Tuesday Trainings : Diaconal Ministry - 1

Deacons are a gift from the exalted Savior to the Church. Their work is to take care of the practical needs of the flock so that the pastors may “devote themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word.” (Acts 6:4)[1] They are to oversee the deeds of mercy both to the church and the community around the church.  It is the only other holy office in the New Testament church in addition to the elder.  The diaconal ministry of the church frees the church's teaching and preaching, it validates the church's teaching and preaching, and it accompanies the church's teaching and preaching. [2] It is thus a very important office of the church. As George C. Fuller puts it, "To denigrate the high office of deacon is practical heresy". [3]

In part 1 of his diaconal ministry training, Tim Keller, the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian, well known for his books on the diaconate like Resources for Deacons and Ministries of Mercy, develops a theology of mercy ministry. He begins by considering the well known passage of Scripture dealing with the story of the good Samaritan. Keller makes some initial observations on the text like the overarching category for all that the Samaritan did, namely, mercy, noting down the deeds of the Samaritan as deeds of mercy, namely, meeting medical needs, financial needs and providing shelter, and finally noting the common thread among all the needs he ministered to, namely, human or felt needs.

With this introduction, Keller begins to lay a theological foundation for mercy ministry. He begins by defining diaconal ministry as the meeting of felt human needs through deeds and word in the power and love of the kingdom.  Keller defines a need as a dependency distorted and aggravated by alienation from God. He then goes to Genesis 3 to show the four levels of need due to four levels of alienation that resulted from the Fall. Firstly, we are spiritually alienated from God (Gen 3:8), resulting in psychological alienation causing guilt and shame (Gen 3:10), leading to social alienation from each other (Gen 3:7, 12), culminating in physical alienation (Gen 3:17-19). He moves onto show how the gospel heals every level of need, partially in this age and completely in the age to come. This healing is the essence of the kingdom of God and spreading it is the ministry of the church. The diaconal ministry is crucial in spreading this healing, though partial, especially in the needs arising from the physical alienation caused by the fall.

Diaconal Ministry - 1  Listen  |  Download 

Footnotes  

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[1] Deacons, Heritage Baptist Church, Owensboro

[2] Ronald Pearce, God's Gift of Deacons

[3] Timothy J. Keller, "The High Calling of Deacon", Resources for Deacons, Pg11

Friday Features : Women and The Word - 2

Elsie Newell will be our featured teacher through out this month on Fridays, as she teaches the importance of the Word of God, especially for women. She comes to us with a wealth of experience, a true heart for the Lord, and a desire to help women understand the importance of loving, studying, and teaching the Word of God. She has been in ministry for over 30 years; teaching and leading Bible studies. Currently she teaches a weekly study to the women in her church, another to drug addicted women at a local shelter in Anderson, and a third to teenage girls. She has also written a number of small group Bible studies, one of which was published in 2008, The Amazing Promises of God. Elsie has been married to Newt for 50 years, and has 3 children and 12 grandchildren, who she helps home school. She is a member of Christ Reformed Church in Anderson, SC.

Deeply practical, she speaks from a rich experience of knowing God through the Scriptures. Her main thrust is on the discipline of meditation. In the first part, she introduced the discipline of meditation with an emphasis on the wondrous end of meditation, namely knowing the wonderful God of the Scriptures. In this second part, she turns her attention to 2 Peter 1:3, specifically on God's promises and how to apply them in our lives.

God’s Precious and Magnificent Promises  Listen  |  Download 

Tuesday Trainings : Redemptive-Historical Preaching - 3

Redemptive-historical preaching is preaching every passage of Scripture, in light of its redemptive-historical context, showing how each passage relates to the grace of God which is ultimately revealed in Jesus Christ. This Christ-centered approach to preaching is much needed if one desires to see gospel-centered ministries flourish in our day and age. 

In his first part, Dr. Bryan Chapell, president of Covenant Theological Seminary, spoke about the necessity of Christ-centered preaching, if we are to be true to Christ’s own hermeneutic. Then, last week, he began to talk about how that Christ centeredness can be excavated from all the Scriptures. He talked particularly about that grace message in its various forms that either prepares for or predicts or reflects or results from the work of Christ. Dr. Chapell also discussed macro-interpretation and micro-interpretation. A “macro” way of looking at the text would be when we ask where a text fits in the grand scheme of Genesis to Revelation. “Micro” ways of looking at the text involve when we ask whether there is a doctrinal statement there that is reflective of the grace of God or whether there are relationships, either of God toward His people or them toward one another, relational reflections of God’s grace that will ultimately be more fully represented in the work of Christ.

