Reformed Evangelical Synod of America

Archive for October, 2009

As the sun set on this day in 1517, the unity of the Western Church shattered as the Ninety-five Theses of Martin Luther were nailed to the door of the Collegiate Church at Wittenberg, Germany. This was not, however, the first division within the Church.

Disregarding various heretical movements, the Church was first divided in the wake of the Council of Chalcedon, giving rise to the so-called Oriental Orthodox Churches. Political and theological forces divided the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches in the middle of the eleventh century, and the Church in the West has been torn asunder repeatedly, both before and after the Reformation, by many varying movements.

Nobody will deny that the Church, as an assembly of frail, fallible human beings, is imperfect, and today is a day set aside for prayer for the unity and renewal of the Church Catholic. By what means, however, is this unity and renewal to come?

If we surrender ourselves to strange doctrines which find no root in the Scriptures, then our unity is one in which we have given place to human desire instead of God’s precepts. The unity which God desires for his Church is based on the truth revealed in his Word and preserved by the Holy Spirit, who is faithful in every generation. We receive with great joy and with a deep-seeded sense of responsibility the witness, not only of the ancient Fathers, but also the leaders of the Reformation who sought to advocate for a return to the Biblical faith which, sadly, had become buried beneath the excesses of the Roman Church of the sixteenth century.

While this means that we must remain steadfast in our confession of the ‘Five Solas’ of the Reformation, we must also be vigilant against modernism which has, sadly, turned much of contemporary Christianity into a form of Humanism with an object of affection. Just as we cannot turn our backs on the doctrine of justification by faith through grace to achieve unity with the Churches of Rome or Constantinople, so too we cannot turn our backs on the moral and ethical teachings of God’s Word in order to find unity with those Protestant Christians who have elected to revise Scripture along humanistic lines.

Today, we find ourselves in the midst of a New Reformation. The Church is being called back to her roots, her God-breathed faith, by the power of the Spirit. The calling is one which is rooted in the absolute necessity of conforming ourselves as individuals and as the Body of Christ to the example of the one who died and shed his blood that we might be one, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

COLLECT
Gracious Father, we pray for your holy catholic Church. Fill it with all truth, in all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in anything it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; and where it is divided, reunite it in all truth. This we ask for the sake of him who died and rose again, and ever lives to make intercession for us, Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord. Amen.

READINGS
Jeremiah 31: 31-34
Psalm 46
Romans 3: 19-28 or Revelation 14: 6-7
John 8: 31-36 or Matthew 11: 12-19

On the various New Testament lists of the Twelve Apostles, the tenth and eleventh places are occupied by Simon the Zealot and by Judas of James, also called Thaddaeus or Lebbaeus. Some ancient Christian writers say that Simon and Jude went together as missionaries to Persia, and were martyred there. If this is true, it explains, to some extent, our lack of historical information on them and also why they are celebrated together.

COLLECT
O God, we thank you for the glorious company of the apostles, and especially on this day for Simon and Jude; and we pray that, as they were faithful and zealous in their mission, so we may with ardent devotion make known the love and mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

READINGS
Jeremiah 16: 1-16
Psalm 11
1 John 4: 1-6
John 14: 21-27

We rejoice with Father Rob, pastor of the RESA Mission in Johnson County, Indiana and his wonderful wife Mrs. Kristen Lyons on the safe delivery of their daughter Clare Lyons on October 26th, 2009 at approximately 9:30 AM.

May the Lord bless them with His grace.

A photo slideshow is available here…

As Paul carried his preaching out of Asia and into Europe during his second missionary journey, he began at the city of Philippi in Macedonia. His first European convert was a woman named Lydia, a merchant who dealt in purple-dyed goods. She and her household were baptized, and she invited Paul, with Luke and his other companions, to make her house their headquarters in Philippi.

Dorcas (or Tabitha in Aramaic) was a member of the early Christian community in Joppa, a seacoast town of Israel. She was noted for her acts of charity, in particular for making garments and giving them to needy widows. When she fell ill and died, Peter came to see her, and raised her to life.

Phoebe was a deaconess of the Church at Chenchreae, the eastern seaport of the city of Corinth. When Paul mentions her, she has left the vicinity of Corinth and is in Rome, so that Paul commends her to the Church there.

