Making Melody to the Lord

Here is a guest post from a dear brother at TCC, Kent Capps. My prayer is that it will help us meditate even further on Exodus 15 (Sunday’s sermon here) and respond to God’s glorious salvation with joyful singing.

How essential is singing to the Christian life? Is it a peripheral practice that can be set aside if one doesn’t possess a particular affinity for music or the ability to carry a tune? I think not. While the Bible makes no prescriptions for how often believers should sing—the purpose is not ritual requirement but expression of the heart’s gladness in God—it does indicate that all believers must and will regularly lift their voices to God. “For it is good to sing praises to our God” (Psalm 147:1).

Have you ever noticed that, at crucial points in redemptive history, God’s people sing? Exodus 14 tells the story of God bringing his people across the Red Sea to escape slavery in Egypt. The final verses of the chapter summarize the event: “Thus the LORD saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great power that the LORD used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the LORD, and they believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses” (Exodus 14:30-31). End of story? No, notice how Exodus 15 begins: “Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the LORD, saying, ‘I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously . . . . The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him’” (Exodus 15:1-2). The song continues for eighteen verses, recounting God’s mighty act of redemption and highlighting his majestic holiness, awesome deeds, and steadfast love.

Much later, when Isaiah peers into the future at the messianic kingdom, he couches the coming salvation in Exodus terms. God will lead his people across the Sea of Egypt in sandals, and “there will be a highway from Assyria for the remnant that remains of his people, as there was for Israel when they came up from the land of Egypt” (11:15-16). End of story? No, notice what immediately follows in Isaiah 12:

You will say in that day: “I will give thanks to you, O LORD, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the LORD GOD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation [the very words of Exodus 15:2!].” With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day: “Give thanks to the LORD, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously; let this be made known in all the earth. Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel” [Isaiah 12:1-6].

When God’s people experience the new and final Exodus, the salvation that will arrive through the Messiah, they will again sing! Song accompanies salvation like heat accompanies fire. (The same step from salvation to singing appears in Isaiah 25-26 and other places. When God makes a rich feast for all peoples and swallows up death forever, “In that day, this song will be sung in the land of Judah . . . ” [26:1].)

The New Testament provides its own examples, such as Mary’s Magnificat. Pregnant with the promised Messiah and struck by the magnificent mercy of God, she adds a crescendo to the redemption chorus: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46-47). Her song continues for another eight verses, highlighting God’s faithfulness to his saving promises. She plays right into what Isaiah envisioned—singing saints. She simply couldn’t help herself.

The Apostle Paul calls the believers in Ephesus to take their part in the great choir of witnesses: being filled with God’s Spirit, address “one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (see Ephesians 5:18-21; cf. Colossians 3:16-17). Paul knows that a heart filled with the Spirit will sing.

Finally, it is no accident that, in John’s final vision, we find the heavenly multitude singing “a new song” to the Lamb: “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9-10). Singing must and will find glad expression on the lips of those who have been ransomed with the precious blood of Christ.

So, if God has brought you out of slavery to sin, and you have drawn water from the wells of salvation, then, whatever you do, sing! Don’t just listen to the music. Let it make its way from your heart to your lips. Sing among others. Sing by yourself (make your “quiet times” louder!). Take your gospel strains to the shower, the car, the elevator, and even the bed (Psalm 149:5). Follow the Spirit’s prodding and make melody to the Lord with all your heart.

Treasuring Christ Together (TCT) Church Planting Network in Raleigh

This upcoming week some church planters from all over the nation who are a part of Treasuring Christ Together (TCT) church planting network will be gathering here in Raleigh for their quarterly networking meeting.  This church planting network has been formed through our common relationship with Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, MN.  This church planting network is a partnership around the gospel and church planting for mutual encouragement, training, common vision, and a unified strategy to plant churches all over the United States.  Pastor John Piper, the pastor of preaching and vision, preached at Treasuring Christ Church on June 7 and Pastor Kenny Stokes, the downtown campus pastor at Bethlehem Baptist, preached here November 15 in order to continue to display our partnership in the gospel with Bethlehem Baptist Church who sent us out to plant this church in 2005.

