The Scripture Cannot Be Broken

We have become occupied around here for several months with discussion of the Church: not just local church, but the entire Body of believers in Jesus everywhere.  Occupied with it's history, it's condition in the world now, and it's future.  Truth be told, I am thinking about these things primarily for selfish reasons.  I want to have some significance in God's business during my short stay on this planet.  I dread insignificance (don't you?) and am deeply encouraged by relationship with God, by what He has revealed to me in the Bible about His love for me, about my having a role in His great purpose and plan (however small that role may be).  You know, I guess, about "You are the potter;  I am the clay."  That is, the appropriate way to think about our relationship to God is with humility, at every turn letting Him be God. 

A part of this humility is letting God's Word have authority over me (us).  Jesus declared: "Your Word is truth." (Jn. 17:17). He added elsewhere, "If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken." (Jn.10:34-35). "Laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the traditions of men…, making the word of God of no effect through your traditions." (Mk. 7:8, 13). Paul declared that "All scripture is given by inspiration of God…."(2 Tim. 3:16). The Scripture is the Word of God (Rom. 9:6) and God cannot err (Titus 1:2). Jesus said, "'It is written'…by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." (Mt. 4:4). Since the Bible is the revelation of God in words, we must take its authority seriously.  By that I mean that God, via the message of the Bible, has the right to instruct us what to do, as well as to put boundaries around our behaviors. 

Can I say that I am a follower of Jesus, or in any sense claim to be under God's authority, if I am willing to set aside the Bible when considering what is right and wrong?  Can I say I belong to God (in the sense of being one of His people) if I deny the authority of His Word over my life?

The results of denying God's authority is illustrated everywhere every day.  Consider this report, keeping in mind that the leader mentioned is the highest ranking leader of a major American Christian denomination.  

So I call on you to be alert to teachers, messengers, spirits, who call you to slip out from under God's authority, and to follow their new plan:  their new, modern, deeper understanding of the ways of God.   The great apostasy Paul wrote of so much is for real. 

We all feel the need for significance.  But I want to be significant as a servant of God, not as a servant of the Devil.

-Guest post by David Nitz

On False Teachers, part 2

So in last week's post (False Teachers, part 1), we established beyond a shadow of a doubt that false teachers exist, and that we need to be vigilant to guard ourselves and our church bodies from them. We also looked at what to look for and how to identify false teachers, should we suspect that one is one our midst. All really tricky stuff, not to be taken lightly, and impossible to achieve without being thoroughly immersed daily in the Truth. So then what's next? If you become entirely convicted, through prayer, study, wisdom, and counsel, that there is a false teacher inside of your body of believers, what should you do??

The answer to this is so simple, and yet practical application of it so unbelievably difficult.  American Christians have been taught for generations now that Christians are nice.  Somehow nice has been equated with good, so if you're not being thoroughly nice, or perhaps if you have a "critical spirit," you're not actively following Jesus' teaching of love and compassion.  But friends, I have read many passages in Scripture that are not nice.  At all.  I've seen John the Baptist point to a group of Pharisees and yell, "You brood of vipers!!" I've heard the apostle Paul say, "I wish they would just go the whole way and cut their testicles off rather than keep harassing you about this!"  On another occasion, Paul told us that, if someone we know should claim Christ but choose to remain in sin, we are not even to eat with them! Jesus Himself called people names all the time, including hypocrites, fools, snakes, and liars.  And have you ever read the book of Jude??  Holy gees, now there was a guy that was NOT fooling around! Of false teachers he has this (among other things) to say:

 "These people are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm—shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead.  They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever."

Yowch.  Those are some distinctly not-nice, critical words.  And all of our Biblical heroes have harsh words to say about people and ideologies that need to be harshly addressed.  Because the Bride of Christ is precious, and she must be defended..  The Gospel of Christ is sacred, and it must be defended.  Our faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is the foundation for every true thing in the universe, and must be defended at all costs.  And friends, sometimes that requires nice, good, kind, compassionate people to say and do harsh, difficult, painful, and not-nice things.  I feel like I should apologize for saying that, but the fact is, I am unashamed of the Gospel of Christ.  These are not my ideas, I have no authority.  This is the authority of the Scripture that I hold out to you now.

