Luke 1:39-56: Joy and Humility Before God at the Savior’s Coming

Above is an Armenian portrait of Mary greeting Elizabeth in Luke 1.

The following sermon is to be delivered at Grace Church of Philly on December 5, 2010:

Introduction

The big themes of our text today are joy and humility.

The two sections of text that we will study together in Luke 1 reveal the hearts of women who were genuinely excited and amazed at the character and works of God.

In these texts, it is clear for all to see that there is joy expressed that is beyond compare and without parallel.

In these texts, it is also clear for all to see that there is a very deep humility present in the hearts of these women that colors their joy in a very unique and interesting way.

Thus, the themes of joy and humility are woven together in a literary tapestry that forms one of the most famous and magnificent texts of the New Testament.

Before we undergo a more detailed look at these verses, I believe it is critical to note that the humble rejoicing of these two women is not necessarily centered upon their own personal circumstances, but instead upon the person and works of the mighty, saving God of Israel.

Let us be very careful not to miss this fact. The joy of these two pious and devout women rested and centered in God Himself.  They rejoiced as they reflected upon the character of their mighty, saving God.

Too often we find ourselves rejoicing in things that are related to God, but not God Himself. Read more »

Jesus the Great Shepherd

The following is to be preached at an outreach to the poor and homeless in West Philadelphia on October 15, 2010.

In Mark chapter 6, we find Jesus sending out the apostles. He sends them out to preach to the multitudes about repentance from sin.  This they do, and in v. 30 we find them returning to Jesus and reporting to him everything that they had said and done.

6:31 – And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate [ἔρημος: desert, wilderness] place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.

Jesus and the disciples get into a boat and leave for the wilderness place by themselves.

6:33-34 – Now many saw [Jesus and the disciples] going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. When [Jesus] went ashore he saw a great crowd….

At this point, what would we expect of a human leader? In normal circumstances, what would we expect? What would we expect of one who was so busy with something that he didn’t even have time to stop for a meal break? Read more »

Destroying the Works of the Devil

The following is a short gospel message that was preached to the poor and homeless at a special worship outreach and feeding on April 16th:

This evening, I want to share a few words about a people who were severely afflicted and oppressed; and a few words about the God who heard their cry and delivered them out from under the hands of those who were causing their suffering.

Before the time of Moses, the ancient Egyptians enslaved the people of Israel and “made their lives bitter with hard service,” treating them “ruthlessly,” (Ex. 1:14) the leaders even going so far as ordering that all male Hebrew children be killed immediately after birth (Ex. 1:15-22). Read more »

The Gospel and Mercy Ministry

At Grace Church, our desire is that everything we do and say and think would be informed and driven by the gospel of Jesus Christ. And “everything” necessarily includes our ministries of mercy.

In other words, we don’t want mercy ministry to become an end in and of itself. We are very concerned that it never becomes detached from Jesus and His saving gospel.

Missionary Lesslie Newbigin speaks on the danger of reductionism in the life and thought of the church: Read more »

On “Therapeutic Spirituality”

Frequently, I dialogue with nice, moral people who genuinely believe that they are “good” and that Jesus came to help them discover their ultimate potential in life. They believe that he can help them by unleashing some kind of untapped, or dormant, power inside of them.

I’ve asked people who believe this sort of thing to explain to me what they believe Jesus meant when he said, “You must be born again” (John 3:7). Usually, I get an explanation that sounds something like this: “Well, Jesus can help us discover how much love and greatness we have inside of ourselves so that we can live better lives.”

In this type of religious system, Jesus the omnipotent God-man is reduced little more than a self-help guru. Sort of like Tony Robbins with a halo.

Those who are deceived (or have deceived themselves) into thinking such strange and unbiblical things are usually people who have some type of (very) limited knowledge of the teachings of Scripture, attend church on occasion (either presently or in their past), and know some facts about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. I confess that, in the months leading up to the day I was saved, I believed something very similar to what I described above (although, for the life of me, I don’t believe I could have offered such a creative explanation as to what being “born again” meant).

Following are some excerpts from a fabulous book I am currently reading and re-reading. In it, the author adeptly addresses the type of culturally-popular / ungodly / vapid / powerless / counterfeit “spirituality” I just described above.