COLLECT
Almighty God, you inspired your servants Lydia, Dorcas, and Phoebe to uphold and sustain your Church by their loving and generous deeds. Give us the will to love you, open our hearts to hear you, and strengthen our hands to serve you in others for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

READINGS
Proverbs 31: 10-31
Psalm 33
Acts 9: 36-42 or Acts 16: 11-15, 40 or Romans 16: 1-2
Matthew 25: 1-13

This Lord’s Day we will Celebrate Reformation Sunday, though as you know Reformation Day is always October 31^st, the evening before All Saints Day.

On October 31^st, 1517 things came to a head in Europe. If you think the TV Evangelists and phoney faith healers are bad today, in Luther’s Day the Vatican was financing a building project by for all practical purposes selling salvation. Johann Tetzel had a saying with which he coaxed the money out of people’s purses – “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory and into heaven springs.”

Luther wrote against them (Thesis 21): “Therefore those preachers of indulgences are in error, who say that by the pope’s indulgences a man is freed from every penalty, and saved;”

Again in thesis 37: “Every true Christian, whether living or dead, has part in all the blessings of Christ and the Church; and this is granted him by God, even without letters of pardon.”

Thesis 52: “The assurance of salvation by letters of pardon is vain, even though the commissary, nay, even though the pope himself, were to stake his soul upon it.”

54: “Injury is done the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or a longer time is spent on pardons than on this Word.”

62: “The true treasure of the Church is the Most Holy Gospel of the glory and the grace of God.”

79: “To say that the cross, emblazoned with the papal arms, which is set up [by the preachers of indulgences], is of equal worth with the Cross of Christ, is blasphemy.”

It’s evident that in posting these theses in Latin on the castle church door, Luther had hoped for serious discussion. But in light of the outrages of the day and a new communications tool called the “printing press”, Luther ended up seeing far more than a discussion… he got a REFORMATION.

Luther’s questions go straight to the heart of the matter – just WHO IS LORD ? What is the CHURCH about?

Luther was not a lone voice in the church… the Holy Spirit was making many restless for the Good News to be faithfully preached and lived.  They yearned for the masses for whom Christianity as simply a routine exercise in Church Attendance to be brought to new life.

There was a growing unrest in many throughout the West to say “it’s time to get back to the Biblical Faith with Jesus Christ at the center.”  It’s funny how many people craved that and yet how entrenched forces who wanted control of money and power fought that.

You see, if people can be kept blind and compliant like a herd of cattle or a flock of sheep, they can be milked or sheared at will to keep the people at the top rich and at ease. Luther in his 86^th thesis asked: “”Why does not the pope, whose wealth is to-day greater than the riches of the richest, build just this one church of St. Peter with his own money, rather than with the money of poor believers?””

Luther began quoting the scriptures such as Romans 3:19-28 which we read today to remind the people and the Church that Jesus Christ is the one who saves – as sinners none of us may earn salvation and none of us may sell it!

Naturally he received a great deal of hatred for telling the “people in charge” that, well, they had the message of God wrong.  They had missed God’s Good News!

It reminds you about what happened to Our Lord in John 8:31-36…

So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, ‘You will become free’?”

Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who keeps on committing sin is the slave of sin.”The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

Jesus started talking about being set free by the Truth, and what was their immediate reaction – and these were the people who believed in Him!?

Their reaction: “Wait a minute!  We’re the children of Abraham and have never been slaves!”

Never been slaves? Are you kidding? What about that 400 years in Egypt, those 70 years in Exile, and now when the Roman soldiers told them to jump, they asked “how high”? How easily they deceived themselves! How easily we deceive OURSELVES! Ha!

Jesus doesn’t let that one pass. He tells them “Whoever commits sin is the slave of sin” – I’m sure they knew that included them! Jesus was going to give His disciples something they had never known as the Sons of Adam – the gift of being In Christ and being able, through Him, to have a clean conscience and a NEW HEART (Jer 31:31-34)

There is no hope for slaves of sin to stay in God’s house. God’s Son will remain in the house, He is the Adopted One, the One who will never be cast out and forever be blessed by God – if we are made free by this Son, Jesus, then the problem of our slavery will never be an issue again.

If we will simply admit our need for Jesus Christ to be set free from the hold that sin and Satan wish to have upon us to dominate and destroy us, then we will find freedom, then we need never fear the abandonment of God, then we need never live as orphans in God’s World again… Jesus Christ, the Truth of God, the one who suffered as a sacrifice for sinners become for us the place where God Himself offers atonement. We don’t go to a Temple, we go to Jesus. He receives us, forgives us, and gives us new life through the Holy Spirit. He sets us free.

