Pastoral Notes for Sunday, August 2, 2020

At least three times a year, we offer the Exploring Cornerstone Class, which is our version of an Inquirer’s or New Member’s class. I’m leading an Exploring Cornerstone Class via Zoom on Monday nights right now for those who have been visiting with us in person or via livestream. As always, it’s such a joy to hear the stories of the people God leads to us and reflect together on the history, vision, commitments, and ministries of Cornerstone Pres.

This past Monday we did a 30,000-foot flyover of Reformation and Presbyterian history. Starting in 1517 with Martin Luther’s nailing of the 95 theses and ending with the founding of the Presbyterian Church in America in 1973, we spanned nearly five hundred years of history in 45 minutes. Given the constraints, it was a highly selective retelling of history. I limited us to key people, moments, and movements that deeply influenced the shape of Reformed and Presbyterian history.

At one point in the discussion, I noted how every era in church history has its blights, and that the men and movements within Reformed and Presbyterian history are no exception. I cited, for instance, the well documented anti-Semitism that shows up in the writings of Martin Luther and hinted at the questionable judgment of John Calvin in the death of Michael Servetus.

My purpose in briefly noting these difficult matters was not to condemn Luther or Calvin. Far from it! The historical record is clear: these men are champions of the Christian faith. They labored tirelessly for the glory of Jesus Christ and the good of His church in their generation. We stand on their shoulders and do well to follow their lead and example in so many ways.

My purpose in making the reference was to steer clear of two equal opposite tendencies in looking at historical figures. The first tendency is to idolize. We idolize a figure in history when we treat them as if they did no wrong. You know you’re falling into idolization if you find yourself ignoring or trying to explain away any perceived character flaw or transgression because down deep inside, you can’t stand the possibility that your hero is, at the end of the day, a fallen human being just like you (Romans 3:23).

The second tendency is to demonize. We demonize a figure in history when we treat them as if they can do no right—when we make their moral failings the whole story. We speak of them as if the only thing true about them is what they’ve done wrong, and we can’t imagine there’s anything redeemable about them (Matthew 7:11).

If we examine history with an honest eye, we won’t be surprised to learn our enemies do things that are good and right from time to time. We also won’t be surprised to see our hero goof up now and again. In the end, everyone is a mixed bag of original glory and original sin.

Let’s learn from the men and women of history. Let’s follow their example where we can. Let’s give them the respect they’re due. But let’s not idolize them or demonize them. Let’s let them be the humans they are.

Pastoral Notes for Sunday, July 26, 2020

Dear Cornerstone Family,

We lost a theological giant this week. Dr. J.I. Packer died on July 17, 2020 just a few days shy of his 94th birthday. Though born in England and nurtured in the low church Anglican tradition, Packer likely made his biggest impact in North American evangelicalism. His best-selling 1973 book, Knowing God, is still considered one of the best introductions of Reformed theology. If you haven’t read it, rectify that soon. I commend it highly.

Someone asked me this week what made Packer so influential. I found the question difficult to answer. To be honest, there is nothing particularly flashy about Packer as a person. Though a superior mind with a keen ability to communicate, especially in written word, his ministry was pretty ordinary for the most part. If you considered his life as a whole, I suspect you’d find he spent most every day teaching the Bible and writing good books. Which is probably why (at least from a human perspective) he was so influential. Packer was a man who ran the race and stayed the course. Day in and day out, he gave himself to the things that mattered most.

Two leading values I see in Packer’s ministry: purity and peace. Specifically, purity of the truth and peace in the church. If you were to survey the leading emphases in Packer’s lecturing and writing, take inventory of the historical figures and movements that captured his attention, and mark the kinds of controversies that typically ensnared him, you would see a man trying to unify the church in the truth. Even when I find myself at odds with Packer, I can’t help but respect him, for what I know he’s trying to do: speak the truth with love for the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace in the body of Christ (Eph. 4:1-3, 15).

Today, in heaven, Packer knows that for which labored: purity and peace. For that, we can rejoice! Well done, Dr. Packer. You did not run in vain, sir. “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!” (Rev.14:13)

Before I close, let me give you a brief update on the church ministry as we look toward the fall. Your staff and elders are in regular discussion about the state of the ministry during COVID-19. We continue to be very encouraged by the stories of God’s work in our body through in-person and livestream worship and the variety of other ministry initiatives happening over the summer with children, youth, men, and women. So many things to share, but I’ll save the heartening stories for a later time.