I love the beginning of the book of Jude, when he basically says, "Brothers and sisters, I so wanted to write to you and just celebrate how awesome our faith is, but instead I feel compelled to address this other ugly issue."  And I get that, Jude. I totally get that.  I, too, wish that week after week I could just write to everyone about how awesome our faith is, how loving and compassionate our Savior, how boundless the grace and mercy.  But instead, I feel compelled just as Jude did to "write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people." (Jude 1:3)  That's the task with which I believe I have currently been entrusted.


 Jude then continues with these decisively harsh words about false teachers: "Certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord."

In Paul's second letter to Timothy, he warns, "The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron." And he tells Timothy that he will be a good minister of Jesus Christ if he points these things out to his brothers and sisters, nourished on the truths of faith and of good teaching  (2 Timothy 4:1-2,  6).  I like the sound of that.  I very much like the idea of being a good minister of Jesus Christ to my brothers and sisters.  I very much like the idea of being nourished on the truths of faith and good teaching.  But I suppose that is beside the point. I suppose the point is that these Scriptures suggest to us that false teachers aren't to be ignored, or approached politely, or addressed gently.

So where does that leave us?  When it comes to the difficult topic of dealing with false teachers, what should we do? What are we, as Believers in Jesus and defenders of the Faith, called to do when we believe that that Faith is being corrupted by darkness? 

False teachers are to be called out.  Publicly.  There are no kind provisions set aside in the Bible for false teachers, the way there are for exhorting and admonishing your brothers and sisters who are struggling.  There's nothing that tells us to tread softly and deal gently.  Because false teaching causes spiritual devastation.  It is destructive and brings the way of truth into disrepute (2 Peter 2:1-3).  It's just plain old unacceptable and must be brought to light and dealt with as swiftly and decisively as possible. Paul himself called false teachers out by name (1 Timothy 1:18-20, 2 Timothy 2:17-18).  Sometimes, regardless of what the current church climate tells us is acceptable, sometimes we just have to do or say something really harsh in defense of our faith.

So there we are, friends.  This is tough stuff, I know it, and it takes so much wisdom, so much discernment, so much prayerful consideration.  We can't just run around the streets shouting "False teacher!!!!" at every person whose doctrine we disagree with.  But we must immerse ourselves in the truth, and always stand at the ready to contend for our faith in any way that we're called to.  Being a follower of Jesus is amazing, entirely fulfilling, boundlessly joyous.  But it's also hard.  It also requires sacrifice and suffering.  Sometimes it requires us to do stuff that we absolutely hate.  That's painful beyond measure.  

But we do it.  

Because consider Who's asking.  And what He's already done for us.

On False Teachers, part 1

I love the Bible. I love how poignantly clear it is on some points, how epically mysterious it is on others.  I love how the text is alive, how it beckons us to immerse ourselves, study more, discuss longer, compare passages.  I love how all the truth of the Universe is contained in a single volume of text, that God chose to reveal Himself to us so that we can know Him. I love how I can be hurting, so deeply I can barely verbalize it, and I can turn to the Scriptures and they will comfort me and guide me and remind me where my peace and hope lie.

But then there are things in the Bible that are tough. I mean, there are some really difficult ideas in there, ideas that are hard to understand, and ideas that are hard to carry out. In a discussion I had recently with another Believer, he said, "If you start assembling the teachings of Jesus and His Apostles regarding certain subjects, you come up with stuff American Christians cannot handle.  It is not nice at all." We live in a culture where certain ideas are so ingrained that we have just come to regard them as truth, without ever even giving them much thought.  And certain mentalities and behaviors are straight-up demanded of us, in all situations (ex: radical and unquestioning tolerance and acceptance, unwavering kindness and gentleness, etc), that again we never stop to question their validity. Are we called on to treat each other gently and kindly in most circumstances? Definitely (Ephesians 4:32). Even when we are called on to call each other out on our sins (ie: admonish), we are counseled to be gentle (Galations 6:1, Timothy 4:2), because Heaven knows that we are all sinners, and next time it might be YOU who needs to be exhorted.

