“And of some have compassion, making a difference: And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.” (Jude 22-23)
Last Sunday afternoon a vicious tornado leveled about half of the city of Joplin, Mo. Unless you have been under a rock for the last few days, you are well aware of all of this and have seen many of the images coming from Joplin. Most everyone in our neck of the woods has some connection to the tragedy since Joplin is only 3 hours from Kansas City. Our office manager Teresa Dailey grew up in Joplin and still has family there. All of them are safe, having missed the storm by a few blocks, but they are obviously affected. My wife works for Jo-Ann’s Stores, and the Joplin store was right in the middle of the tornado and completely destroyed. Fortunately all of their employees made it out alive, but right now they do not have a job. Hundreds are still missing. Anyone who survived the storm will have a gruesome nightmare experience to relive for the rest of their lives every time it starts to rain. Help and relief efforts are well underway, but it will obviously be a long time before normalcy is restored.
I heard from one of our former church members who now lives in Joplin. Their family is OK, but they have friends who are still missing. She said the President is scheduled to visit Joplin in the next couple of days, and that Fred Phelps and his gang of lunatics are planning to come at the same time to picket his visit. What is it about these raving nut jobs? Anyone who would seize on the suffering of others to promote their own personal fame and agenda is sick. I cannot imagine a more twisted and perverse form of “Christianity” than to descend upon a group of people at such a time and rejoice in their misfortune and blame them for the tragedy. I know that God does not operate like that. He is kind and gracious and longsuffering with man, and the very fact that Phelps and his wacko family are still around is proof. God is compassionate even to them in spite of the venom and filth they spew.
As we step back from this for a minute and consider the verses in Jude above, we can get a lesson on how to deal with the message we carry of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It says that some are saved with fear. The coming judgment of God against sin needs to be proclaimed. The sirens went off in Joplin about 20 minutes before the storm hit. Ample warning was given that a very dangerous situation was unfolding. No one could predict or imagine the exact details, but people knew that a nasty storm was imminent. Imagine the outrage if the weather service had ignored the situation and did not warn people. What if they had taken the approach so many Christians do with the gospel, and said, “We don’t want to offend anyone.” Or, “If I just let my light shine, then people will know a tornado is coming.” Fear of hell is a motivation for people to trust the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour. They must be warned, but with compassion and grace. It is not compassionate to gloss over the reality of the impending judgment of God against sin. But it is even less compassionate to gloat over the tragedy that sin produces in people’s lives. Bad things befall people because we live in an evil and fallen world, and quite often it is the direct fault of the individual. Not so with the tornado in Joplin, but God uses difficulties in the lives of the lost to get them to turn to the Saviour. It is at those times when true compassion must be manifest in the hearts of his people.
We see a massive outpouring of assistance and compassion from around the area for the people of Joplin. We are seeing it from the lost. Most of the people coming to the aid of Joplin probably do not know Jesus as their Saviour. They are just moved with genuine compassion for the plight of the suffering. As Christians, we know an even greater tragedy is on the horizon for those without Christ. Losing your home and possessions is bad enough. Losing an eternal soul is far worse. Sound the alarm, and respond with grace to those who need Jesus.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
John Dillinger and Prohibition
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such, there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-33)
Those are famous verses. Virtually every Christian has heard them quoted hundreds of times and has heard many messages on the theme of the fruit of the Spirit. There is a lot of really good insight given on those verses by Bible teachers and commentators to provide us with strength and encouragement in our walk with the Lord Jesus Christ. But there is one thing about the teaching that has always bugged me. Now that I have a blog, I can get things like this off my chest, and you have to live with my spouting off. Most of the commentators and all of the new versions of the Bible change the last word “temperance” to “self-control”. That has always bothered me. This is the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is what God produces in our lives as we yield ourselves to his direction in our lives. What part of “self” belongs in that discussion? How can self-anything be considered a product of God’s work in our lives?
