God and the Father are homoiousios (of the same substance), sharing equally divine attributes, with one being no less God than the other.

Christ himself declared, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).

As Anselm of Canterbury would echo some 700 years later, regarding Christ’ unique qualifications to serve as propitiation “for the sins of the whole world” (1 Jn. 2:2),

“For the God-Man to do this, the person who is to make this satisfaction must be both perfect God and perfect man, because none but true God can make it, and none but true man owes it.”

Refusing to change his views regarding Arius’ heresy, Athanasius was exiled five times for his defense of Nicene orthodoxy.

Sadly, today in the United States we see many once orthodox ministers and ministries caving to the current culture crush, having been taken “captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ” (Col. 2:8).

Amazingly, today, those relatively few who stand for biblical fidelity and theological orthodoxy are labeled enemies, by those who were once their allies in “contending earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3).

The statement below from Ligonier Ministries explains perfectly why the American Church should pray fervently this Christmas for more pastoral Athanasius’s while studying earnestly like congregational Bereans (Acts 17:11).

“Athanasius considered the preservation of truth in the church more important than position or power. He is an excellent model of the true servant of God—one who is absolutely committed to the teaching of Scripture, which is the very truth of our Creator.

 Old heresies rarely die. Instead, they get repackaged and republished. Today, sects such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses promote views that are almost identical to the views of the ancient Arians. It is therefore incumbent upon us to know the truth of Scripture on essential matters of the faith so that we can give an answer when we see these heresies come our way.”

Please join the EA team in celebrating that, while sin decisively separated humanity from God, God himself rectified the situation through the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ Jesus.

Merry Christmas!

“Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?”

If you’re like me, etched in your memory is the scene of Linus reminding Charlie Brown of the true meaning of Christmas, by reciting Luke 2:8-14 describing the birth of Christ.

Christmas is the celebration of Jesus Christ’s incarnation: the appearing on earth of God’s eternal Son.

But the issue is not THAT Jesus came, the question is WHY he came.

The Apostle John states emphatically, “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.” (1 Jn. 3:8)

Like a liberating force, Christ arrived at Christmas to begin his redemptive mission, which entailed a sinless life and sacrificial death, and culminated in his resurrection and ascension to heaven.

The late theologian RC Sproul believed the book of Hebrews provides “the most magnificent portrait of Christ anywhere in Scripture.” The passage below describes why Christ’s incarnation enables “death to be swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15:54) for those who place their faith in Him.

“Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.” (Heb. 2:14-15)

The Son of God was not by nature “flesh and blood,” yet, willingly, took upon himself humanity for the sake of providing redemption to mankind (Phil. 2:5-8). Christ’s humanity enabled him to represent mankind. His divinity ensured the sufficiency of his sacrifice.

The contemporary hymn In Christ Alone contains the phrase,

No guilt in life, no fear in death. This is the power of Christ in me.

We are enabled to confidently proclaim those lyrics, which echo the passage above, because of the rich theological truths that forego them.

In Christ alone! – who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe.
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied
For every sin on Him was laid
Here in the death of Christ I live.

Amidst the busyness and unsettledness of this season, please take time to contemplate Christ’s incarnation, which preceded his death and resurrection, and provides our salvation.

And, as you are able, we covet your prayers and year-end contributions this holiday season, as we enter our 9th year of ministry, in equipping the global church for greater biblical fidelity and ministry effectiveness.

Encourage to Receive on Giving Tuesday

To post a blog, emphasizing RECEIVING on a day that secular society has set aside to foster charitable GIVING, seems both countercultural and potentially counterproductive for a ministry!

Guilty as charged! Empowering Action firmly believes, that after 8 years of God’s protection and provision, if we focus on ministry faithfulness the Lord will be supply sufficient finances.

With that promise in mind, and recognition of the unique emotional, physical and financial strain this pandemic has placed on many of us, let me offer you this word of spiritual encouragement on receiving the grace of God from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth.

