New Life Baptist Church, College Station Texas

Last night, our church affirmed Kyle New­comer as the fourth elder of New Life Bap­tist Church. It was a great cel­e­bra­tion as we rec­og­nized God’s good­ness to our church in pro­vid­ing us another faith­ful pas­tor. I chal­lenged Kyle and our church body from Eph­esians 4:11–13, which reminds us that God appoints lead­ers to equip the saints for the work of the min­istry. By God’s grace, Kyle has been doing that work for years with­out an offi­cial title — solid evi­dence that God has indeed called him to this work.

Alexan­der Strauch wrote the fol­low­ing in his book, Bib­li­cal Eldership:

“One of the deep joys of my life has been to share with a team of ded­i­cated pas­tor elders the pas­toral lead­er­ship of a church. Dur­ing the more than twenty years we have served together, we have expe­ri­enced many prob­lems and frus­tra­tions, but we have also expe­ri­enced growth, joy, laugh­ter, and deep friend­ship and love for one another. As part­ners in the work of shep­herd­ing God’s pre­cious, blood-bought peo­ple, we have sharp­ened, bal­anced, com­forted, pro­tected, and strength­ened one another through nearly every con­ceiv­able life sit­u­a­tion. I do not hes­i­tate to say that the rela­tion­ship with my fel­low elders has been the most impor­tant tool God has used, out­side of my mar­riage rela­tion­ship, for the spir­i­tual devel­op­ment of my Chris­t­ian char­ac­ter, lead­er­ship abil­i­ties, and teach­ing min­istry. As a result, I believe, we have been able to pro­vide sta­ble, long-term, pas­toral care for the peo­ple of God” (35).

While we are a much younger group than Strauch’s elders, by God’s grace we can say the same things. I am so grate­ful to pas­tor New Life along other men who are called, qual­i­fied, and com­pe­tent for the work. It has been and will con­tinue to be a great joy for me. Wel­come, Kyle.

Please join us tonight at 5pm as we con­sider 1 John 2:7–14, the third install­ment in our sum­mer ser­mon series through the book of 1 John called “Life in the Son.” In tonight’s mes­sage, we will learn that John isn’t giv­ing us a new com­mand­ment, but an old one — to walk in the light by lov­ing our broth­ers and sis­ters. If we say we are in the light but do not love other believ­ers, we are blind to the truth.

We will also observe the Lord’s Sup­per and enjoy din­ner together after­ward. Please review 1 Corinthi­ans 11 and pre­pare your heart to feed on Christ by faith tonight. See you at 5pm!

Stop for a minute and con­sider this ques­tion: “What is the biggest prob­lem in my life?”

(Really. Stop and think about that.)

(Did you really stop? Ok, I’m tak­ing your word for it.)

Maybe what came to mind was a sit­u­a­tion you are cur­rently deal­ing with at work — a strained rela­tion­ship with a boss or coworker, maybe being snubbed for a pro­mo­tion you really thought you deserved. Per­haps you thought about your home life — dif­fi­culty in your mar­riage, or trou­ble with a child. Pos­si­bly you thought about a major set­back in life — an injury, an ill­ness, a finan­cial dif­fi­culty. How did you answer the ques­tion, “What is the biggest prob­lem in my life?”

In King’s Cross, Tim Keller refers to Jesus’ heal­ing of the par­a­lyzed man in Mark 2 and writes, “If some­one says to you, ‘The main prob­lem in your life is not what’s hap­pened to you, not what peo­ple have done to you; your main prob­lem is the way you’ve responded to that’ — iron­i­cally, that’s empow­er­ing. Why? Because you can’t do very much about what’s hap­pened to you or about what other peo­ple are doing — but you can do some­thing about your­self. When the Bible talks about sin it is not just refer­ring to the bad things we do. It’s not just lying or lust or what­ever the case may be — it is ignor­ing God in the world he has made; it’s rebelling against him with­out ref­er­ence to him. It’s say­ing, ‘I will decide exactly how I will live my life’ And Jesus says that is our main prob­lem” (from chap­ter three, “The Healing).

Our self-help, therapy-driven, me-obsessed cul­ture has taught us to think that our biggest prob­lem is what has hap­pened to us — how we have been wronged, slightly, or hurt by oth­ers (or even by God). What Keller is say­ing (and I think what the Bible teaches from cover to cover) is that our main prob­lem is not what has hap­pened to us, but how we have responded to what has hap­pened to us. When oth­ers sin against us (inten­tion­ally or unin­ten­tion­ally) or do things that hurt us that are not sin­ful in any way (like a boss who doesn’t pro­mote us at work), God is con­cerned with how we respond to that divinely ordained circumstance.

