My wife loves making lists, because she loves checking things off her list. Striking through task after task brings a real sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. Nothing beats the feeling of checking off that last item and heading for a well-earned rest. But there is always that one item – that stubborn one that is always there, yet never removed, never finished.
Some jobs simply never end. Some, such as road construction or cancer therapy, never end because the work progresses more slowly than the growing need. The pace of the work cannot keep up with the demand for it to be complete. But there are other jobs that never end because it is their nature to be undone, incomplete. Laundry work is the paradigm for this type of work.

Laundry is never done. You may wash the last load and fold the last dishrag and smugly congratulate yourself in your victory over dirty clothes, then in a flash your family appears bearing those loads they have been holding back for “such a time as this.” And, thus it starts all over again. Laundry is never done. By definition, as long as we live in this fallen world where we are no longer naked and not ashamed, laundry is ever-awaiting. In our household, “laundry work” is a ready metaphor for any job or experience in life that is always being done but never getting done.

The Reformers of the Sixteenth Century, famously included the reformation of the church in the category of ‘laundry work.’ The Reformation was not an event, but an iteration. It is in the very nature of the church to perpetually undergo reformation. Prior to the return of Christ and the final judgement, there is no golden age to which we can point and say, if only we could live in those times the church would be pure. From the beginning of God’s Covenant people, the church has been in need of reformation. Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda, ‘the Church reformed, [and] always reforming’ was the Reformer’s motto.

Always Reforming! The church is always in need of correction, sanctification, renewal, discipleship, gospel preaching, the faithful and diligent use of the ordinary means of grace. The marks of the church imply as much — faithful preaching of the Word, faithful administration of the Sacraments, and church discipline. The Reformation of the Church is not an event, it is ‘laundry work.’ That is, until the day when the church descends from heaven – holy, radiant, finally and fully prepared to be the bride and wife of the lamb. For now, the church must be ‘always reforming.’ But a day is coming when faith becomes sight and every promise, every ‘yes and amen’ in Christ, is fulfilled. Then the church will at last be all she has been created to be. All brokenness and blemish will be gone.

Her beauty, her perfect fellowship with her Beloved, and her indescribable life, so beautifully captured in Revelation 21:9-22:5, are the hope to which we press “with every grace endued.” Knowing that a day is coming when the laundry work of reformation will end, we press on with the work of always reforming. Scripture commands us, “let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”

Have you grown weary of a church that is always reforming? Or of the arduous work this reformation demands? Has the friction of always reforming caused you to grow weary of doing good? Have you chosen, either practically or actually, to excommunicate yourself, unwilling to press on toward the hope of a radiant, pure, and holy church? Have you become such a severe critic of the Lamb’s bride? A commenter rather than a communicant? Have you have lost sight that, even in her time of sanctification, she is glorious, radiant, and live-giving?

Throughout time the church has been an Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda. But a day is coming when the church reformed and always reforming will “com[e] down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel… And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”

Until that day, may this vision of the end, teach us to love the church and live within it. Hymnwriter, Samuel Stone expressed this tension well in the final verses of his beloved hymn, The Church’s One Foundation.

‘Mid toil and tribulation, and tumult of her war,
she waits the consummation of peace forevermore;
till with the vision glorious her longing eyes are blest,
and the great church victorious shall be the church at rest.

Yet she on earth hath union with God the Three in One,
and mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won:
O happy ones and holy! Lord, give us grace that we,
like them, the meek and lowly, on high may dwell with thee.

The Church’s One Foundation, Samuel J. Stone.

Join us this Reformation Lord’s Day, as we examine Revelation 21:9-22:5 and consider a day when the church will no longer be always reforming.  

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

What’s the catch?  Our mothers always warned us, “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”  The cunning of the salesman is to promote the benefits and overcome the objections.   Unfortunately, ‘the catch’ often gets lost in a sea of euphemism.   And so, to bridge the gap between the sunshine of the salesman and the rainy day of reality, we have disclaimers. 

Everything comes with disclaimers. The fine print. The low-toned, rapid-fire voice at the end of the commercial offering a hurried, but dire warning. Asterisks and double-daggers qualify every statement, so as to evade charges of false advertising. The dictionary defines a disclaimer as, “a statement, document, or assertion that disclaims responsibility, affiliation, etc.; disavowal; denial.” To disclaim is the opposite of claiming. The salesman claims, the legal department disclaims. Offers are made, then qualified, modified, mortified. The sales pitch promotes benefit without borders, then the disclaimer draws a very small map of possibilities. 

