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A follower of Jesus

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Eph 5 – The Mystery of Marriage (pt2 of 3)

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There are many things I want to teach, but I decided to start by addressing one of the thorniest parts about biblical marriage–submission.

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord…

A friend of mine leads a small group at his church of married couples. And just last week, he asked the ladies, is it natural to submit to your husbands? One wife shared, yes, it’s natural, but our husbands make it unnatural. I don’t know who this sister is, but she is very wise.

This idea of a woman submitting to a man is a landmine. Preachers don’t want to step on it and risk getting their legs blown off. They don’t want to touch this subject for fear of receiving a bunch of angry emails on Monday morning after preaching about women submitting. It is so politically un-correct in our modern climate to talk about submission in marriage, which is why many pastors totally avoid this topic. I think that’s why so few of us have heard a sermon about marriage despite attending church for many decades.

It is so taboo to teach about marriage because of this idea of submission. The mere mention of the word causes people to react violently. If you believe in this idea of submission, you will be labeled by some as a legalistic, narrow-minded, chauvinistic bigot. The very notion of submission to authority, any authority, is out of fashion today. It rubs against the grain of our culture. It is totally at odds with contemporary attitudes of permissiveness and freedom. We are a skeptical people when it comes to any form of authority. We want to flatten out all relationships. Ours is an age of liberation and anything sounding like oppression, in this case oppression of women, is deeply resented. Submission sounds like subjugation. Therefore, many want to strike it from our vocabulary when talking about marriage.

What are we to say to our critics who can be quite vocal when pastors like me want to talk about submission? In my humble opinion, first, we have to apologize. We have to agree that yes, it is sadly true that women in many cultures for centuries and even to this day have been exploited. They have been treated as lesser than men and as servants in their own home. Even 50 years ago, Christians in this country promoted the idea that Christian women needed to stay home and homeschool their kids and cook and clean and Christian husbands went to work and didn’t lift a finger at home and didn’t help with child rearing. Those are stereotypes because a good portion of Christian churches and Christian couples back then believed this is what it means to live out our duty to our family.

Christians need to acknowledge with shame that we often went along with these cultural currents. We kept silent. We maintained the status quo because we were too comfortable or too scared to speak out. Or we were simply ignorant about what the Bible said. In so doing, we have been complicit and perpetuated some forms of oppression toward women.

May I remind you that Jesus was the first person to give dignity to women. He treated women with courtesy and honor at a time when they were despised. It is Jesus who said, “Let the children come to me” in a period of history when unwanted babies were discarded like trash or abandoned for anyone to pick up so that they can be raised as slaves or prostitutes. And it is Jesus Christ who taught the dignity of manual labor by working as a carpenter, washing his disciples’ feet and saying, “I am among you as one who serves.”

Next, I think we want to discuss how this topic of marriage demonstrates how culture can sometimes undermine the authority of Scripture in our lives. Culture should always bow the knee to Scripture, not the other way around. Scripture says some unpopular things and we have to make adjustments in our lives before the Word of God. But often the case, if something becomes unpopular, we change Scripture or leave out portions of Scripture to justify our behavior.

To show you what I mean, let’s read a few passages. Please turn with me to 1 Cor 11:2-5. [READ]

Living in the 21st century, we read this and think, head covering? I don’t see any of the women here wearing a bonnet or a yamika or a head covering. So we conclude, I guess this passage doesn’t apply to us. Many jump to that conclusion based on the cultural practice. But, we need to learn how to read Scripture and distinguish culture practices, which can change, from universal principles that never change. Women wearing head coverings was a common cultural practice in the first century at the time when Paul was writing this letter to the Ephesians. That tradition is no longer practiced by women in the year 2013. However, it is interesting that in verse 4, men still practice what Paul talks about here. To this day, if a man is wearing a cap and it’s time to pray before dinner time, what do we do? We take off our cap out of respect to God.

In v10, Paul calls the head covering a SYMBOL of authority. In other words, the head covering is a symbol that the woman willingly is submitting herself under the authority of a man in a church setting, presumably a pastor, or elder, or bishop or overseer. Whether we wear head coverings or we don’t is NOT the main point because the head covering is just a symbol. How do most churches today symbolize women being under the authority of men? Our modern day equivalent is ordination. At this church, and most mainstream, conservative, evangelical churches, only men are ordained as pastors. And this is how women submit under the authority of the church.

You may say, wait a minute. Head covering is a cultural practice. The modern day equivalent of head coverings is the practice of ordaining men only. A few decades from now, what if the practice of ordaining women becomes more palatable by a larger segment of society? Because symbols change. Then, is it okay for a woman to be ordained as a pastor? What is the basis for women submitting when our cultural practices are always in flux? Right? That’s the key question.

1 Cor 14 talks about women being silent in churches, and at our church, we have women praying and sharing testimonies and leading bible studies on campus. This may be confusing. It seems really arbitrary and Christians seem to pick and choose what to follow.

This is a clear case when we need to be able to separate the cultural practice from the spiritual principle.

1 Cor 11
3 But I want you to know that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of the woman, and God is the head of Christ.

What I just read is not a cultural practice. It is an unchanging spiritual principle. The head of every man is Christ and the man is the head of the woman. When we hear the word “submit,” we often think the one who submits is less valuable or lower than the one who has been given the authority. Notice that even Jesus submits. The head of Christ is God. Although Jesus is fully God, although he is perfectly equal with God the Father, yet he submits under the authority of God the Father, who is Christ’s head.

