When Sermon Prep and YouTube Collide

Today I was browsing YouTube for a few minutes looking for an old song that I couldn’t quite call to mind (mostly because I never knew it well), and I happened upon some videos of a certain popular Christian music artist (I hate that term … but I digress) from the 80s, 90s, and today.

She was dressed modestly, sang passionately, seemed mostly devoid of the gyrations and foolishness that accompanies much of Christian music today. She was praising God with her whole heart and leading others in worship. She even prayed before she sang.

Turns out she was also hooking up with a man she wasn’t married to.

She blew up her marriage and family. Caused a lot of pain both for herself and her family.

But she looked just right. And man could she sing. And she was so passionate and devoted leading worship that way.

And people thought everything was okay.

Today I am finishing up a message for tomorrow on Galatians 2:20 about being crucified with Christ and no longer living, yet all the while continuing to live by faith in Jesus. I am thinking about the connections between Galatians 2:20, Romans 6, Colossians 3:5, and Romans 8. They are not exactly parallel, but they share a common theme: death to sin and self and life because of what you believe about Jesus.

And I reminded how easy it is to put on a good show, to look right, dress right, sing right, speak right, be passionate and energetic, and not be living the crucified life.

Brothers and sisters, to quote my good friend John Owen, Be killing sin or it will be killing you.

Jesus loved us and gave himself up for us. So believe it, and be crucified with Christ.

Then go live like you believe it.

Here’s a Guy Who Doesn’t Get It

Several weeks ago, Kwame Kilpatrick, former Detroit Mayor and current prison inmate, said this regarding his perjury about the text message scandal that brought down his corrupt administration.

I certainly believe that telling the truth right would have saved my own butt and would have saved a lot of turmoil and trouble, but I don’t know if I would have done anything any different, because I was trying to stand up for my wife and children at the time.

This is unfortunately all too typical of the kind of thing that passes for husbands and men these days.

The notion that you are protecting your wife and children by lying about another woman is beyond bizarre. It comes only from a sense of entitlement that you should get what you got at home, and get some on the side as well. It is the sense of entitlement and arrogance that underlay the whole sordid mess known as the Kilpatrick Administration in Detroit.

If you had been wanting to protect your wife, you would have limited yourself to her. You would have kept the promises and the commitments you made to her when you married her. There would have no been no text messages, no relationship with your chief of staff, or other women.

You would have taught your boys by example that a real man loves the woman he married and he keeps the promises he made to her.

The truth is you were trying to protect yourself from your wife, from the possibility that she might infringe on your fun, take your family and your life savings, and leave you behind.

And now your boys are growing up without their daddy.

Now, the Detroit Free Press runs another story with this as the lead paragraph:

Carlita Kilpatrick says her husband is distressed and depressed, angry and resentful, has trouble sleeping and fears the future – mainly because his text messages were released, according to a now-disclosed interview with a psychiatrist.

Again, this is just evidence that he, and she, just doesn’t get it. The problem isn’t that the text messages were released. The problem is that there were text messages to be released. His anger, fear, resentment, trouble sleeping, and depression is because he did something wrong, he knows it (which is why he wanted to hide it to begin with), he got caught, and now is paying the price for it.

Here’s the cold hard truth: If you don’t want salacious text messages or emails being made public, then don’t send them.

Instead, cultivate a heart of respect for the woman you married.

It’s a hard lesson to learn, I guess. And one that more than a year in prison has not yet taught him.

His mother, former Congresswoman woman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick chimes in calling it “judicial misconduct” and “prosecutorial misconduct.” She says it’s “helplessness and slavery,” which is an embarrassment to her and disrespect to generations of African-Americans who were actual slaves for reasons other than getting caught sending illicit text messages to someone they weren’t married to and lying about it while spending $9 million dollars of someone else’s money to hide your own mess.

Fortunately, the gentle congresslady is unemployed now.

Unfortunately, she’s living off her government pension, which means you and I are paying her to pontificate like this..

And by the way, Kwame, your greatest fear should not be the already released text messages.

It should be the federal corruption trial that awaits you and some of your cronies.

Because long after your sentence on perjury and violation of probation has passed, your sentence for corruption and bribery will keep you away from your family.

And my bet is that you still won’t get it.

But let’s not kid ourselves. This is not a Kwame problem. It’s not a Detroit problem. It’s a human problem.

All of us have within us the seeds of self-destruction that have manifested themselves in incredibly ugly ways in this situation.

We are sinners by nature. We are possessed by an extreme sense of entitlement and a deep and abiding gullibility.

We are tempted to satisfy our own lusts and then cover our tracks with dishonesty—whether implicit or explicit, whether only to ourselves or also to those around us.

