How our age cries out for leaders like this. May God make us like such men.
Oh God, Give Us Leaders with Such Humility.
Monthly Archives: December 2011
Ann Voskamp, J.P. Moreland, Obamacare, The Strait of Hormuz, Jimmy Stewart, The Sinless Christ, Christology
Weekend Links
This week’s links with a lot of separate categories. As always, these are to provoke thought, expand perspective and challenge assumptions, not an endorsement of every particular.
Thinking Better About Government and the Economy
The Sensible Vision of Paul Ryan on the Budget (Larry Kudlow)
If this is coming to USA, how do I get out? (theblogprof)
Engaging the Culture
What’s Going on in the Strait of Hormuz? (CNS News)
When Bedford Falls Becomes Potterville (Larry Taunton)
Was Jesus Sinless? (From a former Navy Seal)
Thinking About Science and Technology
Thinking Better about Doctrine
How is Christ in Our Midst: A Christmas Reflection? (J.P. Moreland)
Beyond Narnia: Always Christmas and Never Winter (Marty Schoenleber)
Thinking Better about Pastoral Theology and Care
The surprising thing that most pastors have a hard time doing. (Brian Croft)
Thinking Better about Thanksgiving
A Thanksgiving Laugh Through the Eyes of Child (Llama Momma)
Why it is Always Christmas and Never Winter (Ann Voskamp)
Beyond Narnia: Always Christmas, Never Winter
Friday is for Heart Songs
The Importance of the Names of Christ
The Old Testament makes it clear that it is God alone who can save men and women from sin and the corrupting influence of sin:
Genesis 49:18 2 Kings 19:15-19 2 Chronicles 14:11
2 Chronicles 20:5-12 Psalm 3:8 Psalm 25:5
Psalm 37:39 Psalm 62:1 Psalm 81:1
Isaiah 12:2 Jeremiah 3:23 Lamentations 3:26
Micah 7:7 Habakkuk 3:18 Zechariah 4:6
This is why Jesus’ claim to forgive sin was so radical to the Jews of His day (cf. also Matthew 9:2-8; Mark 2:1-13; Luke 5:18-26).
This gives us a tremendous insight into the names that are given to Jesus in the birth narrative of Matthew. When the person described in Matthew 1:18-25 is given the name “Jesus” by an angel of the Lord, “Because he will save his people from their sins” it can only mean that he is “Immanuel.” This is precisely what the angel of the Lord makes explicit when he applies Isaiah 7:14 and Isaiah 9:6 to Jesus.
Matthew then makes the issue still clearer by providing the translation of the name “Immanuel,” (“God with us”), thus drawing attention to the name as more than a name only, but rather a description of the bearer’s person and purpose. In short the name Joseph is to call the child born to Mary reveals both who he is (Immanuel = “God with us”) and what he came to do (Jesus = “YHWH will save).
We really are “the visited planet.” He really was and is Immanuel and He really will save you from the consequences of your sin. This, not toys and trinkets, is what Christmas is all about. Marketers and mass media, greeting cards and department stores tell us an almost endless number of things about Christmas.
Christmas is about giving.
Christmas is family.
Christmas is togetherness.
Christmas is peace and joy.
Christmas is about children and toys and etc., etc.
Don’t buy it. None of those things are bad. They just aren’t the whole picture. In fact, they leave out the most important person in the picture.
Christmas is about God loving you and wanting you to be a part of His family, and wanting to give you the greatest gift, and wanting you to be together with Him and wanting to bring peace and joy to your heart not for a season but for eternity. And this is why the child born in a manger is the “Master Key” to understanding the whole Bible.
And this is the reason that no matter what is going on around us, cancer or healing, heartache or heart full, disappointment or surprises, defeat or victory, it is always Christmas and never winter. Train your heart to never forget this. He is with us always and will never forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).
©1995, 2006, 2011 (revised), Marty Schoenleber, Jr.
Your Job is Simple: Show the Greatness of Christ
It is your job to be so filled up, so overflowing, so saturated with a vision of Christ, and his glory, and his gospel, and the wonders of the cross that your people catch an intoxicating glimpse of Him that draws them to lay everything down for Him as a living offering, a living sacrifice so that they begin to prove in their experience, both to themselves and to a watching world that the will of God is good, acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:1-2).
(for more Your Job is Simple: Show the Greatness of Christ).
The Stench of Sin Should Not Deter Us from Love
Thursday is for Discipleship
My experience with Christians in some thirty states that I have spoken in is that:
They rarely share their faith with others if sharing their faith is defined as “the content of the gospel.”- They rarely invite anyone to anything in which others would be exposed to the “content of the gospel.”
- They seem to associate living for Jesus in some kind of quasi-political or cultural battle.
- They avoid “harsh” and “broken” and “coarse” people, “foul mouthed people” as if they are almost contagious.
- And they extremely rarely ever venture out to contact, befriend, or care for people who “look” dangerous, dirty or “hard.” In fact, one study showed that only 2% of Christians ever invite any non-Christians to Church let alone share their faith with them!
