View the video of Pastor Wilson’s response

Christ Church – Moscow, ID
Sermon #1723 – A.D. May 12, 2013
Text: II Samuel 1

YouTube version can be found HERE.

Sermon Clips:
Not Just Lying at Saul’s Funeral

A Biblical View of Democracy

A Messiah-less Shield

Gnostics, Weapons, Tyrants: How the 2nd Amendment Applies

Baptism: Atticus Allen Bartlett
New Members: Bill Akin Family

Introduction
Remember that the book of Samuel is all one book, and we stopped in the middle of it (at our conventional break between first and second Samuel) simply for the sake of convenience. The same great narrative continues, as God establishes His kind of rule, and does so in His way.

The Text:
“Now it came to pass after the death of Saul, when David was returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites, and David had abode two days in Ziklag; It came even to pass on the third day, that, behold, a man came out of the camp from Saul with his clothes rent, and earth upon his head: and so it was, when he came to David, that he fell to the earth, and did obeisance . . .” (2 Sam. 1:1-27).

Summary of the Text:
While the battle was going on at Gilboa, David was fighting the Amalekites and, after his victory, he had been back in Ziklag for two days (v. 1). On the third day, a messenger arrived from Saul’s battlefield (v. 2). He reported that he had escaped from the camp of Israel (v. 3). When asked, he said that many were dead, as were Saul and Jonathan (v. 4). How do you know this? (v. 5). The young man then spins a story which the reader knows to be false (vv. 6-10; 1 Sam. 31:4-7). He claims to have killed Saul at Saul’s request, and he brought the crown and bracelet to David. David, and all the men with him, tore their clothes and wept for Saul and Jonathan (and for Israel) until that evening (v. 12). David then inquired further of the messenger (v. 13), and asked how he dared to lift up his hand against God’s anointed (v. 14). He then turned and commanded one of his soldiers to execute him (v. 15). David pronounced him condemned by his own testimony (v. 16).
David then composed a lament to be included in the Book of Jasher (the Book of the Upright), called the Song of the Bow (vv. 17-18). The gazelle of Israel is slain in the high places (v. 19). Don’t tell the Philistines about this (v. 20). Mount Gilboa is told to wither up and go dry (v. 21). Saul and Jonathan are then praised highly (vv. 22-23). The daughters of Israel are then commanded to lament (v. 24). The gazelle from earlier is now identified as Jonathan (v. 25), and we come to the center of David’s lament (v. 26). The mighty have indeed fallen (v. 27).

Some Striking Figures:
Saul lost his kingship because he plundered the Amalekites, and here an Amalekite plunders him . . . and loses his life for it. David has just finished wiping out the Amalekites, and then here comes another one. When David asks what happened? he uses the same phrase that Eli spoke to his messenger from the battlefield. This is the next iteration of Hannah’s great vision of the collapse of the corrupt elites, and their replacement by faithful outsiders. Only this time the words are spoken by the one who will replace, not the one to be replaced.
Hebrew poetry is vivid, concrete, and brevity is one of its great virtues. The word rendered beauty (v. 19) also means gazelle, and David makes it very plain he was talking about Jonathan (v. 25). Also, the lost shield of Saul, unburnished with oil, represents a play on words (v. 21). Shields were oiled to make them gleam, and to help weapons glance off them. But this lost shield has no oil—it is unanointed, or “messiah-less.” This is a powerful image showing that the Lord’s anointed is no longer alive. But if we remember our narrative, David is also the Lord’s anointed.
This lament repeatedly uses the apostrophe—David speaks to Israel at large, and then to Gilboa, then to (about) Saul and Jonathan, then to the daughters of Israel, and then last to Jonathan directly. It is a fitting form of address for an elegy.

Those who take v. 26 as representing something homoerotic simply demonstrate that they have not read the rest of David’s life, not to mention how little they understand a warrior culture like this one.