But are we called upon to deal kindly and gently with every single human being who crosses our path? Indeed not. A harsh truth that most of you will really struggle to accept. And since the entire point of this blog is to keenly examine Scripture in order to better understand and practically apply God's revelation to our every day lives, today I want to look at a group of people who the Bible tells us should be dealt with swiftly and harshly and without apology: false teachers.

False teachers area big subject in the Bible. Paul (2 Corinthians 11:13-15, 1 Timothy 4:1), Jude, (yeah, pretty much the whole book), Peter (Peter 2:1), John (1 John 4:1), and Jesus Himself (Matthew 24:11), they all warned us strongly to be on the lookout for false teachers and false prophets, which gives me the impression that it's kind of a big deal. So this week let's look at how to identify a false teacher, and next week we can talk about what should be done once one is identified. The church in Galatia was apparently dealing with just such a problem around the time that Paul penned them his letter. In chapter 5 he addresses it in a straightfoward manner, and so gives us some basic guidelines for identifying false teachers. Here are the basics:

False teachers are not terribly interested in getting people to obey God.  In fact, it's kind of their main goal to convince people that they don't really need to obey God (Galatians 5:7), but since they are working under the guise of a Bible teacher, they can't just say, "Hey, this obedience stuff is stupid, let's all get drunk!" They have to be sly and sneaky. They have to distract you, subtly trip you up, tell you things that sound good and right, but in actuality have no Biblical merit, and usually undermine some of the most basic of Biblical principles (another good reason we should all be fully immersed in the Word and constantly encouraging and admonishing each other)! But oh! Will they ever be convincing! They will usually be gifted orators or wordsmiths, saying just the persuasive things that your ears are longing to hear. It flutters your heartstrings and speaks directly into your life, just exactly what you needed to hear today!  But when you really try to break their teaching down into basic principles, you find that it's little but false flattery and empty rhetoric. Really really pleasant words that just don't mean anything.  Paul put it best in his second letter to Timothy (4:3-4), when he said, " For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.  They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths." Youch. Scary.

False teachers will also be very influential in the church, maybe even gain almost complete control over it (Galations 5:9). You know that verse we've all heard about yeast working through the whole batch of dough? Well, this is what Paul was talking about when he said that. An effective false teacher is going to insert him- or herself right into the inner workings of your church, maybe right up front standing in the pulpit, or maybe, with seeming humility and hospitality and submission, a little more behind the scenes, but still pulling all the unseen strings. And slowly he or she is going to start inserting his or her own deceptive and misleading ideas into the truth-teaching until the whole group has gone entirely off the rails. I don't know about you friends, but I find THAT to be a very frightening and sobering idea. 

Look for a certain amount of prideful behavior (Jude 1:11, RE: "the way of Cain"). In my experience (both personally and with others) pride can be sneaky and sometimes masquerade as its exact opposite, humility.  Look for a person who is angry, defensive, passive aggressive, or downright hostile when challenged; who throws around his or her weight, sometimes subtly, sometimes not so much, in an attempt to intimidate; who shuts down, ignores, or derides your honest questioning. A true Gospel teacher wants nothing more than to engage you about Biblical truths, and will delight in your questioning and leap to the challenge to hash out tough ideas with you. A false teacher wants you to shut up and listen, fall in line, and not cause any problems. And for Heaven's sake, if you have questions or disagree, don't say anything!  But friends, this is not Biblical, this is not sound doctrine. Paul told us that OF COURSE there will be divisions among you (1 Corinthians 11:19), and he was delighted when the Berean Jews questioned everything he said and weighed it against Scripture (Acts 17:11). Because a true Bible teacher has nothing to fear from your doubts or questions, and will in fact be thrilled that you are actively seeking and searching truth! 

