This evening we will meet at the church build­ing at 6:30 p.m. to observe bap­tism and the Lord’s Sup­per.  After the ordi­nances, we will have a short busi­ness meet­ing.  Guests are wel­come to attend the ser­vice.  We encour­age every­one to pre­pare by thought­fully read­ing through pas­sages like Romans 6:1–6 and 1 Corinthi­ans 11.  This will help us to med­i­tate on the mean­ing and pur­pose of Chris­t­ian bap­tism and the Lord’s Sup­per.  We hope to see you tonight!

Last evening, we cov­ered Matthew 5:27–30 and were chal­lenged to do what­ever it takes to fight sin and exalt Christ in our lives.  There is no sac­ri­fice too great.

I wanted to refer back to a cou­ple of resources that we have posted about at other times that I thought would make sense in light of last night’s mes­sage.  If God con­victed you last night (or after hear­ing the ser­mon online) that you need bib­li­cal account­abil­ity in your life, I would encour­age you and those who might enter into that kind of rela­tion­ship with you to read Jonathan Dodson’s free e-book, Fight Clubs. Dod­son does a great job of encour­ag­ing us to exalt Christ and avoid the twin pit­falls of legal­ism and license in our accountability.

Also, I wanted to post the link to the Randy Alcorn arti­cle we linked to ear­lier this month and that I referred to in yesterday’s mes­sage.  In his post, he encour­ages us to weigh the con­se­quences of our sin long before temp­ta­tion ever hits as an added guard against the flesh.  You can read the whole post here.

Many today will be cel­e­brat­ing Hal­loween by dress­ing up in cos­tume and/or dress­ing up your kids or pets. Whether we do this to truly cel­e­brate this day (often a cel­e­bra­tion of evil), or we are just fol­low­ing the trends and tra­di­tions of the masses, I do not know.

But, today also marks the 492 year anniver­sary of Mar­tin Luther nail­ing his “Ninety Five The­ses” to the door of Wit­ten­berg Cas­tle Church. This is often referred to as the begin­ning of the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion. While this was a major turn­ing point in the Church, Luther was not alone, nor was he the first to call for reform. Men like John Wycliffe and Jan Hus led the way 100–150 years prior to Luther. They com­mit­ted their lives for the love of the Church. Hus was burned at the stake and Wycliffe was called a heretic by the Church, and 44 years after his death, his body was exhumed and burned for good measure.

God accom­plished great things through the Reform­ers and pre­served and refo­cused His Church. This should def­i­nitely be cel­e­brated by all true believ­ers. Unfor­tu­nately divi­sion still exists, even about how we view the period of the Reformation.

Sev­eral pub­li­ca­tions indi­cate that there are increas­ing num­bers of indi­vid­u­als who adhere to the pri­mary the­o­log­i­cal dis­tinc­tions that were redis­cov­ered and reasserted through­out the Ref­or­ma­tion period.  Illu­mined and over­joyed at these truths, “reformed” believ­ers today often cel­e­brate Octo­ber 31 as “Ref­or­ma­tion Day”. While this can be a much more Christ-exalting endeavor than trick-or-treating and dress­ing like mon­sters, many do this sim­ply as a counter-cultural response. In dis­dain for ghoul­ish garb and other non­sen­si­cal Hal­loween tra­di­tions, they react to these cul­tural norms by scoff­ing at the sec­u­lar folly and rel­ish chances to cor­rect oth­ers who say, “Happy Hal­loween” by remind­ing them it is “Ref­or­ma­tion Day”. As a result, oppor­tu­ni­ties to com­mu­ni­cate the gospel may be missed by being too iso­lated from the culture.

So should we cel­e­brate Ref­or­ma­tion Day? YES! Cel­e­brate what God did through the Ref­or­ma­tion. There are so many rea­sons to remem­ber and be thank­ful. Have a party or go to one.  But let us exam­ine our­selves and be sure we are not cel­e­brat­ing from a posi­tion of pride which would belie the very doc­trine we espouse. We may know we are saved by grace, but we should not act as if we under­stand that fact through our intel­lec­tual efforts alone.

Today, as we remem­ber the reform­ers of the past, may the Lord grant us the grace to be reform­ers in the present; of our cul­ture, our com­mu­nity, of our churches, and ourselves.

In chap­ter five of The Supremacy of Christ in a Post­mod­ern World, Tim Keller con­sid­ers how the Gospel should be pre­sented in post-Christian, post­mod­ern Amer­ica.  Refer­ring to a ser­mon preached in 1959 by Dr. Mar­tin Lloyd-Jones, Keller notes that tra­di­tional philoso­phies and method­olo­gies do not work for “this kind” – that is, the men and women who make up 21^st cen­tury west­ern society.

Keller believes the rea­son that our con­tem­po­rary evan­ge­lism meth­ods are pro­duc­ing such lit­tle fruit is because our post-Christian soci­ety has been inoc­u­lated to Chris­tian­ity – at least the cur­rent, west­ern, Amer­i­can form of it.  Because our friends, neigh­bors, and co-workers have encoun­tered so many peo­ple who claim to be Chris­tians but give no evi­dence of know­ing, believ­ing, or liv­ing the Bible, most in our day have writ­ten off Christianity.

Unlike Tim Keller (who lives and min­is­ters in New York City), we live in a much more tra­di­tional south­ern city that is home to arguably the most con­ser­v­a­tive pub­lic uni­ver­sity in the United States.  And yet post­mod­ern think­ing has taken firm root here as well.  That is evi­dent from the three prob­lems Keller iden­ti­fies with engag­ing the post­mod­ern mind:

1. Truth – to the post­mod­ern thinker, truth is not which cor­re­sponds to real­ity but are merely con­straints one per­son imposes on him­self and tries to impose on others.

2. Guilt – soci­etal norms in ear­lier gen­er­a­tions meant that most peo­ple who were liv­ing in sin knew that they shouldn’t be.

3. Mean­ing – the post­mod­ern mind­set rejects the notion that words can accu­rately con­vey meaning.

If you spend some time talk­ing to peo­ple in Col­lege Sta­tion, you will notice that the post­mod­ern mind­set is nearly as preva­lent in this sup­pos­edly con­ser­v­a­tive, religiously-minded city as any­where else.

So what does this mean for us at New Life?  It means, as Keller so aptly states, “There is no ‘magic bullet’…You can’t just whip up a new gospel pre­sen­ta­tion, design a pro­gram, hire the staff and try to get peo­ple in the door.  The whole church and every­thing it does is going to have to change” (108).  We must engage the peo­ple of Col­lege Sta­tion with the bib­li­cal Gospel by know­ing it, believ­ing it, and liv­ing it.  We must cut through the ques­tions about truth and guilt and mean­ing by intro­duc­ing them to Jesus, who alone is the truth, removes our guilt, and gives mean­ing to this life and the next.

Next week, we will con­sider the six ways Keller believes the church must change to faith­fully and effec­tively present the Gospel to our post­mod­ern world.

Tim Chester (co-author of Total Church) and Jonathan Dod­son (author of Fight Clubs) were up in Auburn, Maine this week for the Lead 09 Con­fer­ence at Atmos­phere Church.  They gave what seem to be sev­eral very help­ful ses­sions on Gospel, Com­mu­nity, and Mis­sion.  I haven’t lis­tened to them all yet, but what I’ve read and heard from these two men so far has been very, very helpful.

If you don’t have time for any of the other mes­sages, let me encour­age you to lis­ten to Mis­sion as a Lifestyle by Tim Chester.  He really gets to the heart of the mat­ter in this talk and in his book, Total Church. You can down­load any of talks from Atmosphere’s web­site.