The Early Chapters:
Not surprisingly, we have a chiastic structure here. A. David executes the purported murderer of Saul (1:1-16); B. David laments Saul and Jonathan (1:17-27); C. struggle between the house of David and house of Saul (2:1-3:1); D. David’s house (3:2-5); C’ struggle between Abner and Joab (3:6-30); B’ David laments Abner (3:31-39); A’ David executes the murderers of Ish-bosheth (4:1-12).
Teach the Bow:

This injunction (v. 18) should be understood by us at three different levels. The first is that this is clearly the title of the song, and this is how it is to be recorded in the Book of Jasher. The children of Judah were to be taught this song that eulogized Saul and Jonathan. Second, the title is significant. The central person to be honored here is Jonathan—he is the one associated with the bow (v. 22). Be a Jonathan, imitate Jonathan in this. Take the right lesson away from the song. This is how David is able to include Saul in the eulogy. Anyone that someone like Jonathan was willing to die with (and for) is worthy of praise (v. 23). This is not an instance of “lying at funerals.” Saul was David’s father here because Jonathan was his brother (v. 26).

But last, this is a call to learn the craft of bowmanship itself. There is no gun control fastidiousness here. There is no “being like Jonathan” without actual bows, and the knowledge of how to use them (Ps. 144:1). To praise his use of the bow in song is to praise the bow itself. Remember that this was a lament offered by a small band of men whose great army had just been taken out by the Philistines. Never forget. Learn the bow, and learn to be the kind of man that Jonathan was when he wielded it. And whatever happens, do not drift back to the way it was when Saul and Jonathan first mustered the troops (1 Sam. 13:19-22). When there is no “smith” allowed in Israel, there is a tyrant in Israel.

Just this last week, Vice-President Biden called upon “faith leaders” to keep up the pressure on the issue of gun control, and to reframe the whole debate in moral terms. Okay. Anyone who cannot tell the difference between a criminal and an inanimate weapon is also someone who cannot tell the difference between an American and an Amalekite. Do not be children in your understanding, but grow up into maturity.

YouTube version HERE.

Christ Church – Moscow, ID
Sermon #1722 – A.D. May 5, 2013
Text: Heb. 12:22-29

YouTube version can be found HERE.

Sermon Clips:
Introit on the Kazoo

Only Two Things are Forever

This Supper is Preaching

Unsullied, Uncorruptible, and Irreversible

Repent! Because You’re a Screwup

Household Baptism: Miriam Elizabeth Hicks

Introduction
Our goal in this life, and our goal as a congregation, ought to be three-fold—we should want to get the gospel straight, we should want to get the church right, and we should want to get the world restored. Let’s walk through it in that order.

The Text:
“But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven: Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:22-29).

Summary of the Text:
As believers, we have not come to an earthly mountain, but rather to a heavenly one (v. 22). We have not only come to God, but also to all the saints, to all our fellow believers (v. 23). We have come to Jesus, and to the blood of sprinkling (v. 24). This is blood that speaks from Heaven, and we must not turn a deaf ear (v. 25). The voice we must not refuse is a voice that shakes Heaven, as well as earth (v. 26). God shakes everything down in order that the permanent things may remain (v. 27). This kingdom that we are receiving is one of those permanent things, and this is why our worship of God must be reverent and true (v. 28), for God is a consuming fire (v. 29).

Gospel: Blood That Speaks:
The gospel, the good news, is objective and outside us. Our response to the gospel (repenting, believing, etc.) is not the gospel. It is the response to the gospel. The gospel was true and established before anyone here was born. The gospel is this message—Jesus Christ suffered, bled and died on the cross for the sins of His people. He was buried in the tomb, and on the third day He rose again from the dead. He ascended into Heaven, where He is seated in power and glory. From that high place, He intercedes with the Father for you. Jesus prays for you, and He pleads His case with the blood that speaks. That is gospel.

