Think Theology

“For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.” – 1 Cor. 1:17

Imagine preaching a gospel that empties the cross of its power. Throughout the past two weeks, I have often thought how applicable this statement from the apostle Paul truly is. The Atonement, understood in terms of Christ as our substitute, is absolutely essential to evangelistic preaching. Without the cross, the power of the gospel is stripped away. And I wonder how many pastors actually understand not only the work of the Christ on the cross, but the importance of proclaiming the cross.

I’m blessed to know that thousands of Kenyans heard the gospel in the past two weeks. Praise God for the gospel and the power of Christ’s cross. He is mighty to save! He has power to save! Glory to God!

It is amazing when you see people come to Christ. Absolutely amazing. But it is really amazing when a Muslim women repents of her sin and rejection of Jesus and comes to Christ for her salvation!

That is what happened yesterday. We have seen hundreds of people come to Christ. Yesterday we preached open air and I did more rap songs. The Kenyans LOVE hip hop. Praise God for this tool. I am falling in love with open air preaching. There is something about the open air “field evangelism” that excites me. Thank God for His grace and mercy and for the Holy Spirit’s help in these times.

Kenya is ripe for the gospel. Praise Jesus!

Our first meeting in Kenya went well. I was asked to preach the first evening and I preached from Lamentations 3 and showed how hopelessness is only answered by the hope of Jesus Christ – crucified and resurrected! Praise God for the fruit!

We have had wonderful fellowship and the food has been excellent. We are heading to Kakamega to do some open air preaching and evangelism as well as to encourage the church!

Thank you for your prayers!

For His glory,
Luke along with Glen, John, and Lana

I wanted tolet you know about a trip I’m taking for the next two weeks. Most of you probably already know, but I am heading to Kenya, Africa. I’m traveling with three good friends from Trinity Christian Fellowship (Glen, John, and Lana).

I leave today, Feb. 22^nd, and will be gone until March 8^th. While in Kenya, our team from TCF is joining some other friends from Conway Celebration Church out of Conway, AR. Last year I went to Nepal with their pastor, Cary Cox.

While in Kenya, we plan to be a part of the following:

• Build a green house for an orphanage in the city of Kakamega;
• Teach various pastor conferences;
• Preach the gospel “open air” in a variety of cities;
• Teach a women’s conference;
• Teach a “New Believer’s” conference;
• Minister to orphans;
• and much more!

We’re really excited about this opportunity! It was just a few months ago that we began praying about going to Kenya and sensed the Lord directing us to go there. We needed to raise over $15,000 to cover our expenses and to build the green house! Well, that was a lot of money for us to raise! TCF is a small congregation and our community is very much “blue collar,” so I was very curious how this was going to all work out! But that didn’t matter to God! Jesus once told His followers that “with man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27). God’s hand has been on this trip and we are excited that all of the money needed was raised!

I have been sooo blessed to see the support coming in from friends and family and other churches! It has been humbling and encouraging to see how God has used so many different people to help us accomplish His purposes for this trip! One small Baptist church in Chicago actually paid for the entire green house! Go Baptists!

Anyway, I wanted to give you a quick update and let you know why I haven’t been writing much lately and to also ask you for prayer! We could use prayer for the following:

• Safe travel!
• Effective evangelism and teaching!
• Building the green house will take a lot of time and energy! Please pray for Glen and the rest of the people helping build that!
• Pray for the women’s conference. Lana will be teaching a bunch of Kenyan women, so pray for her!
• Pray for me (Luke) and Glen as we do some “open air” evangelism! Pray that the gospel is received and people turn from their sin to Christ!
• Most importantly, pray that the name of the Lord is glorified and that many, many people in Kenya come to know Jesus as their Messiah!

I thank you for your prayers, your involvement, and your friendships! Feel free to pass this on to anyone you think may be interested to know more about our trip. I plan to do my best updating thinktheology.org with news of our trip, depending upon how much Internet time we get!

