Stuff I’ve Heard

Not long ago I was listening to a sermon and the man giving it said,”I can’t give you meat, all you can handle is the milk of the word.” This was said to a congregation I presume has been churched for many years. I don’t know their individual spiritual condition but I assume the man speaking does or he would not have said what he did.

My mind immediately questioned why he would say such a thing. I thought if he has been the leader for very long something is drastically wrong somewhere. As the spiritual leader it is his job to make sure his “sheep” can handle the meat of the word. Logically, if they cannot, it is his fault and not theirs. Yet, his remarks were pointedly condemning of his audience for their lack of – what?

Mike Ratliff has posted about this in a spiritual gifts article here:

There is little doubt that there are some in leadership positions in the visible church that are there because of their natural abilities rather than the fact that God has gifted them to lead His people. If the latter were the case, they would not be leading their followers into apostasy as the passage I placed at the top of this post clearly states. Those gifted by God to be true leaders in His Church have the role and responsibility to do what? They are to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of Got, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Why?

 

I teach a class on the gifts in my church and one of the things I stress is for the class to always insure that what they think they have as a gift is not just natural ability. It is one thing to be able to have the natural ability to play Cello but it is quite another to play as does Yo Yo Ma. A good player has talent, Ma is gifted. The evidence speaks for itself. So it is with preachers and teachers.

So, when I hear anyone say something derogatory about someone else’s ability, be it musical or spiritual, I can only ask what is the reason – or as Mike asks, “why” is the situation as it is. Teachers are responsible for the education of those in their charge and preachers are responsible for the spiritual lives of their congregations.

The man who scolded his congregation for their lack of maturity in the Word should be very cautious about what he is saying. Someday he will give account for the accusation and he would be well advised to make sure he has done all within his power to insure he has taught them well. If he thinks he has been called to preach but has not been gifted for the task, my opinion is has made a mistake that has eternal implications.

Finney's Aftermath

I recently posted two papers on the legacy of Charles Grandison Finney written by Pastor Tom Chantry. (The link to them is at the top of this blog). Most Christians today haven't a clue who Finney was, or what he was about, let alone the legacy he left us. Not knowing his history has been a costly mistake.

These articles are two of the finest distillations of Finney's disastrous theology I have ever read. If you haven't read them yet you should take the time to do so. Chantry is a Reformed Baptist pastor in Milwaukee.

Pastor Chantry has now written a third article about Finney. You can find it here. Chantry says this:

The one thing Charles Finney thought he knew was the majesty of God. After all, Finney's god was "the moral governor," a severe adherent of absolute standards who demanded absolute obedience of all his creatures. This, to Finney's unconverted eyes, was the majesty of the creator.

The Christian ought to know better.[emphasis mine]  The glorious majesty of God is seen most plainly in His remarkable grace. He is a Judge - and a perfectly righteous Judge whose standards are unimaginably pure. Nevertheless, He is no distant tyrant sending random thunderbolts upon the earth. He is rather a true King, One who rules over and defends His people. That defense of His people extended to their salvation, even when that salvation meant the painful and shameful death of His own Son.

Nowhere in all creation is the true majesty of God more in evidence than in His superintendence of the great plan of salvation! Christian people ought to stand in awe of the gospel as the highest revelation of the greatness of God.[emphasis mine].

"The Christian ought to know better," is such a striking statement coming from a Pastor it should give pause to everyone of us to reflect on what we are doing in the name of God.  Chantry goes on:

First, he devised all of his cunning methodology in order to produce the "decision" which earlier evangelists had attributed to the moving of God's Spirit. Then, whenever he saw that his hearers had made such decisions, he shamelessly took credit for them. He published statistics of how many had been saved through his ministry and he wrote his Lectures on Revival as a way of telling others how they could save as many people as he had. In other words, the part which the Spirit had played in the ministries of both Wesley and Whitefield was a part which Finney endeavored to fill!

The nefarious effect of this crass substitution of the evangelist for the Spirit has all but killed Christian witness in our day. Whereas Christians once proclaimed a Triune, saving God, today's evangelicals become confused as to why the Trinity matters. Once Christians understood that salvation is all about the Father who ordains redemption, the Son who accomplishes it, and the Spirit who applies. Today we say instead that Jesus saves, so long as the preacher can talk you (or trick you) into letting Him do it. If therefore we would have revival, we must have preachers who, like Finney, can produce extraordinary conversion counts.

