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28-Mar-2011

Posted by : David

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Hell Wins

Category : bible

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A number of pastors and theologians wrote some great reviews to Rob Bell’s “Love Wins.” I don’t feel the need to repeat them, only that I thought it important to read the book for myself and provide my own thoughts for the people at Passage Church. Because of the extraordinary publicity this book received, the influence of Bell, and the fact that many evangelicals WANT Bell’s version of the afterlife to be true,  I thought it important to provide a commentary.

So, in short, hell wins.

If what Bell says is true, then the orthodox, Christian understanding of hell for the last two thousand years is evil. Not just wrong, evil. It is oppressive, bigoted, against the good of humanity. I couldn’t imagine the forces of hell wanting anything more.

Twenty-first century Americans are asking the question, “How can a loving God send people to hell?” But the Bible doesn’t answer that question. When we become Christians we don’t just get answers to OUR questions, we get new questions. That is part of the “renewal of our minds:” as we submit to the Bible, we see things from God’s perspective, not ours. Even our questions change.

For that is the essence of understanding: to see where another is coming from — not bringing our paradigms or experience to what another person is saying. This seems to be what Bell’s friends and fans are demanding for Bell, but in fairness, Bell needs to do that with the Scriptures. For the Bible doesn’t answer the question, “How can a loving God send people to hell?” It answers the question, “How can a holy God accept sinners?” And when we understand biblical questions we get biblical answers — answers that humble us, but amaze us.

Bell is a communicator that knows how to elicit strong emotional responses from his audience. This is not a bad thing. But he is playing to all the wrong emotions – namely the emotional desire for God to be like us, answering to us, not for us to be like him, answering to him. Of course, Bell doesn’t mock God, he mocks the people of God who hold to the historical understanding of the Scriptures and the church. He’s got an easy scapegoat (some metaphors still apply), but a holy God is still on trial. As Saul learned on the road to Damascus, when the people of God are maligned, so is Jesus (“why are you persecuting me?”).

That’s why in “Love Wins” hell wins. The age-old strategy of the serpent is to ask questions that call into question the goodness and wisdom of God’s word. Satan did this in the garden of Eden by focusing on what God restricted, making God look like He wasn’t good. The Deceiver would want us to think that we have just misunderstood God — that we can decide for ourselves what is good and evil.

Sound familiar?

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24-Mar-2011

Posted by : David

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Struggling with Jesus

Category : bible

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About two months after I became a Christian, I was reading the New Testament and I became so angry with what Jesus said that I threw the Bible across the room. I simply couldn’t believe that Jesus said the things he did. His words infuriated me.

What was happening? It was the conflict between me and God’s word. Was I going to mold God’s word to fit me or was I going to be molded by God’s word? Since this was the first time I read the Bible, the conflict was intense.  I was discovering Jesus and realizing we were very different.

That is why I am generally encouraged by people who struggle with Jesus as they are drawing near to him. I know that they are approaching him honestly. The people that don’t seem to struggle with Jesus are the people that almost always fall away. They aren’t taking him seriously. They think his values and theirs are one and the same.

But Jesus is Creator and we are creatures. We have to eventually come to a place where we let God be God. He is a person and is who He is. To make Him who we want Him to be is delusional. It is a worship of a false god. But that is the human predicament. We have replaced the Creator God for a god of our own imagination (Romans 1:18-19).

This is also not to say that we can’t misinterpret the Scriptures — this is why we need the present body of Christ and the historical understanding of the Church. But we don’t have the leisure of rejecting things about God just because we don’t like them. In Jesus day, the religious leaders didn’t like the mercy of God. In our day, there are cultures that are similar. They like holiness and obedience, not grace.

But our culture loves mercy and grace, but dislikes Truth. But with Jesus we get a man full of grace and truth (John 1:14). No wonder we can’t stand him.

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08-Mar-2011

Posted by : David

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The Opposite of 1 Corinthians 13

Category : bible

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love is patient. love is kind. love does not envy or boast. it is not arrogant or rude. it does not insist on its own way. it is not irritable or resentful. it does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. love bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things. love never ends (1 Corinthians 13:4-8).

Selfishness gives up easily and is unkind. it envies and brags. it is haughty and rude. it insists on its own way. it is constantly irritable and resentful. it rejoices at wrongdoing — it hides the truth. selfishness will drop others when it gets hurt, thinks the worst of others, gives up on others who aren’t convenient. Selfishness is a flash in the pan, common.

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13-Jan-2011

Posted by : David

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Why You Should Attend a Weekend Church Service

Category : bible, church

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Why should you attend a weekend gathering of the church? For years this question didn’t have to be answered.  It was just assumed.  When people thought about their faith they thought about it, at least, in relation to their Sunday activities of singing, listening, and giving at a church building.