As you’d expect, we’re seeking God’s face for wisdom as we prepare for the fall. It is our earnest prayer and plan to increase in-person ministries as we move toward the fall while continuing to offer opportunities online and through livestream. As we begin to make plans, we ask you to pray for us. Pray for wisdom. Pray for the health and safety of our congregation. Pray for the ongoing effectiveness of the ministry. Pray that we would honor Jesus Christ by fulfilling our mission: “To Glorify God in the Gospel as Disciples who Make Disciples.”

More on all this soon. For now, let’s worship together!

Your servant,

Nate

Pastoral Notes for Sunday, July 19, 2020

Dear Cornerstone Family,

Those who have the peculiar suffering of listening to me preach multiple times on a Sunday have often remarked how each sermon is different. You’d probably expect that some aspects of communication might change from sermon to sermon, and that is certainly true. More times than not, however, the differences aren’t just phrases or word choices but textual notes, cultural insights, theological elaborations, and practical applications.

For instance, in the noon service sermon last week, I took a rabbit trail into the attributes of God. I noted that God’s anger toward sin, though true of Him, is not an essential attribute of who He is but rather circumstantial. Let me explain how this works, and why this is important.

Holiness is an essential attribute of God. It’s essential because it’s always and necessarily true of God at all times and circumstances. We could point to many places to prove this, but Isaiah 6:3 is one such place, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of the hosts.” Notice, God is holy. Holiness is so central to who God is He can’t choose not to be holy. In short, God is not God without holiness.

The same thing can be said about love. When the Apostle John says, “God is love” (1 John 4:8), he’s making the point that God is in His very essence love. Jesus notes in the high priestly prayer, that love was the basis of His relationship with the Father before the world existed (see John 17:24). Why? Because love is essential to who God is.

Never do we see the Scripture speak of God’s anger in this way. Rather, God’s anger or wrath is the expression of the attribute of holiness toward sin. In other words, God’s anger arises or appears only under certain circumstances—when His holiness is confronted with man’s sin. This is why, of course, the Triune God is never described as sharing in or experiencing anger before the foundation of the world.

Now, this must be nuanced, of course, when it comes to the incarnation of Jesus Christ. God pours out His wrath on Jesus Christ on the cross, but He is only able to do this because the Son of God added to himself a human nature and “became sin for us,” to borrow a line from Paul (2 Cor. 5:21). The Father could never have been angry at His Son if the Son hadn’t first taken the guilt of our sin on himself.

Finally, this is also why—and this is very important—God’s anger can be averted. Unlike His love, God’s anger can be quenched if the sin that provokes His anger is removed. This is what happened on the cross! When Jesus took the guilt of our sin on himself, the anger of God that was pointed at us turned to him. When Jesus offered himself up on the cross as payment for that sin, the anger/wrath of God toward our sin was satisfied. So much so that if you’re in Christ, God has no anger toward you. None. Zilch. Nada. It’s been completely removed. Because of what Christ has done, the only thing left God has for you is love.

So, let’s worship like that’s true.

Your servant,

Pastor Nate

Pastoral Notes for Sunday, July 12, 2020

When you think of spiritual growth or change, what would you say makes the most difference? There’s lots of potential good (right) answers. But when I look back on the seasons of the most significant spiritual growth, there’s always been a loving person delivering God’s Word to my heart. It really is that simple, and that profound.

On the surface, that may sound like a defense of pastoral ministry or the activity of preaching and, in a sense, it is. But that’s not the point I’m making right now. For interestingly, the people who have made the biggest spiritual impact in my life have only occasionally been pastors.

This week in staff meeting we took time to personally apply the first point of last week’s sermon from Psalm 44, namely, that God’s ordinary means of passing on the faith to the next generation is the family of faith, the church. I asked each staff member to tell us about someone in their past who made a big spiritual impact. We named mothers, Sunday School teachers, youth volunteers, and, yes, a pastor or two. But it was noteworthy that for almost all of us, the single biggest spiritual influencers were ordinary Christians who loved us enough to minister the truth of God’s Word to where we needed it most.