Excerpts from Michael Horton, The Gospel-Driven Life (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2009), 78-80:

“Spirituality” is as successful as materialism in feeding our narcissism. Keeping us preoccupied with our inner self and its experiences, morality, and activity, the “search for the sacred” is as godless as atheism. There are plenty of resources on the market to feed our culture’s anxiety over self-improvement. But they are all different ways of dressing up the old Adam. Furthermore, their moralistic prescriptions never actually reduce stress but pile more expectations upon us to try to make ourselves acceptable to God.

We are not sick, but spiritually dead. We are not good people with room for improvement, but the ungodly. We are not children who need a little direction, but lost. The gospel comes not to help us get our act together, fixing us up for a night on the town, making us more respectable to ourselves or others. Rather, it comes to kill us and make us alive as completely new creatures. Not a new and improved self, but a self buried and raised with Christ, is the gospel’s message of genuine transformation.

Moralistic, therapeutic spirituality is part of that narcissistic complex about which Paul warned Timothy that makes us “lovers of self…, having an appearance of godliness, but denying its power” (2 Tim. 3:2, 5). And the power that it denies is the announcement of free justification in Christ, apart from works. The power of God does not lie in programs, strategies, self-help formulas, seven steps to a better life, or political reform. Like someone trapped in a burning building, we cannot rescue ourselves. There is no hope inside of us! There are no inner resources or possibilities – no Archimedean point at which we might pry ourselves open to God and begin to climb the stairway to heaven. Our whole nature is in bondage to sin, so we cannot even repair our condition by an act of the will. Our only hope lies outside of us, from the God who rescues us in his Son! Paul said that he was “not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16)….

This gospel – the Good News of God’s justification of sinners in Christ – …is the ocean that we swim in, the air that we breathe, the identity that defines us….

The gospel is not a general belief in heaven and hell or hope for a better life beyond; it is not even confidence in a resurrection at the end of the age. It is the announcement that Jesus Christ himself is our life, for he is our peace with God. He does not merely show us the way; he is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6).

A Review of Boyd’s “The Myth of a Christian Religion”

Following is a brief review of Gregory A. Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Religion: Losing Your Religion for the Beauty of a Revolution (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009).

This is a book that describes what it looks like to live submitted to the lordship of Jesus Christ in twenty-first century America. Boyd addresses the sad and discouraging fact that many professing Christians appear to be totally submerged in the worldly norms and values of our fallen and wicked culture. In this, they are “indistinguishable” from the agnostics, atheists, and peoples of other faiths around them. There is a “radical contradiction between the lifestyle Jesus calls his followers to embrace…and the typical American lifestyle” (11). Boyd calls on Christ-followers to embrace the extreme counter-cultural call of the gospel and lifestyle of the Kingdom.

At the heart of much of our consumer-oriented evangelicalism today is the “magical” sinner’s prayer. Boyd points out that the misuse of Romans 10:13 has done much to empty the gospel of its saving power: “We’re basically [teaching people to purchase] fire insurance with a magical prayer” (167). This has, in my opinion, created legions of unconverted, unloving, gospel-inoculated, church-going sinners who may mistakenly believe that they are co-heirs with Jesus Christ in His Kingdom. People who have no intention of submitting their lives to the lordship of Jesus Christ have placed their trust in the power of a prayer rather than in the power of the One who commands their ultimate love, affection, and allegiance. The object of the prayer is thus ignored in pursuit of the prayer itself. In this, modern evangelical Christianity has become no different than the pagan religions of the world, with their magical incantations and recitations.

Boyd points out that a saving relationship with Christ “must be one of submission. We are ‘saved’ when we authentically surrender our life to Christ, enthroning him as Lord” (167). The remainder of this work details what it looks like, from a biblical perspective, to live out the radical implications of the lordship of Christ in our daily lives.

After two foundational and introductory chapters on the nature of the church universal and the separate nature of the “two kingdoms” (the Kingdom of the Cross and the Kingdom of the Sword) that many evangelicals tend to so easily confuse and conflate, Boyd concisely and adeptly tackles what I believe to the largest issues confronting the body of Christ in America today: heart idolatry, judgmentalism, religiosity, Western individualism, nationalism/patriotism, violence, social oppression, racism, poverty and greed, abuse of the creation, sex, and secularism. A failure to live like Christ in each of these areas has done much damage to the church’s gospel witness and credibility.