For the glory of Christ,

Luke Geraty
Think Theology
Trinity Christian Fellowship

“Dance around the burning effigy of man as the world shrivels and folds in on itself, or dance around the God who blazes and smokes and bring hope to the world. Paraphrasing Kreeft a bit, I would please, Please love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Please love Jesus by giving your life away for the life of the world and the joy of your God.” – Timothy Stoner, The God Who Smokes, 276

I am a human being who has been, is being, and will be  saved by God’s grace. I’m not perfect, and sometimes I get frustrated. How about you? I am frustrated by the following:

1. People who pretend they want to have a discussion on a theological topic but who do not listen or interact with issues raised or questions or comments;
2. People who are self-righteous and always concerned about the sins of other people (and pointing them out);
3. People who celebrate historical ignorance and who choose to ignore what can be learned from our past;
4. People who think missions is simply about going to Africa and overlook the missional call of our local communities;
5. Pastors who encourage churches to be self-focused and who ignore the implications of the gospel;
6. Illogical people (when did logic and reason become so ignored?!?!);
7. People who say, “WE take the Bible literally” (first off, people rarely actually consistently do that and we shouldn’t always try to because the goal in hermeneutics is to determine the author’s intent – sometimes biblical authors used images and metaphors and figurative speech);
8. People who say,  “WE are a Bible believing church” or “WE follow the Bible” in a way that arrogantly suggests that everyone who differs on certain theological and ecclesiological issues decides to not believe or follow the teachings of the Bible (seriously, you sound very arrogant and equally ignorant);
9. People who think that you “go” to “church”;
10. People who think that “church” is simply for “good” people and that “sinners” need to clean themselves up (Pharisee, anyone?);
11. People who actually try to argue that Christians should abstain completely and entirely from alcohol (seriously, this is just plain silly and I would ask you to refer back to #6);
12. People who say they love Jesus but can’t commit to a community of believers (i.e., “church”) and who resist fellowship and accountability;
13. Christians who equate social justice with the gospel in a way that minimizes the need for repentance, faith, and obedience to Christ (yes, I believe in progressive sanctification, so don’t take that too far);
14. Christians who ignore social justice and do nothing to share in God’s heart for mercy and compassion ministry;
15. People who misrepresent pastors, theologians, theological systems, and books in order to discredit what they disagree with (why not just interact with the substance of those people and beliefs?);
16. Christians who disregard the call to love the Lord with our minds (yes, scholarly thinking has a place in your life). The Christian faith is not all about emotionalism;
17. Christians who think that loving God and expressing emotions is silly and immature;
18. Churches that value “traditions” more than what is Scriptural or how the Spirit is currently at work in culture and community;
19. World missions that makes other cultures conform to American standards (e.g., African villages pressed to build “church buildings” that are big and expensive or Chinese Christians told that they must wear shiny suits and have nice watches to be pastors); and finally…
20. Hypocrisy (yeah, it’s bad, so avoid it).

My list could go on, but these twenty came to mind in just a few seconds How about you?

Michael Patton, who is neither a Charismatic nor a traditional Cessationist, has written an interesting piece at Reclaiming the Mind – “If there are Modern Day Prophets, then the Canon is Still Open,” which is part of his “stupid statements” series. Patton more or less points out that a statement like that misunderstands both the nature of prophecy and the nature of the canon. I found it pretty interesting.

I enjoyed Grudem’s response to this statement in an appendix to his The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today, which is still, in my mind, the best book written on the subject of NT prophecy.

“What do you do when you don’t desire the Word of God? Or when you read it and don’t see anything that gives you joy? Or when your joy is weak and disintegrates before the allurements of the world? What do you do if you are not satisfied in the God of the Bible, but prefer the pleasures of the world? Did Paul or the psalmists or the celebrated saints of history ever struggle with this? Yes, they did. And we should take heart. We all struggle with seasons of lukewarmness and spiritual numbness of heart. There are times in the lives of the most godly people when spiritual hunger becomes weak, and darkness threatens to consume the light, and everything but the vaguely remembered taste of joy evaporates.” – Piper, When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy, 137

Imagine, you are not alone in your season of feeling barren and dry. Your lack of joyful pleasure in God and Scripture and prayer is not a feeling that you alone must bear! So Piper reminds us that not only can we face encouragement and exhortation from the celebrated saints of history, but we find encouragement from authors of the very book that we sometimes struggle to joyfully read! To think that the very psalmists often struggled in the same ways that we do and they still “made it” into the Bible is extremely encouraging! Apparently God is a bit more understanding and merciful and compassionate about the struggles that we often face. Once again, God’s grace is remarkable!

Thank you, Piper. Thank you for reminding us that normal people don’t always desire God in the ways that we should and that we must fight for joy!

