Trinity Fellowship

In today's text, an encounter that starts as a challenge to Christ's authority ends not only with His complete vindication, but also with the humiliation of His opponents. Jesus does not evade or change subjects, but simply assumes the authority He has been challenged on, and uses it so wisely that His opponents condemn themselves. Jesus's authority comes from heaven, and this is revealed in a public manner after His baptism by John. John's baptism initiated the sorting process that Jesus intensifies. The preaching of repentance drives some to the Saviour and others to their own self-sufficiency. This message of gospel repentance continues this sorting work down into today. Do the demands and the shame of the gospel drive you to the self-effort and self-righteousness of the Pharisees, or to the true righteousness of God's kingdom?

Christ has entered Jerusalem in the final week of His life. The city that should stand ready to receive her Messiah has proven to be His most stubborn opponent. The curse on the fig tree serves as a lasting memorial to what happens to all those who are likewise all show and no substance. Those who profess Christ but do not possess Christ are headed to a similar outcome. Christ is committed to removing sin and unbelief, and He starts with something as mundane as cursing a fig tree. After He explains what He has done, He instructs all of us to not only see the goodness of His judgment, but to actively pray for more of it. He points to the mountain in plain view and encourages His disciples that even this great symbol of power can and will be swallowed up by the sea of God's wrath. So, our charge this week is to actively participate in Christ's settled purpose to remove all unbelief, all idleness, and all obstacles that stand in the way of the advance of His kingdom.

The worship of the living God is a long war for the cosmos. Every Lord's Day morning the future of the world is being determined by how God's people approach the heavenly city. God continues to shake the earth until His kingdom is all that remains. Every Lord's Day we participate in this shaking by besieging the gates of Hades in song, prayer, and the preaching of God's Word. This is a joyful yet solemn task. Our worship is to be both alive and disciplined. Our hearts and heads must both be engaged in an intentional manner that refuses to treat the Lord's service like a junk drawer filled with random elements. Rather, it is to faithfully reflect the patterns and rhythms found all through the Scriptures whenever God keeps covenant with His people. So, the charge is this, see to it that you are intentional about the worship of the living God, in the daily pattern of family worship, and in the calendar-defining event of corporate Sunday worship.

To be Baptist is to be invested in the health of the local church. Baptist life is marked by a robust congregationalism as well as an emphasis on believers baptism being grounded in the nature of the new covenant. Neither of these things guarantee perfect outcomes, but congregationalism and believer's baptism are designed to safeguard the peace and purity of the church. Governance at the local church level ensures an agility to adjust as needed, and to protect the church from top-down directives that may not be in the best interest in the spiritual health of her members. Believer's baptism acknowledges that the new covenant is a better covenant with a perfect Mediator. No longer are the covenant people of God a mixed multitude of believers and unbelievers who are marked by ancestry, but they are a royal priesthood of those who have been regenerated by the Spirit of God and who have been purchased by the blood of Christ. Our charge is to press into these practices, and for each one of us to be intentional about the peace and purity of Trinity Fellowship, a biblical, evangelical and Reformed Baptist church.

To be Reformed is to take every thought captive to obey Christ the King (2 Cor. 10:5). It is a rock-ribbed commitment to interpret every historical event, every human endeavour, every corporate worship service, every personal experience, and every doctrine through the lens of God's glory. In salvation, we see that God saves us from Himself, for Himself, and by Himself. In redemptive history, we see that God is zealous for His own glory, incrementally and meticulously advancing the purposes that He decreed before eternity. In church history, we see how His faithful hand of providence guides His people and keeps our paths straight (Prov. 3:6), reminding us to not neglect the ancient landmarks that our fathers have set (Prov. 28:22). Correctly understood, Reformed theology does not stay safely on the bookshelf, nor does it ever allow for boredom or passivity, but sets fire to our hearts; consuming us entirely for the glory of God.

The controlling theme of Scripture and of world history is the glory of God. Because of the Fall, we have been blinded to God's glory and unable to find our way back. God answers this problem in the gospel; where He comes and does all the work of redemption. We have clearly seen that our Lord does not come finding people willing to cooperate; rather, He makes dead people willing by breathing the life of the gospel into them. The announcement that God saves sinners is summed up in the "Five Solas" which were emphasized in the evangelical reawakening at the Reformation. These words of life are discovered in Scripture alone (sola Scriptura), and reveal to us that we are saved by grace alone (sola gratia), through faith alone (sola fide), in Christ alone (solus Christus), for God's glory alone (soli Deo gloria).