who is your master

For my rejoicing & boasting is this: blogging in simplicity & godly sincerity...
Zechariah 1:8 "I saw that night, and behold a man riding upon a red horse, and he stood among the myrtles in the valley..."

He sees a grove of myrtles, a beautiful shrub, with glossy, dark green leaves, and white, star-like clusters of fragrant flowers, whose leaves exhaled their richest odor only when bruised. This was a symbol of the theocracy, the Jewish Church and nation. The Church is not a cedar, in its queenly pride, or an oak in its giant strength, but a lowly myrtle, humble, unpretending, and exhaling its sweetest graces when bruised by the weight of affliction. Such was the existing state of theocracy, and hence the despondency of the people, who thought that so lowly a thing must be wholly overshadowed and destroyed by the proud and godless powers of this world.

But in the midst of these myrtles he sees a man on a red horse, whom we afterwards discover to be the angel of Jehovah, that divine person whom we trace all along the history of the Old Testament, in every manifestation of God to man, in visible form, until in the New Testament we find him manifest in the flesh. It is the second person of the mysterious Trinity, the great head of the Church. The fact is thus symbolized that he is in the midst of the Church, unseen and hence though seemingly so feeble and lowly, she has this inhabitation as her glory and defence.

~ from "Zechariah" by Thomas V. Moore (orig. published New York: Robert Carter, 1856; reprinted London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1958, 1961, 1968), 46. The Scripture translation is Moore's own rending.

In the midst of the Xanga 2.0 transition, I've found myself annoyed and upset over the current appearance of my blog – the fact that it is currently so very bare bones. But then I read those words of Thomas V. Moore, after which came the conviction of the Holy Spirit. To explain...

Lately, I've been grieving and mourning over the mass of Western Christianity that has been deceived and is all too readily discarding the simplicity that is in Christ – congregation after congregation and denomination after denomination lapsing... and, as a result, scores of professing Christians are laboring fervently – not according to the Spirit, but according to the flesh – and unequally yoking themselves with the spirit and wisdom and might of this age, striving to appeal to and attract the natural man, and seeking to appear wise, powerful, and noble in the eyes of the world.

II Corinthians 11:1 Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly: and indeed bear with me. 2 For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. 3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. (KJV)

I Corinthians 1:26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30 He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (ESV)

As we look at the Church in comparison to the world, it's far too easy for us to be tempted to think, as Moore wrote, that

so lowly a thing must be wholly overshadowed and destroyed by the proud and godless powers of this world.

And I found myself sliding into that very same temptation regarding my blog! (I Cor. 10:12-13)

I do want my blog to be helpful to those who are reading. And it's not that I want my blog to look crummy. Yet I don't want it to look good or to serve others at the expense of diminishing or concealing the glory and the simplicity of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Gospel in any way at all ~ II Corinthians 4:1-7; I Corinthians 2:1-5; Romans 1:16-17. (And yes, in case you're wondering, I do realize some of the quotation marks are displaying incorrectly in this post... and I have no idea why... Quite fitting indeed!)

As pilgrims in this fallen world, Christians are in a constant warfare – we are engaged in battle against our flesh, the world and the devil. It has always been a challenge for God's people to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and not to love the world or the things in the world (including the acclaim of the world), but rather to remain unspotted, as "a lowly myrtle, humble, unpretending," and to stay on the narrow path and to shine as lights amidst the lure of the fleshly aroma of pretentiousness and self-promotion exuding from the world.

I am thankful for one word in particular in that Scripture from Zechariah: "I saw that night..." – what a wonderful reminder that even in dark, gloomy and benighted days of Christianity such as we are in today, Jesus Christ is still in our midst. But as soon as we begin to lose sight of the truths that our Lord is in the midst of His people, and He is building His Church in spite of all appearances, we will begin to resort to relying on earthly means and jockeying for popularity and position in the world as if we were never born again, and as if we were seeking to please men and not the living God. Instead of continuing to walk in the Spirit, we begin to walk in the flesh. Instead of relying on Jesus Christ as our defense and instead of lifting Him up as our glory, we rely on ourselves, and in the process, we rob our God of the glory due His name. We travel down Asa's foolish path: our hearts are no longer loyal to our God, and we no longer rely on the LORD as we ought. (See 2 Chronicles 16.)

