Heaven is important, but it’s not the end of the world

The following quote is written by N. T. Wright from an article entitled The Road to New Creation:

"God is not going to abolish the universe of space, time and matter; he is going to renew it, to restore it, to fill it with new joy and purpose and delight, to take from it all that has corrupted it. ‘The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom, and rejoice with joy and singing; the desert shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.’ The last book of the Bible ends, not with the company of the saved being taken up into heaven, but with the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth, resulting in God’s new creation, new heavens and new earth, in which everything that has been true, lovely, and of good report will be vindicated, enhanced, set free from all pain and sorrow. God himself, it says, will wipe away all tears from all eyes. One of the great difficulties in preaching the gospel in our days is that everyone assumes that the name of the game is, ultimately, to ‘go to heaven when you die’, as though that were the last act in the drama... Heaven is important, but it’s not the end of the world; God will make new heavens and new earth, and give us new bodies to live and work and take delight in his new creation. And the ‘good news’ of the Christian gospel is that this new world, this new creation, has already begun: it began when Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead on Easter morning, having faced and beaten the double enemy, sin and death, that has corrupted and defaced God’s lovely creation"

Looking Back - The Worldly Church

“Evangelical Christianity is now tragically below the New Testament standard. Worldliness is an accepted part of our way of life. Our religious mood is social instead of spiritual. We have lost the art of worship. We are not producing saints. Our models are successful business men, celebrated athletes and theatrical personalities. We carry on our religious activities after the methods of the modern advertiser. Our literature is shallow and our hymnody borders on sacrilege. And scarcely anyone appears to care.”

~ A.W. Tozer

Looking Back - Evangelism

"There is no true evangelism without the doctrine of sin, and without an understanding of what sin is. I do not want to be unfair, but I say that a gospel which merely says “Come to Jesus,” and offers Him as a Friend, and offers a marvelous new life, without convicting of sin, is not New Testament evangelism. The essence of evangelism is to start by preaching the law; and it is because the law has not been preached that we have so much superficial evangelism…evangelism must start with the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man and the eternal consequences of evil and wrong-doing. It is only the man who has been brought to see his guilt in this way who flies to Christ for deliverance and redemption."

~ Martin Lloyd-Jones

Elderly woman (92) witnesses to man trying to rob her

Too Pious to Party

In a dark world full of lost souls, starving children and unreached tribes should Christians feel guilty for celebrating and rejoicing? When the world is weeping should Christians be laughing? When the world is mourning should Christians be dancing? When the world is famished should Christians be feasting? Does physical happiness refute personal holiness? Does partying contradict piety? Many Christians are confused by these questions. They tend to feel guilty and ashamed when they compare what they have to what the lost do not. When they look out at the world and see pain, persecution and poverty they feel ashamed of their own health, liberty and wealth. What is a Christian to do?

This paragraph will most certainly end with the word "but..." Christians should have a heart for the lost. We should, like Jesus, look out on the crowds with eyes of compassion. We are to mourn with those who mourn and weep with those who weep. Jesus said when we give the hungry food and drink and when we welcome the stranger and clothe the naked and when we visit the sick and those in prison we do or don't do all those things to Him (Mt 25). God's Law tells us this: "For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’" (Duet. 15:11) We should always be proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom to the world. If we love Jesus we will feed His sheep. But...

There has always been lost souls in the world. There has always been poverty and suffering. God is sovereignly at work in history restoring what was lost at the fall. The kingdom of God is advancing and Christ will reign till all enemies are under His feet. Until it is all restored and Christ returns we will and always have had the lost, the dying, the sick, the poor and the persecuted in the world. In spite of the reality of sin in the world God wanted His people to celebrate. We don't have to, out of guilt or pity, wait till all is restored before we laugh and dance. There will always be plenty of reasons to mourn but there is also plenty of reasons to celebrate.

