I’m slowly breaking my addiction to entertainment. That is, I am spending at most a few hours a week on television and games. A huge improvement over the way I used to spend my time. That’s not to say all of my time is now used productively, but perhaps it is used better than it had been.

John Piper is the big influence on this. And just today he wrote Why I Don’t Have a Television and Rarely Go to Movies. Following are a few good snippets:

If you want to be relevant, say, for prostitutes, don’t watch a movie with a lot of tumbles in a brothel. Immerse yourself in the gospel, which is tailor-made for prostitutes; then watch Jesus deal with them in the Bible; then go find a prostitute and talk to her. Listen to her, not the movie. Being entertained by sin does not increase compassion for sinners.

…
I have a high tolerance for violence, high tolerance for bad language, and zero tolerance for nudity. There is a reason for these differences. The violence is make-believe. They don’t really mean those bad words. But that lady is really naked, and I am really watching. And somewhere she has a brokenhearted father.

I’ll put it bluntly. The only nude female body a guy should ever lay his eyes on is his wife’s. The few exceptions include doctors, morticians, and fathers changing diapers.

…
But leave sex aside (as if that were possible for fifteen minutes on TV). It’s the unremitting triviality that makes television so deadly. What we desperately need is help to enlarge our capacities to be moved by the immeasurable glories of Christ. Television takes us almost constantly in the opposite direction, lowering, shrinking, and deadening our capacities for worshiping Christ.
…
One more smaller concern with TV (besides its addictive tendencies, trivialization of life, and deadening effects): It takes time. I have so many things I want to accomplish in this one short life. Don’t waste your life is not a catchphrase for me; it’s a cliff I walk beside every day with trembling.

Nathan at Cal.vini.st is giving away two copies of BibleWorks 8. BibleWorks is an excellent study tool for the original languages. I’ve used and enjoyed BibleWorks 7 and version 8 looks outstanding.

Following the SBC convention, I’ve noted with many others that most of the motions were negative, showing what the individual is against rather than for. I also noticed many of those motions were critical of movements, leaders, and changes involving young people. This is discouraging to see. But what we need to remember is that anyone can make a motion and motions themselves do not represent the denomination. Those making motions were presenting their own views. As a rule, it tends to be that people with negative agendas that are the most outspoken in these venues.

That said, I wish the response from some of the younger SBCers has been more gracious. The comments made on the SBC Voices post [Edit: Referring to the comments following Matt's post, not Matt's post itself. And not all of the comments, just a few of them.] Questions and Quotes that demand an answer from the SBC are very unhelpful and will do nothing but make conflict worse.

Remember three words from Scripture. Blessed are the peacemakers (Mt 5:9); Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor. (1 Cor 10:24); and For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. By what you eat, do not destroy the one for whom Christ died. (Rom. 14:15)

I will continue to argue that casual alcohol consumption is not a sin. I will continue to abstain from drinking because so many of my brothers and sisters in Christ – those for whom Christ died – struggle with this issue. I will not allow it to be spoken of as evil, I will defend these as acceptable practices, but I will not value My Right To Alcohol over a brother for whom Christ died.

Controversy is best served by showing the love of Christ, not by flaunting controversial practices in the face of others. That is work best left to Satan, not children of God.

A few weeks ago SBC president Johnny Hunt released the document The Great Commission Resurgence. Since its release it has received over 3500 signatures and has generated quite a bit of discussion.

On the whole it is a good document. As others have stated, almost any pastor can agree with 98% of it. Most of the controversy has focused on section IX which deals with the need for structural changes in the convention.

Regarding section 9, I tend to think Hunt is right – there do need to be some changes in convention funding, structure, and support. My feeling is we have more bureaucracy than we need. We’ve become the Oscar Wilde quote – “Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.” .

I like some of the things in the document. Hunt recognizes the need to adapt to a changing culture, moving beyond programs that worked yesterday and looking for what is effective today. From section 8: “In the past, Southern Baptists were characterized by a remarkable uniformity in both style and substance, but those days have long passed.” Then in section 9: “...the denomination has too often failed to adapt its structure and programs to the changing culture. We are frequently aiming at a culture that went out of existence years ago, failing to understand how mid-20th century methods and strategies are not working in the 21st century.”

Children and families are also affirmed: “Too often we believe that children are a burden rather than a blessing and smaller families are more ‘responsible’ than large families. Too many believe that motherhood is not valuable as a woman’s unique and primary calling and is not as ‘fulfilling’ as other occupations. Too many believe that husbands and fathers are not uniquely called and gifted for leadership in the home and that biblical gender roles destroy authentic equality.” We have three children and someone once commented that we have a large family. That astonished me. Society’s view of children and family has certainly changed, and not for the better.