Please be in prayer for our meetings November 30 and December 1 as we continue to strengthen friendships, values, and vision for the spreading of God’s great fame through church planting all over this nation.  The following churches are involved:

Bethlehem Baptist Church

Desiring God Community Church

Treasuring Christ Church

Grace Church- Memphis

All Nations Christian Fellowship

Glory of Christ Baptist Church

Kaleo Church in El Cajon

Jubilee Community Church (beginning stages)

Thankful for the Promises of God

This is my first post in a quite a while. But I wanted to reenter the blogging world with a quote from Charles Bridges that I used in my sermon last Sunday. The aim of the sermon was to shout out from our Exodus sermon series that God is not only All-mighty, but he exercises that almighty power on behalf of his people. Therefore our battle is not an issue of power, but of faith. It is a battle to believe his promises- especially his promises to exert his might on behalf of his people.

In his book , The Christian Ministry, Charles Bridges helps develop the need for faith when he states, [bracketed sections are definitions],

All our failures may be ultimately traced to a defect in faith… The main difficulty… is not in our work, but in ourselves; in the conflict with your own unbelief, in the form of indolence [laziness] or self-dependence (p173, 175).

In a sermon by CJ Mahaney, entitled “What A Mother Can’t Do Without,” he uses a portion of this quote and inserts at this moment, these words:

The remedy [to our own unbelief] is faith in the God of the promises and faith in the promises of God.

Bridges continues,

When faith is really brought into action, the extent and aggravation of the difficulty is a matter of little comparative moment. Difficulties heaped upon difficulties can never rise to the level of the promise of God. To meet the trembling apprehensions [anxieties]- “Who is sufficient for these things?” the answer is ready- “Our sufficiency is of God.”… Unbelief looks at the difficulty. Faith regards the promise. … It is faith that enlivens our work with perpetual cheerfulness. It commits every part of it to God, in the hope, that even mistakes shall be overruled for his glory; and thus relieves us from an oppressive anxiety, often attendant upon a deep sense of responsibility. The shortest way to peace will be found in casting ourselves upon God for daily pardon of our deficiencies and supplies of grace, without looking too eagerly for present fruit.” (p175, 179, 178).

So on this day when toys, gadgets, rings and other things call for our attention. When the money we have or don’t have seems to always be before our face. When the pain we experience or the anxiety that grips our grieving heart flashes constantly in our eyes, may we recall God’s promises. May we call out to him for faith in those promises. As Bridges says, it is faith that “enlivens the heart with perpetual cheerfulness” not materials, or worry, or self-dependence or the constant escape of laziness to the internet or TV. Some might say in unbelief, “How will the difficulty be resolved? I need a job; the kids do not obey; the medical bills are not being paid off, the debt is not going away.” Faith doesn’t pretend to know the how, but it does know the who- the God of all creation, the one who raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Faith trusts that God will provide for our needs according to his riches in glory, in his perfect timing (Philippians 4:19). Faith trusts that God has always and will always exert his power for his people (Exodus 7-11, Romans 8:28-37).

Spend some time today writing out one promise of God. Regard the promise and be awakened to the strength and joy of Christ.

Thankful for the promises of God

What is Your View of God’s View of You?

Here is the final post in this string of blogs on justification.

Question two

“When I hear the diagnostic question (see the post entitled “Justification vs. Legalism”), ‘Do I live believing God is more disappointed with me than rejoicing over me?,” the answer is “Yes.”   But with this statement in mind, how should I rightly think about God’s grief and displeasure over my sin?”

Answer

The answer is found with your view of God’s view of you.  How do you view God’s eyes when you sin?  She answered, “I do see God with a scowl more than a smile over me.  Part of that is because I know God is rightly grieved over my sin and I can’t get that picture out of my mind.”

At this point we must make a distinction between a scowl and grief.

God’s view of you when you sin is as a loving Father.  As your Father, he is broken over you choosing a destructive path that is the opposite of His design. But he is broken not angry.

As a dad, my anger toward my children usually comes because I can’t fix the situation or because I am not in control. I get angry because my plans are not being carried out and my purposes have been thwarted (and ultimately because my heart is sinful).

Yet none of this happens to God.  He is a loving Father who delights in his children, who greives over their wayward actions and many times will slow or stop their plans to turn them to himself.  But none of this is with a scowl of condemnation, but through the view of loving Father, who although grieved, will accomplish his purposes and who has already forgiven you in Christ.

Hoping these thoughts on justification strengthen you to live confidently in his justifying grace, gladly in your spiritual growth, and boldly in your witness to the world.