Why is man the head of woman? Turn with me to 1 Tim 2:11-14. [READ]

I put women being silent in the church in the same category as women wearing head coverings. These are cultural practices. Paul had reasons that prompted him to recommend this particular cultural practice at the church in Corinth. The cultural practice is not what is important, but it’s the principle that informs our practice. What’s the underlying principle? The principle is that there is an authority structure.

Why does Paul say that women should be silent? Being silent is a cultural practice that points to an authority structure. And the basis for this authority structure is a universal principle. Actually, two universal principles. One, Paul points to creation order. Adam was created first, then Eve. And two, Eve was deceived, not Adam. We get so hung up on the cultural practice–in this case, women being silent–that we don’t read the verses that follow about creation order and Eve being deceived. These are historical facts that never change.

I don’t think the first point requires much convincing. Adam was created before Eve. You can read it for yourself in Gen 2 so there is no debate. The second point about Eve being deceived may take a little bit of convincing. So please turn with me to Gen 3:1-7. [READ]

When you hear sermons about the Fall of Man when sin entered the world, we normally group Adam and Eve together. They fell into sin together at exactly the same moment in exactly the same way. But if you pay attention to the details, you see that they fell into sin differently and at different moments in time. Notice that Satan went to Eve and she was the one who was deceived first and then Eve led Adam into sin. Why didn’t Satan go to Adam? We don’t know, but we can speculate that Satan saw an opening in Eve that wasn’t as prominent in Adam.

Look at how Satan asks a question and then Eve mistakenly quotes the Word of God. She added the part about touching the fruit. If you eat the fruit, you will surely die, God said. But Eve remembered it as, You must not eat it OR touch it, or you will die. She is slightly distorting the Word of God. God never said that if they touch the fruit, they will die. Only if they ate the fruit. Eve got confused. At that point, Eve could have consulted Adam. It says in v6 that Adam was with her the whole time. Eve could have submitted herself and asked Adam to make sure that she was remembering the Word of God correctly. But she took the lead and she ended up being deceived.

What about Adam? God spoke directly to Adam. He knew the Word of God. He saw where this conversation between Satan and Eve was going. He was standing right beside Eve the entire time. He should have led and stopped Eve and said, what are you doing? That’s not what God said. Adam should have stepped in and laid down his life for Eve and protected her from being deceived. But he was passive. He was on the sidelines twiddling his thumbs. And he saw Eve take the fruit and without thinking, he took a bite himself.

To recap, what’s the biblical principle to defend male headship and female submission? Adam was created first and Eve was deceived first. Adam did not lead properly as he should have and Eve did not submit and that’s when all hell broke loose and sin entered the world. So, to break the cycle of sin, we need to recapture the correct authority structure.

If you agree that there is an authority structure along gender lines, then you are a complementarian. If you deny that there is a scriptural basis for male headship and female submission, then you are by definition an egalitarian. A complementarian believes that men and women are equal in value and dignity and worth, yet they differ in their roles and these different roles complement one another. Just like God the Father and God the Son and God the Spirit are absolute equals, yet they have distinct roles.

An egalitarian, on the other hand, treats men and women as interchangeable parts. Yes, men and women are equal in value and dignity and worth but also they are equal in their roles. There is no distinction in our roles. Because they believe, there are no roles. Men and women are like interchangeable parts.

I think you know where I stand. I used to be an egalitarian a few years ago without even knowing that I was, but through my own study from Scripture on marriage, I became a complementarian. I believe men and women are absolutely equal in value and dignity and worth. But, men and women have distinct roles determined by gender. And so, men and women in a Christian marriage need to complement and complete one another.

What is at stake here? It’s not just marriage. Here is what Mark Dever, pastor of Capital Hill Baptist, says —

“It is my best and most sober judgment that this position [egalitarianism] is effectively an undermining of–a breach in–the authority of Scripture. It seems to me and others that this issue of egalitarianism and complementarianism is increasingly acting as the watershed distinguishing those who will accommodate Scripture to culture, and those who will attempt to shape culture by Scripture. You may disagree, but this is our honest concern before God. It is no lack of charity, nor honesty. It is no desire for power or tradition for tradition’s sake. It is our sober conclusion from observing the last 50 years. Of course there are issues more central to the gospel than gender issues. However, there may be no way the authority of Scripture is being undermined more quickly or more thoroughly in our day than through the hermeneutics of egalitarian readings of the Bible. And when the authority of Scripture is undermined, the gospel will not long be acknowledged.”

If you are not sure where you stand on this issue of gender, that’s okay. But please do your homework. Open your Bible and ask God for conviction. Be warned that what is at stake is the authority of Scripture. Culture will always want to bend and distort the Word of God. We are people of the Word and the Word is our authority and the Word ought to mold us, not the culture.

2 Corinthians 3 – Teaching #2: The New Covenant (pt2 of 3)

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These false teachers were confident because of the letters of rec, the commendation they received from others. But that wasn’t the only source of their confidence. Not only are the false teachers being recommended by other false teachers, it’s a situation of the blind leading the blind, but also there was an issue of competence.

2 Cor 3
4 We have this kind of confidence toward God through Christ. 5 It is not that we are competent in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our competence is from God.

The false teachers were confident 1) because of the letters of rec and 2) because of their competence. Their competence led to a spirit of self-sufficiency. Our confidence often is directly linked with our competence. If you are smart and you are competent in school, you feel self-sufficient. If you have high EQ and you are competent in dealing with people, you feel self-sufficient. Our competence often leads to self-sufficiency.