A question to ask is, is he or she consistently only preaching half or part of the Gospel? This part is tricky, because it might take years before you realize that you have been learning at this person's feet all this time and you have NEVER heard certain ideas or doctrines even discussed! Giving money to the church, serving in your community, treating others compassionately - these are all wonderful ideas, but they are NOT the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  They're just little bits of it, and if you are not consistently being preached and taught the whole truth, you are either being unwittingly cheated (your preacher/teacher is misguided) or intentionally misled (false teacher). 

Probably the most important question you can ask is, who does he or she say Jesus is (Matthew 16:15-16)?  If you find yourself under the sway of someone who is iffy about Who Jesus is - who might balk at being asked to confess the Lordship of Jesus Christ (ie: Jesus is Lord <Romans 10:9>, there is only one  God, <John 17:3>, and Jesus and God are one and the same <John 10:30>) - who refuses to define where he or she stands on (or maybe even out-and-out denies) the substitutionary atonement (ie: Jesus died so that we wouldn't have to, and through Him and Him alone are we saved (1 Peter 3:18, John 14:6), - who occasionally makes broad statements about how maybe we can't exactly know the truth, that they themselves are too humble to embrace certainty, that maybe other faiths and religions have some merit and we should not write them off, that we're all on our own path but they are all leading to the same God - that condemn others for declaring that the truth IS knowable (John 8:32, 1 Corninthians 2:16) and make any sort of suggestion that this truth should be unquestioningly obeyed - if you find you are under the sway of such a person, run away.

 Run away screaming.

 Because friends, Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the Son of God and the Lord of all,  the one and only Redeemer, and anyone who truly knows Him will be willing to shout that from every rooftop in town.

Friends, only by being thoroughly familiar with the truth will we be able to recognize a counterfeit.  And we ARE talking about a counterfeit here, right? So what are the characteristics of an effective counterfeit?  It's not going to be obvious; how would that fool anybody or lead anyone astray? No, a false teacher will very likely seem to possess many of the characteristics that we have come to associate with Godliness or Christ-likeness: humility, gentleness, a willingness to serve, compassion, etc etc. Don't be fooled! Test their spirits (1 John 4:1), and don't be deceived, because these false prophets, they are indeed among us. The Scriptures are so clear on these ideas, if we will just study! If we will just read, and then get together and talk! 

There are several books of the Bible that were written specifically to warn us against false teaching within the church: Galatians, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, and Jude. It is really challenging to identify a false teacher, Satan masquerades as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14), and his ministers masquerade as servants of righteousness (2 Corinthians 11:15).  Please friends, I urge you to daily arm yourselves with the Truth, because our human natures are so easily deceived.  It's so easy to accept teaching that tickles our ears but does nothing to further the Kingdom of God.

As always, I welcome comments, questions and dissent, and I say that with all grace and honesty; it's not a challenge but an invitation. The entire spirit of this blog is summed up by Colossians 3:16: "Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts."  I'm just one voice, but the pursuit of Christ is a corporate one, so I beg of you to lend me your voice as well, that we may sharpen each other as iron sharpens iron, and together reach a better, fuller, and more effective understanding of the the Word of God.

Don't Rock The Boat!!

There are many times when I easily recognize that someone else has a better handle on a topic or situation or idea than I do, and when that I happens, I like to give that person the opportunity (and sometimes a nudge, or a shove (-;  I've got a couple of people who have really wrapped their heads around certain ideas that I've only just begun to think about, and I can't wait for them to guest post for me), to share their knowledge with my readers.

This is one of those times. Now, I'm just a kid who has been blessed with a solid Biblical foundation, and I consider myself a student of the Bible, because I study it, I read parallel passages and commentaries, I consult other people who have the same zeal for discerning practical application of Biblical truth, and I do my best every day to apply those principles to how I live and interact with others. Those are my credentials.  My father, who has again agreed to guest post for me here today, attended a well-respected seminary, has a master's degree in ancient languages, has taught philosophy and sociology at the college level, and has been a tireless student of the Bible his entire life, as well as a solid model of what a Godly man, a real and true persuer of Christ, looks like.  Those are his credentials. And it's not that this makes him the Grand Master of All Knowledge and Understanding, it's that it makes him someone who has thought about this particular subject (and more than a few others) a whole heck of a lot more than either you or I. So let's lend him an ear:


"On a rare occasion it will happen that someone will stand on an important principle and dissent from a group.

