Thoughts on Forgiveness

The parable on forgiveness in Matthew 18:21-35 ends with the stark warning: “And so will my heavenly Father do to you if you do not forgive from the heart.” Matthew Henry says regarding this passage, that it is not as if unforgiving people lose their salvation, for “those who do not forgive their brother’s trespasses, did never truly repent of their own, and therefore that which is taken away is only what they seemed to have.”

Although the Christian cannot refuse forgiveness, nor take revenge, Scripture does lay down a stipulation. John R. W. Stott says, “We are not permitted to cheapen forgiveness by offering it prematurely when there has been no repentance. ‘If your brother sins,’ Jesus said, ‘rebuke him,’ and only then ‘if he repents, forgive him’ (Luke 17:3).”

Music, Creation, and the Love of God

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements-surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” Job 38:4-7According to the Book of Job, God’s work of creation was done to musical accompaniment…. John Dryden carried the idea a bit further than this, but not, perhaps, too far to be true:

From harmony, from heavenly harmony, this universal frame began;

When nature underneath a heap of jarring atoms lay, and could not heave her head,

The tuneful voice was heard from high, “Arise, ye more than dead!”

Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry, in order to their stations leap, and Music’s power obey.

From harmony, from heavenly harmony, this universal frame began:

From harmony to harmony through all the compass of the notes it ran,

The diapason closing full in Man.

From

“A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day”

Music is both an expression and a source of pleasure, and the pleasure that is purest and nearest to God is the pleasure of love. Hell is a place of no pleasure because there is no love there. Heaven is full of music because it is the place where the pleasures of holy love abound…

From The Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer

Lost Sheep Looks for Shepherd

Thanks to Tominthebox News Network…

CAIRO, EGYPT – In a stunning discovery, archaeologists working near ancient Alexandria have come upon what appears to be a second century manuscript of Luke’s gospel. This particular manuscript, which is in excellent condition, had been sitting in a clay jar in what appears to have been an old storage chamber under several levels of city streets.

Lead archaeologist Dr. Wilson Davies, professor of Middle Eastern history at Southern Methodist University, told TBNN, “We are very excited about this find. We believe it will shed light on what Luke was really trying to tell us so many years ago. The chapter 15 passage in particular is very interesting.”

In most bibles Luke 15:4-5 reads something like this, “”What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.”

According to the archaeological team, this new manuscript reads differently. In Greek, it says in Luke 15:4-5: “What sheep of you when you are lost does not leave the open country and go after the shepherd until you find him? And when you have found him, you jump on his shoulders, rejoicing.”

Dr. Davies defended the find by stating that the manuscript does not appear to have any tampering and appears authentic. According to Davies, “This manuscript just lends further support to our Wesleyan-Methodist theology at SMU. Ever since John Wesley himself, we have believed that it is man who chooses God. This manuscript, which could be a copy of the original writing of Luke himself, supports our beliefs. It is now clear that the sheep searches for the shepherd instead of the shepherd searching for the sheep.”

Smart Wolf

The wolf found that shepherd’s clothing worked even better. (from Reverend Fun Cartoons)

Don’t Hang Up On God

How do you “pray without ceasing”? John Piper does an interesting take on that question… -JB

Does Anyone Else See the Similarities?

The Pilgrim from Defending. Contending has posted a chart of comparisons between the Todd/Brownsville/Lakeland manifestations and Kundalini Yoga. He has included some comparison videos. Most interesting… -JB

“I Could Never Love A God Like That”

I have long felt that one of the greatest needs in the church today is study of the attributes of God.  Today I find through Reformed Voices that Paul Washer, whom I admire greatly, agrees. -JB

“One of the greatest needs other than preaching the gospel and true conversion is to teach on the attributes of God, because people basically don’t know Him.

If I were to go into most churches and preach on the attributes of God, what would happen about midway through that week is you would have faithful church members who have been there for forty years who would stand up and say,

‘That’s not my god, I could never love a god like that,’

… even though I’m just preaching the historical Christian view of God.” -Paul Washer from the sermon I am Under Obligation

Pragmatism: Trend or Trap?

John MacArthur does a definitive analysis of the insidious trend toward pragmatism that is now full-blown in the church…. -JB

By God’s grace, I have been the pastor of the same church now for nearly forty years. From that vantage point, I have witnessed the birth and growth of menacing trends within the church, several of which have converged under what I would call evangelical pragmatism – an approach to ministry that is endemic in contemporary Christianity.