The seventeenth amendment to the Constitution was passed nearly 100 years ago outlawing the sale and consumption of liquor in the United States. It was a noble attempt, but failed to really address the issue. You cannot change the heart of man by legislation. Only the Spirit of the living God in a believer can change man’s behavior. Once we know Jesus as our Saviour, God has a platform from which to work. His Spirit will produce fruit when we give our lives to his control and leadership. The Prohibition movement was immortalized in song by Frank Sinatra when he sang about the “toddlin’ town” of Chicago. He boasted that it was the “town that Billy Sunday could not shut down”. Billy Sunday was one of the main preachers during Prohibition, and one of my all-time favorite role models. Billy Sunday “shut down” sin and wickedness in a lot of cities by the plain preaching of the word of God. Now that both Billy and Frank are dead, I wonder if “Ol’ blue eyes” wouldn’t mind trading places with Billy.
They called Prohibition the “Temperance Movement”. It was not self-control of the alcohol industry, it was government control. Imagine the feds saying to Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd, “You guys need to control yourselves with the production of this hooch. We will let you operate however you feel like, just keep it under control.” Talk about the fox watching the chicken coop! How in the world can my flesh (self) control my flesh? I know myself better than that. Maybe you are deluded enough to think that you can control yourself, but I am smarter than that. I need God to control me. That is temperance – the control of the Spirit of God over the raging fire of my old nature. It is a fruit of God’s Spirit in the life of a believer, and can no more be produced by “self” than you can produce fruit in a factory. There is no assembly line that can crank out tomatoes, and there is no person who has the power to manufacture the fruit of the Spirit by his own self-control.
One of the best parts of being a Christian is the daily presence of the Spirit of God in our lives to conform us to the image of the Son of God. Yes, we get a home in heaven secured for us, and a deliverance from the torment of an eternal hell is certainly the greatest benefit of our Saviour’s love for us. But he did not just cut us loose after that to fend for ourselves. We would drown in the massive sea of life. I would have no chance to bring glory to my Lord if it was all left up to me and my abilities. His Spirit in us can and will change our personalities and our lives to live as God designed man to live. As we yield ourselves to his control, we can manifest genuine love and peace and faith and all the other items on the list. As we let God be in control, we learn what true “temperance” is: the conformance of our lives to the image of Jesus Christ. He knew how to really live. So can we when we let his life shine through us.
Those are famous verses. Virtually every Christian has heard them quoted hundreds of times and has heard many messages on the theme of the fruit of the Spirit. There is a lot of really good insight given on those verses by Bible teachers and commentators to provide us with strength and encouragement in our walk with the Lord Jesus Christ. But there is one thing about the teaching that has always bugged me. Now that I have a blog, I can get things like this off my chest, and you have to live with my spouting off. Most of the commentators and all of the new versions of the Bible change the last word “temperance” to “self-control”. That has always bothered me. This is the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is what God produces in our lives as we yield ourselves to his direction in our lives. What part of “self” belongs in that discussion? How can self-anything be considered a product of God’s work in our lives?
The seventeenth amendment to the Constitution was passed nearly 100 years ago outlawing the sale and consumption of liquor in the United States. It was a noble attempt, but failed to really address the issue. You cannot change the heart of man by legislation. Only the Spirit of the living God in a believer can change man’s behavior. Once we know Jesus as our Saviour, God has a platform from which to work. His Spirit will produce fruit when we give our lives to his control and leadership. The Prohibition movement was immortalized in song by Frank Sinatra when he sang about the “toddlin’ town” of Chicago. He boasted that it was the “town that Billy Sunday could not shut down”. Billy Sunday was one of the main preachers during Prohibition, and one of my all-time favorite role models. Billy Sunday “shut down” sin and wickedness in a lot of cities by the plain preaching of the word of God. Now that both Billy and Frank are dead, I wonder if “Ol’ blue eyes” wouldn’t mind trading places with Billy.
They called Prohibition the “Temperance Movement”. It was not self-control of the alcohol industry, it was government control. Imagine the feds saying to Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd, “You guys need to control yourselves with the production of this hooch. We will let you operate however you feel like, just keep it under control.” Talk about the fox watching the chicken coop! How in the world can my flesh (self) control my flesh? I know myself better than that. Maybe you are deluded enough to think that you can control yourself, but I am smarter than that. I need God to control me. That is temperance – the control of the Spirit of God over the raging fire of my old nature. It is a fruit of God’s Spirit in the life of a believer, and can no more be produced by “self” than you can produce fruit in a factory. There is no assembly line that can crank out tomatoes, and there is no person who has the power to manufacture the fruit of the Spirit by his own self-control.
