HOW TO USE YOUR HOME TO MAKE DISCIPLES

This is a commitment!  Maybe we cannot do what he has done but we can do something.

There is Nothing Sexy About the Call to Eldership.

Stumbled upon this the other day on the Bethlehem College and Seminary website.  Our elders have been dealing with a painful and difficult issue within our body that is not going well.  As I saw the title, I was reminded of the difficulties eldership faces when they set their minds and heart to the task of eldering.  David

We all recognize the elders as the men who sit in those painstakingly long meetings making the hard decisions for the church. 

But as I returned with five classmates from 40 hours of driving a 15-passenger van to Capitol Hill Baptist Church’s “Weekender” in Washington D.C., I was reminded afresh that elders are the men who share in the eternally significant privilege of shepherding the souls of a local congregation. This appropriately difficult work of eldering serves the correspondingly weighty responsibility of shepherding souls. 

I first attended Capitol Hill Baptist Church as a college intern in the D.C. metro area in Summer 2008. Although I was only there for a short season, I felt known and loved by elders and members of this local body. Now as a seminary student at Bethlehem College & Seminary who is training to be an elder myself, I was able to step behind the scenes at Capitol Hill Baptist Church this past week to attend an intense, movie trailer-like conference of what eldership looks like. While observing elder meetings, membership classes, Sunday services, a congregational meeting, and a staff service review, I watched firsthand how church eldership demands incredible patience and humble service, making me all the more grateful for Bethlehem Baptist Church’s faithful elders. 

As I aspire to eldership, here are three lessons I want to remember and apply: 

1. Lay Elders Are Crucial
   Lay elders are not the B-team benchwarmers but rather the gifted amateurs who contribute to the success of the team. I use “amateur” in the classical sense (from the Latin amator or “lover”), as in those who play a sport (or serve a church) purely out of love rather than for pay. Lay elders invest countless hours in the lives of individual members, in prayer, in thinking through the relationship between doctrinal issues and the practical questions of ministry all out of love for their local church. Qualified lay elders are crucial team members.
2. Seek the Wandering and Wounded Sheep
   Shepherding takes patience, empathy, and a pursuing love on the part of the elders. Eldering means pursuing members who are experiencing acute suffering or who are floundering in sin and who therefore need love, counsel, and possibly church discipline. Elders are the first in the congregation to press into the pain and brokenness of the flock, allowing their own hearts to break for them. Elders pursue the lost and wounded sheep not only to show the hurting members such love, but also so that the rest of the flock might follow their example to love others in the congregation in the same way.  
3. Measure Your Eldering by the Last Day
   Eldership is an eternally weighty responsibility because of the account taken on the Last Day. Hebrews warns elders that they will “give an account” for those in their flock (Heb 13:17). Therefore, elders should measure everything they do against the eternally significant judgment that will happen when Christ returns. 

The call to eldership, though full of hard work and eternal weight, offers the joy of seeing God’s grace at work in the life of the Church. And it is a call I am eager to grow into as I finish my studies at Bethlehem College & Seminary.

The “Weekender” was a fresh reminder to me to pray with thanksgiving to the Lord for the elders here at Bethlehem, who watch over our souls with patience and discernment and most of all an eternal perspective. 

Zach Howard
Bethlehem Seminary Student

What God Can Do Through You - David Platt

Gotta love Platt, thoroughly biblical, passionate, and inspiring!  

Look at the Book

I do not think I have ever been disappointed with anything from John Piper.  I think this new ministry of teaching people to read and study their bibles is going to be a great asset to Christians of all walks of life!  The format will be short ten minute videos helping people see the treasure of the truth for yourself.

The Need to Delegate in Ministry

He identifies a problem but not much help in offering a solution.

The Best Things About the Boring Parts of the Bible

by Nancy Guthrie on the Desiring God website.