2 Questions on Justification: 1) How Does a Justified Person Deal with the Sin of Legalism?

After I preached on justification, I had two questions that came to me that I wanted to share with others.  I first of all desire to thank God for their humility in asking these questions. My attempt in this post is to pass on the questions and hopefully provide helpful answers to you. These will serve as my next two posts.

Question one

You gave a list of questions in your sermon on diagnosing legalism in our hearts (see previous post).  After hearing that list, I am convinced and feel guilty about being a legalist.  What do I do now?  Or stated another way, “If we feel the weight of our sin, specifically, we feel guilty for legalism, how can we deal with it rightly?

Answer

This is how a justified person should deal with any sin, whether it is legalism or license.

1. Confess your sin- I am guilty of legalism… or anger or lust. (Don’t’ run from it seeking to escape your sin- see previous post. Definitely confess your sin to God and if applicable, confess to the one you sinned against as well.)  This keeps me from living in denial where the cancer of sin kills the soul.
2. Confess your status-  My status by faith in Jesus is that I have been declared not guilty because Jesus died for this sin and his righteousness is mine. This is how God views me and he is wildly generous, excited to exert his full empowering, forgiving, life-giving grace upon me.   Failing to do this usually keeps me under the waterfall of accusations that come from Satan (cf. Zech 3:1-5).  Another way to say this is to say, “Trust in God’s promises towards his children.”

We glorify God when we plead his promises (In this case, pleading the promise that he justifies sinners. He declares you not guilty and clothes you with righteousness).  He loves to hear the loud outcry of needy souls.  It is his delight to bestow favors. He is more ready to hear than you are to ask.  It is God’s nature to keep his promises. Nothing pleases our Lord better than to see His promises put into circulation.- CH Spurgeon (emphasis mine)

Your battle at this stage is to put God’s promises “into circulation,” that is, to believe the fullness of God’s love for his people, his posture of forgiveness as you trust in His Son, and his power to change you by the power of the resurrection

3. Confess your inability- Just as I am unable to justify myself (unable to make right this wrong before God by working for his approval), I am also still unable to get rid of my guilt no matter what I try to do.  Confessing my inability puts me in the posture of humility and primes the pump for living in and heralding God’s ability to do what I can’t do.

4. Live in Christ’s ability- So I will not be indifferent to sin, but I will trust in God’s declaration over me and his power in me to do what it right. We agree with Paul it is by the grace of God that we are what we are.  And in his grace I will not sit and sulk in guilt, I will trust him and live to enjoy Him to the fullest.  In his grace, I will now fight against my sin- this sin of legalism…anger, lust, etc.- for my joy, the joy of others, and the glory of God.

Justification vs. Legalism

In a sermon on justification, CJ Mahaney helps us understand legalism when he states, “Simply put, legalism is substituting your works for His (Christ’s) finished work.”

CJ also poses some questions that really help expose the heart of legalism.

Questions to help you identify legalism in your own heart.

1)    Am I more aware of and affected by my past sins than I am the finished work of Christ?

2)    Do I live thinking and believing and feeling God is disappointed with me rather than delighting over me?

3)    Do I have an undue concern about what others think?

4)    Do I lack joy?

5)   Do I consistently experience condemnation?

6)   Am I more aware of areas I need to grow than I am of the cross of Christ?

These questions leave many of us standing guilty of legalism, but we need to know how to rightly process the indictment.

The remedy to legalism is the cross.  Robert Murray McCheyne says, “Take 10 looks at Christ for every one look at yourself.”

Jerry Bridges seeks to explain how God sees us in our sin, and how understanding justification rightly frees us up to grow deeper in Christ.

When we pray to God for blessing, He does not examine our performance to see if we are worthy. Rather, He looks to see if we are trusting in the merit of His Son as our only hope for securing His blessing. Disciplines of Grace, 19

We need to hear the gospel every day of our Christian lives….It is only the joy of hearing the gospel and being reminded that our sins are forgiven in Christ that will keep the demands of discipleship from becoming drudgery. Disciplines of Grace, 21.

Few things cut the nerve of desire and effort to change like a sense of guilt.  On the contrary, freedom from guilt through realization of forgiveness in Christ usually strengthens a person’s desire to lead a more disciplined life. Disciplines of Grace, 23.

The next two posts will hopefully help us address the pains of guilt in a faith-filled way.

