en they are threatened and lost.Tim Keller compared Religion and the Gospel this way:
Religion: “I obey-therefore I’m accepted.”
Gospel: “I’m accepted-therefore I obey.”
R: Motivation is based on fear and insecurity.
G: Motivation is based on grateful joy.
R: I obey God in order to get things from God
G: I obey God to get to God-to delight and resemble Him.
R: When circumstances in my life go wrong, I am angry at God or my self, since I believe, like Job’s friends that anyone who is good deserves a comfortable life.
G: When circumstances in my life go wrong, I struggle but I know all my punishment fell on Jesus and that while he may allow this for my training, he will exercise his Fatherly love within my trial.
R: When I am criticized I am furious or devastated because it is critical that I think of myself as a ‘good person’. Threats to that self-image must be destroyed at all costs.
G: When I am criticized I struggle, but it is not critical for me to think of myself as a ‘good person.’ My identity is not built on my record or my performance but on God’s love for me in Christ. I can take criticism. That’s how I became a Christian.
R: My prayer life consists largely of petition and it only heats up when I am in a time of need. My main purpose in prayer is control of the environment.
G: My prayer life consists of generous stretches of praise and adoration. My main purpose is fellowship with Him.
R: My self-view swings between two poles. If and when I am living up to my standards, I feel confident, but then I am prone to be proud and unsympathetic to failing people. If and when I am not living up to standards, I feel humble, but not confident- I feel like a failure.
G: My self-view is not based on a view of my self as a moral achiever. In Christ I am simultaneously sinful and lost yet accepted in Christ. I am so bad he had to die for me and I am so loved he was glad to die for me. This leads me to deeper and deeper humility and confidence at the same time. Neither swaggering nor sniveling
R: My identity and self-worth are based mainly on how hard I work. Or how moral I am, and so I must look down on those I perceive as lazy or immoral. I disdain and feel superior to ‘the other.’
G: My identity and self-worth are centered on the one who died for His enemies, who was excluded from the city for me. I am saved by sheer grace. So I can’t look down on those who believe or practice something different from me. Only by grace I am what I am. I’ve no inner need to win arguments.
R: Since I look to my own pedigree or performance for my spiritual acceptability, my heart manufactures idols. It may be my talents, my moral record, my personal discipline, my social status, etc. I absolutely have to have them so they serve as my main hope, meaning, happiness, security, and significance, whatever I may say I believe about God.
G: I have many good things in my life—family, work, spiritual disciplines, etc. But none of these good things are ultimate things to me. None of them are things I absolutely have to have, so there is a limit to how much anxiety, bitterness, and despondency they can inflict on me wh
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Religion vs. Gospel
4 Important Things about the Gospel
1. Gospel is spelled "d-o-n-e," not "d-o". The word "Gospel" implies an event that has already been done, not something we must go and do. The Gospel is not, then, primarily about what we are to go and do for God, but about what God has done for us. The Gospel is good news, not good advice.
2. The core message of that good news is that God saves sinners. From start to finish, it is all God's work, not ours.
3. Christ saved us by substituting for us. He lived the life we were supposed to have lived, and died the death we were condemned to die. Whatever "metaphor" you choose for salvation--justification, redemption, cleansing, defeat of the evil powers--substitution is the core of it. For example, Christ's blood cleanses us... but how? Because He substituted for us and absorbed the curse, corruption and condemnation for sin.
4. "The Gospel is only good news if it gets there in time."
Lessons on Leadership from Chuck Swindoll
1) It’s lonely to lead. Leadership involves tough decisions. The tougher the decision, the lonelier it is.
2) It’s dangerous to succeed. I’m most concerned for those who aren’t even 30 and are very gifted and successful. Sometimes God uses someone right out of youth, but usually he uses leaders who have been crushed
3) It’s hardest at home. No one ever told me this in Seminary.
4) It’s essential to be real. If there’s one realm where phoniness is common, it’s among leaders. Stay real.
5) It’s painful to obey. The Lord will direct you to do some things that won’t be your choice. Invariably you will give up what you want to do for the cross.
6) Brokenness and failure are necessary.
7) Attititude is more important than actions. Your family may not have told you: some of you are hard to be around. A bad attitude overshadows good actions.