Let’s admit it, there are certain parts of the Bible we skim because . . . well . . . because we think they’re boring. They’re repetitive, overly detailed, full of names and places we can’t pronounce. So why bother with them? There are many reasons — not the least of which is that even the parts of the Bible we deem to be boring are significant because they are God’s word to us. Here’s my top ten list of the best things about the boring parts of the Bible.

10

After a poetic Creation and a cosmic disaster, the story of the Bible slows down in Genesis by tracing the sons of Adam and Eve’s son, Seth, through numerous generations. Why do we need to know this? Because God made a promise recorded in Genesis 3 about a particular descendant of Eve. The whole of the Bible is most significantly about this descendant. So, the tenth best thing about the boring parts of the Bible is:

Tracing the line of descendants from Adam and Eve forward keeps us tuned in to what is most important in the Bible’s story, or really who is most important — the promised offspring who will one day be born and will do battle with the offspring of the ancient serpent and win.

9

In Genesis 6–9 we witness the population of the world narrowed down to just Noah and his 3 sons and their families. The begats of the Bible pick up again in Genesis 10 focusing in on the descendants of just one of Noah’s sons — Shem — and finally on one descendant of Shem — Abraham — to whom God makes incredible promises. Further lists help us to trace the coming of the promised descendant through Isaac and Jacob and Judah and David until we read inGalatians 4:4, “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman.” Keeping our focus on this promised One helps to keep us from making the Bible all about us instead of all about him.

The book of Exodus begins with the vivid story of a baby in a basket on the Nile River who becomes the deliverer of God’s people from their slavery in Egypt. On their way to the Promised Land, God gives Moses detailed instructions for the design of the tent they are to construct in which God will come down to dwell among them. In the detail of the design we see gourds and open flowers woven into the fabrics, a basin made to look like a lily, lampstands made to look like trees with branches. The writer of Hebrews says the tabernacle and later the temple were, “copies of true things,” and “a shadow of the good things to come” (Hebrews 8:5). So for #9:

The detail of the tabernacle and temple design reminds us of Eden and fills us with anticipation for the beauty and perfection of the new heavens and new earth.

8

As we continue in Exodus we read exacting detail about the clothing that was to be made for the high priest who would serve in the tabernacle. It was to be holy, glorious, and beautiful like God himself, which is appropriate since the priest represented God to the people. The priest also represented the people to God. He wore an ephod and a breastplate that had stones with the names of the twelve tribes on them. So when the high priest entered the Holy Place, it was as if he took the people and their concerns into the presence of God with him.

The detail of the high priest’s clothing assures us that our Great High Priest, Jesus, carries our burdens on his shoulders and our concerns on his heart as he intercedes for us in the presence of God.

7

In Leviticus 1–7 we find detailed instructions for offering sacrifices which were like flashing neon signs saying: “sin brings death . . . sin brings death.” But the sacrifices also revealed that God accepts the blood of an innocent substitute to pay for sin.

The requirements of Old Testament sacrifices help us to see what sin costs as well as the fullness of our forgiveness made possible through the once-for-all perfect sacrifice of Christ.

6

Let’s face it — the laws about what make a person ceremonial clean or unclean found in Leviticus 11–15 are strange. Yet when we study them, we see that everything that makes a person unclean is something that reflects the effects of the curse of sin on this world. Animals fed on other animals only after the curse. Bodies bled and developed disease only after the curse. Mold and mildew, the visible evidence of decay, came into being only after the curse. Everything designated unclean in Leviticus demonstrated that things are not the way they once were in the Garden—the way God originally intended them to be.

The laws regarding clean and unclean in Leviticus give us hope that we who are unclean can be made clean through an acceptable sacrifice, and will one day be made holy to enter into the presence of God.

5

Jesus, who was perfectly clean, took our uncleanness upon himself so that we might be made clean and he is at work even now, by his Spirit, making us holy. God will not abandon our world to its uncleanness forever! He will make it clean.