One of the best parts of being a Christian is the daily presence of the Spirit of God in our lives to conform us to the image of the Son of God. Yes, we get a home in heaven secured for us, and a deliverance from the torment of an eternal hell is certainly the greatest benefit of our Saviour’s love for us. But he did not just cut us loose after that to fend for ourselves. We would drown in the massive sea of life. I would have no chance to bring glory to my Lord if it was all left up to me and my abilities. His Spirit in us can and will change our personalities and our lives to live as God designed man to live. As we yield ourselves to his control, we can manifest genuine love and peace and faith and all the other items on the list. As we let God be in control, we learn what true “temperance” is: the conformance of our lives to the image of Jesus Christ. He knew how to really live. So can we when we let his life shine through us.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
AAUURRGGHH!!!!
“We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.” (II Corinthians 4:8-9)
We all experience those times in life when it seems the whole world is closing in and nothing is going right. Sometimes it is just the onslaught of so many different things that can take our time and attention. The modern world of “conveniences” has made all of our lives far more busy and “inconvenient” that it was a generation ago. For me, it is the “to do list” that drives me up a wall. It is a lot better now, but I remember a while back going through my list and seeing well over 100 separate items on it. That means I could have been doing any one of a hundred things that day. Most of them were totally unrelated to each other. Sometimes you can have a bunch of things on your list, but they can be consolidated and knocked out in bunches. You could get in the car and spend an afternoon running errands and take care of a lot of it. But when I get loaded down with what seems like an impossible flood of stuff, it drives me to drink – Pepsi, of course. Sometimes the fetal position is a welcome diversion from life.
I get in these positions at times like everyone does, and quite often it is my own fault. Of course, I am the king of procrastination. I mean, why do today what you can put off till tomorrow? But at times, the wave of stuff comes at all of us from sources outside our own doing. As I said a few weeks ago in this blog, we go against the grain of this world as believers in Jesus Christ. When you swim upstream, you will get bombarded directly by the “course of this world” (Eph 2:2). Paul spoke about that in the verses I quoted above. We think that our world is somehow unique, and it is in some ways, but not really. Paul could identify with the overwhelming feeling of despair that bombards us, and he did not have a “to do list”. No one called him on his cell phone with yet another problem. He never got in his car to run a bunch of errands. He did not have a “Franklin Planner” to manage his day. Yet the onslaught of the world affected him as it does us. The earth spins on its axis at nearly 1,000 miles per hour, and as often as we cry, “Please stop the world so I can catch up!” we cannot. The world spun at the same rate in Paul’s day.
We take an annual trip to our adopted mission field of Belize. One of the benefits of that trip is to get our bearings in another culture and lifestyle. We take a few people from the church every year to minister to our friends in Belize, and to be ministered to themselves. It is refreshing to spend a few days in a culture where there is only one thing to do each day. As I describe the schedule for the team in our preparations, I mention our “to do list” for the trip, and I list that one thing for each day. The “newbies” who have never experienced the trip before look at me like I have three heads. But it is a great opportunity to recharge our lives and realize how many things we put on our “list” that really don’t matter that much.
Paul’s frustration in the above verses came from his ministry. He was bombarded by things that carried eternal significance. It got so bad at times that he said he and his men, “despaired even of life.” (II Cor 1:8). I think most of us will be ashamed when we get home to heaven to realize how much emotional energy we invested in things in this life that carried no eternal weight. Peter said if we were going to suffer, why not make it for well doing (I Pet 3:17). We will experience those times when life drives us to crawl under the blankets and pray for it to just go away. But let’s invest our lives in the things that will last forever – the word of God and the souls of men and women – so that one day, those frustrations will bear fruit that remains for eternity. As one of my favorite passages says, “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (II Cor 4:17-18) Invest in eternal things. The dividends will pay off!
We all experience those times in life when it seems the whole world is closing in and nothing is going right. Sometimes it is just the onslaught of so many different things that can take our time and attention. The modern world of “conveniences” has made all of our lives far more busy and “inconvenient” that it was a generation ago. For me, it is the “to do list” that drives me up a wall. It is a lot better now, but I remember a while back going through my list and seeing well over 100 separate items on it. That means I could have been doing any one of a hundred things that day. Most of them were totally unrelated to each other. Sometimes you can have a bunch of things on your list, but they can be consolidated and knocked out in bunches. You could get in the car and spend an afternoon running errands and take care of a lot of it. But when I get loaded down with what seems like an impossible flood of stuff, it drives me to drink – Pepsi, of course. Sometimes the fetal position is a welcome diversion from life.