God's people Israel, in the Old Testament, were surrounded by pagan cultures. There was poverty, idolatry and suffering in those cultures. In that context look at what God commanded them to do: "...then you shall turn it into money and bind up the money in your hand and go to the place that the Lord your God chooses and spend the money for whatever you desire—oxen or sheep or wine or strong drink, whatever your appetite craves. And you shall eat there before the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household." (Duet 14:25-27) Douglas Jones and Douglas Wilson, in their book "Angels in the Architecture" sarcastically commented on this verse: "Such unthriftiness. Such waste. Such gluttony. Such winebibbing. Such is a command of our holy God."

They also wrote this:

• Celebration is worshiping God with our bodies, with the material creation He has set up around us. Celebrating – whether in feasts, ceremonies, holidays, formal worship, or lovemaking –are all part of obeying God’s command to “love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength” (Duet 6:5; Mk 12:30) We are to show our love for God not just with one portion of our being (the spiritual aspect); we are to love God with our whole body, heart and strength and legs and lips.
• Complaint is the flag of ingratitude, and it waives above the center of unbelieving hearts –“when they knew God, the glorified him not as God, neither were thankful” (Rom 1:21). Yet by grace, God’s redemption in creation ought to keep us in a perpetual state of thanks which bursts out in celebration at every opportunity. Again, we are celebrating God’s dominion...

There is indeed, in time and history, "a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance" (Ecc. 3:4) "The Lord makes poor and makes rich; He brings low and lifts up." (1 Sam 2:7) Let us celebrate the Lord. We must resist the gnostic tendency to separate the physical things into the category of evil and the spiritual things into the category of good. We serve a God who clothed Himself with human flesh and after He died His body was resurrected. “Asceticism” is the doctrine that a person can attain a high spiritual and moral state by practicing rigorous self-denial and extreme abstinence. The apostle Paul made it clear that asceticism was not the answer: "These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh." (Col 2:23)

Victorious kingdom living includes celebratory kingdom feasting and dancing. It is sin that causes us to forget our blessings and fail to celebrate them: "Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and gladness of heart, for the abundance of everything, therefore you shall serve your enemies, whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in need of everything; and He will put a yoke of iron on your neck until He has destroyed you" (Duet. 28: 47-48). We Christians sometimes have such a hard time gratefully honoring God's blessings in celebration. Yes, we should not forget about the lost but we should also not forget to celebrate the fact that we've been found! Have we become too pious to party? "So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." (1 Cor 10:31)

The helpless and the harvest

Matthew 9:35-38

• "And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."

Watch this video in light of the above passage:

Shocking Interview with an Athiest

Looking Back - J. I. Packer

"In particular, it is important to insist that obscurantism [opposition to the increase and spread of knowledge] in all its forms is wholly out of keeping with true Evangelicalism. The Evangelical is not afraid of facts, for he knows that all facts are God's facts; nor is he afraid of thinking, for the knows that all truth is God's truth, and right reason cannot endanger sound faith. He is called to love God with all his mind; and part of what this means is that, when confronted by those who, on professedly rational grounds, take exception to historical Christianity he must set himself not merely to deplore or denounce them, but to out-think them... If present day Evangelicals fall short of this, they are false to their own principles and heritage."

~ J. I. Packer

Looking Back - Fishers of Men

"The early disciples were fishers of men - while modern disciples are often little more than aquarium keepers."

~ Unknown

Looking Back - Stony Ground Hearers

"There are so many stony ground hearers who receive the Word with joy that I have determined to suspend my judgment till I know the tree by its fruits ...Do you think any farmer would have a crop of corn next year unless he plowed now? You may as well expect a crop of corn on unplowed ground as a crop of grace until the soul is convinced of its being undone without a Savior. That is the reason we have so many mushroom converts, so many persons that are always happy! happy! happy! and never were miserable. Why? Because their stony ground is not plowed up; they have not got a conviction of the law."

~ George Whitefield

Looking Back - Sharing Your Faith

"The number one reason people don't share their faith is that their walk doesn't match their talk."

~ Mark Calhill

Looking Back - "Gospel Hardened Generation"

"If I had my way, I would declare a moratorium [a suspension of an ongoing or planned activity] on public preaching of 'the plan of salvation' in America for one to two years. Then I would call on everyone who has use of the airways and the pulpits to preach the holiness of God, the righteousness of God and the law of God, until sinners would cry out, 'What must we do to be saved?' Then I would take them off in a corner and whisper the gospel to them. Such drastic action is needed because we have gospel-hardened a generation of sinners by telling them how to be saved before they have any understanding why they need to be saved."