I'm going to give you three challenges here; the first two are easy, but the third one only one in perhaps hundreds will ever accept. The first challenge is this: name for yourself what groups you belong to. I'll get you started. You are first a member of the human race, then also of some tribe or nationality, then maybe a political party, maybe a workplace, maybe some associations or clubs, maybe a church, maybe THE Church, and certainly a family. These groups have enormous influence over who you are: how you think, how you feel about things, and what you want: greater power than you may be willing to admit. Every group you belong to has a culture: the way things just ARE in that group. And you are expected to conform to that culture. In fact you are under constant pressure to not dissent from that culture. For fifty years or so this subject has interested many good thinkers, who refer to the general subject as "groupthink."

The second challenge is for your memory. Can you recall anyone associated with you ever standing alone, on principle, against your group? It is a rare thing. Why? The answer lies in an idea some teacher (can't remember who!) suggested to me long ago. That the basic motivator for fallen humans is fear. The fallout if you were to dissent is terrifying. If you dissent you will be considered disloyal, or spiteful, or evil, and shunned, and it really doesn't matter if the concerns you voiced were valid or not.

Now, God created us and knows all about the power of groups. He knew when He planned out His Church and its life in the world what His peoples' experiences would be. And in the Bible He has left us tons of instruction about this subject. How am I as a Believer in Jesus to live in this world? The Bible word "world" is an English translation for a term meaning a beautiful, fallen system. Almost synonymous with our term "culture," only bigger. So John (I John) wrote "Don't be loving the world," and "We belong to God, but the whole world lies in the power of the Evil One." So the situation we have is that the world is fallen, in rebellion against God and thoroughly corrupt, and that corruption infects all our human groups. And in the event an individual Believer is convinced by the Spirit of God, as he reads the Bible, that some teaching or practice in one of his or her groups is simply and clearly wrong, there is conflict. First inner conflict, and then, as God gives grace to the dissenter to speak up for Him and His ways and His Truth, there comes the conflict of dissent. I'll make two examples, both about the Church.

In the 1850s or 60s, in England, the state had an official church, the Church of England. An official teaching of that church was that infants became Christians, and wholly children of God, by baptism. Called baptismal regeneration. Along came a bright, young preacher named Charles Spurgeon, who saw clearly that the Bible taught no such idea, and he found the grace to proclaim that salvation is by faith alone, irrespective of baptism.

 Do you suppose there was fallout?

 A current day example now. In our generation, there has been great, organized cultural pressure to accept homosexual practice as normal and acceptable. The nominal Christian church has bowed to this pressure. Now the Scriptures are explicit and unquestionable about the plan of God for marriage, and sexual boundaries. But if you dare to speak up for God on this subject, dissenting from the culture, there will be fallout.

 Feel the tension?

When Jesus said to His followers "You are the salt of the earth" this is exactly what He was talking about.  (Now if you are a reader of The Message you may have been confused here, where that version sadly fails with its reading  "You're here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth."  That is obviously not what Jesus meant.  Salt was used throughout the ancient Near East to slow down spoiling of meat).  Jesus is challenging His followers to live out His Truth in full view of the world, so that the difference in lifestyles is obvious.  Be truthful when everyone else lies.  Be a faithful husband or wife when everyone else finds excuses to fool around.  Call Jesus Lord over every area of your life even if your church leaders won't.  

So my third challenge is rough:  

If God's Word is clear, but your group is fuzzy, dissent.  

If the boat needs it, rock it.  

Be willing to stand alone until God brings along other faithful Believers to stand with you. 

 Paul wrote to the Romans (12:2) 'Quit copying the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing.'"

I Am Not Ashamed Of The Gospel Of Christ

I know I said that we would look a little deeper into how God communicates His mind this week, but this week has been a wild one, and since my habit is to blog about what's been on my mind the preceding week, we're going to have to change course and examine another idea today.

