The Body, Baseball and Entertainment

Dodgers All-Star ball player Manny Ramirez and his 50-game suspension for the use of human growth hormones splattered the news yesterday. Talk has focused on how long it will take for the fans to forgive and forget the drug-happy antics of the entertainers on the diamond and get back to the game. Concerns about the HGH sins of Major League Baseball will last about 30 seconds. Romans 1: 22-24 tells us the first thing to go, to spin out of control downward in degradation, is the body. Apart from grace, for ball players, dancers, doctors, students, rockers, truckers, teachers and more, the first thing to go is the body. Lusting, abusing, killing, and tattooing all line up and take a number. Sins of the body are the opening chapter telling the tale of paganism and idolatry in the church and the world. Want to see worship of the creature? Look at the body. And as well, at the opposite end with respect to help, hope and renewal, getting rid of bodily sins is the toughest thing; it's the last for full, final and total sanctification---Romans 7:24, O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Entertainment and bodily sins can easily go hand in hand. Sinful man, tied as he is to the sins of the body, can't fight his way out of a bodily paper bag. Ball players need Jesus. The fans need Jesus. We all need Jesus. Deliverance from the flesh only comes by submission to Jesus. Romans 7:25 I thank God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!

G. Mark Sumpter

The Communion of the Saints

“All saints, that are united to Jesus Christ their Head, by His Spirit, and by faith, have fellowship with Him in His grace, sufferings, death, resurrection, and glory: and, being united to one another in love, they communion in each other's gifts and graces...” That's part of Chapter 26 Of the Communion of Saints, found in the Westminster Confession of Faith.

Newer publications on the doctrine of the Trinity have brought about focus to Christian community. God is one God, who exists in three persons, and these three are the same in substance and equal in power and glory. Maybe you remember the spiritually rich, traditional hymn, “Holy, Holy, Holy...God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity.”

Heeding the importance of and good gift of genuinely connected godly relationships cannot be emphasized enough. Too easily we go along in life stringing loose acquaintances together, one after another, like pearls on a string, and we're satisfied with this low-level acquaintance necklace. One specific danger of the loose string of acquaintances is how we're disconnected from one another in our day to day roles. If we're only living at the acquaintance level, then we'll miss the other community aspects of who we are as husband, wife, mother, father, welder, homemaker, grandparent, painter, cab driver, girl scout volunteer, elder, coach, music teacher, student, gardener, coin collector or what have you. Often we're only known in one role. But we have many roles, and those roles overlap. Working at our wider, more thorough connections in life with their multifaceted applications takes effort. We are given to settle for the splintered approach knowing one another in one safe, most-often acknowledged, and self-protected role. We like our freedom. The Trinity shows us both the oneness in being, who God is, and oneness in doing, what He does. For us, being together and doing things together is the work of a lifetime.

G. Mark Sumpter

Fuss Over Politicization

It's been newsy for the past 30-40 years that ethical issues for our everday living have become politicized. The Supreme Court and Capitol Hill are the sole gatekeepers of right and wrong, and therefore, unjust actions by the powers that be leave Christians without recourse and hope. Politicization, we are told, gives muscle and leverage for the agenda of the unfaithful professing church, the unbelieving media outlets and the wrong-headed legislation on the part of those at the state and federal levels. I fail to see the concern over this. It's only showing us what the Bible affirms. Issues and practice are made law (legislative and judicial government) and reported on (media) and therefore, matters are politicized very naturally because life falls out of, stems from, God's image in man. Dogs bark and cats meow. Man bears the imago religio, the mark and image of being a religious creature. Man cannot help but name (Genesis 2:19), decree (Daniel 3:1-7) and legislate (John 19:1-7). And it's always plainly and inescapably done morally, religiously. The fact that the realms of corporate ethics, federalism, education, and bio-medical research and practice, to name a few, snatch and use the state-craft and political activity of proposed, evaluated, debated, and eventually regulated law only makes the line in the sand clear. Everything is politics, but politics is not everything. We're being shown once again that God is good to provide His restraint so that man does not go his full way into sin, via God's providential watch care and the conscience of man, and at the same time, we're seeing that our God is good, showing us the commission to preach, teach and evangelize. The executive, legislative and judicial branches of public office in the USA need to be confronted with Jesus Christ and Him crucified. If anything, the politicization of issues gives leverage to the Christian. The line in the sand is telling: enmity, division, morality, man's autonomy, God's law, and the gospel. Put me in coach, I'm ready to play. Man is either for Jesus or against Him. Politicization of issues reminds us of the church's primary calling: God's worship, preaching His Word and administering the Sacraments. We either bow to God or we bow to Satan and unbelieving man.

