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Pastor Terry Jones: Don’t Do It!

9 September 2010 By The Grinder Leave a Comment

We are called to preach Christ, not intentionally incite animosity and anger. I propose that Pastor Terry Jones’ plan to publicly burn the Koran has nothing to do with the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. I hope Pastor Jones will ask himself seven questions before proceeding:

  1. As a result of the Koran burning, how many Muslim’s will hear and believe the truth that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son?
  2. After you publicly desecrate what they consider sacred, will more Muslim’s or less be inclined to listen to the greatest news in all of life?
  3. How does burning the Koran promote the truth and values that Jesus Christ taught his followers to observe?
  4. How does burning the Koran demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit that Paul taught?
  5. How does burning the Koran relate to the methods and example of the early church as recorded in the Book of Acts (think Mars Hill)?
  6. How does burning the Koran relate to the Great Commission or Jesus’ prophetic charge in Acts 1.8?
  7. Honestly, what biblical text has led you to believe that this is a good thing to do?

My advice to Pastor Jones is simple: stop what you are planning and return to the true, biblical role of a pastor – enjoying, living, promoting and preaching the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ – at home and among the nations.

Filed Under: Errors, Stupidity

Update from the Far East – Week 1

7 September 2010 By The Grinder 1 Comment

Okay, today marks one week since we departed from America. It took a few days to get here. Thankfully, the trip was mostly uneventful. The one event that did occur was a minor delay. After flying half way to Asia, our plane had to return to Moscow. Thus, a five hour flight became a 10 hour flight. In the end, it was no biggie; we arrived with our luggage and our lives. We’ve also had no issues with visas or registration. We praise the Lord for that.

Our focus for the first part of the trip has been helping the church establish a children’s ministry. Maya and Clare have put in many hours preparing and presenting, and thus far the reception has been excellent. Today, they are training a new group.

We head to the village this weekend, where I plan to teach a couple of sessions on Saturday, and preach in a newly-planted village church on Sunday.  Next week, we plan to spend time with the leaders here, discussing how to establish an effective missions program in the local church. We expect God to do great things through all of these imperfect efforts.

My Russian is not as rusty as I thought it would be. It does drop off quickly when I get tired, but I think it always did that. I’ve been able to communicate fine, and we will see this weekend if I can still teach/preach in the language.

The kids have adapted fine. David’s language is coming back quick. They are really enjoying this part of their heritage.

Thanks for your prayers. We will keep you posted.

Filed Under: Sempiternal, Travels

Protected: Sermon for Sept 5th

29 August 2010 By The Grinder Leave a Comment

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Filed Under: Sermons

The Greatest News in All The World

24 August 2010 By The Grinder Leave a Comment

Reposting this from Justin Taylor’s Blog. Watch this and glory in the greatest news in all the world; and believe in Him!

More about the video at Worship Matters.

Filed Under: Sempiternal

How to Wreck Your Church in 3 Weeks

22 August 2010 By The Grinder 2 Comments

I am re-posting this since we discussed this subject in Sunday School today and I referred to this article, and I thought it would be helpful for anyone who might have wanted to wreck their church in only 3 weeks. :-)

How to wreck your church in three weeks:

Week One: Walk into church today and think about how long you’ve been a member, how much you’ve sacrificed, how under-appreciated you are. Take note of every way you’re dissatisfied with your church now. Take note of every person who displeases you.

Meet for coffee this week with another member and “share your heart.” Discuss how your church is changing, how you are being left out. Ask your friend who else in the church has “concerns.” Agree together that you must “pray about it.”

Week Two: Send an email to a few other “concerned” members. Inform them that a groundswell of grievance is surfacing in your church. Problems have gone unaddressed for too long. Ask them to keep the matter to themselves “for the sake of the body.”

As complaints come in, form them into a petition to demand an accounting from the leaders of the church. Circulate the petition quietly. Gathering support will be easy. Even happy members can be used if you appeal to their sense of fairness – that your side deserves a hearing. Be sure to proceed in a way that conforms to your church constitution, so that your petition is procedurally correct.

Week Three: When the growing moral fervor, ill-defined but powerful, reaches critical mass, confront the elders with your demands. Inform them of all the woundedness in the church, which leaves you with no choice but to put your petition forward. Inform them that, for the sake of reconciliation, the concerns of the body must be satisfied.