I have a few little concerns with the document. I wish section 1 focused more on obedience to Jesus and section 2 said more about the Bible as a whole. Section 4 should say more about sufficiency and the need to strive to understand all of Scripture. Section 5 could use a little more clarifying. Section 6, I wish the phrase “Baptist identity” had been left out, though I think I know what Hunt means in the sentence and if so I’m fully in agreement. Section 7 should say a little more about pastoral ministry, and the last sentence of the section is a little quirky. Section 9 is nonspecific enough to cause a desire for clarification.

My main concern is with the overwhelming focus of the document being to seek a resurgence of great commission fulfillment. We need to be carrying out the great commission. We need to be bolder, more faithful in evangelism. But that is not the only, or primary, purpose of the church. The church is given to carry out Ephesians 2:7, to be a sort of trophy room for God, displaying his glory. Evangelism aids in this, so does discipleship. Historically, Southern Baptists have emphasized (though perhaps not carried out) evangelism fairly well but in the past several decades we have been very weak on discipleship. The whole push is to go and tell with little energy left for come and learn and grow. Even those things done as discipleship are often structured to be lures to get the lost into church rather than helping believers grow in the faith.

I appreciate Hunt’s work on this document and his desire to see Christians become more faithful in carrying out the great commission, but I wish the document also called believers to greater faithfulness in studying and knowing and applying God’s Word. I wish that it called churches to increase their discipling work. Many Baptists have declared the Bible inerrant while simultaneously forgetting what it says. I hope we see this change.

What is the God-centered goal of preaching? To borrow language from Piper it is to make much of God. My goal in my ministry – preaching, teaching, visiting, etc – is to help people love God more each day. I do this by trying to help them see more about God, his incredible character, his holy nature, his boundless grace.

The more people love God the more they will desire to serve and obey him. Luther, quoting Augustine, said, “Love God, and do what you will.” (Could someone point me to where those quotes are found?) The idea behind this is not that if you love God then anything else you do is permissible. Luther understood that if you love God then what you will to do is that which is pleasing to God. This is similar to Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” It is not that God says, “Oh, this person delights in me! I’ll give them anything they want!” rather it is that the person says, “I delight in God! The desire of my heart is to live for him, to enjoy him forever!” When you love God your heart and focus change to God himself.

The person who delights in the Lord does not desire a new car more than he desires God. He desires God more than he desires adultery or drugs or possessions or pornography or pride or power or a host of other worldly things. Preaching that focuses on doing rather than thinking and feeling gets at the symptom while neglecting the problem.

Consider Matthew 12:43-45:

To empty a house of demons is all well and good but is ultimately a useless act of the house is left ready for reoccupation. If soldiers on the battlefield clear a stronghold they have done well, but if the stronghold is not secure the enemy will just return in even greater numbers and the problem will be worse than ever. If preaching leads people to change behavior without first leading them to be consumed with love for God then little good has been done. It has probably caused harm, creating people who seem moral on the outside but are dead and rotten on the inside. Teach people about God. Show them Jesus, the image of the eternal, invisible God, in all his glory. Pray for the Spirit to grow in them and for the first fruit of the Spirit, love, to grow wildly for God and then for others.

This is what I want to see happen through my preaching – people loving God, delighting in him, and becoming so filled with wonder at the glory of his goodness and grace that the things of this world grow strangely dim. Teach people to be filled with God. To desire him. To honor him and delight in doing so. That is how the Holy Spirit will work through us in the process of sanctification. That is how disciples are made.

This one was stumbled upon by accident and I confess I’ve not done much more than skim it. Jack Kelley at the Bible Prophecy Today website writes about animal sacrifice in the millennial kingdom. In the article he makes the rather astounding claim that when the millennial kingdom begins Jesus will re-institute the sacrificial system. The Jews will continue to be guided by the requirements of the law and will have none of the same assurances of salvation we enjoy as believers. With the church age ended at the rapture, the reign of the Old Testament law (returns? continues?).

Some of the things in the article caused rather bemused reactions from me, others caused a bit of agitation. I was a bit amused with the following image:

In the coming age, men on Earth will look up into the sky and see the New Jerusalem, home of the Church, in orbit nearby. It will be their source of light and though they’ll never be able to visit it, descriptions of its beauty and majesty will stagger their imaginations. All of creation will stand in awe of this display of the incomparable riches of God’s grace.

and angered by this one:

In an earlier study, The Nature Of Post Church Salvation, I made the case that post Church believers, whether Jew or Gentile, will not enjoy the seal of the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of their inheritance. Eternal Security is a blessing for the Church alone and ends with the end of the Age of Grace at the Rapture.