~ Paris Reidhead, Getting Evangelicals Saved

Take This Test...Whom Do You Serve?

Evangelism and Theology

"Evangelism and theology for the most part go separate ways, and the result is great loss for both. When theology is not held on course by the demands of evangelistic communication, it grows abstract and speculative, wayward in method, theoretical in interest and irresponsible in stance. When evangelism is not fertilized, fed and controlled by theology, it becomes a stylized performance seeking its effect through manipulative skills rather than the power of vision and the force of truth. Both theology and evangelism are then, in one important sense, unreal, false to their own God-given nature; for all true theology has an evangelistic thrust, and all true evangelism is theology in action."

J.I. Packer

First the bad news

“The vague and tenuous hope that God is too kind to punish the ungodly has become a deadly opiate for the consciences of millions. It hushes their fears and allows them to practice all pleasant forms of iniquity while death draws every day nearer and the command to repent goes unregarded.” (A. W. Tozer)

This is why we must not remove God's Law or God's wrath or God's justice or even God's hatred from our message to the lost. You're not going to get me out of a comfy cruise ship and onto a little un-comfy lifeboat unless you make it clear that the cruise ship is sinking fast. The lifeboat is not good news to me unless I first know that the cruise ship is heading for destruction. This means that the Good News (Gospel) is not good news unless preceded by bad news. The Law, along with it's judgments, is our tutor that leads us to Christ. I think a good rule of thumb, when it comes to the gospel, is first the bad news and then the good news.

Ready or not here I preach

Paul, in a letter, told Timothy to “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.” (1 Tim 4:2) Many people think preaching “out of season” means preaching when you are feeling bad. They think this is an exhortation to preach when you’re feeling sick or down or tired or bad. But the next verse explains what “out of season” means. “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” (1 Tim 4:3-4) The preacher should preach the Word of God to an audience who is receptive but he should also preach the same thing to an audience who isn’t. It’s the man of God’s duty to preach the Word, out of season, when nobody wants to hear it because “time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching.”

The church, today, has been infected with a consumer mentality that says, “When they don’t want sound doctrine you can water down and cater your message to fit with that. When they don’t want a lot of meat and heavy sermons you can back off and preach the Word a lot less.” The rule of thumb for many preachers today is “Preach the word in season and water it down out of season.” Paul, though, says to preach the Word when they want it and preach the Word when they don’t want it. Be ready, Paul says, “in season and out of season” to preach the Word and to “reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.” We must preach to those who do have itching ears and preach to those who don’t have itching ears.

We must also preach the Word and apply it to all areas of life and living. If you go back one chapter in First Timothy you read this, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” (1 Tim 3:16-17) All of Scripture is profitable and all of Scripture is profitable to all areas of life and living. That is why the man of God must not be afraid to preach it and apply it to all situations whether people want to hear it or not. The preaching of the Word must be stable and steady (it must not fluctuate) no matter how receptive the audience is.

In the book of Acts Paul speaks to the Ephesian Elders and says this, “And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again. Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” (Acts 20:25-27) We should, as Paul, preach the whole counsel of God. But even more convicting, in this passage, is the fact that if Paul had not preached the whole counsel of God he would have been guilty of blood. Listen to what he said again, “Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” Preachers who water the message down or trim it down to little, pathetic “sermonettes for Christianettes” need to check their hands for the blood of souls. We should want people to want to hear and we should pray that they want to hear but if they do not want to hear we cannot use that as an excuse to shrink from our duty to preach the whole counsel of God.

Paul continues, in Acts 20, by saying this, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears.” (Acts 20:28-31) Paul spent three years applying the Word of God and preaching it here and there and everywhere. We must also, patiently and consistently, preach the whole counsel of God in season and out of season, whether people want to hear it or not. We come up with so many excuses to NOT preach the whole counsel of God. We say things like, “we need to first build a relationship with them” or “they’re not ready for the meat” or “we need to be relevant” or “we need to build some trust first.” Paul said preach it if they want it and preach it if they don’t.

