This Sunday I preached on Matthew 23, a blistering passage that is Jesus's most significant and thorough treatment of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. The 39 verses include the famous "Seven Woes" of Jesus as he blasts them for their religious shell-game.
I invited our church to a time of self-evaluation in considering the following characteristics.
12 Traits of a Pharisee:
1. They do not practice what they preach (v 3)
2. The give themselves exceptions (v 4)
3. They are focused on appearances (v 5)
4. They love to be respected (vv 6-7)
5. They hind people spiritually (v 13)
6. They are dangerously persuasive (v 15)
7. They are spiritually unbalanced (vv 16-22)
8. They are busy in the wrong things (vv 23-24)
9. They are not focused on the heart (vv 25-28)
10. They are over-confident (vv 29-32)
11. They are under judgment (vv 33-36)
12. They grieve the heart of Jesus (vv 37-38)
Here's the concluding paragraph: "Be watchful - be very, very, watchful - of your heart because the murder of the Son of God came at the hands of religious people who had convinced themselves that they were doing God's will."
This Sunday I talked about the passion of William Carey to reach "unreached" people groups, specifically the people of India. He not only became the father of modern day missions, but he also helped give us global view of evangelism.
Here's a summary: Unreached people are not those who have heard; unreached people are those who cannot hear. The difference is access to the gospel message not receiving the gospel. Unreached people groups are unreached for a reason. They are hard to get to, governments set up barriers, the culture is resistant, etc.
If you are interested in learning more, the Joshua Project details the scope and breadth of the need in our world.
Here is a link to what College Park is doing to reach unreached people.
One of my dreams is to see the Foster Care system flooded with Evangelical believers. Imagine what would happen if 2,000 believers from every State in the Union decided to enlist in providing abused and neglected children a safe and caring home. Imagine what a testimony it would be to the overtaxed, underpaid, and highly vilified Department of Child Services to see this many followers of Jesus live out their faith.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal cataloged what may be the early signs of a similar movement. It chronicles the recent interest by Focus on the Family, Rick Warren, and Russell Moore from Southern Seminary as an indication that adoption and foster care are starting to get some much needed attention.
The article clearly has a bias: "one wonders how these evangelical adoptive parents overcome their own desire for control, bring a stranger into their home, and then take responsibility for raising him."
But it ends well: "The most persuasive explanation comes from the author of that article, Leslie Leyland Fields, who exhorts her readers: "We are not sovereign over our children—only God is. Children are not tomatoes to stake out or mules to train, nor are they numbers to plug into an equation. They are full human beings wondrously and fearfully made. Parenting, like all tasks under the sun, is intended as an endeavor of love, risk, perseverance, and, above all, faith."
I am always fascinated when I visit other churches, especially well-known churches, at the similarities and differences in forms and styles of worship.
While I've never visited Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., David Crowe in his blog post gives an wonderful summary with pictures, notes, and even a copy of the order of worship.
It is a very helpful play-by-play (forgive the metaphor) of what a Sunday service is like.
Mark Dever, in a message on politics that some have called the best message on politics and Dever's finest sermon, made an insightful comment regarding the "unhitching" of Christianity from national identity. He argued that Christianity, by definition, is international. In other words, we should use caution in identifying it too closely with a particular nation or people.
To make this point memorable he said the following: "Christians are, by God's grace, like cockroaches; we can survive anything."
To read the rest of the sermon, click here: Mark 12:13-17
This Sunday I'll be launching our Missions Emphasis Month with my annual biographical sermon on a missionary. This year I've chosen to profile the father of modern missions, William Carey.
In 1792, he wrote a stirring challenge to his fellow Baptist pastors to consider the plight of the unreached (called "heathen during his day), and the result was the formation of the first missionary society.
"If a holy solicitude had prevailed in all the assemblies of Christians in behalf of their Redeemer's kingdom, we might probably have seen before now, not only an open door for the gospel, but many running to and fro, and knowledge increased; or a diligent use of those means which providence has put in our power, accompanied with a greater blessing than ordinary from heaven."
I'm leaving today for a 10 day trip to Ukraine and the Caspian Region to celebrate the 10-year partnership between College Park Church at Ukrainian Evangelical Seminary. I will be ministering along with Dale Shaw and Nate Irwin at UETS in Kiev, Ukraine. We are leading a spiritual emphasis week under the banner of "Beholding the Beauty of Jesus" which will include a Fresh Encounter Prayer Service at the end.
