Bulimia Matters.12

“Does the Bible begin with exhortation; does it begin with a program for life? No, it begins with a doctrine. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. That is the foundation doctrine upon which everything else that the Bible says is based.

The Bible does present a way of life; it tells men the way in which they ought to live. But always when it does so it grounds that way of life in truth.”

J. Gresham Machen in his The Christian Faith in the Modern World, p. 98

G. Mark Sumpter

On the Father Front

From the pulpit yesterday we learned that the genealogy in Genesis 5 does not include a standard Old Testament call to a named prophet to bear the Word of God to a given people. There is no missionary call to the foreign field; there are no sons of the covenant who receive a call to outreach and to go preach to a far off nation. Let's say it this way, as an example, we won't read in Genesis 5, And it came to pass that the Word of the Lord came to Jared, the son of Mahalalel, saying, “Arise, go to Egypt.” Why no missionary call? Because the family, the household, the line of faith is the locus for the movement of the gospel; gospel work primarily happens according to the genealogical line of the covenant. Therefore, fathers, you're calling, ordination and commission to the mission field is a calling to your household.

G. Mark Sumpter

He Wounded His Heart At Buried Knee

“Earnestness may be sincere, serious, ardent, and persevering. It goes at a thing with good will, pursues it with perseverance, and urges it with ardor; puts force in it. But all these forces do not rise higher than the mere human. The man is in it -- the whole man, with all that he has of will and heart, of brain and genius, of planning and working and talking. He has set himself to some purpose which has mastered him, and he pursues to master it. There may be none of God in it. There may be little of God in it, because there is so much of the man in it. He may present pleas in advocacy of his earnest purpose which please or touch and move or overwhelm with conviction of their importance; and in all this earnestness may move along earthly ways, being propelled by human forces only, its altar made by earthly hands and its fire kindled by earthly flames.

It is said of a rather famous preacher of gifts, whose construction of Scripture was to his fancy or purpose, that he “grew very eloquent over his own exegesis.” So men grow exceeding earnest over their own plans or movements. Earnestness may be selfishness simulated.

What of unction? It is the indefinable in preaching which makes it preaching. It is that which distinguishes and separates preaching from all mere human addresses. It is the divine in preaching. It makes the preaching sharp to those who need sharpness. It distills as the dew to those who need to he refreshed. It is well described as:

A two-edged sword
Of heavenly temper keen,
And double were the wounds it made
Wherever it glanced between.
'Twas death to silt; 'twas life
To all who mourned for sin.
It kindled and it silenced strife,
Made war and peace within.

This unction comes to the preacher not in the study but in the closet. It is heaven's distillation in answer to prayer. It is the sweetest exhalation of the Holy Spirit. It impregnates, suffuses, softens, percolates, cuts, and soothes. It carries the Word like dynamite, like salt, like sugar; makes the Word a soother, an arranger, a revealer, a searcher; makes the hearer a culprit or a saint, makes him weep like a child and live like a giant; opens his heart and his purse as gently, yet as strongly as the spring opens the leaves. This unction is not the gift of genius. It is not found in the halls of learning. No eloquence can woo it. No industry can win it. No prelatical hands can confer it. It is the gift of God -- the signet set to his own messengers. It is heaven's knighthood given to the chosen true and brave ones who have sought this anointed honor through many an hour of tearful, wrestling prayer.

Earnestness is good and impressive: genius is gifted and great. Thought kindles and inspires, but it takes a diviner endowment, a more powerful energy than earnestness or genius or thought to break the chains of sin, to win estranged and depraved hearts to God, to repair the breaches and restore the Church to her old ways of purity and power. Nothing but this holy unction can do this. ”

From The Power of Prayer by EM Bounds, a chaplain in the War Between the States

G. Mark Sumpter

Our Seeking God and Pastoral Initiative

“In a shepherding relationship the pastor seeks after the lost. The Good Shepherd searches out the strayed, the lost, and the fallen. The pastoral act of visiting a parishioner in the hospital communicates that seeking quality of God.

This seeking characteristic provides the imaginative basis for the practice of pastoral initiative. The right of initiative is unique to the pastoral role. Other professions do not claim it as a right. In fact, in the practice of other professions, it might well be considered unethical.

Initiative is a mixed blessing for pastors. Pastors may feel that their uninvited visits are intrusive. There is certainly an ambiguous quality and perhaps a presumptuous quality to initiating a visit not explicitly requested. As pastors we can only anticipate what some of the reactions might be. It is no wonder that clinical pastoral education students and many pastors are reluctant to initiate such visits.

Pastoral initiative suggest the covenant nature of the relationship between the pastor and parishioner. As a member of the church, the body of Christ, the parishioner has entered into a relationship with a community of faith and care. That care is personified in the person of the pastor. Implicit in this covenant is the parishioner's willingness to receive the care of a seeking God through the care of others.”

From the book, The Pastor and The Patient by Kent Richmond and David Middelton, p. 22

G. Mark Sumpter

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