* * *

"Now 'dove's eyes' set out not only the Bride's affection, and love to Christ, but also the nature of her love, which is the thing here mainly commended, as simplicity, chastity, and singleness, for which the creature is commended, Matt. x. 'Be simple as doves.' And this is the commendation of the love that true believers have to Christ, that it is chaste, single and sincere love: singleness is the special thing Christ commends in his people."

~ from "An Exposition of the Song of Solomon" by James Durham (originally published 1840, reprinted Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1982), 118.

* * *

Lord Jesus Christ, baptize me afresh with Your Holy Spirit, that I might take Your easy yoke upon me, learn from You, and become more like You. May Your grace abound to me so I might rest and rejoice in being a lowly myrtle, humble and unpretending, for You are a Savior who is meek and humble in heart. Yes, You are the Lion of Judah, but You became a Lamb, and You humbled Yourself and You were crucified in weakness and raised to life again by the power of God. Help me to learn to delight to be weak as You were weak, that the power of God might be made perfect in my weakness.

Merciful and gracious LORD of hosts, transform my deceitful, desperately wicked, and covetous heart into a dove-like heart that loves, relishes, guards and glorifies the simplicity that is in the heavenly Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ, and His glorious Gospel. Incline my heart to Your holy and heavenly ways, and disincline my heart from corrupt and worldly ways. May the love of Christ so fill my heart that my love for You might be single, and I might be constrained by Your love to put no confidence in my flesh or in earthly wisdom, but rather by Your grace, may I labor in the Spirit with simplicity and godly sincerity in all I do, including blogging. For there is no true rejoicing and no true boasting apart from having such a heart!

II Corinthians 1:12 For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward. (KJV)

II Corinthians 1:12 For our boast is this: the testimony of our conscience that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. (ESV)

Related posts:
Photo credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Myrtus_communis11.jpg / CC-by-SA 3.0
"we have a knowledge of Jesus problem in America" ~ Dalton Thomas @ Ekballo #3

In my last two posts Calvinism & missions? Indeed! Ekballo # 1: TULIP & prayer to the Lord of the harvest and "We're not on Christian cruise ships. We are on battleships." David Sitton @ Ekballo # 2," I blogged on the first two plenary talks given at the Ekballo Midwest Conference, held April 19-20, 2013:

Scott Anderson's talk The Essential Nature of Prayer in the Gospel Mission found here: http://youtu.be/fuA3p5X32sE

David Sitton's talk Propel the Church, Harvest the Nations found here: http://youtu.be/6JBqc29qmkA

Today, I'd like to present the third and final plenary talk, "Martyrdom and the Eternal Purpose of the Church" given by Dalton Thomas.

First off, in case you might be tempted to skip over Dalton Thomas' opening prayer, please don't! As you listen, you'll hear the humble and fiery heart and soul of a young man who loves Jesus and is sober-minded and vigilant, single-eyed for Christ, zealous for God's name, and seeking to bring glory to God. Thomas is 27 years old, and given that I'm over 50, I am supremely blessed and encouraged whenever I see God raising up such men and women in the next generation in this era when so many are at ease and complacent in Zion, a day of cheap grace, lukewarmness, and small things here in the West.

Thomas' main text was Ephesians 3:7-13, but before he gets to the text, he prefaces it with the following words (boldface mine, throughout):

The call to martyrdom is not the exaltation of death over life. It is the exaltation of Christ over all things... It's not the call to seek death, it's the call to seek Jesus. And the more that we find Him, the more that we find He is more valuable than life, and more valuable than what we lose in death. And so, the more we love Him, the more we love our lives less, and the more the task of global missions becomes very easy to lay hold of. I don't think we have a missions problem in America. I don't think we have an evangelism problem in America. I think we have a knowledge of Jesus problem in America.

I can't express my delight at hearing these words; they are so very relevant. If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you've heard the steady drumbeat of our need to be rooted in right doctrine.

As Thomas introduces the main Scripture text, he says:

This is the text we're gonna look at tonight -- Ephesians chapter 3, which you're probably thinking, "This is not a martyrdom passage." It is.