On Saturday, I'll be speaking at the graduation service and in two churches on Sunday: Salvation Church and House of Prayer. (Be sure to use the Google Chrome feature to translate into English - super cool!)
Then we'll be off to the Caspian region to visit some College Park friends.
Pray that God will bless our ministry and that we'll be a great encouragement to the church in Eastern Europe!
In Matthew 18:1-4, Jesus identifies the definition of greatness. He links true greatness to becoming like a little child - turning from self-sufficiency to dependent, life transforming faith.
Click here to view the manuscript and listen to the audio file.
I found a great quotation of Paul Miller in a recent publication from Life Action Ministries on the connection between prayer and the gospel:
"In the gospel, the Father takes us as we are because of Jesus and gives us his gift of salvation. In prayer, the Father receives us as we are because of Jesus and gives us his gift of help. We look at the inadequacy of our praying and give up, thinking something is wrong with us. God looks at the adequacy of his Son and delights in our sloppy, meandering prayers."
Great hope for meandering, sloppy, and struggling believers who wrestle not only to pray but to pray well.
I was reading an article recently about the amazing number of corporate leaders who had been convicted or fired because of shocking behavior. The piece was entitled “The Corner Office Alters Nice Guys” and it was acknowledging a brutal and scary reality in our power-grabbing world:
“The very traits that helped leaders accumulate control in the first place all but disappear once they rise to power. Once the nice guys reach the top, the headiness of wielding power causes them to morph into a very different kind of beast. They lose their ability to empathize with others, especially lesser mortals and ignore information that doesn’t confirm what they already believe. Most tellingly, perhaps, they learn to excuse faults in themselves that they are quick to condemn in others. Even the most virtuous people can be undone by the corner office.”
Translation? Be sure that you know what true greatness is all about because the world-based, self-focused lure of promotion, advancement, or success can easily destroy you. All you have to do is think like everyone else, live like everyone else, act like everyone else and then think that you did it by yourself, and it will not be long until you are just another body-bag on the road of life. Worse, you could be a personal “train-wreck” with a fish bumper sticker. The gravitational pull of our culture and our flesh is so strong that a follower of Jesus dare not set his or her life on auto pilot. We need a constant re-orientation with the horizon of God’s word.
This weekend is a nostalgic time for me. Part of it is because I just love the Thanksgiving holiday, but for the last two years, there is another reason. It was this weekend that our family visited College Park for the first time to determine if we were interested in entering the candidating process. The anxiety, fear, uncertainty, and prayerful wrestling were very real. Now, two years later, it is amazing to see what the Lord has done in us and at College Park. It creates a deep level of gratitude in my heart to God when I think about those days.
You may have a similar story in your life or you may be in the midst of “the dark side of God’s will.” Regardless, I’d encourage you to take some time this weekend and reflect on how God has demonstrated his care for you in the past few years. Rehearse, remember, and reflect or you’ll soon forget; that is the regular warning from the Word (see Deut 8:1-18, Ps 42:4-6, 77:11, 143.5).
Gratitude must be cultivated or a self-focused, demanding, and proud heart will soon appear.
Tonight we will be gathering for our annual Thanksgiving Service. I’m working today on my devotional for that service and my exposition of Matthew 10:5-33. It has been an interesting combination.
This evening I’ll be sharing 7 statements of gratitude out of Colossians 1:15-20. I recently memorized this passage, and it has gripped me every day for the last two weeks. It is filled with praiseworthy statements about Christ.
When I consider Christ, I am grateful…
1. That he has made God clear and near (Col 1:15,19)
2. That there is nothing on earth over which Jesus doesn’t say, “Mine!” (Col 1:16)
3. That he is the head, the focus, and the source of the church (Col 1:18a)
4. That he is alive, making hope a reality (Col 1:18b)
5. That he is and will be first in everything (Col 1:18c)
6. That he makes peace possible (Col 1:20)
7. That he holds everything together (Col 1:21)
On Sunday, I’m talking about why following Christ is worth it or what keeps you going when following Jesus gets really hard. There are at least 7 promises to which our hearts should cling when following Jesus is painful.