The book of Numbers begins and ends with a census. In Numbers 1 we find the record of the generation who rebelled and refused to believe that God was giving them the land of Canaan and therefore died in the desert. In Numbers 26 we read the census record of the second generation as they prepared to enter into their inheritance and abundant life of the Promised Land. Why do we need this information?

The census records of Numbers encourage us to examine whether our names are to be counted among those who refuse to believe and will die in the wilderness of this world, or if we are counted among those who believe God’s promise of an inheritance and have life in the abundance of the Promised Land to look forward to.

4

In Joshua 13–21 we read the geographic details of the land in Canaan given to each tribe. Because we are unfamiliar with the ancient geography, it can be a boring list to us. But if we were familiar with these places and with these people, we could better imagine the sense of wonder among God’s people as each tribe was given a huge amount of territory in the Promised Land. Likely the people of each tribe would have looked at each other and said, “All of this for us?”

The allotment of territories to tribes in the land of Canaan gives us a preview of what it will be like when our greater Joshua, Jesus, leads us into the eternal Promised Land where we will inherit all that God has promised.

3

One day our Greater Joshua will read out the inheritance that will be ours in the new heaven and the new earth, and we won’t be bored! Surely we will breathlessly say, “All of this for us?”

First Chronicles includes chapter after chapter of genealogies that begin with Adam and stretch to the descendants of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi — the kingly and priestly tribes — who made up most of those who returned to the land after exile.

The genealogies in 1 Chronicles help us focus on where history is headed — the son of David, seated on the throne of the universe.

2

This list should reorient our hearts toward the coming of our great king when we will hear a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Revelation 21:3).

When Nehemiah was trying to figure out who among the returned exiles should take up residence behind the rebuilt walls of Jerusalem, he pulled out the book in which the names of those who returned to Judah when the opportunity was first given by Cyrus’s decree to come home were listed.

The list of names in the book Nehemiah read that included all those whose hearts God stirred up to leave Babylon for Jerusalem should make our hearts glad to know that God likes to keep lists of those whose hearts he has stirred up with a longing for his city, those who will inhabit the New Jerusalem.

1

In Revelation 21:27 John tells us, “Only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life” will populate the New Jerusalem. We will not be bored when that list of names is read! We’ll be on pins and needles listening for our names.

The New Testament begins with a genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. And oh the grace we find in this boring part of the Bible!There in the lineage of Jesus is Abraham who pretended his wife was his sister and gave her to a godless king; Judah who fathered Perez and Zerah by Tamar, his daughter-in-law; Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute who put everything at risk to get in on the promises of God; Ruth, a Moabite who left everything behind to make Israel’s God her God; David who took another man’s wife and then had her husband killed; Solomon who allowed many foreign women to turn his heart away from loving the Lord. So the #1 best thing about the boring parts of the Bible is:

The genealogy of Jesus shows us that Jesus welcomes flagrant but forgiven sinners into his family.

This gives outsiders and outlaws like you and me hope. He is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters.

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Why We Neglect Our Bibles

From John Piper - . . .

We assume every Christian has a Bible that looks like this one — worn down, marked up, and paired with a journal stuffed with multicolored spiritual reflections.

But that’s often not true. Many Christians find it difficult to get into a daily habit of Bible reading. So this week John Piper addressed four common causes of Bible neglect in the Christian life, like: “I don’t read my Bible because . . .

. . . it seems so irrelevant to my life.”
. . . I don’t have time.”
. . . I go to church every Sunday.”
. . . I find it confusing.”
What follows is a slightly edited (and abridged) transcript of his answers.

Reason 1: “I don’t read my Bible because it seems irrelevant to my life.”

This is a very common hang-up. Many Christians neglect the Bible because it doesn’t seem relevant in an average day of life and work. So why do I need to read my Bible every day? Pastor John’s response.

One thing I know in response to this question, another thing I don’t know. What I know is that the Bible is relevant to this person’s average day where he lives and works. What I don’t know is what are his personal goals in life and work. And the reason that matters is that you can have goals at work or in life which will put you so out of sync with the Bible that you find the Bible to be annoying or condemning or boring, because its teaching runs in a different direction from the direction you are going.

