Pastoral Notes for August 5, 2018

Genesis, as the name indicates, is a book of beginnings. To be specific, it’s a book of three beginnings. First, there is the beginning of the world and the human race with Adam.  Second, there is the second beginning of the post-diluvian world with Noah. And finally, there’s the so-called “third beginning” of the world with the establishment of a chosen people of God with Abraham. 

From January to May of this year, we forged our way through the majesty and mystery of Genesis 1-11, the first two of the beginnings in Genesis. Today, we’re beginning again, for the third time. And this beginning is an entering into what Arthur Pink says is “…a preface, not only to the remaining 29 chapters of Genesis, but also to the entire Old Testament, and, we may add, of the Bible as a whole.” Said differently, Genesis 12-23 is so important to redemptive history that it’s impossible to overestimate. For it’s here, through the life and legacy of Abraham, that the life and legacy of faith comes to us in Jesus Christ. That in some very real sense, the beginning of true faith starts here with the ancient patriarch, Abraham, who is himself the father of all who believe (Romans 4:16).

To prepare your heart for this glorious journey, you will find a breakdown of the Genesis sermon series for this fall. Let me encourage you to prepare each week for worship by pausing on Saturday evening and reading the text for Sunday morning’s worship. In addition to reading, please pray for worship each week. Ask the Lord to accomplish his good and perfect will as we gather together in His presence week after week! 

New Beginnings: A Study of Genesis

·      August 5 – Genesis 12:1-9, “The Call of Faith”

·      August 12 – Genesis 12:10-20, “The Struggle of Faith”

·      August 19 – Genesis 13, “Choose Wisely”

·      August 26 – Genesis 14:1-16, “Abram Rescues Lot”

·      September 2 – Genesis 14:17-24, “The Blessing of Melchizedek”

·      September 9 – Genesis 15, “The Abrahamic Covenant”  

·      September 16 – Genesis 16, “Sarai and Hagar”

·      September 23 – Genesis 17, “The Covenant Sign”

·      September 30 – Genesis 18:1-15, “No Laughing Matter”

·      October 7 – Genesis 18:16-33, “Will the Judge of Earth do Justly?”

·      October 14 – Genesis 19, “God, the Rescuer”

·      October 21 – Genesis 20, “Fear God, Not Man”

·      October 28 – Genesis 21, “The Promised Son!”  

·      November 4 – Genesis 22, “Tested and Tried”  

·      November 11 – Genesis 23, “The Death of Sarah”

But there’s one more thing. Don’t leave this morning without picking up our newly published devotional guides! This edition of the devotional guide has daily prayer services that can be used personally or for family worship. It also has daily Scripture readings that pace with the themes of the sermon series, which helps keep what you learned on Sunday near to your heart Monday through Saturday. As always, the devotional guides are FREE for the taking at both entrances to the church.

Pastoral Notes for Sunday, July 29, 2018

In preparation for entering a season of officer training, I took a few minutes last week to unfold our vision for taking care of the flock at Cornerstone.  Leaning heavily on 1 Peter 5:1-4, I outlined five key aspects:  

·      First, we shepherd under the chief shepherd. That is, we believe that Jesus Christ is the head of the church and the source for all pastoral care.

·      Second, we shepherd unto the chief shepherd. That is, in our pastoral care, we are careful to lead God’s flock to increased trust in, dependence on, love for, and obedience to Jesus Christ.

·      Third, we shepherd for the chief shepherd. That is, we believe that our love for Jesus Christ must both drive and direct our love for His sheep.

·      Fourth, we shepherd like the chief shepherd. That is, we take all our shepherding cues from the chief shepherd Himself.

·      Fifth, we shepherd until we see the chief shepherd. That is, we persevere in care for the church till the end, keeping our eyes set on Jesus, 

Today I want to go one step further. At Cornerstone, not only do officers care for the needs of God’s people, they also equip God’s people to care for the needs of God’s people. Paul says in Ephesians 4:11-13, “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”

If we take Paul’s words seriously, we shouldn’t rely on pastors, teachers, and the like to do the entire ministry, but to equip the saints for the work of ministry. Said another way, built into the work of a shepherd is a commitment to train the saints in how to minister and care for the flock, so that more and more the congregation is equipped to minister to itself. As under-shepherds embrace the call to equip the saints for ministry, a culture of care is created among all the members and the flock becomes healthier

This commitment to equip the saints for the work of ministry means several things:

·      Delegate – Church officers are thinking about building a team of coworkers in ministry by asking and answering the question, “Who has God gifted and equipped to do ______ in our church?”

