I Went to Church Yesterday

The sixth of an undetermined number in a series on the character and need for corporate worship.

I did not blog last week because I attended my first cousin's funeral in Hempstead, New York. On top of that, my computer broke and was not fixed until later in the week. Parenthetically, a frightening thought overwhelmed me: I realized to what extent my sanctification was tied to my functioning laptop! For several days, I was a fish out of water breaking all God's commandments against the sin of worrying, scarcely able to concentrate on matters of more importance, on such concerns that have enduring and eternal consequences! O wretched man that I am!!

At the time that all the saints go marching into the sanctuary, I was at LaGuardia Airport boarding my flight to return home to Stone Mountain. I felt strange and out of place and could not stop wondering what and how my brothers and sisters at All Saints Redeemer Church were doing; at what junction of the service were they; did they warmly greet the supplying preacher?; and so on. More worries, more sin! Yet, the truth was, I would rather occupy the last pew of my church than be at the airport on the Lord's Day. I would rather be a doorkeeper there than be at a hub of frantic busyness on such a day. I truly missed my family; I truly missed worshiping our Triune God with them in the sanctuary. I also did hate leaving my huge family back in New York but the family that was heaviest on my mind was my covenant family in Georgia.

My family on my father’s side is quite large and most of my cousins and their children and grandchildren are unsaved. While I did enjoy the brief time that I spent with them, notwithstanding the sad circumstances, I grieved over the condition of their souls and sought to use all opportunities to witness to Jesus, in word and in deed. But then I also began to reflect on the fact that my church family will be with me for a much longer time – even for eternity – than my family in New York. It was then I realized that those bought by the blood of Christ are bound in a much more intimate union, indeed, into an eternal community, than those family members according to natural generation. It is true that Blood is thicker and more long-lasting than blood. It was then that I also ruminated on the fact that the family is a wonderful gift from God granted in the context of his creation mandate to be a community – remember how he lamented that it was not good for man to be alone, Gen 2:18; recall how he created man and woman in his own image and blessed them and commanded them to be fruitful and multiply, that is to populate the earth, his stage of redemption, with offspring also made in his image, 1:27-28. I next cogitated on the gospel truth that those the Lord saves by his grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, he also adopts as his sons and daughters into his family through the work of his Holy Spirit, Rom 8:14-15, who also places them in the local church, the body of Christ, 1 Cor 12:13.

The church then is a covenant family comprising several covenant families. Though having many members, it has only one head, Jesus Christ, from whom it receives its life and livelihood, Eph 4:15 -16, and into whose image its members are being transformed from one degree of glory to another, 2 Cor 3:18. The church is the new covenant community of God, participating in his covenant of grace, enjoying his spiritual blessings, Eph 1:3, as well as material blessings, Mt 6:33-34. It is assured of Christ's sustaining, sanctifying presence in its midst, and above all, it is confident that it will bask in his glory forever and ever. In anticipation of and in preparation for this glorious redemption, the church reflects a commitment to holiness, a love for God and neighbor, a passion for heavenly matters, and a sanctified dissatisfaction with the way things are. My earthly family does not share in these blessings. My earthly family is not filled with this hope. They do not and cannot have this worldview until and unless they have been born again, born from above, into a new family, the family of God. Then and only then will we be family in the truest and most profound sense of the word.

So what did I do at church yesterday? I reminded our congregation that the task of the church is to teach families to become hallmarks of holiness, to carry out the creation mandate of filling the earth with holy seed, to leave legacies of righteousness and holiness, to live in such a countercultural way that they show themselves to be vessels of God's saving mercies in Christ and instruments of his blessing to others. In return, each family's responsibilities include the commitment to disciple its children and to bring them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord in such a way that members of each local household become members of God's unique, peculiar household. In other words, to ensure that there is a one to one ratio between the earthly family and the heavenly family.

