Jared C. Wilson's Blog, page 59
January 16, 2014
In Praise of Fat Pastors
Sort of.
One of the greatest men my wife and I had the privilege of being shepherded by used to wear his pants very high on his waist. His belt was practically underlining his chest. He looked like a dork, and it was distracting when he stood before the congregation. So one of the creative guys at the church “took one for the team” and took him aside one day to recommend he wear his shirts untucked. He did, and the sight was much better. But what I loved about this pastor is that he had zero idea this was an issue. I mean, I’m sure he thought he looked fine — he wasn’t unkempt, just uncool — but obviously worrying about his image wasn’t even on his radar.
By contrast, I used to see another area pastor at the local coffee shop in the same town who was pushing sixty and was rockin’ — or thought he was — the embroidered jeans, Affliction tees, leather cuffs, and frosted bedhead. Professing to be cool, he became a fool.
In the age of Pastor Fashion and sermons forbidding the eating of pork in service of the gospel of weight loss — I mean, does anything scream “Judaizer” more loudly than preaching the dietary law? except maybe actually preaching circumcision — don’t the pastors who don’t care about their image, their profile, their reputation seem more dignified?
Now, of course this is not to say we should be careless about our bodies and our general health. I have nothing against Joel Osteen (pictured) looking good on the surface; I just have a problem with him preaching there. He is perhaps the West’s most successful purveyor of the paltry. I mean, no matter how much abundance he promises, his gospel is actually the puniest one out there. The love of the superficial will kill the soul, stealing our spiritual oxygen like Ed Young’s spanx. Man looks at the outward appearance, of course, and that’s who these guys fear, that’s whose ears these guys are trying to tickle, that’s who they’re seeking to please. When Paul warns in Philippians 3:19 against those whose god is their belly, it’s just as applicable a warning today about the Crossfit junkie as it is the chocoholic.
The pursuit of the appearance of having it all together is not new. We might have the most advanced whitewash, but you can’t really improve a tomb.
I don’t think you even need me to list all the evidences that American evangelicalism is obsessed with image, with cool, with seeming impressive. What we need are men (and women) who will lead the way in rejecting the Photoshopping of our faith. And wouldn’t it be a huge relief, wouldn’t we all just kinda exhale in relief if we were led in this way to stop sucking in our guts? Our stomach might increase, but wouldn’t we actually decrease in the right ways? Wouldn’t that kind of freedom to breathe — the freedom to simply be ourselves — be a fruit of the gospel?
So no, I am not advocating gluttony here, just a Christward self-disregard, a godly un-self-consciousness. I am praying for an increase in the tribe of self-forgetful pastors — if not all-out dorky ones — with platforms thrust upon them genuinely “aw shucks”-wise, men who will love not their images even unto death. Men who at least are not obsessed with the camera catching their good sides. Give me a fat guy in the pulpit so long as he preaches not himself and not the law but the glorious gospel. And if you’ve got a pastor with washboard abs who does that– well, that’s okay too, I guess.
…He had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
– Isaiah 53:2
Related:
Pastors, Pathological Immaturity, and Courageous Un-self-consciousness
Your Best Links Now – 1/16/14
The Idol Behind Same-Sex Desires by Sam Allberry
An important piece at Desiring God from a guy who knows what he’s talking about.
We Know Something Nobody Else Does by Mark Altrogge
“We know something no one else knows. It is one of the great secrets of life and one of the keys to consistent, deep, abiding joy. What do we know? . . .”
Extremely Rare Salvador Dali Illustrations for Romeo and Juliet
“In 1975, the iconic Spanish surrealist illustrated an ultra-limited, presently impossible to find edition of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, published by Rizzoli in a red silk slipcase and featuring 10 lithographs by Dalí. Only 999 copies were published.”
My favorite featured in the piece is pictured below:
Crossfit Coach Severs Spine in Competition
I keep saying working out isn’t good for you . . .
When the Gospel Isn’t Interesting Enough by Sharon Hodde Miller
It’s an important subject. I share Sharon’s (and Lore Ferguson’s) concern that Christian writing online isn’t exultational enough.
