His name was Joseph.  He came from an island off the coast, but had family in the city, and had come to worship at the two feast days, probably staying with his close relative Mary.  While he was there he saw and heard amazing things:  people speaking languages they had never studied, something that looked like fire but wasn’t, something that sounded like a windstorm but wasn’t, and a sermon that both astonished and convicted him.  He wound up staying in town, along with several thousand others who had become part of God’s new kingdom, the one they had been waiting for so long. 
            Despite their previous plans, they all chose to stay so they could learn, so they could grow, so they could mature before they went off on their own to spread the word in a world of sin, a world, they were told, that would reject them more often than accept them.  It wasn’t long till the practical needs of several thousand homeless people with no income could no longer be ignored. 
            Those who lived in the city helped as much as they could.  They took people in and collected funds to buy extra food and clothing.  Men were chosen to see to these needs.  Joseph helped as well, selling off extra property he owned, and donating the full amount to the group. 
            But that was not all he did.  Here was a man who excelled at encouragement, consolation, exhortation.  He was the first to give a pat on the back when it was needed, a hug, a kind word, a stern word, a teaching word, a “rah-rah” from the sidelines, a second chance to those whom others had given up on.  In fact, he became so good at it that the apostles gave him the nickname, “son of encouragement/consolation/exhortation,” whatever your version says in Acts 4:36.  And forever more in the scriptures, that is how we know him—Barnabas.  Did you even know that was not his real name?
            Whenever I think of that man, I wonder what nickname the apostles would give me?  Whiny Winnie?  Gossip Gail?  My-Way Marian?  Grumpy Gert?  Cold-hearted Catherine?  Hotheaded Harriet?   Wondering about that will give your character a real shot in the arm.  I’d much rather have something like Generous Joyce or Compassionate Kate. 
            Your assignment for today?  Try to figure out what they would call you.  Be honest.  You can always change that name, just by changing yourself.


A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold,  Prov 22:1.



Dene Ward

Today's post is by guest writer Keith Ward.

With nearly 2000 years of the history of God as Father, it is difficult for us to imagine the impact the gospel had on the ancient world.  Gospel means “Good News.”  To us, it is so familiar that we cannot even comprehend why they thought of it as astoundingly good.

My purpose is that we see the gospel the same way those ancient pagans did which will help us see why the gospel of Jesus exploded across the empire.

The pagan view of god was one reasoned by the philosophers such as Plato, Zeno, Aristotle, and others not so well known.  They felt that god must be far removed from this corrupt world and indifferent to it.  As a being of pure reason, how could god care what happened to men or even be aware of it.  In fact, the philosophers held matter, and especially emotion, to be so evil in relation to the purity of reason that god himself could not have created them.  The god was unemotional, implacable, unmovable (sort of like the god of Calvinism's predestination).  An emanation thousands of descents removed from god was the actual creator and then not a participant in creation.  Inasmuch as lesser gods than even he interacted with humans at all, they were capricious at best and vicious on a whim.  The major goal of the pagan sacrificial system was to get god to leave them alone.  A pagan’s life was spent hoping the gods never noticed him or at least did not care enough to lash out at him.

Into this world burst the gospel of a God who cares, A God who is good and sends good things, A God who loves and not only loves, but loved so much that he sent his Son.  Gods coming to be among men was not new in the mythologies, but they came to satisfy their own lusts and to toy with men.  God sent his Son to rescue men and elevate them and give them hope.  When this gospel was ratified by signs from heaven and not just magical wonders, but signs that healed and helped mortals, men flocked to the truth. 

Further, the gospel offered hope: hope now and hope to come.  What could an ordinary man be? He would live and work and die and, outside his city, who would know or care? The gospel offered meaning to life, to engage in cosmic warfare in the heavenlies.  A Christian was a warrior known by name to his Captain who strengthened him and rewarded him in life.  And in place of the dismal realms of the dead found in the mythologies, the gospel offered eternal life.  To be somebody--even kings and presidents are not remembered long--but God knows your name.  Men’s monumental achievements are forgotten in a generation and who cares anyway (except for the history test), but righteousness and holiness is a victory written in the Book of Life before the Father’s throne.

