worship

A Christian Response to the Attempted Assassination

Like many of you, I’ve been attentive to the news cycle since the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. The news is disconcerting and troubling in the midst of our increasingly divided political climate.

Like many of you, I gathered with my congregation at worship on Sunday July 14. One of our lay elders, Steve Robinson, preached a fantastic message about our hope in God in the midst of trial. Another of our lay elders, Vince Adams, prayed for our country, the former President, the current President, and the political atmosphere in our country. Worshiping with God’s people on Sunday was a reminder of the necessity of trusting in a sovereign God in the midst of turmoil and uncertainty.

As I’ve wrestled with the events of this past Saturday, here are a few observational reminders for us as Christ-followers.

We must align ourselves with truth and justice, not speculation and conspiracy theories. The memes, political commentary, and conspiracy theories are running rampant. From social media to mainstream media; from podcasts to water cooler conversations, opinions, theories, and speculations are prevalent. I’ve had some of these conversations myself. We may never know all the details. Sixty years from now the information surrounding this assassination attempt may be just as convoluted as the information surrounding the JFK assassination. It is our nature to speculate, wonder, and attempt to figure out. These pursuits are not wrong in themselves. But as Christians, we are to pursue truth and justice, not foolish speculations and conspiratorial wonderings. Our cultural moment situated between mainstream media and social media is primed for conspiratorial and political divisiveness. When we inordinately focus on these speculations, we can be driven to fear and anxiety. Fear and anxiety drown out faith and peace in our lives. As a result, the attention of our hearts and minds must be rooted in the eternal Word of God and the truths that bring calmness and peace. God’s Word not only addresses the peace we need in this moment, but even more importantly points to eternity where God’s justice and truth will reign forever.

We must pursue loving-kindness and compassion for our neighbors, even those with whom we disagree politically. Paul wrote, “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another as Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:32). Jesus preached, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). The political division in our country is evident in our communities, on social media, and in many of our relational interactions. Too many people in our country view the other side of the political aisle as true enemies rather than political opponents. Too much vitriol and anger has been spewed through political rhetoric. Christian should not be part of the vitriolic speech and combative, enemy driven terminology. Yes, as Christians our values and morals are in conflict with prevailing culture. And, yes, we should participate in the political processes available to us to engage Christian morality in our culture . But we must remember that our kingdom is not of this world. We do not enter this conflict playing by the world’s rules or the standards of our culture. Our character and conduct must rise above the vitriol and political divisiveness of our land. Our demeanor must reflect that of our Savior and King who teaches us to live for eternal victory in the world to come, not political victories in the world of now.

We need a revival that stems from God’s work in our country and repentance in our hearts. We must lament, pray, and seek God’s face for ourselves and for our country. While we should be grateful the assassination attempt was unsuccessful, we should grieve for the family of Corey Comperatore as well as the shooter’s family. Pursuit of revival will mean personal and corporate repentance and prayer. Pursuit of revival will mean unapologetic, prophetic preaching from our pulpits against the sins of our land. Do not misunderstand. To love one another in compassion and to love and pray for our enemies is not to condone sinfulness or ignore the unrighteousness surrounding us. If you want to see Jesus’ example of prophetic preaching with lament for the sinfulness of his people, read Matthew 23. What this means for us as Christians is a proper balancing of political and revival perspective. The proposed solutions of political parties and candidates can only be partial solutions (if that) to the problems and issues in our land. The real solution, the ultimate need is not for our politics to get fixed, but for our hearts to repent and revival to attend our land. See God’s invitation in 2 Chronicles 7:14. May God bring to our land another Great Awakening where his people are found in lamentation and repentance and those far from God are found and rescued by the Good Shepherd.