Tetrapod Zoology Investigates the Famous “Mansi Photograph” of Lake Champlain’s Monster
The monster’s name is Champ. But most people call it “driftwood.”
OK Go’s Rube Goldberg Machine Video for “This Too Shall Pass”
January 15, 2014
Made Much Of to Make Much Of
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
– 1 Peter 2:9
Look at the lengths to which Jesus goes! Look at how he exalts us out of our lowly state. Once we were not a people; now we are. Once we were aliens; now we are a chosen race, a set-apart nation. Once we were Godless rebels; but now we know we belong to him alone.
God in Christ certainly does make much of us. But not because we are lovely. Because Christ is. Because his excellencies deserve to be shouted from the rooftops, God wants shouters.
We are made much of ultimately to make much of Christ.
Love When’s
When is God love?
When you are in tribulation, Love will bring you back to himself (Deut. 4:30).
When you are surrounded by the enemy, Love will keep you from evil (Deut. 23:9).
When you are invited to honor, Love will keep you humble (Matt. 14:8).
When you are judged, Love will justify you (Rom. 3:4).
When you are slandered, Love will vindicate you (1 Pet. 3:16).
When you die, Love will deliver you (Prov. 11:7-8).
When you are raised, Love will transform you (1 Cor. 15:50-51).
God is Love at all times.
Your Best Links Now – 1/15/14
The Bible Story and the Meaning of Life
Matt Smethurst interviews David Wells about Wells’s new book God in the Whirlwind. “What I’ve done,” Wells says, “is develop a biblical theology of the holy-love of God, showing how it travels through the Old Testament to its culmination in the incarnation and at the cross.”
10 Mysterious Underwater Structures
Monoliths, tables, lost cities, and some things experts just can’t identify. I love this kind of stuff.
All the World is Not a Stage by Megan McNally
The Confessional Protestant Coalition’s McNally examines our daily failure to self-examine and endeavoring to self-project. God sees through it all.
A Time to Turn Away by Ray Ortlund
Sometimes you’ve done all you can to make it right, to reconcile, to be at peace. When that doesn’t work, what then?
Chewbacca Has a Twitter Feed
And it’s great. Especially if you want to see the string of insider pics he posted recently from the set of the first three “Star Wars” films.
January 14, 2014
Ain’t No Amount of Whip-Cracking That Will Raise the Dead
“People need to know what God’s law says, but we need to remember that the law cannot produce obedience to itself. When we center on the law—which is what we do when we center on how to’s—it is like cracking a whip over a dead body. Ain’t no amount of whip-cracking that will raise a dead man up.”
– from The Pastor’s Justification
The Preciousness of Jesus
What is the one thing you cannot live without?
I think there are two stark realities shown in the passage of the woman who anointed Jesus’ head — a deadly devaluing and a saving adoration. See if you don’t agree:
And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they scolded her. But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”
– Mark 14:3-9
The logic of those scolding is understandable, clear. What the woman has done is wasteful.
And what Jesus says in reply is provocative. He is not denying the importance of caring for the poor. Indeed, how could he, since he has taught so much on caring for the poor and needy already! But he is suggesting that there is something more important.
There is something more important than helping the poor. What could that be?
It is Jesus himself.
To devalue Jesus as the indignant have done is eternally deadly. To devalue the nard as the woman has done is eternally saving.
A few gospel notes on the text:
1. Crushing is the way to blessing.
“Whomever God uses greatly he must wound deeply,” Oswald Chambers has said. The breaking open of the nard is a beautiful picture of that. It complements Paul’s illustration about we ourselves carrying treasures in jars of clay in 2 Corinthians 4.
Maybe Jesus’ friend Mary, whom John’s Gospel has identified as the woman in this scene, learned this precious lesson from the death and resurrection of her brother Lazarus. The way to the blessing is through brokenness. Perhaps Mary understands that now, perhaps she is showing Jesus in this act of tender care and extravagant worship that she “gets it.”
