Jared C. Wilson's Blog, page 29

When God Lays Down His Bow

What is the point of the rainbow? What does it symbolize?

Many Christians know from the church’s teaching on the flood of Noah’s day, that the rainbow originally was a sign of God’s promise not to destroy the world by water again. This understanding makes the modern co-opting of the rainbow symbol for gay pride seem so egregious. But the rainbow is a symbol of justice too.

“Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you,” . . . And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” (Gen. 9:9, 12–13)

The rainbow now designated the sign of God’s promise not to visit wrath on the earth by way of a flood again. But larger than that, the rainbow is another sign of God’s promise to remove his wrath from his children.

The Hebrew word for bow in this text is the same Hebrew word used for the kind of bow one uses in battle, as in “bow and arrows.” God is talking about laying down his weapons. In his commentary on Genesis, Marcus Dods writes:

They accepted it as a sign that God has no pleasure in destruction, that He does not give way to moods, that He does not always chide, that if weeping may endure for a night joy is sure to follow. If any one is under a cloud, leading a joyless, hopeless, heartless life, if any one has much apparent reason to suppose that God has given him up to catastrophe, and lets things run as they may, there is some satisfaction in reading this natural emblem and recognising that without the cloud, nay, without the cloud breaking into heavy sweeping rains, there cannot be the bow, and that no cloud of God’s sending is permanent, but will one day give place to unclouded joy.

We keep seeking peace, peace, where there is no peace, and we only find our true lasting eternal joy-saturated peace when it comes by the Spirit of God straight from Father God in the gospel of the Son of God. In Christ Jesus’s work we see that God “lays down his bow.”

And we can keep seeking peace even in God’s good gifts—work, family, recreation, food, art and culture, the great outdoors, and sexual “freedom”—but we can’t find the peace that endures forever until we find it in the gospel. Because justice, while ordained by God, when administered by man can never truly satisfy.

But the covenant of grace is administered by God himself. So when we seek peace there, we truly find it. It’s not tainted by sin because God is holy and his Son is sinless.

Until we find peace in the gospel, we find only the search for peace and therefore no peace at all. In Isaiah 57:21 we read, “There is no peace . . . for the wicked.”

But to those who’ve put on Christ’s righteousness, who’ve gotten into the ark of the cross, Isaiah 26:3 says: “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.”

The rainbow, then, is a sign of God’s promise that he has hung up his bow, and it’s a reminder to himself of his grace toward the earth. In the same way, the cross is a sign of God’s promise that he has hung his Son up to die, and it’s a reminder of his grace toward you that because Christ has taken the wrath, the wrath is taken.

To tout the rainbow, then, as a symbol of man-centered pride, is to urge the Lord, actually, to take up his bow again, to take it back in hand and draw it back. Celebrating pride is courting condemnation.

Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” – James 4:6

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. – Colossians 3:5-6

A variation on this material appears in The Story of Everything.

The Gospel, The Law, and The Steve Miller Band-Quoting Muslim Cab Driver

He told me his name was Tokar. “Like the song,” he said.

“The song?”

“Yeah, you know—I’m a midnight Tokar.”

“Ohhh.”

This was the first Steve Miller Band-quoting Muslim cab driver I’d ever had the privilege of sharing time with.

I was in a city up north for a pastors conference and was going to meet some friends after hours at a restaurant downtown. But when Tokar and I arrived, I spent another thirty minutes just sitting in the cab at the curb, talking with my new friend.

How the conversation got started, I don’t remember, but it went pretty deep fairly quickly. By the time we’d arrived, he’d already told me he and his wife were waiting for their last child to leave home so they could get a divorce and that he was reading a lot of self-help books.

Tokar’s Muslim beliefs were nominal. But he had the same working understanding of life as nearly every other human being in the world: “do more good than bad.”

“Do you want to get divorced?” I asked him.

“No. My wife wants it. She’s a very depressed person. I want to help her but she says she doesn’t love me any more and we are better if we are separate. So as soon as our last child goes—pffft.” He made a gesture with his hand. “She’s gone.”