We practice faith and confidence in God’s rule by gathering for worship regularly to declare our allegiance to Jesus . Our primary allegiance is to our King. The Kingdom of Jesus is now (the rule of Christ in the spread of the gospel through the works and words of his church) and future (the rule of Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords when he sets up his throne over heaven and earth). The reason our laments, our frustrations, our prayers, our concerns for each other, and our gospel works and words in the world have meaning in the broken world today is that they point to the coming King who will bring peace and perfection when he returns. The way we declare allegiance to Jesus today and prepare for the future is to worship Jesus now–regularly and consistently. Author and theologian N.T. Wright described the role of Christian worship as a declaration of allegiance to Christ and our positive affirmation of the kingdom of Christ (now and to come) as well as our act of protest against the prevailing wickedness in the world today:

All kingdom work is rooted in worship. Or, to put it the other way around, worshipping the God we see at work in Jesus is the most politically charged act we can ever perform. Christian worship declares that Jesus is Lord and that therefore, by strong implication, nobody else is. What’s more, it doesn’t just declare it as something to be believed, like the fact that the sun is hot or the sea wet. It commits the worshiper to allegiance, to following this Jesus, to being shaped and directed by him. Worship the God we see in Jesus orients our whole being, our imagination, our will, our hopes, and our fears away from the world where Mars, Mammon, and Aphrodite (violence, money, and sex) make absolute demands and punish anyone who resists. It orients us instead to a world in which love is stronger than death, the poor are promised the kingdom, and chastity (whether married or single) reflects the holiness and faithfulness of God himself. Acclaiming Jesus as a Lord plants a flag that supersedes the flags of the nations however ‘free’ or ‘democratic’ they may be. It challenges both the tyrants who think they are, in effect, divine and the ‘secular democracies’ that have effectively become, if not divine, at least ecclesial, that is, communities that are trying to do and be what the church was supposed to do and to be, but without recourse to the one who sustains the church’s life. Worship creates or should create, if it allowed to be truly itself—a community that marches to a different beat, that keeps in step with a different Lord.”
–N.T. Wright, Simply Jesus, 217.

May we gather weekly to do all the work of the mission by worshiping the Savior King to whom we belong. May we pursue revival in our preaching and our prayers. May we act with the compassion and loving-kindness of Jesus our Savior. May we live our lives seeking truth and justice.

Photo by Pedro Lima on Unsplash

Worship and Worldview: the Intersection of Church and Culture

Our summer sermon series is titled “Worship and Worldview: the Intersection of Church and Culture.” Like you, I’ve watched with concern the speed and trajectory of our current cultural values and morals. What was presented politically and societally just a few years ago in terms equality and acceptance has become a demand from cultural progressives. Increasingly, the Christian worldview and its accompanying values are becoming marginalized in our nation. As Christians, we grieve the trajectory of our nation’s morality. We grieve the loss of values and morality that we held dear. But what do we do about it? How do we as Christians live in a spiritually foreign land? How do we prepare our children and grandchildren to not only live with biblical values, but uphold them against the torrent of progressive ideology? 

I’m going to try to address these questions and others from the Bible during this summer sermon series. 

In recent years, I’ve read a variety of books around these themes:The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher, Pagans and Christians in the City by Stephen D. Smith, The Gathering Storm by Albert Mohler, Love Thy Body by Nancy Pearcey, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman, and Desiring the Kingdom by James K. A. Smith. I’m currently working through several other books in preparation for this series: Soul Searching by Christian Smith, We Will Not Be Silenced by Erwin Lutzer, The Gospel of the Kingdom by George Eldon Ladd, Prepared to Give an Answer by Timothy Sanders, Letter to the American Church by Eric Metaxas, Handing Down the Faith by Christian Smith and Amy Adamcyk, and You Are What You Love by James K. A. Smith (among others). Desiring the Kingdom is one of my more interesting reads this year and provided some terminology that has been helpful in developing this sermon series. If you would like to join me in workin through these issues, I would encourage you to read one or more of these books this summer. 

We are living in a pivotal time as Christ-followers. The Bible offers us guidance, understanding, and help as we navigate these tension-filled issues because we are not the first generation of God’s people facing marginalization and challenge to our worldview and worship. We need a biblical framework to help us address contemporary challenges and practices. What the Bible says about these topics is important, and we need to faithfully understand (worldview) and practice (worship) what the Bible teaches. 

I invite you to join us for these topics. Plan to attend whenever you are in town. Watch/listen online when you are not able to join in person. Moms and dads, please note the subject material for the July 23 sermon from Leviticus 18 on “A Biblical Worldivew in a Culture of Pagan Sexuality.” This sermon will not be explicit, but it will deal with subject material that is aimed at explaining pagan sexuality in contrast with God’s expectations for his people. 