Yesterday morning I preached through 2 Thessalonians 2:13-3:5 and spent a lot of time expounding upon my love for the grace of God (audio found here). The first part of our text is as follows:

” But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.” – 2 Thess. 2:13-17

This passage is so grace soaked and gospel saturated that I tend to think Paul is intentionally calling the Thessalonians to recognize how extremely important it is to never take the gospel for granted. I felt specifically led to point this out yesterday. The gospel is excellent in so many ways. To realize that our salvation is not based off of our own works but is based sole on the work of Christ on the cross is life-altering. There is no neutral ground when it comes to the gospel or our response to Jesus Christ (cf. Luke 11:23).
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Justin Taylor points out an interesting discussion by Doug Wilson – Sproul and Wright: Judging by the Paperwork vs. Judging by the Heart. Taylor quotes the following gem from Wilson:

The irony is that the mistake Wright makes about first century Jews, R.C. makes about the Reformed, and the valuable insight that Wright offers pastorally about some of the tight-shoed Reformed, he declines to apply to first century Jews.

In short, R.C. judges the Reformed tradition by the paperwork, and first century Jews by the heart.

Wright judges the Reformed by the heart, and judges the first century Jews by the paperwork.

Fascinating. I wonder what Sproul thinks.

Visit Churches Helping Churches for some prayer-stirring videos of the Haiti earthquake.

The Gospel of John is full of penetratingly insightful material to help us form a robust and exciting Pneumatology! I’m surprised so many Christian pastors and scholars overlook how deeply John writes about the work of the Spirit. In fact, the past 20 years of Johannine scholarship has provided some remarkable insight into John’s understanding of the Holy Spirit and His work for those interested in developing a strong biblical understanding.

From the beginning of the Gospel to its end, we find such in depth perspective on the person of the Holy Spirit. John writes of Jesus’ baptism and how the Holy Spirit descended upon Him (John 1:32-33). Later, John records Jesus’ words to Nicodemus – “unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). Still further Jesus is quoted as saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit…” (John 7:37-39). John also makes sure to note that Jesus prepared His disciples for His departure by promising them that they would have the Spirit (cf. John 14:26; 16:7-15). Make no mistake, John’s gospel is a great place to study the person and work of the Holy Spirit.
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“Eternal, incomprehensible, and invisible God, infinite in power, wisdom, and goodness, dwelling in the light which no man can approach, where thousand thousands minister unto thee, and ten thousand times ten thousand stand before thee, yet dwelling with the humble and contrite, and taking pleasure in thy people…”

So goes the introductory prayer found in Richard Baxter’s section on the Reformed Liturgy in The Practical Works of Richard Baxter, Volume I. Reading these words brought a unique freshness to me this morning. I often enjoy reading liturgy for the simple fact that many of the liturgical prayers were written hundreds of years ago, and yet they are still just as true and applicable today!

I think I’m going to include this prayer this Sunday.

To think, liturgy used to bore me; and now I love it.

Shai Linne with “Spread His Fame.” from Grace EV Free on Vimeo.

All praise to the name of the savior who reigns.
He’s taken our blame, embraced all our shame,
He’s raised from the grave so his fame we proclaim.
Salvation by grace through faith in his name.

All praise to the name of the savior who reigns.
He’s taken our blame, embraced all our shame,
He’s raised from the grave so his fame we proclaim.
Salvation by grace through faith in his name.

Jesus, the beautiful and blessed Son,
Immutable, majestic one
Who was resurrected from the grave
for the depraved.
He paved the path for some
Place faith in His passion, son
Be saved from the wrath to come.

He’s fabulous, His status is immaculate
I’m lacking the vernacular to adequately capture His glory.
Incomparable, unconquerable, all powerful, unstoppable
Absolutely phenomenal.

No obstacle He can’t navigate.
He’s God and so He fascinates.
With Him it’s impossible to exaggerate.

Lord of all continents,
Source of all consciousness,
His compliments are the consequence of His accomplishments
Every sphere of life, He’s the Lord of it
And every other power is either fraudulent or subordinate.

At first we snubbed Him,
Now His vessels of mercy love Him.
Your highest thought is infinitely unworthy of Him.
Beyond vocabulary His actions vary,
His wrath is scary
All His adversaries are imaginary.

He has no competitors.
Ask Nebuchadnezzar, bro
He’ll mess you up, have you eating grass,
You can bet He’s amazing.

He takes in blatant, flagrant vagrants, breaks them, remakes them, and shapes them
to hate sin.

Jesus!
There’s no better name!
That’ll never change and He’ll forever reign while we spread His fame.

So all praise to the name of the Savior who reigns
He’s taken our blame
Embraced all our shame
He’s raised from the grave so His fame we proclaim
Salvation by grace through faith in His name!

All praise to the name of the Savior who reigns
He’s taken our blame
Embraced all our shame
He’s raised from the grave so His fame we proclaim
Salvation by grace through faith in His name!