We would all do well to consider the instructions of Proverbs: Guard your heart with all diligence for from it flow the springs of life (Proverbs 4:23).

Only the gospel can save us from ourselves.

So run to Christ.

Human History, Evil, and Solutions

Human history is, in one sense, the story of man trying to fix brokenness through what some have called “functional Saviors.” Functional saviors are the things in which we place our hope for atonement, our hope for satisfaction and joy.

Rather than submitting to the righteous plan of God, mankind has continually sewed together fig leaves in an attempt to cover their nakedness before God. They think they can appease God through a variety of religious rituals, philosophical ideas, and moral reformation.

Human history is littered with the remains of man’s religious institutions that try to fix the brokenness in lives. Early on, it was the creation of gods, complete with religious rituals, temples, priests, and holy books. In more recent times, particularly in our culture, it is the elevation of education, medicine, rehabilitation, ignorance or atheism, all attempting to fix the problem of brokenness. They essentially by redefine the problem to a problem of health (fixed by the medical establishment), a problem of ignorance (fixed by the educational establishment), a problem of control (fixed by government legislation), or a problem of superstition (fixed by atheism, a superstition in itself).

The truth is that only the Bible gives us a worldview in which evil even exists. Apart from the Bible’s teaching, there is no legitimate explanation for the existence of evil, much less its problem. There is no moral reasoning by which evil can be asserted apart from the existence of the God described in Scripture. The very existence of evil presupposes that there is a God with a moral standard by which evil can be determined. 

Man, while living in the world perfectly describe by the Bible, rejects the Bible as revelation and therefore rejects the Bible’s solution. They attempt to find a solution on their own.

But God had a different way to fix the problem. And that is the gospel as found in the Bible.

Owen on Sin and Fire

It is vain for a man to have any expectation of rest from his lust but by its death … Some, in the tumultuating of their corruptions, seek for quietness by labouring to satisfy them, “making provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof,” as the apostle speaks, Rom xiii.14. This is to aslake* fire by wood and oil. As all the fuel in the world, all the fabric of the creation that is combustible, being cast into the fire, will not at all satisfy it, but increase it; so is it with satisfaction given to sin by sinning,—it doth but inflame and increase.

John Owen, The Nature and Power of Indwelling Sin.

*diminish, slacken, reduce.

Why Rules Don’t Work

Notice that I said “Why rules don’t work.” I did not say “Why rules are not good.” I think rules are good. I think they are helpful, but they never work to bring about lasting change?

Why? Because they are external.

John Owen, in Indwelling Sin, say, “A law proposed unto us is not to be compared, for efficacy, to a law inbred in us.”*

This is why Gentiles “do instinctively the things of the Law … [showing ] the work of the Law written in their hearts.” (Romans 2:14-15). It is internal.

This is why Israel’s grand hope in the New Covenant is that God writes a new law on their hearts (Jeremiah 31:33). External law exacerbated sin; it did not cure it.

This is why external walls can modify behavior but cannot change the life.

Too many Christians are into behavior modification. “Stop … Start.” But we too often fail to address the heart.

Heart issues always show up. If we fix one problem area, it will simply show up in another area. For lasting change, we must kill the root. And that can only be done by internal change.

So let us, as those committed to making disciples, be more worried about the why than the what.

_________________________

*The Complete Works of John Owen, 6:165

Why People Go to Hell

One of the core elements of biblical evangelical theology is that people die and go to hell. While that doctrine is distasteful to many, and should be hard for anyone to preach gladly, it is what the Bible teaches and what the church has historically believed. It is hard to imagine that one will long be an evangelical after denying the reality of eternal conscious torment. However, my point here is not to address the reality of hell, but to think for a moment about why people go there.

It is common to hear people say something like, “People do not go to hell for their sins because Jesus died for all sin. They go to only only for their unbelief.”

Let’s consider this along two lines. First, the Bible plainly declares that people go to hell for their sins. For instance, Revelation 21:8 says, “But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” It is hard to imagine that the list of sins is somehow not a part of the reason that they are there.

Second, unbelief is a sin (cf. Revelation 21:8 for starters). If Jesus died for all sin, then he must also have died for the sin of unbelief. Therefore, their unbelief, like all their other sins, would have been paid for. So why would they be in hell for a sin that was paid for?

If the sin of unbelief was not paid for, then unbelief is a sin that is atoned for by doing something, namely, by believing. That is to say that Jesus atoned for all sins but unbelief, and we atone for unbelief by belief. It becomes, in effect, a self-salvation, or salvation by replacement of one thing for another. One might as well deny the reality of hell as affirm the possibility of self-atonement.

“Well,” one might object, “unbelief is not a sin.”