Here are 7 promises from Matthew 10:16-33 to remember when we start to wonder if following Jesus is really worth it:
1. When challenged, remember that God will give you words to say (v 17-20)
2. When your family attacks, remember the value of endurance (v 21-22)
3. When persecution comes, remember that Jesus has been there too (v 23-25)
4. When you are afraid of people, remember that one day everything will be revealed (v 26)
5. When you tempted to be timid, remember who God is (v 27-28)
6. When you are filled with anxiety, remember you are valuable to God (v 29-31)
7. When following him proves costly, remember that nothing is greater than the affirmation of Jesus (v 32-33)
I hope you’ll join me in some focused gratitude this weekend. After all, we have a lot to be thankful for, don’t we?
Here's a great quote from Dale Bruner in his commentary on Matthew that talks about the problem of prayerlessness:
"A creeping death sweeps over the mission of many churches in our time because, quite simply, prayer meetings have ceased. And beneath the death of prayer, at a deeper level, lies the death of real belief…"
Remember WWJD? Remember the bracelets, t-shirts, gym bags, and even a board game? I do. In fact, the entire WWJD phenomenon started in Holland, Michigan! I remember hearing about it soon after I came to the area. The premise of the 4 letters was to remind people to ask themselves – “What Would Jesus Do?” A good question, even if it was way over-marketed!
On Sunday, we’ll be asking a similar question. What would Jesus do in Carmel, Indiana? What kind of ministry would he run? What priorities would he have? Again, some important questions. I’m not sure we can ever be 100% sure, but our text on Sunday (Matthew 9:35-10:4) gives us a pretty clear picture of some priorities.
The passage is a bridge between Jesus’ words (chapters 5-7), works (chapters 8-9), and his mission (chapter 10). It is the launch of the disciples’ ministry under Jesus’ authority. Much of chapter 10 will identify the various challenges that they will face, particularly talking about persecution and opposition. But for now, Jesus simply outlines some key elements to his ministry:
There are four key commitments in Jesus’ vision for ministry:
The Word – He proclaimed (heralded) the gospel of the kingdom
Compassion – Jesus saw the crowds as sheep without a shepherd
Prayer – earnestly seek laborers from the Lord of the harvest
Gifts – he empowered his disciples to conquer the devil and cure the world
It’s almost like Ministry 101. We need all four elements/commitments or the church does really function like Jesus intended.
How easy it is to drift from these. A few examples:
Compassion – How easy it is to see sinful people through the lens of disgust, rigid justice, and fault-finding. But Jesus saw them through a lens. If there was blame, it needed to be partly laid at the feet of spiritual leaders (read Ezekiel 34 for a blistering word about that!)
Prayer – A commentary I read nailed it: “The demise of the prayer meeting equals the demise of the mission of the church because a church that fails to pray fails to believe.” AMEN!
Gifts – 40% of our congregation doesn’t have any area in which they are using their gifts. I’m usually a glass-half-full kind of guy, but I can’t get past just under ½ of our people sitting on sidelines with atrophic gifts.
So my appeal on Sunday will be for each of us to ask ourselves what kind of role we have in making College Park Church a place that emanates what Jesus would do.
I’ll close with a great quote from Kevin De Young. He wrote a great article on how to reach the next generation. His words are not only true – they describe what we are trying to do at College Park:
Grap them with passion. Win them with love. Hold them with holiness. Challenge them with truth. Amaze them with God.
I'm half-way through a great book on prayer by Paul Miller. His simple premise is very refreshing: Prayer is simply the medium through which we experience and connect to God. Miller wants the reader to see prayer as less complicated, more relational, and all-encompassing. In other words, we need to see prayer through the lens of every day communion with God.
Here are a few great quotes:
"Learning to pray doesn't offer you a less busy life; it offers you a less busy heart."
"Come overwhelmed with life. Come with a wandering mind. Come messy."
"You can't build a relationship by sound bites."
Thomas Merton – "Prayer is an expression of who we are…we are living incompleteness. We are a gap, an emptiness that calls for fulfillment."
"Helplessness is how the Christian life works."
"Weakness is the channel that allows us to access grace."
Whenever I attend a conference I take one sheet of blank paper to summarize what I sense God is saying to me. Sometimes it is so clear. Sometimes it takes time to fully process. During the final session, God gave me a great deal of clarity on what specific lessons I needed to learn during my time at the Cove. I knew that I wasn't there to give my workshop. The meager attendance of about 15 people was a clear enough message! God had designs for my heart, not my mouth.
I wrote through my joyful tears, rejoicing that God had graciously revealed some things to me through his Word:
1. Pray to preach with fire (Jeremiah 23:29) – My heart burned within me with new zeal for preaching the Word like Martin Lloyd-Jones used to describe: "Theology on fire!" I was reminded of the need to pray for the powerful anointing (unction) of the Holy Spirit each time I open the Word.