8) Integrity eclipse image. Today we highlight image. But it’s what you’re doing behind the scenes.
9) God's way is better than my way.
10) Christlikeness begins and ends with humility.
How Do You Know a Reliable Preacher
I want to provide you with a brief list of five questions (based on the five sola’s of the Reformation) that can help you discern the reliability of a particular teacher or preacher.
Question 1 (Sola Scriptura): Does the preacher ground everything he says in the Bible? Does he, in other words, begin with the authority and sufficiency of Scripture? A reliable carrier of God’s truth seeks to revel in, wrestle with, and expound from, the Bible. He starts with the Bible. All of his comments flow from what a particular passage in the Bible says. He doesn’t simply use the Bible to support what he wants to say. That is, he submits to what the Bible says, he does not seek to submit the Bible to what he says. He cares about both the Old Testament and the New Testament. He refuses to take verses out of context. He recognizes the unity of the Bible. He acknowledges that both the Old Testament and the New Testament tell one story and point to one figure, namely that God saves sinners through the accomplished work of his son Jesus Christ.
Question 2 (Sola Gratia): Does the preacher freely emphasize that because of sin, a right relationship with God can only be established by God’s grace alone? Beware of any teaching that emphasizes man’s ability over God’s ability; man’s freedom over God’s freedom; man’s power over God’s power; man’s initiative over God’s initiative. Beware of any teaching which subtlety communicates that a right relationship with God depends ultimately on human response over Divine sovereignty.
Question 3 (Sola Fide): Does the preacher stress that salvation is not achieved by what we can do, rather salvation is received by faith in what Christ has already done? It has been rightly stated that there really are only two religions: the religion of human accomplishment and the religion of Divine accomplishment. Does the preacher emphasize the former or the latter? A reliable carrier of God’s truth always highlights the fact that God saves sinners; sinners don’t save themselves.
Question 4 (Sola Christus): Does the preacher underline that Christ is the exclusive mediator between God and man? Does the explainer both affirm and proclaim that Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life” and that nobody comes to the Father but by Christ? Does he talk about sin and the necessity of Christ? Preachers must learn how to unveil and unpack the truth of the Gospel from every Biblical text they preach in such a way that it results in the exposure of both the idols of our culture and the idols of our hearts. The faithful exposition of our true Savior from every passage in the Bible painfully reveals all of the pseudo-saviors that we trust in culturally and personally. Every sermon ought to disclose the subtle ways in which we as individuals and we as a culture depend on lesser things than Jesus to provide the security, acceptance, protection, affection, meaning, and satisfaction that only Christ can supply. In this way, good preachers must constantly show just how relevant and necessary Jesus is; they must work hard to show that we are great sinners but Christ is a great Savior.
Question 5 (Sola Deo Gloria): Does the preacher exalt God above all? A reliable explainer will always lead you to marvel at God. A true carrier of God’s truth will always lead you to encounter the glory of God. A God-centered teacher is just that: God-centered. He will preach and teach in such a way that you find yourself hungering and thirsting for God. You will listen to sermon after sermon and walk away with grand impressions of Divine personality, not grand impressions of human personality.
This is just a start, but I hope it serves as a resource to help you determine the reliability of a particular teacher or preacher.
Baptist Days of Obligation
* Opening night/day of high school/college football season. (Depends on proximity of school, relationships to players, etc. Should include tailgating if possible.)
* Mother’s Day. Obligated to go to church with mom and then take her out to a restaurant, which means standing in line at Cracker Barrel for about 2 hours.
* Any church potluck or meal.
* Any Sunday that starts a revival (or any Sunday that begins a 40 Days of Purpose if your church dumped revivals.)
* Any wedding of anyone in your family within 250 miles.
* Any funeral of anyone in your family within 70 miles.
* The opening of any “Christian Film” in a theater, especially if the movie is produced by a church using their actors and cameras, or stars Kirk Cameron.
* The opening and any 5 subsequent showings of “The Passion of the Christ II.”
* Any school board meeting where creationism will be discussed.
* Homecomings at any church you’ve ever attended, even once, within 300 miles.
* Opening week of any buffet or Barbecue restaurant.
* Any Christian music festival held in an open field in August when the temperature is over 105 degrees.
* You must go vote if any conservative is running for anything.