I know the Bible is relevant to this person’s daily life. He says he doesn’t feel like it is. I know it is. The Bible says, “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). The Bible says: “render service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord” (Ephesians 6:7–8).

So here are ten questions to ask about work.

Question 1: Are you ever tempted to grumble or complain at work? Philippians 2:15–16 is relevant, and shows a glorious way to live without grumbling.

Question 2: Are you ever tempted to be greedy at work and take something that is not yours? The Bible has lots to say about covetousness and greed and stealing and how to be so content in Christ that you are free at work to be generous.

Question 3: Are you ever tempted to be worried or anxious at work? Everyone is. And the Bible talks about this fear almost as much as it does anything. The most common command in the Bible is “fear not.” For anybody who has any fears at work, the Bible is relevant.

Question 4: Are you ever tempted to brag or boast or draw attention to yourself and to your superiority in some area? The Bible is full of wisdom about pride and humility and the effect it has on relationships.

Question 5: Are you ever tempted at work to be angry with anybody? Do you deal with temper issues? Are there strained relationships because you are frustrated with other people? The Bible deals over and over again with the issue of anger and goes a lot deeper in that issue than any psychology can today.

Question 6: Are you ever tempted to cut corners at work, to punch out early, to come in late, to work half-heartedly? The Bible is also relevant to the quality of our work.

Question 7: Are you ever tempted sexually at work by lust? The Bible is full of relevant material on a robust view of sexuality that puts it all in a good perspective and a proper place.

Question 8: Are you ever tempted to feel sorry for yourself at work, to lick your own wounds because someone spoke evil of you, or because you got passed over for a promotion? The Bible is shot through with dynamics of life that help us deal with self-pity.

Question 9: Do you ever struggle with guilt at work, feelings that just come over you that are a vague sense that you are not as good as you should be, or maybe you really failed at something you should have succeeded at by your own standards? Accept the ultimate remedy given in the Bible for guilt.

Question 10: Are there lost people at work that you care about, that you don’t want to go to hell? Where are you going to get help for dealing with them in the hope of giving them life except in the Bible? And where are you going to get strength and courage and boldness and wisdom for how to do it?

The Bible is relevant for the life and work of any man. But really it comes down to this. Does he want to see the greatest treasure in the universe? Does he desire to know Jesus and enjoy Jesus more than anything? Does he love people so much that he grieves over the fact that they don’t know Jesus and will be lost forever without him? That is the question. If Jesus is supreme in this person’s life, if the passion is to know him above all, if the passion is to desire him and enjoy him and treasure him more than anything, if the passion is to bring as many people with you as you can into that experience, then you can’t live without the Bible. It is the most relevant book in the world.

Piper: “You can have goals in life so out of sync with the Bible that you find the Bible boring.” Tweet

Reason 2: “I don’t read my Bible because I don’t have time.”

This is another very common struggle Bible readers face, and this question came from a mom with young kids who feels like there’s no time in the day for clear-headed, uninterrupted time in Scripture. In response, Pastor John turned the tables to address the husband’s role in serving his wife, and offered these six bits of counsel.

One, set a tone of discipline and order in the home so that children are not running wild, but are submissive and obedient and self controlled. Partner with her in getting these kids under control with naps and bedtimes and meal times that are ordered times around which days can be built. My impression is that way too many parents today think their children should be allowed to control the atmosphere of the house. That is a big mistake at lots of levels, I think. So, Dad, step up, partner with your wife in establishing routines and expect obedience to her and to your authority.

Two, Dad, establish playtime with the kids every day. It will obviously change with the ages and so on, but give your whole attention to these kids every day at some point during which time your wife is free. For us, for many years, that was right after supper for about an hour.

Three, build retreats into her life so she gets a half-day or a full day every now and then. You figure out how often you can arrange for the children. You take them on Saturday morning all morning. Get periodic extended retreat times alone where she (and then you) can deal with the living God.