In this third part on Redemptive-Historical preaching, Dr.Chapell moves to the issue of using redemptive principles in the application of Scripture in order to provide biblical motivation and enablement.  Dr.Chapell explores the many dominant themes that come from the excavating the grace from all of Scriptures and discusses how the Bible motivates believers to obedience and holiness. He discusses at quite a good length, what could rightly be described as a Christ-centered theology of change. Very insightful and beneficial for preachers to preach Christ-centered sermons with powerful application of Scripture that is inline with redemptive principles.

Christ-Centered Interpretation for Redemptive Application Read |  Listen  |  Download 

Friday Features : Women and The Word - 1

Elsie Newell will be our featured teacher through out this month on Fridays, as she teaches the importance of the Word of God, especially for women. She comes to us with a wealth of experience, a true heart for the Lord, and a desire to help women understand the importance of loving, studying, and teaching the Word of God. She has been in ministry for over 30 years; teaching and leading Bible studies. Currently she teaches a weekly study to the women in her church, another to drug addicted women at a local shelter in Anderson, and a third to teenage girls. She has also written a number of small group Bible studies, one of which was published in 2008, The Amazing Promises of God. Elsie has been married to Newt for 50 years, and has 3 children and 12 grandchildren, who she helps home school. She is a member of Christ Reformed Church in Anderson, SC.

Deeply practical, she speaks from a rich experience of knowing God through the Scriptures. Her main thrust is on the discipline of meditation. In this first part, she introduces the discipline of meditation with an emphasis on the wondrous end of meditation, namely knowing the wonderful God of the Scriptures. She wants this and this alone to be our motivation behind our meditation of the Scriptures. Her warmth, wonder and even her wittiness are so evident in this presentation, revealing her humble, genuine and joyful godliness, grown out of years of knowing God through the Scriptures.

The Importance of God’s Word   Listen  |  Download 

Wednesday Word : Jesus and The Fourth Commandment

The fourth commandment to observe the Sabbath is one over which Christians are divided. Some believe in a literal observance of it as a day, while others believe it is the spiritual meaning of it that we should understand and observe. Perhaps the group of Christians who were best known for their defense of a literal observation of it  as on the Lord’s Day were the Puritans. All forms of Puritan religion – Anglican, Presbyterian, Congregational and Particular Baptist, unanimously confessed the Lord’s Day as the Christian Sabbath, a day for remembering not only the rest the Lord took when He completed creation but also the deliverance of His people in Christ.  It is a day for taking rest from all other work, to delight in the finished work of the Lord, both in His creation and redemption. However this understanding of the Lord’s Day has been criticized by many as mere Puritan legalism. While acknowledging that some lesser known of the Puritans did write very legalistic works on Christian Sabbath, which even Puritan giants like John Owen detested, if properly understood, Puritan Sabbatarianism does have biblical grounds.

To explore this, the pertinent question to be asked is what was the relationship of our Lord Jesus Christ to the fourth commandment. For invariably, the argument of those who oppose Puritan Sabbatarianism is that Jesus Christ did not keep the fourth commandment literally. Moreover, they argue, He was displaying the need to keep it only spiritually, by His many healings on the Sabbath day. Is this argument an exegetically valid one? Was our Lord teaching His people to not keep it literally, but only spiritually? Is the Sabbath merely a type or shadow of the eschatological rest in Christ, which His believers have a foretaste of even now? Would Jesus view Sabbatarianism as legalism? Did Jesus Christ repeal the Sabbath?

Dr. Robert R. Gonzales Jr., the academic dean and a professor at Reformed Baptist Seminary, expounds Matthew 12:1-14 to explain what Jesus Christ really taught about the Sabbath. He demonstrates how Jesus Christ not only upholds the fourth commandment, but also demonstrates the true significance of it and restores its intended purpose.

Jesus and The Fourth Commandment  - 1  Listen  |  Download 

Jesus and The Fourth Commandment  - 2  Listen  |  Download 

Tuesday Trainings : Redemptive-Historical Preaching - 2

Redemptive-historical preaching is preaching every passage of Scripture, in light of its redemptive-historical context, showing how each passage relates to the grace of God which is ultimately revealed in Jesus Christ. This Christ-centered approach to preaching is much needed if one desires to see gospel-centered ministries flourish in our day and age In his first part last week, Dr. Bryan Chapell, president of Covenant Theological Seminary, introduced the redemptive-historical approach to preaching, its necessity, what it entails and how it is different from other approaches.

