The Atonement is scoured, the inspiration of Scripture is derided, the Holy Spirit is degraded into an influence, the punishment of sin is turned into a fiction, and the resurrection into a myth, and yet these enemies of our faith expect us to call them brethren and maintain a confederacy with them.

“Another Word Concerning the Down Grade”, The Sword and the Trowel 23 p397; quoted in Preaching for Bodybuilding by Joel Breidenbaugh.

Speculation about John Piper’s tweet, pictured above, seems to be the thing to do, so here’s my 12 cents (up from 2 due to inflation).

There’s an old joke about an elderly couple driving down the road in a pickup truck. The man sat behind the wheel while the wife sat on the other side of the truck, next to the passenger door. At one point the wife turns to her husband and says, “You know, we used to sit a lot closer to each other when driving around.” The man, still driving, turned to his wife and replied, “Well, I haven’t moved.”

Piper’s farewell to Rob Bell was a wave toward the one who was moving. Bell’s trajectory has always been away from orthodoxy but this new book positions him well outside biblical Christianity. Piper’s tweet was a recognition that Bell has departed from any appearance of biblically faithful Christianity. Farewell, indeed.

Thank God that by God’s grace Piper has not moved. I pray he never will. Pray that I never well. Pray for other believers to remain faithful, held from wandering by God’s merciful hand. And pray for Bell that he would realize he is the one who moved, and moved into very dangerous territory. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

The work of the local church, however, is a bit more broad. While true that churches exist to facilitate the missions and outreach work of individuals within the church, this is not all that churches do. At a bare minimum we must speak of at least two functions of the local church: going forth to tell, and drawing together to grow. Both functions together serve one purpose: glorifying God. Thus the functions are not ends in themselves but ways of working for God’s glory.

The first function is the function of missions. We go throughout our neighborhoods and towns and countries and world sharing with others the bad news about sin and the good news about the grace, love, and mercy of God through Jesus Christ, praying that God might use us to lead others to himself.

The second function is the function of discipleship. We work to grow and ground believers in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Recognizing that it is not enough to get someone to profess faith in Christ, we then lead believers in the process of growing more like Christ each day.

The distinction in these functions is important. More and more I am hearing voices within the SBC speak as though the first function were the only real work of the church. For example, take the following snippet from the Great Commission Resurgence proposal:

[The Southern Baptist missional vision should be] As a convention of churches, our missional vision is to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations.

In and of itself, that would be fine. As a missional statement it gets across what missions is intended to do: spread the gospel around the world. But the proposal goes on to say:

This missional vision must drive everything that Southern Baptists do, and reset every priority of the local church and denomination.

Here we should see the problem. The problem isn’t just in the GCR proposal. I’ve heard it from pastors, read it on SBC blogs, and seen it in denominational publications. The problem is that this kind of focus leads us to ignore or at least downplay one of the two functions of the church. We become so focused on expanding the walls of the city that we ignore the condition of the things inside the city. We are so focused on reaching unbelievers that we neglect discipleship and have a denomination full of superficial faith.

It is striking to me that the majority of the Bible is written for those already claiming to be the people of God. The majority of the Bible calls God’s people to greater knowledge, to deeper faith, to more faithful obedience. In the New Testament, the passages calling believers to share the gospel make up just a small subset of the passages calling for holiness, for obedience, for knowledge and understanding, for lives of prayer and studying the things of God.

We must go and tell. We must share the gospel. We are right to stress the importance and necessity of evangelism. If we do not share the gospel, we are sinning. But sharing the gospel is the fruit of a life focused on Christ. The more we grow in our love for God, the more we walk in obedience to God, the more we live in the righteousness of God, the more we will delight to tell others about God. The reason so much of our evangelism sounds so superficial is because it is. We have trained our people to tell others God loves them but we have not trained our people to love God.

I think the best concise definition of evangelism is, “Loving God enough to make him known.” There are several things that makes this a good definition, but for our purposes this definition shows that the one telling the gospel must first be growing in his love for God, something that can only happen through discipleship, through walking in holiness, through growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. The more believers walk with God, the greater our love grows. The more our love grows, the greater our desire to share him with others.

Thus we cannot say that a missional vision should drive everything we do. Getting back to the distinction between the local church and the Southern Baptist Convention, we can and should define the SBC in missional terms since that is why it exists. But the work of the local church goes beyond the work of the convention. Drawing together the two functions of the church and its one great purpose, something like the following might be a better vision for the local church: “Seeking the glory of God by helping believers grow in their love of God and faithfulness to God and by helping believers share the love of Christ throughout the world.”