But souls blistered by sin are good soil and respond more readily to the healing balm of the gospel. Often time the best soil is fertilized by the manure of a lot of bad and destructive decisions. One commentator summed up Psalm 1:6 and Proverbs 4:19 with these pregnant words: “The way of the wicked is hard.”
But that is often the place from which attention gets refocused on resources outside ourselves. People who have stumbled often look up. And that is where the gospel finally resounds as good news.
Jesus put it this way: “I did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” (Matthew 9:13)
If we want to be like the Savior; if we want to be his disciples, if we want to hear “well done, good and faithful servant, . . . enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21), we can’t allow the stench of people’s decisions keep us from proclaiming the hope and promise of the gospel.
[Note: please don't infer any animosity or lack of compassion for homeless people, dog lovers, motorcycle owners from the pictures associated with this post. My desire was to simply depict some of the people who many Christians write off as "scary" or "probably not interested" and never go the second mile of even engaging in conversation. You could substitute your neighbor with the noisy dog, or your neighbor who plays the loud music, or your neighbor who is uses coarse language, or dresses "weird" or is tattooed "weird" or pierced "weird" or whatever your particular, let's be honest, prejudice is. Bottom line: people need to hear the gospel and you are the one that is in their path.]
How can we call ourselves followers of Christ, if we will not follow him to the outcasts of our world? Isn’t that what Jesus did?
“Forgive Us for Forgetting that You are Infinitely Holy”
“Christianity today is man-centered, not God-centered.” –Tozer (more at …)
via “Forgive Us for Forgetting that You are Infinitely Holy”.
A Faith Had Been Caught, A Lord Had Been Found
Wednesday is for Prayer
My beautiful bride of 27 years and I are fast moving toward the land of “empty-nesters.”
I hate the term.
How could we ever be empty with the glorious treasures that God has given us in our children. They are such gifts, such enormous islands of light in a dark world. Our love for each of them, and now their spouses, moves dangerously close to idolatry and daily we remind ourselves that we will love them best only if we love them less than the Savior who redeemed us by living sinlessly among us, dying for us, and rising victoriously to announce the captives have been set free.
This year for Christmas, we were together “the marrieds” and “the single girl”. It was a Christmas we will treasure the rest of our lives. Among the gifts, was a copy of a poem that young Marty wrote for us at Christmas the year before he married the lovely Anna. This year he gave us a copy of it. Parents treasure everything their children give them. It’s in our DNA. But this one caught us both off guard. It told us prayers prayed from before they were each born and continued to this day, had been answered.
A faith had been caught. A Lord had been found. Christmas, real Christmas, would continue for another generation. May all your prayers for your children be answered and may you never grow weary in lifting them up to the throne of grace. Prayers for children are precious in the ear of God. Young Marty’s poem follows.
Homeschooled Understanding
This is not a poem that could thank you,
just an illustration of a camel passing through the head of a needle into open arms.
Arms that can no longer hold me up–’cause I’m too big now.
Even though your tongue is as strong as Egyptian pyramids.
I see a mown lawn
And a fixed bicycle
A pumped basketball
And a Bible with endless highlights
I hear a cough too familiar
Wrought from holding a village up with your voice
Words escaping like golden chariots of light on a hill.
And for the days the bear eats me*
And for the days he swallows me whole
There’s always a morning
When I can hear you forging that sword in a furnace of holy fire.
I smell an egg dish; that I don’t want to eat,
Made beautiful on once-a-year fine china
And an aroma of nameless perfume scenting winter coats.
I smell Christmas.
I feel a forgiving hand rubbing insecurities and flaws from my back
In a circular motion.
I feel a mouth
Open and close
On my cheek, a silent expression of the deepest feeling.
I can taste the word: heartfelt
This is not a poem that could thank you for putting a pencil in my hand
A blessing on my forehead
And for having a faith in a God that sometimes I can only see in you.
Lord, rescue our children by Your Word. Make Your Word live in us that they might never doubt Your greatness and that they might serve You all of their days. For Your glory and their eternal joy, I ask this for all the parents of all the children that you have entrusted to us. Oh God, let us not grow weary in praying for our children. Amen.
Who are You Preaching To? Who are You Training Your People to Reach?
Tuesday is for Preaching
Most pastors, I could have been more kind and less opinionated if I said “many pastors”, but I’m going to stand on the first two words of this sentence, most pastors don’t have a good idea of who they are preaching to on a week by week basis. They don’t know the condition of their flocks (Proverbs 27:23), they don’t know the condition of the culture within which they live (1 Chronicles 12:32), and they spend too much time trying to design “wow” moments in their messages and not enough time in prayer and meditation over the text of their message.
I was thinking of these things when I came across an article in USA titled, “For Many, ‘Losing My Religion’ is More than a Song: Its Life“. Here’s the opening paragraphs of the article by Tim Loehrke for USA Today:
When Ben Helton signed up for an online dating service, under “religion” he called himself “spiritually apathetic.”