Whatever happens from this point on, you have won. You have changed the subject in your church from gospel advance to your own grievances. To some degree, you will get your way. Your church will need three or four years for recovery. But at any future time, you can do it all again. It only takes three weeks.
Just one question. Even if you are being wronged, “Why not rather suffer wrong?” (1 Corinthians 6:7).

HT: Take Your Vitamin Z

Filed Under: Daily Life

The KJV-Only Distraction

21 August 2010 By The Grinder 2 Comments

Back in the early 90′s, while I was attending a conservative Bible college in Michigan, I was first introduced to the KJV-Only debate. It was my classmate from Tennessee who leaned over my shoulder and asked, “Is that the Bible you’re reading or one of those modern perversions?” I had no idea what he meant. But I learned!

Now, 20 years later, I am glad to say that most of the steam for the backward movement has run out. But there are still proponents, and the debate inches on. I have observed a few things over the years about the nature of this particular debate. First, most KJV-Only proponents have never taken the time to learn the original languages (I am aware of some that are scholars – but precious few). Thus, when they blast codices and textual families, they are speaking about documents that they have never read and cannot read. Since this is a textual debate at its core, this is highly significant (devastating?).

Second, most of the KJV-Only debates that I have observed or in which I have engaged eventually turned petty and unhealthy – with the KJV-Only proponents primarily resorting to ad hominem attacks and throwing out labels like “blind heretics” for good measure. Of course, this can happen to any good, spirited debate. However, at least in my anecdotal experience, it usually happens during a KJV-Only conversation.  Once, I told a friend to watch his watch and tell me how long it will take for my opponent to call me ‘stupid’ or the like while we began to reason the arguments and positions. It took a mere 3.5 minutes. That is also telling.

Third, and most significant, the best arguments undergirding the narrow KJV-Only position are extremly thin, circular and require massive assumptions. The position is just lacking in meat, plain and simple. And when its proponents feel threatened because of this, they resort to insult to make up for it.

And I know that I am painting with broad strokes and making no attempt to support my claims. That is because this is not my attempt to comprehensibly debunk the KJV-Only movement. Rather, I said all that to turn your attention to a great short piece on the subject by Daniel Wallace.

You can also read James White’s weigh-in on the matter in his book, The King James Only Controversy. Better still are the two cents that D.A. Carson offered in ’78 entitled, The King James Version Debate: A Plea For Reason.

Filed Under: Books, Errors

Piper on How to Use the Sign Gifts

17 August 2010 By The Grinder Leave a Comment

I just noticed the following video on the Desiring God blog. Piper has had, perhaps, the most influential impact on my life and theology of any preacher that I have listened to/read. However, he goes several places in his interpretation that I cannot. One area is the subject matter of this video. Notice, there is a word that we expect him to use, and that he almost uses, but purposely avoids.

That said, I appreciate Piper’s appeal for order.

Filed Under: Theology

Carson on How We Know God Exists

13 August 2010 By The Grinder Leave a Comment

Filed Under: Theology

Randy Alcorn on the Pro-Life Evangelicals voting for Pro-Choicers

9 August 2010 By The Grinder Leave a Comment

Click here to hear Randy Alcorn’s excellent answer to Mark Driscoll’s question.

Filed Under: Sempiternal

Joel Hunter on Literal and Liberal Views of Genesis 1

26 July 2010 By The Grinder Leave a Comment

I have so many issues with what Hunter is saying here, I do not even know where to begin. He is politely demeaning to literalists (like me!), suggesting that we, though sincere, are refusing to use our full mental capacity. Hunter, where are you going?

Filed Under: Errors

Things Not to Do in Biblical Debate

23 July 2010 By The Grinder Leave a Comment

Dr. Richard Mayhue has admonished those of us who engage in debate (specifically, debates about the end times, but most of his points are applicable to general biblical debate) by exposing the following poor tactics in a what-not-to-do list:

1. Putting non-biblical, historical documents on an equal par with Scripture to gain a greater sense of authority for one’s conclusion or even to refute a biblical presentation.
2. Reading current events into the Scripture to prove one’s point.
3. Inserting one’s predetermined position, without first proving it, into a Scripture passage to gain apparent biblical support.
4. Attacking the character of one who holds a particular view in order to discredit the view.
5. Accusing an advocate of an opposing view of holding certain unacceptable interpretations or beliefs, when in fact he does not, in order to demonstrate falsely his apparent poor scholarship.
6. Employing selective data to make one’s point, when full disclosure would have actually weakened the conclusion.
7. Drawing unwarranted and erroneous implications from the Greek NT text that are used to override the more obvious and determinative conclusions derived from the passage’s context.

