Posts tagged Joshua Harris

Current Tunage: Jars of Clay – Faith Enough
“Poor enough to gain the treasure / Enough a cynic to believe.”

I’ve started my way through Hebrews, in part spurred on by Josh Harris’ workshop last week at The Gospel Coalition 2009 National Conference.

One of Josh’s main points was that ‘loving the local church’ is a matter of obedience – or, in other words, it’s not optional for followers of Jesus. His texts for this were mostly in Hebrews and hearing the passages coupled with his exposition and thoughts was something God really used to bring clarity to me on something I’ve really been disobedient in for much of my life as a believer.

Let me explain that a bit -

I was saved at a very young age. By saved, I mean that I realized and accepted that there was no hope for me in this life outside of Jesus and his atoning sacrifice on the cross to pay the penalty for my sins. I made him boss, God, and saviour and have never really looked back (other than the very human doubts and cynicism that plague myself and most others). This happened so early in life because I grew up in a Christian home, with loving and godly Christian parents who really wanted me to know what’s truly important in life – Jesus.

Consequently, I grew up in the local church. Particularly, in what most would term a ‘fundamentalist, theologically and practically conservative, local-church-oriented denomination’. If it sounds like I’m deriding it there, please disregard – I still have a lot of respect and love for where I’m from, it’s just that those who have been inside something tend to see its problems most clearly – the challenge is often how to apply your vision of those issues.

Anyhow, all of my life I’ve struggled with ‘loving’ the local church. This is despite the ones I attended being populated by godly, loving Christian brothers and sisters who really loved me and, as best as they were able, strove to be like Jesus and live lives that please Him, conduct church in a way that pleased Him, and so on.

So why was it a struggle? It’s pretty simple actually – I realized as I was listening to Josh that for all of my life, with very few and momentary exceptions, my attachment to the local church has generally been one of mere “obedience” (read: doing it because its ‘the right thing to do’ and because ‘the Bible tells me so’) – not of “love”. Which, if I’m reading Hebrews correctly, and if I understood Josh correctly, means that I wasn’t really being obedient with regard to the local church. What God calls us to is to passionately love and serve the local church – to love and serve His people and His body. I haven’t really done that a whole lot. It’s not that I was wrong to go out of ‘obedience’, it’s that I didn’t understand what ‘obedience’ entailed – a passionate love for, servanthood to, and focus upon my fellow believers in the local church.

Check out one of Josh’s primary texts:

Hebrews 10:19-27 ESV
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.

Isn’t it remarkable how the writer to the Hebrews talks about our individual right to enter the ‘holy places’ by the merit of our saviour’s blood, and about how that right, that way, is open to us via the torn and murdered body of our great high priest Jesus? Isn’t it amazing how we can enter such a solemn and holy place with a ‘true heart’, ‘full assurance of faith’, and ‘a heart sprinkled clean”? Doesn’t it just make the writer’s admonition to “hold fast hope” hit home?

How is it, then, that for so many years I missed the connection between all of the above, and the command to “consider how to stir up [fellow believers] to love and good works … encouraging one another” as well as “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some”? How is it that I’ve managed to make a disconnect for so long between the obedience of “holding fast hope” and the obedience of the habit of meeting together with other believers? The two seem to be inextricably interconnected.

Josh put it this way (what follows are some point form notes I took from his workshop):

• Holding fast is vitally connected to being committed in a local congregation.
• To hold fast, we need fellow Christians to spur us on, stir us up, and love us.
• To hold fast, we need to ourselves be spurring other believers on, stirring them up, and loving them.
• We will not be faithful without connecting the Gospel to the local church – it’s the only way to hold fast hope.
• The local church is vital for so many areas of obedience and growth: Giving, acquiring counsel, worship, teaching and input, service, accountability, and the regular giving and receiving of testimony. Others help you grow and obey, you help others grow and obey.
  
• 1 Thesselonians 5:14 – Admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all. Another passage that requires obedience of us, to love the local church.
• God works through a people to put his glory on display – Jesus came to save a church.
• 1 Peter 2:9 – All the language is pluralized. We are a ‘chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that [we] may proclaim the excellencies of him who called [us] out of the darkness into his marvelous light”. It’s a group plan!
• If you can’t get excited about Christ’s bride here on earth, you won’t enjoy heaven.
• Hebrews 3:12,13 – We are called to ‘exhort one another every day‘ so that ‘none of [us] may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin’.
• We are called to counsel one another with truth.
• Something irreplaceable happens when we gather and worship, serve, and give together.
• It is through the church that the Gospel is proclaimed and demonstrated, and disciples are made.
• Do I know and feel my need for the Body of Christ (and express it in my actions)?
• We can’t hold fast to the gospel without the local church.
  

Today, as I was studying in Hebrews 2, I was really struck by the first four verses, which read as follows:

Hebrews 2:1-4 ESV
Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

For so long, I haven’t been paying “much closer attention” to what I have heard in God’s word my whole life – that the church is vital for growth and obedience, and that I must learn to love it. My connection to the church cannot be simply one of cold “obedience” and habitual involvement, but it must be genuine obedience that flows out of a passionate love for the local church – for the people of God, believers, that I meet with regularly. I know from experience that when I haven’t been paying this kind of closer attention to God’s Word in this area, I do drift away. Much of the past 24 years has been spent drifting away from Him and His people. Clearly and unmistakably, I see so much of His gentle (and at times, forceful and strikingly corrective) hand of discipline over especially the past decade.

So, what I’m considering this morning, and this week, and this life… is how I can better love, serve, and give myself to the local church. I know how fleeting my hope in Christ can be, and I know how quietly drifting my love for Him is. The question inevitably must be this: “Do I love the local church?”

Hebrews 10:23-27 ESV (emphasis mine).
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.