Incarnation
Posted on 01. Dec, 2011 by Bart Lester in Bart, Blog
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14
Christmas has not always been a welcome holiday for our types. The Puritans positively hated it. In their view, Christmas, Christ’s Mass, was a popish plot to reestablish Roman Catholicism in England. The weekly Sabbath was the only holiday they observed. Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan ruler of England in the middle of the seventeenth century, said Christmas encourages “an extreme forgetfulness of Christ, by giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights.” That view of Christmas did not remain in England alone. The Puritans who settled this country imported it and quickly outlawed Christmas. So in 1659 Massachusetts made the celebration of Christmas a crime. Eventually that edict was repealed in 1681, but the then governor required an escort of soldiers in order to attend a Christmas service. These sentiments continued through the early eighteenth century with a mob attacking a church in Boston in 1706 for having a Christmas service. Far from being out of the mainline, even the great British Baptist minister, Charles Spurgeon, refused to celebrate Christmas throughout his ministry in the late nineteenth century. Such hostility to the celebration of Christmas is very hard for our modern minds to understand. Ours is actually the opposite problem. We are not critics of Christmas. We enjoy the season but rarely remember the reason for the celebration.
Why does the church celebrate this holiday and what does it matter? Simply put, Christmas is a celebration of the incarnation of Jesus Christ. The traditional sermons on the coming of Messiah from the Old Testament and the birth narratives from the gospels, present this truth. But what is the Incarnation? J. I. Packer puts it this way: “The doctrine of the Trinity declares that the man Jesus is truly divine; that of the incarnation declares that the divine Jesus is truly human.” Historic Christianity maintains that Jesus is eternal, the Alpha and Omega. As the early Christians put it: “there never was a time when He was not.” Jesus has always been divine, but He has not always been a man. There is a time in history when God became man. This miracle of God the Son, divine and eternal, adding to His deity a true, real humanity is why we celebrate Christmas.
This truth is at the center of our faith. John, the apostle, lived late into the first century and saw a phony faith called Gnosticism troubling the church. Gnosticism attempted to blend with early Christianity. One of Gnosticism’s beliefs was that matter was inherently evil. Gnostics reasoned if Jesus was supremely good and God, He could not be truly man. Jesus only appeared to be a man. John rightly viewed this as a threat to the Gospel and reacted strongly writing: “Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist” (II John 7).
Why do the Scriptures hold the denial of Jesus’ humanity as such a significant threat to the Gospel? To attack the humanity of Christ is to attack the basis of the Gospel. Jesus emptied Himself of His royal prerogatives and became man (Phil. 2:6-8). In doing so He qualified Himself to be our mediator (I Tim. 2:5). As our mediator Jesus is suited to be our substitute to atone for our sins. In order to become our Mediator it was necessary for Jesus to humble Himself. This humiliation included the difficulties of being born to poor, obscure parents, in a stable in Bethlehem where he was placed at birth in a trough. Not long after His birth, He became a political refuge fleeing to Egypt. Without honor and without status in the eyes of men is where you find Jesus at His birth.
All this trouble that Jesus experienced underlines the chief point frequently forgotten: God was not was not obligated to send His Son. At the end of the day, the great motivation of God was His own mercy not our worthiness. If someone wants proof of the kindness of God, he need not look any further than the coming of Jesus. Here the Father provides His Son as the sinless, innocent and perfect mediator between Himself and sinners. Jesus the Son of God came into the world as a real infant. His mission was to be that sinless mediator between a holy God and sinful men. A mission, He in time accomplished perfectly. The gracious of God evident in the birth of His Son provides us forgetful people with ultimate “reason for the season”.
Fasting At Eastwood
Posted on 10. Oct, 2011 by Bart Lester in Bart, Blog
Several weeks ago in the Sunday morning worship, we encountered Jesus’ teaching on fasting from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:16-17. There Jesus instructs His people about the proper method of fasting, particularly what to avoid, ostentation or hypocrisy. Perhaps the most striking aspect of this instruction is the fact that Jesus assumes His people will fast, “And when you fast”, verse 16. Sadly, fasting is a rare practice in the modern church and one we must seek to recover.
In the effort to honor Scripture and humble ourselves before the Lord the Session in conformity to Book of Church Order chapter 62 is announcing a fast for the church during lunch weekly on Wednesdays until further notice. This fast is not mandatory but voluntary and an attempt to direct the congregation to prayer.
If you remember, fasting is an abstaining from food for a prescribed period of time. The time normally used to purchase, prepare, clean up the meal is instead devoted to prayer. Practically, how does fasting work?
Simply start the fast after breakfast on Wednesday. Do not eat anything in the hours between breakfast and dinner. Break the fast at dinner. During lunch replace time you would devote to eating with prayer.
