Category Archives: Articles
“Choose this day whom you will serve”
Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served in beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve…But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. -Joshua 24:14-15
The Old Testament documents in great detail the constant struggle the Israelites had with worshipping idols instead of Yahweh. In the above passage, Joshua is imploring the people to return to faithful worship of Yahweh as they are settling in the Promised Land. While the names of the false foreign idols varied over time, the consistent thread throughout the Old Testament is that the Israelites preferred to worship a visible and tangible deity. They were not very fond of the whole “invisible God” idea, and so they continually turned away from Yahweh in preference of false gods that took on physical form.
People today are no different. After all, it is easier to trust something (or someone) that we can see over something (or someone) that we cannot see. The 21st century–and its’ accompanying technology–has given us unprecedented access to people and places all over the world. We can “see” just about anything we want. I don’t think that it is a coincidence that our increased vision has corresponded with a general decline in religious belief (Note: I am speaking primarily of the developed Western world). There are so much to see and do these days that we can hardly find time to sustain a relationship with a God who, though ever-present, is “invisible” to us.
The reason I put invisible in quotes is because I believe, as all Christians should, that God actually is visible. Or at the very least, He should be visible to us. The problem is we often choose to occupy ourselves with the more apparently visible things in our lives. I’m not speaking here of general revelation, in which we admire creation and see God’s handiwork–although I do not discount it. I am speaking of seeing God at work in our lives and in the lives of the people around us. I am speaking of taking the time to pause and trace the history of God’s gracious activity throughout our lives.
That is what Joshua wanted the Israelites to do. That is essentially what all of the prophets were getting at the Old Testament. They were saying: “Look, don’t you see how God has been faithful to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Don’t you see how he led you out of Egypt? Don’t you see how he brought you in the land he promised? Don’t you see how he established Israel as a great kingdom?” You get the idea. The prophets always point back to what God has done before in order to revive faith among the people. The people are forced to step away from what has distracted them and retrace their steps, looking for the hand of God along the way.
It is important for Christians today to perform a similar task of pausing to reflect and retrace. And we must start at the cross. The cross is where our story begins as followers of Christ. Christ is “the image of the invisible God.” In Christ, we can see the God who the Israelites longed to see. But we have to take the time to look. It is far too easy to get into a routine of busyness that excludes a relationship with God. We prioritize our lives around so many things. The Israelites were distracted by foreign gods. The rich young ruler was distracted by his possessions. Peter was often distracted by his preconceived notions of who the Messiah would be. We all have something that distracts, and our God is in the business of getting our undivided allegiance.
We must look to the cross, and then follow the thread of God’s faithfulness through history and through our lives. If we do this, we will undoubtedly see that the Triune God is the only one worthy of our devotion. Nothing else satisfies. No one else saves. Pause to reflect on God’s faithfulness, and choose this day whom you will serve.
Just a Great Story
I don’t care who you are, Kevin Everett’s recovery from a “catastrophic” neck injury is simply remarkable. Read this story from ABCNews.com.
Get Ready, O Please, Get Ready
I have heard John Piper tell this story on a few different occasions and thought I would share it with my faithful blog reader(s).
June 2, 1999
I got home on Tuesday, June 1, from speaking to a conference in Pennsylvania. One of my messages there was based on Philippians 1:21, “To live is Christ and to die is gain.” The first news I heard after I got off the plane was that our much-loved choir member and former deacon, and husband and father and friend, Carl Fredericks, had suddenly died today of a heart attack.
As soon as I got home and had devotions with my family, I spoke with Yvonne, Carl’s wife. She was, of course, overwhelmed by the utter unexpectedness of it all. There is no minimizing the pain. But there is the unwavering Lover of her soul. And he is a tender Rock.
Now I sit here numbed by the back-to-back departures of two of our great older saints, Muriel Sundberg and Carl Fredericks. For me, they framed the congregation visually. Bert and Muriel sat on the west side of the main floor on Sunday morning. Carl and Yvonne sat on the corresponding east side (when the choir wasn’t singing). They were both of the hardy, solid, faithful stock that brings stability and strength. They both loved great music. And they both loved the people of Bethlehem. And now their places are empty. O, so empty.
