A very long time ago, when I worked for the Kent State University Museum, I saw a piece of artwork at the Canton Museum of Art. It was called, “Concerned With Many Issues.” I wanted to find a photo of it online to share with you, but had no success finding any reference to it. I’ll have to describe it instead.
It was a diorama about twelve inches square and nine inches high. It depicted a simply appointed living room with a chair, a carpet, a door, and a woman vacuuming. It was an ordinary scene with absolutely nothing remarkable about it. What made this piece of art so memorable to me was what was going on outside the room.
Outside was a fanciful array of men and monsters of all different colors, sizes and shapes. Their tentacles, arms, legs and eyes were all interwoven and they surrounded the room and the woman doing her chores. Inside was a scene of mundane toil; outside was total chaos.
That piece of artwork depicted my life at the time. To the casual observer, I was an average guy working an average job living in an average house and driving an average car. My main worries were losing my job, losing my wife, losing my house, losing my car and my dwindling bank account.
Since saving faith was granted to me by God through Jesus, I really don’t worry much about my job or whether I will have enough food or clothing (Luke 12:29-31), nor even about having enough money. Strangely enough, I still identify with this piece of artwork and am still concerned with many things.
The monsters lurking outside my window today are my sins that I don’t want to do, but keep doing (Romans 7:15); my unsaved family (both those who claim to know Christ but produce no fruit and those who overtly deny Him); my friends at church who seem biblically illiterate and apathetic about the Gospel; people I work with who are trapped in a legalistic religion; and what, if anything, I can do to help bring these people to Christ.
For now I think I will pray about it (1 Peter 5:7), be still, and know that God reigns. (Psalm 46:10)
Two weeks ago at church, our council of Elders called a man up to the front of the church before the worship service began. They presented him an award for being the most humble Christian at our church. The award was a tiny lapel pin a little smaller than a dime. The man accepted the award with a tearful and red-faced “Thank you all, so much” and returned to his seat. Last Sunday, the man came to church wearing the pin in the lapel of his jacket and the head elder took it away from him because he showed pride by wearing it and didn’t deserve it anymore.
This actually didn’t happen. It is an old joke rephrased. Nevertheless, humility can be a difficult concept to understand. Last week I listened to a two-part sermon preached by John Piper entitled Battling the Unbelief of a Haughty Spirit. You can download it and listen to it yourself here:
When I listen to podcast sermons (usually about a dozen each week) I like to take notes on the parts that hit me hard, or speak to my heart. Sometimes I’ll stop the playback and just start writing about instances where I have personally experienced what the preacher is talking about.
Here are the notes that I took while I was listening to the sermons linked above. If you get anything out of this, I encourage you to download and listen to the entire sermon. Not all of what appears below is Piper’s and not all of it is mine.
All acts of unbelief and all acts of sin flow from selfishness and pride. We know what selfishness is, but pride is more complicated. There are two main forms of pride. The first is our traditional understanding of pride that John Piper defines very well as “…knowing we’re good and wanting others to know it.” This is what the bible calls boasting. The other, trickier, sneakier form of pride doesn’t look like this at all; it is called false humility. False humility is when we go out of our way to demonstrate to people how humble we are. Yes, you can be prideful about being humble just like the man in the old joke.
If you are a Christian and you know anything at all about humility, I am confident that you have encountered this type of pride at least once. Here are two examples: The man who volunteers for the worst task at a church function and then for weeks afterward, brags about doing such a menial job. The woman who helps somebody anonymously and then “lets slip” what she did to one friend who she knows can’t keep her mouth shut. These are examples of a craving that people have for other people to think well of them.
Each of these forms of pride is an example of making much of yourself. As Christians, we should be delighting in Christ alone and in God’s mercy to us.
Isn’t it funny, considering our size and place in the universe, that we humans would struggle with genuine humility?