* You must vote if your town is having a “wet/dry” election.
* Ladies: Any Christian Women’s Conference within 500 miles.
* Men: Any Promise Keeper’s Meeting within 500 miles.
* Christmas and Easter.
* Any church sponsored Super Bowl event.
* Any meeting related to voting on a building.
* Any Vacation Bible School “Family Night.”
* Any event involving Bill Gaither Homecomings.
* Any event involving Rick Warren.
* Any Upward Championship game involving your kids.
* Any Olin Mills Church Directory photoshoot.
* Any church softball game against another Baptist church.
* Any youth group fundraisers for the mission trip.
* Any open question/answer with prospective pastors.
* Any church business meeting where there’s a chance of a big fight or someone getting fired.
* Any Billy Graham Crusade within 1000 miles.
Missional Living
When we first set out to plant a missional church, we had some lively debates over what exactly it meant to live missionally. Does it mean moving into a disadvantaged neighborhood and working for renewal? Does it mean living in the same zip code so we can truly be a missional community? Does it mean deepening already-existing relationships with co-workers? Does it mean deliberately changing my patterns of life to bring me into contact with non-Christians “on their turf” (bars, music shows, nightclubs, etc)? Our conversations about these matters seemed easily to slide toward people moralizing their preferences and looking down on others who didn’t think like them. (Which is one reason why we consistently need to be reminded of the gospel!)
Tim Keller helps to answer this question by observing that the standard pattern of evangelism in the New Testament centered around the oikos (Greek for household). But the word household in NT times was much broader than we tend to think of it. “In the Bible, evangelism does not happen primarily through programs… it happens naturally through one’s oikos, or household… A household was not just your family, but… a fairly tight-knit, close set of colleagues, kin, friends, neighbors. It was understood that when you became a Christian, you had been called to be a steward, evangelistically speaking, of your oikos.”*
In our day, Keller suggests that the biblical term oikos applies to at least five networks: your kinship network (family and relatives), your neighborhood (those who live near you geographically), your colleagues (co-workers or co-students), your affinity network (people with a shared special interest), and your friends (those from the other 4 networks whom you develop a close relationship with). The relative strength or weakness of these five networks varies based on your context.
What it means to live missionally, then, is to have authentic friendship with people in these networks. That’s it. If Jesus is truly important to you, and if you have real friendships with people, then Jesus is going to come up sooner or later in the natural course of sharing life. You shouldn’t have to artificially shoehorn Jesus into every conversation, nor should you feel the need to hide or downplay your affection for him. Those in your oikos will get to know Jesus as they get to know you.
So – is missional living primarily about your neighborhood, your co-workers, your hunting buddies, or your non-Christian family members? The answer is: yes.
[*Quoted from "Evangelism and the Steward Leader," mp3 audio from Redeemer Presbyterian Church.]
9 Ways to Know that the Gospel is True
1. Jesus Christ, as he is presented to us in the New Testament, and as he stands forth from all its writings, is too single and too great to have been invented so uniformly by all these writers.
The force of Jesus Christ unleashed these writings; the writings did not create the force. Jesus is far bigger and more compelling than any of his witnesses. His reality stands behind these writings as a great, global event stands behind a thousand newscasters. Something stupendous unleashed these diverse witnesses to tell these stunning and varied, yet unified, stories of Jesus Christ.
2. Nobody has ever explained the empty tomb of Jesus in the hostile environment of Jerusalem where the enemies of Jesus would have given anything to produce the corpse, but could not.
The earliest attempts to cover the scandal of resurrection were manifestly contradictory to all human experience—disciples do not steal a body (Matthew 28:13) and then sacrifice their lives to preach a glorious gospel of grace on the basis of the deception. Modern theories that Jesus didn't die but swooned, and then awoke in the tomb and moved the stone and tricked his skeptical disciples into believing he was risen as the Lord of the universe don't persuade.
3. Cynical opponents of Christianity abounded where claims were made that many eyewitnesses were available to consult concerning the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
"After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:6). Such claims would be exposed as immediate falsehood if they could. But we know of no exposure. Eyewitnesses of the risen Lord abounded when the crucial claims were being made.
4. The early church was an indomitable force of faith and love and sacrifice on the basis of the reality of Jesus Christ.