More to the point, what are these false teachers specifically competent in? It goes back to Jewish tradition. They grew up their entire lives with these Jewish practices. It was familiar to them. It was comfortable. They were competent at observing certain practices. And this competence in human tradition was the source of their confidence.

Again, we have to be careful of human tradition. Any tradition from God should directly point us to Jesus Christ, not to a person, not to a leader, not to a cultural practice, not to a quirky church tradition unique to one tiny local church. If the tradition does not point to Christ, then we have to get rid of it because we risk losing Christ if certain traditions are allowed to harden into “truth.” To be Christian, you have to do things this way and not that way. Worse yet, traditions can often denigrate into salvation by works because you feel like you have to do certain things in order to be accepted by God.

Other than the Lord’s Supper and baptism, we have to be careful of all other traditions because unbeknownst to the leadership, we may be taking on traditions that are unique to us and elevating those things almost to the level of the gospel itself so that we treat adhering or not adhering to these traditions as salvation issues.

In contrast to these Judaizers, Paul didn’t have any credentials. He didn’t have a letter of recommendation from anybody. There was no accredited seminary to offer him an M.Div. degree. He was not even one of the original disciples. The Corinthians had only Paul’s word that he was in good standing with the leaders of the Jerusalem church. There was no phone or email so it was hard to validate or verify such claims. His only course was to reiterate that the risen Lord had called him to be an apostle and to point to his sacrificial lifestyle as legitimizing that call.

Also, he points to one last thing–to the Corinthians themselves. It is one thing to possess the appropriate ordination documents or to frame a university degree and put it on the wall of your study, but these are not living letters. The confirmation of one’s ministry lies in the effects of that ministry in human lives. This will depend upon having ministered a pure, undiluted gospel.

These letters carried the names of persons from their own faction, making the false apostles at Corinth essentially their own source of commendation. Paul had a letter of recommendation–the Christians at Corinth. They were saved through the pure gospel Paul preached. And, unlike the false apostles who lacked a higher commending authority, Paul has a higher authority before whom he appears for recommendation–Jesus Christ.

2 Cor 3
3 It is clear that YOU are CHRIST’S letter, produced by us [by Paul and his co-laborers] not written with ink but with the Spirit of the living God—not on stone tablets but on tablets that are hearts of flesh.

You are a letter FROM Christ. The false teachers wanted to discredit Paul because of his message. His message was too much of a departure from the old. The new was good, but they wanted to roll it into the old. It’s like if you are a homeowner, you may have 2 mortgages. This happens like in our case when we didn’t have enough money to put a 20% down payment. So you put 5% down and then the first mortgage is 80% of the value of the home and the second mortgage is the other 15%. If you have more equity in the home over time or you pay off some of the second mortgage, then you can refinance and combine the two mortgages into one.

These false teachers treated the old covenant like it was the larger first mortgage and Jesus and the new covenant was the much smaller second mortgage. They didn’t deny the new covenant. They just wanted to roll Jesus into their Jewish old covenant so that the net result would be a very Jewish-centric Christian faith. The false teachers probably claimed that Moses was equal, or even superior, to Christ and that Christ was merely part of the covenant of Moses.

It’s hard enough for a church of 10-20 years to shed all of the traditions that were built up during its short history. We get so easily impressed with our little spiritual lineage and what we can accomplish as a church, or even a denomination that has been around for 100 or 200 years.

Think about how hard it would have been been for Jewish Christians in the first century to put aside Jewish traditions that began close to 2000 years before Christ. We look at them and wonder, what’s their problem? Yet, even in America, where our history spans a meager 200 years compared to 5,000 years of Chinese history, consider how hard it is to detach yourself from seeing the world through the eyes of an upper middle class Westerner. From our own experience, we shouldn’t be so surprised that Jewish Christians in Paul’s day had such a hard time accepting the new covenant.

Tradition and culture must bow the knee to Jesus Christ. If not, our tradition and our culture will enslave us and make us judgmental toward people who are different from us. The false apostles were confident because of their tradition and their culture. Those things made them feel competent as spiritual leaders. They felt self-sufficient in their spirituality, superior to others, to such an extent that they could pronounce judgment on Paul.

On the other hand, Paul does not base his confidence nor his competence on his tradition, or his lineage, or his culture, or his abilities, or based on how he measures up compared with other leaders. v4-5 – Paul is supremely confident because his confidence and his competence is from God through Christ.

For anyone aspiring to be a Christian leader, which I hope is every Christian in this room, this truth is so important. None of us can be confident before God, nor competent in ministry before others unless it is from God. We have to understand this. To get at this further, we have to turn back a chapter and read 2 Cor 2:15-17.

2 Cor 2
15 For to God we are the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. 16 To some we are an aroma of death leading to death, but to others, an aroma of life leading to life. And who is competent for this? 17 For we are not like the many who market God’s message for profit. On the contrary, we speak with sincerity in Christ, as from God and before God.

Who is competent for this? Who is competent to be a minister of the gospel? If your answer is, I am. I’m gifted. I have so much to offer. Look at how well I speak. Look at my spiritual gifts. Look at how many years I have been in the church. I think I can make a big impact. If this is your attitude, then you are no different from these false teachers who felt competent based on their traditions and culture and abilities. The answer to Paul’s question–who is competent for this–is a resounding, NO ONE! No one is competent to minister. Does anyone in this room have the competence or the ability to cause a sinner to repent? Or to create faith? Or to cause a dead man or woman to be born again of the Spirit? No one. None of us have the competence required to cause this kind of change in another person. It’s way outside of our pay grade. Yet, why do we take credit like it was our ability? Or why do we demand absolute loyalty or commitment from those we minister to as if we did anything?

