What shall we say then?

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.–Romans 6:1-4

Between my bouts of finding podcasts and listening to them today I was reading Centuri0n’s blog. I can’t even link to it because I don’t think he wants people to–its not that sort of post. But its on top right now…don’t go read it unless you just really can’t help it. And his warning is for real. The link leads to a post thats bar room/locker room raw.

I’m still trying to figure out if the claims made by this fellow about the Bible are any different than the ones we make about it. I don’t think they are in that they’re based more on our experiences that upon what the Bible says. I lost a child so election can’t be right, I know a drunk so drinking must be evil, “Come on Joe les go blow up an abortion clinic”, etc. Whatever evil we want to hang on the Bible as our reason for doing it–it isn’t any different that what those people who beat up his Dad were thinking is it?

In the end its not the sin of the beaten or the blown up, its our own that causes this sort of thing. We WANT to beat the crap out of that person and insert your rationale here. If I was a good Baptist I’d suggest that perhaps ‘they weren’t saved’ but I think we’ve already established that I’m not that good a Baptist because I think thats a cop out. I think it goes deeper than that. I think its the same reason that the SBC was so opposed to Emancipation to begin with and why now we feel like we have to have someone to fight against ALL THE TIME. I think its the same reason as why we have to have fifty different discipleship programs all based on a some different formula of verses guaranteed to grow your church.

We’re not dead. Not yet. We’re still clinging, as a Convention to our life. We are not satisfied with the risen Christ and the Holy Word of God so we have to make more stuff up to go along with it.

Think about that one. Don’t blow it off, think.

Share

One who is taught the word must share all good things with the one who teaches. –Galatians 6:6

Why do we act like this is a suggestion? Why do we treat our pastors like hirelings? Why do we continually strive against the authority of the Word of God?

Yeah deacons, gossips, busybodies, I’m talking to you. Next time you feel like griping about the pastor’s sermon, take time to talk to him about it. When you find out what all he did that week besides prepare the sermon, offer to help out. When you see that he doesn’t have access to that many pastoral resources, ask him what he needs and find a way to get it for him.

I suppose its easier to just play ‘blame the pastor’. I mean, its the Southern Baptist way right? And I admit, I’ve met some folks who were sloppy in the pulpit BUT, and here the thing we need to hear, I’ve also looked at their congregations and said, “No wonder.”

“But the Word of God is not bound!” Are you?

It’s like a bad hangover…

…it just doesn’t know when to go away.

I wrote most of this comment over at Centuri0n’s blog and it sounded more like a position piece so I deleted most of it. But I thought I’d post it up here because, hey, why waste the bits? If you’re one of my non-SBC readers allow me to apologize in advance while I air this bit of dirty laundry.

What I don’t understand is that if alcohol is inherently evil, which is the ground that the prohibitionists seem to be standing on, why isn’t the Bible more clear about the issue? Jesus has no problem talking about lying or cheating on your spouse or anything like that. Why isn’t in the top ten? “Thou shalt not drink” isn’t even anywhere in the Bible. It says bad things about alcohol ABUSE but frankly both sides have got to dig to even say anything about alcohol from a biblical perspective.

I’ve asked a question in the meta over there twice and haven’t yet received an answer so I’ll ask it here for your perusal and here’s the reason: this applies to anything we do. Whatever our cause, this applies to it. Here’s the question with a little bit of commentary and some editing. It’s not an exact quote, in other words.

I’ve read Dagg’s biography and he does lean toward the moralistic prohibition side of things. But his position, I think, was due to the fact that his brother or his son–don’t know off hand–drank himself to death. Is it right, then, to change our position from biblical to ‘activist’ just because of the ’someone we know died’ argument? Kinda takes the focus off the gospel doesn’t it?”

How about E.Y. Mullins? To me, his rewrite our our confession of faith was what pushed us down this whole moral agenda road to begin with. His son died thereabouts, I believe. Did that drive him away from ‘election’ as it was written in his source material? Looks like it from here. So again, let me ask you, can you stand on that sort of authority with regard to setting limits on Christian freedom? Does experience trump scriptural authority?