We no longer evaluate preachers upon how clearly they express the gospel of Christ and how urgently they call on men to turn to Him. Instead we look at the numbers. If an evangelist can get a good percentage of any congregation to come forward, he is a good evangelist. If a preacher can grow a church (something no preacher should imagine himself doing!) then he is a successful preacher. Of course if a seminary president can double the enrollment of his school, then he is an extraordinary president. What other criteria could possibly matter?

And if his methods are not biblical? If, in fact, he must sin in order to produce such extraordinary results? Who dares condemn him! He is (quite literally) doing the work of God. Paul once said he could wish himself accursed in order to save his countrymen, but he understood that he could save no one. Should we be surprised that when evangelists think they can bring about salvation they do not quibble at a little deceit?

What the church so desperately needs is to remember who God is and who preachers are. God saves; we only glorify Him for His salvation.

There is so much more that I can only hope that everyone who reads this blog will read Pastor Chantry's article. When I read it I thought "my God what have we done?"

I like Driscoll

Some friends have looked at me with quizzically raised eyebrows from time to time when I mention Mark Driscoll. He is the young (relative to me) Pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Like me, he occasionally will slip and his language get a little salty. (That means he will swear when he thinks it appropriate).

Unlike me, however, and some folks I know, he was called to preach and it is evident when you listen to him. The following video shows him presenting the complete Gospel message - in ten minutes. He does it coherently, quickly, relevantly to listeners of any age, and with appropriate illustrations. The "Dude" can preach; and, I like him.

Horton on Preaching

Preaching in our post-modern world often seems to be totally unrelated to what God actually says in His Word. Some of the things we hear appear to be designed to manipulate people into making a "decision" for Christ without any kind of explanation of why they have a need for Christ in the first place. The assumption is, as Joel Osteen might say, "people feel bad enough about themselves without me talking about sin."

Michael Horton disagrees with those who believe that some kind of "felt need" on the part of some people is actually a call to preach. Horton says:

"Surely you're not saying that a preacher has to be a scholar." That's exactly what I am saying. A faithful minister is not someone who crawls out of bed one day and decides that he is called to preach, and gets a few of his friends together to confirm him in his zeal. To be sure, the leading of the Spirit is part of the call to the ministry of Word and Sacrament, but it doesn't stop there. If one believes he is led by God to pursue this calling, he must surrender several years to the serious study of God's Word and the tools necessary for rightly dividing it. He must know the proper rules for biblical interpretation. How many cults have been spawned by untrained zealots who couldn't distinguish figures of speech and different literary genres? Further, he must know the languages and be capable, to some extent, of working through the passages in the original tongue. But that's not all. He must learn church history, to learn from the wisdom and folly of the past. Again, how many strange cults and sects have arisen because Brother Fred thought he was the first person to really understand the Bible, when all he was really doing was reviving a heresy that was over a thousand years old? He must learn the systematic teaching of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, on the most important doctrines, in order to see how they all fit into a constructive unity. Otherwise, he will be unbalanced and confused in his preaching and teaching.

Unbalanced, confused preaching and teaching is causing more harm to the body of Christ than these shallow preachers will ever know this side of Heaven. I sometimes wonder if they care about what they are doing.

Unserious Atheism and Unserious Christianity

"Unserious atheism with its support of a sinful heart will ALWAYS trump unserious and unscriptural Christianity, because while both are silly, at least the former allows people to embrace the sin they enjoy."

More and more I hear good Christian people trying to motivate sinners from a human perspective to accept Christ and Christianity without much success. Scripture teaches we should acknowledge our fallen nature and in the light of our rebellion against a Holy God ask for and receive (repentance) forgiveness and acceptance by Christ. Scripture also teaches this can only be accomplished as God the Father draws us to Jesus Christ His son. (John 6:44).

What I hear so often, however, is that sinners should accept Christ and His free gift of salvation for various reasons all presented as something that as humans we should want. For example, I hear some say that we should accept Christ because we don't want to miss going to heaven. That is not the Gospel that is a sales pitch. One might as well be selling shoes, or a trip to Disney Land.