I get in these positions at times like everyone does, and quite often it is my own fault. Of course, I am the king of procrastination. I mean, why do today what you can put off till tomorrow? But at times, the wave of stuff comes at all of us from sources outside our own doing. As I said a few weeks ago in this blog, we go against the grain of this world as believers in Jesus Christ. When you swim upstream, you will get bombarded directly by the “course of this world” (Eph 2:2). Paul spoke about that in the verses I quoted above. We think that our world is somehow unique, and it is in some ways, but not really. Paul could identify with the overwhelming feeling of despair that bombards us, and he did not have a “to do list”. No one called him on his cell phone with yet another problem. He never got in his car to run a bunch of errands. He did not have a “Franklin Planner” to manage his day. Yet the onslaught of the world affected him as it does us. The earth spins on its axis at nearly 1,000 miles per hour, and as often as we cry, “Please stop the world so I can catch up!” we cannot. The world spun at the same rate in Paul’s day.
We take an annual trip to our adopted mission field of Belize. One of the benefits of that trip is to get our bearings in another culture and lifestyle. We take a few people from the church every year to minister to our friends in Belize, and to be ministered to themselves. It is refreshing to spend a few days in a culture where there is only one thing to do each day. As I describe the schedule for the team in our preparations, I mention our “to do list” for the trip, and I list that one thing for each day. The “newbies” who have never experienced the trip before look at me like I have three heads. But it is a great opportunity to recharge our lives and realize how many things we put on our “list” that really don’t matter that much.
Paul’s frustration in the above verses came from his ministry. He was bombarded by things that carried eternal significance. It got so bad at times that he said he and his men, “despaired even of life.” (II Cor 1:8). I think most of us will be ashamed when we get home to heaven to realize how much emotional energy we invested in things in this life that carried no eternal weight. Peter said if we were going to suffer, why not make it for well doing (I Pet 3:17). We will experience those times when life drives us to crawl under the blankets and pray for it to just go away. But let’s invest our lives in the things that will last forever – the word of God and the souls of men and women – so that one day, those frustrations will bear fruit that remains for eternity. As one of my favorite passages says, “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (II Cor 4:17-18) Invest in eternal things. The dividends will pay off!
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Oh, Victory in Jesus!
“Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11)
This is a good day. We awoke Monday morning to the news of the death of one of the greatest enemies the United States has ever had, Osama bin Laden. Celebrations broke out all over the country and the world that this evil man would no longer be able to terrorize anyone. We all marvel at the skill and bravery of the Navy Seal team that carried out the mission. They landed a disabled helicopter right in his back yard, got their job done, and got out of there without any loss of life other than the enemy target and those who were with him. We will never know the names of these great soldiers who thought nothing of their own lives, and were fully prepared to lay them down to rid the world of this evil man so that others could live.
Speaking of which, we do know the name of the man who laid down his life 2,000 years ago that others might live: the Lord Jesus Christ. As a result of his sacrifice, any man, woman or child on earth can be freed from the bondage of sin. But it is only available to those who trust Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour. Jesus died for the sins of the world, but rejecting his offer of the free gift of grace results in the same hell that bin Laden knows of today. This is perhaps a hard thing to say and maybe even harder to understand, but God loved Osama bin Laden as much as he loved you. He sent his Son to die for his sins as well as yours. There was a day many years ago when his mother and father held him as a newborn, and they probably loved him just like you do your children. Unfortunately, due to a false religion and a culture of hatred, his life took a horrible and nasty turn into the beast he became. The outcome we have seen and lived with over the last couple of decades is a result of his rejection of the Saviour. It was that rejection of the love of God that put him in hell, not his murderous rampage. His terrorist perversion was the by-product of his refusal to accept the Son of God. Rejection is rejection. It leads some into the moral cesspool of drugs and sexual perversion. It leads others like this man into the depths of Satanic blood lust. Rejection leads many into a nice comfortable life of religion and morality, where they don’t need the Saviour because they think they are good enough on their own. But that road leads to the same hell. Many will object to that statement. A “decent God-fearing man” who has not received Jesus as his Saviour will claim he is going to heaven because he is not as bad as Osama bin Laden. Well, lah-de-dah. That is a great standard to compare oneself to, huh? Why not compare yourself to Jesus? Instead of ranking yourself ahead of a sick twisted maniac, why not recognize that you are not as good as the only sinless man who ever lived. He came to die for your sins and deliver you from hell. Receive him while there is still time.