Tony Dungy, a for­mer NFL coach who had a very suc­cess­ful career and won a Super Bowl with the Indi­anapo­lis Colts in 2006, gives this same mes­sage on his “I am Sec­ond” video. I encour­age you to watch his short video and lis­ten to how God helped him to deal with the bad things that hap­pened to him again and again in his career, and the good things that God brought out of seem­ingly bad circumstances.

At New Life, our vision is to pre­serve and pro­claim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to make mature dis­ci­ples of all nations for the glory of God. The vision is based on the whole coun­sel of God gen­er­ally and the Great Com­mis­sion par­tic­u­larly (Matt. 28:18–20). We strive to keep this vision in mind at all times as it helps to guide every deci­sion we make.

New Life is just one local church. While we will make every effort to impact all nations for the glory of God, we know we can’t do that alone. As a result, New Life part­ners with two net­works. Nei­ther net­work is a gov­ern­ing body for our church and does not make deci­sions on behalf of our local con­gre­ga­tion. How­ever, part­ner­ing with each net­work helps us in numer­ous ways, espe­cially as we seek to live out our vision state­ment. Below is a lit­tle infor­ma­tion about each net­work and links to help you learn more:

1. South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion (SBC) — the SBC is an asso­ci­a­tion of free con­fess­ing churches, not a denom­i­na­tion. We are involved with the SBC for sev­eral rea­sons. First, we were planted as an SBC church by an SBC church. Sec­ond, we agree on the most basic doc­tri­nal tenets of the Chris­t­ian faith. Third, we mul­ti­ply our mis­sions and church plant­ing dol­lars by giv­ing to the Coop­er­a­tive Pro­gram, which helps to over­see and fund mis­sions and church plant­ing efforts in North Amer­ica and the world.

2. Acts 29 Net­work — Acts 29 is a net­work of global churches which exists to plant global churches. Cur­rently, there are almost 400 Acts 29-affiliated churches in the world. Acts 29 churches are com­mit­ted to the phi­los­o­phy that the best way to live out the Great Com­mis­sion and see more peo­ple come to faith in Christ is through plant­ing healthy churches. As such, Acts 29 churches give finan­cial and human resources to plant­ing healthy churches in their regions, states, nations, and the world.

You can learn more about the SBC by click­ing here and about the Acts 29 Net­work by click­ing here. We have been blessed by our affil­i­a­tion with both net­works, and believe that more king­dom work has been accom­plished through these part­ner­ships than would have been accom­plished by New Life alone.

Last night, Pas­tor Rusty taught on 1 John 2:1–6 and helped us rec­og­nize that we have an advo­cate, “Jesus Christ the right­eous” (v. 1), who gave Him­self as the “pro­pi­ti­a­tion for our sins” (v. 2). More­over, we learned that we know that we know Him if we keep His com­mand­ments (vv. 3–6).

One of the big ques­tions that is raised in this pas­sage is, “Why is the Apos­tle John writ­ing these things?” The answer is likely because some false teach­ers were teach­ing that obe­di­ence was unim­por­tant to the Chris­t­ian life (cf. 1 John 1:8, 10, et.al.), that some pro­fess­ing believ­ers had left their pro­fes­sion and were no longer walk­ing as Chris­tians (cf. 1 John 3:19), or both and pos­si­bly other rea­sons as well.

In 1985, John Piper preached through 1 John and had this to say about the flow of argu­ment in verses 3–6 of this par­tic­u­lar passage:

1. First, and most basic, there is the asser­tion that a nec­es­sary con­nec­tion exists between know­ing Christ and obey­ing his com­mand­ments. Know­ing Christ nec­es­sar­ily pro­duces obe­di­ence. Verses 4–5a: “He who says ‘I know him’ but dis­obeys his com­mand­ments is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but who­ever keeps his word in him truly love for God is perfected.”
2. Sec­ond, it fol­lows from this that you can have assur­ance that you truly know Christ if you obey his com­mand­ments (since obe­di­ence is the nec­es­sary result of know­ing him). Verses 3 and 5b: “And by this we may be sure that we know him, if we keep his com­mand­ments … By this we may be sure that we are in him.”
3. Third, it fol­lows from this that any­one who says he abides in Christ ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. Oth­er­wise you lose assur­ance and in the end prove that you never knew Christ. Verse 6: “He who says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.”