My journey as a Bible student is a relatively fresh one. I have a really solid Biblical foundation, having been raised in the church, being a Bible quizzer in my teen years, and having a father who has been a serious Bible student his entire life. I absorbed a lot of truth just merely by always being so near to it. And sure, I've spent some time over the years thinking and examining this idea and that, but serious study, with research and commentaries and seeking council and clarity from those wiser than myself, that's pretty fresh. And so to be perfectly honest, so much of what I share with you is ideas and concepts and truths that I have only very newly come to truly grasp and understand. And MAN, when you make yourself wide open to His teaching, He'll just teach the tarnation out of you, believe that!

This week was so full of lessons I barely know where to begin this blog today. Which tough lesson did I learn this week that I want to share with you all?

I think I want to talk about what it truly means to be unashamed of the gospel of Christ (Romans 1:16).

I've heretofore shared my serious concerns with manmade church movements, like emergent/emerging church, progressive church, etc. These movements take the Gospel of Christ and they twist it all around. They soften it, make it gentler, nicer, and easier for human ears to hear.  These entire movements are based around the idea that the Gospel of Christ needs to be somehow made more relevant, more palatable, more pleasant, if the world is ever going to accept it.

I have heard, "People don't come to Christ on their own, we have to love on them first."

I have heard, "The very fact that he is actively wrestling with whether or not to obey is an act of submission to God's will." (Meh??)

I have heard, "I can't speak into her life (I think this is the new way to say "exhort"??), because I haven't had her experiences and I can't truly understand her struggle."

I have heard, "Biblical love = radical acceptance."

I have heard, "I would NEVER turn my back on so-and-so!" (when challenged by 1 Cor. 5:11 to "not even eat with such people," in the case of a professing believer and her long-term live-in boyfriend).

I have heard, "I don't think anyone has the right to exhort anyone else based only on what the Bible says."

I have heard, "..and Lord, help us to obey You, but above all to love one another, because we know that that's the MOST important thing."

And doesn't all that seem to make so much sense? It falls on the ears so pleasantly, and it's so easy to accept. And do you know why that is?? It's because it's human reasoning. It makes so much sense because our wicked deceitful hearts  thought it up. Our own flawed, foolish human reasoning is constantly interfering with and perverting the truth of the Gospel, to the detriment of ourselves, our church bodies, and the entire world at large. Because by making it gentler and softer and more palatable, we rob it of its power.  We render it hollow and impotent, just one more self-help option. Just one more way to pursue vague "spirituality."

 Because friends? Half the Gospel is no Gospel at all. So hear me, friends:

There is one True God (John 17:3), and His name is Yaweh, Jehovah, Adanai (Deut. 4:39, 1 Kings 8:60, Isaiah 45:18). His name is NOT Buddha, Allah, or Shiva.

His Son is Jesus Christ, and He is the way, the truth, and the life, and He alone can offer us redemption  (John 14:6).

Hell is a reality, and people who die without ever accepting Christ as their Lord will go there (Matthew 25:42, Mark 9:43).

Those are the most basic of basics, Gospel 101, if you will. But for some reason lately, the church at large doesn't want to preach this anymore. It's too exclusive, too harsh, it's just not nice.  It might turn somebody off and then they won't come back to church. Again, human reasoning. The apostle Paul preached these basic truths to every town he went to, and if the town didn't except it, he shook their dust from his feet and moved on (Matthew 10:14). No apologies for not having a nicer message, no months and years spent with ill-defined "loving on" people. He just spoke the truth. All of it.

So in that vein, here are a few more truths that the current church seems entirely unwilling to admit or address, but of which I am unashamed:

Abortion is a plague, a holocaust of God's most innocent creations, and you CANNOT call Christ Lord and be pro-choice (Jeremiah 1:5, Matthew 25:40).

God hates homosexual sex (Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11).

Drunkenness, any amount of drunkenness, on any day of the week, is NOT OK. Period (Ephesians 5:18).