Four, lead your wife in the word so that her desire never wavers because of your example of pursuing treasure and sweetness in the word with her.

Five, give her adult conversation about important things including things from Scripture, so that she doesn’t lose perspective what all this time with the kids is for.

Six, pray for her. Husband, pray that your wife will find the motivation and discipline to enjoy God’s word.

Piper: “Husband, pray that your wife will find the motivation and discipline to enjoy God’s word.” Tweet

Reason 3: “I don’t read my Bible because I go to church every Sunday.”

A third reason some Christians neglect their Bible is by thinking listening to weekly sermons is sufficient. Isn’t this what pastors get paid to do — to understand the Bible and explain it to me once a week? Here was Pastor John’s response.

I was a pastor and I loved it when people listened to my sermons. But something is wrong here. This is serious. If the word of God is coming with power each week, it doesn’t just satisfy hunger, it also creates hunger. I would have felt like a total failure if my people said, “Because of your preaching, we don’t read our Bibles.”

To someone who says the sermon is all I need, my question back would be this: Is it all you want? Why isn’t the meal on Sunday whetting your taste for more on Monday? Why not? It seems to me like we have two issues here. (1) How much of the Bible do we need? (2) How much of the Bible do we want?

Let’s take the second question. Why would you only want one passage a week from the Bible, from someone else? To me that’s like saying: I am in love, my sweetheart writes me every day, and I would like to just read her letters once a week, and I think I would like somebody else to read them for me and give me a digest of what she said. Are you kidding me? To only want to read one love letter a week when she is writing them every day is a sign that something is wrong.

The Bible is an unparalleled love letter to the people of God. The Psalmist says: “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103). It just wouldn’t make any sense for the psalmist to say: “I get a spoonful of honey on Sunday and that is plenty. I don’t want any on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday or Saturday.” Instead he said: “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97). “More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold” (Psalm 19:10). “If you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God” (Proverbs 2:4–5).

So why would you want only one glimpse a week of this beauty? Only one taste a week of this honey? Only one deposit a week of this silver in your bank? Only one letter from your lover?

I think I can say from experience, from history, and from the Bible: Every Christian needs more spiritual food than one meal a week. That doesn’t work physically; it doesn’t work spiritually. Temptations are too relentless. Doubt is too frequent. Satan is too active. Tribulations are too heavy. Conflicts are too many. Emotions are too volatile. Perplexities are too difficult. Faith, hope, and love are too threatened, to think I can deal with these all week long simply from one word I got on Sunday. I can’t do it. And I don’t think anybody can.

Piper: “The Bible is an unparalleled love letter to the people of God.” Tweet

Reason 4: “I don’t read my Bible because I find it confusing.”

Finally, what about readers who simply find the Bible dreadfully hard to understand, not at the fault of the Bible, but because they find every book hard to understand? To this discouraged Bible reader, Pastor John offered some very practical advice.

One, make sure you have a modern translation that is readable, like the ESV or the NIV.

Two, make sure you’re in a church where the pastor explains passages from the Bible every Sunday.

Three, get a good study Bible like the ESV Study Bible. In a good study Bible there are notes at the bottom of the page to help answer a lot of the puzzling questions you will ask.

Four, read carefully and slowly and try writing a passage out. And I don’t mean write out the long stories in the Old Testament. I mean if you are stumbling over a verse or a paragraph in the letters or in the gospels, try writing it out by hand.

Five, join us online for Look at the Book episodes which are going public at the National Conference. In those videos, I will help guide you through texts. My hope is that these videos will instill habits of reading in you to make the Bible more understandable.

Six, pray. Pray for God to give you light. God loves to make his Son known. He sent him into the world at the cost of his life so that he could be known and loved. He is not interested in holding back from you the light that he gave with his Son and gave with his word.

Piper: “You can’t live without the Bible. It is the most relevant book in the world.”>