Selling heaven as the reason for accepting Christ is no different than telling people all they need to do to insure prosperity is to give more money to the church "because it works." The shallowness of this non-intellectual, mushy, thoughtless, presentation of Christianity will in the long run, in my opinion, convert more people to Atheism than it will to Christianity. In our culture we are taught to believe only in the "scientific" provable material Universe around us, not the someday, maybe, reward of an "unprovable" Heaven. To the unregenerate a Heaven someday is much less attractive than a new Cadillac is in the here and now. That's why so many are led astray by the prosperity "gospel."

What ever happened to Biblical idea that we should tell people they were made (not evolved) by a Holy God who, because of the rebellion of our first parents, has been rejected as imaginary and non-existent? That's what the Atheists would have us believe. The Bible says that if we tell people the truth of their rebellious nature, explaining to them how this has separated them from God, He will do all that is necessary to insure His chosen ones are with Him after death in the Heaven He has prepared. We can't "sell" or "convince" people of the idea they are doomed. Only the Holy God can do that. How did we move so far from the factual content of scripture that we now think we can "win souls" for Christ by our own efforts?

Why can't preachers just tell people the Truth of the Gospel and let God do what He is going to do?

Scripture has meaning

The Pyromaniac in Chief has come up with a novel idea:

Remember: Scripture meant one thing before you were born, means the same now, and will mean the same, should you die.

Preach that meaning.

Peggy Rosenthal wrote a book a long time ago declaring that "words have meaning." Richard Weaver wrote one declaring "ideas have consequences." Now Dan Phillips declares "Scripture has meaning."

I think these learned folks are trying to tell us something.

Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones

"The mind must be struck first."

Al Mohler on Preaching

Al Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary posted some very enlightening remarks on preaching. Here is what he what he said in conclusion:

This raises an interesting question: Is the marginalization of biblical preaching in so many churches a cause or a result of the nation's retreat from Christianity? In truth, it must be both cause and effect. In any event, there is no hope for a recovery of biblical Christianity without a preceding recovery of biblical preaching. That means preaching that is expository, textual, evangelistic, doctrinal, and evangelistic. In other words, preaching that will take a lot longer than ten minutes and will not masquerade as a form of entertainment.


Time and time again, God's people have been rescued by a recovery of biblical teaching and preaching. The right preaching of the Word of God is the first essential mark of the church. As the Reformers made clear, where that mark is absent, there is no church at all.

The study conducted for the College of Preachers is interesting, if also frightening. But little is gained from asking confused people what kind of preaching they want. The faithful preacher takes as his first and most sacred responsibility the charge to give the congregation the preaching it needs.

In my experience, teaching not preaching, people often do not like to hear what they "need." But, then, that really boils down to being faithful to the task. People wanted to kill Jesus on the spot when he told them they had to repent. After all, our culture, like his, insists it is made up of "good people" and there is nothing to repent.

I wonder how many more classes I would get to teach if I asserted as did Jesus, "you generation of vipers?" (Mat 12:34) Actually I don't wonder, the question is rhetorical, I know: I'd be lucky to escape with my life.

Brit Hume on Jesus Christ

There is more Christian preaching in this 3 minute video than most churches preach in a year.

Everyone Needs To Watch This

Matt Chandler of Village Church, Dallas, Texas speaks the Truth in Love to every Christian.


more about "Everyon Needs To Watch This", posted with vodpod

Added Link

Over the years I've listened to many sermons from Preachers through the Internet. The ability to do that is one of the blessings of Al Gore's technology. (That's supposed to be funny: Lighten up!) Anyway, I find it a blessing because I hear men I would never have the opportunity to hear except for this indescribable thing called the "Internet."

One of the men I heard is a young Preacher who is outstanding. His name is Voddie Baucham from Houston, Texas. His ability to treat complex theological concepts is, in my opinion, unparalleled.

I've posted a link to his "page" on Sermon Audio in the Resource Links section on the right. If you have a few minutes, pick any one of his sermons to listen to and see if you don't agree. You will hear a man called and blessed to the vocation of Preaching.

Alistair Begg Talks about Preaching

Begg asks: "Why is there such a disinterest in preaching."

Later he says: "Much of the trouble with our contemporary preaching is it is built on the fallacious assumption that anybody can and will respond to the gospel if only it's presented to them in the proper fashion."

See my post on "Free Will?" below!



A large portion is transcribed here.