Though Reformation Day recalls people in the past who were in need of Reformation, and we read about the Jewish People of Jesus’ day who needed their own Reformation, the truth is that we in America are slaves… we are slaves to debt, we are slaves to materialism, we are slaves to our addictions, we are slaves to an out of control government,  and we are slaves to sin.

This message that Jesus can set people free in every generation is our only hope … don’t be fooled because you grew up American thinking you lived in the “land of the free” and the “home of the brave”. We are every bit as enslaved as these Jewish people who protested so loudly that they’d never been slaves.

It’s Reformation Day – it’s not a day to gloat over our illustrious past. Churches that celebrate Reformation Day in the US these days are, by and large, rapidly dying out and very ineffective at spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ! Sure, God gave us a great start.

But what are we doing with the Good News and the Word of God today?

If we are not taking the message of Jesus Christ to the streets, if we are not living out the Good News in Word and Deed, if we are not winning people to Christ and seeing Jesus Christ set them free, we are still in bondage ourselves!

This Reformation Day, we need to make sure we ourselves are not slaves.

This Reformation Day, we need to return in repentance and trust to Jesus Christ the one who died for sinners and who is able to, as Psalm 51 says, “Create in us a clean heart!”

This Reformation Day, our renewed love for Jesus Christ and the freedom He gives should drive us to our knees to pray for the ongoing Reformation of ourselves, our homes, our churches, our nation and for the Gospel to spread to the farthest part of the earth.

I bid you a blessed Reformation Day… but I likewise must remind one and all that we ourselves must daily be renewed by the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ and empowered by His Spirit, lest we too fail to live in the fullness of His blessing!

Sermon Audio is available here.

Scripture Readings:

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 46
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36

Collect:

Gracious Father, we pray for your holy catholic Church. Fill it with all truth, in all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in anything it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; and where it is divided, reunite it in all truth. This we ask for the sake of him who died and rose again, and ever lives to make intercession for us, Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord. Amen.

Crispin and Crispinian were shoemakers and lived in the third century. They preached the Christian faith in Gaul whilst exercising their trade and so, like St Paul earning his living as a tent-maker, were no drain on the Christian community. They were put to death for their faith at the beginning of the Diocletian persecution and died in about the year 287 in Rome.

COLLECT
Almighty God, you called your servants Crispin and Crispinian to use their employ as a means of evangelism, and gave them the grace to witness to you even unto death. May we find in our own daily lives the means and the courage to witness to our faith in your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

James, the brother of our Lord, is generally regarded as the author of the Epistle of James, and as an early bishop of the Church at Jerusalem. James, who would eventually suffer death for the cause of Christ, did not believe in him during his earthly life, but was converted after the resurrection. It was James who formulated the agreement at the Jerusalem Council concerning the inclusion of Gentile Christians in the Church. Outside the New Testament, James is mentioned by the Jewish historian Josephus, who calls him “the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ,” and reports that he was much respected even by the Pharisees for his piety and strict observance of the Law, but that his enemies took advantage of an interval between Roman governors in the year 62 to have him put to death.

COLLECT
Grant, O God, that, following the example of your servant James the Just, brother of our Lord, your Church may give itself continually to prayer and to the reconciliation of all who are at variance and enmity. We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

READINGS
Acts 15: 12-22a
Psalm 1
1 Corinthians 15: 1-11 or James 1: 1-18
Matthew 13: 54-58

Dear Friends in Christ,

Yesterday the Vatican announced a new program to receive Anglican parishes en masse into the Roman fold.

This all seems so odd.

Archbishop Thomas Cranmer offered himself to the fires of martyrdom rather than recant the Reformational faith. The papal representatives of his day were glad to oblige.

How can those who today call themselves “Anglicans” receive such a warm reception from Rome, sans flames of course? Do they sense any loss in the process? If not, why did they call themselves Anglicans to begin with?

Of course, many things have changed since those days. Rome has toyed with the idea of justification by faith enough to mollify liberal Protestants without actually saying it was ever wrong. The Papacy has, in Vatican II, conceded many points to the Reformation Faith which Roman traditionalists rue to this day. And while many priests themselves have run up huge legal settlements for their frolics, the Church itself still nominally hails virtue as a virtue – that’s more than can be said for degenerate Protestantism. But Rome’s penchant for elevating it’s own selective reading of church tradition as the voice of God equal to scripture, it’s estimation of itself as THE Church Catholic to the exclusion of all others, and it’s demand for unquestioned loyalty still undermine the foundation of historic Anglicanism – Grace Alone, Faith Alone, Scripture Alone, Christ Alone, and the Glory of God alone.