But now many are questioning the importance of the church service. Some have given up on it altogether.  Here are some reasons for this phenomenon:

  1. Sunday-centric ministry has not produced disciples like the 1st century disciples.
  2. Worship is not meant to be a one day affair.  Worship should be 24/7.
  3. Going to a church building on Sunday isn’t a “righteous” thing.  It is not a good work.

All of these critiques are valid. Attending a weekend church service is not enough to fulfill all that God desires out of His followers.  The Bible critics building centric or “event” oriented worship.  Just read Jesus response about worship in John 4.  And, of course, the weekend is not an “act of righteousness.”

But the Bible doesn’t forbid a weekly gathering of the church, either.  We can throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Just because some of the reasons for weekend attendance aren’t fully biblical, doesn’t mean there aren’t good reasons to attend weekly.

Let me give you two:

First, God has given us the Bible for our perseverance and encouragement (Romans 15:4).  God’s word is the energy that restores our initiative and drive to live the lives that God would have us live.  We need continual reminders of what God says in his word.  (Paul, Peter, Jude, and John all wrote their letters specifically to “remind”).  The weekend church service serves as those reminders: God’s word proclaimed musically, God’s word preached, God’s word fed upon in communion.

Second, we can’t just read the Bible by ourselves and expect that we are going to understand it in it’s fullness. We need teachers.  Just as no university would just set up a library and have no classrooms, neither should a local church just expect people to read the Bible for themselves and understand everything.  We don’t learn simply by reading and regurgitating.  We need people to reinforce, provide context, and give application to what is in the books.  That is how we learn.

Much more could be said, for God’s word is not simply about learning.  Yet we are foolish to cut ourselves off from the weekly gathering of the church.  For God has set it up for His people’s perseverance and encouragement.

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16-Sep-2010

Posted by : David

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The Story We Tell Ourselves

Category : bible

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We are all telling ourselves a story. We are the hero of our story; revolving around our journey to get what we want in life.  Maybe it’s significance, or power, or comfort, or love.  We want our stories to have a happy ending.

But that is not the story the Bible is telling about you.

The Bible is definitely a hero’s story.  It’s a journey where the protagonist is going after what he desires.  The story is full of intrigue, opposition, triumph, and tragedy.  And the hero ultimately gets what He wants.

But the hero is God, made known to us in Jesus Christ.  The genre is redemption, the Earth the stage, and, humanity, once friends, are now the villains — the antagonists.  We are opposing God’s desires at every turn, but God ultimately triumphs.

But the triumph now is not by defeating his enemies, but by turning them into friends.  Jesus Christ rescues the villain: the hero gets what the villain deserved, so the villain can get what the hero deserved.

The hero gets what he wants — us — and he lays his life down to do it.  And all those who believe this story are changed. How could they not?

Imagine if you were drowning with no hope of self-rescue.  But the lifeguard appeared and pulled you from your near grave.  Would your life be different afterwords?  Or if you were in a burning building with the flames at your feet, but were rescued at just the right time?  Your story was about to end — your desires snuffed out — but you were rescued.  Would your desires change?

How much more so then when we see the God of the universe laying His life down so we could be with Him forever.  That is why the Bible simply does not work if we first read it as having something to say to us.  We certainly are in the story, we are just not at the center.  And that is the key to a happy ending.

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19-Aug-2010

Posted by : David

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Jesus’ greatest enemy was a purity movement

Category : bible

Jesus’ greatest enemy was a purity movement.

The Pharisee’s, a sect of Jewish leaders and teachers, main goal was to purify Israel of its sin so that God would deliver Israel from Rome. In the law they saw the fundamental promise: “if you obey you will be blessed and dwell in the land.” And so they took it upon themselves to be obedient and to enforce obedience across their small country.
The problem was they thought they were the obedient ones.
They were meticulous in their following the law, but they missed actually the grand intent of the law. It was not only to be pure and blameless, it was to be loving and good. That is why Jesus would say that they “strained a gnat, but swallowed a camel.” They neglected mercy and justice to their fellow countrymen.
But we ought not to just think that these men were more evil than any of us. They just had it in their mind that they were worthy of being blessed and they tried to root out any people that would withhold the blessing from the nation i.e. prostitutes, tax collectors, and “sinners.”
And that is the problem with all purity movements, whether they be doctrinal, methodological, or moral. The leaders see themselves as part of the solution and are the referee’s of their culture, sitting in judgment of those who, in their minds, are withholding blessing from their nation. And so they have to be merciless, they have to be judgmental, because their fundamental question is “what must we do to be blessed?” not “what must we do to love?”
*Originally published on March 16, 2010

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17-Aug-2010

Posted by : David

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Why the Bible Should Come With a Warning Label

Category : Christian Life, bible

Two opposite errors exist in approaching the Bible.  One is not to read it.  The other is to know it so well that you miss Jesus.  John chronicles that latter error when he quotes Jesus in his gospel (5:39-40):

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”

Are you surprised to believe that this error exists?  We constantly talk about reading and studying the Bible as an unqualified good.  But clearly HOW we read the Bible is just as important as reading it.