In this next part, I want to compare and contrast the old and the new covenant. v1-3. The old covenant is written with ink on paper or on stone tablets, i.e. the Ten Commandments. The new covenant is written not with ink, but with the Spirit and it is written, not on stone tablets but on human hearts.

The next set of verses, v4-6 – we can talk about the old covenant. The old covenant is very human-oriented. The leader of the old covenant is Moses. Moses is the key leader to follow. You have the Law, a set of rules to obey. And thus, competence comes from our ability to obey these laws. And worst of all, if we try to return to the old covenant now, it will kill us spiritually. The letter kills. In contrast, you have the new covenant, where competence comes from God. He sends the Spirit and He produces the results deep in our hearts, ultimately, leading to spiritual life.

In v7-18, Paul speaks about the old covenant with Moses back in Exodus after the Israelites had been freed from slavery in Egypt and they were wandering in the desert. Moses spent time alone with God on top of Mt Sinai. And because he had spent time in the presence of God, Moses’ face was glorious, it shined radiantly so much so that the glow caused people to turn away. I guess after a while the Israelites were tired of turning away because of his radiance so they asked Moses to put on a veil to cover his face. Eventually, the glory would fade and his face would be back to normal.

Paul refers to this old covenant as glorious, but it is a fading glory while the new covenant of Jesus Christ is unfading, eternal, permanent glory. The point is, Moses and the old covenant is glorious, there’s no denying that, but it was only a pointer to Christ and when Christ showed up, by comparison, Moses is not so glorious.

It’s like if Jeremy Lin walked in here and we played a pickup game of hoops together, we’d think Jeremy is pretty glorious. He would be shooting over us and dunking over John Shen and no look passes. But if Lebron James walked in, Jeremy, I love you, but I’m sorry, Jeremy would not seem as glorious next to Lebron. How much more, when Christ comes, how can we even mention Moses in the same breath?

2 Cor 3
13 We are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the Israelites could not stare at the the end of what was fading away, 14 but their minds were closed. For to this day, at the reading of the old covenant, the same veil remains; it is not lifted, because it is set aside only in Christ.

Even back in Moses’ day, there was a literal veil and a spiritual veil. The literal veil was to prevent the glory from Moses’ face to blind the onlookers. The spiritual veil is referred to here as a closing of their minds. Even with the 10 Plagues and the parting of the Red Sea and God’s miraculous deliverance from Egypt, there were some Israelites in the camp at the base of Mt Sinai whose minds and hearts were closed. Because they only saw the physical–I’m hungry, I’m sick of manna, why we are in a desert, I want to go back to Egypt–and these people missed the spiritual significance of what God was doing in history due to the spiritual veil over them. Likewise, the Judaizers of Paul’s day totally missed the spiritual significance of Jesus being a fulfillment of the Exodus account. Jesus ushered in a Second Exodus, not limited to a literal freedom for the Jews from slavery in Egypt, but spiritual freedom available to all from the slavery of sin.

Paul is implying that God did not allow some of the Israelites in Exodus to understand the spiritual dimension of the promises made under the Mosaic covenant which would eventually be fulfilled in Christ. They did not see the glory of the old covenant which pointed to something or someone far more glorious than Moses. The result is that though Jewish believers in Paul’s day would sit week after week in the synagogue and hear passages about Moses, a veil of ignorance prevented them from understanding the scriptures which were being read. Because of the spiritual veil, the mere reading of the old covenant will achieve nothing. The inward veil of which the outward veil was the symbol is still keeping hearts in darkness whenever the OT scriptures are read.

Only Jesus can remove the veil. Only Jesus can open closed minds and blind eyes and soften hardened hearts. Only Jesus can cause a sinner to repent and receive eternal life. This is the new covenant. There will never be a newer covenant, or the new covenant part two, or a third covenant. Jesus is it. Everything in the OT points to Jesus. Everything in the NT culminates with the coming of Jesus into our world and everything in human history will be wrapped up when Jesus returns.

Matt 18: Relearning How to Be a Child of God (pt2 of 3)

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Do you feel a need to be constantly productive? Do you feel a need to keep proving yourself to the world? To yourself? Just one more thing off the list. Just one more achievement. One more degree. One more promotion. One level higher in the income bracket. There is no end to this.

Often I find that when we feel like things are not going well, we want to change our circumstances. Change majors. Change labs. Change jobs. Change spouses. Change churches. We think the problem is somewhere out there. But if we realize that the problem is within, then there is only one solution. There is only one solution and the answer is always Jesus. Sounds simple, but for us who are not simple, not child-like in our thinking, it is so difficult to come to this conclusion that the solution to everything in life is Jesus. If you change jobs, but you don’t gain more of Jesus, then you’ve lost. If you stay in a bad situation but Jesus is present with you, then you’ve won. Children are humble enough to go their parents and ask for help. As Christians, in this regard, we have to relearn how to be child-like.

This may be news to you. But God actually doesn’t care if you make it in the eyes of the world. He just wants you to be humble and to come to him as his child. Not as a 20 year Christian veteran. Not as a pastor. Not as a church leader with an impressive spiritual resume. Coming to him as a child who wants to spend time with their Father. Verse 4–

4 Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

This verse speaks to our sense of self-identity. We all want to be great in whatever way we define greatness to be.