- Master’s Seminary Journal Volume 13, 2 (Sun Valley, CA: The Master’s Seminary, 2002), 239-42.

Sadly, I see these methods widely employed in debates and about most subjects (except for number 2, which is mostly reserved for eschatological debates). That is sad because controversy and debate can be decidedly good things, clarifying doctrines which would otherwise remain obscure. However, the above list contain the behaviors which often render a debate useless.

Filed Under: Theology

The Great Painter and His Brushes

19 July 2010 By The Grinder Leave a Comment

“Picture in your mind a great, wise painter, painting on a huge canvas with many brushes, most of them very ordinary and messy. The painter is God, so you can’t picture him. He’s invisible. But he intends for his painting to be the visible display of his wisdom. He knows people can’t see him, but he wants his wisdom to be seen and admired. His canvas is huge. It’s the size of the created universe. I know you can’t really imagine looking at that canvas because you are in it. But do your best.

And God is painting with thousands and thousands of colors and shades and textures—a picture as big as the universe and as old as creation and as lasting as eternity—a picture we call history, with the central drama being the preparation, salvation, and formation of the church of Jesus Christ. And he is using thousands of different brushes, most of them very ordinary and very small because every minute detail is crucial in this painting, to display the wisdom of the Painter. These brushes are God’s missionaries. “

– John Piper 2004

Filed Under: Sermons

Spurgeon on Reading

16 July 2010 By The Grinder Leave a Comment

We will look at Paul’s books. We do not know what the books were about, and we can only form some guess as to what the parchments were. Paul had a few books which were left, perhaps wrapped up in the cloak, and Timothy was to be careful to bring them.

Even an apostle must read. Some of our very ultra-Calvinistic brethren think that a minister who reads books and studies his sermon must be a very deplorable specimen of a preacher. A man who comes up into the pulpit, professes to take his text on the spot and talks any quantity of nonsense is the idol of many. If he will speak without premeditation, or pretend to do so, and never produce what they call a dish of dead men’s brains – oh, that is the preacher!

How rebuked they are by the apostle! He is inspired, and yet he wants books! He has been preaching for at least thirty years, and yet he wants books! He had seen the Lord, and yet he wants books! He had had a wider experience than most men, and yet wants books!

He had been caught up into the Third Heaven and had heard things which it was unlawful for a man to utter, yet he wants books! He had written the major part of the New Testament, and yet he wants books! The apostle says to Timothy, and so he says to every preacher, “Give attendance to reading” (1 Tim. 4:13).

The man who never reads will never be read. He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

Brethren, what is true of ministers is true of all our people. You need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works, especially the Puritanic writers and expositions of the Bible.

Filed Under: Books

Radical; Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream

9 July 2010 By The Grinder 5 Comments

I am so encouraged with the ministry of David Platt. He has challenged and encouraged me since I began to pay attention to his preaching and teaching. He is bold, unpretentious and deadly serious about the glory of God among the nations.

That is why this book did not shock me. It challenged me, but I knew where he was going with it from the first few pages. Nevertheless, it was an extremely profitable book for me at this stage in my life. Often it is necessary to examine our lives and root out our subtle idols; and then to question whether or not our priorities are in line with God’s. Since God’s ambition is his glory among the nations, we ought to be about that task with all of our beings. This book will challenge you to do just that.

Read this book today.

Filed Under: Books

The Man Who Moved a Mountian

7 July 2010 By The Grinder Leave a Comment

Bob Childress was a rough mountaineer from the Blue Ridge Mountains who turned from a life of revelry, bootlegging and violence when he met Jesus.  Through the discipleship of a Presbyterian minister, Bob gave up drinking and sought hard (and fought hard) to become a minister himself. Against everyone’s expectations, he completed seminary and was ordained to the ministry in his early 30′s, with a wife and several children in tow.

Childress became a sought-after preacher. Several big-city churches offered him their prestigious pulpits, but Bob felt the call of the Blue Ridge. For decades he labored, starting churches and schools, and preaching the gospel. He tried to steer the mountains from their backward ways. Scorned and often in danger, Childress never gave up. In the end, he moved the mountain.

The Man Who Moved a Mountain, by Richard C. Davids is an inspiring story of faith and faithfulness. I was challenged by Bob’s stubbornness; his willingness to trust God and walk into danger with a warm smile and a genuine love.

It is a great book and I highly recommend it. Order it here from Amazon.com.

Filed Under: Books
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