·      Develop – Church officers are thinking about training a team of co-workers by asking and answering the question, “How do we need grow in order to take the next step in ministry?”

·      Deploy – Church officers are thinking about releasing a trained team of coworkers into various fields of ministry by asking and answering the question, “How can ______ be best used in work of ministry?”

·      Duplicate – Church officers are looking to the trained team of coworkers and asking and answering the question, “Who among this team of trained coworkers is ready to become the next equipper for ministry?”

I hope these two weeks outlining our vision for leadership has helped you better understand the vision for leadership at Cornerstone. As always, we’re a work in progress. But thanks be to God, there’s progress! As we enter into another round of officer training, pray that God would be pleased to raise up more shepherd leaders, so that we might continue to become the church that God is calling us to be.  

Pastoral Notes for Sunday, July 22, 2018

“So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, not for shameful gain, but eagerly, not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.”—1 Peter 5:1-4

A month ago we entered into a nomination, training, and election season for new church officers. We began this season as we always do by calling upon you, the congregation, to set forward nominees—qualified men—as candidates for officership. Having received and reviewed the nominations, we are now in touch with all the nominees and will soon begin the process of training. At some point soon, I’ll share with you more about the training and how you can pray for the men entering this process.

In the meantime, I thought it might be helpful to distill our commitments and aims as under-shepherds of Cornerstone. As I do this, I want to acknowledge that we’re not where we want to be. There’s much room for improvement. Each elder and deacon will tell you that. But thanks be to God, we’re not where we once were! Advance is being made. We see glimmers of what we hope to be now, and we expect, relying on God’s grace, that we will continue to grow in the work of shepherding as we mature in the love and wisdom of God.

So, leaning on Peter’s words in 1 Peter 5:1-4 quoted above, our philosophy of pastoral care can be summarized under these five headings. 

First, we shepherd under the chief shepherd. That is, we believe that Jesus Christ is the head of the church and the source for all pastoral care. Though God is often pleased to use our gifts, wisdom, and craft as under-shepherds to effectively minister to His people, we recognize ourselves to be only His instruments. Any benefit coming through our pastoral care is to God’s credit alone. 

Second, we shepherd unto the chief shepherd. That is, in our pastoral care, we are careful to lead God’s flock not to us, but to increasing trust in, dependence on, and love for Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd Himself (John 10). We like to say that our shepherding is only as good as we are leading the sheep to the true shepherd.  

Third, we shepherd for the chief shepherd. That is, we believe that our love for Jesus Christ must both drive and direct our love for His sheep. It’s very easy in caring for the flock to begin focusing on pleasing the flock. That’s not a shepherd’s call. It’s our responsibility to carry out what Christ says is best for the flock. The way we like to say it is: “We love each other with the love of Christ.” Keeping this in mind, we keep the focus on Christ and His glory as we shepherd His flock.

Fourth, we shepherd like the chief shepherd. That is, we take all our shepherding cues from the chief shepherd Himself. Peter summarizes this care with the words “willingly… eagerly… being examples.” We believe those descriptors characterize the spirit of Christ’s own shepherding. In humble reliance upon the Holy Spirit, we strive to care for the flock of God with the grace, discipline, wisdom, and love of the Chief Shepherd himself.

Fifth, we shepherd until we see the chief shepherd. Weariness and discouragement in the work of shepherding is a given. Anyone who has regularly cared for anyone knows this feeling. It’s the same for church officers. We regularly need encouragement to not give up but keep on keeping on in the work of shepherding—even when it seems like what we do makes little difference. Knowing that an “unfading crown of glory” awaits us upon the chief shepherd’s return is a regular encouragement when shepherding morale is low.

Next week we’ll look at the second key passage for shepherding at Cornerstone, Ephesians 4:11-13

Pastoral Notes for Sunday, July 15, 2018

This past week I had the privilege of sitting under the ministry of Dr. Derek Thomas, Senior Minister of First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, SC. Years ago, Dr. Thomas was my systematics professor at Reformed Theological Seminary and a colleague in ministry at First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, MS. Dr. Thomas has long been a mentor and friend in ministry, but it’s been a decade since I’ve had him in class.