Even in Southern Baptist circles among pastors and church leaders, I get asked questions like, how many are you running on Sundays? I know we need to have certain metrics from a denominational perspective to measure effectiveness. But really, does it come down to numbers? And if our church is only 50 attendees, then I must not be doing a good job or I am not worth listening to. But the guy next to me, he has 200 people so everyone flocks to him and says, how do you do it? He’s interviewed. He’s on camera. Everyone is all eyes and ears for the “great” and talented and gifted ones in our midst.

Christians are not exempt from the values of our culture. Even as Christians, we drink the Kool Aid of our culture and we think greatness is defined by wealth, beauty, power and fame. 4 things that everyone strives for, Christian or not. Many of us, knowingly or unknowingly, are pursuing those things because those cultural values are in us.

Everything is performance. Ever receive a Christmas card from a proud parent who is talking about their kids? Little Johnny is first in his kindergarten class. Joe is captain of his junior high football team. Melissa just got accepted to Stanford. If you read the card through the filters of wealth, beauty, power, fame, it’s all there. We value education because it will secure a good job as a manager at a big company, which pays very well and you will be well-respected by your peers and you can marry a model for a wife. Wealth, beauty, power, fame – it’s all there.

We can also be performance-oriented as Christians. Christian parents can teach their kids to be performance-driven in terms of faith in God. As long as they attend church and carry around their bibles and they behave well and are good moral citizens, we think we’ve done a good job as Christian parents. There is nothing wrong with teaching our kids these things, but if that’s all they walk away with, then we have given them a performance-driven approach to faith.

On top of these things, Christian parents, we tell our kids, be the best in school, be the best in sports, excel in music, or drama or computer or whatever. It’s performance. Why do we place so much emphasis on performance, for ourselves and for our kids? I believe it’s the same reason I have a hard time having a day when I am not productive. We all suffer from wanting to be great.

Maybe your definition of greatness is not being the best in your field. Or in your career. Or any arena. Greatness can be simplified to mean, we want our lives to count in this life. The worst feeling, esp. for guys, is the feeling of being stuck. Where you try and try and try, but you are not moving forward. You hit a brick wall. You stop being productive. You stop making progress. You’re stuck.

Why is being stuck so bruising to our pride? Because much of what we do in life, the reason we work so hard is to gain the respect and admiration of others. Our self-identity is so tightly wrapped up with how we view others. Others are important to the extent that they validate how we want to feel about ourselves. Others are important because we want them to view us a certain way. If we all lived on deserted islands by ourselves, each one on their own deserted island, I don’t think we would feel a need to work so hard to prove ourselves. A coconut and shelter and we’d be happy. Because there would be no audience to say, wow, you’re great.

Issue #1 – Jesus speaks to our identity. Do you define greatness the way Jesus does? A child is humble. Therefore, a Christian must be humble. A Christian leader in particular must be humble. There is no quality more important for a Christian leader. To be humble like a little child in the Father’s arms–Jesus says, that person is great.

Verse 5 speaks to issue #2 and how we view others.

5 And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me.

Not only are we little ones before God, but we are also called to treat others like little ones before God. To welcome them. To receive them. To serve them. To love them like little ones.

If we are following the worldly definition of greatness and you and I are trying to figure out how to elevate myself so that others look up to me, then we can’t say that we are welcoming others like little children. We’d have to say, others are not little ones. Others are competitors that I have to beat out. Others are pawns in the chess game of life and I’m the king or the queen. We dehumanize others. We rip out their souls. We don’t treat them as individuals. Others are there only as a measuring stick, and by comparison, I’m better. I’m great. I make more money. I have more power, look at my job title. I am more handsome. I am more beautiful. And people know my name. I’m famous.

If you believe that greatness is defined by chasing after everything else that the world chases after–wealth, beauty, power, fame–and you are good enough to stay one step ahead of the crowd to distinguish yourself, then not only is your self-identity completely off, but your view of others is also off target.

Whoever welcomes a little child like THIS [Jesus probably pointed to the little child or lifted up the child to make a point] whoever welcomes a little child like THIS in my name welcomes me. To stress how important these little ones are to God, Jesus spends the rest of the chapter condemning to death those who stumble his little ones.

6 But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

Harsh words. It’s as if Jesus is putting a sign under his “little ones”–FRAGILE: Handle with Care. If you treat one of these little ones harshly or carelessly, watch out. Jesus said, you should die. How we treat others is serious business.

Treat others with care and dignity and tenderness. Why? Because to God, they, we, all of us are His little ones. We are all like kids who can fall and get hurt. We can be stumbled easily. If you don’t think you can be stumbled easily, it’s probably because God has been merciful to you and you have not been put into situations that would have pushed you to the limits of your faith. And to the verge of possibly tipping over and stumbling. To God, we are all little ones who can stumble easily.

Jesus goes on to follow this thread in v7-9.

7 “Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come! 8 If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. 9 And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.

Some Christians leaders may read this and think, I am the leader. I am the strong one. I am the discerning one. I see sins in others and it’s my job to point it out. Because I am the leader and it’s my God-given responsibility to lead people out of their blindness. So they rebuke and correct others harshly. As a result, some of the sheep stumble. They leave church. They leave God. And these leaders have no remorse whatsoever.

How did the leaders get this way? These leaders skipped over v7.

Matt 18
7 “Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come!

If we are the cause of people sinning, the stumbling block, woe to us. There is a difference in how we are to handle sin in ourselves vs. handling sin in others. When dealing with personal sin, we should be reading verse 8 and on, taking sin so seriously in our own lives to the point of cutting off our limbs or gouging out our eyes. Not literally, or we’d all be blind, but as a figure of speech, this is the intensity with which we battle sin in ourselves. The verse doesn’t say, as leaders, cut off the limbs and gouge out the eyes of our sheep as we help them to struggle with their sins. Do you see that? This is important.