Can anyone really argue that the promise of assurance and security will someday come to an end? His “proof” comes from two passages (Rev. 14:12; Rev. 16:15) which seem to require both faith and obedience – something he seems to argue could only be required of those not part of the church: “…the Lord had John say that both obedience and faith will be required of Tribulation believers, whereas the Church is saved by grace through faith alone.” I trust any regular readers here will immediately recognize the enormous problem in this teaching. I won’t elaborate. Ask in the comments if it is not clear to you.

There is lots more. As I said, I just skimmed and I don’t want to tackle all the problems. I suspect this represents the more extreme end of dispensationalism rather than normative dispensationalism. We shall see.

You’ve most likely heard the gap illustration of salvation. Just to refresh your memory, it goes like this.

God created man to live in relationship with him. We stood with him, walked with him. Then Adam and Eve sinned and caused a great void to open up between man and God. There was no way we could cross that void. It was a deep canyon with God on one side and man on the other.

Jesus gave the solution by crossing the canyon, something we could not do. He came among us and lived and died on the cross, paying the penalty for our sins. The cross then became the bridge between God and man, giving us the means to cross the canyon and reach God. Through the cross we can find God and salvation.

Let me suggest an alternate picture.

God created man to live in relationship with him. We stood with him, walked with him. Then Adam and Eve sinned and all creation fell as though down a huge cliff. We stood at the bottom of that cliff with God at the top. Nothing we do would enable us to climb the cliff.

Jesus presented the solution by descending the cliff. He stepped down from high above and lived among fallen humanity. He died on the cross, paying the penalty for our sins. Through the cross he draws us to himself. Jesus then ascends back to God at the top of the cliff, taking us with him.

The difference in these two illustrations is enormous. In both of them God is the one who makes salvation possible. Man is helpless to make a way to God. But in the first God only makes salvation possible, not certain – and only in a world different from our own. In the first illustration Jesus creates a bridge we must walk across to be saved, but this ignores man’s inability to walk toward God. Dead in our sins, we neither have the desire nor the ability to approach God. We are enemies in rebellion against him. The first illustration is truly semi-Pelagian in imagining some ability remains in man so that he can walk to God. Perhaps some who present this illustration would include the Arminian notion of prevenient grace, the belief that God has enabled people to respond to him. This would take the illustration out of the realm of Pelagian heresy but it still leaves the person with an ability the Bible says we simply do not have.

The second illustration does a better job of presenting the biblical picture. It is not perfect, no illustration can contain everything, but it shows that man is not capable of any of the work to reach God.

God brings us to himself. He descends the cliff, does what is necessary to bring us into righteousness, then wraps his arms around us and carries us with him back into Heaven. This is what it means to be saved, to be found in the arms of Christ when he has returned to his heavenly home. “But wait!” you say “He was raised 2,000 years ago! I was not there, I could not have been risen with him!” Ahh but you were, dear saint. Thus we are told a few times in the New Testament, as at Ephesians 2:6, that God has raised us up with him and ​seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. In an event that is both very real and very mysterious, all the saints of God were raised with Jesus Christ. He carried us from the fallen world to the throne of his Father. This is the only way our salvation could take place.

Perhaps I should make some tracts.

The latest Ask Pastor John is well timed, I’ve had several comments and questions about paraphrase Bibles lately.

Much has been made about the resurgence of Calvinism in the SBC. More young people, and not a few older pastors, are embracing a theology of salvation that closely resembles that which was taught by John Calvin. 

The label Calvinism is a convenience. Use the word and people (sometimes) know (sort of) what you are talking about, though to my surprise I see several people claim the title Calvinist who really aren’t very Calvinistic in their thinking. But the label tends to imply something untrue: that people have studied the teachings of John Calvin and have devoted themselves to those teachings. The truth is that Calvinists are those who have studied Scripture and have drawn conclusions from Scripture similar to the conclusions drawn by John Calvin.

What we have in the SBC is not a resurgence of Calvinism but a resurgence of Scripture. Conservatives won the struggle in the 80’s and 90’s to move the denomination away from liberalism, but too many conservative pastors did little more than give lip service to the Bible, failing to use the Bible any more than the liberals. I attended a revival service several weeks ago during which the preacher talked a lot about how important the Bible is but he never once faithfully unfolded Scripture. He used a few springboard text and filled his long sermon with personal anecdotes. This can also be seen in most of the material that comes out of Lifeway. I often get angry when I look at how they handle various texts. Irresponsible, shallow, misleading, sour milk, frequently missing the point, using the word of God as a springboard to the things they want to talk about. These things happen too often in the SBC but by the grace of God this pattern just might be changing.

