Binocular Vision

By Jim Howe

When I first became a father, we moved from Palo Alto, California next door to Stanford University, to Etna, California the front door of the Marble Mountains. In Palo Alto, I had studied both Greek and Hebrew along with exegesis, and a smattering of church history. I studied with J. I. Packer, Ray Stedman, R. C. Sproul, Bruce Waltke, Steve Newman, Jack Crabtree, and Ray Ortlund (Junior) among others at Peninsula Bible Church in the non-accredited Scribe School where I received a good foundation for life and ministry. I completed the two-year program and went off to begin a lifetime of service in the Church. Kerry and I took our young two-month-old son Jeremiah, everything we owned, and moved to the far north of California.

I was still relatively new to the Christian faith. I had come to faith in the spring of 1970 and it was 1979.  The mountain air of Siskiyou County was exhilarating, and my own struggles existentially drew me deeper in my belief. I was immersed in reading Francis Schaeffer, translating Paul’s monumental letter to the Romans in the early morning hours and wrestling with reasons for faith. I often went outside in the early morning to watch the stars while crying out to God to reveal Himself to me. God was at work then as He is today. The fellowship of the church where I served part time as a youth pastor was rich.  There were several young couples like us that were drawn to the country and to Jesus out of the Jesus movement that had swept the west coast.  We studied the Bible together in a fellowship group. God was doing something transformative in our lives, and it attracted even more people to join us.   

I was learning what it meant to see life through the dual vision of “pastor” and through the spectacles of Holy Scripture. As I think about this dual perspective I think of the thick glasses I wore to see the world and to read the Bible where God revealed Himself to me. On my birthday, October 7, 1979, Kerry, my wife, and I awoke to the sound of gun shots outside the home we were renting. We looked out the window and Kerry said, “There is a four-point buck, get your rifle!” It was the last day of deer season. I grabbed my newly rebuilt .30-6 Winchester with the Redfield scope. But I didn’t grab my glasses because I was in a hurry, I could not find the buck in the scope. One eye was focused with the aid of the scope but the other could not see well enough to get the deer in the sites. Certain to get a buck if I could get a good shot, I missed my best chance of the season. As much as Kerry tried to point my body in the right direction, I simply could not see the buck without the aid of my glasses even though I had the powerful magnification of the scope.   

There is a two-fold vision laid before us in 1 Thessalonians 2:9-16.  We need pastors to pursue a high level of commitment to care for the people, and we need congregations that are hungry for the Word of God.  Paul is the human instrument God used to care for the people, and the Scriptures are the divine instrument through which God speaks to the hearers. Read carefully what Paul shared about his personal relationship with the young congregation and the way they heard the Word of God.  You will notice the responsibility Paul had to care for the people, and their response to the message proclaimed:

1 Thessalonians 2:9–16 (ESV) ⁹ For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. ¹⁰ You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. ¹¹ For you know how, like a father with his children, ¹² we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. ¹³ And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers. ¹⁴ For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, ¹⁵ who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind ¹⁶ by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved—so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them at last!

The relational commitment of the apostolic team associated with Paul was of the highest caliber.  The response to the word of God by the congregation was surely supernatural.

Paul’s fatherly care and the congregation’s response to the word of God form the binocular vision I wish to bring out. G. K. Beale put it this way:

Christians in a local church need to know one another well enough in order that they can know, pray for and even meet one another’s needs.  Such behavior breathes the air of the first-century church. We in today’s impersonal technological age need to be more like our first-century ancestors in the faith.[1]

Personal engagement by pastors and by the hearers is essential.  I needed both of my eyes to see the deer.  We need both pastors and elders who care deeply to be one focus of our attention, and with the other eye focused to make sure our hearts hang on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

We live in a time where the expectations we have for the Church have been lessened.  Covid19 has shut down churches and lessened the kind of pastoral care that can be given.  We need to be “more” the church, not less.  That means we cannot expect to care for one another in these challenging times with more technology and less real human contact.  God is the One we serve not a state governor. We have found ourselves listening to more sermons online.  Many have found that so many mega church pastors are more entertaining their own. But we do not need a consumer driven focus or a need focused sermon.  We need to hear from God through the God ordained servant of the word He has called to speak to us.  We also need the personal touch with one another as we care for one another.  

 As I desperately wanted venison in my refrigerator, there is a deeply God-centered need to be more like the first-century church.  Where did the early church meet? In sanctuaries with social distancing? No, they met in homes. What did the government have to say about their gathering? Nothing, until they began to stand against the idol of the time shaped in the form of Caesar.  Who is Lord today?  Our focus is higher than the politics of the nations.  Love for God and neighbor remain our concern. While we want to show care for one another in the face of this virus. Let us remember that less than 2% of the people who get the virus die.  Is there something deeper at stake?  We are called to care for one another as the people of God, as the early church did in the face of persecution, and at times sickness that shook the Roman world.  In a time of great untruths propagated through the media, we are called to hear the word of God above all words.  We are to listen to God and to care for one another.

