Spirit and Truth

This weekend I had the privilege of touring with my close friends from Four Days Late. We traveled from Gadsden, AL to Charlotte, NC, Darlington, SC, and Myrtle Beach, SC. My primary role on the trip was to serve as road pastor for the band. It was a unique experience that brought great joy to my soul and refreshed my vision concerning many things.
I have been on a long study of the nature of truth this summer, and so, as I thought about what I should share with the band during our Bible study opportunities it became clear to me that we should take a deeper look at what it means to worship in spirit and in truth.
To begin with, it is funny how God can make the way straight for His purposes without us really even knowing it or realizing it. As we traveled the first leg of our tour, we had wonderful, somewhat spontaneous, conversations about what we believed about God. The one idea that summarizes those conversations is that it does not matter so much what you believe or want to believe, but what is true. That's right - true. Some things are true whether you believe them or not. That is why we must be willing to accept whatever God says about Himself whether we like it or not. I think the most dangerous statement we can ever make is, "I just can not believe in a God who is like that." If God has revealed in His word that He is like that, you have just denied God. You may ask, "How can I know for sure what the Bible says about God? Well, that seemed to be a recurring theme throughout the week.
On Monday, the band played for a youth leaders luncheon in Myrtle Beach, where Josh McDowell was the featured speaker. He talked about truth and emphasized many of the things MacArthur does in his book Truth War, and did so on the basis of the wonderful work of Francis Schaeffer, particularly in Escape from Reason. McDowell's unique contribution was a convincing style of presentation and the ability to demonstrate many of the realities concerning the truth crisis among students through his own research and statistics, along with that of George Barna and Thom Rainer. At the end of the day, his million dollar question was the same, "how do we know that what we believe is true?"
It is funny, because our first stop allowed us to dive into the idea of true worship being in spirit and truth. I would first like to point out that worship is not of spirit and truth. We do not worship spirit or truth. Christ informs us that God is seeking true worshipers who will worship in spirit. Primarily, this emphasizes the New Testament's radical departure from an emphasis on the place and external form of worship. That emphasis turns to the central ideas of who and how. Where you worship, whether in the temple or on the mountain, falls away and the worship of the one true God, through the person of Christ, is lifted up. The form or activity of worship falls away and the worship of God according to his own desires, in spirit and in truth as He has prescribed, is elevated. Spirit implies heart, the core of our being. The heart work of our worship is to be loving God above all things with all of our being. Truth implies content. The head work of worship is to be thinking rightly about God, the one true God as He has revealed himself in Scripture. How do we know what is true about God?
That first stop allowed us to see the tragedy of worship in spirit, but absent of truth. This is no reflection of the band. They did their part. Let's just say, the lyrics of the songs were the strongest testimony of the truth, not the preaching of the word as God commands.
Our second stop allowed us to see the tragedy of worship in truth, but without spirit. Again, though tired and frustrated, the music and the preaching were what is to be expected. But the reality of my previous blogs concerning youth ministry and the absence of doctrine and truth was made obvious in the lack of desire for God, the lack of heart for worship we found. Worship and God seemed to be non-existent on the priority lists of most of the participants.
Having seen the reality of what we had been discussing all weekend played out before us, our conversations reached a passionate high as we entered Myrtle Beach late Sunday night.
As we talked into the night, the obvious answer became relationship. We are so self-centered that we can not rightly conceive of God, who is overwhelmingly God-centered. We are so self-consumed that we can hardly manage to give our hearts submissively to God. And so, how do we know? By spiritual discernment. By submerging ourselves in the truth of God's word until we are so full of the Spirit and so controlled by the mind of Christ that we inherently know the things of God distinctly apart from the things of this world. We know heart, not appearance. We know fellowship, not games. We know truth, not opinion, philosophy, novelty, or lies.
And the venerable McDowell asks, "How do you know it is true?" And we respond, "Because God is a relational God. He desires to have a real and personal relationship with us. He knows us perfectly and he knows the only way we can ever have a relationship with Him is for Him to show himself to us. God must reveal himself in an understandable and sufficient way so that we might know Him. God wants to be known, and so, we can know with great confidence that what He says about Himself in Scripture is eternally true and ultimately sufficient."
Oh, but how do you know that He is relational? How do you know that God desires to have a relationship with you? Well, because I have one. I have a relationship with God. He chose me, pursued me, purchased me and loved me before I even asked if it was true. Modern thought said if it is true it will work. And postmodern thought says that if it works it is true. My relationship to God says both. God is the source and measure of all truth and so His word is truth and therefore it will work. God is my creator and redeemer, my master and my friend and so His word works and therefore it must be true.