What is pragmatism? Basically it is a philosophy that says that results determine meaning, truth, and value – what will work becomes a more important question than what is true. As Christians, we are called to trust what the Lord says, preach that message to others, and leave the results to Him. But many have set that aside. Seeking relevancy and success, they have welcomed the pragmatic approach and have received the proverbial Trojan horse.

Let me take a few minutes to explain a little of the history leading up to the current entrenchment of the pragmatic approach in the evangelical church and to show you why it isn’t as innocent as it looks.

Recent History

The 1970s, for the most part, were years of spiritual revival in America. The spread of the gospel through the campuses of many colleges and universities marked a fresh, energetic movement of the Holy Spirit to draw people to salvation in Christ. Mass baptisms were conducted in rivers, lakes, and the ocean, several new versions of the English Bible were released, and Christian publishing and broadcasting experienced remarkable growth.

Sadly, the fervent evangelical revival slowed and was overshadowed by the greed and debauchery of the eighties and nineties. The surrounding culture rejected biblical standards of morality, and the church, rather than assert its distinctiveness and call the world to repentance, softened its stance on holiness. The failure to maintain a distinctively biblical identity was profound – it led to general spiritual apathy and a marked decline in church attendance.

Church leaders reacted to the world’s indifference, not by a return to strong biblical preaching that emphasized sin and repentance, but by a pragmatic approach to “doing” church – an approach driven more by marketing, methodology, and perceived results than by biblical doctrine. The new model of ministry revolved around making sinners feel comfortable and at ease in the church, then selling them on the benefits of becoming a Christian. Earlier silence has given way to cultural appeasement and conformity.

Even the church’s ministry to its own has changed. Entertainment has hijacked many pulpits across the country; contemporary approaches cater to the ever-changing whims of professing believers; and many local churches have become little more than social clubs and community centers where the focus is on the individual’s felt needs. Even on Christian radio, phone-in talk shows, music, and live psychotherapy are starting to replace Bible teaching as the staple. “Whatever works,” the mantra of pragmatism, has become the new banner of evangelicalism.

The Down-Grade Controversy

You may be surprised to learn that what we are now seeing is not new. England’s most famous preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, dealt with a similar situation more than 100 years ago. Among churches that were once solid, Spurgeon and other faithful pastors noticed a conciliatory attitude toward and overt cooperation with the modernist movement. And what motivated the compromise? They sought to find acceptance by adopting the “sophisticated” trends of the culture. Does that sound familiar to you?

One article, published anonymously in Spurgeon’s monthly magazine The Sword and the Trowel, noted that every revival of true evangelical faith had been followed within a generation or two by a drift away from sound doctrine, ultimately leading to wholesale apostasy. The author likened this drifting from truth to a downhill slope, and thus labeled it “the down grade.” The inroads of modernism into the church killed ninety percent of the mainline denominations within a generation of Spurgeon’s death. Spurgeon himself, once the celebrated and adored herald of the Baptist Union, was marginalized by the society and he eventually withdrew his membership.

The Effects of Pragmatism

Many of today’s church leaders have bought into the subtlety of pragmatism without recognizing the dangers it poses. Instead of attacking orthodoxy head on, evangelical pragmatism gives lip service to the truth while quietly undermining the foundations of doctrine. Instead of exalting God, it effectively denigrates the things that are precious to Him.

First, there is in vogue today a trend to make the basis of faith something other than God’s Word. Experience, emotion, fashion, and popular opinion are often more authoritative than the Bible in determining what many Christians believe. From private, individual revelation to the blending of secular psychology with biblical “principles,” Christians are listening to the voice of the serpent that once told Eve, “God’s Word doesn’t have all the answers.” Christian counseling reflects that drift, frequently offering no more than experimental and unscriptural self-help therapy instead of solid answers from the Bible.

Christian missionary work is often riddled with pragmatism and compromise, because too many in missions have evidently concluded that what gets results is more important than what God says. That’s true among local churches as well. It has become fashionable to forgo the proclamation and teaching of God’s Word in worship services. Instead, churches serve up a paltry diet of drama, music, and other forms of entertainment.

Second, evangelical pragmatism tends to move the focus of faith away from God’s Son. You’ve seen that repeatedly if you watch much religious television. The health-wealth-and-prosperity gospel advocated by so many televangelists is the ultimate example of this kind of fantasy faith. This false gospel appeals unabashedly to the flesh, corrupting all the promises of Scripture and encouraging greed. It makes material blessing, not Jesus Christ, the object of the Christian’s desires.

Easy-believism handles the message differently, but the effect is the same. It is the promise of forgiveness minus the gospel’s hard demands, the perfect message for pragmatists. It has done much to popularize “believing” but little to provoke sincere faith.

