2024 General Synod, Day 1 Recap

Thank you, especially to the brethren of the Hopewell congregation, for the keen interest in how things go with our Lord's church in the ARP, and for giving yourselves to prayer for it. Since these include my own personal observations, I'm posting these summaries here, rather than on the church blog. If you'd like to try to keep up with the General Synod, you can see the Synod materials here, and watch the live streams here.

Where to Begin: God [Dec, 2022, Contribution to Seventeen82]

This article first appeared at Seventeen82

As ARPs, it is by means of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms that we obey the Scriptural mandate to maintain a pattern of sound words. By the Confession’s own viewof the Holy Scriptures, such patterns of sound words must be servants of Scripture, not substitutes, or even supplements. This is what we might call the preliminary principle of Reformed Presbyterianism.

An Open Reply to Our Moderator Regarding His Pastoral Letter of Encouragement unto Public Worship

I wrote the following letter this morning. 

It is brief of necessity, because I expect that not all response to our Moderator's letter will be positive, and I wished to reply with encouragement as quickly as possible. There is so much more that I could have said about the thinking of our Session (and myself), our hunger to hear other ministers of the gospel speak similarly from Scripture, etc.

I make my letter "open" for similar reasons. Since there may be other voices that push back against him, I wish to be public in my support for our Morderator's wise and biblically prioritized counsel:

Dear Dr. Holmes,

I almost wept with joy upon reading your letter yesterday, brother. 

It has been a lonely time for me and the few other ARP ministers who thought that public worship is not something that we may cancel, and that if in trying to gather the Lord positively prevented us from being able to do so, that this would be a time for great mourning, regardless of what other measures might be taken for some semblance of continuing the means of grace without that public worship.

In all that was said and written, there was very little about the priority of the first table of the law over the second, the place of public worship and the Lord's Day in the will of Christ for His disciples and His church, the risk-worthiness of public worship, and especially the glory that is due unto God in the manner that He Himself says glorifies Him. 

The man-centeredness of even most of the careful and thoughtful commentary was cause for much reflection upon where our own congregation and lives have been man-centered in a way that we just couldn't see. We cried out to God to help us see and repent. And, God helping us, we have some areas in which our congregation will be reforming as a result.

But, as I said, we felt extremely lonely in our refusal to give up gathering for the public worship of God, and our viewing this as a call to REPENTANCE FROM innovation in worship (as opposed to new LICENSE TO innovate in worship). We reached a point where, as our Session and congregation prayed for the church generally and our Synod specifically, we did so with great grief, pleading with God to stir our hearts up toward Him and His worship. 

Your letter has been a part of the Lord's answer to that prayer. 

And now, I find myself able to pray not only that the Lord would bring us back to His inerrant and sufficient and authoritative word in Scripture; but, also that He would grant us humility and unity in heeding the edifying and encouraging letter from His servant who has stood upon the Scriptures to write so helpfully to us.

With thanks and prayer to our great and gracious God for you, I remain your co-laborer in the gospel ministry,

--

Pastor James Hakim

Hopewell ARP Church

Culleoka, Tennessee

http://hopewellarp.org

http://jamesnhakim.blogspot.com

Notre Dame Burned to the Ground

Notre Dame burned to the ground. As far as the building goes, it was just the roof and spire that burned this week. The rest may have to wait until Jesus burns even the elements of heaven and earth in the process of refashioning them for the new creation.

But the whole thing burned all the way to the ground some 200 years after the building was "consecrated," when Trent took Roman Catholicism over the threshold from "decaying church" into "synagogue of Satan" by anathematizing the gospel.

It's far more dreadful for the church, as a living and spiritual organism, to burn than for even the most significant of buildings to be lost. When Solomon's temple was razed, it was a smaller tragedy than the previous 400 years of Judah's spiritual collapse.

"But Notre Dame is a symbol." Stop right there. Christ brought us out of the shadows. Post-ascension, religious symbols beyond the two sacraments are indicative of a church that's burning.

I grieve for France, and Paris, and even beautiful buildings. I wish I grieved more, but my heart is never so soft as it should be. I fall even further short when grieving for churches. I keep hearing that it's holy week. Who says? Men? Certainly not God.

I'm not just hearing this from Roman Catholics. Not just from Evangelicals. Not just from so-called "Continental Reformed" (though we should change the euphemism to "Continental 2/3 Reformed," since the preacta and postacta of the Synod of Dordt would thoroughly shock them).

I hear it from ministers in my own Church. I am subjected to their Facebook ads for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services. I am amazed at their articles that throw the word 'catholic' around as if it has anything to do with the organization headquartered in the Vatican. I am dismayed at their dismay at the possible "loss" of dead images, which we confess together are offensive to the living God.

It's not that I'm ungrateful that the Lord has been turning our Church back around to its former, more biblical, doctrine and practice. Rather, I'm alarmed that there's not still alarm, when the fire is not yet out.

To be sure, the heat is diminished. The soundness of the structure as a whole is no longer in question. But the last of the fire still smolders in fairly obvious ways. It needs to be put out. And then the rebuilding and refurbishing can begin and should proceed in earnest.

To be honest, most of the time, I forget altogether to see this reality. Sometimes it takes an historic event to put the rest of our everyday experience into historical (or even biblical) perspective.

O, for a heart that would grieve as it ought for the spiritual state of the Church! O, for a Church that is so enraptured with the reigning, returning Christ who sits on the Throne, that it would shrug at the weightlessness (and grieve at the offensiveness) of all human embellishments that dare go by the name "Christ"ianity.