Dead in Sin and Tresspasses or How We Managed to Rob the Girls Scouts with Glee

We hear the arguments often that man is basically good and that he only occasionally does bad things. Notwithstanding the definition of good being rightly defined, it doesn’t take too much effort to see man’s depravity at work. It isn’t difficult to see constant reminders of man’s wickedness. Just go to Google news and you’ll get your fill.

Headlines speak of lies, deception, murder, theft, hatred, racism, addictions, divorce, abuse, scandal, and war yet few ever think that they are as messed up as their neighbor. Poor, poor Mr. Otherguy.

When you parent children you learn quickly that you are not about the business of instilling evil and manipulation into their little minds and hearts; instead, you are the teacher of virtue and morality. Children bite, scream, curse, strike and beat each other without ever being taught how to sink their teeth into their sister’s arm. While we may never be as evil as we could be, we certainly have no footing when we attempt to claim the moral highroad. And if our parents go MIA from the discipline and instruction camp we usually end up on the front page.

Christ spoke directly to those who thought they were better than murderers just because they hadn’t actually committed the act when He said, “You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT MURDER ‘ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.” Matthew 5:21-22

Jesus went after the heart. We are all born sinners and with that corrupted nature we are dead in our sin. (Eph. 2:1) We are wicked and estranged coming right out of the womb according to the Psalmist and if not for the grace of God seen in His free choice of mercy and pity, we’d be just as horrid as the most horrendous. “There, but for the grace of God, go I” isn’t just a cute bumper sticker, it’s true. I pray that rather than being in shock over sin and in dismay over evil, we can learn to grieve more because of its presence and see it more evidently in our own lives for this is what brings about humility. I believe this is the thrust of Matthew 7’s speck and plank exhortation and Galatians 6’s warning about considering yourself to be more than the nothing that you truly are. Nothing from nothing leaves nothing. The empty hand of faith.

So in light of this meditation take a look at this video. Here is a great example of what the unrestrained and untrained heart looks like in youth. All I kept hearing while watching this was Proverbs 29:15, “The rod and reproof give wisdom, But a child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother.” Shame, now there’s a word we don’t hear anymore.

More on this story is found here and here.

Come Join Us

Katrina rocked our cottages to the core. It’s almost three years now since destruction, flooding, and governmental intrusion were all the rage. Many horrid things resulted from that disaster but there were also incredible benefits and blessings that would never have seen the light of day if not for tribulation’s heat.

One of those blessings has been the establishing of Sovereign Grace Homeland Missions. Through faithful responding to tremendous community need, our church has been able to form a generational urban outreach mission. We are still developing our homebase of operations and seeking those who want to join our replant and work.

Pray for us as we continue to move forward into the fields for we know that the adversary roams with us and if your heart is so inclined drop us a line or come visit us and be encouraged by His charge.

Up the bayonets!

F.I.R.E. - Fellowship Connections

Several years ago we attended a local meeting of FIRE (Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals) and met some great like-minded brothers in the Lord.

As a small church recently coming out of our misunderstandings about Reformational thought and anything Calvinistic, FIRE was instrumental in our growth as pastors and as a church in general. Since then, we have been blessed with FIRE friends and a whole host of pastors and ministers who have helped to encourage, edify, and educate us as we move onward in our call to serve God’s people.

What we like most about FIRE is the irenic tone and flavor that the organization thrives upon while maintaining a solid commit to the Doctrines of Grace. For us the group has been a great fellowship and extension of our faith community. We pray that the Lord continues to help our network grow and prosper as an example of true ecumenical alliance.

Take a minute to view the video below taken at our recent 2008 National Conference on Kingdom Apologetics.

John Crotts, Bruce Ray, James White, Jerry Marcellino, and James Grier brought us the Word of God at this year’s Conference and focused on how we as believers and leaders are to minister and defend the hope that is within us as we live out our faith in fear and trembling. It was a great time of refreshing.