“What does your religion say about this?”

“Well, you know what they would say. It isn’t right.”

“So what do you do?”

“What can I do?”

“Love her.”

“What do you think I’m doing?”

“Okay, right. I’m sorry.”

“Every day,” he said, “I just get up, do my thing. Try to stay out of the way. Just try to get through the day.”

“That sounds like a terrible way to live.”

“Yes.”

“What would your religion say about that?”

“About what?”

“Just trying to get through the day.”

“I don’t know. They’d say it’s not good. I should look on the brighter side.”

“Look on the brighter side?” That wasn’t the kind of thing I would’ve expected from Islamic theology. It sounded more like Joel Osteen. The more we talked, the more I discovered Tokar’s theology was closer to Osteen’s than to Islam’s. I said, “So when it’s all said and done, what happens? When it’s all over.”

“When it’s all over? You go stand before God.”

“And you hope he will let you into heaven?”

“Right.”

“And how do you know if he will?”

“It’s like—”—and I swear, I am not making this up; this is the exact illustration he used, which might as well have been cribbed from someone’s fake illustration about sharing the gospel with somebody—“it’s like there’s a big scale.”

I totally knew where he was going with this.

He continued: “And on one side is all your good, and on the other side is all your bad.”

“And whichever side is weightiest, that’s how you know if you made it.”

“Exactly.”

I just sort of let it hang there a while. Then I asked him: “Do you think your good outweighs your bad?”

He let that hang there a while. Then he softly said, “No.”

“I don’t think mine does either.”

We all have, essentially, three ways to live: by goodness, by badness, or by the gospel. Or, to put it another way: law, license, or Lord.

Some people prefer to live for the moment, to get as much pleasure in as they can, and not think about tomorrow, not think about what comes after they die, not think about God, except perhaps to shake their fist at him or his church. Some people deny God by their words, avowing a decided atheism. Some people simply deny God by their life, embracing the functional atheism of living however they please. This is the “bad” or “licentious” way to live, although certainly people who’ve sold out to it don’t think it’s bad at all!

Some people prefer to live very religiously, very morally, minding all their p’s and q’s and keeping a tidy behavioral ledger running. They are doing their best to be good and think good and say good. They serve and give and sacrifice. But they don’t love Jesus. They might even go to church, or they might think themselves too good for church. They may be atheists or religious people, but they are trying to “earn their keep” in the world either way, trusting that karma will save them or maybe those great big heavenly scales will tilt their way when it’s all said and done.

I think if we’re all honest, we will recognize that isn’t likely. A lifetime’s worth of good behavior cannot make up for the eternal glory we need to live with God forever.

So there I was in that cab with my friend, the midnight Tokar. He had admitted his good deeds would not outweigh his bad deeds. I admitted the same. He was staring not just into a dreary life of “getting by,” he was staring into the unknown eternity, and I had unwittingly exposed his aimlessness. And his hopelessness.

So what do we do? We have three ways we can live, but in the end, the first two are really the same. They are both just self-salvation projects, and neither of them works.

But then there’s Jesus. He alone offers a rest from trying to be good enough. He alone conquers our fears of being too bad. And when we see him clearly—see what love he has for broken sinners, see what hope he offers for wayward travelers, see what rest he provides for weary hearts, see what joy he pours out on parched souls, see what glory he shares with frail human beings—there’s only one choice to make. This is what I told Tokar.

In the end, Christianity stands alone, not because it’s a “better religion,” but because it speaks a better word. Christianity is unparalleled, because Jesus Christ is.

Tokar shrugged.

Please don’t shrug.

(This is an excerpt from my new book Unparalleled: How Christianity’s Uniqueness Makes it Compelling)

Pastor, This Is What We Need On Sundays

A word to my pastor friends, who every week labor in preparing to teach the Bible in the weekend gathering while the dark cloud of the new cultural downgrade hangs over them:

Brothers, don’t go about your weekly sermon preparation and personal discipleship in sackcloth and ashes. Get into the vineyard of God’s Word, get some holy sweat worked up, whistling while you work, lifting your hearts in worship. Get into the kitchen of study and prep and start putting together the banquet. And come Sunday, spread the feast out rich and sumptuous for us, beckoning us to taste and see that the Lord is good. We don’t need your doomsdaying or dimbulbing. Still less do we need your shallow pick-me-ups and spit-polished legalism. Like our brother Wesley, set yourselves on fire with gospel truth that your church family might come watch you burn.