This book may be extremely difficult and challenging for many within the conservative evangelical church. All the more reason, then, to honestly and openly engage the truth it contains. I commend Boyd for the courage it took to write this book and to take the bold stand that he takes for the Kingdom and the cause of Christ.

The Gospel and Being Incarnational

The Gospel and Being Incarnational

Philippians 2:5-8
⁵ Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

In this post I want to talk about the value of being Incarnational and how the gospel informs and empowers that value. This text is a call to think incarnationally.

The talk of being incarnational is often in the context of how believer’s in Christ relate to the world outside the church. Among Christians you will find various approaches to how to relate to non-church culture or how they attempt to live their lives in relationship to the world outside the church.

Isolationists avoid the culture. Antagonists fight the culture. Separatists keep pure from a defiled culture. Sycncretists blend the values of the church and the culture. Triumphalists seek to control and conquer the culture. Accomodationists give in to the culture.

At Grace Church of Philly we seek to be Incarnational (to live out the values of the gospel in human skin).The gospel came in human skin, i.e. God in flesh, and the gospel continues to come in human skin, i.e. Christ living in me and through me. In being incarnational we become ‘friends of sinners’ and immersed in the culture. We believe that
if incarnational gospel values are being developed in us, then we have no fear of being completely assimilated into the culture.

… the life of Christ reminds us that incarnation does not lead to us feeling anymore at home in the kingdom of this age, that the more we incarnate into our culture, the more we will find ourselves at odds with the elements of that culture which resist God’s redemptive actions in the world (Michael Horton).

However, our interest is not only Incarnational Ministry or Living in relation to the world outside the church. We are interested primarily in the deeper internal values that drive external activity.

Being incarnational is first about inner transformation before external ministry and living.

Another way to say it is – Incarnation is less about the external context (the where I am) than it is about the internal value (the who I am).

Incarnation that begins with external activity and context rather than inner transformation is in danger of being ingenuous and powerless.

Incarnation is first about who I am becoming than what I am doing.

INCARNATIONAL AS AN INTERNAL VALUE (Keep thinking this one thing)

The call to being incarnational as an internal value is expressed in verse 5:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus….

We are to have hearts and minds that come from reflecting on Christ’s incarnation and death on the cross.

• Being incarnational, we deny ourselves certain rights so that we can identify with others in their suffering (self-denial)
  

Jesus did not “count” equality with God as something to grasp tightly i.e. he never said, ‘I see the need of the world, but I can’t give up my form of existence. I must hold it tightly.’ Jesus could never cease to be who he was, but he could leave his throne of glory and descend to a manger and a cross. This He did. This we are called to do. We do this without surrendering who we are in Christ and we do this for the good of others. This is what good missionaries do; this is the call of all believers. This is the only way we meet the world in its suffering. This means that we may have to deny ourselves our right to the comfort of the “American Dream” in order to effectively minister in a broken and suffering world.

2 Corinthians 8:9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

Being incarnational is denying my rights and often lowering my status in bringing who I am in Christ into identity with those who suffer because they do not know Jesus.

In being incarnational I do not surrender who I am in Christ, yet there is enough about me that relates to the world I live in.

1 Corinthians 9:19-23
¹⁹ For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. ²⁰ To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. ²¹ To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. ²² To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. ²³ I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

Because he was willing to change his form of existence, he “made himself nothing (emptied himself)”

This action was not a divestment of Who He is as Son of God. He surrendered no attributes of deity, though as theologians say, he surrendered the independent exercise of some relative attributes, i.e. he was always omnipotent (all powerful, yet in his incarnation, he did not exercise his omnipotence but rather did all that he did in the power of the Holy Spirit.

This becoming nothing calls us to at least the following way of thinking:

• Being incarnational, we come with a desire to serve, not to dominate.
  

The desire to dominate rather than serve is a plague among Christians in churches and in the culture.