This week we walked through John Calvin’s magnum opus, The Institutes of the Christian Religion in detail. As many of you will know, this work served as the theological backbone of the Reformation during the 16th century. There are so many beautiful things to say about the work, but one aspect that stood out again to me this week is the way Calvin understands and speaks of the Christian life.

Calvin summarizes the Christian life with the term piety. That’s not a term we use often today. In fact, as we think of piety today, we tend think pious—a term that carries the sense of being religious, self-righteous, and hypocritical. Of course Calvin doesn’t mean that. He uses piety to speak of the proper knowledge and attitude that we should have toward God. He says, “I call ‘piety’ that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of his benefits induces.”

What’s interesting is that Calvin joins together two things we often keep apart—love and reverence. Today, we often say that if we love God and know God loves us then there should be no fear, but that’s not true knowledge according to how Calvin sees it. Because God is God and is all-powerful, able to do whatever He desires, even if he loves us (and he does in Christ), there is a holy reverence that is still an appropriate and even necessary Christian response.

It’s the point C.S. Lewis was making in the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe when, after learning that Aslan is a lion, Susan says to Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, “Ooh! I thought he was a man. Is he quite-safe?” And Mr. Beaver responds “Safe? … Who said anything about safe? Course he isn’t safe! But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Even the goodness of Aslan and his obvious love for Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy did not take away the sense of fear and reverence. For Calvin, this bringing together of love and fear is evidence of true knowledge and the spirit through which true godliness is formed.

So much to be said here, but let me sum it up. On the one hand, if your understanding of the love of God is not joined with fear of God, your relationship with God will come to be casual and flippant. On the other hand, if your understanding of the holiness and power of God is not joined with the love of God, your relationship with God is likely to be distant and cold. It’s only by holding these two equally important aspects of the nature of God together, that a loving reverence for God arises.

It has often been the case in church history that revival comes when a strong sense of the holiness and love of God are recovered. To that end, pray for us in this regard. Would it not be most glorious for God to grant to His church in our time a true sense of who He is? O that our love for God would be reverent and our reverence to be full of love, and that in pondering him we grow from one degree of glory to the next (2 Cor. 3:18).

Pastoral Notes for Sunday, July 8, 2018

In the past few weeks, our very own Greg Wilbur published an excellent piece on worship online at Christward Collective. I found Greg’s piece so helpful and thought provoking that I decided to republish it here for your benefit. Last week, the article focused on what confessional worship is and guidelines for how worship should be led to encourage the congregational and confessional aspect of it. This week, Greg talks about the role of beauty.

Guidelines for Worship, Part 2

God has placed us here in this time and place for a purpose, and our corporate worship should reflect that reality within the context of redemptive history. We are reformational, not revolutionary. We are confessional, not traditional or modern. In order to be truly contemporary, “with the time,” we must understand our place in the lineage of the Church—which necessitates an understanding of what has gone on before. We should appreciate and utilize the wisdom and artistic excellence of the past without worshipping the forms; we should seek to create new work, without divorcing ourselves from our history.

As we relate and communicate to the culture around us, we must use great wisdom to discern that which are “the patterns and customs of this world,” as opposed to those things that are biblically permissible. Instead of falling to the least common denominator, we should be accessible to our culture, yet excellent. Without creating artificial barriers to the Gospel, we should, however, move from the milk of the Gospel to solid food.

As we seek to follow the guidelines above, the distinctive aesthetic of worship calls us to pursue the beauty of Christ and to make Him known. Consider beauty in worship in the following ways:

· Beauty is an attribute of God and is therefore a theological issue. God is the standard of beauty as well as its source; therefore, there is an objective standard for what is beautiful. Aesthetics is the study of beauty and the ability to apprehend it. From a theological perspective, the Word of God is the rule by which we make aesthetic judgments. God speaks to the role of artists in the description He gives of the artists for the tabernacle: filled with the Spirit, ability, intelligence, knowledge, craftsmanship, and able to teach others. Good art and music should be the product of these types of characteristics.

· Beauty is best understood in its relationship and balance to goodness and truth—otherwise it can be trite, transient, trendy, temporary, deceptive, insubstantial, or gimmicky. There is a significance and weight to true beauty.

The very fact that something is beautiful is an apologetic of the Gospel and of the realities of truth and goodness. All beauty is God’s beauty. In addition, beauty can be a winsome adornment, and it can be a challenging stumbling block. Beauty can also open the heart to that inexpressible sense of the transcendence of God that causes great desire for the Truth.