2. Live in the supremacy of Jesus(Col 1:15-20) – I was compelled to think not only about the centrality of Jesus, but to live in his supremacy: to take being "God's kind of person" to another level, to realize that Jesus is reconciling all things to himself even now, to see my daily life through the lens of "Our Lamb has conquered, Let us follow Him!"
3. Live like an athlete (Heb 12:1) – An athlete is different than a casual competitor. His discipline, regimen, activity, and focus are radically different than most because he is in training. I need to think this way and then live this way.
4. Stop for refreshment (Heb 12:12) – Along the race of ministry are God-given refreshment stands. Too often I'm too busy running in the race, and I think if I just push it a bit harder I'll finish faster. But without refreshment, we hit a wall. Refreshment is a critical part of the race strategy; it isn't optional; God created me with a need for rest and refreshment. Only the foolish or inexperienced try to make it without it.
It is great to be home from a fabulous week at the Heart-Cry Conference at the Cove in Asheville, North Carolina. The original intention was to go to the conference because I was doing a workshop on the prayer movement in Holland from 2005-2007. However, I know that God had other reasons for me to be there. This was fairly clear given the fact that out of about 300 conference attendees only about 15 came to my workshop. I think God wanted a humbled, listening heart. He had designs for my heart, not my mouth.
If you are interested in the personal take aways, I wrote about them in my blog. (click the word "blog" to go there)
Where are we going this Sunday? I must tell you I had a wonderful time marveling at Jesus in Matthew 9:18-24, and I was amazed at the beautiful pictures of grace that are all over our passage for Sunday. The verses mix 4 miracles with desperate faith, and it is something to behold.
Here's the summary for Sunday: When you've got nothing left but faith in Jesus, you've got everything because nothing is impossible for Jesus.
The miracles show us Jesus' amazing ability to move people from 1) Loss to Restoration, 2) Shame to Wholeness, and 3) Captivity to Freedom.
The story of the woman with a hemorrhaging problem is very moving. Here's what I wrote for Sunday:
"This woman is not only desperate; she is filled with shame. She doesn't approach Jesus like others have. She doesn't fall down in front of him. No, she comes up from behind him and simply tries to touch him. This is an unthinkable action on her part because technically she would be making Jesus unclean. No words, no plea, no conversation. She comes to Jesus behind his back and secretly touches his garment."
Now what happens next is amazing. Jesus is touched by an unclean woman (making him unclean), and she receives the healing power from Jesus. Could the gospel be any clearer here? It reminded me so much of this verse: For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21). What a beautiful divine exchange!
Along with the beauty of this, I'll be dealing a bit with the issue of shame. Please pray about this. There are many people who live in perpetual states of shame for what they've done or what was done to them. I hope to call them out of the tomb of humiliation, and I hope that our counselors will be busy after services providing comfort and counsel for shame-filled people. To help you know how to pray, here are five statements that I'm going to offer as hope to shamed people:
God knows it all, and He still loves me (Psalm 139:1-18)
He is sovereign over everything (Psalm 135:6)
I'm completely forgiven (Rom 8:1)
He has made me a new person (2 Cor 5:17)
I live for his glory (2 Cor 5:9)
I'm praying that God would set some people free on Sunday. I'm praying there will be some desperate people who will come to see that, maybe for the first time, that nothing is impossible for Jesus.
So pray for desperation; because without it we tend to cling to our own sufficiency. Faith is birthed when self-sufficiency is lost
Finally, pray for the introduction of our Christmas offering project in Mango, Togo. This project puts us at the battle-line of the conflict between Islam and Christianity in West Africa. The story is compelling, the mission is critical, and the opportunity is mind-boggling Our early involvement is critical for the success and credibility of the project. Pray that the 1000 new people would catch this critical part of our DNA. Pray that reaching unreached will be a vision that shows up in withdrawals from bank accounts in the next 6 weeks!
In a few hours, I'll be sharing the full story of the Holland Prayer Initiative, and identify 5 lessons. Here they are:
1. Revival resonates with people and pastors – Pastors love the ministry and people love coming to church when they sense "God is here."
2. There is always a remnant – there are always people who long for something more; they are there, you just haven't found them yet.
3. Revival is birthed through relationships over time – God works through people working together; you cannot manufacture it and only God can birth it. But relationships are the soil.