A Call to Live in Faith Communities

Recently, I had the privilege of spending some time with a kindred spirit. I first met Dr. Grier a few years ago in Michigan and ever since then his heart has been knitted together with mine. It’s a strange union because we’ve not spent much time together nor have we been in the same circles much but what we do share is a common Christ and a common vision for the church and her work in this life. I’ve transcribed a bit of his sermon “The Glorious Hope for which We Stand” which was delivered this month at the 2008 national FIRE conference “Defending the Hope: Kingdom Apologetics” in Felton, CA. I pray that it will challenge and encourage you as we co-labor for Christ’s glory.

 

“God engages people redemptively right in their present history by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Nothing has to happen in this culture for the Spirit to regenerate people. He will address them right there in the midst of the post-modern shift, we can be absolutely confident in that.

Mission begins in the person of God.

We don’t have to wait for anything to go back, we don’t have to yearn for the Puritan days… we don’t have to yearn to go back when America was supposedly a Christian country… we don’t have to wait for Roe v. Wade to be reversed before the gospel will indeed, blessed by the power of the Spirit, address the people of this culture in midst of this present worldview shift… I am confident about that. We should not back down because of the concern that we have and the insecurity we feel as this shift takes place.

In doing apologetics and evangelism, not only do we have to be confident that the Spirit will engage the culture redemptively, but there must be a faith community in which this gospel is lived out and thus is seen in reality to fulfill the purpose for which it is given.

We have got to get over this individualism, we have lived so long with everybody coming to church and when they come, they are looking for increments of personal holiness, they want to move up another notch on the ladder, they want to be told of some more benefits they have received in Jesus Christ so they can sit and bask in the benefits.

But may I say to you that the force of the gospel is not to make us sit and bask in the benefits…the force of the gospel is to send us on a mission …the benefits are the basis to prepare us for that mission.

We’ve made mission almost a percentage of our budget that we give for overseas. But may I suggest to you that mission begins in the person of God. God is the one who sent His Son, the Father and the Son sent the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and the Father and the Son and the Spirit send the church- it isn’t the sending church it’s the sent church.

We’ve lost that focus. We have become almost a community in the Reformed structure that is committed to a cognitive head-shop kind of approach where we fill with all the niceties of doctrine and all the things that we would die for, and I’m willing to die for them, but I want you to know that increased knowledge brings increased accountability.

I want you to know that the focus of the church of Jesus Christ is not inward it is outward.

The task of apologetics in a post-modern culture is going to have to be to show that this biblical redemptive narrative - Genesis through Revelation - is coherent and is cogent on its own terms. The day is past when we’re going to be able to marshal arguments and deductive reason in order to prove certain things to be true.

The day is present when we are going to have to master this narrative, this entire content of God’s biblical revelation. We are going to have to learn to be able to demonstrate how that hope fits all the way back to Genesis 3, how it comes to its consummation in Revelation 21 and 22… that means we can’t stop with just preaching expositorily through books of the bible we’ve got to put the content of the book into the larger structure of the redemptive narrative. We must master this narrative.

We must be able at any moment when we are asked to defend our hope to defend it not by going external to the narrative, not by going out to archaeology and proofs that we’ve tended to use in the past in a much more rational time period. We are going to have to be able to listen carefully to people of other faiths and to the people of post-modernity and we are not good at listening.

We need a redemptive community that is a foretaste of the consummation.

When somebody is talking to us we are thinking more about how we are going to answer then we are listening to what they are saying, that’s what we do when we pray in groups, right? You don’t pray with the person praying… you’re thinking about what you’re going to say when you pray. We’re not good listeners.

We’re going to have to be able to take the content of this entire redemptive canon of Scripture and show how it all goes together and not just isolate little pieces of it.

What we need is a redemptive community that is a foretaste of the consummation. I should be able to bring any post-modern person to your church and say, “If you’d like to get a taste of what the consummation of the work of Jesus Christ is like in the future come along with me to this church and you’ll get a taste of it today!”