Marriage is a sacred covenant between a man and woman, and divorce is not ok, except for very specific reasons, which the Bible lays out for us (Matthew 19:2-9, 1 Corinthians 7:10-15). "We just grew apart," "Marriage wasn't how I thought it would be," "We just don't love each other anymore," and "irreconcilable differences" are NOT acceptable Biblical reasons for divorce.

Sex is for marriage. Not "people in committed relationships," not with "someone that you truly love." Marriage. Period (1 Corinthians 7:2. 1 Thessalonians 4:3, Mark 1:8).

Now listen: I am not here saying that this is the entirety of the Gospel of Christ, rules and regulations and harshness. Of course not! He is full to overflowing with love and kindness, and mercy and grace acceptance and forgiveness! What I am laying before you here is merely the parts of the Gospel that I fear are just being "left out" of the message. These are the parts of the Gospel that today's Church seems to be ashamed of. I have heard "everyone is on their own path," and "everyone has to take their own journey," and "God meets you where you are," and in every one of these instances, it has been someone defending either their own sinful behavior or the sinful behavior of someone else.

 The fact of the matter is, Jesus expects obedience. In fact, He is owed it, because we no longer belong to ourselves, we are bought and paid for by His blood, sanctified and set apart.  But if the churches and trusted church leaders refuse to acknowledge and preach and teach some of these most basic of Jesus' commands, what will become of us?? Because, let's be honest, your average Believers rely on their local pulpit for almost all of their truth intake. And they trust that they're getting the whole story, the whole truth, everything they need to know to be effective followers of Jesus. And they're being short-changed. We are all being short-changed when we are consistently only given half the Gospel.

And so is the Author.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ does not need any man to make it anything other than what it is. It is precisely as gentle, precisely as harsh, precisely as relevant as it needs to be. It is perfectly and entirely beautiful and complete exactly the way it is.

And so I challenge you, emergent/progressive church-types: I challenge you, local church preachers and teachers: what are you ashamed of??


For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes..
Romans 1:16

How God Communicates His Mind, part 1

This week I posted a couple of links on FB coming down on The Message "Translation" of the Bible, and I caught a little flack and got into some really great debates and conversations because of it. And while my mind was not at all changed about the merit of this so-called "translation" (I am NOT a fan!), I was challenged again to think about how God communicates His mind to His people.

Frank Viola is by far my favorite Christian author, his ideas are clear and inspired, and I feel like he has a gift for seeing the big picture of ecclesiology  in a way that turns almost everything we think we know about Church on its ear.  In a good way.  In the best way, because he challenges his readers to search for and see real truth in a landscape of faulty human reasoning and tradition.  In the first chapter of his book Revise Us Again, entitled "God's Three-fold Speaking," Frank talks about the three ways that God reveals His mind:

'The Torah contains the foundations on which the community of God's people are built.  The Torah includes God's enduring moral principles -the standards that spring from His very nature. These standards do not change, nor can they be compromised. In the Old Testament economy, the priest was the person who taught the Torah.

The Prophets section of the Bible often seems to contradict the Torah. The prophet is the person who enters the community of God's people and causes an abrasive, disruptive upheaval of what the community believes or practices.

The prophet challenges the people's response to the Torah, which is often a legalistic or libertine response.

In reality though, the prophet doesn't really contradict the Torah. He contradicts the people's response to it. We are fallen creatures, and we sometimes turn the standards of God into dead rituals. At other times we misapply or disregard them altogether. The prophet is needed at such times.

The Wisdom Literature contains something that we Christians often do not have a great abundance of - wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge gained through experience. It also includes a predictive element.

Because of his long experience, a wise person can detect patterns. And he's able to foresee outcomes (Luke 11:49, Prov. 22:3).

A wise person may make a statement like this: "What you just said sounds really god, but it's not going to work and here's why..."

The instrument of the Wisdom Literature is the sage, the wise old man with the gray head. The sage is sought after for his wisdom because he has the experience of life. As a result, he can peer into the future.

The priest is authorized by the authority of the Torah, which contains what God has previously spoken.  The prophet is authorized by the present burden of the Lord that the Holy Spirit lays upon him. The sage is authorized by his experience and the fruit of his wisdom, which can be evaluated by the future outcome of his counsel (Luke 7:35).