HT: Justin Taylor

“Ask Mary and Joseph, the Magi and the Shepherds [what they thought of the Child]. They will tell you that they found in this extreme poverty an indescribable tenderness, and an infinite dignity worth of the majesty of God.” – Jean-Pierre De Caussade (1675-1751)

Mark Dever – Study Video from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

Generally I think drama can be either fantastic or, stupid. But, in this case, I love this drama and the students in the congregation that I’m a part of, recently did it. Here goes…

Happy Holidays Merry Christmas. I’ve been extremely busy the last couple of days, but I wanted to wish all you readers a wonderful time of year that would extend beyond this season and would continue for the rest of your lives. The Incarnation is to be celebrated far beyond a few weeks in December!

Some interesting links to check out:

How to Prepare a Christmas Sermon – While some of you may not be preachers or teachers, you can apply some of these insights in your family devotions and in your discussion with family members.

Why is X Used when it Replaces Christ in Christmas? – R.C. Sproul schools us on the fact that “replacing” the “Christ” in Christmas with an “X” wasn’t originally used to minimize the magnitude of the centrality of Christ. Read this and refrain from selling propaganda.

Vital Virginity – Kevin DeYoung reflects on the importance of the Virigin birth. Excellent defense for the historic belief and biblical teaching of this miraculous event!

Wayne Grudem has a video of Christian Beliefs – I think I’m going to attempt to get this resource and teach it at TCF in the near future. It looks fantastic. Use the video, and then have a small group discussion. Looks to be excellent. Check out this review (and a follow up).

Hypnotizing Handbell Choir Christmas Eve – Wow. This is neat. Christmas Eve Handbells? Awesomesauce.

On Friday morning, at 12am, I had the opportunity to view the movie Avatar at its first public showing. I’ve been looking forward to this movie for awhile due to the speculation floating around the Internet and through various media sources. The wait was worth it in more ways that I can even begin to describe. I am going to avoid giving spoilers here because I want the movie to be as fantastic for you as it was for me. But I must mention that the story and visual appeal blew me away. Though it may seem blasphemous to some, I would venture to suggest that it has become my favorite movie of all time and has surpassed even Star Wars. Of course, these are simply my own opinions, but I found it breath-taking. In fact, I was left in awe.

The visual effects were stunning. One reviewer has noted that some people have actually become nauseous watching it! The storyline is fantastic because it is so applicable in our culture. Perhaps the storyline was not as deep and intriguing as others, but I couldn’t help but find myself absolutely engrossed in it. I want to travel to the planet Pandora! I want to live among the Na’vi! I want to experience flying on a banshee!
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“In many ways, redemptive-historical interpretation resembles a close reading of ancient and authoritative texts, such as constitutional documents or even dense poetry. Yet there are differences. The redemptive-historical theologian (RHT) is, for this essay, an evangelical who affirms the verbal or plenary inspiration of Scripture. We assert the inerrancy, infallibility, sufficiency, progressive development, and christocentricity of the Bible. Because we believe Scripture has a divine Author who inspires the human author, the discovery of the first Author’s message obligates the ideal reader to believe and do certain things as a result, even if that should prove difficult.” – Daniel M. Doriani, Moving Beyond the Bible to Theology, 76

As some of you know, or can recognize, I’d consider myself an advocate of Redemptive-Historical Interpretation (RHI) when we’re talking about the application of Scripture to the lives of Christians living today. The method just makes so much sense to me. The reason I find this quote so helpful is because Doriani clearly explains the foundations for RHI in this book, which is excellent. The other authors who contribute their methods are equally good (though some better than others), but I love RHI.

But beyond advocating RHI, I really like how Doriani underlies essential points to any Evangelical method: (1) assumed inspiration, (2) inerrancy & infallibility, (3) sufficiency, (4) progressive development, and (5) christocentricity. Each of these should underlie an Evangelical’s approach to the text. In fact, while we Evangelicals do a great job of promoting #’s 1, 2, 3 and often 5, at times we ignore #4, which is essential to hermeneutics! God has chosen to progressively reveal both Himself and His plan of redemption throughout History. We find evidence of this especially in the New Testament, where the promises of the Old Testament find fulfillment. And what’s more is that these promises, which progressively develop through redemptive history, find their ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ, which underlies why we are christocentric!

Recognizing these essential suppositions is what Doriani states should encourage our obligation to dig into the text and determine what God’s message was through the human authors by determining what the human authors’ message was! From there, though it may be “difficult,” our lives are to be changed – both what we believe and how we act. Amen,

I have to be honest here. I’m not a huge fan of George Barna’s books. I own several of them, but just haven’t found them that interesting, insightful, or helpful. It’s not that I dislike the guy, I just haven’t really been profoundly impacted by them. Yet many others have, and some of the authors who have impacted me were impacted by him, so I’m sure in some way he actually has impacted my life! How’s that for confusing?