I want to thank God publicly for these two gifts to Bethlehem. Who can calculate the price of a soul? Just last week the staff was away for two days of praying and fasting and seeking the Lord for the future of Bethlehem. One of the texts we lingered over was Psalm 116:15, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” Another meaning of the Hebrew word behind “precious” is “costly.” Both are true. To us, so costly. To God, so precious.
Why so precious? One reason is that God gave his own Son to die for Muriel and Carl. When Christ died, their death was defeated. “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:55, KJV). In other words, because of Christ’s suffering and the Father’s sacrifice, the death of Muriel and Carl was robbed of its victory.
This means that the death of every saint is a demonstration to all creation that Christ’s atoning death was gloriously successful. It was not in vain. Therefore, the arrival of every saved saint in heaven is another trumpet-tribute to the preciousness of Christ’s life and death on this earth. He must (it seems to me) take each one by the hand, as it were, and lead the saint to the Father, and say, “Look! Another trophy! Another ‘fruit of my travail.’ Another sinner saved and soul made perfect. O Father, look what we have wrought! Is this not precious!”
And costly. O the tears of loss! No, not as those who have no hope, but tears nonetheless. I remember weeping until the heaves continued, but the eyes had no more fluid. Such is the overflowing effect of love, when it is robbed of the beloved.
Dear friends, God is speaking to us all in these sudden, unexpected and painful departures. Are you listening? I said to my family tonight during devotions: it could as easily have been me. Or you. Are we ready? O Bethlehem, are we ready? Do we trust him? Do we love him? Do we live for him? Is he our Love above all loves? Pursue him and know him. Live with him as if tomorrow you might meet him face to face.
Thank you, Lord, for the lives of Muriel and Carl. And thank for the heart-wrenching message of their precious and costly departures. O grant that we might say concerning ourselves – and because of them – “To live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).
Grieving with hope,
Pastor John
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TasteAndSee/ByDate/1999/1130_Get_Ready_O_Please_Get_Ready/
‘Gospel of Wealth’ Facing Scrutiny
The following story is from the Associated Press:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hKP3-tVm-viy8t0ccGbs6IP_zfUAD8TQ080O0
The message flickered into Cindy Fleenor’s living room each night: Be faithful in how you live and how you give, the television preachers said, and God will shower you with material riches.
And so the 53-year-old accountant from the Tampa, Fla., area pledged $500 a year to Joyce Meyer, the evangelist whose frank talk about recovering from childhood sexual abuse was so inspirational. She wrote checks to flamboyant faith healer Benny Hinn and a local preacher-made-good, Paula White.
Only the blessings didn’t come. Fleenor ended up borrowing money from friends and payday loan companies just to buy groceries. At first she believed the explanation given on television: Her faith wasn’t strong enough.
“I wanted to believe God wanted to do something great with me like he was doing with them,” she said. “I’m angry and bitter about it. Right now, I don’t watch anyone on TV hardly.”
All three of the groups Fleenor supported are among six major Christian television ministries under scrutiny by a senator who is asking questions about the evangelists’ lavish spending and possible abuses of their tax-exempt status.
The probe by Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has brought new scrutiny to the underlying belief that brings in millions of dollars and fills churches from Atlanta to Los Angeles — the “Gospel of Prosperity,” or the notion that God wants to bless the faithful with earthly riches.
All six ministries under investigation preach the prosperity gospel to varying degrees.
Proponents call it a biblically sound message of hope. Others say it is a distortion that makes evangelists rich and preys on the vulnerable. They say it has evolved from “it’s all right to make money” to it’s all right for the pastor to drive a Bentley, live in an oceanside home and travel by private jet.
“More and more people are desperate and grasping at straws and want something that will alleviate their pain or financial crisis,” said Michael Palmer, dean of the divinity school at Regent University, founded by Pat Robertson. “It’s a growing problem.”
The modern-day prosperity movement can largely be traced back to evangelist Oral Roberts’ teachings. Roberts’ disciples have spread his theology and vocabulary (Roberts and other evangelists, such as Meyer, call their donors “partners.”) And several popular prosperity preachers, including some now under investigation, have served on the Oral Roberts University board.