Truth in Youth Ministry

I do not make a habit of copying blogs. However, I got one today pertaining to Truth or right doctrine in Youth Ministry and how it has very real, tangable results in the lives of students. I beleive this with the core of my being, and as this blog says, the Bible clearly teaches it. This magnifies what I have been reading in The Truth War by MacArthur. We need to read this truth, be reminded of what it is we are called to do and then respond in faith and obedience to it.

Good Doctrine Makes Better (Teenage) Saints
August 15, 2007
By John Piper

Here it is again. More evidence from surveys what the Bible makes so plain: superficial, non-doctrinal, non-serious Christians sin pretty much like the world; but more serious, more doctrinally oriented Christians lead lives that are morally distinct. Two years ago Ron Sider flagged this in his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World?
Now a new book by Mark Regnerus called Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers gives the same bleak picture of so-called “evangelical teenagers” who sleep around as much as unbelievers. But again the book points out that “the 16% of American teenagers who say that their faith is ‘extremely important to their lives’ are living chastely” (Gene Veith, “Sex and the Evangelical Teen,” World, August 11, 2007, p. 9).
Some of you may remember what Sider said two years ago. But here it is again. The point is that what he said then has now been confirmed again by a totally separate survey. May the Lord use both these studies to encourage us that even though growing a church by serious teaching of biblical truth may be harder and slower, it does bear more radical fruit than less doctrinally serious strategies of growth.

Here is what Sider says the more radically transformed Christians believe:
These people believe that “the Bible is the moral standard” and “absolute moral truths exist and are conveyed through the Bible.” In addition they agree with all six of the following additional beliefs: that God is the all-knowing, all-powerful Creator who still rules the universe; Jesus Christ lived a sinless life; Satan is a real, living entity; salvation is a free gift, not something we can earn; every Christian has a personal responsibility to evangelize; and the Bible is totally accurate in all it teaches. (Scandal, p. 127)

Then Sider lists the kinds of behaviors this more doctrinally rigorous group tend to show.
They are nine times more likely than all the others to avoid “adult-only” material on the Internet. They are four times more likely than other Christians to boycott objectionable companies and products and twice as likely to choose not to watch a movie specifically because of its bad content. They are three times more likely than other adults not to use tobacco products and twice as likely to volunteer time to help needy people. Forty-nine percent of all born-again Christians with a biblical worldview have volunteered more than an hour in the previous week to an organization serving the poor, whereas only 29 percent of born-again Christians without a biblical worldview and only 22 percent of non-born-again Christians had done so. (Scandal, p. 128)

Sider concludes with a word that pastors and youth leaders should hear with great seriousness—mainly because the Bible teaches it, but also because Regnerus’s new book points in the same direction. Here is Sider’s conclusion:
[The] findings on the different behavior of Christians with a biblical worldview underline the importance of theology. Biblical orthodoxy does matter. One important way to end the scandal of contemporary Christian behavior is to work and pray fervently for the growth of orthodox theological belief in our churches. (Scandal, pp. 129-130)

Yes. Pray for sure. And work our heinies off teaching and preaching and modeling the Truth. And resist an entertainment model for youth ministry. And cultivate a joyfully blood-earnest atmosphere for worship. And call for our youth and our retirees to go risk their lives somewhere for the risen King Jesus. This is where serious truth-driven ministry takes us.

Growing in the knowledge and grace of Jesus with you,

Pastor John