“The Word made flesh” – came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

We Christians are good at words and technology today makes it possible for us to multiply our words. But too often we are only ‘talking heads.’ The world needs the word of God but it needs the word embodied in human flesh. Jesus did not simply say, ‘I love you.’ He said ‘I love you,’ then came from heaven, took on the form of a servant, and gave his life for you.

What are we doing besides talking?

• In being incarnational, we come with humility not superiority (he humbled himself)
  

Jesus will come in power and glory some day, but he first came in humility. He made himself low. Sometimes our approach to those outside for the gospel comes across as arrogant.

For example, often we approach non-believers as if we are smarter because we grasp the content and implications of the gospel. I confess that I have been there. This arrogance is a vestige of the Enlightenment where reason was exalted and when applied to theology, it often produced people with an arrogance which says to non-believers ” you’re pretty dumb if you don’t get it (the gospel).”

But think about it, why do you believe what you believe. Is there such incontrovertible evidence that is so persuasive that any reasonable person should accept it?

Or is there something so distorted about our ability to know the things of God that it takes a supernatural work of the Spirit to open our eyes and minds.

We come to those who need Jesus with humility because we know that God in His grace and through the work of His Spirit has allowed us to have ears to hear and eyes to see. “I once was blind now I see.”

In his letters (118,22) Saint Augustine wrote: “Grasp the truth of God by using the way he himself provides, since he sees the weakness of our footsteps. That way consists first, of humility, second, of humility, and third, of humility.”

• Being incarnational, we come to identify with others in their weakness and suffering (he came in the likeness of man)
  

As a man he experienced what we do. He knew the joys and sorrow, the laughter and tears, the pain and the comfort that humans experience. We cannot be incarnational without identifying and experiencing the ‘human condition’ of those who we seek to love in Jesus’ name.

We cannot do this from a distance.

• Being incarnational, we come with a heart of obedience to the mission, regardless of how costly it is. (even the death of the cross)
  

His identifying with us in our weakness of suffering in order to deliver us necessitated the cross – the only way God’s deepest love could be expressed without sacrificing His holiness and justice.

Incarnational obedience is costly. One of the costs of incarnation is that in touching others you are also touched by others. And, sometimes that touching hurts.

Jesus touched and healed many and embraced children, and felt the embrace of others, as well as the anointing of perfume and the washing of feet, but he also was touched with rejection, pummeling, and thorns, and nails and ultimately he was touched by our sin.

Isaiah 53:5 But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.

Incarnation often involves a costly obedience.

INCARNATIONAL AS A MINISTRY MODEL (Incarnation = in flesh, i.e. eventually internal values are expressed in external ministry and living)

What we mean by “incarnational mission,” then, is a commitment to be with people, to embody the good news we preach, and through the Spirit to mediate the presence of Christ wherever He is needed. As the body of Christ, we are the continuation of His ministry; we are His presence on earth. We are the salt of the earth, the light of the world (http://www.wordmadeflesh.org/the-cry/the-cry-vol-10-no-3/incarnational/).

There is a danger with only an external incarnational focus.

We are not distinctively Christian because we do things that identify with the world in their suffering.

We are distinctively Christian because our understanding and experience of the gospel drives us to identify with people in their suffering.

Eventually being moved by the gospel to think incarnationally has an impact on how we relate to society, to communities, to culture.

When we think about being incarnational, we need to think about how we as Christians relate to each other and culture outside the church.

Since being incarnational is more about internal transformation than activity, it is evident first in the church and that’s point of Philippians 2.

Incarnational living is not a rejection of the church, but a reflection to the world outside the church of those values that characterize the body of Christ.

Since GCP is committed ‘showing God’s grace to a great city” – we seek to express these values in a way explained by Tim Keller.

1. Christians should live long-term in the city. The city is an intense crucible of culture formation. Cultural trends tend to be generated in the city and flow outward into the rest of society. Therefore, people who live in the large urban cultural centers (working in their institutions, taking jobs in the arts, business, academia, the helping professions, and the media) tend to have greater impact on how things are done in a culture. If a far greater percentage of the people living in cities long-term were Christians, Christ’s values would have a greater influence on the culture. In his book Two Cities: Two Loves, he [James Boice] argued that evangelicals should live in cities in at least the same percentage as the general population. If we do not, we should not expect much influence in society.