Disclaimers makes us jaded to every remarkable promise, suspicious of every offer.  Yet, I suppose this is nothing new in the history of the world.   From the beginning, the Great Deceiver, deceived our forefather Adam to believe that it was God who was deceiving him.   Satan added disclaimers and man doubted.   Ever since, man has doubted.   God offers man more than he can imagine.  The offer requires only faith, yet man can only doubt.  Satan suggests disclaimers.  Surely God is up to no good.  Surely it is a trap to defraud and destroy.   And so, in our fallenness we trust the Deceiver, and view the Trustworthy One with suspicion.

But God gives something else.  He gives faith as a gift.   God in his mercy, gives us the faith to trust that his offer comes without disclaimers.   Nothing in our doing or undoing undoes God’s offer of eternal life.   And to remind us of this, He brings the great story of redemption to a close in Revelation 21 with a vision of all His promises kept.   Everything He offered is given.  Nothing is withheld.   There are no caveats, no conditions, no last-minute substitutions – no disclaimers.

What was true regarding the people of Israel entering the promised land, is also true all who will experience the new heavens and the new earth.

Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.

Joshua 21:45

Have you trusted these promises? Have you accepted God’s offer? Have you believed that eternal life in Christ appears too good to be true, but really is? Or has the Deceiver kept you looking for a disclaimer, a loophole, a conviction that God’s promise comes with asterisks and double-daggers and will come to nothing? Join us this Lord’s Day as we examine Revelation 21:1-8 and consider the offer that appears too good to be true, but really is.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Rock and roll ballads rarely offer helpful counsel for life’s existential angst.  But they do put their finger insightfully on the pulse of the angst itself.   The bards of rock know well their condition and articulate it with great intensity.   Examples are copious, but some lyrics are more poignant than others. 

Creed’s title track, My Own Prison, has always grieved me.   It’s clarity regarding the ultimate existential crisis, but unwillingness to accept its acknowledged solution underscores the inability of man, unaided by the effectual calling of the Spirit, to find peace. 

Court is in session, a verdict is in
No appeal on the docket today just my own sin
The walls cold and pale, the cage made of steel
Screams fill the room, alone I drop and kneel

Silence now the sound, my breath the only motion around
Demons cluttering around, my face showing no emotion
Shackled by my sentence, expecting no return
Here there is no penance, my skin begins to burn

I hear a thunder in the distance, see a vision of a cross
I feel the pain that was given on that sad day of loss
A lion roars in the darkness, only he holds the key
A light to free me from my burden and grant me life eternally

I cry out to God, seeking only His decision
Gabriel stand and confirms, I’ve created my own prison.

While its theology is askew, the songs’ message is clear.   Without God’s grace, men are self-condemned in a prison of their own sinful making.  The Bible is clear about our condition apart from God’s grace.  Men try to ignore it, deceive themselves about it, and rail against it, but the they cannot escape their own prison.    Though many mock Christianity and scoff at the Bible, all men sense the truth of what Paul wrote in Acts 17:31 and dread it.

[God] has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

Judgment is coming.   God has not hidden this truth.   Throughout the Scriptures the inevitability of God’s judgment is proclaimed with clarity and certainty.   The final judgement is never expressed in conditional language.   As the author of Hebrews wrote.

It is appointed for man to die once and then comes the judgement.

Hebrews 9:27

All men will face it.  Great and small, righteous and wicked, believers and unbelievers.  Yet not all men will be condemned.    In a moment of remarkable literal clarity, Revelation 20:11-15 speaks of the final judgment – of its certainty, scope, basis, and sentence.   But like every word of judgement in Scripture, this picture of the final judgement includes a word of grace.   

Among the books of men’s deeds is found another book, the Book of Life of the Lamb Who Was Slain.   This book does not contain men’s works, but their names – the names of those who have trusted Jesus’ works, not their own.   For these men and women, boys and girls, justice has been satisfied.    The one on the throne executing judgement has, himself, endured judgement in their place.  

What about you?  Which book determines your eternal destiny on the day of judgement?   Will you hear, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” or “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”  Join us this Lord’s Day as we examine Revelation 20:11-15, commonly called the Great White Throne Judgement, and consider what makes the difference between eternal life and death at the final judgement.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.