The problem I have with all of these arguments about alcohol is something that bugs me about a lot of SBC things. We take our idea we want to drive whether it’s Lottie Moon or boycotting Disney and we say “OK this is what we want to support. NOW lets go to the Bible and find a verse for the promotional literature. The Bible should drive what we do. Period. This whole alcohol resolution thing is on shaky ground from that perspective.

I think most of our troubles in the SBC come from a source very close to this issue. Stay tuned.

Inflicting Hosea

I read this post on the Church Matters blog and I though it was great. It’s nice to know that there are some folks out there who are faithfully preaching God’s word. May He bless their efforts–until they just can’t stand it.

Honestly though I think long sermons are fine but I like good preaching. It bothers me when the church doesn’t make it a priority. What I mean is this: when the staff is putting together the church service the first thing they should ask is “Pastor, how long do you need to preach this Sunday?” I’ve spent too many years listening to whittled down 20 minute topical sermons designed to make me feel good or feel bad rather than teach the Word. Most of which were preached in that fashion because of pressure from the congregation.

I think the idea of a seven day shelf life for preaching is a little optimistic though. Most of the key-rattlers, nap takers, and grocery list writers are going to tune the pastor out from ‘let us pray’ till ‘amen’ anyway. Everyone else is going to be so buried by work that come Wednesday they are going to be more concerned with surviving until Saturday than anything else.

Now before you get all worked up let me say this: Yes, I realize that if they cracked their Bibles more than just on Sunday morning so they could have something to write that grocery list on they’d be better off–but thats you and me. God love ‘em, most of my beloved Baptist kindred could care less about that sort of thing, they’re just happy to know that they’re going to heaven some day.

Didn’t watch the Superbowl

We didn’t watch the Superbowl last night, not really. We were super busy, though, and had the game on for awhile but for the most part it went on without us. We did hear on the news that the New York Giants spoiled the New England Patriots perfect season. That would have been something for the history books. Sports aficionados will be discussing whether or not the Pats season was better than Miami’s for years. “Oh but you’re forgetting the Patriots,” they’ll say, “They won more games.” Well of course that’s what matters isn’t it?

Instead of watching the game, and this is a little ironic, we put the kids into bed and watched a football movie. “We Are Marshall” has been in the watch pile for a long time. We have always liked to watch movies together and did so a great deal when we were dating. Time’s a little more scarce these days but we still manage to watch one every now and then. This one was really well done, I thought and managed to shift the focus from the dead to the living. It didn’t dwell on the fiery plane crash or any of those grisly details. It focused on the comeback, on the playing of the game because that’s what needed to be done.

Not because you want endorsements, not because the MVP gets a Cadillac, not because you want to go to Disneyworld. For the love of the game and for the fans who watch—that’s what these kids were about when they played. It struck me that we have lost our focus when it comes to sports. It’s no longer about sportsmanship, competition, overcoming or being overcome. It’s no longer about pitting your strength against another’s to test yourself and your opponent. It’s about the bling. It’s about the supermodel girlfriend or the Manhattan apartment. It’s the big contract baby.

And that’s a crying shame. That’s the reason I don’t really watch that much professional football. College kids play with heart. If they work it, get an interception and then run it back for a huge gain or a touchdown it’s not for a cash bonus. It’s all heart and drive and pride in the game. Or it used to be that way. Even as I write this a great number of college players play ball because they are hoping for a ticket to the NFL.

I don’t know. I think it’s a huge drain on our greatest national resource—young minds. Granted, a great number of football players don’t win renown for their intellect. But many of them are very smart people who spend the most energetic and productive years of their lives playing a game. They don’t invent anything. They don’t start new businesses. They control vast fortunes that they mostly spend on themselves or their agendas. Even the shameless entrepreneurial-ism of John Elway and even Troy Aikman would be a step up from just blowing through all that money.

I don’t know, seems like a waste to me.

Sorrow

Originally posted: March 12, 2007 @ 10:26
I get a lot of spam on this one for some reason so I’m moving it. I think it also fits with some of my own recent thoughts about doing things ‘for’ God. It took me a long time to figure out what this fellow was lacking…

“And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” –Mark 10:17

Humility…in answer to my question; he was lacking in humility.