If these have not changed, then the answer must lie in the fact that today’s Anglicans have changed.

Anglicanism began as the church of the whole people of Great Britain. It was a public faith intended to disciple a nation and leave no soul without a spiritual shepherd. Over time, it became the church mainly of the elite and not the people. Especially in the United States, the Episcopal Church was known as the “Republican Party at Prayer”. In the practical working lexicon of American Religion, the word “Anglican” almost became the synonym of “Anglophile”. It is only in the Global South where Anglicanism is perhaps disassociated from the implications of privilege, pecksniffery, and the love of all things British with Christianity included somewhere at the bottom of a long list of cultural peculiarities  if absolutely necessary, that is.

The fact that individuals either in the Anglican Communion or on it’s fringes in the “continuing churches” would gladly make this move shows how far Anglicanism has come and signals the need for a drastic reforging of the Anglican Identity in the West. Anglicans who understand the biblical, theological, and cultural significance of their brand of Reformed, Evangelical and Protestant Catholicism, and who wish to see it prosper in the coming days must make a break with image of Anglicans as elitist snobs. Anglicans must reassert their fundamental theological contributions to the Christian faith and must be known for their love for all souls, rich and poor alike. It may even signal the need to eschew the names “Anglican” and “Episcopal” if people are to focus on their contemporary mission. It definitely means tomorrow’s Anglican (by whatever name) is known for their work with the poor, the addicted, and the lost as the Baptist, Methodist, and Gospel Mission is known for that vocation today.

The Book of Common Prayer in tomorrow’s Anglicanism must not be the worship guide reserved for the service which only the aged attend. Vernacular versions of the BCP in contemporary (though not insipid) language with their lectionaries and catechisms must become the engine of corporate discipleship for coming generations once again. The goal of this revived Anglicanism is not to reintroduce Afternoon Tea in the New World but instead – as Cranmer aimed – to disciple whole families and nations into Christ, to live in His abundant grace. Because the demise of Anglicanism began with the renunciation of it’s Articles of Religion, a revived Anglicanism must likewise revive its confessional commitments along evangelical lines and enforce subscription to them and catechize in light of them.

But not all Anglicans have changed.

There are some Anglicans for  whom the words “evangelical catholic” are neither a conundrum or a paradox when used to describe their confessional, Prayer Book Protestantism. And today, they feel even more disenfranchised by yesterday’s developments. Increasingly their new found home, whether  in the ACNA or a ‘continuing church,’ strikes them as less “reformed” and “evangelical” than they might have wished.

If this describes you, you are welcome to join us here. By the grace of God, we remain committed to the Biblical Faith witnessed to by the Apostles, Prophets, Martyrs, and Reformers.

In these  trying times, may God give you clear direction.

In these challenging days, may the collapsing foundations all around us cause us to rebuild on He who alone is eternity’s sure foundation,  Jesus Christ (Matthew 7:24-27).

Please contact us if we may be of service!

In Christ,

+Chuck Huckaby
Reformed Evangelical Synod of America

(Note: Normally celebrated on the 18th of October, St. Luke is transferred this year due to falling on a Sunday.)

Luke wrote one of the major portions of the New Testament, a two-volume work comprising the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. In the two books he shows the parallel between the life of Christ and that of the Church. He is the only Gentile Christian among the Gospel writers. Tradition holds him to be a native of Antioch, and Paul calls him “our beloved physician.”

Luke appears in Acts during Paul’s second journey, remains at Philippi for several years until Paul returns from his third journey, accompanies Paul to Jerusalem and remains near him when he is imprisoned in Caesarea. During these two years, Luke had time to seek information and interview persons who had known Jesus. He accompanied Paul on the dangerous journey to Rome where he was a faithful companion.

COLLECT
Almighty God, you inspired your servant Luke the physician to set forth in the Gospel the love and healing power of your Son. Graciously continue in your Church this love and power to heal, to the praise and glory of your Name. We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

READINGS
Isaiah 43: 8-13 or Isaiah 35: 5-8
Psalm 124
2 Timothy 4: 5-11
Luke 10: 1-9 or Luke 1: 1-4; 24: 44-53

Homily for the Lord’s Day
The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity – October 18, 2009

BCP Proper 26b
Numbers 11: 16, 24-29 – Psalm 51b – (Philippians 1: 12-18) – Mark 9: 38-50

(Note: The epistle from Philippians is used as the Evening Prayer reading this week in the local congregation in which the following homily is being preached, and thus is not figured in to the following text.)