4. Revival looks different in each church – God moves in different ways through different means in different contexts. His movement is a varied as the needs in the church.
5. God's works are messy and mysterious – No two works of God are the same, and they are filled with real and fake moments. We are not always sure as to what God is doing, but the journey is still worthwhile and satisfying.
Summary: A revival is essentially a Christ-awakening movement. Revival happens when the people of God come to fully understand, submit to, worship and obey the person of Jesus. It is a movement where the church awakens, adores, and arises to ALL that Christ is.
Bryant's message was by far the most compelling and hopeful message of the entire conference. His message was so captivating that it was nearly impossible to take any notes. The sense of worship and awe at the wonder of Jesus was present from the beginning of his message until the end. It was one of those moments that you were able to see and feel the anointing of God upon a man as he spoke.
His definition of revival: God's Spirit using God's Word to re-convert God's people back to God's Son for ALL that he is.
Bryant gave seven reasons why he believes that we are on the verge of a Christ-awakening movement:
1. The Decisive Person – God is committed to his Son
2. The Divine Pattern – He's done it before; He is able, willing, and ready to do it again
3. The Dark Prospects – Our world clearly needs a renewal movement
4. The Disturbing Paralysis – The church, for the most part, is stuck in apathy
5. The Dramatic Preparations – There are signs all over the world of what God is doing. Even a book recently published by secular authors ("God is Back") records the new movement.
6. The Distinctive Prayer – There are prayer movements all over the country
7. The Determined People – Every church has people longing for revival
Bryant's bottomline was that there is a need for the church to move from the centrality of Jesus into the supremacy of Jesus. He called the church to not be only purpose-driven, but to be person-driven.
Tomorrow in my session on revival, I will share 5 tests that Edwards developed in response to criticisms regarding the First Great Awakening. The marks are from his book Distinquishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, a book written to test the work of the 1st Great Awakening and address some of the abuses.
God used this list to propel my heart into joining the movement of prayer and renewal in Holland in 2005:
1. When the esteem for the true Jesus is raised
2. When Satan's kingdom is attacked
3. When people come to love the Scriptures more
4. When men are led away from falsehood into truth
5. When there is an increase in love to God and man
(For those you unfamiliar with Roberts, he is one of the most prominent, living experts on biblical and historic revival. His quote is the one that I often use: "If revival came to America, the response would be clear: millions of church-people would be saved.")
Summary: Roberts calls pastors who have a heart for revival to preach the Word, not out of or about the Word. True revival, according to Roberts, springs from the fire of the Word as it breaks people in their heart-heartedness
2 Timothy 4:1-8
Every Lord's Day people are being injured by preaching that is not faithful to the Word
Amos 8:11 – a famine of hearing the Word of the Lord
Two Kinds of Revival:
Word Based (Protestant Reformation, 1st Great Awakening -1732-1770, 2nd Great Awakening – 1792 - ?)
Experience Based (3rd Great Awakening 1857-1859)
Three Reasons why a Word-based revival is preferred?
1. Converts of experience-based revival tend to fall away with a far greater frequency
2. Word-centered movements last longer
3. The impact of experienced based revival is slight; the impact of word-based is deep
Conclusion: We need a reformation of revival – the powerful preaching of the Word through the power of the Spirit
Paul's Instructions to Timothy:
1. A Solemn Charge (4:1)
- God the Father and God the Son are called as witnesses
- Judgment is on the line
2. A Solemn Command (4:2)
- It is possible to preach from and about the Word without preaching THE Word
- How to know?
Jer 23:29 – "Is not my Word like a fire and a hammer?"
When you preach, is it like fire from heaven?
Heb 4:12 – The Word is quick and powerful
Does your message quicken people?
Do you see people cut by the word?
The nature of the Word is to create exposure – to be discerning
1 Peter 1:23 – when was the last time you watched someone come alive under your preaching?
3. A Solemn Consistency (4:2)
- Preaching in season and out of season
Key Words: Reprove – correction of error, Rebuke – willing to honestly deal with sin, Exhort – a calling to turn
4. A Solemn Concern (4:3-5)
- It is possible to entertain our people
- Some preachers are so concerned about being liked and loved that they end up tickling the ears of their people
5. A Solemn Calling (4:5)
- there should be a sober-mindedness since we are carrying an important message for an urgent time
- there is so great a cost for those who carry this burden. This is not a task for the faint-hearted
- a calling to finish well
May we finish with power, grace, and glory to God!