This is the crucial point to remember: Fasting with prayer is the Bible’s model. You find it in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. Listen to David connecting prayer and fasting in Psalm 35:13: “But I, when they were sick – I wore sackcloth; I afflicted myself with fasting; I prayed with my head bowed on my chest.” Similarly in Acts 13, as Paul and Barnabas are about to begin their first missionary journey, Luke notes: “Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.” Those are just two examples. If you look at Ezra 8:21-23, Neh. 1:3-4, Luke 2:36-38, and Acts 14:21-23, you find that fasting and prayer are alway in tandem in the Bible.
In the Bible, fasting typically happens on occasions of trial, crisis, or at the onset of some enormous duty or task.
Specifically, we are asking you to pray for four items during this fast:
1.) That God would direct the Pastoral Search Committee to the next senior minister of Eastwood.
2.) That God would raise up and direct the church in the selection of elders and deacons during this time of officer training and elections.
3.) That God would bless Eastwood as a body with unity, oneness of mind, and growth in spiritual maturity.
4.) That God would bless our corporate witness in Montgomery and be pleased to grow the church with conversions of unbelievers to Christ.
This is an exciting time in the life of Eastwood as we recover the old tool of fasting to promote prayer in our body. May God be pleased to honor His methods for the Glory of His Son.
Bart Lester
The Venerable Company Of Pastors
Posted on 01. Jul, 2011 by Bart Lester in Bart, Blog
Years ago, Christmas break of 1989 to be exact, I summoned up the courage to inform my minister of my growing desire to enter the ministry.
Now this was not a Presbyterian church and I didn’t know what the proper protocol for such an announcement should be. Having no idea what to expect, I was surprised by my minister’s reaction. He was delighted to hear of my interest in the ministry. Looking back, I guess I had anticipated some reservations on his part; and also, perhaps, a list of things to do to prepare for ministry.
Instead to my astonishment, he began to insist I immediately get licensed by that congregation and start preaching. Start preaching!?
“When?” I asked. He suggested that coming summer, perhaps even during spring break. Now as a sophomore at Auburn, this was starting to sound way too serious. After all, I was not exactly clear on what I believed. Surely, I was thinking, there must me some sort of course or training. No, it was just a matter of informing the deacons and commissioning me at a Sunday night service.
“What about seminary?” I asked. He responded that would come later. The important thing was to get started as soon as possible to gain experience.
To start preaching without any instruction or oversight stuck me as highly suspect and honestly was something of a turn off. I began to wonder if the entry level was this low, could any one who expressed interest get licensed to preach and eventually ordained? I walked out of his office terrified and perplexed. My interest in church government was sparked from this incident.
Exactly who was responsible for determining whether you are called? Is there a body or an individual who makes this decision? Does the Bible speak to these issues? The search for the answers to these questions lead me eventually to Presbyterianism’s form of government long before I understood the doctrines of the reformed faith.
In the end what I needed was The Venerable Company of Pastors. What was the Venerable Company of Pastors? That was the title given to the church court in Geneva and the surrounding lands in Calvin’s day. This body was the prototype of our presbytery. Although a board composed of lay elders and pastors called the consistory, the equivalent to our session, governed the local churches in Geneva the larger geographic area was governed by the company of pastors. The development of these church courts flowed out of the desire of the leadership in Geneva to return the church to the biblical form of government. How the church ought to be governed might at first glance seem like a matter of preference, something that could and should be left to individual churches.
My experience had taught me differently and so had the experience of the reformers many of whom had suffered under the tyranny and arbitrary nature of one-man rule. After all the medieval church had a top down system of government. At the top was the bishop of Rome, the Pope. Under him were the cardinals and archbishops who had under them the bishops and priests. This system was rife with abuse and from the reformers point of view totally out of step with the Scriptures which spoke of churches that were governed by elders of whom the pastor was one (Titus 1:5, I Tim. 5:17).
The rediscovery of the bible and the accompanying intense study of it led to the conclusion that church was connectional in nature and that those who governed the church over a geographic area were not lone individuals vested with almost absolute power, but instead a church court composed of a group of pastors and elders. This view of the organization of the church was no innovation. It was Paul who reminded Timothy in I Timothy 5:14, “Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed on you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of the hands by the presbytery.” The Greek word for presbytery means literally council of elders. Paul was calling on Timothy to remember his ordination. A presbytery, a group of elders, set Timothy apart for the ministry.
Calvin and others understood this as the New Testament model of church government. The court above the local church session was to be the presbytery. The pastor or teaching elder is ordained through the presbytery of which he is a member. So the teaching elders of the church are actually members of presbytery not the local church. It is that body which ultimately makes the call on his qualifications for the ministry; and once he is ordained, it is this body that exercises oversight over him. This higher court not only regulates who comes in and out of its allotted geographic area; but also it manages the ministers and candidates in that area as well.
