A Guide to Christian Theology - Lesson 1

Well, the first question we're doing this thing is, why in the world would you invest this kind of time in studying systematic theology? That's a really good question and I have a really good answer, because it's useful and I'll show you how.

In this first little segment in here, I just want to think about how to approach the idea of doing theology, studying what the Bible teaches about God and us, and sin, and all those things. And it comes down to two verses from Psalm 139. Psalm 139:17-18, "How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you."

And that attitude is the heart of what I do when I do theology and what I try to get people I'm teaching to it, is realize that God has given us his thoughts, his ways, his truth, and he's given it to us as a gift. And vast? Oh, my. We'll never get to the bottom of it, but we're going to give ourselves to understanding the best we can. "How precious to me your thoughts, oh God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you." And that's the heart of it. We are studying God in a personal relationship with him.

So when you do this, what I want you to do when you do theology fundamentally is I want you to study personally. That is bring your whole person to the presence of God and the presence of the community of God and be with him in the process. We're always studying with Yahweh present. We're never talking about God, we're talking along with God. Now, you can bring anything to him, but you always do it respectfully, you always do it submissively, and you always do it, "Check my thoughts and be sure I'm right."

Personally, with God present, in the provincial capital of British Columbia, there's a window that talks about the different dimensions of theology. What I took away from that window is, first of all, theology without piety. So one window is theologia, the other is pietas. Theology without piety is sterile abstraction, and it's worse than useless. Piety without theology is empty emotionalism. The difference between those two is really important. Theology without piety, without that pious personal response, is sterile and it's deadly.

When I go to study marriage, I recognize there's a deadliness constraint. I have a long relationship and when I'm studying it, if I'm studying it abstractly, it can actually corrode our marriage. If I come and bring Sherry with me and we do it together, it can build our marriage. That's where we do theology. But piety without theology, it's just emotionalism because we extract it from who God is, then we go in crazy places. Join together, we end up with the John 4:24, worship in spirit, truth.

So George MacDonald said this, "Nothing is so deadening as the divine as an habitual dealing with the outsides of holy things." I'll read that one more time. "Nothing is so deadening to the divine as an habitual dealing with the outsides of holy things." We want to dig in deep into the living core of what's going on. So on one hand, going back to biblical times, we need to be very careful about the danger of precise orderly theology of the Pharisees. They're going to kill Jesus. And a lot of its work I see in theology is logical, precise, and dead. The other side, of course, is nothing. Note, the other danger of the emotionally warm theology are the Sadducees. They were so concerned for relevance, they're ready to give up truth. We've got to hit that balance between the two and be the idea of this neither pharisaic nor saddusaic.

So when you think of this again, why do this? Because when you do theology, we're bringing a framework to passages of scripture. One of the books that has just intrigued me forever is the book Jonah. I began with that Jonah and the Whale and that kind of stuff and kind of a kid's tale. And the more I've pondered that over the years, the deeper I've gotten into it, the more I realize the profound lessons.

But you got this crazy thing that happens, God sends Jonah and he says, "Warn them I'm going to kill, 40 days, you're toast." So Jonah very reluctantly goes under duress and says, "40 days, you're toast." No turn or burn, it's just in 40 days, you're toast. "They repent and God forgives them," is what it says. And what happens? You'll bring a theological frame to that. Can God actually respond to the repentance of somebody else? And different theologies have defense for that question.

And you'll interpret that theology very differently if you're kind of hardcore Calvinist than if you're a staunch Arminian or something in between. And that framework you bring, because for some, God is always the initiator, never the responder. See, if I bring that framework to the past, it will come to a different conclusion. Never bring that God is the one who's looking for response for his people, and that can actually be changed by their response than somewhere between. So that theological frame is important.

Another one, Hebrew 6. What does it say when it says, "It's impossible for those who turn away to be renewed to repentance?" Again, very different frames. Some people say, "One time you fall away, end of story, you're done. You got one chance on the train, you jump off, you're done, in hell forever." On the other side, you get a more Calvinist viewer and they're going to say, "No, it's impossible to lose your salvation so that must be something else. That's a warning passage. And God uses the warning passage to accomplish his purpose of keeping us in the faith." Very different interpretations, the same passage because of the theological framework. And so what we're going to do here is talk about not just the passages, not just the theologies, but how you do theology behind it. But that framework is really important.