What will eventually become of my cousins and their children and their children's children? I don't know but what I do know is that dum spiro, spero, while I breathe, I hope .. and encourage, exhort, reason, plead with and use all other means available in order for them to become my family in the Spirit. This is partly what I taught in church yesterday.

I Went to Church Yesterday

The fifth of an undetermined number in a series on the character and need for corporate worship.

Yesterday was the highlight of my week. Moreover, yesterday is the highlight of my week. There I was gathered with fellow-believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, fellow-members of God's redeemed covenant community, assembled in the very Presence of our Triune God, in order to hear from him, in order to receive his blessing.

It is as we are gathered together in sacred assembly, in church, on Mt. Zion, coram Deo, before the face of God, that the most wonderful encounter takes place, that between God and man. It is here that God reaches out to man and meets him in the preached Word and in the sacraments. It is by this divinely appointed means of Word and sacrament that we hear God speaking to us. It is here that we primarily witness the divine action to and among us. It is here, as in the case of the disciples walking along the Emmaus Road when confronted by the resurrected Christ, our eyes are opened as Christ is made plain to us in Word and sacrament. It is here, the church, the new creation, born as the old of the divine Word and Spirit, that the Lord continues to speak and act with his people... Here, in this stream he has placed in the desert, his bright city in a land of darkness.

Yesterday our covenant God proclaimed to us through the visiting minister, the Rev. Leon Brown of Westminster Seminary, Escondido, Ca., not some “general” eternal truths but particularly and especially, those truths pertaining to his redemptive action in time and history, the truth of his gracious delivering sinners from their sins through his sent Son Jesus Christ, in whom alone we are to place our trust for salvation from sin, death and judgment. Through the minister, God's ambassador, we heard only one message, the message of Christ’s Person and work on the cross for us. Through the minister, God told us his story of redemption, formerly symbolized by an impressive network of types, rites, shadows and figures, all pointing to and “foresignifying” Jesus Christ, in whom they were fulfilled and substantiated. Through the minister, the Lord God reminded us of his manifold blessings in Christ, blessings concerning cleansing from sin, removal of guilt, adoption into his family, assurance of hope and preparation for heaven. Through the minister, God's spokesman, we were told that his story trumps our testimony; his work dwarfs our experiences; his covenant faithfulness infinitely outstrips our inconsistent devotion; his promise defines our word; his metanarrative controls our stories; his grace swallows up our sin.

There, we needed to have the boundless truths of this verbum externum (external Word) applied to our hearts and minds through the Holy Spirit. As God spoke to us by his Word and Spirit, he enabled us to taste and see that he is good, Ps 34:8. He enabled us to delight in him, to relish his goodness, to enjoy him in whose presence "there is fullness of joy; and at whose right hand are pleasures forevermore." Ps. 16:11.

As we, believers and our children were gathered in his presence, we were in truth and in deed rehearsing for that great day when we would see him face to face in that consummate church, the restored cosmic temple of which the garden of Eden is a type and of which the local church is a microcosmic representation. There and at that time, he will gather his elect from all the nations, from the four corners of the world. Then, He will have no need to ask them, where are you? for they will all rush to his holy mountain “clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” " Rev 7:9-10.

Yesterday I visited a miniature heaven on earth. Yesterday I went to the New Jerusalem on earth. Where did I go yesterday? I went to church. I went to the New World. I went to the real world.

I Went to Church Yesterday

I Went to Church Yesterday

The fourth of an undetermined number in a series on the character and need for corporate worship.

As fallen mankind sinks more and more into perverse narcissism, thinking of salvation in individualistic terms persists in today's evangelicalism. For example, when we recall the time and circumstances of our coming to faith in Christ, we are still prone to think in terms of my salvation and not God's. We still refer to our conversion experience in such unbiblical terms as "the time that I made Jesus Christ my personal Lord and Savior” or "the day that I accepted Jesus Christ into my heart," and so on.