The character of this church, and the nature of the gospel of grace and forgiveness, and the undaunted courage of men and women—even unto death—do not fit the hypothesis of mass hysteria. They simply were not like that. Something utterly real and magnificent had happened in the world and they were close enough to know it, and be assured of it, and be gripped by its power. That something was Jesus Christ, as all of them testified, even as they died singing.
5. The prophesies of the Old Testament find stunning fulfillment in the history of Jesus Christ.
The witness to these fulfillments are too many, too diverse, too subtle and too interwoven into the history of the New Testament church and its many writings to be fabricated by some great conspiracy. Down to the details, Jesus Christ fulfilled dozens of Old Testament prophecies that vindicate his truth.
6. The witnesses to Jesus Christ who wrote the New Testament gospels and letters are not gullible or deceitful or demented.
This is manifest from the writings themselves. The books bear the marks of intelligence and clear-headedness and maturity and a moral vision that is compelling. They win our trust as witnesses, especially when all taken together with one great unifying, but distinctively told, message about Jesus Christ.
7. The worldview that emerges from the writings of the New Testament makes more sense out of more reality than any other worldview.
It not only fits the human heart, but also the cosmos and history and God as he reveals himself in nature and conscience. Some may come to this conclusion after much reflection, others may arrive at this conviction by a pre-reflective, intuitive sense of the deep suitability of Christ and his message to the world that they know.
8. When one sees Christ as he is portrayed truly in the gospel, there shines forth a spiritual light that is a self-authenticating.
This is "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God" (2 Corinthians 4:6), and it is as immediately perceived by the Spirit-awakened heart as light is perceived by the open eye. The eye does not argue that there is light. It sees light.
9. When we see and believe the glory of God in the gospel, the Holy Spirit is given to us so that the love of God might be "poured out in our hearts" (Romans 5:5).
This experience of the love of God known in the heart through the gospel of Him who died for us while we were yet ungodly assures us that the hope awakened by all the evidences we have seen will not disappoint us.
Brent Walker Speaks about Religious Liberty
Article by Marv Knox
Baptists must hold in tension three sets of paradoxical ideas if they are to remain faithful to their heritage and champion freedom, Brent Walker told participants at the T.B. Maston Christian Ethics Award Dinner Oct. 30 in Dallas.
The awards dinner is sponsored every-other year by the T.B. Maston Foundation, named for a pioneering Baptist ethicist who taught at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth much of the 20th century. Maston shaped the ethical thinking of generations of ministers and gained a reputation for leading Baptists to support civil rights and racial reconciliation.
The foundation presented its 2009 Maston Award to Leon McBeth, a leading historian of the Baptist movement who taught at Southwestern Seminary for 43 years.
The history McBeth chronicled showed Baptists to be people who “fought for religious liberty -- for others as much as for ourselves,” stressed Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty in Washington.
If Baptists intend to preserve religious liberty, they must maintain balance within three sets of ideas, he added. They are:
• The two religion clauses in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The nation’s founders gave religious liberty “double protection” by including two religion clauses -- No Establishment and Free Exercise, he noted.
“Both ensure religious liberty; both require an institutional separation of church and state as a means to that end,” he said. “As soon as government starts to meddle in religion or takes sides in religious disputes, someone’s religious liberty is denied and everyone’s is threatened.”
Walker proposed a common-sense exercise for maintaining the tension between the religion clauses: “Every time we say ‘no’ to government’s attempt to promote religion to uphold the Establishment Clause, we should find a way to say ‘yes’ to its Free Exercise counterpart. This allows us always to seek to find a ‘win-win’ solution and keep these two clauses in proper balance.”
• Religious freedom and responsibility.
“Our freedom in Christ can never be separated from -- and must always be limited by -- the responsibility that we have to one another,” Walker stressed. “Freedom and responsibility, liberty and accountability -- these dyads must always be held in tension.”
Freedom and religious liberty are not ends in themselves, he added.
“We are free, in the words of the Great Commandment, to love God and love one another,” he said. “… And our freedom in Christ must always be exercised in the context of the responsibility we have to one another. This also involves the ethical imperative of ensuring everyone’s religious liberty. An attitude of ‘religious liberty for me but not for thee’ is self-centered, irresponsible and sinful.”