The gospel has two sides. The first is the person of Jesus, who He was. The second is the work of Jesus, what He did. He is the incarnate Deity, the second Person of the Trinity, one who became a man for our sake. He was fully God, and fully man, and He then went to the cross to die, be buried, and to rise. This is the gospel, this is the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Church: With Reverence and Fear:
This gospel message is proclaimed in various ways. It is proclaimed (obviously) when an evangelist goes out and preaches this message to those who have not heard it, or who have not yet accepted it. He preaches it, and this is one of the central ways this message is declared. But there are others—and worshiping communities is another central one. We practice weekly communion in our worship, and what does the apostle say? He says that every time we eat the bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death. We do this until He comes again.

Now there is a point that must be emphasized particularly in our day. In our text it says that we must serve God (worship, latreuo) with reverence and godly fear. God teaches us what our demeanor in our church worship services must be like. It must not be breezy, casual, informal, or begun with an introit on the kazoo. That’s not a call to worship the Ancient of Days.

World: That Cannot Be Moved:
Human history is the result of God’s great process of shaking both Heaven and earth. He shakes us down in order to test and prove us. He wants the world to stand—He wants the kingdom He is giving us to remain. But the way He does this is by removing all the dross through fire (our God is a consuming fire, is He not?) and by establishing the silver He purifies so that it might remain.

The world is a great construction site, and there are scraps all over, and scaffolding that will be hauled away. At the center of it is a great city, a great kingdom. That kingdom is not synonymous with the world now, but at the end of the process the two will be synonyms. The kingdom will be the world, and the world will be the kingdom.

Do not lament for that which perishes. Nothing that God wants to have remain will ever falter. Nothing that God wants to have removed will be found worthy at the last. God’s methods of world transformation are not . . . tender. But they are good.

Conclusion:
And so here is our conclusion. Hear the gospel, believe it, eat it, drink it, and proclaim it. Jesus is crucified and risen. Having received this gospel by faith, worship the God of Heaven in terms of it. Worship Him with reverence and godly fear. Worship Him as the Almighty Maker of Heaven and earth, and not as your skybuddy. And last, do this with the understanding that true gospel worship is a cosmos shaker, a battering ram, an earth-mover.

YouTube version HERE.

Christ Church – Moscow, ID
Sermon #1721 – A.D. April 28, 2013
Texts: Ps. 34:7-8

YouTube version can be found HERE.

Sermon Clips:
A White Stone; A Personal Relationship

Vineyards, Not Bottling Plants

Historic and Pop Evangelicals

Training for the Outer Darkness

Household Baptisms: Sidney, Hallee, Aleyna, Alexis, Georgia, Jack, Abigail, and Judah Kirsch
New Members: David Kirsch Family

Introduction
We worship God the Father through Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. But in order for this to work, He cannot be a distant Christ. Remember that in Christ God came near, God became our neighbor. We worship God through a close Christ, a near Christ, an indwelling Christ. The point of the message today—taste and see—requires that we serve God through an experienced Christ.

The Text:
“The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them. O taste and see that the Lord is good: Blessed is the man that trusteth in him” (Ps. 34:7-8).

Summary of the Text:
A wonderful theme of this psalm is that God is the great Deliverer. God is the one who saves those who have faith in Him, and whose lives are living indications of that faith. That theme is very much present in the two verses that constitute our text. The angel of the Lord places the one who fears God in the midst of the camp, and entirely surrounds him. He delivers him (v. 7). This is a glorious promise, and anybody is invited to come in order to participate in it. The invitation is to taste and see (v. 8). What do we taste? The goodness of the Lord. We taste the blessedness of trusting in Him.

Notice also the parallel between fearing Him and tasting His goodness. And notice too that being delivered is the blessing that results from trusting Him. Tasting is fearing and blessedness is being delivered.

An Experienced Christ:
We identify ourselves as evangelicals, but by this we mean historic evangelicals, or confessional evangelicals. This is to be distinguished from that pop evangelicalism that has commodified the whole thing in order to be able to print it on a T-shirt, available at a Jesus junk store near you. Jesus Himself said that the experience (which is absolutely necessary) is not an experience that we can successfully manipulate. We cannot bottle the wind of the Spirit. We cannot manufacture this because we are talking about the sovereign motions of the sovereign God.