So how can you know that you might be reading the Bible, looking for life, but missing Jesus completely?  A few thoughts:

1.  You read the Bible to reinforce what you believe, not challenge what you believe. You imagine yourself as the type of person who believes the things you read about.

2.  The things you read are especially applicable for people you know, but not for you.

3.  You imagine yourself as the hero of the story, not the person or people who are unbelieving. You will frequently ask in your heart, “How could these people be so unbelieving?”?  For instance when you read the story of the Israelites wandering in the desert you might say, “How could those Israelites grumble about food and drink when they just saw God part the Red Sea?”  But are we completely blind to how we grumble at work or home when there is a fear of losing something?

4. You love the attention garnered from your knowledge of the Bible, but give little thought to how you have applied what you have read.

Maybe the Bible should come with a warning label: Beware: reading this book incorrectly will make you twice as fit for Hell then when you began.

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09-Aug-2010

Posted by : David

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Reading the Psalms in a Christ-Centered Way

Category : bible

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One of the most important discussions that Jesus had with his disciples is the walk to Emmaus.  We are not privy to the details of the conversation, but Luke tells us, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27).  In this one narrative we get a glimpse of how Jesus saw the Scriptures — that the focus of them was not us, but him.

So how do we go about reading the Psalms in a way that is Jesus-centered and not us-centered?  It is really quite easy.

Just put the Psalmist words in Jesus’ mouth.  Imagine that Jesus is saying them. Not just the original author.  Not you — Jesus.

The richness of reading the Psalms should become immediately apparent..  For instance, here is an excerpt from my Bible reading plan two days ago:

Psalm 31:21-24

21 Blessed be the Lord,
for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me
when I was in a besieged city.
22 I had said in my alarm,
“I am cut off from your sight.”
But you heard the voice of my pleas for mercy
when I cried to you for help.

23 Love the Lord, all you his saints!
The Lord preserves the faithful
but abundantly repays the one who acts in pride.
24 Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
all you who wait for the Lord!

Imagine that Jesus is telling this to you, exhorting you. Jesus cried out in alarm, “I am cut off,” but God heard his plea for help — God preserved him in his time of need and will preserve you in yours as well.  Jesus had to wait for the vindication of the Lord — and since he had to be strong and courageous, so we can trust that God will show his love to us in his time, because we are in Him.

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14-May-2010

Posted by : David

Comment: (1)

Not Just What, How

Category : bible

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One of the first rules for preachers is to teach your people what the Bible says. Every author has an intent and we want to get as close as we can to discovering it.

But I am learning to pay more attention to HOW the authors told the story. An easy example: Paul’s presentation on Mars Hill in Athens in Acts 17. This sermon is so instructive not just because of what Paul said, but the way he said it. He started his talk on terms the people of Athens could understand and then proceeded to introduce Jesus.

And that is one of the keys to bridging the divide between connecting with people and rich, biblical content. If we just explain what the Bible says without consideration for how we are presenting it, then we haven’t been fully helpful. On the other side, if we just are contextual, but don’t introduce the biblical content, then we probably just want to fit in.

Telling stories, using secular material like songs and poems, challenging assumptions, are all material that Biblical authors used to get across the message from God. They used this content because it connected.

And, of course, Jesus was the master of this. Think how he started with people’s assumptions as a launching pad for a richer truth. When he begins a sermon, “You have heard that it was said…” that is exactly what he is doing. Should we not also imitate this style of speaking and engagement? In this example, we should not just teach that contempt equates murder, but we should learn the rhetorical devices of Jesus so we can drive those truths home with the same kind of power.

For the word of God certainly is the “sword” of the Spirit, but we need to learn how to strike.

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06-May-2010

Posted by : David

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Using the Bible To Keep God at Arms Length

Category : bible

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There is a way to read the Bible that keeps God at an arm’s length.   If you primarily read the Bible as a book of principles to follow and people to imitate then your relationship with God won’t be intimate, it will be contractual.

Why is this so?

In a contract whatever you put in is what you will expect to get back.  I pay my mortgage every month and after 30 years I expect the bank to hand me the deed of the property.  This relationship works because I don’t have the money to buy a house with cash.  And in exchange for some interest paid I get to be the full owner of the property.

But this does not create intimacy with the bank.  I actually don’t mind them fading into the background.  And on their end they don’t bother me unless I haven’t paid.

Do you see how a relationship with God can never be intimate when the interaction is based on these terms?  We think, “I put in obedience, He, in turn, blesses.” In this instance, our interaction with God can still be fervent, it just won’t be intimate.   There will be no love.

But when we begin to see the Bible as story of God’s blessing humanity, eve when they didn’t keep up their end of the bargain, something in our relationship changes.  The anger of “you owe me, God” is exchanged for humble gratitude.  The devastation of “I would’ve had more if I could’ve just been more obedient” turns into an exhilarating freedom and joy.

And who wouldn’t want to draw near to a God like that?

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