John (nei­ther the Apos­tle John nor John Piper!) is not say­ing that our sal­va­tion is con­tin­gent upon our obe­di­ence to Christ. Rather, both Johns are argu­ing that if we are saved, we will want to obey Christ and we will obey Christ by His Spirit. As Tul­lian Tchivid­jian has said, grace is not opposed to effort but to earn­ing. Piper con­cludes his ser­mon in this way:

“So when God com­mands you to do some­thing and you ignore it or go against it, John can only con­clude one thing: You don’t believe that God is love. And there­fore you don’t know him. For if you believed that God is love, then you would believe that all his com­mand­ments were the very best thing for you. And you would fol­low them. When you turn away from the com­mand­ments of God, you say in effect, a lov­ing God wouldn’t com­mand me to do that. And so our dis­obe­di­ence dis­plays our lack of trust in the love God has for us. And it shows that we do not know God.”

Please join us tonight for the sec­ond mes­sage in our 1 John series, “Life in the Son.” This mes­sage will cover 1 John 2:1–6, where John explains that Jesus is our advo­cate with God the Father, the One who serves as a pro­pi­ti­a­tion for our sins. John will also help us to under­stand that any­one who says, “I know Him” but does not keep His com­mand­ments is a liar. The fact that we have a great Medi­a­tor in Jesus should lead us to grate­ful obe­di­ence. See you tonight at 5pm!

For today’s blog post, I sim­ply punted to Tul­lian Tchivid­jian. He wrote an excel­lent post for The Resur­gence enti­tled: “Account­abil­ity Groups: The Tyranny of Do More, Try Harder.” Jonathan Dod­son expands on many of these points in Fight Clubs (which we have avail­able at New Life each Sun­day night). If you aren’t in a Fight Club (a small group of 2–3 peo­ple of the same sex that exists to fight sin and exalt Jesus) con­sider form­ing one or join­ing one. We’re glad to help you.

Because Tullian’s  arti­cle isn’t very long, I’ve posted it in its entirety here. Enjoy!

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in “account­abil­ity groups” where there has been lit­tle to no atten­tion given to the gospel what­so­ever. There’s no reminder of what Christ has done for our sin—“cleansing us from its guilt and power”—and the resources that are already ours by virtue of our union with him. These groups pro­duce a “do more, try harder” moral­ism that robs us of the joy and free­dom Jesus paid dearly to secure for us.

When the goal becomes con­quer­ing our sin instead of soak­ing in the con­quest of our Sav­ior, we actu­ally begin to shrink spir­i­tu­ally. Sin­clair Fer­gu­son rightly points this out:

Those who have almost for­got­ten about their own spir­i­tu­al­ity because their focus is so exclu­sively on their union with Jesus Christ and what He has accom­plished are those who are grow­ing and exhibit­ing fruit­ful­ness. His­tor­i­cally speak­ing, when­ever the piety of a par­tic­u­lar group is focused on OUR spir­i­tu­al­ity, that piety will even­tu­ally exhaust itself on its own resources. Only when our piety for­gets about us and focuses on Jesus Christ will our piety be nour­ished by the ongo­ing resources the Spirit brings to us from the source of all true piety, our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Puri­tans used to say that far too many Chris­tians live beneath the level of their priv­i­leges. There­fore, I need to be told by those around me that every time I sin I’m momen­tar­ily suf­fer­ing from an iden­tity cri­sis: for­get­ting who I actu­ally belong to, what I really want at my remade core, and all that is already mine in Christ. The only way to deal with remain­ing sin long-term is to develop a dis­taste for it in light of the glo­ri­ous riches we already pos­sess in Christ. I need my real friends to remind me of this—every day. Please tell me again and again that God doesn’t love me more when I obey or less when I dis­obey. Know­ing this actu­ally enlarges my heart for God and there­fore shrinks my hunger for sin. So, don’t let me for­get it. My life depends on it!

Chris­t­ian growth, in other words, does not hap­pen first by behav­ing bet­ter, but believ­ing better—believing in big­ger, deeper, brighter ways what Christ has already secured for sin­ners. I need my fam­ily and friends to remind me of this all the time.

The bot­tom line is this, Chris­t­ian: because of Christ’s work on your behalf, God does not dwell on your sin the way you do. So, relax and rejoice…and you’ll actu­ally start to get bet­ter. The irony, of course, is that it’s only when we stop obsess­ing over our own need to be holy and focus instead on the beauty of Christ’s holi­ness, that we actu­ally become more holy! Not to men­tion, we start to become a lot eas­ier to live with!

Will some­one please keep remind­ing me of this?”

