Joe Holland

Storms clouds over Main and Davis St. 

Taken with an iPhone 3GS, using the Camera+ app.

Refreshing and Retrenching

Let us look steadfastly to the blood of Christ, and see how precious that blood is to God, which, having been shed for our salvation has set the grace of repentance before the whole world.  Let us turn to every age that has passed, and learn that, from generation to generation, the Lord has granted a place of repentance to all such as would be converted to him.

Tomorrow marks a bunch of new beginnings for me. 

1. I turn 32.  I'm not all that worried about it.  The average life expectancy of a male in the US is still 76.  So I figure I'm not middle-aged until I hit 38.
   
2. We celebrate our 1 year anniversary of being residents of Culpeper.  I love this town.
3. I begin a 2 week vacation.  It's the first extended vacation since I've been church planting and I'm really excited about it.  My hope is to use the two weeks to do a global reboot on life. 
   
4. I begin a 2 week sabbath from internet and social media.  I figured with all this stuff about the internet making us dumb that I'd take a few weeks to unplug.  My hope is to pour every extra redeemed moment into my family.
   

So the Apostle Paul rolls into Thessalonica to start a church.  If history teaches him anything it tells him he won't be there long until someone runs him out of town.  He has one shot.  What should he teach?

“Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.” — Acts 17:1–4 ESV

Yup, he taught Old Testament Christology with specific focus on the penal substitutionary atonement provided by God for sin in the person of Jesus.  He didn't teach on relationships, money, child rearing, or politics—though I think he would have gotten to those things eventually.  What the Thessalonians needed to hear, what would be most helpful to the growth of their church was that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, was killed to make atonement for sin, did rest in the grave, was raised up to life, and is seated in glory and life at the right hand of the Father. 

History proved true and Paul was run out of town after some of his buddies were roughed up by some angry religious guys. 

Paul was there for 3 weeks and taught Old Testament Christology.  What do you think happened to that little church after he left, now pastor-less and left to deal with the aroused anger of a good portion of their city? 

The simple answer is that they grew and thrived.  The gospel of Jesus—preached from the Old Testament on 3 consecutive Saturdays—turned the Thessalonian church into a regional example of how church planting should be done.  Paul would later write to them and about them,

“And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything. For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.” — 1 Thessalonians 1:6–10 ESV

The life of a church planter is fraught with temptations to believe that program, charisma, and chance are the characteristics of a health growing church.  I'm thankful God gave me a book that teaches me otherwise and challenges my idolatrous pragmatism.  The gospel of a savior crucified for me and for the people to whom I preach is what builds the church. 

If I could only preach one thing I would and do preach Jesus.

Such is the grasping tendency of the human heart, that it must have a something to lay hold of — and which, if wrested away without the substitution of another something in its place, would leave a void and a vacancy as painful to the mind, as hunger is to the natural system.

The human heart must have an object of affection or it withers.  Romantic love.  Vocation.  Family.  A sports team.  Political ideology.  The heart has a grasping tendency that cannot be satisfied except by the possession of an object.  And that object can only be dislodged by a more prized object.  And so our lives are the collection of stories about our hearts' possession and dispossession of eligible suitors—always grasping never satisfied.

What occupies the tight fisted grip of your heart?

The Bible present the human heart as a dissatisfied organ of misplaced affections until it finds its supreme object in Jesus.  No other object can dislodge Jesus from the heart of the Christian because no other object is great than he.

“Thus we shall behold the person of a sinner and evildoer represented in Christ, yet from his shining innocence it will at the same time be obvious that he was burdened with another's sin rather than his own.”

One of the more profound of Jesus's teachings was the ubiquity of the ten commandments.  They do not exist as 10 important things to do out of a bunch of important things to do.  Rather, they are a summation of all that God required to earn his favor.  I know many people who—believing this truth—develop a deca-partite view of morality, ticking off in their moral memory which of the ten commandments they have kept and which they have not.  This leads to a high school grading system of God's approval—desperately hoping that 70% will be enough to graduate to eternal bliss.

The difficulty is that each individual offense against God is a breach of the whole.  You cannot break one without breaking the other nine.  The Marrow of Modern Divinity takes up this point showing how Adam's mastication and ingestion of the forbidden fruit was a 10 part affront to the God that had created him and graciously preserved him.

When he ate,

1. He chose himself another God when he follows the devil.
2. He idolized and defiled his own belly; as the apostle's phrase is, "He made his belly his God."
   
3. He took the name of God in vain, when he believed him not.
4. He kept not the rest and estate wherein God had set him.
5. He dishonored his Father who was in heaven; and therefore his days were not prolonged in that land which the Lord his God had given him.
6. He massacred himself and his posterity.
7. From he Eve he was a virgin, but in eyes and mind he committed spiritual fornication.
8. He stole, like Achan, that which God had set aside not to be meddled with; and this his stealth is that which troubles Israel—the whole world.
9. He bear witness against God, when he believed the witness of the devil before him.
10. He coveted an evil covetousness, like Ammon, which cost him his life, and all his progeny.

But God did provide the remedy in Christ.  Christ would come and obey at every point all ten and so the whole law.  He would do so in order that all that believed in him might have his spiritual curricula vitae and so earn by his merit right standing with God.

Thomas Boston reflecting on this truth says,

Sinners, being united to Christ by faith, return, being carried back the same way they came; only their own feet never touch the ground, but the glorious Mediator, sustaining the persons of them all, walked every bit of the road exactly, Galatians 4:5.  Thus in Christ, the way of free grace, and of the law, sweetly meet together; and through faith we establish the law.

We're singing a new-to-us song this coming Sunday.  It's a Charles Wesley hymn called Rejoice, The Lord is King.  Alex Mejias of High Street Hymns has put a new tune a new stanza to it—both of which I'm grateful for.  It's born from the triumph themed psalms scattered throughout the Psalter.

I often think of Jesus's atoning work and his kingly rule.  But I don't often think of them together.  This song calls us to do both.

Rejoice, The Lord is King
1. Rejoice, the Lord is King! Your Lord and King adore.
Rejoice, give thanks and sing, and triumph evermore,
and triumph evermore.
Lift up your heart, life up your voice.
Rejoice, again I say rejoice!

2. The Lord, the Savior, reigns; the God of truth and love.
When he had purged our stains he took his seat above,
he took his seat above.
Lift up your heart, life up your voice.
Rejoice, again I say rejoice!

3. Rejoice in glorious hope! Our Lord, the King will come
and take his servants up to their eternal home,
to their eternal home.
Lift up your heart, life up your voice
Rejoice, again I say rejoice!

I attended my grandmother's funeral today.  It was a day made more poignant by last week's sermon preparation.  I preached on Jesus raising the the son of the widow of Nain.  Death has been my constant companion for two weeks now.  But so has Jesus my Savior.  He came to kill death—as strange as that sounds.  And one day, death itself will be no more.