It’s so easy to give ourselves a pass when it comes to sin and focus much of our attention on the sins that we see in others. I don’t think we need to think very long to come up with personal examples of this wrong imbalance and tendency to be harsh with others and generous with ourselves. I know for myself, one of my pet peeves is bad driving. It’s not the end of the world if you are walking in a crowded mall and you are careless and you bump into someone else. No harm, no foul. But if you are driving a two ton, 4000 lb metal vehicle at 60 mph, bumping into another car or another object can lead to death. Being careless behind the wheel can lead to tragic consequences. So if I see someone being careless while driving and they swerve into my lane or they cut me off or they run a red light, I get bothered.

This makes it highly unpleasant for Jackie when she is driving and I am in the passenger seat. If she is careless while driving, I am extremely unforgiving. My kids make fun of me. The imitate how my voice changes, Jackie, what are you doing? Did you see that car? Did you see that person crossing the street? Why are you driving so close to the car in front of you? Why are you answering the phone while you are driving? Why are you trying to text at the stop light? Turn off the phone. Don’t you know you are breaking the law?

Because it is my pet peeve, I have very little patience when it comes to poor drivers. Generally, I am a good, safe driver. However, when I have a moment of careless driving, I am extremely generous with myself. A few years ago, I rear ended someone because I was wiping the dust off of my dashboard. Not smart. But I could say, see, I wasn’t texting or breaking the law. I looked down for a split second because I wanted to clean my car. Is that such a crime? Or the other day, I was backing up the car and telling the kids to lower the shade on their window because it was obstructing my view. And as I was telling them, I slightly bumped into the beam in the parking garage. See, if I had a clear view through the windows, maybe I would have seen the beam. I have all kinds of legitimate excuses and good reasons for my momentary lapses in my otherwise stellar driving record. But if others mess up, I show them no mercy.

Not bumping into other cars or not running over other pedestrians is a good principle for all drivers to live by. I am not saying, it’s okay to be a careless driver. But the point is, we raise a high standard for others but give ourselves a lot of wiggle room. This is how we are. We are far more harsh with others than we are with ourselves. We are actually quite generous when it comes to ourselves. As a result, we give ourselves a pass when it comes to personal sin and we gouge out the eyes of a little one, who may end up stumbling because of our harsh and careless treatment of them.

When it comes to others, let’s not cut off hands and feet and gouge out eyes with our judgmental attitudes and our critiques and our nagging and our harsh words.

Vision for the Church: Fellowship (pt3 of 4)

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One Body – One Level, Not Two Levels
I am not sure if this is how you conceive of fellowship, or a church. You may be hearing all this talk about one body and being interconnected and prioritizing church and you’re thinking to yourself, this doesn’t apply to me. I am here to be served. The servants are the pastors, the elders, the leaders, the staff, not me, I’m just a member. Or another way to put it, on Sundays, you guys put on the show, you guys cook the food, clean the tables, give rides and I am here to be a passive spectator.

Catholics – Two Levels (Clergy/Laity)
It is not surprising that many conceive of fellowship or church in this way. Catholics view church as being divided into two levels. There is a clear line of demarcation between the clergy and the laity.

Some Protestants: Two Levels (Leaders/Members)
Many Protestants may not take it that far, but in many cases, there is a clear distinction at Protestant churches between the pastor and the congregation. I have a specific role to teach, shepherd and lead, but we are all servants under Jesus, the Chief Shepherd. The Head. We are the body. We may have different roles and gifts, but using the body metaphor, there are no levels. We are one, we are interconnected. There are no parts of the body that are greater in importance than the others. One body. We’re all body parts. Your pinky toe hurts and the entire body notices. We are all connected to the Head. We report to the Head. That’s the only distinction. If you want to call it levels, that’s the only higher level. Christ the Head on one level and the rest of us the body at another level.

As I said earlier, if you look at the New Testament, there is no detailed blueprint that all churches are expected to follow in terms of structure and polity. I think this is deliberate because God is infinite and every generation and every culture is different so the Bible gives every church a great deal of autonomy to adopt practices that fit their context. Even SBC, our denomination gives complete autonomy for each local church and we partner with the denomination and other SBC churches on a voluntary basis.

It’s notable that there are several instances in the NT where there is a breakdown between elders and deacons and deaconesses. All are servants but some serve by focusing on teaching and prayer and spiritual guidance–the elders–and others serve by focusing on meeting the needs of the congregation. Deacons and deaconesses.

One Level: We Are All Servants/Parts of the Body
Of course, Heb 13:17 and James 1:3 warns that overseers and teachers and leaders will be judged more harshly by God. Certain roles come with added burden. Still, we are all servants. We are all parts of the body. We all serve at different capacities because we have different roles and gifts. But we are here to serve one another instead of being passive spectators. The job of the ministry is not the responsibility of the pastor or one or two key leaders. We’re in this together.

Ministering to the Whole Person (Spiritual/Physical Needs)
Both the spiritual needs and the physical needs of the church are critical. If all we did is to teach and then everyone is on their own to figure out how to manage their own physical needs, that’s not a picture of a healthy church. If you come to one of the leaders with spiritual issues only and we never talk about your studies or your future or issues at home with your kids, or your financial problems, then we are not meeting all of your needs. We are both physical and spiritual beings. So as a church, we are ministering to the whole of your life, not just the spiritual part. Conversely, if all we did was to meet the physical needs of the congregation and made sure you were well fed and you were having fun but the teaching and your spiritual development was being overlooked, then we’re just a social club.