If you’d like to follow along with our sermons, you can join us in person at Wilkesboro Baptist on Sundays 8:00 AM, 9:30 AM or 11:00 AM. If you can’t make it in person, you can follow along for videos of our worship services on Vimeo, YouTube, or FaceBook. Wilkesboro Baptist also has a podcast channel where you can catch our sermons each week. You can find them here or subscribe to Wilkesboro Baptist Church on iTunes.

  • June 25 Text: Daniel 1. Title: “What it Means to be Christian in a Spiritually Foreign Land.”Theme: Daniel models what it means to think and live biblically in a pagan and wicked culture.
  • July 2  Mission Trip Report from our student trip to New York City. 
  • July 9 Text: Daniel 2:31-49. Title: “Developing a Kingdom Mindset in a Society of Ungodly Leaders.” Theme: Daniel and his three friends develop a heavenly, kingdom-oriented perspective in a pagan land. 
  • July 16 Text: Daniel 12:1-4. Title:  “Technology and a Christian Worldview.” Theme: Daniel prophesies about the increase of knowledge in the time of the Gentiles. 
  • July 23 Text: Leviticus 18 . Title: “A Biblical Worldview in a Culture of Pagan Sexuality.” Theme: Applying a Christian worldview in a society of contemporary sexual immorality requires understanding holiness and sexuality from God’s perspective. 
  • July 30 Text: Ecclesiastes 12:13-14. Title: “Vanity and The Best a Man Can Do.” Theme: Since we live in a society full of vanity, how do we manage to think and live biblically? 
  • Aug 6 Associate Pastor Tad Craig 
  • Aug 13 Text: Philippians 4:4-9. Title: “Memorization, Mind, Community and Christian Thinking.” Theme: Christians have the privilege and resource of the inner life and their mind under the direction of God. 
  • Aug 20 Text: Acts 17:22-34. Title: “Gospel, Apologetics, and a Pluralistic Culture.” Theme: Learning to discern religious, cultural, and philosophical patterns aids Christian thinking and witness. 
  • Aug 27 Text: Psalm 67. Title: “Christian Worldview and Mission.” Theme:Ultimately, Christian thinking recognizes and lives by God’s purpose in the world: fear, worship, and salvation through us to the nations. 

Here are a few overarching interpretive observations that should help us navigate this series and these topics: 

  • The United States is not Israel, nor does the United States represent people of God today. The United States would be more accurately described as Babylon or Rome in terms of values and morality. We should keep this in mind as we reflect on what it means to live in a sinful society as the people of God. 
  • Christ-followers are the people of God. The people of God make up the kingdom of Christ. The kingdom of God is an overarching theme in this series and helpful for how we see our role as the church in the culture today. 
  • We need both worldview (thinking) and worship (liturgies) to shape us cognitively and formatively as God’s people. Our orthodoxy (what we believe) and orthopraxy (what we do) must be informed and formed by Scripture. It will not be enough to think rightly about these issues. We need to be formed by biblical liturgies and spiritual disciplines to live faithfully as God’s people today. 
  • We must be active and intentional to know and articulate our worldview and practice Christian worship (liturgies). If we remain passive regarding the biblical worldview and worship, the secular and pagan liturgies driven by media, politics, education, entertainment, and social media will form us and our children/grandchildren to the prevailing values around us. Our recourse must be a commitment to thinking biblically and worshiping faithfully. 
  • The church must function as a place where the people of God can be rooted and fruitful. We must pray for sinners, share the gospel, speak up on these issues, vote, and engage society with our voices and actions. But we need to be aware that we may not be able to bring our values back from the immoral brink we’ve already crossed. We are watching the collision between unfettered sexual freedom and religions freedom. Whether or not we are able to affect change in our society, the church must remain a community of the King: Christ followers and Jesus worshipers. 
  • As the people of the Kingdom of Christ, we should have courage and confidence. The angel in Revelation 15 announces: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Rev. 11:15). We should be courageous for our King is the King. We should have confidence because no matter what happens in our culture and in our world, the kingdom of this world will become the Kingdom of our Lord. 

Join us in prayer and participation during this summer sermon series. May we remain faithful as the people of God in the Kingdom of Christ.