While the Scripture makes it clear that each person must individually repent and receive Christ alone for eternal life-note for example the focus on the individual indicated by "every one of you" in Acts 2:38– it equally clearly instructs us that the Lord does save his people. The message of God's redeeming his covenant people runs throughout Scripture. For example, it is by this mighty outstretched arm and strong right hand that he delivered the people of Israel unto himself, Dt 5:19; 9:29; etc. It was the church that Christ purchased with his blood, Acts 20:28. It was his sheep for whom he, the Good Shepherd, laid down his life, Jn 10:11-16. Verse 10 confirms "… I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." (Emphasis added).
In describing Christ's work in redemption, Peter employs collective epithets drawn from the Old Testament: "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." 1 Pe 2:9-10.
At the end of time and history when the Lord God will sum up all things under Christ, " the dead [plural] in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord." 1 Ths 4:16-17. Our glorification which will occur "when the saints go marching" into heaven, "when believers will be with the Triune God in everlasting joy, when the already and the not yet of our salvation are swallowed up into a timeless perfection with the Second Coming of Christ, is in fact the glorification of the saints and not of the saint.

Further, the Lord does not leave each convert to himself, to live as an undetached "dangling participle" in life. Rather, the Holy Spirit sovereignly constitutes each believer as a member of the church into which he places him. To this end, the apostle Paul writes "For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many." 1 Cor 12:13-14. That our placement in the local church is the sovereign work of our God is emphasized later in v. 18, "But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose." and again in 27, "Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it." (Emphasis ours).

Thus, throughout Scripture the corporate, collective, community aspect of divine redemption is convincingly demonstrated. The primary testimony in Scripture is that God saves his people. Salvation, above all, is ascribed a collective dimension. God saves his people.

It is in the context of this divinely ordained collective, the local church, that God is forming a new humanity in Christ, a new ethnicity, produced by the finished atoning work of Christ and realized by the reconciliation of man with man, Eph 2:14-15, resulting from man's reconciliation with God, to whom all persons have equal access in one Spirit, 16-18.

In serving God's people, Christ's sheep, I am gravely reminded that God's community is formed and strengthened in its unity and purity by his Word and sacrament. The preached Word of Christ's Person and work and the sacraments bearing the same message in visible form, are not habit-forming but community-forming. This is the historical language that the church speaks and hears when it is assembled in God's presence. This is God's language that by definition is on a collision course with the raucous, chaotic cacophony with which Christians are bombarded in the marketplace. Therefore, when they come to church, when they assemble corporately, it is the preaching of God's Word and the administration of the sacraments that serve to "detox" them from the world's multiple contaminations.

More specifically, in Word and sacrament, God's people are reminded of his speech and action in history, not in the distant past of a nebulous there and then but most importantly, in the midst of their existential challenges, in the hic et nunc, in the very here and now.

In Word and sacrament, God's people are reminded of his accomplishment of redemption in Christ on their behalf.

In Word and sacrament, God's promises which find their Yes in Christ, 2 Cor 1:20, are brought to bear on the hearts and minds of his assembled covenant people.

In Word and sacrament, God strengthens the faith that he first creates through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In Word and sacrament, God's people are lovingly reminded of his gracious transformation of them from aliens and strangers, utterly hopeless and godless in the world, into his own people, into those that are brought near unto him through the blood of Christ, Eph 2:13.

In Word and sacrament, God's community is strengthened and sustained as his people are repeatedly told of his rescuing them from the just deserts of their sin and repositioning them to play new roles in his divine drama of redemption in which he is the chief actor.

In the ministry of Word and sacrament, God's people respond to his gracious overtures in Christ by making vows to him. We are not entirely passive as this drama is unfolded before our very eyes.

The ministry of Word and sacrament is God's primary means of grace by which he transforms his covenant people by causing them to see his Word in action, in Christ, in history and on their behalf, "That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory." 2 Cor 1:20.

The more I go to church, the more I speak and learn these transcendent, transforming truths, the more I want to have them repeated unto me there. That's why I went to church yesterday.