What Kind of Culture Do We Want?
Now that we established the fact that fellowship or church is a shared burden, I want to speak to the importance of creating the right culture. What kind of culture do we want at LBC?

We All Bring Our Culture to the Table
We all bring our culture to the table. If you’re Asian, you bring your Asian culture to the table. If you’re Caucasian, you bring American culture to the table. If you are a second generation Korean American, or Chinese American, you bring a hybrid culture to the table.

On top of that, we bring our previous church culture to the table. Growing up, your church might have been a first generation immigrant church that was very conservative and had strong leadership and they were reaching out to only one ethnic group.

Compare that first generation immigrant church with a church like ours where we, God-willing, are trying to build a multi-ethnic community. Do you think the methodologies within those two churches will be the same? Of course not.

Or you might have come from a church where there was only one dominant ministry–homeless ministry or some type of social work and nothing else vs. a church with many kinds of ministries–the poor, college students, the elderly, young singles, married couples, empty nesters. How similar would those 2 churches be? Probably not that similar. Yet, due to our culture and our previous church background, subconsciously, we all bring certain preferences and perspectives to the table. Wouldn’t you say so?

Flexibility and Fluid
Some of those things are good and should be kept. Others should be discarded. We have to be flexible. Remember Jupiter? Or the reversed tootsie roll lollipop. Some things that worked 10 years ago may have been effective then, but it no longer works because times have changed and people have changed.

David was a man who served God in his generation and I would bet that his generation looked quite different from our generation. How can we serve THIS generation that we are a part of in THIS city? Every church that seeks to be relevant needs to wrestle with this question.

No One Size Fits All Approach
I don’t believe that we can have a one-size-fits all approach to fellowship or how we do church. There are many factors to consider. We have to consider our context. Where we live. Who God brings to our church. The stage that our church is in. Before, while we were at the Coral Center, our neighbors were horses. Now we are in Old Pas. We are in the heart of the city. And we are sharing a building with Friendship Baptist. These factors are going to have a direct impact on our fellowship here.

So with all of these moving parts, what is our anchor? Obviously, it has to be the Word of God. And with the Word of God, I believe our first priority is to create a biblical culture that supersedes ethnic culture, upbringing, previous church experience.

1 Cor 7:17-24 – Culture, Tradition, Vocation and Calling (pt2 of 3)

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So quick review. Let’s follow Paul’s argument – circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, dressing in our Sunday best is nothing and dressing down is nothing, but keeping God’s commandments is everything. Obeying God where you are is what counts. Paul is radically God-oriented. Everything, everything falls before the priority of God.

Culture and religious practice are nothing, ultimately. However, this doesn’t mean we throw culture and religious practice out the window altogether. In fact, there are times when Paul is sensitive to culture in cases where the salvation of others is involved. An example of this is Timothy versus Titus.

Paul had Timothy circumcised in Acts 16. Yet, Paul absolutely refuses to let Titus be circumcised in the book of Galatians. Is this a double standard?

To make sense of this, we have to recognize that these two are vastly different situations. In Galatians, the truth of the gospel was at stake. I don’t want to get into all the details, but suffice it to say that Paul strongly opposed Titus being circumcised because the false teachers there were distorting the gospel and saying that you need to be circumcised in order to be saved. The gospel of free grace plus circumcision. The gospel of free grace plus works. The gospel plus anything is no longer the gospel.

It was a totally different situation for Timothy in Acts 16. Timothy had a Jewish mother who brought him up as a Jew. But his Greek father had not allowed Titus to be circumcised. So Timothy was a half-Jew. No false teachers were pushing for Timothy’s circumcision, nor was there an issue of the gospel message being distorted as was the case in Galatians. Rather the reason Paul had Timothy circumcised was because Timothy was ministering in places where many non-believing Jews lived. So Timothy’s circumcision was not motivated by pressure from within the church but by a missionary strategy to save souls. That was the motivation behind Paul’s recommendation to Timothy to get circumcised. In other words, Paul didn’t want Timothy’s uncircumcision to be a stumbling block for Jews being saved. This is a cultural consideration related to missions.

In addition, Paul is not against all cultural adaptations because of his own statement in 1 Corinthians 9 that he himself becomes all things to all men that he might save some.

Listen to what Paul says in 1 Cor 9:19-23. It’s an amazing passage.

1 Cor 9
19 Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21 To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. 23 I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

This is the power of the gospel. Paul is totally free. He is not bound by his culture, he is not bound to any tradition, he is not bound to any one person, BUT… for the sake of the gospel and out of his love for people and out of his desire to see them saved, he will voluntarily bind himself. To the Jew, he became a Jew. He adopted Jewish customs for the sake of the Jews he was ministering to. He even had Timothy circumcised. To the weak, he became weak. This is what happens in a believer’s life. You can take the focus off of yourself and look to the needs of another. Because your needs, your fundamental needs regarding significance, regarding your guilt and shame, regarding purpose, because your needs have been fully met in Christ, therefore, you have the roominess of heart to have someone else’s salvation in mind. And this shift in perspective causes you to limit yourself and constrain yourself for the sake of the other because you want to reach common ground and you want to remove unnecessary obstacles that could hinder someone from receiving Christ.

What Paul was doing was showing that obedience to the commands of God is so much more important than any cultural or vocational distinctive. In other words, don’t make such a big deal out of whether or not you are circumcised, don’t make a big deal about your religious preferences. But instead make obedience to God a big deal. Make the gospel a big deal. Make the salvation of others a big deal.