Jealousy is, undoubtedly, one of the oldest negative human emotions. We only need to open our Bibles a few pages – page 12, in my principal study Bible for example – to encounter the story of Cain and Abel. The sense of jealousy, self-superiority, and ultimately self-justification that led to the first murder has remained a rampant ‘inspiration’ among our frail and fallen race ever since. Today, in our readings from Sacred Scripture, we are once again reminded of the impact of jealousy – even on the greatest of God’s followers. At the same time, God’s gracious sovereignty is demonstrated in both our reading from Numbers and our Gospel passage from Mark.

In our Old Testament reading, God instructs Moses to gather ‘seventy men who are recognized as elders and leaders of Israel’ and to bring them to the Tabernacle so that they may be filled with the Holy Spirit. The Lord knew that Moses was being overwhelmed by the constant battle to oversee the Hebrew masses… their ongoing petty disputes, arguments, and their ever-present complaints against God must have been horribly trying for him. He needed aid, and the Lord graciously provided. He promised that he would fill those selected with the power of the Spirit so that their wisdom and discernment might be made more and more perfect as it was manifest among the people.

On the following day, when Moses brought the seventy to the Tabernacle, two of them stayed back and did not come with the other elders. They are identified in our text as Eldad and Medad. Why did they stay back in the camp? There are several theories, but the most common among Christian commentators is that they recognized their unworthiness for such a great honor and chose to remain behind. Regardless of the reason, however, for their absence, God had other plans.

In truth, none of the seventy was truly ‘worthy’ of the honor, just as none of us are ‘worthy’ of God’s grace when left to our own devices. No matter how ‘worthy’ we feel that we are, our true, base nature remains a fallen one that is redeemed not by our own thoughts, but by the washing and the Word of our Lord. Perhaps the elders who went to the tabernacle with Moses recognized that it was God who was making them worthy. Perhaps they had witnessed enough during the time of the Plagues, the Passover, and the Exodus itself that they learned to place their reliance on God’s power as opposed to their own. Perhaps Eldad and Medad were so self-conscious that they knew they were unworthy, and that nothing they could do could make them worthy of God’s great gift. It didn’t matter. In the moment when the Spirit came to rest upon the others, the Spirit also entered into the minds and hearts of Eldad and Medad, and began moving them to speak the wisdom, love, judgment, and mercy of God among the people of Israel in the camp.

Perhaps in that moment, Eldad and Medad had an experience not unlike John Wesley described in his journals. By 1738, Wesley was a man on the brink of defeat. He had engaged in a highly unsuccessful mission in Colonial Georgia, and had returned to England under a deep cloud of suspicion. His experiences prompted him to pen in his journal:

I who went to America to convert others was never myself converted to God.

In the months leading up to the defining experience of his life, Wesley began meeting with Moravians in England. He had observed their quiet confidence in the midst of a storm at sea during his journey to America, and as a result became somewhat enamored with their inner strength. In early March, Wesley met with Peter Bohler. Concerning this meeting, he wrote:

…by [Peter Bohler], in the hand of the great God, I was, on Sunday, the fifth, clearly convinced of unbelief, of the want of that faith whereby alone we are saved. Immediately it struck into my mind, ‘Leave off preaching. How can you preach to others, who have not faith yourself?’ I asked Bohler whether he thought I should leave it off or not. He answered, ‘By no means.’ I asked, ‘But what can I preach?’ He said, ‘Preach faith till you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith.’ Accordingly, Monday the sixth, I began preaching this new doctrine, though my soul started back from the work.

For weeks he tried preaching this ‘new doctrine’, but for whatever reason Wesley still found himself unsatisfied. In places he seemed to be successful, but in Churches he was having a harder time of it. Congregation after congregation forbade him to preach. In the week leading up to his experience at Aldersgate, he wrote that he had ‘continual sorrow and heaviness’ in his heart.

On Wednesday, May 24th, however, something changed.