When I was little we use to play the game of hide and seek. When the person who was seeking was done counting to 30 he would say, “Ready or not here I come.” We, as Kingdom seekers, must learn to say, in season and out of season, “Ready or not here I preach.”

Is Your Evangelism God Centered?

A New Reformation by Dr. James Montgomery Boice

"I would like to see the beginning of a new Reformation in our day, and I hope you would like to see it too and are praying for it. I hope you have become nauseated with the tawdry entertainment that passes for the true worship of God in many of our churches and, like the saints of the past, are longing for more of the deep truths of the inerrant Word of God. We certainly need a reformation.

The most serious issue facing the church today is not the inerrancy of Scripture but its sufficiency. Do we believe that God has given us what we need in this book? Or do we suppose that we have to supplement the Bible with human things? Do we need sociological techniques to do evangelism, pop psychology and pop psychiatry for Christian growth, extra-biblical signs or miracles for guidance, or political tools for achieving social progress and reform? It is possible to believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice, and yet to neglect it and effectually repudiate it just because we think that it is not sufficient for today’s tasks and that other things need to be brought in to accomplish what is needed. This is exactly what many evangelicals and evangelical churches are doing today."

Dr. James Montgomery Boice

Kicking Down The Door

I’m sick and tired of people portraying and describing the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Alpha and the Omega, the victorious Son of God who reigns on the throne of heaven, as some effeminate, weak and neglected Arminian hippy that is just standing there knocking on the door and waiting for sinners to invite Him into their life and heart. Our view of evangelism has to change. Is Jesus really standing there, anxiously and helplessly, on the outside of the sinner’s heart? Is He powerless and stuck on the outside until the “decision” is made and the door is opened from the inside?

But, you might ask, what about Rev 3:20? It says this: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” The problem is that this verse has been ripped out of its context and applied to evangelism. It is a message to the elders of a church (the church in Laodicea). As David Chilton wrote: “He is not making a feeble plea, as if He did not rule history and predestine its most minute details… Nor is he speaking to people in general, for he is directing His message to His church; nor again, is he simply speaking to Christians as individuals, but to Christians as members of the Church. This verse cannot be made to serve the purposes of Arminian, subjective individualism without violently wrenching it from its context.” Chilton also wrote: “For it should be obvious that in this verse He is extending to the Church an offer of renewed communion with Himself.”

Rev 3:20 is not describing the door of anyone's heart. Jesus knocks at the door of that corrupt church of Laodicea. Christ does not knock at any man's heart and wait for permission to come in. God opened Lydia's heart - then she listened and believed. That is the irresistible power of His grace. He breaks down the door of the closed heart and makes us believe. Acts 13:48 says, “…and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.” Jesus is Sovereign, not man. He doesn’t need our permission to come into our heart. In fact, we cannot even come to the door when we are laying face down and dead on the floor. The sinner is "dead in trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:1); "you being dead in your sins" (Colossians 2:13). Dead men don’t open doors.

In John chapter 6, Jesus stresses the absolute inability of the natural man to perform acceptable spiritual actions, including opening the door of our heart. In verse 44, He said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.” (John 6:44) We are not able to come to Him unless the Father “draws” us or drags us. I want a picture of Jesus kicking a door down in the same masculine way He overthrew the tables in the temple while chasing out the religious hypocrites with a scourge of cords. He’s the one who commands the wind and sea to be still…and it obeys. (Mk. 4.39) He speaks and the galley of soldiers falls flat on their backs. (Jn. 18.5-6) Thank God He rescues us from our own depravity and rebellion and brings (or drags) us into His loving presence.

We don’t need to open the door of our heart, we need a new heart. Ezekiel 36:26-27 says, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” Before we can respond we need to be resurrected. Before our heart can respond our heart must be replaced. In the famous picture, shown above, there is no door knob on the outside of the door. In other words, Jesus can't do anything until the door is opened from the inside. Yes, we need a picture of a masculine Jesus kicking down a door.