And God is not above keeping his own rules, for he committed to the crushing of his own son in order to cover his children with grace. Think of the lavishing of grace this is! (Some would call it a waste…)
Secondly:
2. God loves us so much, he will do whatever it takes to help his children be satisfied in Jesus alone.
Our Lord knows we need to be startled to see his beauty. He knows we struggle in our flesh to naturally see Christ as glorious and all-satisfying. We need to be shaken awake. We need the smelling salts of the gospel waved under our noses.
He knows that a life of comfort and ease is spiritually speaking very dangerous for us.
So: What needs to break in your life so you see the preciousness of Jesus? What needs to be taken away from you?
In his fantastic little book on Romans 8, Supernatural Living for Natural People, Ray Ortlund writes:
When Paul says that some people have their minds set on the things of the flesh and others have their minds set on the things of the Spirit, he is not using the word mind in a merely intellectual sense. He is talking about our mindset…He is talking about our whole mentality, what we dwell upon, the tilt of our likes and dislikes, what we respect and admire, what we want out of life, what we aspire after . . . Paul himself was like this. He discovered in Jesus a treasure so rich that he took all his hard-won lifetime achievement awards and junked them in order to have Jesus. And then he looked at that pile of earthly prizes there in the dumpster, threw his head back and laughed: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ” (Phil. 3:8, RSV). If you are a Christian, but bored, maybe you need to lose something. You cannot just add Jesus to an already crowded life. So what do you need to off-load, so that your heart can feel the surpassing worth of knowing Christ? And do not stop off-loading until that sense of privilege in Jesus really starts to percolate. When our hearts thrill to his surpassing worth, the world loses its appeal.
Speaking personally, I can say that it wasn’t until I lost everything that I found out I had everything in Christ.
Finally:
3. Christ is most precious.
The breaking of the expensive gift, its pouring out all over the Teacher, was not a waste because he was more valuable than it. All gifts are wasted if they don’t adorn the Giver.
All precious gifts must adorn the most precious gift of the precious Giver himself or they cease to have value.
Here is Spurgeon, preaching on 1 Peter 2:7:
A young man had been preaching in the presence of a venerable divine, and after he had done he went to the old minister, and said, “What do you think of my sermon?” “A very poor sermon indeed,” said he. “A poor sermon?” said the young man, “it took me a long time to study it.” “Ay, no doubt of it.” “Why, did you not think my explanation of the text a very good one?” “Oh, yes,” said the old preacher, “very good indeed.” “Well, then, why do you say it is a poor sermon? Didn’t you think the metaphors were appropriate and the arguments conclusive?” “Yes, they were very good as far as that goes, but still it was a very poor sermon.” “Will you tell me why you think it a poor sermon?” “Because,” said he, “there was no Christ in it.” “Well,” said the young man, “Christ was not in the text; we are not to be preaching Christ always, we must preach what is in the text.” So the old man said, “Don’t you know young man that from every town, and every village, and every little hamlet in England, wherever it may be, there is a road to London?” “Yes,” said the young man. “Ah!” said the old divine “and so form every text in Scripture, there is a road to the metropolis of the Scriptures, that is Christ. And my dear brother, your business in when you get to a text, to say, ‘Now what is the road to Christ?’ and then preach a sermon, running along the road towards the great metropolis—Christ. And,” said he, “I have never yet found a text that had not got a road to Christ in it, and if I ever do find one that has not a road to Christ in it, I will make one; I will go over hedge and ditch but I would get at my Master, for the sermon cannot do any good unless there is a savour of Christ in it.”Go and see some of our sick and dying friends; go and talk to them about the Reform Bill, and they will look you in the face and say, “Oh, I am going from this time-state: it is a very small matter to me whether the Reform Bill will be carried or not.” You will not find them much interested in that matter. Well, then, sit down and talk to them about the weather, and how the crops are getting on—”Well, it is a good prospect for wheat this year.” They will say, “Ah, my harvest is ripening in glory.” Introduce the most interesting topic you can, and a believer, who is lying on the verge of eternity, will find nothing precious in it; but sit down by the bedside of this man, and he may be very near gone, almost unconscious, and begin to talk about Jesus—mention that precious soul-reviving, soul-strengthening name Jesus, and you will see his eye glisten, and the blanched cheek will be flushed once more—”Ah,” he will say, “Precious Jesus, that is the name which calms my fears, and bids my sorrows cease.” You will see that you have given the man a strong tonic, and that his whole frame is braced up for the moment. Even when he dies, the thought of Jesus Christ and the prospect of seeing him shall make him living in the midst of death, strong in the midst of weakness, and fearless in the midst of trembling. And this proves, by the experience of God’s people, that with those who believe in him, Christ is and ever must be a precious Christ.