We are all talking about ecumenicity, and the argument is put forward that, because of a certain common danger, it is not the time to be arguing about points of doctrine; rather we should all be friendly and pull together. Not at all, according to our Lord. The fact that the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches are called Christian is no reason why we should not expose the corruptness and the dangerous errors of their systems.

My own position on the Declaration has shifted some. While I more or less agree with the concerns of the document (I would differ from the emphasis in the document that the purpose of marriage is procreation), I share the concern of others who believe it does us no good to stand arm-in-arm with Catholics and Orthodox and risk undermining clear gospel presentation. I also sympathize with the somewhat snarky tweets from Abraham Piper and Jared Wilson. Anyone can sign a document. Living it out is both the more vital and the more difficult task.

What is our best argument to those who reject the truths of Scripture? Is it logic or reason? Or that these precious words have been proven through the experience of our lives? Spurgeon offers his thoughts, pages 272-273.

…They tell us sometimes that such and such statements are not true; but when we are able to reply that we have tried them and proved them, what answer is there to such reasoning? A man propounds the wonderful discovery that honey is not sweet. ‘But I had some for breakfast, and I found it very sweet’, say you, and your reply is conclusive. He tells you that salt is poisonous, but you point to your own health, and declare that you have eaten salt these twenty years. He says that to eat bread is a mistake – a vulgar error, an antiquated absurdity; but at each meal you make his protest the subject for a merry laugh. If you are daily and habitually experienced in the truth of God’s Word, I am not afraid of your being shaken in mind in reference to it. Those young fellows who never felt conviction of sin, but obtained their religion as they get their bath in the morning, by jumping into it – these will as readily leap out of it as they leaped in. Those who feel neither the joys nor yet the depressions of spirit which indicate spiritual life, are torpid, and their palsied hand has no firm grip of truth. Mere skimmers of the Word, who, like swallows, touch the water with their wings, are the first to fly from one land to another as personal considerations guide them. They believe this, and then believe that, for, in truth, they believe nothing intensely.

If you have ever been dragged through the mire and clay of soul-despair, if you have been turned upside down, and wiped out like a dish as to all your own strength and pride, and have then been filled with the joy and peace of God, through Jesus Christ, I will trust you among fifty thousand infidels. Whenever I hear the sceptic’s stale attacks upon the Word of God, I smile within myself, and think, ‘Why, you simpleton! how can you urge such trifling objections? I have felt, in the contentions of my own unbelief, ten times greater difficulties.’ We who have contended with horses are not to be wearied by footmen…

Those who would define the value of life in terms of what we do are stuck when facing the issue of a failing body. Even many Christians fall into this trap. What is our purpose? Some would say spreading the gospel. What makes life meaningful? Fulfilling our purpose. So what are we left with when illness and infirmity and a failing body makes evangelism impossible?

Man’s purpose is not found in any of our outer actions, per se. The meaning of life is that we were created for the glory of God (Isa 43:7). We find true meaning only by glorifying God. We glorify him with our actions when action is possible. We glorify him by trusting in him, resting in him, praying to him whether or not we are capable of doing things for him. The meaning of life for an older person has not been lost by their inability to perform acts of service. They can glorify God even as their bodies fail. The main way to do this, I think, is by being content in him and trusting in him even if your circumstances are such that the world expects you to curse God and die. What a testimony that makes! In the world’s eyes many of these people have absolutely nothing to live for. They should sink into despair and kill themselves! And yet here is this bedridden saint praising God for his mercy! How great indeed must be his mercy if this saint would praise him even when she seems to the world to have nothing to praise him for.

This is love. That God has redeemed every aspect of the lives of his elect. Even our infirmity has purpose. Even that person lying in a nursing home bed barely able to move has a purpose. If your life is not focused on bringing glory to God then what is it focused on? And what other option would you see for man’s purpose? Only this one option gives hope to those who are unable to do active service for God. Glorify God in sickness and health and you have found life’s meaning.

I’ve just done a purging of movies, music, and tv shows that, frankly, I never should have purchased to begin with. iTunes and a digital age makes media too easy to obtain. Most of these shows and movies would be considered fairly mild by many but just how much worldliness should a Christian tolerate in his entertainment? Everything in moderation, one might respond. But how does one decide how much worldliness is acceptable? There is so much accepted sin in media these days, very few things passed my test.