At any rate, I am interested in the subject of leadership, so his latest book, Master Leaders, was intriguing. I found it to be intriguing, insightful, diverse, and sometimes a little annoying, all at the same time! Let’s start with the positive…
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The deeper I go into the Scriptures & heart of God, which are so intricately connected, the more I see the beauty and grandeur of God’s pleasures. Imagine, if you will, discovering that the “cosmic-kill-joy” that you once considered to be god, became a magnificent and majestic God that had pleasures beyond our wildest dreams! Imagine, once again, that you found out that, not only does He take pleasure in His creation and His plan of redemption, He is actually pleased with His people. The first line of Ps. 149:4 states, “For the Lord takes pleasure in his people.” Words cannot properly convey the widespread misunderstanding that abounds within the Church regarding God’s love for His people. And the practical outworking of that love is that God actually takes pleasure in them. They are not mere additions to creation that bring no emotional affections; rather, God’s people bring Him the utmost pleasure!

Now, it would be wise  to make some clarifications here. God’s pleasure in His people is not because we are so special and unique, nor is it because we complete Him in any way. God was not lonely before Creation. He was infinitely pleased in Himself and sufficient and complete in Himself and without need for companionship apart from Himself, despite what many well meaning people subtly suggest. But such suggestions, regardless of intention, produce a low-view of God, in my opinion. We must see God as complete and sufficient and without our “help” in order to understand how the Bible presents Him. So please resist the temptation to make much of yourself and continue to make much of God and delight yourself in Him and His great love and affections and pleasures!
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Last night I hosted an evening of eschatology at TCF. Two of my friends, Tyler and Holly of the Northwoods YWAM base, came and shared on the topic of the “last days.” We had an excellent turn out and I think we accomplished our goal of fostering interest and clarity of the general eschatological terms (e.g., The Millennium, the Rapture, Post-millennialism, etc.).

Holly provided a fantastic set of outlines for everyone to follow along with. One of them was an eschatology glossary and the other had diagrams. After all, you can’t have a discussion on eschatology without diagrams!

Throughout the discussion I realized how strongly I hold several opinions:
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There is a lot of discussion on the subject of revival within the Church. Depending upon your tradition, your perspective on what revival is and what it produces will be different. I have heard revival expressed in various ways throughout my life. Some suggest that revival will produce really good worship music. Others suggest that revival will cause people to have the same doctrine. Still others seem to see revival as an outpouring of the Spirit in a way that causes shaking, laughing, barking and other physical manifestations.

I believe Iain H. Murray offers six helpful God-centered and Biblically based ideas on what true revival brings:

1. Revival restores faith in the Word of God
2. Revival restores definiteness to the meaning of ‘Christian’
3. Revival advances the gospel with amazing swiftness
4. Revival always has moral impact upon communities
5. Revival changes understanding of the Christian ministry
6. Revival will change the public worship of the churches

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I’ve been picking up on a trend within the “Missional” movement that is a bit frustrating. In the quest to live misisonally (intentionally focused on the Gospel in our current context), many have began to downplay the role of global missions. In fact, I’ve heard and read some suggest that the Church just needs to be Missional where it is and God will take care of the rest of the world.

Sadly, this is not the point of being Missional! Missional living has never been a replacement for God’s commission for the Church to be globally minded! So please, if you are Missional, remember that there is a much “greater” commission that implores you to consider the need for the world to hear the Gospel!

Ed Stetzer recently offered five reasons that Missional Churches don’t go global. They are as follows:

1. In rediscovering God’s mission, many have only discovered its personal dimensions.
2. In responding to God’s mission, many have wanted to be more mission-shaped and have therefore made everything “mission.”
3. In relating God’s mission, the message increasingly includes the hurting but less frequently includes the global lost.
4. In refocusing on God’s mission, many are focusing on being good news rather than telling good news.
5. In reiterating God’s mission, many lose the context of the church’s global mission and needed global presence.

Stetzer’s reasons are, in my opinion, spot on. I’m inclined to believe that #1 is the most influential here in America due to our “individualistic” way of thinking (i.e., “just me and Jesus), but #4 tends to be overemphasized as well.

For those interested in two excellent sermons that will challenge you to think globally, check out John Piper’s “Let the Nations Be Glad, Part 1″ and “Let the Nations Be Glad, Part 2″ (each from the Advance 09 Conference).