True humility means casting everything on the Lord. Casting your anxieties on the Lord is humility, because proud people don’t feel that they need help from the Lord. Pride makes people deny their anxieties and want to look like they’ve got it all together. Piper says, “…how easy it is to ‘be made much of’ even for my self-denial.” We have to be such cool customers. God is our LAST refuge instead of our first thought. We are afraid to be vulnerable. We are afraid to look human.
Piper says, “God loves people, but hates pride.” The condition of your heart is of utmost importance. It is almost impossible for anyone to tell the difference between genuine humility and false humility in another person, but it is easy for us to know it in ourselves. This is a skill that we work inwardly on ourselves, not an outward skill that we work on others.
If we are making much of Christ and little of ourselves, then we are practicing humility well. And the proper response is to make much of Christ for granting us a humble heart.
Today I received an email with one of those “heart-warming” emotional stories in it. You know the kind. They usually tell about doe-eyed baby animals who survive a terrible ordeal, dying people who beat the odds, or cherub-faced children who understand the true meaning of life. They are usually completely fabricated and are so sweet they induce nausea.
Surprisingly, this one was not fictional and was written by a respected journalist named Michael Gartner. It is entitled, “A Life Without Left Turns.” If you would like to read the entire article, here is the link. If you would just like a synopsis, read on.
My father never drove a car.
Well, that’s not quite right.
I should say I never saw him drive a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.
“In those days,” he told me when he was in his 90s, “to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it.”
At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in:
“Oh, bull___!” she said. “He hit a horse.”
“Well,” my father said, “there was that, too.”
So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car.
Another portion tells about his father and mother’s church habits:
My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn’t seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage. (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.) He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin’s Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish’s two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home. If it was the assistant pastor, he’d take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church.
He called the priests “Father Fast” and “Father Slow.”
Later in the account we find out why it is so named.
As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, “Do you want to know the secret of a long life?” “I guess so,” I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.
“No left turns,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“No left turns,” he repeated. “Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn.”
The piece ends with his father’s death at 102 years of age.
“I want you to know,” he said, clearly and lucidly, “that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have.”
A short time later, he died.
What a horrible story. Let me sum it up from a Christian viewpoint.
A man gets married, works hard all his life, has two sons, walks everywhere, doesn’t drive a car, avoids church, lives to be 102 years old, dies peacefully and goes straight to Hell.
If there is nothing more to this life than to live happily, comfortably, healthily and die peacefully, then religion is a complete waste of time and we should just skip church like this man did and go for a walk instead! His story is an example of how not to live and we should pray that our lives are not wasted as this man’s was. How terribly, tragically sad this story is. Proof that Satan will give you anything you want in this life if he can have you in the next.
But if the Bible is the truth and there is more to our existence than this brief journey we call life, then our purpose must be to never live a life focused on selfish comfort and pleasure. Our true purpose must be to reach those who do not know about Jesus and share God’s gift of eternal life. (I’ll let you in on a secret: most of your friends at church are trying their best to live their lives like the man in this story. If they have retired already, time is running out for you to tell them that they’re wasting their life.)
Here is a truly heartwarming story that Christians should pass around more than the one by Gartner. This one is from John Piper’s book Don’t Waste Your Life.
In April 2000, Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards were killed in Cameroon, West Africa. Ruby was over eighty. Single all her life, she poured it out for one great thing: to make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor, and the sick. Laura was a widow, a medical doctor, pushing eighty years old, and serving at Ruby’s side in Cameroon. The brakes failed, the car went over a cliff, and they were both killed instantly. I asked my congregation: Was that a tragedy? Two lives, driven by one great passion, namely, to be spent in unheralded service to the perishing poor for the glory of Jesus Christ – even two decades after most of their American counterparts had retired to throw away their lives on trifles. No, that is not a tragedy. That is a glory. These lives were not wasted. And these lives were not lost. “Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35).
Americans spend billions of dollars every year trying to live a life like Michael Gartner’s father. Can you imagine him standing before Jesus on the great Day of Judgment and telling God, “I walked instead of going to church.” Or “I never drove a car and didn’t let my wife make left-hand turns.”
What will you say when you stand before Him?