A few things prompted my purging:

1. Listening to Andrew Peterson’s The Good Confession always makes me more sensitive to my thoughts and behavior. The particular line is: “Well you know my dad’s a preacher man / I walked the aisle and took his hand.” Every father is a preacher to his kids. Being a preacher by vocation made it sink in all the more. This should make us think about what sort of preachers we are to our kids. What example do I set? Not just when I’m around them but after they’re in bed. Would my thoughts edify them, help them grow? How about the thoughts I’m putting in my head through movies and shows? It’s a terrible burden, being a parent – it requires that we actually live out the things we claim to believe if we are going to set a good example for our kids. You want an accountability partner? Have kids.
2. Preparing for a sermon on prayer reminds me just how little I pray. I have the following line in my notes: “This sermon does not contain advice. It contains words for your sanctification and holiness. If you are not a person of prayer, you are living in sin.” I am not a person of prayer. Not even close. God forgive me, I’m too busy watching trash or surfing blogs or playing computer games (that purging will come soon). Getting rid of all of this will not make me a person of prayer, but it will go a long way to removing my destructive distractions.
3. Thinking about the Puritans reminded me that they had no televisions. I sometimes think, “I need this show! I watch it whenever I just want to relax.” My justification for keeping the show is that I (sometimes) work hard and need down time and movies and tv shows help me relax. But the Puritans had no television and they managed just fine.
4. If the invited speaker fails to show I will be speaking to our men’s group tomorrow. Following the lead of the guys at The Resurgence I plan to talk about manhood from the perspective of the men in the Bible who did very hard, very masculine things. It struck me how little of a man I am if I can’t even make myself give up things that are bad for me. (The next application for this one: food.)
5. This one is after the fact, but this post at Desiring God pointed me to Romans 8:32 and the reminder that God, not man, provides what I need. Do not seek the body’s needs through the world’s means. What I need to relax and recharge at the end of the day comes from the Lord, not Hollywood.

The end result is quite a bit more free space on my computer and some more empty space on my shelves. It also means more money since, God enabling, I will continue this conviction and will avoid those things that, in the name of entertainment, invite worldliness. Brothers, pray for me.

Apparently a new controversy has broken out around Mark Driscoll (mentioned by the Founder’s folks). I don’t know all the details but some of the criticism focuses on his explicit discussion of sexuality. A number of people strongly oppose the amount of explicit information Driscoll is willing to put in public.

Here is my take.

First, consider the medium. Critics are concerned with Driscoll making such explicit information easily available over the internet. I would share their concern except for the fact that a tremendous amount of pornographic material is even easier to obtain over the internet. It is very difficult to spend much time on the internet and avoid seeing things you do not want to see. Today’s young people spend a lot of time on the internet. I guarantee most of them have seen by accident more pornographic material than many adults have seen in their lifetime. I also guarantee that a large percentage of people on the internet – including Christian young people – are not just stumbling across pornographic material by accident, they are looking for it.

With that in mind, I am reluctant to disapprove of churches offering a counter response. Driscoll and others are saying that sexuality is a good thing if handled properly. Want to know how to handle it properly? Don’t go to a porn site, go to church. Young people are more open discussing sexuality than most older people. Biblically, I don’t know how anyone could make the case that Christians should not be explicit when talking about sex. One must be wise, yes, but I think in this case wisdom leans in Driscoll’s direction.

Second, consider the context. Driscoll is pastoring a church of young people in Seattle, Washington. If he were trying to present this material to my church it would be inappropriate. Most of my people are not immersed in culture and technology the way his are. Most of my people do not have the questions about sexuality that his people have. I don’t believe Driscoll has anywhere said all preachers should address sexuality in the way he does. He has his flock with their quirks and their needs, I have mine. There may be some in my church – and are certainly many in my city – who would benefit from his preaching on this subject, but the majority of my people do not need the material he is offering. The majority of the people in Driscoll’s church do.

This does not relativize preaching and practices. Rather it seeks to accomplish the same end through the same means carried out in different ways. The end is glorifying Christ and leading people to live God glorifying lives. The means is preaching and teaching that will help them know how to live those God glorifying lives. Such preaching will guide people to make decisions guided by the Bible and know how to handle issues not clearly spelled out in the Bible. If my people don’t have those issues it would serve no purpose to raise them. Driscoll’s people do have those issues and questions so he guides them to know how to glorify God in those areas.

This is pragmatism of the good sort. All preachers should ask this question: “What do my people need to hear in order to help them glorify God better in their lives?” This requires knowing your people, knowing their needs, and being bold enough to address those needs, whatever they may be. Are your people consumed with racism? Preach on it. Do they struggle with alcohol addiction? Preach on it. Do they cheat on their taxes? Preach on it. Do they want to know how to honor God with how they raise their kids? Preach on it. Do they struggle with how their sexual relationship with their spouse can be glorifying to God in the midst of a culture that sees sex as the ultimate selfish pursuit? Preach on it. That’s what Driscoll has done.