At the same time, we insist that a man must be born again if he is to see the kingdom of God. As I have taught before, you don’t have to know what instant the sun rose in order to know that it is up. And neither may be conclude from the fact that we know that it is up that we have the authority to command it to rise.

God is Good:
We serve the God who invites. We serve the God who summons, and who goes out of His way to summon. “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, And he that hath no money; Come ye, buy, and eat; Yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? And your labour for that which satisfieth not?” (Is. 55:1-2).

Apart from Christ, we feed on little bits of refuse. We bake bread made out of sawdust. We mix our drinks with used dishwater, and we sneer at those pitiful believers who do not know what it means to live the good life. We turn everything into gruel. We clutch at driveway pebbles, calling them diamonds. We collect wisps of straw to make an arrangement for the middle of the table. When God pronounces a woe on those who call evil good and good evil (Is. 5:20), more is involved than simply a mistake in ethics. It all comes down to what you have to eat, what you have to chew, and what you must swallow. And if you consume the meager pickings of self, you are in dietary training for the outer darkness.

Consistency and Variation:
God is not locked into the same kind of tight strictures that we are. A vineyard in France, and one in California, and another in Louisiana, can all produce a bottle of Cabernet, and this is completely different than the effect you get when it is a diet soda bottling plant in all those same locations. But no one remarks on the terroir of the Diet Dr. Pepper. No one stands at the drink dispenser, swirling the plastic cup under his nose.

It is the same with the fruit of the Spirit—fantastic variation and remarkable consistency. Legalists want the experienced Christ to taste like it all came from one bottling plant. Antinomians want to pretend that there is no difference between a fine wine and stump water. Never forget that the triune God, who is growing us all up, is holy. And never forget that the triune God, who is growing us all up into a splendid array—of different kinds of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control—is not a ball-bearing manufacturer.

A White Stone:
A commonplace in Christian circles is the phrase “a personal relationship” with Jesus. However clichéd it may have become, there is an important reality there that we must preserve. We preserve it because it is precious.

“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it” (Rev. 2:17).

God the Father, through the Lord Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, has a relationship with you that only He and you know. This is for the one who overcomes, and what is it that overcomes? Is it not our faith? The one who tastes, the one who sees—which can only be done by faith—is the one who knows the goodness of God as it has been evidenced in their relationship. Just the two.

Now this does not eliminate the need for the body of Christ. Every cell, every member, being alive is the prerequisite for living participation in the living body. You want to be a living finger, not a dead fingernail. Don’t be covenantal keratin.

Christ Church – Moscow, ID
Sermon #1720 – A.D. April 21, 2013
Texts: Luke 10:29-36

YouTube version can be found HERE.

Sermon Clips:
Throwing Rocks at the Moon

The Tall Order of Loving Your Neighbor

The Downside of Heaven

Particular People, Not America and Apple Pie

Jesus Said God Doesn’t Care

Afraid of God Answering “Yes”

Admission of New Members and Household Baptisms
Members: Chi Flores Family
Baptisms: Ihzik and Marcus Flores

Introduction
We live in a relativistic and postmodern age, one that loves to muddy distinctions and blur the lines. This is all done with high-sounding language, which the first thing that happens is that we find we have lost the Creator/creature distinction, which puts us in the idolatrous violation of the greatest commandment. The next thing we discover is that we have blurred the lines between us and our neighbor, which places us in selfish disregard of the second greatest commandment.

The Text:
“But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor? And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves . . . Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among thieves” (Luke 10:29-36).

Summary of the Text:
The parable of the Good Samaritan follows hard after the episode where the seventy returned from their mission. The issues involve individuals, households, cities, and nations. The parable cannot be filed away in one spot. Jesus tells His followers to rejoice because their names are written in heaven (v. 20). He says that great things have been revealed to them (v. 24). And then a lawyer challenges Jesus (v. 25), and they have an exchange about the two greatest commandments (vv. 26-28). But the lawyer, stung by this, wanted to parse things out (v. 29). Jesus then tells the very famous story about the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan (vv. 30-36).