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

Here was a man, steeped in the Scriptures, filled with a great desire to proclaim the Gospel to the unsaved, who himself had trouble believing what he had heard and preached. For whatever reason, John Wesley had held himself back, just as Eldad and Medad did in the wilderness. And yet, even in the midst of Wesley’s unwillingness, the Holy Spirit began a new, transforming work in him that would change the Church of England, and ultimately the face of Christianity in the New World. He began to find strength and certainty – not in himself, but in the Holy Spirit. Just as Eldad and Medad stepped out into the Camp of the Israelites with boldness, Wesley now embarked on a new journey of faith, a deeper one; one that had the power not only to transform the self, but others, through the compassionate mercy of God.

Of course, Eldad and Medad had their detractors. In fact, they had a very powerful detractor, namely Joshua, Moses’ assistant. Joshua, who would later go on to lead the Israelites, viewed himself as more than just an aide – he was Moses’ chief defender. Here were two usurpers to Moses’ authority; men of questionable faithfulness who had not come as directed to the assembly in the Tabernacle. Joshua, being a man of great stature as a warrior, perhaps places too much stock in human strength, and not enough in the concept of Divine Strength.

Moses reaction mirrors Jesus’ in our Gospel reading today when the apostles forbade a man to minister in Christ’s name. In this instance, the Apostles – whose jealousy serves as a fiery undercurrent to their report – fare far worse than Joshua; at least Joshua asked Moses about the situation before taking matters into his own hands! The Apostles had no such qualms, and found themselves harshly rebuked by Christ: “Don’t stop him!” was the reply they received. It was, in essence, the reply that Joshua received too.

The core lesson we need to take from our readings today is that God, not man, determines who his servants are. We may recognize them, ordain them, send them out… but it is God who places the Spirit within his people to accomplish great things. The same God who does this, gives to his people guidelines for recognizing who will be rightly filled with the Spirit for mission and ministry – he did in the Old Testament, and he does in the New.

For two thousand years, the Church has called and sent ministers of Word and Sacrament to meet the needs of the faithful. Sadly, the Church has not always done the best job of living by the Biblical guidelines for calling and sending people forth. At times, this has necessitated some rather unconventional ministries in the Church – ministries like John Wesley’s, or Martin Luther’s. These men, whose hearts were filled with the Gospel message proclaimed by Paul and the Church Fathers, often found themselves shut out of pulpits. Each resorted to different means to ensure that the Gospel of Grace was proclaimed among the people. Luther’s solution was, undoubtedly, the more institutional of the two, but Wesley’s was perhaps more dramatic. Though he never ceased to be a priest of the Church of England, Wesley often found himself and his evangelistic meetings to be in direct competition with the ‘accepted’ worship of the English state in the fields on the outskirts of the villages and towns he visited. He was considered – variously – wacky, novel, disobedient, and undoubtedly a whole host of other negative attributes were held by his detractors. And yet, in the midst of a cold, barren, and at times faithless Church of England, God had chose the voice of this humble, broken man to be a great vehicle for revival and faith in his homeland and beyond.

Had the apostles found that their competitor was preaching a doctrine that did not focus on Jesus Christ; had Moses discovered that Eldad and Medad were attempting to prophesy in a manner inconsistent with God’s revelation to the Hebrew people; had Wesley’s bishop determined that he was preaching a doctrine not in accord with the faith of the Scriptures, then all of them would have been fully within their rights to stand against the teachers, preachers, and prophets that sprung up in their respective day. More often than not, however, jealousy – as Moses cites to Joshua – is the reason to run ‘competitors’ out of town, not fidelity to the truth.

As believers, and as members of our own local congregation and our own Synodical fellowship, we must be sure and certain of what we believe, but at the same time we must be careful not to ‘un-church’ others who are preaching the sufficiency of Jesus Christ for salvation. We may have differing ways of approaching the message, but if the message is, at its root, the same, then we are called to lift our hearts and hands to God in thanksgiving for his providential provision of preachers of the truth, not to decry them as usurpers or threats to the kingdom in a sense of jealousy or envy when we consider their accomplishments.

Does this mean we should ‘give up’ our own distinctive and directions? No… on matters which are not essential to salvation, we are free to select practices that seem best and right, provided they are not directly opposed to the Word of God. Our liturgy and ritual, or others lack thereof, may be an important matter to us – but the most important matter must be the answer that is given when we give an account of our faith. Do we attempt to conform the Christian message to ourselves, or do we embrace the Christian message and allow it to conform us to Christ?

If the answer is the former, then God help us… but if it is the latter, God has already helped us as he helped Eldad and Medad, as he helped the Apostles, and as he has helped countless believers throughout the ages. To our good and gracious God –who ever stands ready to warm the heart and inspire the mind– be glory and honor, now and forever. Amen.