And when you gather Sunday with the flock, shepherd us to repentance and sincerity, reminding us of the holy God who welcomes us with sin-forgetting forgiveness. When we enter the worship gathering, let us not look back to the ruins lest we all become the wrong kind of salt. Let us look forward to the new Jerusalem, where our citizenship is secured even today and evermore. Get your wits about you and take heart, for our Lord has overcome the world. Yesterday, today, Sunday, and forever. Frighten the kings of the world and shake the kingdom of the devil with how resolute you are in abandoning yourselves to the mighty God.

Your churches don’t need your hand-wringing but your hand-raising. We need your deep, abiding, all-conquering, sin-despairing gospel joy. This and this alone is the hope of the world.

The Chocolate-ness of Chocolate, The Coffee-ness of Coffee, and The Gospel

“And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, “This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept as they heard the words of the Law. Then he said to them, “Go your way. Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.” — Nehemiah 8:9-10

The first step to real gospel joy is real gospel brokenness. We cannot get to real happiness in God until we get to real despair of our sin. “Til sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet,” Thomas Watson tells us.

But once we have despaired of all sin and the gods at their genesis, we are free. Really, truly free. To eat fat juicy steaks, for instance.

In fact, we cannot really enjoy the good gifts God gives us until he as their Giver is our greatest joy. Until he as their Giver is our greatest joy, we will be left trying to enjoy his gifts for things they are not, rather than the things they are.

In Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis credited a close friend with cultivating in him “a determination to rub one’s nose in the very quiddity of each thing, to rejoice in its being so magnificently what it was.”

John Piper echoes this enjoyment of quiddity in his book Don’t Waste Your Life, commenting on this kind of awareness: “To wake up in the morning and be aware of the firmness of the mattress, the warmth of the sun’s rays, the sound of the clock ticking, the sheer being of things… ”

If I don’t believe the gospel, I will miss out on the joy of the it-ness of things. I will be looking to these things as drugs, as appetite-fillers, as fulfillers, as powers, as gods, as worshipers of the god of myself.

If coffee or chocolate or anything else other than God is the highlight of my day or the ultimate joy of my heart, my joy is temporary, hollow, thin.

But if I believe in the gospel, I can finally enjoy the chocolate-ness of chocolate and the coffee-ness of coffee. Only the gospel frees me to enjoy things as they truly are and as they someday will be.

Is Your Pastor Happy to See You?

“Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.” — Hebrews 13:17

I wish that when I was a pastor I had spent more time with all the low-maintenance church folks. In church life, the squeaky wheel, as they say, gets the grease. Meanwhile, the folks who quietly and humbly served, gave, and simply showed up without causing heartaches or headaches just keep on keepin’ on. God love ‘em. I sure did. They were a joy to me, and I fear I neglected them too much simply because they didn’t seem too needy.

It is my goal now, for as long as God would have me simply as a sheep and not a shepherd, be as low-maintenance as I can manage for my church. I want when my pastor sees me coming — his name is Nathan (Hi, Nathan, if you’re reading this) — not to inwardly sigh or tense up or have to marshal some extra patience or energy, but to relax a little, smile, and feel safe.

As a twenty-plus year veteran of ministry who knows an awful lot of pastors, I can tell you that this feeling can be rare.

There’s even a Bible verse about this, and it’s one that many pastors are too scared to ever preach on. I’m gonna do them all a favor right now and share it with you:

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. (Hebrews 13:17)

Some of you reading this might actually need to print that out and tape it to your mirror or the dashboard of your car.