That gospel is still good news to the nobodies, to the downtrodden and forgotten, to the everyday man who will never be the footnote to a footnote in history.  Is that not who heard Jesus gladly?

"“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  " (John 3:16).

Don't you long to forever be where that love is?
 
Keith Ward

Paul wrote a scathing letter to the Corinthian brothers and sisters.  This was a church with so many problems many might have refused to call them “sound” nowadays.  The root of every problem they had could probably be summed up as “immaturity.”  Paul, in fact, calls them babes.  You know what he would have said in our language?  “I could not speak to you as spiritual adults because you are a bunch of big babies!”  1 Cor 3:1.
            In chapter six these immature people were taking each other to court.  Paul tells them that this only hurts the church’s reputation in the world.  “What?” he says.  “Don’t you have any one wise enough to help you settle your disputes?  You are doing harm to the church and ought to be willing to suffer wrong instead of making God’s kingdom look bad” (chapter 6, more or less).
            I don’t think that only applies to legal matters.  This was recorded for us, and if we are as smart as we think we are, we ought to be able to apply it in all sorts of situations.  The problem is, we are Americans, and proud of it.  We have rights!  And we often insist on those rights, regardless of how it might make others view the body of which we claim to be a part.
            And then there are the situations that really have nothing to do with “rights,” just convenience or “feelings.”  I love the insurance commercial that says, “The drivers on the road are people.  So treat them like they are in your home, not in your way.”  I wonder if the ad man who came up with that is a Christian.  He sounds more like one than some I know who are. 
            So the next time the person ahead of you in the check-out line takes a long time writing a check, or when the person in the car ahead of you is not as brave as you are about making that left turn across traffic, “take wrong” and “be defrauded” of a few minutes in your day instead of letting him know how much he exasperates you. 
            What if either of those people walk into services Sunday morning, looking for the truth of God’s Word and recognizes you?  Exactly how has your “looking out for your rights” affected their hearts?  Do you think they are likely to be more or less receptive to the gospel? 
            What if, at a family gathering or a church potluck someone says something that you find insulting?  “Take wrong” or “be defrauded” of your feelings for the sake of the others there, including children whose fun might be ruined when you cause a scene and walk off in a huff, or a visitor someone has brought to the potluck who might now have a bad opinion of the church.  In all these cases, just like little children, we often see and care only how things affect us, and not how they will affect others.
            If we cannot yield the right of way when it only affects our convenience, what makes us think we can when it is a matter of legal rights?  If we cannot sacrifice a few precious feelings, we have already failed the test of whether we would sacrifice our lives.  He who is faithful in little is faithful in much; he who is unfaithful in little, is unfaithful in much, Luke 16:10.
            It takes maturity to yield, especially when you are in the right, especially when the other person is not looking out for your good, especially when you have to suffer wrong, or even just inconvenience, to do so.  It also takes maturity to remember this in the heat of the moment.  Would Paul call us a bunch of big babies, too? 
I say this to your shame.  Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you.  Why not rather suffer wrong?  Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves [by this behavior] wrong and defraud—even your own brothers, 1 Cor 6:5-8.

 Dene Ward

Today's post is by guest writer Matt Bassford, and was originally printed in the emagazine Pressing On edited by Mark Roberts.  Contact me (left sidebar) for subscription information.

For years, I’ve been an advocate of using quality hymns in worship. Not surprisingly, there are plenty of folks who disagree with me, particularly when I get to picking on contemporary praise songs that I don’t think are useful in congregational worship. They’ve even been known to get upset about it. It’s like I called their dog ugly or something.

One of the most common countercharges is that I don’t like the contemporary songs I don’t like because I’m stuck in the past. According to this way of thinking, I believe the only good hymns are the ones written in the 19th century, filled with “Thee” and “Thou”, and possessed of syntax so convoluted that only Yoda could love it. Oh, and the music has to sound like it was born on a pipe organ too.