After having this system explained to me, this stuck me as not only entirely biblical but precisely what I had needed years earlier. I had no business preaching or teaching in the church until other men examined and then placed their approval on me. Today in the American church scandals locally and in denominations are commonplace. It seems to me that our system of ascending courts governed by elders and pastors is the real check to so many abuses.
To a Christian public tired of scandal, our church government is a positive selling point and the true remedy to much of what troubles the church.
May God bless the Venerable Company of Pastors.
Love Lost
Posted on 01. Jun, 2011 by Bart Lester in Bart, Blog
“And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold” Matt. 24:12
This summer started in an unusual way for me. When my daughter, Caroline, finished her last exam we loaded up my car and drove to Atlanta and boarded a flight to France. Earlier this year my in-laws had invited her on a trip they had planned. When I learned of the trip, I invited myself. They accommodated my request and we spent eleven days in France. During that time, we visited sixteen different cities, towns, and villages.
I had not been to France in several years and I had forgotten how crowded and busy the big cities of Paris and Lyon were. Packed trams, subway cars, and trains. In those enormous crowds a strange phenomena caught my attention: the utter silence. Other than the noise of the railway, the doors on the cars slamming shut, the destination announced, or the occasional drunk who invaded the subway car there was no noise, no smiles, no conversations, no polite chatter, just hundreds of people staring into space pretending no one else was there. France seems to me, an occasional visitor, as a sad, lonely place. Great art, impressive architecture, great pastries, fine infrastructure, fast trains, but no love or any of its manifestations. I generally have very low expectations in this area but repeatedly, I was disappointed. In line in at the museum, in the cafe, waiting in the lobby of the hotel, or in the cab the obvious absence of kindness and concern was striking.
I note these reflections, with no intention of belittling France. I truly love and am fascinated by this great country. It is massive, diverse in its regions, and troubled in its religious history. I pray regularly for God to renew what was present there in the early church and what was lost in the reformation. While there I was struck with the notion that the future for our nation is the present in France. I don’t mean economically or politically but spiritually. Europe is referred to as post-Christian by the experts. If that is true and I believe it is, the most noticeable absence in day to day life is that of love and her manifestations. During the trip, I reflected on the words of Jesus from Matthew’s gospel: “and because of lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.” In this passage, Jesus in the Olivet discourse warned that in the future pronounced lawlessness always resulting in lovelessness. Lovelessness is something we must always guard ourselves against. Jesus’ warning is one we must heed today.
How do you guard against lovelessness? Simply making pursuit of love the greatest priority. In ministry so many of the problems in marriage, family, and the church are caused by lovelessness. Why were you so impatient, rude, selfish, unforgiving or easily offended? A lack of love is always the culprit. Love is the foundational spiritual gift and the primary evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit (I Cor. 13). Jesus commands us to love even our enemies (Mt. 5:44). He reminds his apostles that those who have been forgiven much love much (Luke 7:47). Paul calls our speaking of truth to be in love (Eph. 4:15). He prays that the Philippians would grow in their manifestations of love (Phil. 1:9). The writer to Hebrews calls us to make it our ambition to stir up one another to love (Heb. 10:24). John in his letter reminds us that love is the antidote to fear (I John 4:18). As to love’s importance in the church, Jesus threatens to remove His work and blessings from the church in Ephesus because the church has abandoned love (Rev. 2:4). No other virtue is held up as absolutely necessary for the health of the church as that of love.
I believe I have seen the future. It has come to me as a warning. As we as a body pursue this virtue, may what was said of the early church be said of Eastwood: “Oh! How they love one another!”
Transitions In Translation
Posted on 01. May, 2011 by Bart Lester in Bart, Blog
As a minister, I am asked all sorts of questions regularly. For years, the most popular question that I was asked was “Why did David, a man after God’s own heart, have so many wives”? That is no longer the most popular question that I am asked.
The new question is a much more practical one: “What Bible translation should I buy?” The confusion over Bible translations is understandable. When I was young there was only the King James Version (KJV) or the New King James Version (NKJV). Then in the late seventies came the Living Bible, the New International Version (NIV), and the New American Standard Version (NASB). Never before had there been so many choices. Now if you go to Books A Million or Amazon, the choices are seemingly endless. If you take the time to peruse these different versions at the bookstore the same verse sounds very different from one translation to the next. It is very confusing.