Posts on Justification: Getting Rid of Guilt Can Crush You or Exalt Christ

I love the church series still continues with a series within a series. I love the church because it is a testimony of God’s amazing justifying grace. So from my sermon on justification I am going to write five quick posts on justification. I hope this is helpful and causes us to trust and celebrate the God who justifies the ungodly.

No matter the sin, the Christian feels guilty for their transgression against God. We can handle our guilt with faith or with the absence of faith. Here is an excerpt from my sermon 3 weeks ago on justification that seeks to explain the wrong ways to handle guilt and offers a brief glimpse into God’s answer for guilt.  The next three posts will also be fleshing out the joys of justification.

When you feel guilty, really guilty, you will do almost anything to get out of that feeling.  This is how many respond:

-       We seek to blame others (we saw it with Adam and Eve in Genesis and humanity hasn’t stopped since). Our goal when we blame: to defer the guilt, to get it off of our shoulders.

• Sometimes this results in the horrors of domestic abuse. If you can’t fix your own pain, then you blame others with force and anger.
• Sometimes the guilt results in divorce or shattered relationships because no one wants to humbly forgive but simply make sure the other person know they were the cause of the problem.  Know that you are your greatest problem and many don’t know where to go.

-       Many times escape is the plan whether through alcohol, drugs, food, sex, movies, video games, sports, etc…  Our hearts scream, “Keep me from having to deal with the reality of the pain I’ve caused or the wrongs I have done.”  We want them to go away but after the escape they are there again and usually accompanied by even more guilt.

-       Once some acknowledge their guilt they will try to hurt themselves through cutting, not eating, or simply depriving themselves of something they wanted but now feel no longer worthy to have.

No matter what you have done, no matter whom you blame, where you escape or how you inflict punishment on yourself, you… you, yourself, stand at the end of the day…guilty.

And if you are guilty, then death, condemnation, emotional turmoil, separation from God is your destiny.

Unless there is an answer for guilt. An answer other than escape and blaming. An answer that takes the guilty and makes them not guilty. If that is the case then we have hope. Friends, there is an answer. The answer is found in Romans 4:5 where we are called to “…trust in him who justifies the ungodly.” God makes right the ungodly. He declares the ungodly not guilty. How? When sinners trust in the punishment bearing, guilt removing sacrifice of Jesus.  This is called justification. This is the Christian’s joy because justification creates reconciliation to God.

Grace Never Quits and Neither Does our Need for It

While studying for my sermon two weeks ago on saving grace, I was struck by a quote from John Newton that will hopefully awaken us to the reality that we need grace to sustain us moment by moment.   John Newton, the author of “Amazing Grace,” talks about a remarkable change in his life prior to his conversion. He diagnoses that it was prior to his conversion because…

I was greatly deficient in many respects. I was in some degree affected with a sense of my enormous sins, but I was little aware of the innate evils of my heart. I had no apprehension of . . . the hidden life of a Christian, as it consists in communion with God by Jesus Christ: a continual dependence on him. . . . I acknowledged the Lord’s mercy in pardoning what was past, but depended chiefly upon my own resolution to do better for the time to come. . . . I cannot consider myself to have been a believer (in the full sense of the word) till a considerable time afterwards.”[emphasis mine;  Richard Cecil, Memoirs of the Rev. John Newton, p. 32-33]

If this is us, may we be indicted and repent.  May we remember our need for grace from the beginning to the end of our lives.

And delight that at no moment in our lives are we ever able to live a godly life apart from God’s divine intervention.

There is no time when we are able to live as Christians without Christ.

Grace is always needed for us to endure to the end. Without grace, which grants holiness, no one will see the Lord.

So today don’t proceed without prayers for help. Don’t succeed without prayers of praise and thanksgiving. Don’t fail without prayers of hope that he is teaching you, growing you and promising to give you more grace in the future. Don’t seek to risk in love without pleading for God to empower, enable, and save through his gospel.  I pray this fuels our church to continue to remember we are a community of grace where grace never quits and neither does our need for it.

Thankful with you that God is eager to pour out grace and give us the kingdom.

I Love the Book of the Church

Many books catch our eye and they almost seem to be in endless supply these days. Once you get one book there is another that you would like to get.  Yet in the sea of books, there is one book that is unrivaled in its influence and unparalleled in its importance. God’s Word alone gives life, saves, and lasts forever.  The Bible is the book of God’s people.  I love the Word of God and its permanence in the church.