• Civic withdrawal and engagement.
“Historically, for most Baptists, the separation of church and state has never meant a segregation of religion from politics or to strip religious talk from the public square. It does not relieve Baptists of their duties of citizenship,” Walker insisted.
Citing examples of Baptists who engaged government across the past four centuries, Walker observed, “We have always been committed to doing -- rolling up our sleeves, going to work and speaking out in the public square.”
Tensions are part of life -- including public life, he concluded. “It is my prayer, in our so-called post-modern, post-denominational time and throughout the next 400 years, we Baptists carry forward a proper understanding of these three issues and deal with them responsibly and constructively.”
Matt Chandler using Eugene Peterson to tell us "Don't Be This Pastor?"
Matt Chandler, in his chapel address, (and at the A29 Louisville Bootcamp) quoted the following from Eugene Peterson’s Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity (pp. 7-8):
For a long time, I have been convinced that I could take a person with a high school education, give him or her a six-month trade school training, and provide a pastor who would be satisfactory to any discriminating American congregation. The curriculum would consist of four courses.
Course I: Creative Plagiarism. I would put you in touch with a wide range of excellent and inspirational talks, show you how to alter them just enough to obscure their origins, and get you a reputation for wit and wisdom.
Course II: Voice Control for Prayer and Counseling. We would develop your own distinct style of Holy Joe intonation, acquiring the skill in resonance and modulation that conveys and unmistakable aura of sanctity.
Course III: Efficient Office Management. There is nothing that parishioners admire more in their pastors than the capacity to run a tight ship administratively. If we return all phone calls within twenty-four hours, answer all the letters within a week, distributing enough carbons to key people so that they know we are on top of things, and have just the right amount of clutter on our desk—not too much, or we appear inefficient, not too little or we appear underemployed—we quickly get the reputation for efficiency that is far more important than anything that we actually do.
Course IV: Image Projection. Here we would master the half-dozen well-known and easily implemented devices that that create the impression that we are terrifically busy and widely sought after for counsel by influential people in the community. A one-week refresher course each year would introduce new phrases that would convince our parishioners that we are bold innovators on the cutting edge of the megatrends and at the same time solidly rooted in all the traditional values of our sainted ancestors.
(I have been laughing for several years over this trade school training with which I plan to make my fortune. Recently, though, the joke has backfired on me. I keep seeing advertisements for institutes and workshops all over the country that invite pastors to sign up for this exact curriculum. The advertised course offerings are not quite as honestly labeled as mine, but the content appears to be identical—a curriculum that trains pastors to satisfy the current consumer tastes in religion. I’m not laughing anymore.)
3 Hard Truths for Me and other Pastors
3 Challenging Truths
Here are a few truths that I hope will challenge you to lead your family strongly while being a church planter or pastor:
1. The church can get another pastor, but your kids can't get another dad.
Like it or not, we only get one shot to raise our children. I talk to fathers all the time who lament their absence during their childrens' formative years because of working too much. Even though this is often true for pastors, it shouldn't be. Our biblical credentials for ministry deal mostly with how we lead our families and our own character, rather than how effective we are in ministry. And remember, no one reaches the end of their life saying "I wish I had spent more time working on my blog." Be the exception, not the rule.2. The church can get another pastor, but your wife only has one husband—and she needs a good one.
Oftentimes our wives take the brunt of the beating of our ministries: they hold us together, they hear us complain, and they hear others complain about us and experience the angst of how to handle it in a gospel way. Take it from someone who has greatly failed before in this area: do as much as you can to set clear boundaries between the church and home, and frequently check up on whether or not she enjoys being a part of the church. If she doesn't want to attend the church where you are the pastor, then it is a problem you need to deal with.3. A day off is not just a good idea. It is essential.
"Monday Funday" is as special as a 1910 Honus Wagner baseball card at our house. It is the day we play outside, eat Chinese food at a mall, and don't talk about the church. Our church knows about “Monday Funday” because I mention it in sermons, schedule around it, and unless someone is bleeding out in their kitchen, I do not violate it. My ministry and family are too important. Pick a Sabbath, keep it, and fight for it. Your soul and your family will thank you.Never forget: The first flock you lead is not the one that gathers on Sunday, but the one that lives at your house.
Are you leading them well?