If you have Christ, when you are breaking open in suffering or death, you will find you have a precious Christ!
His preciousness is total and complete:
Romans 10:12 says he has riches to bestow and Psalm 50:10 says the cattle on a thousand hills are his, so you know Jesus is unrivaled in his resources.
Proverbs 3:19 says “The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens” so you know Jesus is unparalleled in wisdom.
Ecclesiastes 8:4 says “For the word of the king is supreme,” so certainly King Jesus’ supremacy is undoubtable.
In Isaiah 6, the cherubim cry out, “”Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” so you know Jesus’ glory is boundless.
Ephesians 1:7-8 says “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight,” so you know the grace in Jesus is invaluable, incomparable, gratuitous, and infinitely precious.
Our Christ’s preciousness is more than deserving to be adorned with the drink offering of our very lives. And it is our willingness to adore him in and through our breaking open that shows we believe this.
Your Best Links Now – 1/14/14
They Fired Jonathan Edwards by Darryl Dash
“The congregational vote was 230 to dismiss him, 23 to keep him. I doubt they had to recount the ballots. There are a couple of things we can learn from this . . .”
UNC Researcher Gets Death Threats for Showing Some College Athletes Are Practically Illiterate
As if we needed one more example of sports idolatry, or collegiate corruption, or . . .
All the Dying Megachurches by Matt Svoboda
Svoboda riffs off a great Thom Rainer quote. And he’s right. Our church is not big, but we have more than doubled in the last four years, and I warned our congregation at our annual “state of the church address” two weeks ago that we ought to never mistake getting bigger with getting healthier. Sometimes healthy things shrink and unhealthy things grow. So Matt is right when he says, “Church size and church style? They mean very little. A church made of people whose passion for the gospel outweighs everything else? Yeah, that can be world changing.”
The Football Fan Pastor Who Officiated a 1-Minute Service to Make Niners Kickoff
… is a buffoon.
The Biggest Contradiction in the Bible by David Murray
A nice take on James’ “contradiction” of Paul.
This Guy Filmed His Plane Going Down into the Ocean, from the Inside
January 13, 2014
Christ’s Glory is the Pearl of Great Price
“So, in reading and studying the Bible, we ought to make every effort to search for the revelations of the glory of Christ in it as did the prophets of old. The glory of Christ is the ‘pearl of great price’ which we should make every effort to find (Matt. 13:45-46). And the Scripture is the ocean into which we dive to discover this pearl, or the mine in which we dig for its precious treasures (Prov. 2:1-5). Every sacred truth that reveals something of the glory of Christ to our souls, is a pearl or precious stone which enriches us. But when the believer discovers this pearl of great price itself, then his soul cleaves to it with joy.”
– John Owen, The Glory of Christ (p.33)
Your Best Links Now – 1/13/14
Hidden Paintings on Old Book Pages
Fore-edge paintings. This is too cool and will probably make you start contorting the pages of your old books.
There Will Be No Sea in the New Heaven and New Earth by R.C. Sproul
Bummer for all you beach-lovers. But seriously check out the article.
Al Mohler on the Alleged End of Morality Laws
“The law will continue to embody a morality code, just a very different code from the Christian moral system that undergirded Western law for more than a thousand years.”
Scientists Still Can’t Explain This Radio Signal From Space
The so-called “Wow!” Signal, recorded by SETI in 1977, still baffles researchers. Was it a broadcast from an alien civilization far, far away?
Ernest Hemingway’s Manly Burger Recipe
If you like your burger made with Asian spices, wine, and capers, this one’s up your alley.
The New Muppets Movie Trailer Brilliantly Skewers Internet Comment Threads