“We then, as workers together with Him also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain.” (2 Cor. 6:1)

The great theologian H.A. Ironside wrote of this verse,

“Christians have been richly blessed; God has lavished His goodness upon us. What response are we making to the love of His heart? To receive His great goodness, to glory in salvation by grace, and yet to live carnal, worldly lives is indeed to ‘receive the grace of God in vain.’ Let there be on our part a constant response of loving devotion to Him who has so graciously accepted us in the Beloved.”

Paul later explains to Titus the effects the grace of God produce in salvation and sanctification,

“For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age.” (Titus 2:11-12)

So this Giving Tuesday be reminded to GIVE loving devotion to the Lord, as a result of having RECEIVED His grace…

Christians as Atheists?

There was a time when Christians were accused of being atheists…and it was an unintentional compliment.

Despite paying their taxes, submitting to governing authorities, and even offering prayers for the emperor and the empire as a part of their worship, the early church was accused, amongst other things, of being subversive atheists.

Justin Martyr, a convert from paganism who went on to become the most prominent amongst the early Church apologists, argued that Christians, while unwilling to worship the emperor or other gods or participate in social events associated with pagan religion, factually were moral, upright, and law-abiding citizens who were the empire’s “best allies in securing good order.”

John MacArthur provides essential cultural context to comprehend this accusation:

“The Romans had a very broad and somewhat tolerant attitude toward religion. They allowed their subjects to worship whatever gods they wanted to worship, as long as they also worshiped the Roman gods. Their approach to religion was all-inclusive and what bothered them about Christianity was Christianity was exclusive. Christians preached an exclusive message that there is only one true God, one Savior, and one way of salvation. And they not only believed that, but they propagated that. They preached that. They were evangelistic, trying to win converts among the nations that were part of the Roman world.

This went against the prevailing, dominant role of religious pluralism. Christians therefore were denounced, strangely, as atheists because they rejected the Roman pantheon of gods, because they would not worship the emperor as God, and because they didn’t worship idols. And the Romans couldn’t disassociate a god from an idol. If you had no idol, you had no god. They were atheists. And so, here are these subversive atheists, assaulting the unity and the peace of Rome with their exclusive God and exclusive message.”

My fellow believing Americans, does this sound painfully familiar?

It should.

We, too, in 2020 live in an “inclusive” society, angered by Christianity’s exclusive message. Refusal, like the early Christians, to acknowledge any god other than society’s pluralistic false deity, will produce wrath, amidst society’s redefined definition of tolerance.

Additionally, I think it’s essential to note Satan’s malicious practice of leveraging cultural contexts in redefining words, then and now.

Darrow Miller in A Toxic New Religion how this tactic is at work, once again, 2,000 years later,

“You would think that the new religion by now would have created its own particular vocabulary—but no. For the last 50 years or so, it has simply redefined some of our culture’s most important words. For example, Eric Metaxas and Anne Morse note sardonically that the new religion’s abortion activists ‘like to use the same words we pro-lifers use, but they’re using an entirely different dictionary.’ Which words have been redefined across culture? Only words such as marriage, freedom, love, compassion, and justice—words that are the very foundation stones of Western culture. According to Os Guinness, ‘There has been a subtle shift in the meaning of many Western ideas, so that once-strong Jewish and Christian [words] are now used in different ways that decisively change their meaning.’

This matters because words matter. They have the power to convey truth and help us understand reality—or obscure it. Words and language are the basic building blocks of culture. Stripping words of their true meaning turns out to be incredibly destructive.”

Ultimately, I believe:

  1. We, “Christian atheists,” should brace for a wave of intensified persecution.
  2. God’s grace is sufficient.

And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor. 12:9–10)

  1. Persecution, while painful, will ultimately purify the Church and glorify the Lord, as it purges false teachers, false gospels, and false professions of faith.

God is on His Throne

Amidst the chaotic turmoil of our current environment, you can rest assured that the Lord is still on His throne.

A brief word of encouragement from Psalm 46:1-3:

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.