I preach in a lot of churches and quite frankly if that’s what the consummated Kingdom is going to look like I just as soon not go. That’s what I mean by a faith community. A community that lives under the rule of God for whom this narrative is embracive of every part of life… for whom the study and the grasping of this narrative and the ability to use it and to put it together in its wholeness becomes the basis of witness and the basis of giving an answer, defending, the hope in your midst. “

Additional Information:

James M. Grier, Th.D. - Seminary Vice President and Distinguished Professor of Theological Philosophy at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary

www.jamesmgrier.org

 

Gay Marriage, Spot and Beautiful Vases

I was in San Francisco right after the historic ruling that legalized gay marriage. Not that New Orleans is foreign to overt homosexual communities, but it was a bit surreal to actually be in the midst of the news rather than hearing about it from afar. California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George has said that this ruling is based on the impressions that he had while visiting the south’s racial ‘no Negro allowed‘ world and sees this as simply another form of discrimination. To him and many others this is merely a civil rights issue.

If ever there were a proof of living in a transmodernity that has become overwhelmingly post-logic this would be it. Definitions mean little anymore and along with redefining comes a loss of logic. Based on George’s definitions and attitudes why not legalize bestiality next and allow us to marry our pets? I know many loving people out there who are in love with Biffy and Spot and Smoochie pup. Why not let them have the dignity of getting married? Are they, too, not in a committed relationship of mutual love and affection? Some of the most happy and committed relationships I’ve ever seen are between a man and his dog or a woman and her cat so why not let them marry ? Certainly these outdated discriminatory laws against intercourse with animals need to be overturned!

“…an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation.” - Chief Justice Ronald George

Where does the redefining end? Marriage was not instituted by man, it was given by God. Just as we are not the byproducts of chance, mutation, and primordial soup explosions, we are also not autonomous agents floating in the ether who can invent any type of familial relationship and call it good.

If a man chooses to get breast implants and take female hormones and use his anus as a vagina that does not make him a woman. And if a woman decides that she will wear her hair short, dress like a man and purchase a penile-substitute so that she can be her girlfriend’s boyfriend she isn’t a man either. This is a self-authenticating truth. I’m not a dog if I bark and eat Science diet anymore than Spot is my wife. God created all things in kind and He made us in His image - man and woman. If someone were to make a beautiful vase for you and you then in turn decided to use that wonderfully created centerpiece as a personal latrine would not the creator of that vase be angry? Would you not be disgracing the intended purpose of that vase by urinating and defecating in it day after day? We would throw someone in jail if they went to a museum of fine art and began to use the painting canvases as toilet paper yet somehow we don’t have the same respect for our own bodies?

Homosexuality misuses the intended and obvious design of the human body which is why it is proper to label it as deviant, perverted, and wrong. Comparing being against the redefining of social constructs and marriage laws to suit homosexuals equal to not allowing a black man from Georgia to eat at Denny’s is patently absurd. They are not even in the same category which is why categories must be reworked in an attempt to make it all ‘fit’. God created mankind from one blood and He made us both male and female. Following the created order is honoring to Him; following unjust racial divides and invented gender-nastics is abuse.

This is a great evangelical time we live in - a great time to use these events to dialog with others as a platform in proclaiming the unchanging truth of the Gospel.

For more thoughts on this you can listen to James White’s commentary here.
Or Al Mohler’s guest here.

And if you think my comments on Spot were whacked, read this.

On How We Do Church

The topic of church and how we ‘do church’ is one that fascinates me. And as those who have been called ‘the church’, it is a topic that demands our highest attention. In most circles and certainly from a historical standpoint, we can see that for many, the ‘church’ is a building where ‘the church’ gathers.

Usually lost in this understanding of ‘church’ is the fact that we as a people are ‘the church’ as opposed to being just a place of brick and mortar. All sorts of fights and disagreements and even movements have been established as a result of this distinctive difference. Besides debates over Regulative Principles of worship the one that comes to mind specifically would be the conviction of many church friends I’ve had over the years who insist on ‘home-churching’ because they are convinced that we don’t need ‘a building’.

