A Reading for the First Sunday of Advent
Not all churches participate in Advent readings or candle lightings, and among those that do there is a wide variety of significance attached to the particular candles (even within similar traditions). As I looked at available readings, I didn’t find any that corresponded very closely to the focus of our Advent series through Matthew 1-2. So I did the next sensible thing: I wrote a new one.
Check that; I am writing a new one–a week at a time as I prepare each sermon. So if you’re looking for readings for the 2012 Advent season, you’ll find no help here. But if you’re looking for an opportunity for further reflection (or perhaps planning ahead for next year), I’ll be posting each reading following that particular Sunday of Advent. Today’s reading was for the first Sunday, corresponding to the sermon text of Matthew 1:1-17.
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First Sunday of Advent: Jesus fulfills Israel’s story Read more…
Jesus: King of Heaven and Earth
We live in a world torn apart. A world of chaos and conflicting kingdoms. A world where unrighteousness is rewarded and injustice often goes unpunished. A world that has lost its identity and direction. We live in a world that lost sight of its Creator and fallen short of his design and vision for creation.
We live in a world of rebellion—not merely on earth but against heaven. A world that has thrown off God’s rule and sought to replace it with our own. A world filled with skepticism toward the very idea of God, and outrage at the suggestion that he has any right to rule us, judge us, or tell us what to do.
Yet for all our passion, all our innovation and progress, we live in a world where the fracture grows deeper every day, and though we hate to admit it, we are powerless to do anything to stop it.
We live in a world in desperate need of a Savior and King.
Into this fractured world the Gospel of Matthew speaks a radical message: Jesus Christ is King of heaven and earth. Read more…
The Gospel is Afoot in New England, and People are Taking Notice
Ruth Graham, a New Hampshire-based journalist who freelances for the Boston Globe and Slate Magazine, has a nice article on Slate.com highlighting what several have called the “quiet revival” in New England. I was privileged to be interviewed for the piece.
In this season of advent and anticipation, it’s exciting to think and dream about what God is doing to bring glory to his name in a post-Christian region that was once central to evangelical faith in America. But more than dreaming, we must continue to pray and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus, who alone can give new life by his Spirit.
You can read the article here.
What One Direction Gets Right…And Dreadfully Wrong
British boy-band sensation One Direction released a new single last month called “Live While We’re Young,” which hit #1 in the U.S. within just two weeks. Strange as it sounds, there’s a certain resonance between this song and the passage I’m preaching this weekend, Ecclesiastes 11:7-12:7. Consider these words from Ecclesiastes:
“Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. . . .” (11:9)
Similarly, One Direction sings of the urgency of making the most of one’s youth. In this respect at least, the band is onto something—life and youthfulness are not to be squandered. Rather God calls us to live while we’re still young, “before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’” (12:1).
So what does it look like to make the most of our youth? That’s where the similarity between Solomon and One Direction ends. Read more…
Eight Ways We Ruin Relationships by Losing Sight of the Gospel
My monthly post is up at the Gospel Alliance New England: “Eight Ways We Ruin Relationships by Losing Sight of the Gospel.” Click here for part one and part two.
Why Missions?
Our annual missions conference is under way this week at Westgate Church. We have a rich heritage of sending and supporting missionaries, and the opportunity to hear from over a dozen of them this week. But the question often comes up, why missions? Why this emphasis? What’s the big deal? Or in other words, what is the mission of missions? The charge is to make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:18-20), but what is the ultimate goal the drives and fuels that charge?
Here are seven points, with a whole bunch of Scripture, all of which advance the first and main point about why missions:
1. Missions is about worship Read more…
The Mystery of Life and the Folly of Abortion
This week I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on Ecclesiastes 11:1-6 as I prepare to preach this text Sunday morning at Westgate Church. As I reflected on tonight’s Vice Presidential debate, my heart was drawn to v. 5: “As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything” (ESV). As he tries to navigate life’s uncertainties, the Preacher is wrestling here with the inscrutable ways that God works out his plan—something we can’t fully understand or control. To illustrate his point he draws our attention to human conception—the mysterious way that a human person is created in the womb, something we likewise cannot understand or control. I say person because that’s what the verse says—no mere bone and tissue, just another part of mom’s body; but spirit joined with bone in a body-soul person, created in the image of God.
This is but one of several passages of Scripture that unambiguously affirm the personhood of a human fetus (cf. Ps. 139:13-16; Jer. 1:5; Lk. 1:41-45; Exod. 21:22-25). Life begins at conception.
Now I won’t spend much time on this Sunday morning, because it’s not the central message of the passage. But I will share a few reflections here, both on the folly of abortion and the hope of the gospel. Read more…
Mission New England
Josh Cousineau, a native to the Northeast and a church planter in Auburn, Maine, offers some compelling and instructive reflections on the mission field many of us call home.
His first post traces the landscape of what he describes as the “gospel-depleted culture” of New England. He writes:
In the Northeast, Christian is more likely to be found on the lips of someone making a derogatory comment, than someone talking about the hope which they live their lives by. Jesus is about as far back in people’s minds as who won the medal count in the 2008 Olympics. Not only do the vast majority of people not know about Jesus, they don’t even care that they don’t know about Him. It is not relevant for them, so therefore there is no need. See, it is not that they have turned their backs on the family religion, or let their parents down by bailing on the Easter service this year, or the Thanksgiving Eve prayer service. Their parents probably didn’t go to church much in the first place, so they don’t really care. You would have to go back to grandma, or even great-grandma before you would find someone who actually had a ‘Christian-Rhythm’ to their life. This is just how life is, and there is nothing one can do about it.
Yet this is not cause for despair. Rather, it’s a unique opportunity: Read more…
Is Jesus Bigger than Your Favorite Football Team?
From his excellent devotional on preaching the gospel to yourself daily, Joe Thorn writes:
Dear Self,
Take note–your view of Jesus tends to shrink over time. It is not that your theology itself drifts, but sometimes you so focus on one aspect of Jesus that you tend to forget the rest. The result is a shrinking Jesus (in your faith). And as your shrinking Jesus becomes small Jesus, he is easily eclipsed by your idols and ego.
The bigger and more biblical your understanding of who Jesus is, the more likely he is to be such an object of love and adoration that the idols that aim at capturing your attention and swaying your allegiance will lose their power. This is why you sometimes lack earnestness for the kingdom and the glory of God while you overflow with passion concerning temporal things. Instead of making a joyful noise and singing earnestly for the victory Christ has over sin and death, you express a dispassionate approval and mouth the words to the songs sung in worship. But there is often a fire in your belly and shouts of joy when your favorite college football team is victorious over the competition. This is probably why the church is shrinking in North America–because small Jesus does not compel us to talk of him (much less suffer for him). And small Jesus is too little to arrest the attention of the world.
So please remember–Jesus is bigger than you tend to think. He is the perfect revelation of God, the radiance of his glory, the exact imprint of his nature; he is the Creator and Sustainer of all that exists. Everything belongs to him and exists for him. He is the author of your salvation, the perfecter of your faith, and the only one in whom you can find life.
Joe Thorn, Note to Self: The Discipline of Preaching to Yourself (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), 47-48.
Take a Sabbath Rest: God Doesn’t Need You in New England
If you’d like to read about one of the ways pride shows up in my life and ministry, venture on over to the Gospel Alliance New England blog and read my latest post: “Take a Sabbath Rest: God Doesn’t Need you in New England.”
in the meantime 