Ok, I’m going to be very upfront here. This post has two purposes:

1. To call to everyone’s atten­tion that my Dal­las Mav­er­icks have finally won their first NBA Cham­pi­onship. In doing so, I also intend to point out that sev­eral teams did NOT win the NBA Cham­pi­onship, namely the Los Ange­les Lak­ers, the San Anto­nio Spurs, and espe­cially the Miami Heat. (I do real­ize there are more teams in the NBA, but let’s be hon­est — we weren’t too wor­ried about them.)

2. To point out an act of humil­ity to emu­late. In Don’t Waste Your Sports, CJ Mahaney iden­ti­fies these char­ac­ter­is­tics in hum­ble athletes:

• A hum­ble ath­lete rec­og­nizes his lim­i­ta­tions. We all come with divinely imposed limitations—limitations meant to hum­ble us.
• The hum­ble ath­lete acknowl­edges the con­tri­bu­tion of oth­ers. No ath­lete accom­plishes any­thing alone.
• The hum­ble ath­lete is gra­cious in defeat and mod­est in vic­tory. When the hum­ble ath­lete loses, he rec­og­nizes that his oppo­nents played bet­ter, and he sin­cerely con­grat­u­lates them on their win. And when the hum­ble ath­lete wins, there are no exces­sive cel­e­bra­tions, no inap­pro­pri­ate vic­tory dances.

Dirk Now­itzki exem­pli­fied these traits in Sunday’s Finals vic­tory. To my knowl­edge, Dirk Now­itzki (the Mav­er­icks’ star player for the past 13 years) is not a Chris­t­ian. How­ever, he is a good exam­ple of a hum­ble ath­lete. I encour­age you to watch this video (at least the first cou­ple min­utes) and con­sider how you respond to praise and recog­ni­tion. I espe­cially encour­age you to watch this video if you are a fan of the Lak­ers, Spurs, or Heat. This will help to grow you in humil­ity in and of itself.

In last night’s mes­sage on 1 John 1, we learned that we have fel­low­ship with God and with each other through con­fes­sion – specif­i­cally, con­fess­ing Jesus as Lord and Sav­ior and con­fess­ing our sins to God. One of the key issues we talked about last night was that we tend to view sin very dif­fer­ently than God views sin. This means sin is a much smaller issue in our eyes than it is in God’s eyes, and that leads to self-righteousness. We do not believe that we need the grace of God (or don’t believe we need very much of it) and we believe that we are bet­ter than oth­ers whose sin strug­gles are more read­ily apparent.

Our hearts must be changed so that we view our sin appro­pri­ately (that is, we see it as exceed­ingly sin­ful, as God does) and we view God’s grace appro­pri­ately (that is, we see it as exceed­ingly gra­cious, as it in fact is). Sin is so much more than break­ing rules. At its core, sin is unbe­lief in God and His Word, and if that is true, then there is no more gra­cious act than for God to for­give us for not believ­ing Him and His Word when He is per­fect, pure, and holy in every way.

I’ve had the priv­i­lege of read­ing Tim Keller’s newest book, King’s Cross, for the past few weeks. You won’t be sur­prised that I think it’s fan­tas­tic, just like his other books. I thought these quotes high­lighted the depth of our sin and the depth of God’s grace very well. Med­i­tate on these quotes and ask God to help you live in light of His truth by His grace.

“Time after time the Bible shows us that the world is not divided into the good guys and the bad guys. There may be ‘bet­ter guys’ and ‘worse guys,’ but no clear divi­sion can be made between the good and the bad. Given our sin and self-centeredness, we all have a part in what makes the world a mis­er­able, bro­ken place. Yet we’re all still try­ing to address that sense of unclean­ness through exter­nal mea­sures, try­ing to do some­thing that Jesus says is basi­cally impos­si­ble. Let me give some exam­ples. One exam­ple is reli­gion itself: If I stay away from dirty movies and pro­fane activ­i­ties and bad peo­ple, if I pray and read my Bible, if I try really hard to be good, then God will see that I’m wor­thy and come in and heal my heart. The prob­lem is that, as Jesus said, the model doesn’t stick. You never feel you’re good enough. Though you’re pray­ing and try­ing your very best to be good, your heart doesn’t change. You’re never filled with love and joy and secu­rity. You’re actu­ally more anx­ious, because you never know if you’re liv­ing up.” (ch.7)

“In the end we’re all alike, grop­ing for true love and inca­pable of fully giv­ing it. What we need is some­one to love us who doesn’t need us at all. Some­one who loves us rad­i­cally, uncon­di­tion­ally, vul­ner­a­bly. Some­one who loves us just for our sake. If we received that kind of love, that would so assure us of our value, it would so fill us up, that maybe we could start to give love like that too. Who can give love with no need? Jesus.” (ch. 9)