Two simple focuses: care for one another and a careful listening to the word of God as God speaking to us.  The post-Covid church will not look like it did in the past.  God is working to make the Church to be the Bride of Christ through His sovereign providence that we might reveal His glory in this time and serve to bring His kingdom in a very broken world.

Listen to the deep yearning of the Spirit in your heart to gather, to care for one another and to hear the Word of God. God will not be frustrated.  God in His providence is doing something bigger.  God is starting a movement in the heart of His people.  A restless cry to be the Church.

Listen to Andrew Peterson sign and you will hear the Spirit working in us all a restlessness to be the movement of the kingdom: https://youtu.be/YhQv6gFxIn8

Father, create in us a desire to be the Church in a deep way.  Stir in us a restlessness that won’t settle for state sanctioned freedom to worship when You call us to share the gospel with all our neighbors, families and friends.  Break our hearts for the hopeless all around us, and fill us with the hope of Jesus Christ.  Raise up godly elders and teaching elders to serve the church beyond the limitation of this time.  Father, we surrender to your providence and seek for ways to be the Church in new wineskins of deepened community and deep listening to the Word of God.

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[1] G. K. Beale, 1-2 Thessalonians, IVP Downers Grove, p. 73.

Rebuilding in a Time of Upheaval

 

By Jim Howe

 

Where do you begin to rebuild when all that we know is being torn down? The “new normal” feels to many of us like living in Babylon after the exile or living in the rubble after Rome was destroyed. There is an urge in us all, a deep desire, for something real and lasting.  While Jerusalem was awaiting destruction by the Romans that would occur in a few short years in 70ad, Paul was building the kingdom of God. It was laborious, tedious, and dangerous work but it was built on the unchanging Word of God and the message of Jesus Christ revealed in the gospel.  If you listen in on Paul’s conversation with the Thessalonians, you will hear him call the Church today to simply be the Church:

“For you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain. But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.” (1 Thessalonians 2:1–8, ESV)

Costly, “all in”, transparent, God-focused, and relationally intensive, long-term investment in sharing the gospel of God is on display in what Paul wrote. The work of Paul stood in stark contrast to the religious hucksters of the day. The change that was evident in the lives of believers was proof that proclaiming and dialoguing about the gospel was not a waste. 

There is something earth shaking about being involved in truth that is worth dying for. The level of suffering American Christians face is small in comparison to our global brothers and sister.  But if you join in speaking the gospel message and living the gospel faith you will suffer attacks.  The sneer of unbelief is everywhere and the criticism pervasive.  The gospel Paul proclaimed is universal in scope, but it is also exclusive in that it is centered in the one Lord and Savior that leads people into a life with the one true God.  We all long to have the approval of those we love.  But building a new world that lasts can only have one foundation: God.  He is the One we all must answer to in the end. Faithfulness to the gospel message and the entire Biblical narrative is the most important credential for rebuilding the Church in a time where health requirements have many churches shut down and others limping along with worship attended by only a faction of the congregation.

The kind of rebuilding we see Paul doing in Thessalonica is exactly what we need.  The emphasis is not upon a building; it is centered upon proclaiming the message of God through costly human interaction.  We need to be the Church that is unstoppable as we meet in home fellowships in backyards and as we have conversations with the Bible in hand and live together in deep humility.

Paul was not authoritarian in his posture.  His allegiance to Christ as the head of the Church set the stage for a humble yet bold approach.  A nursing mother and her children describes the most basic human relationship. The love Paul spoke of was profound “affection”.  The message he proclaimed of Christ’s cross and resurrection was put on display as the light of Christ shown through his life.

As we remain in many ways still in our homes warned to stay away from social contact, we are all aware of family relationships.  Living the gospel with our spouse, our family and children is the arena for us now.  It is the very foundation and building block for the new world called the Kingdom of God. What we do each day does matter; it is not in vain when our faith is in Christ and our relationships are an expression of obedience to God.

We are all being called to surrender to the Sovereign God who is at work. After all, He alone is the one who really builds the kingdom.  He is shaking the globe, and behind the scenes He is laying the foundation for a whole new world.  Listen to the words of this old hymn rewritten for today: https://youtu.be/ihwS1rAagCo

Here are the words to consider:

Verse 1:

God moves in a mysterious way

His wonders to perform;

He plants His footsteps in the sea

And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines

Of never failing skill

He treasures up His bright designs

And works His sovereign will.

 

Verse 2: 

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,

But trust Him for His grace;

Behind a frowning providence

He hides a smiling face.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;

The clouds you so much dread

Are big with mercy and shall break

In blessings on your head.

 

Chorus:

Holy, Holy

Oh mysteries beyond

Glory, Glory

Be to our Sovereign God

 

Verse 3: 

Blind unbelief is sure to err

And scan His work in vain;

God is His own interpreter,

And He will make it plain.

His purposes will ripen fast, Unfolding every hour;

The bud may have a bitter taste,

But sweet will be the flower.

 

God Moves In A Mysterious Way

Written by Matt Papa, Matt Boswell

© 2016 Love Your Enemies Publishing, Dayspring Publishing, LLC ( A Division of Word Music Group, Inc.) CCLI #7065055

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