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Friday
05Feb2010

"All things are yours" (1 Cor. 3:21)

David Murray,

The Christian can enjoy the little that he owns in a way that the non-Christian millionaire cannot, because the Christian tastes mercy and grace in the smallest crumb and drop that God gives him. But the Christian can even enjoy things that others own in a way the owners themselves cannot! I can wander through the mall and admire the beauty and creativity of the clothes and gadgets even if I will never own them. I can see and enjoy the speed of fast cars, the elegance of sleek yachts, and the architecture of expensive houses in a way that those who own them cannot. I can see God’s wise, beautiful and powerful creativity behind every good thing (Emphasis added).

Saturday
09Jan2010

The Difference between an Evangelical & a Fundamentalist

I use the term Evangelical often.  It’s impossible not to, especially when I’m teaching.  It clarifies my perspective, and serves as short hand for a long list of ideas.  It means one believes that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone.  It means one believes Jesus is God and so on.  It means that one believes in the core ideas of a broadly reformed Christian faith—a simple, New Testament faith.  But especially, it speaks to one’s perspective on the Scriptures as being the inerrant, authoritative, inspired Word of God in the original manuscripts.  At least that’s what I mean by it. :-/

Not a bad thing to be!  But of course the term brings other baggage with it that I do not intend by its usage. I recently found a take on what it means (or at least what it should mean) to be an Evangelical that I wish would come to the minds of every reader and/or listener when it is spoken.  From Bruce Waltke’s, An Old Testament Theology:  

I accept the inerrancy of Scripture as to its Source and its infallibility as to its authority.  My spiritual conviction is intellectually defensible.  The finite mind is incapable of coming to infinite truth and moreover is depraved.  To live wisely I need to inspired revelation of the divine reality by which I can judge the wisdom or the folly, the right or the wrong, of my thoughts and actions.  But I dare not presume to understand how or what this revelation means before coming to it on its own terms.  I must allow the Bible to dictate how it seeks to reveal God’s truth.  I study how it writes history; I examine and lean to recognize the different forms of literature:  poetry, narrative, prophecy, and so on.  I consider the Bible utterly trustworthy, and I commit my life to it, but I do not presume to know beforehand the exact nature of its parts.  With this posture, I continue to learn and allow myself to be taught and corrected by the BIble. (Page 77, emphasis added.)


I particularly love the phrase “this posture,” but more on that in a moment. 

He contrasts this with 4 other types of Christian attitudes toward the Bible.  He classifies Evangelicalism (at its best) as standing under the Bible.  A close but misguided relative of Evangelicalism is Fundamentalism, which Waltke describes as standing upon the Bible.  Waltke writes, 

By “fundamentalists” I mean here those who presume the Bible does not stray from their standards of accuracy, especially in matters of science and historiography.  They presume their interpretive horizon represents truth and that the biblical writers, though writing in an ancient environment, will not stray from the “accuracy” of their modern horizon.  But the ancient standards do not necessarily conform to modern standards.  The only legitimate human standard by which the bible can be measured is the logic of noncontradiction.  Paradox may be incomprehensible, but contradiction is “non-sense.”  What I have in mind here is that fundamentalists do not “stand under” the Bible long enough to “understand” it.  Sometimes they, thought well-intentioned, advertise “the Bible as it is for men as they are,” but they neglect the prior question of whether “men as they are are fit for the Bible as it is.” (Emphasis added.)

So a Fundy knows what the Bible means before he reads it!  It confirms him in his ideas!  It must, because he got them from the Bible, right?  

We’re all subject to that kind of self-confirming reading of the Bible.  Humility calls for a different posture in reading.  The posture is the one described by James in 1:25

James 1:25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

This phrase, “looks into” not only describes what such a person is doing, but the way they are doing it.  The Greek term indicates a certain curiosity, which in my mind cannot exist in the heart of the Fundamentalist (as described above).  It calls us to a posture of humility that assumes God is going to show us ourselves as we really are if we come to it with authenticity, and brokenness.  It assumes that I’ll find myself lacking and need to repent daily.  Repent, not only of things I do, but of who I am and things I wrongly hold to be true about myself, my God, and the Scriptures themselves. 

Psalms 139:23–24   Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! 24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!

Wednesday
21Jan2009

Pray for Boldness

At this morning's prayer meeting I was feeling dull. I don't know if discouraged would be the right term, but I was feeling a bit whatever about the mission. I thought about why I was there at 6:00AM in a very cold building, and asked God to help me do my job as a believer and missionary--to pray for His name to be honored (hallowed), His kingdom to be established, and His will to be accomplished.Picture 4.png

I turned to Acts chapter 4 for some encouragement and it stirred something in me that I began to think about yesterday afternoon. I was thinking about what really hinders me from talking about Christ with friends and strangers. I came up with two shameful reasons, so here is my confession:

People pleasing keeps me silent.

Not wanting to offend someone with my outrageous beliefs is a decidedly bad reason not to talk about what Christ has accomplished on my behalf and in my soul. It raises a few questions. Who do I respect most? Myself? The person I might offend? Both are idols if I put their respect above honoring Christ.

 

Pride keeps me silent.