Please, don’t hold this man’s life up as something to be emulated. His life was a waste. His one and only, precious life was a waste because he refused to know Jesus. Please don’t waste your life like this man. Please!
Earlier today, a friend on Facebook asked me my opinion on women pastors. My opinion doesn’t matter, so I told him what I have found in the Bible. If you disagree, or have another view, please post a comment with the biblical basis for your belief.
I still have much to learn, but this seems rather plain to me.
The Bible doesn’t bar women from teaching altogether, just from teaching and having authority over men in the assembly. For that reason, I have to say that female pastors and elders are unbiblical. 1 Tim.2:8-15. That said, I have met some very godly women who have the gift of teaching and use it as God intends.
Titus 2:3 says that older women are to teach what is good. Acts 18:26 tells of the beginnings of the ministry of Apollos. One of his teachers was Priscilla. Clearly, even in the early church, women teaching was approved and even encouraged in certain situations. I don’t think that has changed and we shouldn’t put unbiblical restrictions on women who have the gift of teaching.
A common counter-argument is “Paul is just stating a cultural or religious difference that doesn’t apply to us today.” But Paul doesn’t appeal to cultural or religious examples for the reasons behind his statement. In 1 Tim. 2:13-14, Paul uses the example found in Genesis 3 of the woman supplanting the authority of the man and deciding to eat the fruit and encouraging Adam to do the same. Look at Gen. 3:9, who does God call to account for the sin? Not Satan, not Eve, but Adam. The man is held accountable.
The problem in the modern church isn’t only that women want to do what God has said they shouldn’t, (like Eve) but also that men let women usurp the authority that God intended for them (like Adam). The “adolescentizing” (to mint a word) of the American male is behind this problem. Many men would rather play with their toys than lead a community of believers. But that’s another rant for another time.
When you see that saving faith is a beingsatisfied in all that God is for you in Jesus, then the good fight of faith (as Paul calls it in 1 Timothy 6:12) becomes a fight for JOY! A fight for Joy in Christ, not television. In Christ, not sex. In Christ, not money. In Christ, not fame. There’s the battle. And it is to be fought every day as we put to death what is earthly in us and all of our cravings for this world and they rise up again and again and they must be killed with this truth. Put to death what is earthly in you. (Colossians 3:2) Die every day to the things that will destroy your Joy. That changes everything. – John Piper
The only foundation and basis upon which those of us who have been called through the teaching of the bible by the enabling of the spirit to mediate the rule of Christ’s headship among his people is as we have the bible preached to ourselves. And unless it comes in power to us, it cannot come in power through us. Therefore, no man can exhort you to submit to the headship of Christ with any sense of realistic integrity unless that man himself has been so beset upon by the necessity of his bowing to the headship of Christ. So it is not some monarchy that God has established, where with Kings and popes and princes he has established some hierarchical structure, and in the midst of that you have the proletariat in Colossae or Cleveland or Corinth and they are called upon to do what the leaders say. No. It is that together we bow beneath He who is the supreme one and the all sufficient one and He who alone is the head of the Church. So who is in charge around here? Christ! – Alistair Begg
A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God’s truth is attacked and yet would remain silent. – John Calvin
Grant what thou commandest and then command what thou wilt. – Augustine
Resolution One: I will live for God. Resolution Two: If no one else does, I still will. – Jonathan Edwards
I am employed in an industry that works two to three months ahead of time. I started adding 10 to the end of my numerical dates in November. Now, with three months practice, I still have trouble making the 10 instead of the 09. It’s not just because of the change of the decade* either. I had very little trouble transitioning from 99 to 00, but the change from 09 to 10 is a bigger leap.
Here’s why.
As long as I’ve been typing (or “keyboarding” as my kids call it) I’ve used my right hand to hit the first digit of the year. I took my first typing class in 81. In 83 I took my first computer class in high school. When I went to college I spent a lot of time on a keyboard typing computer programs and term papers. Every time I entered the year, I went to the 8 with my middle finger.