When Bill Dohm turns his eyes toward heaven, he’s just checking the weather so he can fly his 1946 Aeronca Champ two-seater plane.
Sunday mornings, when Bill Dohm turns his eyes toward heaven, he’s just checking the weather so he can fly his 1946 Aeronca Champ two-seater plane.
Helton, 28, and Dohm, 54, aren’t atheists, either. They simply shrug off God, religion, heaven or the ever-trendy search-for-meaning and/or purpose.
Their attitude could be summed up as “So what?”
“The real dirty little secret of religiosity in America is that there are so many people for whom spiritual interest, thinking about ultimate questions, is minimal,” says Mark Silk, professor of religion and public life at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn.
As Christmas Day glides by — all gilt, no substance — for many, clergy and religion experts are dismayed. They fear for souls’ salvation and for the common threads of faith snapping in society. Others see no such dire consequences to a more openly secular America as people not only fess up to being faithless but admit they’re skipping out on spiritual, the cool default word of the decade, as well.
Did you feel the truth of that phrase in the last paragraph? “Common threads of faith snapping in society.” If you have the responsibility of bringing the word of life to a flock, large or small, wrestle with this. This is the reality of what is happening inside and outside the church. Remember this as you pray over a message. Remember this as you wrestle with the meaning of the text. Remember this when you brood over the text in the hopes of becoming an authentic preacher who stands before the people of God as one who both believes and practices the truth.
And as you do, pray for your brothers in arms. We need to lift one another up to the throne of grace for the incredible privilege and opportunity to open up the bread of life to men and women who have the mission of taking the message to the Kingdom to the world. Why don’t you stop right now and pray for preachers of the word around the world.
Immanuel, God with Us! Can it Really Be True?
Monday after Christmas
Immanuel, God with us. (Matthew 1:23)
God is with us.
The creator of all that is seen and unseen is with us.
God, YHWH, took on human flesh and walked among us. He was covered with the downy flesh of a baby and placed in the rude bed of an animal’s feeding trough.
Is it not overwhelming to contemplate that our God has worn a body? He knows our frame (Psalm 103:14). He knows the heartache of loss, the panting need of thirst, the pangs of hunger that an empty stomach send out. I have little doubt that he experienced the illnesses that his mother Mary’s genetic makeup passed on to the human nature that he assumed in her womb. [Did the Savior ever have the common cold? I think, probably, yes.]
And yet, the Scripture declares, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15)
Christ lived a sinless life. He satisfied all of the positive requirements of the Law. He perfectly kept every command–with a body, with flesh like ours. It is stunning to contemplate. And it is the only way that he could have been the perfect, spotless, atoning-lamb of sacrifice for sin. His blood, his death was the substitute that we needed so that God could be both “just and justifier” (Romans 3:16) of those who place their faith in Christ.
This is what Christmas is all about. Not the gifts we give but the gift he gave. Not the things we receive from one another but the gift he wants to give to all who will receive him. Jesus came, he became a child born in animal stall so he could grow up and be our kinsman redeemer and lay his life down on the cross to pay for our sin.
In August, a young man who came to believe in Christ during my years at New Song Church, lost his battle with alcohol. Sixteen years ago, he gave his heart to Jesus, the Jesus who came to save. His growth in grace was episodic at best. Months of sobriety followed by months of stupor. Months of learning and growth punctuated by months of backward movement. Miracles surrounded him at many turns. Three times, he lived with us when he was homeless. There was the time he walked into a bar, determined to get drunk, only to come out ten minutes later without a drink and with three people rescued from the bar two of whom came to church the next Sunday. His hope was renewed.
In April and May and June, and July, there was a new freshness to his faith. He wrote me emails that spoke of a new preciousness of the gospel to him. He made an insightful comment on one of the posts here on the BLOG. A great man he met at New Song never gave up on him and was investing in his life. I remember the day I challenged the two of them to work together. It started rocky and got rockier, but his new discipler hung in, kept making contact, kept speaking truth to him, kept praying for him, kept loving him. (Thanks BT, you made a life changing difference in his life.)
But on a Sunday morning in August, my 16 year friendship ended when alcohol, and new medication, mixed with the great heat of the summer ended his life. A grieving mother and three sisters wept and remembered the brother and son they loved and in the end there was only one comfort–the Savior has worn a body. And he knows their sorrow and he died to atone for sin and rose again so that death could be swallowed up in the victory of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:53-57).
In the midst of all your gifts, and all the food you have consumed and all the games and parties and celebrations of this season, don’t forget that Christmas is all about Easter and what Jesus accomplished and that it really is true. God is with us, Immanuel has come. Let the glad tidings of this season be on your lips all year long.
reworked and revised post
What Would Happen if We Began the New Year by …
What do you think would happen? Think about it. Millions and millions and millions of people around the world spending one hour with God ….