When I first started to study this passage, I had no clue why this fellow went away sad. He had money. He had personal purity. He obviously had a good knowledge of the Bible because he had to know the commandments to keep them. And he had, well, self-reliance…and that’s the problem. My attitude about this rich young ruler, as the headings in my ESV tell me he was, changed. He wasn’t humbly seeking the Lord, as I have always thought. Anytime someone runs to Jesus and bows before him we think, “Wow, look at that.” And I think that’s probably what he wanted people to think. He was looking for approval Jesus—and probably everyone else too.

Now don’t get me wrong—I’m not any better at ascribing motives to folks dead two millennia that you are. No one knows what happened back then outside of the Word of God and the Bible is painfully silent about our friend’s thoughts as he ran up to Jesus. For all we know he made a habit of chasing down rabbi’s and asking them that same question over and over again—sort of a form of zero century church shopping. But I digress…. Grandstanding aside, we do know that he ran up and asked Jesus the thing that even the raging atheist wants to know “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” You’ve got to at least give him points for that.

Which brings us back to our point.

The problem is that there really isn’t anything you can do to inherit eternal life. We’re just preoccupied with this feeble life of ours and the events that happen in it seeking to assign some worth to our toils. So we ‘do things’ for the church. In my short life I’ve done a great many things in the church. I have driven a van, I’ve ‘done’ Sunday School, I’ve worked with kids and worked VBS, I’ve participated in Brotherhood activities including spending several nights in cabins looking after boys during fishing tournaments—not for the faint of heart. I’ve jumped through the hoops of SBC discipleship in one church and then another. But when you do things because they look good they are, or because everyone one agrees they are the ‘right thing to do’ they are, in the words of Paul, dung. (For all those with kids that’s ‘poopie’.) Not that spending time with kids or any of the other things I’ve listed here are ‘dung’ in and of themselves. But God knows our heart. He knows when we shift over to trying to ‘earn’ his favor. We, as Christians, have Christ. What more favor do we need? But continually I find myself running up to Jesus and bowing before him and saying, essentially, “What must I do to be saved?” When I really mean, “look at all this that I have done for you.” We can’t really do anything but we like to think we can. It’s a deadly trap.

My wife, God love her, told me something that cut me to the quick. And if you don’t have a wife that can call you on something like that in a way that you will listen to then you are either missing out….well, or not listening. Probably the latter if I know you (which I don’t, but men are a fairly homogenous bunch. If you’re a woman and reading this I probably don’t have to explain it to you.) “Yes,” she says to me in a forgotten tiff about something ridiculous “But you’re not anything like the man of God you think you are when you have that kind of attitude. You’re just as big of a hypocrite as the rest of us.” And there was no huff or show, it was just the plain truth and I had to swallow it.

Humility. See what I mean?

The reality of it is that we all go away from Jesus sorrowful at one point or another because he puts his finger on that thing that stands between him and us and says “This must go.” And instead taking his invitation to toss it aside in an exuberant show of freedom we rattle the chain and take up our ‘burden’ and sigh and walk away sorrowful. ‘But Jesus I’ve got so much to do for YOU.’ So I can’t really be too hard on this young man in this passage because he represents most of us at one point or another.

It’s tough to think about this, but Jesus doesn’t coddle us. He doesn’t take our little pet beliefs and say, “Well that’s good enough.” He looks at us the same way he had to look at Peter when he saw him and tells us, “Come follow me…” or like he did this young man “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Get rid of the things that come between you and I and then come follow me.

Money, knowledge, self-reliance, a smart mouth, legalism, alcohol, your theology, your must-complete evangelism goals, an obsessive desire to please others and make sure all the light switches are working, regret…there are many things that come between us and the Lord. Lay them down.

Lay them down.

And while much of this is speculation, we know one thing: the location of his sorrow. When we are sorrowful, thats good. When we mourn over sin, thats good. But when we walk away from Christ and we are still sorrowful, thats bad. It’s bad because we have unfinished business at the feet of Jesus.

We’ll talk about that some more later.

The Anti-Founders University

Or thats what it sounds like to me.