In the 90s I worked at three different companies and always had a computer for drafting and CAD design work. Moving from 89 to 90 wasn’t a big deal at all; each digit was just one position to the right. It was the same scenario going from 99 to 00; just one digit over to the right.
Now along comes the dreaded 10.
For nearly 30 years, I’ve been going to my right to type the year. Now I need to go to my left and it is a radical change of a long, long-time habit.
Though this typing change is trivial in comparison, I think there are parallels between this and Jesus’ words to Nicodemus about being born anew in John 3:3. Nicodemus didn’t understand how anyone could be born again – it just didn’t make sense to his worldly, works-based mind. But Jesus was talking about a change, a radical change that goes all the way back to the beginning stages of life and learning. Nicodemus had to first unlearn what he had learned and then relearn the way of the Gospel. This is why Jesus said we must be like little children. My youngest daughter had no trouble going from typing 09 to typing 10 because she’s been typing for less than a year.
The older we get and the longer we cling to our traditions, the harder it is make the changes that Jesus demands. I have family that were born and raised in the Roman church and they thoroughly believe that they can’t change. Not that they won’t change, but that they absolutely can not change.
Making even small changes in our lives is difficult; how much more so the big changes that require us to start all over again. Every time I struggle to use the smallest finger of my left hand to hit the 1 instead of using my right ring finger to hit the 0 I’m going to think about what it means to be born anew. 2 Corinthians 5:17
* Yes. I know that the decade doesn’t end until December 31 of 10, but typing 11 will be way easier than typing 10 and my point would be lost if I waited a year to publish this.
Brit Hume, the senior political analyst for Fox News and a regular panelist on Fox News Sunday had the audacity to express an opinion during the opinion portion of the January 3, 2010 show. See for yourself.
There has been an uproar from some in the media (and from plenty of anti-free-speech bloggers) that Hume’s statement is inappropriate. The fact of the matter is that Brit Hume is a gutsy guy. It is only a matter of time before the “mainstream media” will excoriate him for this, but he’s right on the money. The false religion Tiger Woods adheres to (Buddhism) will do nothing for him. Nothing. He needs Christ as his Lord and Savior. John 14:6 Romans 10:9-10 Acts 13:38
I got a restaurant gift card from my boss. I got a Sony Reader from my kids. I got shirts and Bible software from my wife. I got gift cards and ammunition from my step-dad. I got cookies from my grandmother. I got, I got, I got!
Is Christmas about getting or giving?
From the time we are children, our parents, our teachers, and most animated Christmas specials tell us that Christmas is about giving, not getting.
I got my doubts about that.
Listen to people talk at the office, on the phone or in a restaurant in the days following Christmas and you will almost certainly hear the words, ‘I got’ followed by something that sounds like the first paragraph of this article.
How I would love to hear someone say:
I got back from a mission trip.
I got my neighbor to come to church with me.
I got forgiven.
I got saved.
If you heard a particularly uplifting “I got…”, please leave it in the comments section. We could all use some positive news this time of year.
I would like to wish you and your family a very happy and memorable Christmas.
The whole reason we celebrate is to commemorate the greatest gift ever given. Christmas is the time to honor Jesus of Nazareth, God the Son, the Son of God, who was born in human flesh to live among His creation for a few decades. What he did, during what we would consider a very short life, was to teach us to love God and one another, to take our sins upon him, and to cover us with His perfect righteousness so we can once again be in full fellowship with God the Father now and forever.
If you only half-heartedly believe this, or don’t believe it at all, please think about it for a few minutes. Consider the fact that all of us will die someday and how many toys we have really doesn’t matter. Consider the fact that there is no way for anyone to live a life good enough to qualify for even a moment in the presence of a perfect, Holy God. The only way to earn a place in heaven is to live a perfect, holy life, and none of us can do that. But if you believe Jesus (not just believe IN Jesus) and turn away from your sins, God will look at your sinful life and see Jesus’ perfect life. Jesus’ work on the cross has assured all believers of this.