. . . I do believe this is the most important statement in the Bible about the nature of the Church. Paul uses a phrase that we're gonna to look at tonight, that I think just needs to be contemplated for a couple decades, which is this phrase: "the eternal purpose of God."

Now tonight, before we look at this, you know, it would be interesting, if we passed around a piece of paper to everybody, and a pen, and said, "Write down your definition of the eternal purpose of God. Fold the paper up and send it up here, and we're gonna go through them." Everyone would give good, Biblical answers, Bible verses that stuck. But I found a number of years ago, when the Lord laid hold of me with this passage, I realized is that what I would have written is not even close to what Paul defined as the eternal purpose of God. I think in order for us to rightly reckon and apprehend the call to frontier missions, I think we need to have a perspective on the eternal purpose of God, lest we be disconnected from the center of it all.

As you listen, see how your definition of the eternal purpose of God lines up with the Biblical definition, which the apostle Paul unfolds in Ephesians 3.

WARNING: Be prepared to have your head blown up –– but by that I mean blown up in a good way –– more particularly, to have your theology blown up, to have your understanding of God refined and purified and renewed and expanded –– I only say that because I felt like my own head was blowing up (in a good sense) as I first heard Dalton Thomas in person, and once again as I reviewed my notes on his talk a couple months ago, and then once more as I've relistened to the whole talk again over the past few days...

http://youtu.be/47nP5JAqTxY - Dalton Thomas // Martyrdom and the Eternal Purpose of the Church

Holy Spirit, You are the Spirit of truth. We confess we have a knowledge of Jesus problem in the Church in America, as well as in our own souls. How can we know God as we ought, how can we love God as we ought, how can we serve God as we ought, how can we live to God as we ought, how can we die for God as we ought, how can we glorify God as we ought –– unless we know the truth about God? Our adversary, the devil, is a deceiver. He is a liar and the father of lies. He transforms himself into an angel of light. He wants to keep us from knowing the truth and loving the truth. Holy God, be merciful and gracious to us, and pour out Your Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. Apart from Your opening our eyes, we have no genuine spiritual sight of You and of Your truth. Your Word is right and pure and true. As we read, listen to, meditate upon, and study Your Word, sanctify and cleanse us. Blow up any false, incorrect, impure, and faulty theological understandings we might be clinging to. Blow up any false, incorrect, impure, and faulty theological underpinnings we may be building upon. Lead us into all truth for the sake of Your blessed name, so we might be a delight and a joy to You, and bring praise, honor and glory to You throughout all the earth. Amen.

ecclesia reformata semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei

[the church reformed, always being reformed, according to the word of God]

Photo credits:

Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:August_Müller_Tagebucheintrag.jpg / {{PD-Art|PD-old-70}}

Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PSM_V56_D0465_Hollow_dynamite_cartridge_elevation_view.png / PD
"We're not on Christian cruise ships. We are on battleships." David Sitton @ Ekballo # 2
In my previous post, Calvinism, TULIP, missions and prayer to the Lord of the harvest, I shared the first plenary talk from the Ekballo Midwest Conference held April 19-20, 2013, given by Scott Anderson. The second talk at Ekballo Midwest was given by David Sitton, President of To Every Tribe (http:/www.toeverytribe.com). (You can read more about Sitton and his wife here and here.)

http://youtu.be/6JBqc29qmkA

http://youtu.be/6JBqc29qmkA - David Sitton // Propel the Church, Harvest the Nations

Here's an excerpt from Sitton's talk. . .

"There are some other important words, like obedience, and responsibility, and obligation. All of these are good words. They have their place as well. But I just feel compelled to focus and to center upon that word privilege. That's the word I want to emphasize. Because God has given us the unspeakable privilege –– oh yeah, it's a responsibility and an obligation. It is that. It is a command. But isn't it, more than anything else a privilege?–– That we get to do this. That we get to go into all of the world with the Gospel. Are you kidding me? We get to do this. We get to go and we get to take territory for the kingdom of God. That's what we get to do, and as we do it, we do it as the army of God. What a privilege! Don't ever forget it! Don't ever take it for granted. It's a privilege."But at the same time, you need to keep this in balance: we are still in spiritual warfare. We need a warfare worldview. We need to understand that we are not civilians, Christians. We're not on Christian cruise ships. We are on battleships. And we are going into dangerous territory. Places where Satan has been in control for thousands of years. Do you think he's gonna to let them go easily? Think he's gonna let them go without a fight, without a struggle. He will let them go, but it will through a mighty warfare. And so, we are an army. Everything about us is a picture of being in this army. We are soldiers. We wear armor that soldiers wear. It's spiritual armor. We fight with spiritual weapons. And we go and win spiritual territory or the Kingdom of God. . . .