There are certainly people who believe such things, but I’m not one of them. I think “Abide with Me” is a wonderful hymn, but not every hymn has to sound like “Abide with Me” to be good. Instead, my usual indictment of many modern worship songs is that 1) they lack strong Biblical content, and 2) the music is too complicated for a congregation to learn easily.

Neither one of these things is a necessary attribute of sacred songs written in the past 50 years, though such songs often fail on one or both counts. Rather, they are frequently problems because modern authors and composers generally don’t make good content and congregationality their priorities, particularly the latter.

Chris Tomlin doesn’t write music for me and my modest range. He writes music for Chris Tomlin, Chris Tomlin’s wonderful range, and Chris Tomlin’s backup band of professional musicians. Most brethren, however, have musical gifts much more like mine than like Chris Tomlin’s. Is it any wonder when they struggle with the Chris Tomlin repertoire?

However, when contemporary writers pay attention to content and the musical abilities of ordinary worshipers, they can turn out some excellent work that is eminently suitable for use in our assemblies. By now, most brethren are familiar with “In Christ Alone”, written by Stuart Townend and Keith and Kristin Getty. Together and separately, they’ve written plenty of other hymns that are comparable in quality and usefulness. The same goes for Bob Kauflin and the many writers who have been associated with Sovereign Grace through the years.

Recently, the Australian group CityAlight has attracted my attention (the tagline on their website is “Christian worship music with Biblically rich lyrics”, which is a good sign). Yes, they use drums and guitars, but brethren have been adapting denominational hymns for a-cappella use since the Restoration. We can do it here too.

Consider, for instance, the CityAlight song “Jesus Strong and Kind”, which I recently encountered for the first time. Its lyrics are:

1. Jesus said that if I thirst
I should come to Him;
No one else can satisfy;
I should come to Him.
2. Jesus said if I am weak
I should come to Him;
No one else can be my strength;
I should come to Him.
Chorus:
For the Lord is good and faithful;
He will keep us day and night;
We can always run to Jesus,
Jesus, strong and kind.
3. Jesus said that if I fear
I should come to Him;
No one else can be my shield;
I should come to Him.
(Chorus)
4. Jesus said if I am lost
He will come to me;
And He showed me on that cross
He will come to me.
(Chorus)

That’s good. It doesn’t look like the hymns Isaac Watts wrote, nor yet like the hymns I write. It’s still good. It reveals Biblical study and contemplation, it is focused, and it is deeply meaningful to the believer, especially those who also have spent time in study of the word.

If I may indulge in hymn-geekery for a moment, it’s also good because of its structural strength. Like many modern praise songs, it doesn’t use a strong rhyme scheme and can’t develop structure that way. Instead, it employs repetition, mixed with a few powerful word changes, as its structural element. The change from “thirst” and “satisfy” to “weak” and “strength” makes v. 2 meaningfully different from v. 1, even though most of the words are the same. However, the whole still has unity because of those similarities.

The music is also (or should be, at least) congregationally accessible. The use of verses means that brethren who learn music by rote don’t have to learn as much. The range is limited to a congregation-friendly octave, C to C in the original sheet music, though I’d probably raise it to D or Eb for four-part a-cappella use. I like the tune, too. Churches of Christ should be able to sing this one easily.

When was this fine piece of hymnody written? 2019. All it takes is somebody in the denominational world who cares about the Bible and congregational singing, and they’ll hand us something we can use.

Indeed, this happens frequently. This year, I wrote a workbook called Singing with Understanding for a Bible class I taught. Each lesson of the workbook pitted an unfamiliar hymn I liked against an unfamiliar hymn I didn’t so that the class could analyze the qualities of good and bad hymns. For the sake of fairness, I segregated hymns by time period: old good against old bad, new good against new bad. Of the four categories, I had by far the easiest time filling out the “New Good” category because so many of the best worship songs being written now are unfamiliar to the church.

That’s a shame. Rather than allowing CCM icons and praise teams to drive the additions to our repertoire, we ought instead to be looking for songs that are written for and will benefit the congregation. If we seek, we will find, and our song worship will benefit immeasurably thereby.

Matthew Bassford