Everything else you may have been told that you have to do in order to gain heaven is extraneous. Repent and believe that Jesus is Lord and you are saved – by grace alone through faith alone, not by works. No other religion in the world teaches this, grace is unique to Christianity. Grace is the best kind of gift because none of us deserve it. What a wonderful gift! God loved us so much that he sent his Son to defeat death and sin, and give all believers the undeserved gift of eternal life in His presence.
May the blessings of Christmas be upon all of you.
2 Timothy 2:24-26 – 24 The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, 25 with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, 26 and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.
Dear Timothy,
Thanks for passing along the note that Paul sent you. His words are always helpful for teaching, reproof, correction etc. How are things in Ephesus? I hear that your preaching has gotten much more confident and forceful since Paul’s last letter. I guess they don’t call you “Timid Timmy” anymore.
I was surprised by Paul’s use of the word, bond-servant in reference to believers. That’s not a word that is widely understood in my country. In our nation’s history, a servant was sometimes a slave (a human being owned for life by another human being). I’m sure that concept sounds as strange to you as “bond-servant” does to me. When I shared your letter with my friend Nathan, I explained that when people in your country owe a debt to someone, they often place themselves in service to the one they owe until they work off the debt. We don’t do things that way exactly, but we certainly understand the concept of debt and I think that helps us understand that a bond-servant of the Lord is someone that owes a debt that can never be repaid. Is that what you think Paul meant?
Another thing that helps me understand the concept of bond-servant is that there is an alternative. It’s not like being a slave, because we have a choice; slaves had no choice. We incurred a debt and are now unable to pay it back, so our choice is to either work for our creditor or go to prison. It’s not that much different here in my country and it’s not much different between us and God. We owe God a debt that can never be repaid and we have a choice – obedience or prison. Obedience leads us to belief in Jesus as Savior and Lord which leads to eternal life in the presence of God; while prison leads us to a life in this world as a slave to sin which leads to eternal punishment away from the presence of God.
Paul says that we shouldn’t be quarrelsome, but kind to all. Do you think he really means all when he says all? That’s a difficult order, even for a bond-servant. So God wants us to be kind, patient and gentle to those who oppose us. Paul may have traveled around quite a bit, but I know he never made it to this part of the world. Maybe if he had, he wouldn’t call us to such an impossible task. People around here don’t take kindly to correction, especially not from folks like us who use the Bible as their standard of truth. Objective truth is sneered at in my country.
Paul also says that repentance leads to knowledge of the truth – and that God may grant repentance to those who oppose us. Most people think that repentance is something that we do ourselves, not something that is a gift from God; (actually, most think that repentance isn’t even necessary and too many preachers ignore the subject altogether).
So if our opposition comes to knowledge of the truth, they will come to their senses; and if they come to their senses they will escape the snare of the devil. I really like the way that sounds. It’s like one thing leads to another logically, step by step. Looking at it backward works too. Do you think Paul knew this? They are in the snare of the devil because they’re not in their right mind; they’re not in their right mind because they have no knowledge of the truth and they have no knowledge of the truth because they have not been granted repentance by God.
But it doesn’t end there. God may grant them repentance if we treat them with kindness, gentleness and patience. It could all hinge on how we respond to someone who opposes us. Everything could depend on it! I had no idea that how we treat unbelievers and those who oppose us could have such an effect. Thank you for passing along this knowledge, my friend.
One more thing that I almost left out: Paul’s last phrase, those who oppose us are, “held captive by him [Satan] to do his will.” Timothy, do you think Paul used that word on purpose? I used to believe in coincidence, but now I just see the hand of God everywhere. We are bond-servants of God and those who oppose us are captives of Satan. This language isn’t just an accident, is it? Servants and captives are very different things. We are bond-servants by choice but why are they captives (prisoners) of the devil? Is it ignorance or apathy? Is it selfishness or laziness; or is by choice?
Please send me more soon. There is a richness in Paul’s writing that refreshes me and helps my friends and me know and love God more and more every day.