Grassley is asking the ministries for financial records on salaries, spending practices, private jets and other perks. The investigation, coupled with a financial scandal at ORU that forced out Roberts’ son and heir, Richard, has some wondering whether the prosperity gospel is facing a day of reckoning.
While few expect the movement to disappear, the scrutiny could force greater financial transparency and oversight in a movement known for secrecy.
Most scholars trace the origins of prosperity theology to E.W. Kenyon, an evangelical pastor from the first half of the 20th century.
But it wasn’t until the postwar era — and a pair of evangelists from Tulsa, Okla. — that “health and wealth” theology became a fixture in Pentecostal and charismatic churches.
Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin — and later, Kenneth Copeland — trained tens of thousands of evangelists with a message that resonated with an emerging middle class, said David Edwin Harrell Jr., a Roberts biographer. Copeland is among those now being investigated.
“What Oral did was develop a theology that made it OK to prosper,” Harrell said. “He let Pentecostals be faithful to the old-time truths their grandparents embraced and be part of the modern world, where they could have good jobs and make money.”
The teachings took on various names — “Name It and Claim It,” “Word of Faith,” the prosperity gospel.
Prosperity preachers say that it isn’t all about money — that God’s blessings extend to health, relationships and being well-off enough to help others.
They have Bible verses at the ready to make their case. One oft-cited verse, in Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians, reads: “Yet for your sakes he became poor, that you by his poverty might become rich.”
Critics acknowledge the idea that God wants to bless his followers has a Biblical basis, but say prosperity preachers take verses out of context. The prosperity crowd also fails to acknowledge Biblical accounts that show God doesn’t always reward faithful believers, Palmer said.
The Book of Job is a case study in piety unrewarded, and a chapter in the Book of Hebrews includes a litany of believers who were tortured and martyred, Palmer said.
Yet the prosperity gospel continues to draw crowds, particularly lower- and middle-income people who, critics say, have the greatest motivation and the most to lose. The prosperity message is spreading to black churches, attracting elderly people with disposable incomes, and reaching huge churches in Africa and other developing parts of the world.
One of the teaching’s attractions is that it doesn’t dwell on traditional Christian themes of heaven and hell but on answering pressing concerns of the here and now, said Brian McLaren, a liberal evangelical author and pastor.
But the prosperity gospel, McLaren said, not only preys on the hope of the vulnerable, it puts too much emphasis on individual success and happiness.
“We’ve pretty much ignored what the Bible says about systemic injustice,” he said.
The checks and balances central to Christian denominations are largely lacking in prosperity churches. One of the pastors in the Grassley probe, Bishop Eddie Long of suburban Atlanta, has written that God told him to get rid of the “ungodly governmental structure” of a deacon board.
Some ministers hold up their own wealth as evidence that the teaching works. Atlanta-area pastor Creflo Dollar, who is fighting Grassley’s inquiry, owns a Rolls Royce and multimillion-dollar homes and travels in a church-owned Learjet.
In a letter to Grassley, Dollar’s attorney calls the prosperity gospel a “deeply held religious belief” grounded in Scripture and therefore a protected religious freedom. Grassley has said his probe is not about theology.
But even some prosperity gospel critics — like the Rev. Adam Hamilton of 15,000-member United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in suburban Kansas City, Mo. — say that the investigation is entering a minefield.
“How do you determine how much money a minister like this is able to make when the basic theology is that wealth is OK?” said Hamilton, an Oral Roberts graduate who later left the charismatic movement. “That gets into theological questions.”
There is evidence of change. Joyce Meyer Ministries, for one, enacted financial reforms in recent years, including making audited financial statements public.
Meyer, who has promised to cooperate fully with Grassley, issued a statement emphasizing that a prosperity gospel “that solely equates blessing with financial gain is out of balance and could damage a person’s walk with God.”
It is too bad that a party outside of Christianity has to come in to investigate the legality of the prosperity gospel, when a party inside of Christianity could so easily refute it theologically.