Again, what we have in the SBC is not a resurgence of Calvinism but a resurgence of Scripture. We have people faithfully studying the Scriptures. The end result is their theology looks like that of John Calvin. But these people are also talking about and teaching the Bible with greater faithfulness. This in itself can be a challenge to churches that are not used to well grounded biblical preaching but it is a challenge we must push through if we are to grow in the Lord.

Praise God for the resurgence of the Bible in the SBC. May it continue and may it spread.

Where is the world headed? What will be the high point of the history of the world? Estimates of the age of the universe vary, anywhere from 6,000 years to 15 billion years or so. Whatever the case, in that time God has done many, many amazing acts. Creation, protection, overthrowing mighty rulers, raising the dead, walking on water, healing the sick, talking donkeys, saving people from sin and death, etc etc. The history of the world is absolutely packed with the wonders of God’s glory and grace. What will be the high point?

I would say there isn’t really a high point, that it all just keeps growing greater and greater. At some point the history of creation will come to an end (sort of, not really – it will all be made new) but our experience will not end. I believe our enjoyment of God will only grow throughout eternity and thus the glory God receives from us will grow. There will be no high point, just newer and newer heights of delight and glory.

Having that in my mind I am a bit astonished at what Ryrie sees as the high point of history. It is possible he is drawing a line between temporal history and eternal history, drawing out the high point of creation history before the end of all things, but I don’t think he makes this distinction. Nonetheless, if the question is limited to temporal history, I would say the high point has already passed, that it took place at the cross. In all of human history, in the time before God finally closes his work on earth, the cross is the moment when God was most glorified.

So, in the span of eternity there is no high point, in the span of world history the cross was the high point.

Ryrie says the high point of history is found in the millennial kingdom. The significance of the millennium is it stands as the climax of all that has happened: “The entire program culminates, not in eternity but in history, in the millennial kingdom of the Lord Christ. This millennial culmination is the climax of history and the great goal of God’s program for the ages.” (108)

The presence of the comma before the second clause causes some confusion. Is Ryrie specifying that the high point of history, not including any consideration about eternity, is found in the millennial reign, or is he saying that the high point is found in history, not in eternity, and it is the millennial reign? I believe he is saying the latter. Earlier in the book Ryrie makes this statement: “Concerning the goal of history, dispensationalists find it in the establishment of the millennial kingdom on earth, whereas the covenant theologian regards it as the eternal state.” (21) There he makes a clear distinction between the dispensationalist view of temporal history and the covenant theology view of the eternal. He goes on to say that the dispensationalist does not minimize the importance of eternity but he never really says what he thinks God is doing in eternity. Perhaps that will come later.

It seems very strange to me to see all that God has done in history, all his mighty acts including the infinite value of the gift of the precious Son of God, finding their culmination, their goal, their end in a period that will only last 1000 years. This greatly undervalues the importance and majesty of God’s work. It may well be that I am missing something, I’m still new to the details of dispensationalism and still have a lot of reading to do, but I believe I have presented Ryrie accurately.

That ends the main part of my post, what follows is me following out loud a train of thought. Jump in if my reasoning is faulty somewhere.

Here is another question/observation. Dispensationalists distinguish God’s work with Israel from God’s work with the church. The rapture would separate the church so that most (not all, assuming some people are saved after the rapture) Christians are not (physically?) present during the millennial reign. The millennium fulfills God’s promises to Israel, bringing about the powerful, secure, mighty nation of Israel with God on the throne. So what does the cross have to do with the millennium? Does the death of Jesus Christ have a specific purpose for the millennial kingdom? If God’s purposes for the church and for Israel are distinct, and the church is made up of those who have become the children of God through the death of Christ, I’m not sure what role the cross would play in the millennial kingdom. That would make Ryrie’s claim all the more astounding since he would be saying the goal of history involves something that has nothing to do with the cross. Am I making any sense?

I do want to note that Ryrie is clear that dispensationalists believe there is only one way of salvation. There is not one way for Jews to be saved and another for Christians. All who are saved receive salvation only through Jesus Christ by faith, so even those Jews who experience salvation do so only because of Jesus.

Whatever the case, this whole notion strikes me as very odd and it reduces the significance of God’s work. The kingdom of God is eternal, not temporal, and entrance into the kingdom is through the cross. Those in the kingdom will be in it forever and will forever grow in their delight of God, giving him increasing measures of glory.