I'm an old man, if you haven't noticed. I grew up on the song, You Shall Know Them By Your Love. And the phrase, at least in my young days, I think it's still true, "I just love Jesus." Okay, who's Jesus? And what I find is just incredibly different response to the question, who is Jesus? Well, that's theology. Who is this one? What manner of man is this? We'll talk about it as one of our topics. So that's an important thing to do.

Many of you here are leaders. Oh, did I tell you to get your Bible? Okay, push pause right now. Go get your Bible if you don't already have it, okay? Do it, this is a command from God. Push pause, get your Bible, you got to have it. Okay, and push pause and turn to Titus 1. I'm going to do that here too, Titus 1. We're going to do this a lot in here, so keep your bibles around. This is talking about leaders in the church. It's talking about elders, a number of things we talk about.

Titus 1:9, so you've got it in phone already. There's somebody like that in paper, like these people here in front of you, and it takes a while to get there. Titus 1:9 says this, "He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. For there are many rebellious people, full of meaningless talk and deception, especially those of the circumcision group. They must be silenced, because they're disrupting whole households by the teaching things they ought not to teach."

And see, that's one of the things we're told to do. As leaders in the church, we must be able to exhort in sound doctrine and refute those who contradict, which means we need to know what we're teaching to build people to the measure of the stature of fullness of Christ, and also to refute those who by subtle deception are ruining the faith. And that's what we're looking for. We want to do that kind of stuff. There are a lot of people who claim to speak for God. A lot of people claim to be a follower of Jesus. We need to know who they are. And personal charisma, persuasiveness, is it supernatural power or is it consistent with who God really says he is? That's our question.

Intelligent prayer, when I think about that, I was taught as a kid, in many cases, I still hear that, I've got to get my attitude fixed before I come to God in prayer because I always have to begin my prayer with praise. I always have to begin with adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. What happens if you feel the pits? What happened if I just happened in our church? 59-year-old man loved Jesus, took Jesus with him everywhere, had a heart attack just over a week ago, and within five days was dead. I talked to his widow yesterday. What do you do when your husband just died and you're alone in the world? You got to begin with adoration? Well, it depends on your theology.

See, I look at Psalm 13, which is one of those incredible psalms written by David, and it begins, "How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?" That's not adoration. See, you bring a theology of understanding of God to your prayer. Do you have to get reverent, sing and adore before you can pray? My answer is no. But for a lot of people, they're not allowed to bring in sadness. They're not allowed to bring in hurt. Or they play the victim side, and really, that's all they do is bring hurt to God and complain to him. So again, your picture of God is going to be very central to your life of prayer.

What do you do with trials? Again, thinking of this woman I talked to yesterday, widow, husband dead. She was in the hospital room with him when he finally passed after several heart attacks, and brain damage, and all kinds of stuff. What do you do with that? Where's God? I just talked to a policeman this morning who was involved in an officer-involved shooting, and he ended up shooting a man who was trying to kill him. Where's God in this? Your baby just died. Where's God in the suffering?

See, the thing is that different theologies will bring different answers to that. And in some cases, a theology can be very comforting, and one person will be deadly to another one. And what I would do in this course is we think through it, is approach these questions and many more. Well, one more question. Again, talking to a guy just very recently and he kept describing himself, "There's nothing good in me. There's nothing good in me. Fortunately, God accepts me as a sinner."

And I let him talk for a while before I said, "Can you open your Bible and read me?" And I took him some passage because he's born again in Jesus, there's a lot of good in him. It's called new heart. It's called deep desires for godliness. Now, there's bad in him too, at least my understanding, but he is representing a theology that says, "There's nothing good in me. I'm saved by grace alone. I'd be given the righteousness of Jesus and nothing there." I talk to other people and they say, "Thanks be to God. I have been renewed completely. There is no sinful desire in me whatsoever." Poor opposites about how you approach the Christian life.

And I lay these things out partly to trouble your mind. Yeah, it's true. And partly to think that what we're doing here, as we invoke on this study, is something that's deeply personal, deeply applicable to your Christian life, and critically important for your discipleship life as you bring others to the measure of the stature of fullness of Christ. That's what we're going to do over these lessons. And I want you to do it personally. I want you to do it biblically. I want you to do it responsibly, and if possible, I want you to do it in community because that's the best way to do things. Okay?

Let me pray for us to begin this study, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, thank you that you've entrusted us with the words of life. You've given us your thoughts, you've given us your ways. You've shown us who you are. Holy Spirit, show us those places in us where we need to learn and grow. And as we do this course together, I pray rich blessing for us all. In Jesus' name, amen.