The verse above says God does not rejoice when a wicked man like this dies. Proverbs 24:17 says, “Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth…” God desires that the wicked would turn from their evil to receive his Son. James 2:13 says “…mercy rejoiceth against judgment.” God will apply judgment if necessary. He did so with bin Laden a couple of days ago; both physically by his death, and spiritually by his eternal destiny. He would rather have been able to apply his mercy, because of the two – judgment and mercy – God rejoices more in mercy. But there must be reason for his mercy to be applied. That reason is not because of anyone’s “goodness”, but because someone paid for sin. While we celebrate the victory, we also grieve the loss of a soul. The true victory will come when Jesus finally returns and conquers the “last enemy” of death. We all know that bin Laden’s death does not end the battle over terrorism. Someday soon, our Lord will return. The only true victory is over sin and death. We obtain it when we bow the knee to the Lord of glory, Jesus Christ. If you have never done so, why not now?
This is a good day. We awoke Monday morning to the news of the death of one of the greatest enemies the United States has ever had, Osama bin Laden. Celebrations broke out all over the country and the world that this evil man would no longer be able to terrorize anyone. We all marvel at the skill and bravery of the Navy Seal team that carried out the mission. They landed a disabled helicopter right in his back yard, got their job done, and got out of there without any loss of life other than the enemy target and those who were with him. We will never know the names of these great soldiers who thought nothing of their own lives, and were fully prepared to lay them down to rid the world of this evil man so that others could live.
Speaking of which, we do know the name of the man who laid down his life 2,000 years ago that others might live: the Lord Jesus Christ. As a result of his sacrifice, any man, woman or child on earth can be freed from the bondage of sin. But it is only available to those who trust Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour. Jesus died for the sins of the world, but rejecting his offer of the free gift of grace results in the same hell that bin Laden knows of today. This is perhaps a hard thing to say and maybe even harder to understand, but God loved Osama bin Laden as much as he loved you. He sent his Son to die for his sins as well as yours. There was a day many years ago when his mother and father held him as a newborn, and they probably loved him just like you do your children. Unfortunately, due to a false religion and a culture of hatred, his life took a horrible and nasty turn into the beast he became. The outcome we have seen and lived with over the last couple of decades is a result of his rejection of the Saviour. It was that rejection of the love of God that put him in hell, not his murderous rampage. His terrorist perversion was the by-product of his refusal to accept the Son of God. Rejection is rejection. It leads some into the moral cesspool of drugs and sexual perversion. It leads others like this man into the depths of Satanic blood lust. Rejection leads many into a nice comfortable life of religion and morality, where they don’t need the Saviour because they think they are good enough on their own. But that road leads to the same hell. Many will object to that statement. A “decent God-fearing man” who has not received Jesus as his Saviour will claim he is going to heaven because he is not as bad as Osama bin Laden. Well, lah-de-dah. That is a great standard to compare oneself to, huh? Why not compare yourself to Jesus? Instead of ranking yourself ahead of a sick twisted maniac, why not recognize that you are not as good as the only sinless man who ever lived. He came to die for your sins and deliver you from hell. Receive him while there is still time.
The verse above says God does not rejoice when a wicked man like this dies. Proverbs 24:17 says, “Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth…” God desires that the wicked would turn from their evil to receive his Son. James 2:13 says “…mercy rejoiceth against judgment.” God will apply judgment if necessary. He did so with bin Laden a couple of days ago; both physically by his death, and spiritually by his eternal destiny. He would rather have been able to apply his mercy, because of the two – judgment and mercy – God rejoices more in mercy. But there must be reason for his mercy to be applied. That reason is not because of anyone’s “goodness”, but because someone paid for sin. While we celebrate the victory, we also grieve the loss of a soul. The true victory will come when Jesus finally returns and conquers the “last enemy” of death. We all know that bin Laden’s death does not end the battle over terrorism. Someday soon, our Lord will return. The only true victory is over sin and death. We obtain it when we bow the knee to the Lord of glory, Jesus Christ. If you have never done so, why not now?
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