2. Christians should be a dynamic counter-culture in the city. It will not be enough for Christians to simply live as individuals in the city. They must live as a particular kind of community. The Bible tells us that the history of the world is a ‘tale of two cities.’ The ‘city of man’ is built on the principle of individual self-aggrandizement (Gen 11:1-4- “Let us make a name for ourselves”). What God wants is different. “In the city of our God, his holy mountain is beautiful in elevation–the joy of the whole earth” (Psalm 48:2). In other words, the urban society God wants is based on service rather than selfishness, and on bringing joy to the whole world, not just to the individuals within it. Jesus probably had Psalm 48:2 in mind when he told his disciples that they were ‘a city on a hill’ whose life and action showed God’s glory to the world (Matt 5:14-17). That is us! We
Christians are called to be an alternate city within every earthly city, an alternate human culture
within every human culture, to show how sex, money, and power can be used in non-destructive
ways; to show how classes and races who cannot get along outside of Christ can get along in
him; and to show how it is possible to produce art that brings hope rather than despair or
titillation.

3. Christians should be a community radically committed to the good of the city as a whole. It is insufficient for Christians to form a culture that only ‘counters’ the values of the city. We must then turn, with all the resources of our faith and life, to sacrificially serve the good of the whole city, and especially the poor. Christians work for the peace, security, justice, and prosperity of their neighbors, loving them in word and deed, whether they believe what we do or not. In Jeremiah 29:7, the Jews were called not just to live in the city but to love it and work for it’s ‘shalom’—its economic, social, and spiritual flourishing. Christians are, indeed, citizens of God’s heavenly city. But the citizens of God’s city are always the best possible citizens of their earthly city. They walk in the steps of the One who laid down his life for his opponents. In the end, Christians will not be attractive within our culture through power plays and coercion, but through sacrificial service to people regardless of their beliefs. We do not live here simply to increase the prosperity of our own tribe and group, but for the good of all the peoples of the city.

4. Christians should be a people who integrate their faith with their work. There is a fourth, crucial component to our plan for relating Christians to culture. As we said above, all work proceeds from beliefs about the ‘big questions’ regarding what life means, what human beings are, and what are the most important things in life. We call the answers to these big questions a ‘worldview.’

Conclusion:

This text calls us to have thinking that comes from focusing on the incarnation of Jesus Christ. As we focus on Christ (2 Cor 3:18 –while beholding his glory, we are being transformed into his image), the values of his incarnation (self-denial, serving others, humility, identity, costly obedience) are progressively instilled in us by the Spirit of God.

Even as we seek to have these values instilled in us and these values expressed in real ministry that touches the lives of others, we make no mistake in thinking that our being incarnational is the answer for the world’s ultimate need.

When our incarnation of the gospel purports to exhibit perfection or in itself is seen as the gospel, it masks the gospel of grace (and tells a lie).

Our incarnation of the gospel is always deficient which is why we always point to the one who alone truly embodies the gospel.

Grace Gathering Video – Pastor John Davis

Dr. John Davis speaking on justification and the glory of God on 11-15-09.

Grace Gathering Video – Pastor John Davis (Part One)

Our Philosophy of Ministry

Along with others on our leadership team, I currently find myself in a ministry context of planting a new church in an urban area that is racially, culturally, and socio-economically diverse. Add to this mixture a highly transient student and young, urban professional population and further challenges to long-term ministry become immediately evident. In this short piece I will set forth my philosophy of ministry in general (regardless of any temporal or geographical circumstances) and my philosophy of ministry in the immediate context of University City, Philadelphia.

The ultimate goal of my life is to serve and minister in a way that is radically Christ-centered, radically gospel-centered, and radically other-centered by the power of the Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father (Matt. 22:34-40; 28:18-20). It is the God-man Jesus Christ whose life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension gives meaning to the gospel and displays for me the precious value of each and every human life (John 3:16; 1 Cor. 15:1-8; 1 John 4:9-10). It is through the gospel that I am reconciled to this Jesus and empowered to love and serve others (Rom. 1:16; 5:5; 1 John 4:19). It is through indiscriminately loving others that I can live out this gospel and serve Christ by serving others (Matt. 25:31-46; 1 John 3:14-19).

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