There are of course national implications, and ethnic implications, and first century implications, and the central implication is that such implications don’t matter anymore. So let us not lose the trees because of the forest. Jesus told His followers to rejoice that their particular names were written in Heaven (v. 20). The set-up question from the lawyer concerned what he individually had to do in order to inherit eternal life (v. 25). He uses the pronoun I. Jesus answer him in kind—do this and you shall live.

The Basics:
We begin by noting that having a neighbor to love means that there is somebody else out there. There are, out in the world, other centers of consciousness which don’t look out through your eyes at all, and whom you are to love as you do yourself. That is a tall order.

Note that you are not summoned to love an abstraction like “mankind.” To love everyone is very similar to loving nobody. What could it possibly mean for you to say that you love every last person in China, one billion of them? This would simply be to confess that you love none of them.

Neither may we—in our rascal hearts—settle for loving the idea of loving our neighbor, instead of our neighbor himself. One understands the temptation. The idea of loving your neighbor doesn’t have any bad habits, doesn’t need to take regular showers, and doesn’t return things he borrowed busted.

John asks how can you love God whom you have not seen, when you do not love your brother, whom you have seen (1 Jn. 4:20)? In the same way, and on the same principles, how can you love your “neighbors” whom you have not seen when you don’t love your neighbor, whom you see daily? The priest and Levite who passed by the man beaten up could have been busy composing prayers that they would present in the Temple on behalf of all men everywhere. But “all men,” Jesus taught, were, in an incarnational way, present in that ditch through their appointed representative.

The Options:
So we are not allowed to slip off the point by loving everyone indiscriminately. That kind of gaseous approach is nothing but self-absorbed good intentions, which amounts to the bad intention of remaining self-absorbed.

So your neighbor is someone else, and not everybody else. But if this is the case, then which someone is it? The answer to that question is found in the parable that Jesus told. Your neighbor is not everybody else; your neighbor is anybody else. Your neighbor is not everyone, but he is Everyman. When Christ was born among us, He was born in a particular town, of a particular woman. This is why you can always find Christ in your neighbor. Jesus loves humble dwellings—He lives in us, doesn’t He?

So your neighbor is assigned to you by the providence of God. Your neighbor is the one that God has placed in front of you. This is why it is not possible to have a robust theology of your neighbor without a robust theology of God’s sovereign control over all history. How did this person wind up in front of you in the first place?

Answered Prayers:
One of the things we have urged you to do is get to know the names of five of your neighbors—straight across the street, two catty-corner across the street, and one on each side of you. Five neighbors. Start praying for each one by name.

Now let me say something about two different kinds of reluctant prayers. One prayer is hesitant to pray because of an instinctive knowledge that such a prayer couldn’t possibly be the will of God—say a prayer for your company to transfer you to the Big Rock Candy Mountain division of your company, where nubile assistants feed you grapes incessantly, and the skies are not cloudy all day. You think, perhaps, that such a prayer might be a tad selfish. God might say no. But the other kind of reluctant prayer is just the opposite. You aren’t concerned at all that God might say no. You are dreadfully afraid that He will say yes. A prayer for patience might be answered affirmatively, along with the trial that makes the patience necessary.

If you start praying for your neighbors, God might throw them spang into your life. He might say yes. They might track stuff in. In fact, they almost certainly will. The problem with this is that you had just gotten your life set up the way you wanted it, the cruise control all adjusted, with nothing left to do but finish your road trip to glory—and no hitchhikers.

Don’t Be Afraid:
When it comes to your neighbor, don’t be afraid to go small. Don’t be afraid to go particular—this is a symphony and you are just the third piccolo. Just do your part—your neighbor is not all neighbors.

YouTube version HERE.