Paul is saying, don’t stress out and don’t boast about your culture because it is of little importance to God compared to whether or not you are devoting yourself, soul and mind and body, to obeying his commandments.

What commandments are we to obey? The Great Commandment. That’s what we talked about at the beginning of the year. Love God and love your neighbor. The core of God’s commandments revolve around love.

Culture is no big deal. Religious practices are no big deal. Obeying God’s commandments, specifically obeying his commandment to love, is a big deal.

Then Paul turns in verses 21–23 to apply his principle to vocation, specifically the issue of whether one is a slave or a freedman.

Were you a slave when called? No big deal. The point is: when you are called into the fellowship of Christ, you gain a new set of radically different priorities; so much so that if you are a slave, it should not cause you to stress out. Were you a slave when called? No big deal. Do you have a menial job? No big deal. Is it a job that is not esteemed as highly as other professions? No big deal. This is the same point he was making with cultural and religious differences earlier: Are you uncircumcised? No big deal. Are you circumcised? No big deal.

This is really important for us to consider. Students, how do you conceive of your future vocation? If you think of your future vocation in terms of a calling, which it could be, but if you are wrong and your vocation is not a calling, then you run the risk of elevating your vocation to a level that it was never supposed to occupy. Because remember, Paul uses calling in this passage to mean, our salvation.

College is a time when I see many students excited about their faith and those very same people who said, God, lead my life, my life is yours, a few years later after grad school and getting a PhD, or a few years after working, those very same people who used to be so excited about God now barely attend church. It’s because their vocation became an idol. It began to occupy a place of ultimate significance in their hearts. Calling here refers to salvation and the emphasis is on obeying the commandments of God which are all about love. If obeying God’s commandments to love are the highest priority in your life, then your vocation doesn’t really matter. Pursue whatever job you want provided your heart and your priorities are in the right place.

For those who are already working, you may have worked hard for a couple of decades and you wonder, was it all worth it? All the overtime, the stress, the business trips, the demanding bosses, was it worth it? And you can confuse yourself, maybe I missed my calling. It could be that your restlessness is God-given. He could be calling you to change your vocation. But this passage suggests that many times, changing jobs or changing circumstances is not the answer. It’s a heart problem. You might change jobs, but the problem is, your heart follows you. Sure, the circumstances change, but it’s still the same old you.

Therefore, Paul would argue in 1 Cor 7:20–

1 Cor 7
20 Each one should remain in the situation which he was in when God called him.

The important thing is keeping the commandments of God. But Paul takes it a step further. He deepens our understanding with a second reason. The first reason–remain as you are because obeying the commandments of God is everything. Thus, a person can say to his culture, to her job, no big deal. Another reason a person can say, “No big deal,” even in extreme cases such as being a slave, is this–verse 22–

1 Cor 7
22 For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord is the Lord’s freedman…

And the reason the person who is free can say, “No big deal,” is similar:

1 Cor 7
22 …he who was a free man when he was called is Christ’s slave.

This verse is a window into the gospel. We were sinners, objects of wrath. But God out of His love sent Jesus and he died on a cross for our sins. And all who repent and believe, repent and place their faith in Christ, we stand justified in the sight of a Holy God because Jesus’ righteousness, his perfection, his perfect obedience is credited to us. And if this gospel runs in our blood, then we can apply the gospel to our vocation. Paul is saying that in the gospel there is an antidote for despair in menial jobs and an antidote for pride in highly esteemed jobs. He looks to the slave who may feel hopeless and says, in Christ, brother, sister, you are a free man. You were bought with a price. On the outside, you may look chained up, limited, few options, oppressed, forgotten. But on the inside, because of Christ, your chains have been broken. Let no man enslave your soul. Let no job enslave your soul. Don’t let your bitterness over your circumstances enslave your soul. Rejoice in the Lord and hope in him because you are the Lord’s freedman.

Then he looks to the freedman, maybe Paul is even thinking of the other extreme, the slave owner, the ones in power, the ones with the higher paying jobs and he says, do not become proud, for in Christ, you are a slave. You are a slave of Christ. Don’t act like you rule over others. There is one who has authority over you, Jesus Christ, and you must be humble and submissive to him. Often, isn’t it members of this group who are actually enslaved by their jobs? Again, Paul would say, let no job enslave you. Don’t be enslaved by your pride. Don’t be overly impressed because you are respected by others.

Why? Because whether a person is a slave or a freedman, don’t let your vocation be the cause of your despair or your pride. You ought to be able to say, “No big deal.” The doctor or a professor or executive among us should not be proud, and those with less prestigious jobs among us should not despair. Both are freedmen in Christ.

Let’s read v24. I like the ESV version of v24 because it brings out a nuance that the NIV doesn’t–

1 Cor 7 (ESV)
24 So, brothers, in WHATEVER condition each was called, there let him remain WITH God.

WITH God! There’s the crucial phrase. What matters in life and in eternal life is being WITH God. It is about enjoying his presence. What matters is not whether our job is high or low in man’s eyes. What matters is whether we are being encouraged and humbled by the presence of God.

Obeying the commands of God (v 19) and enjoying his presence (v24) are so vastly more important than your culture or job title that you should feel no desire to change either of them. This is the main point that Paul is making. In the case of your vocation, you should not be driven from one by fear or despair, nor tempted by the other by wealth or pride. You should be able to say to your vocation, no big deal. You are not my life. My life is about obeying God and enjoying his presence.