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Easter Weekend Recap – Jesus Christ Our Lord

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You can’t get away from Jesus at Easter.  Yesterday, at Crestview, my sermon was entitled Jesus Christ Our Lord from Romans 1:3-4.  In this sermon, I tried to give an overview of who Jesus is and how this relates to the special nature of Easter.  Specifically, we saw that Jesus is God’s Son, fully man and declared powerful in His resurrection.  Hope you had a great Easter Sunday.

Weekend Preview – Easter

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As you probably know, this coming Sunday is Easter.  It’s an amazing day to gather together and worship, celebrating Jesus and His life, death and resurrection.  This Sunday, in the Scriptures, we will be looking at Romans 1:3-4 and specifically who Jesus is.  I invite you to join us.

We will have an Easter Brunch at 8:30AM.
Sunday School at 9AM.
Worship at 10:15AM.

There will be no evening activities this coming Sunday.

On the Elders…

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There have been some good resources emerge lately on Elders, Deacons and Church Leadership.  Thought I’d connect to those here.  Even if you are casually involved in church life, you would do well to listen in / read up on some of these things, so that you can better pray for / support your local church leaders.

Andy Davis wrote a great post on how to lead elders meetings.  We follow a pretty strict model of taking time for prayer, discussing something devotionally oriented to help us in our work, and then talking “church business.”  Andy’s article helped get some ideas going on making these meetings more helpful.

A recent 9Marks interview discussed Thabiti’s new book Finding Faithful Elders and Deacons.  This, also, had much to commend to the local church leadership and the church at large, helping us think and consider the long term leadership plans of the church.  I’m hoping to get all of our elders and deacons to listen in on this.

We have huge work to do, but it is a joy.  Therefore, receive these tools as opportunities from God to more faithfully serve Him.

Weekend Recap – Sheep

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Yes, we are all like sheep, at least that’s what Isaiah 53:6 says.  This means that we are weak, prone to go astray and Isaiah says we’ve actually done it — we’ve turned every one to his/her own way.  But, our great hope this week (and every day) is that on Christ was laid all of our iniquities.  My sermon from 4/1/12AM entitled Like Sheep from Isaiah 53:6 reveled in these truths.

In the evening, my small group finished Jerry Bridges’ book Respectable Sins.  To say this book affected us is an understatement.  God used this to not only reveal sin, but to deepen our dependence on the Gospel.  There are so many good elements and fruit that my group shared.  If any of you are interested, Bridges kept pointing to Thomas Chalmers’ Expulsive Power of A New Affection.  Click that link and digest that content to see what Chalmers (and Bridges) were driving at.

Have a great Holy Week this week.

Weekend Recap – Abel’s Faith

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Our weekend at Crestview was filled with excitement, as always. In the AM, we took the Lord’s Supper together and looked to Abel’s Faith from Hebrews 11:4.  Abel’s example helps us see how faith is tied to worship, our righteousness and our witness.

In the evening, we met in Small Groups.  My small group discussed the respectable sins of immorality and idolatry.

Hope you had a great day.

The Dead Speak?

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Seems like a strange thing to suggest, but that is precisely what the author of Hebrews says in Hebrews 11:4 (our text for 3/25/12) regarding Abel.  The text says: “…And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.”  What does this mean?

Well, we know from the Genesis 4:3-5 passage that after Cain murdered Abel his blood cried out from the ground.  This was reflected in this painting by William Blake entitled The Murder of Abel:

In the Genesis passage, what seems to speak through Abel’s death is his blood.  His blood is kind of crying out from the ground condemning Cain.  So, in Blake’s painting, Cain is running away with his ears covered.

But, in Hebrews 11:4, something else is speaking: Abel’s faith.  It was “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts.  And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.”  The body they may kill, God’s truth abideth still (said Luther).  Even though Abel was slain, his faith stood firm and continued to speak.

What does your faith speak?  Does your faith reflect a heart of worship to God?  Is God commending your faith because of how you relate to Him?  These are some of the themes we will look at this coming Lord’s Day.  Join us.

Father Hunger?

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Our Men’s Ministry Collision Course met this past Sunday, March 18, 2012.  We discussed this video from Desiring God entitled, What is Father Hunger?

Here’s a transcript of the interview:

Scott Anderson: So Doug, tell me about this phrase I’ve heard you write about on your blog and talk about before, Father Hunger.  What do you mean by that and what are you trying to get at using that phrase?
Doug Wilson: What I mean is that when, when fathers abdicate, when fathers are not fathers, when fathers don’t exhibit the kind of backbone their wives and their children need them to exhibit, there’s a natural and built-in creational need that his wife and his children need him to exhibit but he’s not exhibiting.  They need him to give them something that he’s not giving to them.  And when he—famished nature will be avenged—when you withhold from your children the praise that children ought to receive from their father, when you withhold from them a love that they ought to get from their father, when you withhold from them provision they ought to get from their father, they have a deep awareness that something’s missing. 
Now, oftentimes, because of how they’ve grown up they don’t know what it is exactly.  They can’t pinpoint what the problem is but they are highly susceptible to political demagogues, they are susceptible to counterfeit forms of masculinity, screaming at rock stars, people who exhibit some sort of machismo, some sort of strength, people gravitate to that not knowing why they do.  They’ll fall for the promises of a paternalistic state: “I’ll take care of you; I’ll provide everything you need.”  And that’s all driven by father hunger.  Feminism is driven by father hunger.  Many people think feminism is the desire to have men go away.  I think fundamentally feminism is the deep angst over men not showing up.   
After showing this video to the men, we discussed the examples of Abraham (Genesis 22:5), Job (Job 1:5) and Paul’s commands to the Corinthian church (1 Corinthians 16:13-14).  We asked men two questions:
1) What do the examples of Abraham and Job teach us?
2) In what area(s) do you need to “act like a man”?
We closed in prayer with men praying at tables with one another over these things.