On Dec 4th, the College & 20s group will be watching the documentary, Collision, at a home in Wheaton. “Documentary” can remind some of us of opportunities to take a nap in High School Social Studies courses. This is certainly not that kind of movie. It captures Christopher Hitchens and Doug Wilson’s travels through three cities as they discussed and debated the question, Is Christianity Good for the World?.
Hitchens’s take:
Christianity is a wicked cult, and it’s high time we left it behind.
And Wilson:
“There are two tenets of atheism. One, There is no God. Two, I hate him.”
We’re looking forward to this and hope that it kicks up helpful questions and a great discussion. We’ll have more on this later, but here’s a trailer for now:
You can also go to the website to watch the first 13 minutes of the movie and other interviews.
It’s Reformation Day. Today we remember October 31st, 1517, when Martin Luther nailed a document to the door of the Wittenberg church (All Saints Church). It was a list of “95 theses” for debate.
Johann Tetzel was raising money to built St. Peter’s basilica and the Sistine Chapel. Ceilings like that don’t come without a cost. He told people to give money so that they could buy forgiveness for themselves and others. In place of genuine repentance, they could pay and have their sins forgiven – past, present, and future. You could even buy forgiveness for your dead relatives who were in purgatory. His theology?… “When a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.” In posting the theses, Luther was reminding us that when Jesus calls us to repentance, he’s not asking for spare change; he’s asking for our lives. All of life is repentance. And our money will not purchase our forgiveness. We need nothing less than Christ’s death in our place. And that’s what God has freely given us in his Son.
In Stephen Nichols’ words, this is ‘how a monk and a mallet changed the world.’ The Reformation was not an innovation. It was in many ways a recovery of the heart of the Christian faith. It was a return to the astonishing and joyful news that in Christ, God is reconciling sinners to himself. We don’t get in on this deal by filling a bucket with coins; the price is paid by the blood of the cross. We’re saved by grace alone, through faith in Christ alone. A central lesson of the reformation is that the church needs to keep the gospel central and the peripherals peripheral. Luther’s thesis 62: The church’s true treasure is the gospel.
We share with Luther the joy of the gospel. We love the reformation and celebrate it because we love the gospel and celebrate new life in Christ. It’s easy to assume the gospel and let other things become the center of our lives and community. That’s a tragedy.
Tetzel’s message is that our pocket change counts for repentance. Luther reminds us that it’s about the heart; and it’s all of life. Tetzel’s message is that we can purchase forgiveness. Christ’s message is that it’s already bought.
“When Christoph Römhild, a Lutheran pastor in Hamburg, Germany, sent Carnegie Mellon Ph.D. student Chris Harrison a list of 63,779 cross-references between the Bible’s 1,189 chapters, the two became enthralled with elegantly showing the interconnected nature of Scripture. Each bar along the horizontal axis represents a chapter, with the length determined by the number of verses. (Books alternate in color between white and light gray.) Colors represent the distance between references. Graphic by Chris Harrison, Carnegie Mellon University” – Christianity Today
This is a cool picture, designed by a Ph.D student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, giving visual representation to the interconnected nature of the Bible. Sometimes, as Christians, we may be asking “What does the Old Testament have to do with the New?” or “Why should I care about the Jewish Law?” This graphic points out a wonderful and deep truth; the New Testament is built upon the Old. The Bible is one book and one story and it’s all about Jesus.
Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third dayrise from the dead, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” – Luke 24:44-49
The College/20s group will be having its fall bonfire this Friday night (October 30th) at 8:30pm. This will be a great time to hang out. Feel free to bring friends along. This has potential to be a great outreach event because, along with s’mores and great conversations, we will be spending time meditating on the Gospel and what it means for all of our lives. S’mores, bonfire, friends, Gospel. That sounds like a good night to me!
This past Sunday we briefly considered what might be the most dominant “religion” in America, at least among teenagers and college students. It’s called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism: God created us but isn’t really involved in our lives unless we have a problem with which we want help (deism). The goal of life is to feel good about oneself (therapeutic). God, along with what most religions teach, wants us to be nice, good, and fair to others – and if we are, we go to heaven when we die (moralistic).