Of course they forget the fact that their homes are buildings and in most cases a successful home-church model always outgrows the size of any one particular person’s home size and they inevitably end up renting a place if not weekly at least monthly for gatherings.

For moderns the church is a place where they come to find social networking and pleasures such as a coffeehouse embedded in the sanctuary or a junior softball league sponsored in their backfield. While these are not necessarily evil, many times they simply come at the expense of the gospel where a watered-down Jesus is put on cool t-shirts while the true and living God/Man is mantled into obscurity. A halcyon-inflected materialism gently mediates much of the modern forum causing biblicists to convulse and protest. And so the debate rages on.

Along the same lines of protest come outcries against the Emergent Church movement which tends to find more in common with Oprah and Deepak than with Christ and His church. However, when I read and listen to this debate I find many people talking past each other proving once again that the importance of definitions can never be underestimated. Far too often, anything ‘new’ is posed as ‘wrong’ and anything ‘old’ is labeled as ‘outdated’. This is simply false.

All things must be examined by the light of Scripture to see if they stand. In my opinion the bulk of the Emergent Church movement is the direct result of an overreaction to a stale and dull church that has under-contextualized itself. A church that has been stagnated and stuck in certain idolized centuries while at the same time leaving its doors open to pop-psychology, corporate-like ecclesiastical structures, and a blindness to understanding the rapidly changing culture in which it wishes to minister. Neo-mysticism is now riding the hedge with rampant skeptics and far too many have seen the solution in placating to felt needs and individual whims. The result has been a dismal failure to maintain Scriptural integrity putting much of the truth of God under the hip bus. Why can’t we simply be who we are where He has planted us? Isn’t it possible to stand fast on the timeless truths of Scripture wavering not one inch on the gospel of Christ while at the same time realizing that we are not 17th century Puritans and that our society while exhibiting many of the same personality, is completely different with new and unique challenges?

Surely this is not a compromise but an act of timely wisdom. Being strong on doctrine does not make you boring or indifferent anymore than acknowledging relateability makes you a compromiser. A fear of abandoning doctrinal integrity while maintaining a fear of being out of touch with your culture are really just two firm hands on the same stick.

There are many aspects of revisiting how we ‘do church’ that are good and refreshing. We have been called to challenge and discern all things biblically and so it is a happy journey to rethink. If we believe that the truth of God’s Word never waivers and that men have a tendency to change and stray from that unchanging rule of faith, then periodic examination should be required to make sure that we have not yet, once again, dipped into the hailing of tradition over truth or that we have not put our preferences in higher esteem than they need be.

Below is a clip from Pastor Tim Keller’s TV interview about doing church in an age of skepticism. Enjoy.

Supernaturally Loverific

No matter what we do in our Christian lives as we sojourn through crevice and peak, if it’s not done on the ridge of love - it’s nothing more than an hand-hammered cymbal resounding loudly from the clang of a flesh stick. If we do the most amazing acts of service and yet do not have love in our hearts, we are a gong of nothingness being beaten by empty mallets. No acts of charity or mercy or depths of ministry mean a single drop if they are not based in the purity of Christ-like love.

But what does this love look like? Well, we don’t have to go to a wedding to find out; we can turn to the great letter by Paul to the church in southern Greece any time we want to discover again the character of Christian love. Here’s a snapshot.

Love is patient and kind and not jealous.
Love does not brag and is not arrogant.
Love does not act unbecomingly and it does not seek its own benefits.
Love is not provoked and does not take into account a wrong suffered.
Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness but instead it rejoices in truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.
And most of all love never fails.