Yes, there are some bad pastors out there. There are some authoritarian, domineering leaders out there. Too many, in fact. Some pastors are indeed bullies. These guys need to be held accountable and in many cases removed from their position of authority, as the biblical qualifications for the pastoral office forbid the quarrelsome, short-tempered, domineering man any part in church leadership (Titus 1:5-9, 1 Tim. 3:1-7, 1 Peter 5:1-4). (I have written about the necessity of pastoral gentleness numerous times, perhaps most notably here.)

But can I be honest? In my entire life in the church, despite some negative experiences with a few pastors, I’ve encountered way more bullies in the pews than in the pulpits. There are just as many pastors victimized by graceless congregants as vice versa.

I have a pastor friend who said he once dared to preach on Hebrews 13:17, and he had no sooner read the verse at the start of his message — hadn’t even started preaching yet! — and a woman stood up and shouted, “We’re Baptist. We don’t submit to anybody!”

You may not be Baptist, but you do need to submit to your church leaders. The Bible says so. Argue with it, if you want, but know that you are arguing with God.

To be a Christian is to be a churchman or churchwoman. The New Testament knows of no vibrant discipleship apart from life in the local church, no authentic Christianity divorced from the covenant of life together according to the biblical structure of the local church. And if this is true, it behooves us to be the best churchmen and churchwomen we can be. And good churchfolk love, respect, and submit to their pastors.

This does not mean idolizing them, treating them like celebrities or becoming yes-men. It doesn’t mean becoming our pastor’s rubber stamp committee. But it does mean giving grace not just to your fellow sheep, but also to your shepherds. In fact, they may need more, as the responsibilities they carry are more burdensome and they will have to give a greater account before God. Submitting to your leaders means repenting of the impulse to “yes, but” everything they say, especially if what they say isn’t sinful.

In matters of differences of opinion, it means being circumspect in how we voice our own. It means remembering that playing the “devil’s advocate” is not a good thing. Christ doesn’t need any advocates for the devil in his church!

Generally speaking, submitting to your elders means maintaining a posture of encouragement and gracious support for them and working to make the church a safe place for them (and their families!).

Some people in our churches see it as their role to “keep the pastor honest.” These people are usually the kind that make pastors keeping watch over them groan.

Look, you may be a total mess. You may have a lot of pain and a lot of struggle. You may find it frustrating to get your act together. If you know this about yourself, why not give the same grace to your leaders that you expect for yourself?

And if you think it should be a great honor to your leaders to get to shepherd you, you’re probably the most groan-worthy of all. It’s the ones who reckon themselves totally put together who usually cause the biggest problems.

How can we work toward our leaders’ joy and not their anxiety? It’s no advantage to us to be a nagging pain to our pastors. They’ll have to give an account for how they pastored us. And we’ll have to give an account for how well we presented ourselves to be pastored.

8 Reasons To Preach Through Books of the Bible

The resurgence in commitment in many evangelical circles to expository preaching is a very encouraging sign as the contemporary church navigates so many shifting cultural trends with so many shifting stylistic trends of its own. As many younger churchmen have begun to look not at the latest preaching styles but at what evangelicalism’s elder statesmen have been doing for years — not to mention, as they’ve begun studying the homiletical practices of the gospel renewal movements throughout church history — we’ve fortunately seen a rise in expositional preaching. Many of us have maintained a commitment to this kind of explication even when our sermons happen to be topical!

While there’s no need to be dogmatic about this kind of sermon delivery, and while I think taking time for short topical sermon series or strategic “stand-alone” messages can be good and helpful, I do think it is generally wise for a pastor not just to preach expositionally, but to preach expositionally through entire books of the Bible. I think every preacher ought to endeavor to feed his flock this way. And here are eight reasons why:

1. It’s biblical.

Contrary to what some have said, expository preaching through books of the Bible has biblical precedent. The two most notable examples can be found in Nehemiah 8, where Ezra preaches through the book of the Law, “giving the sense” (v.8) as he goes, and of course in Luke 24, where “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, Jesus interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (v.27).