G. Mark Sumpter

Including the Douglas Fir

For eight years I worked alongside of Pastor Richard P. Kaufmann in Escondido, California. The number one thing he taught me was gratefulness. He stood firm on passages like Luke 7, Luke 15, Romans 1, and the New Testament letters with the opening remarks that the apostle Paul made regarding the local church. I will always remember Dick's wise, sincere and faithful model of thankfulness in each and every circumstance. This is especially needful----to the 10th power it is especially needful----in times of theological controversy and church squabbles. If you haven't read Ken Sande's The Peacemaker, shut it down right here, and pick up the book. His opening chapter is a line-drive to straightaway center, well beyond the 410 foot fence. You have to read him. In a manner of speaking, the Holy Spirit birthed that book from Sande's keyboard.

In my years of reading and life experience, when it comes to controversy, men are more dominant in one of two areas: they either see the forest or they see the trees. The forest man is the big picture guy. He's good at offering help in the bigger scheme of things. He sees that life is bigger than the controversy, he keeps an eye on the next 3 or 5 years--he looks ahead to what the issue means, he works at giving proper guidance for problem solving with respect to the wider church or community, and he's usually one to make plans, use diagrams and sketch out charts producing a schematic on how the controversy should be seen beyond the present, expected handful of meetings. [When you get through this, you'll be able to testify to other families how faithful God has been.] The trees fellow works log by log, getting each log cleared and out of the way so that speck after speck can be removed so that gentle relief may be brought about. So he examines body language in a conversation, words which are minimalizations, accusatory or exxagerations; he also observes the promise making words and sin owning words of confession that are offered. For the trees man, the controversy is solved by following rules of communication with recognizable, but not necessarily excessive, exactitude. [I didn't realize that you had been stuffing down this offense for so long, if I'm hearing you correctly, your use of the words, “You don't know me,” have made that super clear.]

In the Peacemaker book, Sande does a superb job of using Philippians 4:1-9 as a unit of Scripture for a working case about strife and hurt in the church. Paul has laid out the forest for three chapters of the bigger picture of God's glorious work in the church, in Paul, in Jesus Christ, and in Timothy and Epaphroditus. Finally, in chapter 4, he turns to the trees of a particular case of division between two women in the church at Philippi. Look at the step by step explanation of the verses in how controversy and disruption should be handled; we're to follow the line upon line grocery list of Paul's teaching. Keeping the forest and the trees imagery in mind can help on how we approach controversy. The mutual help that each perspective offers is an asset, both help to build hope in a difficult matter.

G. Mark Sumpter

Is Your Repentance Showing?

“The problems that the church faces today are not, then, first of all a product of the world's hostility. The world is always hostile to the church. The problems are rather the result of her failure to be pleasing to her Lord. The church is in danger not of the world's wrath, but of God's. As Eliot said, it is when we will not worship the jealous Lord that we have to pay our respects to Hitler and Stalin. The world's attacks on the church, then, are not overcome primarily by direct counterattack. The church's first response to legal attacks must not be legal; her first reaction to slander must not be self-defense. The church's first response to the world's hostitility must always and ever be abandonment of idols and repentance toward God. Her first response must always and even be to return to exclusive devotion to her Lord.”

The Kingdom and the Power by Peter Leithart, p. 183

G. Mark Sumpter

Open Letter to Sproul, Horton and Begg

Dear Brothers,

On the west coast we just received your conference announcement for the fall teaching ministry in Seattle on September 25-26, 2009. God has used you greatly and you have taught us well for two or three decades on the doctrine of the church. What happened to your sound doctrine and life when it came to planning worship on Sunday the 27th? We look to you to call the theological and practical shots for us on a number of counts. You straighten us out on any number of things including holiness, a Christ-less Christianity and in being a practical model for us for expository preaching. High fives. But planning and hosting worship on the Lord's Day?

I see that your cruise is taking off on the 28th. Sounds relaxing and super fun. B.C. is almost God's country. I think I follow your thinking, the Lord's Day falls right before the 28th. Something needs to be provided for worship.

Why not put a check box on the registration form for those that need help for getting to worship that Sunday AM, contact the area NAPARC churches in the Seattle area for making transportation arrangements, and encourage your attendees to participate at a local historic and confessional church? Would making such arrangements be a hassle and bother? Probably. But your staff knows how to host events with a capital H. Do hard things.

Your sea cruise heading out of Seattle is going to feature teaching on the church. Why not start the cruise one day earlier by cruising over to a local church on the 27th?

The Pacific Northwest desperately needs your teaching. You know us. We're the tree-huggers, boaters, hikers, hunters and recreationalists in the USA. We'll be found anywhere in worship on Sundays except in house of the Lord with His people gathered in Jesus' name. We're praying for the I-5 Corridor from Sacramento to Seattle. Help put feet to our prayers, won't you?