Based on this definition, I encourage believers to abandon the overused and multi-definitionally dysfunctional word ‘love’ when thinking about the royal law of Christ and in its place use the term “supernaturally loverific“. Love has been clobbered with ambiguous baggage yet “supernaturally loverific” gets us more to the point. It draws us closer to the higher level and call that we’ve been given - to imitate our Savior. When we read this first Corinthians character list it should floor us for it is unimaginably transcendent. Every ounce of this description begs for divine direction. Every particle of this directive shows our holes and cracks. Every part of this call is a pull to a supernatural life that can in no fashion be of this world. We all have the scars and back wounds to prove it.

This is why Christ said that we are to be identified by our love; it is supernaturally given, nurtured, and maintained. It is the encapsulation of the fruit of the Spirit given to us at our new birthday as a free gift from the Godhead. Christ demonstrated what this love looks like while he was here on earth and the Scriptures continue to exhort us towards supernaturally loverific living till the day we pass on to eternity.

The next time you begin to rebuke a friend; remember where your heart should be. The next time you sing a psalm in church; remember the source of all peace. The next time you feed someone who is hungry or discipline your children; remember who laid down his life for you. The next time you do anything; remember love. And not just any type of love, but remember the supernatural affection that should swell within you as a work of Godly renewal in a once-dead existence. Only the elect of God can exhibit such a beautiful life.

May it bathe your words, thoughts, and deeds.

Real Church Growth is the Fruit of the Lips

Many believe that numbers indicate growth when it comes to the church but numerical prowess is never a consideration biblically when God speaks about our success. We never read passages that say, “And the Lord was pleased that their Sunday morning classes were twenty-five percent bigger than the previous quarter. And all of Galilee rejoiced and the people were glad for their goals had been complete.”

Yet, this is exactly the attitude of much of the church today - We are successful if we have lots of people in attendance. It seems that popularity is a virtue and the narrow gate is miles wide. Growth is mainly seen only statistically and is registered by head counts and figures. However, is this the real measure of a church’s growth or have we become accustomed to a statistician’s lie. When was the last time you heard this sort of exchange?

“How goes it?”
“Good, and you?”
“Fine.”
“How’s church?”
“Great, we had several people give public testimony to the power of God in their lives as they are seeing much more of their own weakness and sin and confessing it…”
[insert stunned and confused look here]
“Confessing sin? during service?”
“Yes it was great… and many others have voiced their joy in overcoming anger and bitterness in their lives …free now to be a greater witness to the gospel as a result. We are really growing as a church! And your fellowship?”
[insert continued stunned and confused look here]
“Uh… we had about a hundred in our evening service and the praise band was rocking. Umm… what did you say…people did what?”

Fidelity to the truth of His Word is our anchoring principle in the church as we practice our faith communally. And God constantly exhorts us in Scripture to move forward in our walk and confess our sins one to another as we are conforming to the image of His Son in incremental Christ-likeness.  I’ve always loved testimonies for this very reason.

“Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name.” Hebrews 11:15

Nothing is better than hearing about the transforming power of God in a believer’s life and not just at the moment of conversion, but also when it comes to our progressive life of sanctification where we find ourselves changing internally - as we lay aside our old ways and habits and adopt “new man: living. This is real church growth when God’s people learn how to love and love more abundantly.

While there is nothing wrong with great increases in numbers - gauging our growth by adding up how many bodies show up each week has more to do with a marketing mentality than it does with the cause of Christ. We would do well to remember the praises of the apostle Paul as he wrote to the Thessalonians commending them for their work of faith, labor of love, and steadfast hope in the Lord Jesus.  Seeing our brothers and sisters in Christ possess the fruit of the Spirit and watching it increase in their lives as they give testimony and praise to our Father is a great joy!

“We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers; constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father, knowing, brethren beloved by God, His choice of you; for our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake.” - 1 Thessalonians 1:2-5

This Sunday in our service we had an extra thirty-five minutes added to our service merely because we had that much testimony to the greatness of God in the renewal of His people. We were truly excited and blessed. What an encouragement to hear of His mighty work among the saints! And no one but Him gets the glory for divine transformation in our hearts.

