Bible Blitz

Crossway Books has made a package that includes an ESV New Testament available for a very low price. It comes with a door-hanger bag, so we went out this morning and hung a bunch of them around Edson. We, in this case, are volunteers from five churches in town. We had a good turn out and we distributed almost all of the 2500 kits that we ordered.

Being a cooperative project, we listed the names, service times and contact information for the churches that participated on the invitation sheet. I think that in itself says something to our community.

Thanks to Crossway for making this possible, Carol's Books in Edson for tipping us off to it and ordering the materials and to Pastor Steve and the Edson Alliance Church for leading and hosting the teams today.

If you're in another town, check out the possibility of distributing a bunch of Bibles before Christmas. Consider partnering with other churches to biltz your town or neighbourhood.

Now let's pray that people will read their new Bibles!

Paul's Passion for the Church

Last night we had a good Bible study on the book of Philemon. We finished a lengthy study of Philippians last week. Until Christmas we'll do some smaller books and thematic studies.

Philemon is a little jewel. One thing that struck me was Paul's between-the-lines betrayal of his ministry passion in verse 7:

For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you.*

Paul is in prison as he writes this, but his source of joy and comfort is good news concerning people in one of the churches he planted. He isn't giving thanks for physical help or personal encouragement (though he does that elsewhere), but for the work of a brother who refreshed the saints.

I had to ask myself, "Is this what I live for? Is this encouragement and spiritual refreshment of the saints what gives me joy and comfort?"

As a cross-reference, we took a look at Paul's mission statement in Colossians 1:28-2:3:

Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.*


I can identify with Paul's passion to some degree, but it is so easy to be distracted with "ministry" things that do not serve this goal of seeing the saints (and pre-saints that we are evangelizing) not only brought to a greater knowledge of Christ, but brought to the point where they are delighted in Christ and refreshed by His truth and love.

*All Bible quotes are from the ESV

Rejoice

My favorite Christmas album is Savior by Sovereign Grace Ministries. We've had the album for three years now, but I just started listening to it for this season last week - Thursday morning, to be exact. I listened to some of the album at the gym and then plugged my iPod into my car stereo on the way home. Just before I got home, the song Rejoice really got me. Here's the last verse:

All the church rejoice
For your King returns
On a white horse wearing a crown
He will break the sky with the angel's shout
Descending from the clouds
The the dead will rise from the land and sea
All His people will ascend
We will reign with Him for eternity
Rejoice, all the church, rejoice*

I was overwhelmed by the bittersweet reality of that awesome truth. The tears came because our Emily is now one of those dead, but she will rise. So will I - by God's grace - with all God's people. I am thankful that Emily, my dad and other believing loved ones that have gone ahead of us are present and alive with Christ, but what a glorious day awaits us all at the Resurrection!

We sang Rejoice at church on Sunday for the first time and it was well received. This is the first time I've told my story from the trip back from the gym, however.

By the way, you can buy the album at the Sovereign Grace site for $8 plus shipping, or download it there for $6 or buy it on iTunes. Highly recommended.

Don't Drift

I preached on Hebrews 2:1-4 on Sunday. The first few minutes of the sermon were not recorded. When I listened to the introduction as I was editing the file for upload, I thought the inadvertent edit improved the message. If you're interested, you can find it here.

Sax for Teeny

I saw the title of this post in the closed captioning in a hockey highlight package this morning at the gymn. The sound was down on that TV, but I knew what they were talking about as they were showing a fight from the Oilers game last night.

Only Oilers aware hockey fans will get this post, but I thought it was funny.

Catching Up

There's lots going on these days, but that has not been reflected here. Here are some highlights:

• A trip with Josh to Ontario and New York. Our Fellowship Baptist National Convention was in Niagara Falls last week, so I took Josh along and we met some friends and checked out a possible school for Josh in Toronto.
• Baptisms on Sunday. Excellent, God-honouring testimonies. We're thankful.
• A new sermon series on the book of Hebrews. Messages are going up at www.edsonbaptist.com

Much more could be said, but for the sake of getting something up, I'm going to post this without further elaboration.

Give Thanks. Seriously.

Thanksgiving is not just a byproduct of good times; it is a crucial Christian discipline. I’ve been slowly learning this, particularly in the last year.

Over the past two weekends, formal thanksgiving has been front and centre here. We celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving (October 11-12) and then the 50th anniversary of Edson Baptist Church last weekend.

These formal times of giving thanks to God are right and good. Celebrations are good for the soul, and they train us to be thankful people when we come to them in humility and in a conscious attitude of dependence upon God for His grace.

It would be easy to blow off such events and say, “These are just days on a calendar.” This kind of nonchalance could even wear a mask of spirituality. However, God’s Word sets a pattern of formal thanksgiving and remembrance.

Formal thanksgiving is good, but it must not displace continual, heartfelt thanksgiving to God in our daily lives. Giving thanks is commanded by God in many places. This is one of those, “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called” things. Thanksgiving is not a work by which we are saved. Quite the contrary, it is a recognition that all good things – and particularly our redemption – come from God as gifts.

To fail to give thanks is to rob God of His glory and deprive ourselves of joy. If you think I’m overstating this, do a word search in a concordance (or your computer Bible program) for “thanksgiving” and “give thanks” and tell me that I’m wrong. If you’re not convinced yet, then read Psalm 50 carefully and work out the logic. We read Psalm 50 in church on Thanksgiving Sunday this year and I was freshly convicted by it.

If you’re still not convinced that giving thanks is that important, I heartily recommend John Piper’s message from New Attitude 2007 on the kind of obedience that pleases God (free download).

If you don’t feel like being thankful, repent! And then dig into God’s Word and look for Jesus there. Contemplate who He is and what He has done for you. Think about what you would have if God had not given you something (hint: nothing). What do we have that we have not received?

Give thanks. Seriously.

Upcoming Events

I've been promoting a couple of upcoming conferences at our church, so I thought that I'd mention them here as well.

First, there is one that I won't be able to attend, but some me from our church may make the trip. It's a Sola Scriptura Conference at Cloverdale Baptist Church on October 22-24 featuring Jerry Bridges, Donald Whitney and John Crotts.

I won't be able to make it because I've been asked to speak at the first annual Mayor's Breakfast in Sylvan Lake, AB. on the 23rd.

However, I do hope to make it to the ReFocus Canada conference at Willingdon Church in Burnaby B.C. April 7-9. John Piper is coming back, as is Bruce Ware. Preston Manning is also a speaker this year - seeing that name in the lineup today was a surprise! It looks like registration is open already.

With One Foot Raised

I recommend all the messages at the recent Desiring God Conference (even though I haven't heard them all yet), but one that really left an impression was Sam Storms talk, The Final Act in Theater of God.

My blog title is from this Calvin quote, cited from a letter to a suffering friend:

"They [our physical afflictions] should serve us as medicine to purge us from worldly affections and remove what is superfluous in us. And since they are to us the messengers of death, we ought to learn to have one foot raised to take our departure when it shall please God."

This morning, I read a similar exhortation in Spurgeon's Morning and Evening:

"The hope which is laid up for you in heaven." - Colossians 1:5

Our hope in Christ for the future is the mainspring and the mainstay of our joy here. It will animate our hearts to think often of heaven, for all that we can desire is promised there. Here we are weary and toilworn, but yonder is the land of rest where the sweat of labour shall no more bedew the worker’s brow, and fatigue shall be for ever banished. To those who are weary and spent, the word "rest" is full of heaven. We are always in the field of battle; we are so tempted within, and so molested by foes without, that we have little or no peace; but in heaven we shall enjoy the victory, when the banner shall be waved aloft in triumph, and the sword shall be sheathed, and we shall hear our Captain say, "Well done, good and faithful servant." We have suffered bereavement after bereavement, but we are going to the land of the immortal where graves are unknown things. Here sin is a constant grief to us, but there we shall be perfectly holy, for there shall by no means enter into that kingdom anything which defileth. Hemlock springs not up in the furrows of celestial fields. Oh! is it not joy, that you are not to be in banishment for ever, that you are not to dwell eternally in this wilderness, but shall soon inherit Canaan? Nevertheless let it never be said of us, that we are dreaming about the future and forgetting the present, let the future sanctify the present to highest uses. Through the Spirit of God the hope of heaven is the most potent force for the product of virtue; it is a fountain of joyous effort, it is the corner stone of cheerful holiness. The man who has this hope in him goes about his work with vigour, for the joy of the Lord is his strength. He fights against temptation with ardour, for the hope of the next world repels the fiery darts of the adversary. He can labour without present reward, for he looks for a reward in the world to come.

Autumn

We've had a beautiful late summer and fall. In our country, the leaves are turning and falling even though we haven't had a real frost yet.



One week from today will be the 1st anniversary of Emily's death. It will be a hard day, but we're getting out of town for the weekend to be together as a family.

We're doing pretty well. I'm thankful that God has helped our family and that we are carrying on. I don't know how next weekend will be, but if Emily's birthday and the first Christmas without her are any indication, I think we'll be okay.

I was reading C.S. Lewis' An Experiment in Criticism last week and I came across a quote that arrested me. He was talking about the difference between real grief and the kind that you meet in a literary tragedy. He wrote, "Sometimes it remains for life, a puddle in the mind which grows always wider, shallower, and more unwholesome" (p. 78 in the Cantos edition).

I don't want that to happen, I don't think it's happening, but the very fact that this sentence leapt off the page at me warns me that it could very easily happen. At the very least, isn't this a picturesque way of putting the lingering bitterness that can remain after a loss?

I don't want to wallow in it, but the grief is still very real. However, God's goodness and grace shines ever brighter and I am thankful for the sure hope we have in our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Juanita found a poem about September that is, as she put it, bittersweet. We're enjoying a beautiful autumn, but there is a difficult anniversary to remember.

Sons & Daughters

I've been meaning to do a quick review of this new CD, but I'm going to be lazy and point you to C.J. Mahaney's review. Read the review and then go and buy it!

The Church - Sermon Series

It is the 50th anniversary of Edson Baptist Church this year. We are having a celebration weekend on October 17-18, but I thought I would lead up to this event by doing a sermon series on the church. The first message, an introduction, was not recorded.

I have posted a sermon on the church from January 2008 over at the church website (www.edsonbaptist.com) as a substitute.

I've also been planning to make some comments on Psalm 46. Perhaps tomorrow....

Thinking About Churches V: Preaching

This is the last post in a mini-series on anecdotal observations of churches. I don’t get out much, I’m in Edson most Sundays, but over the years I’ve visited several different churches in Canada and the U.S. on holiday. I’ve also had conversations with friends and family about their church experiences. In the churches I’m familiar with, preaching still takes place. That alone should be encouraging, but what is that preaching like?

As I’ve said in earlier posts, I’m disappointed in the general attitude of the service and in the music, but what makes me really sad (and sometimes mad) is the preaching. In each post I’ve said that there are notable exceptions, and I’m thankful for churches that value biblical, expositional preaching, but there is indeed a famine for hearing the Word of the Lord in the land.
The central problem, I've decided, is a rush to application. We don't hear what God is saying, we hear some “relevant” application about how this passage is really about us. Even if Jesus is mentioned, the main point is how we need to clean up our act or try harder at being good Christians. Call it "Law Lite," if you will, but the gospel is missing regardless. Sometimes, there is not even a discernable passage, just a verse or two projected on the screen behind the speaker. The sermon is usually very short, but the personal illustrations are long (some call this authenticity).

Is any of this new? No, not at all. Most of this probably describes the churches I grew up in for the most part (minus the PowerPoint), though I didn't know any different then.

The reason that I'm sad about this is that God presents us a feast and we go out of our way to serve junk food. A lot of people think that the worship stops when the music stops, but can we blame them if the message has nothing of God’s voice to recommend it as worship? If people think that preaching is a bore, they probably think that the problem is with them. I wish I could communicate to them that the problem is with the lack of biblical, gospel content in their services. God is not boring. Our sin and God's solution is not boring.

I asked earlier if this problem was new. Consider this wisdom from 2600 years ago:

Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the LORD, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. -- Jeremiah 2:12-13

Again, let me stress that there are exceptions. Some churches really celebrate God and the Gospel in biblically faithful ways, but the longer I live, the more I realize how rare churches like this really are. If you attend one, be thankful. If you don't, then make some noise!

So what do I mean specifically about his poor preaching? Let me point you to another source. As I began this post, I thought about an article that I read in Modern Reformation magazine several years ago (I just checked the date – 13 years ago!) and it is still available online. It pinpoints some common preaching problems.

If you are in a church with weak preaching, work on some constructive ways to alert your pastor to the wealth of preaching resources and examples that are available.