Christ is no longer the focus of the message. While His name is mentioned from time to time, the real focus is inward, not upward. People are urged to look within; to try to understand themselves; to come to grips with their problems, their hurts, their disappointments; to have their needs met, their desires granted, their wants fulfilled. Nearly all the popular versions of the message encourage and legitimize a self-centered perspective.

Third, today’s Christianity is infected with a tendency to view the result of faith as something less than God’s standard of holy living. By downplaying the importance of holy living-both by precept and by example-the biblical doctrine of conversion is undermined. Think about it: What more could Satan do to try to destroy the church than undermining God’s Word, shifting the focus off Christ, and minimizing holy living?

All those things are happening slowly, steadily within the church right now. Tragically, most Christians seem oblivious to the problems, satisfied with a Christianity that is fashionable and highly visible. But the true church must not ignore those threats. If we fight to maintain doctrinal purity with an emphasis on biblical preaching and biblical ministry, we can conquer external attacks. But if error is allowed into the church, many more churches will slide down the grade to suffer the same fate as the denominations that listened to, yet ignored, Spurgeon’s impassioned appeal.

Make it your habitual prayer request that the Lord would elevate the authority of His Word, the glory of His Son, and the purity of His people in the evangelical church. May the Lord revive us and keep us far from the slippery slope of pragmatism. -John MacArthur

 

If Christians Are Ever Going To Be Christians Again

Christopher Neiswonger writes a particularly thought-provoking post that calls the present age a time “when the Church has become the darkest of all places.”-JB

If Christians are ever going to be Christians again we need to remember that we see things other people don’t see and hear things that other people don’t hear, and live accordingly, worrying much less about whether or not everyone agrees with what we see and hear and much more about what we say and do in the limited time we have.

In the past Christians would simply protect the innocent and the weak, regardless of what the naturalistic and faithless thought about the matter. We would make laws according to the rule of ultimate good while not persecuting the ignorant because of their ignorance, but never particularly prone to be conciliatory toward people of a merely Natural mind. We would have never allowed people to strip the laws of their ordained purpose of protecting the innocent and punishing evil simply because some people can’t tell the difference between good and evil. And we would never have elected people to hold public office that we knew were faithless, because though they may use our words, they cannot understand them.

There was never a need to create a law that faithless people could not hold a public office; we were wise enough to not elect such people as the expression of our God given right to self determination in politics. Why elect someone to office that does not believe in our God given right to self determination because they recognize no God? Or something that is really just as bad, possibly worse, no God that we recognize. It’s not that we don’t recognize everyone’s right to run for office, we’ve simply forgotten our duty to not vote for them because they are opposed to our most fundamental understanding of who and what we are and what should be done in the world.

It is inherently self destructive to the Christian, their societies, their children, and their cause, to be found neutral on any matter of faith or practice, especially politics. Politics is the rule of the community, and community is part and parcel of the expression of the Christian life. As such, a Christian that is not “political” is no Christian at all, because a political life is one that expresses care and concern for the larger community. A Christian that cares only for themselves is a contradiction in terms.

We are committed, demanded, commanded, ordained to give ourselves for others in every way and at every opportunity. To abandon the community to merely Natural men and women is an act of the gravest kind of aggression against Christian love and moderation. Who will tell them right from wrong if not you? Who will guide them in the truth if not you? People that believe that the entire content of human experience and community is explicable in terms of an accidental arrangement of atoms in the void with no ultimate purpose and no meaning beyond today’s Natural lust?

How dare we forget how to be Christians and leave a world to collapse under the weight of its own tragic blindness? How would it last without the infusion of goodwill and reason attributable only to the insight of a Spiritually informed people? Every corner would inevitably descend into the madness of Hitler, and Stalin, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan, and Alexander. There would be no measurement of evil but the power of one man’s arm against another. The pedophile would become the norm again as he was in ancient Greece, and as he is becoming virtually in the West as sexual purity is explained away as the dying traces of a once robust Christianity. The King would become again an agent of innovative laws according to the dictates of his own unquestionable will. Half the population would be slaves, the other half wolves of varying descriptions. Women would be bought and sold as chattel because there is no naturalistic way to justify the rights of women. There is no Naturalistic way to justify any rights for anyone. It takes the insights of a Spiritually informed person to see the right and wrong that provide the philosophical capital for “Rights”.

We have no right to abandon that post, and more than that, a duty, a righteous charge to fulfill in this present dark age when the Church has become the darkest of all places.

Christopher Neiswonger

John Piper: Powerless Pulpits Deny the Existence of Hell