At staff meeting, I mentioned the name Chuck Thompson. He helped lead the 3rd-5th grade boys’ class on Wednesday nights at my home church in Laurel, MS. I remember one night in particular. Chuck told us he’d had a long week and didn’t have much time to prepare a lesson, but that he wanted to teach us about thanksgiving.

He had each boy—probably 4 or 5 of us—retell all the events of our day. From the moment we woke up, to the moment we stepped into the room for Bible study that night. As we painstakingly rehearsed the day’s activities, Chuck would stop us and say, “How can you give thanks to God for that?” From brushing our teeth to playing catch in the backyard, Chuck was calling us to pause, consider, and give thanks to God.

Little did we know, he was teaching us the life transformative truth of 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” The teaching was so simple. It was even unprepared! But thirty years later I remember it and am still learning the lesson of it. In fact, I’m sharing the lesson with you! Chuck has gone on to be with the Lord, but the impact of Chuck’s ministry remains with me to this day. That’s how God loves to work.

Who has God used in your life to make a spiritual difference? Go ahead and stop right now and give thanks for them. Then, for God’s glory alone, ask the Lord to use you to lovingly minister the truth of God’s Word to someone else. Trust me, that’s the kind of prayer He’s inclined to answer.

Pastoral Notes for Sunday, July 5, 2020

Dear Cornerstone Family,

I had a lovely conversation this week with a thoughtful young man in our community. He overheard the final minutes of a phone conversation I shared with a friend. In that conversation, I referenced a line of thought in Charles Taylor’s book, Sources of the Self. Taylor argues that in late modernity a seismic shift in understanding about the human person took place. The historic Christian understanding of the human soul was in large part replaced with a secularized concept of the human self. Taylor goes on to note how this shift moved society over time away from traditional understandings of human identity arising from within the moral framework of the universe to radically individual self-conceptions of human identity rooted in personality and psychology. (Yep, a little heady, but a very important observation.)

When I hung up, the young man at the table next to me introduced himself. He apologized for eavesdropping on my phone conversation, but the cultural shifts I referenced fascinated him. He noted the civil unrest we’re presently experiencing in America, expressing real concern about whether the fabric of the nation can maintain itself much longer (alluding specifically to the presidential election in November). He then asked, “Do you think the shifts you mentioned are part of the reason we’ve lost the ability to have meaningful dialogues on social issues today?”

I could tell he sensed a connection but couldn’t quite put his finger on it. I told him that anytime we jettison a divinely created, morally framed understanding of reality and opt for a subjective, psychological-sociological framed understanding of reality—where each person is free to forge or create their own identity and meaning—societal fragmentation is inevitable. “In my opinion,” I said, “one of the evidences that such fragmentation is well underway in America is our inability to have reasonable, respectful discourse when we disagree on social issues.”

He nodded, so I continued. “If we embrace subjective self-conceptions of personal identity; one where the individual is free to determine who he or she is, then we necessarily cut ourselves off from the possibility of a commonly held understanding of reality. We’re all living in our own worlds so to speak. Furthermore, if we determine self-identity, then it necessarily follows that we can choose our own morality. This in turn necessarily cuts us off from a commonly held sense of what is right and wrong and thus a vision for moving forward together.”

Now, I didn’t think of it at the time, but it’s worth noting now. In his book, Culture Wars, James Davison Hunter argues that whenever a nation’s communal life and habits of social connection erode, the nation becomes increasingly dependent on the exercise of power to hold things together. This is why, Hunter suggests, American society is looking increasingly to governing officials, laws, and the exercise of political power to provide solutions for our social and cultural problems. Hunter wrote that in 1991. It’s truer today than it was then.

On this July 4th weekend, in the midst of great concern for our nation, it’s right for us to give thanks to God for the freedoms we still enjoy. Chief among them, the freedom to do what we’re doing right now— worship! Friends, that’s a tremendous blessing. Don’t take it for granted! But as we exercise our freedom to worship today, let’s remember WHO we look to for help and hope. Not to princes who cannot save (Psalm 146:3) but to our God (Psalm 121:1-2) who has set His son, Jesus Christ, on the throne of heaven and given Him the name above every name (Philippians 2:9). Only under His blessed rule are we free indeed (John 8:36).

Your servant,

Nate