2. It helps people learn their Bible.

It is a sad reality that most Christians get most of their Bible at church. We want them to spend daily time in the word, of course, but too many don’t and won’t. Preaching through books of the Bible, then, over time exposes churchgoers to the fullness of God’s counsel. This is even true for Christians who do study their Bibles but who tend to do so like their preachers tend to preach, favoring certain books or certain stories or certain devotional emphases. If a preacher will preach through whole books, he will eventually get to more “obscure” books that even some studious Christians haven’t spent much time in.

3. It spiritually stretches the preacher and deepens his understanding of God.

If a preacher will commit to preaching through entire books of the Bible, he will find himself dealing with difficult and complex passages he might otherwise have avoided. Systematically working through a book means you can’t skip the confusing parts or the scandalous parts or the “boring” parts, the study of all of which is helpful to the preacher’s own devotional life — since all Scripture is breathed out by God and useful (2 Tim. 3:16) — and consequently helpful to the congregation.

4. It puts controversial or “hot topic” issues in their proper place.

A preacher committed to preaching through books of the Bible can’t hobby-horse or camp out on one political, social, or cultural issue he feels most important. His preaching isn’t being driven by Hallmark or the headlines. Thus, he gets around to the “social issues” when the Bible does and ends up correlating his concern and energy about them to the Bible’s concern and energy about them.

5. It helps Christians see the full storyline of redemption.

The gospel announcement of Christ’s sinless life, sacrificial death, and glorious resurrection for the salvation of sinners is a grand plan foreshadowed and echoed throughout all of Scripture, and preaching through entire books of the Bible helps churches see the epic story God is telling about his Son from the foundation of the world. Similarly:

6. It more greatly magnifies the glory of Jesus Christ.

As my favorite children’s Bible storybook says, “Every page whispers his name.” As Jesus himself says to those disciples on the road to Emmaus, even the old covenant Scriptures are “about himself.” And as Paul says, all the promises of God find their “yes and amen” in Jesus (2 Cor. 1:20). To not preach through as many biblical texts as you can is to withhold certain aspects of Christ’s glory from your church. To preach systematically through books of the Bible – laboring faithfully in the work of Christ-centered exposition — is to show the glory of Christ in surprising, fresh, and God-designed ways.

7. It fosters congregational patience, endurance, and commitment to the word.

Hopping from one topic to the next, jumping around according to pastoral interest or current devotional mood, has some advantages to be sure, but a commitment to a book more befits the plodding needed for faithful, long-term ministry. Preachers who preach through books of the Bible logically think in more long-term ways, which is beneficial for pastoral fruitfulness. And the way preachers preach shapes their church. A pastor who commits to showing Christ week after week through book after book re-wires the short attention spans of modern congregants to the Spiritual fruit of patience, the Christian virtue of endurance, and the church’s mandate to be “people of the book.” Nothing shows a pastor’s and a congregation’s fidelity to and reliance on the word of God alone like preaching the whole counsel of the word of God alone.

8. It creates a longer pastoral and congregational legacy.

As C.S. Lewis once said, “To go with the times, is to of course go where all times go.” Or, alternatively, also from Lewis: “The more up-to-date a book is, the sooner it is out of date.” Substitute “sermon” for “book,” and I think we’re on to something here. To preach with the times is to go where all times go. Now, sermons ought to be applicable and relevant to the Christian’s daily life and the world we live in. But the great thing about the Scriptures is that they are remarkably applicable and relevant to the world we live in without our help! And while sermons fashioned toward the tyranny of the now may be of some help for some time, sermons preached from the eternal word can be of help for all time. In the long run of pastoral ministry and the life of the church, a pastor who resources his congregation with faithful, plodding biblical exposition is providing a body of work that will live much longer after his own departure. What a milestone it would be to get to the end of preaching through the entire New Testament to your church, or even, should God grant you this length of tenure, the entire Bible! Wouldn’t that be a finish line worth shooting for?

Why Unparalleled?

The why behind the vision for Unparalleled: How Christianity’s Uniqueness Makes it Compelling

Why Unparalleled? from Jared C. Wilson on Vimeo.