Steve Lawson in the Holman Commentary provides the following insights:

Having understood the all-sustaining power of God, the psalmist wrote, “We will not fear.” This is a bold statement of confidence in God inspired by the greatness of the Almighty. Regardless of what the psalmist and the people of God face, they have no reason to fear. God is in control.

 The psalmist continued, “Though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.”

 This is a picture of confusion, represented as a momentous earthquake that caused an upheaval of the tall, lofty mountains. The mountains, representing stability and continuity, seem to collapse into the sea; “and the waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.” This imagery conveys earthshaking circumstances. As the mountains crash into the sea, the sea responds by flooding outside of its assigned barriers. In spite of all this turmoil that pictures devastating circumstances seemingly out of control, we will not fear. God is in control.

Remember what Spurgeon said,

“The sovereignty of God is the pillow upon which the child of God rests his head at night, giving perfect peace.”

50 Cent Word

Here’s a 50-cent word to add to your vocabulary: merismus.

A frequently used figure of speech in the Bible, merismus is a literary device that uses polar opposites to communicate entailing everything in between.

For instance, in order to communicate that His kingship is universal, Christ says, “All authority was given to me in heaven and in earth” (Matt. 28:18). Christ is not limiting His power to those two specific places, but, rather, He is clarifying that there is no location outside the sphere of His dominion.

When Christ identifies Himself as Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. (Rev. 22:13), He is not saying that He is merely the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. The phrase expresses infinity, the boundless life of God, which, as John MacArthur notes, “Embraces everything, includes everything, and transcends everything.”

What relevance does this have to your everyday life? The Holy Spirit in Scripture uses this literary device to communicate that this Jesus, the object of our worship, possesses a kingdom without border and an infinite existence.

“Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 2:9-11)

 

 

Praying Colossians

Donald Whitney is his book Praying the Bible writes regarding combating a boring prayer life,

“So what is the simple solution to the boring routine of saying the same old things about the same old things? Here it is: when you pray, pray through a passage of Scripture.”

Colossians 1:13-18 is a great example regarding the incomparability of Christ Jesus. In the midst of addressing false teaching that had infiltrated the church in Colossae, Paul points the church to Christ as their Savior (v.13-14), eternal God (v.15), creator (v.16-17), and head of the Church (v.18).

How you, Father, rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of your beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.

He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.

Father, may Christ, our Savior and the head of the Church, have preeminence in our lives today. May our words and deeds be edifying to others, and glorifying to your Name.

Navigating a Pandemic and Political Firestorm

During these strange times in which we live, what do you find yourself wishing you had more of?

  • Bandwidth, as distance-learning children drain your WIFI
  • Influence, over government decisions impacting your life and livelihood
  • Clarity, regarding what the future holds

How about more grace and peace amidst this ongoing pandemic and political firestorm?

In the introduction to his second epistle, Peter writes,

“Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.”

Grace and peace come from knowledge of God and Jesus Christ. Knowledge in the New Testament is characterized by a personal knowledge, unlike philosophic speculation or mystical experience. As a result, the Apostle Paul says in 2 Timothy 1:12, “I know in whom I have believed” not “in what I have believed.”

William Barclay notes,

“When Peter speaks of grace and peace coming through the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ, he is not intellectualizing religion; he is saying that Christianity means an ever-deepening personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”

And what, specifically, is this grace and peace, afforded to us by a deepening walk with Christ?

Kenneth Wuest clarifies that in this context God’s grace refers to His “sanctifying grace, the work of the Holy Spirit producing in the yielded believer His own fruit. This peace is sanctifying peace, the tranquility of heart that is the result of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the believer.”

God’s grace forms the foundation for peace, both peace with God (Rom. 5:1) and the peace of God (Phil. 4:6-7).

And there’s a multiplication principle at work in the life of the believer:

As we grow in our knowledge of God and Jesus, taught by His Spirit through the reading of His Word, and obedience to His Word (enabled by His grace and Spirit), grace and peace will be multiplied in our lives.