Blessings in Christ Jesus, Mark Sumpter
Faith OPC/Grants Pass, Oregon


G. Mark Sumpter

Two Witnesses of Luke

Luke uses two witnesses to prove the facts of the historical account of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. One might argue that Luke and Acts make up his two-part testimony as a faithful historian (Luke 1:1-4 and Acts 1:1). Doublets can be found in his writing: there are two birth announcements (Luke 1-2), two commissions of the disciples (Luke 9 and 10), and two ascensions (Luke 24:50-53 and Acts 1:9-10), to name three. The prologue of Luke 1:1-4 is the first witness of 1) fact, 2) explanation and 3) fulfillment. And then in the post-resurrection appearence of Jesus, in Luke 24:13-ff., with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, Luke presents the second witness of the same triad: fact, explanation and fulfillment. Look at the language of Luke 1:1-4, things fulfilled, things explained, and things in which to be catechized. Then it's republished in Luke 24:25-27 and Luke 24:44-45, with the same triad: things fulfilled, things explained, and things written.

G. Mark Sumpter

Sharpen Your Iron, Boys

“All truth is from God; and consequently, if wicked men have said anything that is true and just, we ought not to reject it; for it has come from God.

Whenever we come upon these matters in secular writers, let that admirable light of truth shining in them teach us that the mind of man, though fallen and perverted from it wholeness, is nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God's excellent gifts. If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God. For by holding the gifts of the Spirit in slight esteem, we contemn and reproach the Spirit himself.”

John Calvin in his Commentary on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus and Philemon, pp. 300-301. Compare also his Institutes of Christian Religion, Book II, 2:15.

I thought this Calvin fella was the Genevan stuff shirt, that old and crotchety pastor who wears the dark suit and never smiles. You know, the depravity guy who tells us that each one of us has enough dynamite of sin in the heart to blow up the world three times over.

G. Mark Sumpter

Whatever Happened to Diversity?

I have been reading summaries from Gene Veith’s book, God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life. Dr. Dennis Johnson of Westminster Seminary has been feeding me notes and commentary. Also, the book, The Call by Os Guinness has been helpful.

Some words from Veith, an article on work: “God is graciously at work, caring for the human race through the work of other human beings. Behind the care we have received from our parents, the education we received from our teachers, the benefits we receive from our spouse, our employers, and our government stands God himself, bestowing his blessings.

The picture is of a vast, complex society of human beings with different talents and abilities. Each serves the other; each is served by others. We Americans have an ideal of self-sufficiency and often dream of being able to grow our own food, build our own homes, and live independently of other people. But our proper human condition is dependence. Because of the centrality of love, we are to depend on other human beings and, ultimately and through them, on God. Conversely, other people are to depend on us. In God's earthly kingdom, we are to receive his blessings from other people in their vocations.

The purpose of one's vocation, whatever it might be, is serving others. It has to do with fulfilling Christ's injunction to love one's neighbor. Though justification has nothing to do with good works, vocation does involve good works. The Christian's relationship to God is based on sheer grace and forgiveness on God's part; the Christian's relationship to other people, however, is to be based on love. As Wingren [a Swedish writer] puts it, ‘God does not need our good works, but our neighbor does.’”

And now read the old Scottish Adam Smith from his The Wealth of Nations,

“But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chuses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens. Even a beggar does not depend upon it entirely.”

The current office of the President and his cabinet want us more and more to move to centralization so that there’s a one-size vocation fits all, all dependent on government, not a God-dependent citizenship that’s stirred by an appropriate person to person self-interest, and thus, a mutually dependent, neighbor to neighbor productivity and fruitfulness, all according to one’s own skills, training, desires, and experiences. I thought we were at the intersection of “To Each His Own,” Boulevard and “American Diversity” Drive? Whatever happened to diversity?

G. Mark Sumpter

Biblical Hebrew Language Helps

Our class on Thursday nights is using a variety of techniques to master about 200 nouns, adjectives and verbs. We're using the ear-gate, the eye-gate, and the total physical response.

Take a look here! It's Jonah, as a beginner-friendly comic book story!



Go to the web address and jump in with another form of practice.

http://www.animatedhebrew.com/jonah/index.html

G. Mark Sumpter

En Gedi

No wonder David found En Gedi to be a refuge from Saul (1 Samuel 23-24). What a place of refreshment in the hot Judean wilderness! Date palms provided vegetation too. The beautiful waterfalls seemed to drop down out of nowhere, shooting out from way overhead.

Over the weekend of January 17, four of us hiked back into wilderness of En Gedi. The trail snaked upward along the side of a ravine, and all around us were the crags and crevices, and gaping holes that looked like caverns. Along the route, we enjoyed looking at the rock badgers too.

My guess, the temperature was in the high 60s, low 70s that day. We would have been really huffing and puffing if it had been in the summertime heat!

During the time of the Davidic Era of Israel's history, 1000-900 B.C., there were settlements dotting the landscape on the western side of the Dead Sea. This region is known as the midbar, the desert. En Gedi is about half-way down, thinking about the north-south axis, right next to the Dead Sea.

G. Mark Sumpter

Bulimia Matters.11

“It is Satan's practice to go over the hedge where it is lowest.”

--Puritan Pastor, Richard Sibbes


G. Mark Sumpter