Put another way, the priest looks to the past and asks, "Is this scriptural? Is this right?"

The prophet looks to the present and asks, "What is God saying to us right now? What is His present leading?"

The sage looks to the future and asks, "How will our present actions affect the future? Is this decision wise or foolish?"

To put it in the language of the Bible: "The priest asks, "What do these stones mean?" (Josh. 4:6).  The prophet asks, "Is there any word from the Lord?" (Jer. 37:17). And the sage asks, "Where can wisdom be found?" (Job 28:12).'

Revise Us Again
Frank Viola


He goes on to address the inherent dangers of over-reliance of any single one of these modes, that all three are necessary to fully know the mind of Christ, and what that looks like when practically applied to Church life. This particular chapter was one of the most eye-opening and attitude-changing things I had ever read, and I can't wait to examine these ideas with you, but I fear it will have to wait til next week. My 2-year-old has decided that I am done blogging for the day, and my priorities dictate that I now turn my attention to him :) So cogitate on these ideas until next week, when we dig in a bit and try to figure out how these ideas might look in a properly functioning body of Believers.

 

Guest Post: How Is Your Church "Progressing?"

Around our place we have been bouncing around some thoughts about the self-named Progressive Church.  Wikipedia has a brief entry by that name which may be of benefit if you are not  familiar with the term.

Based on about forty years of observation, and a little background in ancient languages, ecclesiology and philosophy, I conclude the following.  Many of the teachings of the Progressive Church are not progressive at all,  but rather a movement back into the ancient heresies of gnosticism, antinomianism and universalism.  I know that's a mouthful.  Said another way, these guys are teaching some of the same stuff Paul, John, Peter and Jude had to fight against in the first generation of the Church's life.  But Progressive sounds so cool, doesn't it?  Reminds me of the Progressive Insurance Company and I wonder if they are actually innovative in any meaningful way.  Either one.

I'm serious about there being some glaring problems with the Progressive Church.  Let's make a baseball metaphor.

Let's "progressively" change some rules of the game.  Forget all those buzzkill rules about being "out" all the time.  We don't want those defensive positions around the field.  Oh, those guys can still stand out there, but it would be cooler if they would just clap a lot and yell things at the batter, like, "I affirm you, Dude."    And the pitcher should no longer be throwing so hard;  in fact, underhand delivery would be preferable.  We want every batter to hit a homer!  Hey, it's my game, so I'm going to name it Radical Love Baseball. If you love the game of baseball,  if you see the beauty in it just the way it is, messing with the rules would scandalize you.  The new rules above might be good for five-year-olds, but for die hard lovers of the game, such changes would be heartbreaking.

Now I do love baseball, but not in the way I love the Church.  And when I see the Devil fooling with it, I feel like I must scream a little.  Just reading a Psalm yesterday where the writer said something like, "God's people are all screwing up, and there are no prophets, so now what are we going to do?"  The Psalmist didn't say exactly that, but I'll bet my offering is better than the Message on that verse.  God, raise up some prophets!!

I use the baseball metaphor to underscore that what the Progressive Church is about goes beyond what is touted.  They seek to change some basic teachings of the Bible.  Someone should be blogging every day, exposing their false teaching with the Light of God's Word.  I promise to find you some links. . .somewhere out there a bright, straight-up, Truth-loving scholar, preferably with a double PhD in Koine Greek and Church History, may be blogging on this and I don't know about it.

I'll ask you one question, then quit for today.  In your church, do you hear clear teaching about holiness, the destiny of the lost, the abortion plague, sexual boundaries, the end times?  Really.  We all need to be involved with a group of Believers who challenge one another to obedience to the Whole Counsel of God.

Wait.  I have to throw this in.  In the Wikipedia article mentioned above, the author made a list of perhaps thirty or so people they described as notable Progressive Christians.  First name on the list is Barack Obama.  Now that is. . .  it's just. . .  I mean, lots of people (like Madonna, for example) assume he is a Muslim.