 

Perhaps worse than the desire to keep the conversation polite is the desire to make someone think that I'm not one of those people. Not that I fear being known as a Christian, but that someone would think I was ignorant or simple (which is how many see us). Perhaps the best word for what I fear is that someone think I'm foolish:

 

1 Corinthians 1:18 For the word of the cross is folly (often translated "foolishness") to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.


1 Corinthians 1:22-24 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly (or foolishness) to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.


Many people hesitate to talk about the Gospel because they are afraid they will be stumped by a hard question, or that the person they talk to might be smarter than they on various Biblical difficulties or philosophical questions. Its great to be informed, but in bearing witness to Christ is my own reputation for having answers really what I should be concerned about? Isn't that just valuing the same thing as "those who are perishing?"

So in a sense I'm more like the Corinthians than I am like Paul. For Paul, their love of a good argument moved him to focus entirely upon the cross and rest entirely upon the power of God's Spirit so that their faith, "might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God (1 Corinthians 2:5)."

So back to Acts 4. I found the cure for this worldly, sinful set of motivations in a powerful passage:

Acts 4:31 And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.

God filled them with His Spirit and that gave them boldness. So I think I know what boldness is, but here is a solid lexical definition of what the Greek word behind it means:

Boldness: "an attitude of openness that stems from freedom and lack of fear (Friberg's Analytical Lexicon)."

Boldness is freedom. Boldness lacks fear. The Spirit of God sets you free to not care what someone thinks about you when you love them enough to tell them that Jesus is the only one who can save them from the wrath of God.  

Father, shake this place and fill me with your Holy Spirit.

Afterthought: So I finished this post the day after I started it, and had the blessing of seeing the kind of boldness I was thinking about in action in a news show. Franklin Graham told a few news folks that the country needed Jesus, plain and simple. (Hoped to get the clip, but I couldn't find it. Maybe soon.)

Thursday
15Jan2009

Suffering, John Piper, and the Economic Downturn

I was moved a few weeks ago to write the following status update on my Facebook page:

Picture 4.png
I won't get into what made me think that, but the idea has been haunting me ever since, especially as I Picture 5.pngwatch some people in our church suffering economically (and in a dozen other ways). As a Pastor I'm filled with compassion and pain for all of them, and yet I am always deeply concerned that those of us who suffer wouldn't let our trials be wasted. God wants to use our pain for our joy and his glory (boy oh boy, I've been effected by Piper).  

I was just talking with some students the other night about how shallow our American Evangelical concepts of suffering can be. The Bible has so many rich things to say about suffering that we should be absolutely shocked at ourselves the next time we casually shout, "why me!" when something goes wrong.   God help us to finally start to think Biblically, and sound like James or Paul when we encounter trouble.

 

Its hard to get my intended tone clear here, so let me just describe my attitude. I say this as someone who has been seeking God for help to see what it means to live an authentically Christian, and genuinely New Testament life.

 

1 Peter 1:6-9

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Romans 5:1-5

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

James 1:2-4   

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

This post started as nothing more than a link to this clip from the desiring God blog. Check it out.

 

Saturday
03Jan2009

See your text before you preach it.

I'm getting ready for Sunday's message. If I set up the time stamps right for this site (which I doubt) you'll see that its Saturday evening! In other words, I don't have a ton of time left for reflection. Not and ideal situation for my prayer week message, but it happens. Now, this time I have an excuse I was on vacation until Friday (worst vacation ever, but that's another story--all 4 DeLalla's got sick).  

I translated my text earlier this afternoon, but I just felt like I wasn't grasping the core message of the text, so I started to fiddle around with the diagraming tool in my Accordance Bible software. (This is Mac only, but I believe Logos has a tool for this too). Here is a picture of what my diagram looks like:


gdiagram3.png

 

Now don't think I'm smart. The color coding was already there. I simply laid the text out logically, not in some secret scholarly way. I was literally absent the day they taught that in seminary-really! I could never figure out all the stuff about where to put the prepositions and whatnot. I just move stuff around in a way that helps me think more clearly about what is being said.

For example, in the text I'm working with Paul says he, "did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom." In the next verse He tells them why. He decided to focus on Christ and his cross. In my diagram I lined those things up to show the contrast between what he didn't do, what he did do, and why he did it. Simple, intuitive, and easy to remember when I'm yelling about it tomorrow morning.

Don't think you need Greek to do this. Working through a text this way with a solid, literal translation is extremely helpful.

Don't think you need the software I used! I used to do this in Word all the time. Some people just write it out, but that doesn't work for me. Accordance makes it extremely easy, and fast, but Word, pen and paper will yield the same results.

There are some big benefits to diagraming a text. I couldn't help but stop for a minute to commend this to you because within a half hour or so I had the core of my message laid out! And I didn't really write anything save a couple of key phrases to track what I discovered. Why so few notes? Because the message of the passage is so clear to me, it doesn't seem necessary at this point. I'm not done yet, but when I go to make my oultine I have a much clearer idea of where the message needs to go, what words and ideas I need more study on etc.

Dr. Duane Garrett once remarked that if you don't have much time to prepare for a message, the best thing you can do is spend your time in the text itself and let if flow from there. This is a great way to spend some quality time with a text. Preaching is not about cute illustrations and alliterated points! It is about God building a fire in you so you can burn in the pulpit on Sunday morning. Being full of the text itself makes for a more glorious fire than some warmed over antidotes, cute outlines, or clever quotes. Nothing against them, but you know what I mean. ;-