In his second part, Dr.Chapell deals with developing Redemptive-Historical sermons. He begins with a three-step basic process for preaching Christ from any text in the Bible. He then discusses interpretive approaches to be employed in Christ-centered preaching. His third and final section in this study is dealing with expounding historical narratives with Christ-centered lenses. He concludes with recognizing the entire bible as comprised of texts falling into four main categories  – 1. Predictive of the Work of Christ, 2. Preparatory of the Work of Christ, 3. Reflective of the Work of Christ and 4. Resultant of the Work of Christ.

Developing Redemptive Messages   Listen |  Download  |  Read

Friday Features : Reformed Theology – 12

Lecture 12, Perseverance of the Saints :

Can people who are saved lose their salvation? If not, then how do we explain those people who have fallen away? In this final message of this series on Reformed Theology, Dr. R.C Sproul thinks about these questions as he looks at “Perseverance of the Saints.”

Video :

Audio : Listen

Thursday Theology : Biblical Theology Vindicated

Graeme Goldsworthy, Australian Anglican and Old Testament scholar is well known for his passion for biblical Theology. Goldsworthy was formerly the lecturer in Old Testament, biblical theology and hermeneutics at Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia.  Speaking for the Gheens Lectures, delivered on March 18-20, 2008, at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Goldsworthy spoke first on the necessity and viability of biblical Theology. Goldsworthy’s lecture has four points – 1. Biblical Theology and the doctrine of Scripture, 2. The role of the gospel in biblical theology, 3. Challenges to biblical theology and 4. Summary conclusion: The necessity of biblical theology.  

Goldsworthy defines the discipline of biblical theology as follows : “Biblical theology is the study of how every text in the Bible relates to every other text in the Bible. It is the study of the matrix of divine revelation. At the heart of the gospel is the person of Jesus Christ; he is the word of God come in the flesh. The nature of the gospel is such that it demands that it be at the centre of the biblical message. Biblical theology is, then, the study of how every text in the Bible relates to Jesus and his gospel. Thus we start with Christ so that we may end with Christ. Biblical theology is Christological, for its subject matter is the Scriptures as God's testimony to Christ. It is therefore, from start to finish, a study of Christ. Biblical theology is much more than simply relating the events of the story in chronological order, even if accompanied by theological comment in the process. It needs to be analytical of the theological dynamics within the big story. What is the nature of the progressiveness of revelation? Is it a gradual dawning of the light, or is it a series of discreet steps? What is the relationship between the two Testaments? In biblical theology there needs to be the kind of theological reflection that would help us to see the great recurring themes, both in their unity and their diversity. We observe the way in which the prophets deliberately recapitulate the earlier history of redemption in their eschatological projections. We seek to analyze the dynamics of prophetic fulfilment and typology. biblical theology involves first of all the close reading or exegesis of the parts in order to understand the theological perspectives contained. These must then be synthesized into an understanding of the unity of the theology of the whole canon. The wider synthesis will then affect our understanding of the significance of the parts. But, why should we have any confidence that such a task can be realized? Such confidence can only come from the gospel itself. The writers of the four Gospels point the way by their handling of distinct aspects of the relationship of the person and ministry of Jesus to the Old Testament Scriptures..”

This gospel-centered approach to biblical theology is what makes listening to Goldsworthy so profitable. Gaining insights from him would lead any pastor or even a lay Christian to see the “the coherence of the canon, its inner unity”, making our doctrine of scripture robust and mature. When one learns how everything in scripture is centered on the gospel and tastes the integrity of the canon in declaring the one good news of God, one cannot help but bow in rich adoration of the One Mind behind this wondrous Book. A high view of the Scriptures thus depend on one’s appreciation of the coherence of the canon. Goldsworthy notes, “our doctrine of Scripture, to be robust and maturing, needs to involve more than an abstract concept of authority and inspiration. It needs shape, and it is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ that gives it that shape. In this regard hermeneutics intersects with dogmatics, and both intersect with biblical theology. We cannot really have any useful concept of the authority of the Bible unless we have some notion of what the authoritative word is telling us. The doctrine of Scripture as the written word of God must focus on both authority and structure. The doctrine of the authority of the Bible demands the task of biblical theology, which is to seek to understand the structure of Scripture. “

This is a very excellent introduction to and vindication of this very vital theological discipline of biblical theology. Properly done, it would help Evangelicals regain an understanding of the gospel-centered structure of the Scriptures.  

The Necessity and Viability of Biblical Theology Listen |  Download  |  Read