A word about sin from Dagg’s Manual

“He who looks into the state of society around him, finds proof of man’s wickedness. Crimes abound everywhere; and the earth is filled violence, as it was of old. Laws restrain the crimes and violence of men; but the very necessity of laws demonstrates the wickedness of mankind. War and oppression make u, in great measure, the history of our race; and innumerable deeds of wickedness, which never find a place in the historic record, are written in God’s book of remembrance and will be brought to light in that day, when men shall be judged according to the deeds done in the body.

The actual transgressions of men consist in doing what God has forbidden, and in leaving undone what he has commanded. The latter are called sins of omission; the former, sins of commission. With both these kinds of transgression all men are more or less chargeable. They who abstain from grosser crimes have, nevertheless, committed many sins, and omitted many duties. But sin in the overt act, constitutes only a very small part of man’s sinfulness…

Moral depravity shows itself in outward acts of transgression; but, atrocious as these often are, it is chiefly in the heart that God beholds and hates it. “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” [Genesis 6:5] In the heart it was that God saw the great wickedness of the earth. The heart is a metaphorical term, denoting those mental affections which are the principles or beginnings of action. Here depravity exists at the very fountain from which all human action flow.”–from, The Fall and Present State of Man, Manual of Theology, J.L. Dagg

This is the kind of thing we’re talking about when we talk about sin. This is the kind of thing that needs forgiving. This is what Jesus is talking about in Mark 2:10. Thats the authority he’s talking about.

Mark 2:1-12 (part 2) The Answer

Note: This Post is part of the series “Studies in Mark” see the Series Index for other posts in this series.

1And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. 2And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them. 3 And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. 4And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. 5And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “My son, your sins are forgiven.” 6Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, 7“Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” 8And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? 9Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? 10But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic—11“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” 12And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”– Mark 2:1 – 12 (ESV)

So we made it to verse five and had to break it off. Jesus forgave the paralytic and then healed him, I stated, for one purpose: to Glorify God the Father. Here’s what I mean…. The scribes have shown up too. We aren’t told this until v.6 and we are told that they were ‘sitting there, questioning in their hearts.’ There are a lot of people I have met who know the Bible well. They are quite familiar with it in fact, but they always question it. They always attempt to bend it to their agenda. They come to it with something they want to support from scripture and then would like to shape it rather than be shaped by it.

But they got it right. The scribes are generally cast in a negative light because they were so stiff necked but they get the question right here: “Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

And that is the question we all must answer. Everyone who is honest knows they do things that are wrong. I know that the world allows us to adjust our morals as the situation requires but the reality is that no one is perfect. The Bible says “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” it’s in the Book of Romans in the Bible and it’s your homework. Look it up.

And now we come to the reason for it all in v.10. “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—and he heals the man. And because of the ruckus of this fellow coming in through the roof and ‘cutting in line’ you can be sure that everyone knew he had arrived and had seen Jesus. There was no doubt about it as he walked out. See? The miracles have a purpose. They’re not just flash in the pan or just for show or to drive up your offerings. They drive his points home that he was something special, something different and all they had to do was have ‘ears to hear’. And he even tells them that he was the ‘Son of Man’ something that the scribes had to pick up on almost immediately.

But I don’t think these folks did. They were so focused on the show that they missed the hearing part. In v.12 they prove it “We never SAW anything like this!” [caps mine]

And here’s the other thing that we miss a lot today. The miracle wasn’t focused on the man who was healed. Jesus didn’t say, “Here’s how you know that you’re saved” when he healed him. Jesus wasn’t giving him evidence of his faith, OK? In v.10 and 11 Jesus says “10But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic—11“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” The focus was on ‘the Son of Man’. Jesus was answering the question the real question they had in their hearts: “Who is this guy?” He was God. Who can forgive sins but God alone?

No one can. That’s the answer you should be looking for

Other posts in this series.

Click-Clack-Moo: Baptists That Type

This post is marginal. I don’t care if they have to use Champagne evangelism at Mars Hill Church. Have you ever been to Seattle? Someone needs to preach there…

The real meat of this thing is in the Meta where Frank says he is looking for dialog about the same and warns about the IDV (Internet Doctrine Vigilantes). Read it and learn something about blogging you wish you didn’t know.