In light of these developments, how do I advise people? The last several years, I have consistently pointed people to the English Standard Version (ESV). There are several reasons for this:
1.) Translation Philosophy/Accuracy: The Bible was not written in English. The Old Testament is written in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek. Your English Bible has arrived at its language by a philosophy of translation. Word for word literalism was the dominant philosophy of translation practiced since the Protestant Reformation until the 1970s. This model put the text first by attempting to maintain a very close rendering of the original language into English. By and large, that philosophy has been replaced by the dynamic equivalent philosophy of translation. Dynamic equivalent philosophy places the reader not the text as primary. Consequently, the translation is a thought for though versus a word for word rendering of the text. In other words, the translation becomes more of an interpretive commentary on the passage than an actual rendering of the text. The NIV was the first mass marketing success of this philosophy. As the dynamic equivalent philosophy continues to evolve so do the liberties taken with the biblical text in their translations. Zondervan’s new, Today’s New International Version (TNIV) published in 2005 is a good example of this. In light of these developments, Crossway Publishing committed to a modern translation based on the older word for word translation philosophy. The ESV is the product of this commitment.
2.) Accessibility: I am sentimentally attached to my 1977 NASB. It is a great translation, but difficult these days to purchase. If you go to the bookstore you might find a NASB but it is increasingly difficult. In contrast, the ESV is easily purchased at a reasonable price in a variety of formats at most bookstores or online. The ESV has recently come out with a wonderful Study Bible that is head and shoulders above its competition. It has a webpage were it’s translation can be read, www.esvonline.org. Best of all for the technologically savvy, Crossway offers a wonderful, free ESV Bible app for your iphone, ipad, ipod touch, droid phone, or blackberry. If you have an e-reader like the Kindle or iBooks for your ipad you can download the ESV for free from the Kindle store or iBooks store.
3.) Readability: As attached as I am to my NASB, I don’t think it reads well publicly. For that matter, in my judgement neither does the KJV or the NKJV. These literal translations either use outdated language or current language in a wooden way. Of the literal translations, I believe the ESV achieves a remarkable balance between accuracy of translation and readability in the English. This is a crucial factor in choosing a translation for public worship, family worship, and private devotion.
With these factors in mind, the session at its April meeting approved the ESV as the teaching Bible of our church. The desire here is to clarify for the congregation what version of the Bible will be used in the preaching and teaching opportunities of the church. Our desire is not to write off all other versions of the Bible as inherently inferior or obsolete but to attempt to provide uniformity in all our teaching opportunities as well as lead you in choosing a translation that is accurate to the original text. It is our hope that in the end this change will lead you to a deeper understanding of the Bible and the great Savior to which it points you.
Finding Rest
Posted on 01. Apr, 2011 by Bart Lester in Bart
Rest, the older I get, seems to be an increasingly elusive pursuit. When one task gets finished five are still waiting to be started. When one responsibility gets satisfied, ten others are increasing in intensity. Emails to answer, phone calls to return, deadlines to meet. Some of this admittedly is a function of our culture and the value it puts on individual productivity. America is known as an exceedingly busy country. Foreign visitors I am acquainted with have commented to me about the pace of life here. No time to eat, no time for conversation, no time for reflection, no time, period. Leisure, although championed by our society and held up as the goal of life by the advertising industry, seems like a fantasy. Boredom is a forgotten state of my early childhood. What happened to rest?
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Relevance
Posted on 01. Mar, 2011 by Bart Lester in Bart, Blog
My old college dictionary, Webster’s New World Dictionary, defines relevance as: “relating to the matter under consideration; pertinent.” Today churches are preoccupied with relevance. The matter under consideration is the culture. Increasingly, when the supreme priority of the church is relevance, ministry, purpose, and vision are defined by the concerns and movements of modern culture. Those concerns and movements are always relentlessly changing.
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Where do we go from here?
Posted on 01. Feb, 2011 by Bart Lester in Bart, Blog
Uncertainty, confusion, and fear, these reactions from the congregation have been felt by all. The past two months have been the most tumultuous in the history of Eastwood. So the question on everyone’s mind is: where do we go from here? Perhaps the place to start is the last book of the Bible, Revelation. We find John, late in the first century and most likely the last of the apostles alive, in exile on the island of Patmos. The Roman government, initially indifferent to Christianity, was cruelly persecuting the church. The churches on the main land of Turkey were all seriously struggling both internally and externally. What to do? The case seemed hopeless. John was isolated and the church was in trauma. Unable to do anything, we find John worshipping on the Lord’s Day (1:10). No doubt, he felt the burden of the troubled churches deeply. The first chapter reveals the good news. John was not the only one involved or concerned. The exalted Jesus in all His glory appears to John. His appearance, no longer as the suffering servant, was a shock to John who “fell at his feet as though dead” (1:17).
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