Troubleshooting the Celebrity Pastor Problem

Every week one could write another post about another fallen pastor, because that appears to be the rate at which they fall. A great number of ministers without national or global platforms are counted in this number, but oddly enough, these falls only seem to hit “close to home” when it’s a guy with a big platform. It’s an odd phenomenon, isn’t it? We may not know the big name guys at all, but the fact that they are, in evangelical culture anyway, a “household name,” makes it more personal. (This is not just evangelicals, of course — newsstand tabloids regularly run photo features like “Celebrities: They’re Just Like Us!”)

In all the hand-wringing over the latest evangelical celebrity scandals, however, I don’t see much new that is said. To some extent, this is understandable, as the problems being faced are not new — pride, anger, lust, etc. — any more than they are limited to those in ministry. These old, universal problems require the same old, universal solutions — grace-driven repentance from us, grace-glorious deliverance from God.

And so we see the same usual formulas handed out in blog posts and tweets and sermons and podcasts — accountability and honesty, lots of talk about boundaries and “guard rails” and the like. Pastors are re-reminded to not be alone with women, etc. Most of these words are good words, advice that is tried and true. Within the gospel renewal movement, of course, we are moving deeper to heart issues and idolatry, and this is a good thing too. Figuring out how the gospel speaks to the idolatries and root sins that seem particular to the work of pastoral ministry is really important.

Yet, we are identifying something else here, something that runs across evangelical tribes. It is the “celebrity pastor” problem, where we participate in the highest elevation of a pastor’s platform as we can manage and then load him up with all the expectation we can muster. The result, naturally, is that he is top-heavy and prone to toppling. There are dangers in temptations in pastoral smallness and obscurity too, but the most prominent dangerous temptations in pastoral bigness are these idolatries — worship of the celebrity pastor by his fans and himself.

So let us accept the soundness of the typical boundaries and relational and ministerial guardrails that every pastor and his church ought to have in place. But what else can we do? What are some specific, practical things that can be done to work against the idolization of the successful pastor? I have a few ideas. They are not easy things to do, of course, but wise things rarely come easily.

1. Transition your “video venue” satellite campuses to church plants or at the very least install live preaching.

I have quite a few friends whose churches employ this medium for weekend preaching in their satellite campuses, so I tread lightly here, as always, but I have yet to hear a very convincing argument for the wisdom of this approach to the worship gathering. I say a lot more on this in my book The Prodigal Church, so I won’t rehash my critique here, but the argument seems to boil down essentially to: “The campus wouldn’t be viable without so-and-so on the screen.” And my response? “Okay. Maybe it shouldn’t be viable.” If they’re only coming because of so-and-so, you have a celebrity pastor problem. (Now, this happens in almost any church of any size. People come only because of the preacher, or only because of the music, or only because of the children’s program, or what-have-you. But when we franchise rather than plant, we cooperate with the idolatry of the consumer.)

2. No more book deals for gifted preachers who are not gifted writers.

Sometimes gifted preachers are gifted writers and sometimes gifted writers are gifted preachers, but more often than not, guys gifted to preach aren’t necessarily gifted to write (and vice versa). We compound the celebrity pastor problem when publishers sign guys with big churches to big book deals regardless of their ability to say anything lasting in any artful kind of way. I am grateful for evangelicalism’s double threats (men like Tim Keller come to mind), but not every dynamic speaker needs a publishing deal, especially since the books are most likely to be written by somebody else, which is not just a celebrity problem but an honesty problem. Couldn’t we all be helped if more of us just stayed in our lanes?

3. Discerning the credibility of our experts.

I had a great conversation last week with a friend who called me specifically to talk about this problem. What do we make of publishers, editors, and other public parachurch platforms who provide outlet for ministers, for which their only qualification appears to be success or popularity? In other words, how do we know the guy publishing the book on marriage has a healthy marriage himself? Why are we assigning parenting books to people whose kids aren’t even teenagers yet? What if the guy we’re paying to write and speak on grace-centered leadership is a short-tempered, domineering jerk to his staff? How would we know?