In contrast (thankfully), the gospel tells us that God is not the god of a deist: He not only created the world, but he upholds all things through Jesus, who is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Heb 1:3). The gospel is also not moralistic: Because we are not nice, good, and fair to others, we therefore would not have the pleasant prospect of “going to heaven when we die.” Thankfully, God has taken care of our biggest problem, even when we didn’t see it as such, in sacrificing his Son to cleanse us from our sin. And the gospel is not therapeutic: Through Jesus death and resurrection, he has set us free to no longer have our central goal as feeling good about ourselves, but to magnify God’s value by finding our joy in Christ.
Lest we drift away from the gospel and become moralistic, therapeutic deists, “we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard” (Heb 2:1)
We’ll continue to see the greatness of Christ and the gospel through the letter of Hebrews this Sunday. We’ll be in 2:5-18.
If you would like to read a great article describing the challenge of “moralistic therapeutic deism” further, you can go here.
There is always a lot of transition at this time of the year for the College & 20s ministry. Many of you have recently taken off for the school year after being with us this summer. You’ll be missed and we look forward to seeing you when you’re in town. Others of you are back from the summer months and are going to be joining us at Grace Church of DuPage for another school year. We’re glad you’re with us again and look forward to growing in the gospel together. Some of you have stumbled across this blog because you’ve recently visited with us and are trying to learn a bit more of what we’re all about. We would love to get to know you better and help you get plugged into our community.
Beginning this coming Sunday (Sept 6), we’re going to begin a study of Hebrews. We’re really excited about this and are looking forward to having our faith and hope bolstered by seeing, week after week, the greatness of Christ. We have much in common with those who heard these words first, and the Spirit is still speaking through them today. If you would like to begin thinking and growing from Hebrews ahead of time, please do so – you can read the first chapter for Sunday. Since Hebrews is really, in many ways, a sermon, I’d encourage you to find some time soon to sit down and read it straight through and out loud in one shot.
Our hope in this study is that we would pay much closer attention to the gospel and the surpassing greatness of Christ so that we would not drift away (2:1), but rather run the race set before us (12:1).
Last Sunday we ended again with a series of 4 questions designed to help us do the work of applying the message of John 15:1-8 to our hearts and souls during this week. As promised, here they are on the blog in case you weren’t able to get them down in time:
1. Are you abiding in Jesus and how do you know?
2. If you answered yes to the above, what is your motivation for abiding in Jesus?
3. Do you see prayer as essential or just optional to the process of bearing fruit for God’s glory?
4. When you “bear fruit” (even the commonplace fruits that we see every day) who do you give the credit to?
On Sunday morning, we ended with 4 questions to reflect on in light of what we learned in John 17:20-26. In case some of you weren’t able to write them down in time or can’t remember, here they are for you to reflect on over the next several days.
1. Do you experience an increasing ability to love, serve and prefer other Christians above yourself?
2. Would any non-Christians know of the reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection from your life or the life of this college group? Would any non-Christians see and experience God’s love incarnated through your life?
3. Does your experience of the glory of God through Jesus affect your life in any way each day?
The Resurgence has just published in e-book format a new book called Fight Clubs: Gospel-Centered Discipleshipand made the PDF available for free download on their website. Jonathan Dodson is the lead pastor of Austin City Life Church and heads up the PlantR church planting network. In looking through this book, it seems like it is an awesome resource to help us “fight for our faith and the faith of our neighbor”. I’d encourage everyone but especially the College and 20’s men to download this and make a point of reading it before the new school year starts!
As we come up to the end of Calvin’s 500th birthday month, I hope that some of you have had your taste whetted to dive in an study Calvin’s own work. If you’re not yet interested, here’s a quote which should be sure to motivate:
“But how can the mind be aroused to taste the divine goodness without at the same time being wholly kindled to love God in return? For truly, that abundant sweetness which God has stored up for those who fear Him cannot be known without at the same time powerfully moving us. and once anyone has been moved by it, it utterly ravishes him and draws him to itself.”
As we come up to the end of Calvin’s 500th birthday month, I hope that some of you have had your taste whetted to dive in an study Calvin’s own work. If you’re not yet interested, here’s a quote which should be sure to motivate:
