I was asked yesterday by an aspiring young worship leader if I lean more toward planned-out worship or Spirit-led worship. A few days before that, another young worship leader asked me if I feel creatively restricted in my position. I completely get where both of these guys were coming from, but I answered them both the same way: the questions set up a false dichotomy between freedom and boundaries.
Order is a friend of freedom. Chaos is a cesspool of slavery. If we are to be truly free, we must have boundaries. When every player agrees on the rules of a game, each is free to play his or her best without frustration. When no one agrees, everyone is hindered in their progress. In fact, the very existence of games is predicated upon rules. The Bible takes great pains to bring structure, order, and limits to our worship, while also encouraging us to be creative and exuberant in our expressions. Jesus is clear that true worshipers will do so in Spirit and in Truth. Paul demands orderliness and also says where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. We are much more able to enjoy a drink that is restricted to its cup than one that has been freed from such limitations and is now liberated to a puddle on the floor. To be sure, even then, the liquid is simply obeying the limitations of space and gravity.
The real heart behind the questions these young men posed is, "Can I trust those who have the authority to set the boundaries for me?" Now that's a telling question, and one we should expect young men to be wrestling with. Not yet commissioned to positions influence, these young men must submit to the leadership under which they find themselves, and this can create cause for anxiety, to be sure. They've been gifted with certain visions and abilities and they fear they may never be fully reached if forcibly bound by another man's unsympathetic power.
I struggle with that fear myself, and therefore I'm not in a position to give much advice. But as we're asking these questions, let's not fall into the trap of believing that restrictions and structures are somehow unspiritual. The Bible won't let us go that route.
As residents of the 21st century, we have inherited the word “gospel” with thousands of years of traditional meaning already poured into it, and we’ll address a lot of that today, but first I want to make clear what meaning the word had in it before Christianity adopted primary use of it. When a word is used in the first sentence of the first book of the New Testament, we have to recognize what it meant to the author and original audience before we start reading it through the lenses of theologians (which is a good thing, by the way, we just have to have a decent historical/cultural hermeneutic as well). The word euangelion, or good news, was used 2000 years ago as a report of a king’s military victory. Not a surprising word choice when you realize that the author takes great pains to ensure that we see Jesus as just that: a conquering King. “Christ”, or “anointed one” and “Son of God” were both loaded with royal meaning for Jews and Gentiles alike, and they are two other phrases that are even more richly infused with meaning when they refer to the person Jesus.
But now I want to look at what the word Gospel has come to mean to us in light of Who the Word revealed Himself to be, particularly within the themes found in this short passage. They are: Incarnation – God with us; Initiation – God for us; Imitation – God through us
Incarnation – God with us
We see in this passage that the Lord is on his way. Here. That’s a big deal. To give us some context, let’s imagine our chief executive, the president, was able hand down an executive order that dismissed the legislative branch of our government and gave him full legislative power. He then wrote a law making himself the supreme judicial power, and to top it of, he claimed full authority over the religious sector. How are you feeling so far about our nation’s state of affairs? I know, some of you are thinking: that depends. Is it Obama? Now what about this: This supreme ruler has all this power and you’re a dissenter, and He’s coming your way. Terrifying, right? To bring it back to the Old Testament, their supreme ruler was the kind of guy whose very presence, his glory, would melt your face off.
Initiation – God for us
We get near Christmas time and we’re so excited to sing about Immanuel, “God with us,” but let’s be real. If we’re at odds with Him, we don’t want Him around, especially not with that face-melting thing he’s got going on. But we look at this text and we see something beautiful: He sends a messenger. Why is that awesome? Because He could have sent a mercenary to take us out. He could have just shown up and we’d all have been destroyed. He’s showing us that there’s hope. His message? He’s preparing your way for you, if you’ll accept it. God’s initiation is what makes His incarnation such a desirable thing.
Now what’s the direction He is initiating? Well ultimately it’s Revelation 21. Many would be content to go straight there, but Jesus didn’t. He had His sights fixed on a more immediate destination. John elaborates a bit more on what this way is in the parallel passage, John 1:29 when he says of Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God, who comes to take away our sins.” Now this is great, because it’s our sins that are making God’s presence so devastating to us. That’s why part of the message John was proclaiming was repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness! God is for us! He’s taking the initiative to pursue us! We don’t have to be the ones to send a messenger to Him begging for terms. He sought us out while we were a long way off.
You see the best part about this whole passage, I think, is the setting. We’re in the desert. Isn’t that great? What I mean is, God only interacts with one group of people in the desert: His family. Everyone is pretty familiar with the desert motif in scripture as a place of testing and discipline. Hebrews 12 says that He discipline those he calls sons because He loves them. He’s preparing His heirs to reign with Him, just like he used the desert to purge Israel of her Egyptyness before she entered into the land he wanted to be a City on a Hill. But a lesser-known use of the desert motif is found in Hosea 2, where He says He will take His bride, Israel out to the desert to seduce her: to win her back after she had abandoned Him. You see, ultimately we will reign with Him, but before that happens, He has to take the initiative to win us back from our slavery and bondage to sin. The Lord Jesus was blazing a path straight to the cross where He would lay down his very life for his bride’s sake, so that he could take her with him to inherit the earth and reign with Him forever. He has the heart of a Father and a Husband, and I can tell you: that is a furious and unrelenting passion, especially if your wife or child is in danger.
Imitation – God through us
So He has prepared our way for us, but that’s not the end of the message. He’s got some things for us to do, too. He says, “Prepare the way of the Lord, and make His path straight.” He wants not only to be reconciled with us and take us with Him where He’s going; He also wants us to be, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:20, His ambassadors, through whom He is making His appeal, that all would come to Him and be satisfied. We’re not just beneficiaries of the message, we’re bearers of it! Imagine, the very thing that was a terror to those in the Old Testament, the Glory of God that would wipe us off the planet if we even saw it, His GLORY, is now seen through us!
How do we bear this message? It’s pretty clear that we do it by imitation. We get a hint of this in this passage when we go from having a way prepared for us to being preparers of ways. Monkey see, monkey do. That’s actually what we mean when we say disciple, or discipleship: to become more like someone else. We’re becoming more like Christ, and through that, His glory is revealed. So it comes full circle: He sends his messenger to invite us to accept His payment of debt on our behalf and then we ourselves become messengers who prepare the way of His kingdom by living the way of the cross, and then being resurrected as He was to reign forever. That’s why the story ends with the great commission. He’s commissioning the messengers to imitate Him, preparing us, and the world, as the paths of His victory over sin and death.
Christians are citizens of Heaven. There's not any serious debate among Christians about the truth of this claim, but the interpretation, however, is quite another story. The Crusades were carried out in the name of the Kingdom. Fundamentalists are charged with culpability for global warming for their angle. Even the emerging church is in large part divided by their views on this. I typically prefer to avoid shaping a personal opinion on debates of this kind, but I cannot by any stretch deny that one's interpretation of this truth will have profound effects upon the way his or her life is lived. I'll therefore attempt to lay out the dualistic landscape as I see it and maybe that will serve as sufficient conceptual geography for a healthy battle, the outcome of which I hope will mean victory for all who enlist.
Exiles - If we view ourselves as Citizens of Heaven, temporarily exiled in this foreign land but ultimately destined to escape this pagan place and finally return "home," that's going to affect how we live. We will not invest much of our resources in this land, our daily activities instead reflecting interest in different place. I have some friends who are staying in a temporary sublet while their seminary housing is refurbished. I doubt they will hang pictures or even unpack any more boxes than they have to until they move to a more permanent abode. To the exile, we remain on earth but for a missional purpose: to offer citizenship in heaven to the indigenous peoples of earth before they (and their planet) are destroyed and we are called home to live with the King.
Colonists - If we view ourselves as Citizens of Heaven, dispatched as colonists of a conquering Kingdom and charged with beginning the conversion of all on earth to reflect life as it is in Heaven, this too will affect how we live. We will conduct ourselves as ambassadors and heralds of the coming regime, allowing the natives the opportunity to naturalize or be destroyed. I have another set of friends who have intentionally moved into a forgotten part of town as an attempt to revitalize the community. They invest their lives in making the world around them come to life as a result of their hope. To the colonist, we are dispatched to this earthly outpost to begin the redemptive process that will be consummated when the King returns to establish His City on Earth.
No doubt most of us hold a blended view to an extent, but that begs the question that forces one to draw a line: will we ultimately escape earth or conform her?
"National statistics indicate that 80-90% of such babies are now aborted — meaning that we have launched a search and destroy mission on Down syndrome babies in the womb." From Al Mohler's Blog.
Numbers-wise, this means America's genocidal attack on people with Down's Syndrome is far more successful than Hitler's attempted genocide of Jews. The only difference is, even if you kill them all, they will not be permanently exterminated, because they are continually created inside their murderers.
The worst part is, this sounds more like a conversation about weeds than it does human beings.