"We're the army of God. We don't fight as the world fights. We don't blow up marathons. [Note: the Boston Marathon bombing took place earlier that week.] We don't strap bombs on to little children and run them into crowded malls. We don't burn Korans. We don't do any of that physically violent stuff, because people are not our enemies. Muslim are not our enemies. Hindus and Buddhists –– they are not our enemies. We're not after, like some of the Muslim extremists, who go, and their intent is geographical conquest.

"No, our strategy is different. Our strategy is not killing, but our strategy is dying. That's the warfare of the Spirit. We're not going after geographical strongholds, we're going after spiritual strongholds.

"These places where Satan - - Here's a name of Satan. Many names in Scripture, here's one of them: he's called the deceiver of the nations. That's his name. That's who he is, and that's what he does.

"But we're going into his territory. We're going after him. Hear that language: that's military language. We're going after him. We're targeting him. We're going after the hearts and the souls of the people for whom Christ dies. We're going after ... lost sheep who are scattered among all of the people groups and languages on the planet. These are the regions, not geographic so much, but spiritual regions.... and we want to win these places for Christ. And we're going after them aggressively. Unapologetically we're going after them.

"Once again, we don't go as marines with physical strength, but we go as lambs among wolves. And through us, through the Gospel, Jesus destroys spiritual strongholds. That's how it works. We don't go with strength, we go with weakness. We don't go with killing, we go with dying. Isn't that what Jesus did? He came and He died and He conquered. And now that's what we do."

* * *

It's too easy for us to think primarily of missions in terms of those who are sent out. I particularly appreciated the last portion of Sitton's message as he spoke of the need for:
Missionary martyrs to go

Thousands of intercessory prayer martyrs

Thousands of financial martyrs
In other words, some of us will be called to go, while others will be called to stay –– but as Christians, no matter where we are and no matter what our calling, each and every one of us must remember that we're not civilians, that we are not Christian cruise ships, but rather we are on battleships.

Or, as John Piper put it, all Christians must be engaged:

Know this: God's purpose for your life is that you engage in His being known and praised and enjoyed and feared among peoples where He is scarcely, if at all, known at all. He wants you to be engaged.

You've got three options:

Go

Send

or

Disobey.

That's all.

~ Source: John Piper's message based on Psalm 67, "Pursuing the Glory of God in the Gladness in the Nations in God"

May our God strengthen us to comprehend the width and length and depth and height –– to know the love of Christ which passes all knowledge, that His love might constrain and compel us, so we might no longer live for ourselves, but live for Him who died for us and rose again (to live for Him really is true life, is it not?!), and joyfully respond to our Master's call to be His ambassadors, and to count it a privilege to be engaged in His mission that He be might be known and praised and enjoyed and feared among all the nations. God forbid we bow down to the American dream and gain the whole world, but find our souls languishing and withering as we waste our lives lounging on Christian cruise ships. God be merciful to us sinners, for the sake of Your name! Amen.

Here's the video which David Sitton mentioned in his talk...

http://youtu.be/FzIkh6qfbRY

http://youtu.be/FzIkh6qfbRY - Who's Next?

Photo credit: Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gastineau_Channel_with_anchored_cruise_ship_23.JPG / CC BY-SA 3.0.

naphtali_deer

About me...

Christian hedonist in training. Pressing on to know more and more of the joy of the LORD. Pleading with God to rend the heavens and revive and refresh my own soul, as well as His Church, to His praise, honor and glory.

Thank God. He can make men and women in middle life sing again with a joy that has been chastened by a memory of their past failures. ~ Alan Redpath

More about this blog...

My other websites

tent of meeting: Prayer for reformation & revival

(See also Zechariah821. Zechariah821 is a mirror site of tent of meeting, found on WordPress)

deerlifetrumpet: Encouragement for those seeking reformation & revival in the Church

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