What responsibility do those of us in cultural gatekeeper positions (I’m the managing editor for For The Church, a site that regularly publishes resources from ministry leaders big and small) have in vetting somebody’s credibility on a given subject or perspective? I don’t know that I have the answer to this, but I think we ought to try to figure it out. Maybe it involves having deeper conversations with someone’s family or church leaders. I don’t know. But I’m willing to bet more platform-providers are asking these questions these days, if only because it’s costing them lots of money to send books into rain-soaked dumpsters.

4. Actual parity among elders.

I greatly appreciated this recent post by Tim Challies on Confronting the Current Church Leadership Crisis. Pastoral plurality in the local church is not just the biblical norm, it is a practical and spiritual necessity. But this plurality has to actually function as a plurality. We can look at the church leadership structure of many of these fallen celebrity pastors and see that there were other elders in place. Sometimes they do not actually have parity with the lead pastor — meaning, his vote outweighs theirs, if they even have one — and sometimes the parity is there on paper but not in practice. In either case, accountability isn’t just something to reserve for times of crisis.

Real collaboration and cooperation should be part of the functionality of the pastoral leadership. There’s nothing wrong with having one guy provide most of the preaching in a church, but he shouldn’t provide it all. And the service shouldn’t appear as a one-man show. Behind the scenes, church elders ought to exercise the Bible’s permission to ask questions, challenge assumptions, and check each other’s hearts. Elders ought to say “yes” a lot, but they are not supposed to be yes-men. And it ought not be inordinately difficult to fire a pastor who has disqualified himself. Whatever a church’s pastors are, the church itself will become. So if the pastoral team is “lead guy”-centered, existing mainly to prop up and orbit around the lead guy, guess what the church’s center will be?

Again, none of these things is easy to do. Tackling the celebrity pastor problem from any of these angles would likely require a fundamental and complex reconsideration and reconfiguration of the ways many of us do ministry, do church, “do” evangelicalism. But we leave these proposals unconsidered to our own peril. Ignoring these things certainly allows us to continue on as we’ve always done, indiscriminately adopting the values of the world in celebritizing our leaders and then acting shocked and angry when they fall under the pressure. But we’ve seen what happens when a ministry is oriented almost wholly around the platform of one guy. When he falls, the ministry does. Heck, set aside the notion of sinful disqualification. What happens to your satellite campuses when the big screen preacher gets hit by a bus?

Let’s figure this out, church.

His Eye is On The Sasquatch

“Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty?”

– Job 11:7

I’ll tell you why I hope Bigfoot exists — and why, in a way, I hope he is never discovered. Because it excites me to think that there are creatures out there God has made for his own enjoyment and to enhance the wonder of life on the earth.

I like to think about those creepy fanged fishies deep in the Mariana Trench, swimming around in the murky darkness of the oceanic fathoms, their dangling bioluminescence their only lantern into the future. Most of them we will never see — at least, not on this side of the new earth, where we don’t have the lung capacity or the mechanical capacity to withstand the pressure of such depths. There are species down there we have zero clue about. I think of exotic fish in clear pools of water in the darkness of undiscovered caves deep in the jungles that human feet will never enter. In the thickest centers of the wildest forests, there are species of insects and birds that are yet undetected.

And maybe there are Bigfoots in the North American woods. I mean, we didn’t know about the mountain gorilla until 1902! Can you believe that? An actual large primate we didn’t know anything about until the 20th century?

I believe that God made all things for his own glory. Anything that was made, he made and made for ultimately for that end — to reflect the wondrous creativity and power and love and God-ness of himself. And this is why there are some things we just don’t know about. If we could know everything, we’d be God. So I think God keeps a lot of things to himself. The answers to a lot of our “why” questions, for instance. And maybe, just maybe, giant frolicking sea monsters and fields of space flowers on some unreachable planet and big upright primates only detectable by the blurriest of camera lenses.