The book of Isaiah says, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go the law (instruction), and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” (Isaiah 2:3).

In reading this, I was struck by the contrast between the last days’ glory and the present situation in Israel.  The text portrays the scene in the last days when the people of God will worship him on the mountain of God.  The mountain of God is so special because it is to remind us of the place of his presence. It is there where God’s people will be led and fed by the word of God.  However a devastating scene stands starkly opposed to this glorious picture of perfection in the presence of God. Surrounding this picture in chapter, in the first five chapters of Isaiah, the people of Israel run after gifts rather than God (Isaiah 1:23). They have thrown themselves at idols (2:8,18,20) and are filled with injustice (1:17,5:7). Their “heroes” are drunks and partiers (5:11,22).  Therefore God promises them banishment from the promised land (5:13). Do you know why? “Because they have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel” (5:24).  This indifference to God’s word is summarized in Isaiah as arrogance (2:11,12).  Oh may we not fall into the same arrogance. I love the book of God’s church because it is God’s word that preserves His people.  May we heed the warning from Isaiah’s portrayal of wordless Israel.  My prayer for TCC and God’s church in general is that we would hunger, even ache for communion with God which happens primarily in His word.  Isaiah’s words are still on point today when he says, “The grass withers and the flower falls (video games fade, money will run out, cars will break, clothes will get holes in them or go out of style), but the word of the Lord remains forever” (Isaiah 40:6,8). Let’s spend our time with this “forever word,” the book of the church.

For more, see this post by Kevin DeYoung. It strengthened my heart further reminding me why I love God’s word. May we be reminded of the power, joys, and mind-altering truths that await us in God’s word.

Longing to Never Stray from God’s Word

I Love God’s Electing Love for the Church

I am glad to be blogging again after a long break due to vacation and vacation catch up. But let’s continue in the series “I Love the Church” with “I Love God’s Electing Love for the Church.”  Election is not supposed to be debated but celebrated (Ephesians 1:3-6).  Sunday’s sermon on election only confirmed in my heart how gracious God is to choose rebels like us to make up the church.  My rebellion could not be stronger and his love could not be clearer than when before time began, highlighting that his electing love was not based upon anything in the creation, God stopped my hell-bent rebellion and in his strong mutiny-crushing love, he chose me for his own.  This is the story for everyone in Christ’s church. Below are a few quotes from Sunday that might stir us to stand amazed at his electing love and live empowered to love others because of his mercy.

John Calvin teaches us to delight in mystery and calls us to affirm what God’s word affirms and no more.

- taken from Sam Storms book, Chosen For Life, p180-181

“Nothing is taught [in Scripture] but what is expedient to know….we must guard against depriving believers of anything disclosed about predestination in Scripture, lest we seem either wickedly to defraud them of the blessing of their God or to accuse and scoff at the Holy Spirit for having published what is in any way profitable to suppress.  Let us, I say, permit the Christian man to open his mind and ears to every utterance of God directed to him, provided it be with such restraint that when the Lord closes his holy lips, he also shall at once close the way to inquiry.”

JI Packer’s “Election: God Chooses His Own”

-from Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs

The verb elect means “to select, or choose out.” The biblical doctrine of election is that before Creation God selected out of the human race, foreseen as fallen, those whom he would redeem, bring to faith, justify, and glorify in and through Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:28-39; Eph. 1:3-14; 2 Thess. 2:13-14; 2 Tim. 1:9-10). This divine choice is an expression of free and sovereign grace, for it is unconstrained and unconditional, not merited by anything in those who are its subjects. God owes sinners no mercy of any kind, only condemnation; so it is a wonder, and matter for endless praise, that he should choose to save any of us; and doubly so when his choice involved the giving of his own Son to suffer as sin-bearer for the elect (Rom. 8:32).

CJ Mahaney

-from a sermon entitled, “Sovereign Grace”

If you perish hell blame yourself for it is entirely your fault. But if you should make it to heaven credit God for that is entirely his work.

Charles Spurgeon

-also pulled from CJ Mahaney’s sermon entitled, “Sovereign Grace”

I believe the doctrine of election because had God not chosen me I would never had chosen him, and I am sure he chose me before I was born or else he never would have chosen me afterward.  And he must have elected me for reasons unknown to me for I never could find any reason myself why he should have looked upon me with special love.

At this point I agree with the great hymn, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” when it calls us to respond,  “…Love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all.”

Loving and Spreading God’s love with you