Give room in your services to testimony time. Let your people publicly rejoice and be glad in their God as they testify to redeemed living. Edification is good medicine.

The GREEN Mandate

Yesterday was Earth Day - A day when hippies from around the world unite in geothermal bliss reminding the world yet again that the sky is not just falling, but that the earth is dying as well. Now I know that not every earth-bug is a hippie and not every environmentally conscience citizen is an alarmist; but there is no doubt that when it comes to the ‘green topic’, nostrils begin to flare and sensibility usually gets beaten with hemp shards so that she can no longer speak.

What I find interesting in this ecological debate is the fact that many Christians are not leading the charge. We who know and understand what God has said should be the biggest and most vocal advocates of the Earth; yet like many things the godless have hijacked the agenda. Believers should be aggressively inventorying catalogs of eco-friendly solutions since God has given us the earth and has committed it to our care as blessed superintendents.

“…Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” - Genesis 1:28

To ’subdue’ and ‘rule over’ in no way indicates destruction, desolation, or pollution. We, and not cattle, are made in the image of God and we, and not lizards or snails or eagles or dogs, are the caretakers of the earth. The problem with the green movement is that it is motivated by a corrupted nature that sees the world upside down - a world where the creatures and the created are worthy of worship and the Creator is relegated into an old woman named Mother Earth.

We know that since the beginning of creation man has clearly seen God’s invisible attributes, eternal power and His divine nature through the very things that He has made. But due to his sin-corrupted nature, man does not give thanks to God for the beauty of the world. Instead, he becomes futile in his understanding and invents endless theories and speculations while declaring that he is wise.

As a result of man’s rejection of God as supreme Creator, man has created all manner of gods and goddesses and altars and shrines and stone temples. Mankind has exchanged the incorruptible image and glory of the true and living God for a plastic banana wrap in religious cellophane. Man has adopted the corruptible image of the creature and worshiped it rather than He. The truth has been exchanged for a lie.

So now we see large demonstrations of green-friendly people who have rejected the One who invented green and the ones who should be the most green somehow end up on the outside. I believe that we have a GREEN mandate, a mandate from God to be good stewards of the earth and we should be the loudest party goers on Earth Day, but not because we celebrate the earth itself. We should be the loudest voice because the earth proclaims the glory of our Father to a world lost in blindness.

The next time you see a green hippie use that moment to testify to the author of green whose intense wonder and glory and beauty and majesty is seen even in a small sprout.

Expelled Excels

“Expelled”, the new documentary starring Ben Stein, is the single most important movie of the decade.

This film exposes the academic elitists for who they really are - bankrupted humanists who apply double-standards to their so-called science while hoping that no one catches their sleight of hand.

The intolerance of the tolerance camp has been exposed. The closing of the ‘open mind; is put on display as those leading the charge against Intelligent Design (ID) are allowed to speak for themselves about their presuppositions, biases, and refusal to allow anything that resembles a Creator to enter into the discussion. Stein’s work sheds light on a fearful secularism that bans any challenge rather than seeking the logic of the facts.

This movie is more than just a film about the need for open discussion though, it shows what is at stake when we allow truth and fact to fall into insignificance.  It has been alarming to see the amount of prejudice and apathy regarding this movie particularly among those who have the most to lose from the entrenchment of the information-controlling juggernauts.  This is exactly the ground that makes evil fertile - ignorance and apathy mixed with a firm dose of pessimism.

Everyone should take the opportunity to see “Expelled” — if nothing else, as a bracing antidote to the atheism-friendly culture of PC liberalism. But it’s far more than that. It’s a spotlight on the arrogance of this movement and its leaders, a spotlight on the choking intolerance of academia, and a spotlight on the ignorance of so many who say so much, yet know so very little. - Brent Bozell

This documentary is required viewing for any one serious about academic freedom, their faith and the future of our schools. And, no, that’s not an exaggeration. See it and you’ll see.