God has bathed this world in wonder in such a way that mere examination can’t do it justice. Recently noted atheist scientist and TV personality Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted, “I wonder who was the first person to see a bird soaring high above & think it a good idea to capture it and lock it in a cage.” Some wiseacre replied, “A scientist.”

Science can help us see the wonder, but it can’t quite figure out how to help us wonder at the wonder. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “In Science we have been reading only the notes to a poem; in Christianity we find the poem itself.”

And this is why I hope we never catch Bigfoot: If we did, the fun would be gone. The mystery would vanish — poof, with a whimper. We’d lose the wonder. He’d be skinned, flayed, vivisected. We’d have his brain in a jar at the Smithsonian. And we’d lose another increment in that feeling that there’s another world just around the corner. It’s better, for now, not to know.

I like that God keeps some things just to himself. It reminds me that he’s God and I’m not. It reminds me that this world he’s created is revealing his glory, not mine. This is part of the reason, I suppose, that when God responds to Job’s inquiries with an epic journey up the dizzying heights of divine sovereignty, he includes some stuff about sea monsters.

I like that God teases us with these mysteries. So long as the mystery of Christ has been revealed (Eph. 3), and we have all that we need to be saved and to work out that salvation, I am totally cool with these little misty visions haunting the created order, always one step ahead of us, peeking around trees, leaving mushy footprints, stray hairs, sketchy images. They help me delight in God’s delight. They help me remember this world is wondrous and it belongs to the God who spoke the cosmos into being without breaking a sweat.

His eye is on the Sasquatch, you know. Even if ours are not.

5 Things The Ascension Means

Don’t forget the ascension! It is an integral part of gospel doctrine. The reality of Christ’s ascension has many implications. Here are just five.

1. Jesus is really alive.

The reality of Christ’s ascension, inextricable from the resurrection event, tells us that he did not raise from the dead only later to die again like Lazarus, Jairus’ daughter, the widow of Nain’s son, Eutychus, or Tabitha. Jesus’ body will not be found because he took its glorified tangibility to heaven.

2. Heaven is thicker than earth.

We tend to think of heaven as the ethereal place of disembodied spirits. And in a way it is. But Elijah is there. And Enoch. And so is the risen, glorified, incarnate Christ. Jesus is there, taking up material space. He is touchable, present. Clearly, heaven is not less real than earth but more. It is a thicker reality than our four-dimensional space, more vibrant, more colorful, more real.

3. God’s plan for human dominion of earth is being realized.

The first Adam and his helper Eve were charged with filling the earth and subduing it. They screwed it up. But God’s plans cannot be thwarted. Man will reflect God’s glory in dominion over creation. In the Incarnation, then, God sends his only Son to right the course, reverse the curse, and begin the restoration of all things. The second Adam does the job, and even in his glorification, the incarnational “miracle of addition” (see below) persists, fulfilling God’s plan for man to reflect divine glory in dominion over creation. The God-Man, who is the radiance of the glory of God, rules over the earth and is even now subduing his enemies. “The ascension means that a human being rules the universe” (Tim Keller). Just as God planned.

4. The Incarnation is an enduring miracle.

The Incarnation was a humbling of God’s Son, but not a lessening of him. As I’ve argued in Gospel Deeps, the Son maintained his omnipresence even in his Incarnation. (Historical theologians have traditionally called this perspective the extra calvinisticum.) But what the ascension means is that Jesus Christ forever remains the Christ who is Jesus. He did not revert back to intangibility. But his ascended incarnational state then is not an eternal limitation but a part of his ongoing efforts to fill all things. He takes up more space in the heavens and the earth now, not less. The Incarnation is a miracle with no expiration date.

5. The ascension is gospel for sinners!

Why? Because if, among the many things the gospel means, it means we are united with Christ through faith, it also means that where he is we will be also. It means we will go to heaven in spirit, and heaven will come to us in body. The ascension is the full fruition of the promise of Christ’s resurrection being the firstfruits of our own. The ascension means the gospel is better news than we even thought, gooder than good! Because it holds out the promise, the blessed hope, not just of life after death, but as N.T. Wright says, life after life after death. What a gracious God we have!