Then we must ask why would one be punished in hell for eternity for something that was not even wrong to begin with? And why is it listed along with other sins in places like Revelation 21:8, Titus 1:15, and 2 Thessalonians 2:12.

People who usually make this argument do so, at least in part, as an argument about fairness, that it would be unfair for God to pay only for the sins of some and not the sins of others. The idea of fairness is crying out for a post, and perhaps shall have its own soon. But to entertain the argument, how is it fair for God to send someone to eternal conscious torment for something that was not wrong? It makes no sense.

Yes, this is, in some sense an argument for a limited atonement of some sort. Before you cry foul, remember that everyone (except universalists) limits the atonement in some way, either in its provision or its application or both.

But I think there are some who need to think a bit more rigorously about the idea that people do not go to hell for sin; they go for unbelief.

Hopefully, this might jumpstart a thought or two.

Okay, One More on Sanford

But for a different reason.

An article in today’s The State (Columbia, SC’s newspaper) is entitled “Sanford’s mental state questioned.”

Some are suggesting a “deeper personality disorder,” a “chemical imbalance, narcissism, and impulsive behavior.” Some are saying he lost contact with reality and should get a psychiatric evaluation.

Yes to narcissism, impulsive behavior, and loss of contact with reality. He is definitely narcissistic and impulsive. He seems to, at least for a time, have lost contact with reality.

But that’s not a mental disorder. That’s life. A psychiatric evaluation won’t help that. It is a spiritual issue. Of course, secular psychologists have no category for that because they lack understanding of humanity. They are the ones out of contact with reality.

Reality is that humanity is helplessly narcissistic. Life is all about self. We are instinctively impulsive, because we do what it takes to satisfy our narcissism. We want it and so we go try to get it. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail. 

The search for a mental disorder, even the very suggestion of it, is evidence of the “blame something else” mentality that infects the world. It can’t be because Sanford is a sinner (like the rest of us). There has to be something wrong with him.

The only true hope for mankind is reality—the reality that we are sinners in need of a Savior. When we come into believing contact with that reality (the only reality there is), the narcissism will fade, the impulses will start to come under control.

A culture of irresponsibility is being fostered by those who suggest mental disorders are why men seek out immoral relationships and power. It’s actually a culture of narcissism that is divorced from the reality of personal sinfulness.

We need a culture of grace. This culture says (to borrow from Tim Keller) I am far worse off than I ever dared to imagine. But through Jesus I am far more loved and accepted than I ever dared to hope.

Until we realize we are fallen creatures who can’t get up, we will continue to look for other things to blame. Only when I reach the depths of hopeless can I see the cross as the real solution.

It may not save my position in life (whether governor, pastor, or anything else). It may not save my marriage. But it will save my soul and give me eternal hope and a new paradigm for living in a broken down world.

Owen on the Full Pursuit of Holiness

In his little book Of Temptation, in a section on “deceitful assistances” in fighting against sin, ODG John Owen warns about

The most vigorous actings, by prayer, fasting, and other such means, against that particular lust , corruption, temptation, wherewith you are exercised and have to do. This will not avail you if, in the meantime, there be neglects on other accounts. To hear a man wrestle, cry, contend as to any particular of temptation, and immediately fall into worldly ways, worldly compliances, looseness, and negligence in other things, — it is righteous with Jesus Christ to leave such a one to the hour of temptation (John Owen, Of Temptation (Joseph Kreifels), pp. 147-48).

It is overwhelming, to me at least, to think of fighting all sin at once. It is too easy to let the “little sins,” or some private sins, go unchallenged while we focus on the “biggies.”

Owen says that to do such is a deceitful assistance, to imagine that we can address sin on one part of our lives while neglecting the sin in other parts.

Perhaps Owen is given to some hyperbole here, but his point should be given careful consideration. Sin is not an all or nothing proposition. It will take whatever it can get from us.

Diagnosing Sin in Your Life

When we face struggles in life, we must consider the possibility that it might be because of sin. After all, God does remove fellowship from those who are in sin (cf. Psalm 66:18; Isaiah 1:15, Isaiah 59:2; Proverbs 28:9; 1 Peter 3:7).

Here are some questions to help us explore sin in our lives.

1. Is there known sin which you have not confessed?
2. Are you living in consistent sin patterns without sensitivity and confession?
3. Are you hardened to known sin in your life? Do you care about sin?
4. Are there areas in which you are resisting accountability in dealing with known sin? This often indicates that you know something is wrong with what you are doing.
5. Are you cutting yourself off from relationships with fellow believers because of the way you are living?
6. Are you resistant to being challenged about areas in your life?
7. Are you sinning against your conscience by doing things that you are not confident are godly?
8. Are you daily examining your life and confessing known sin?
9. Are you striving after holiness, however imperfect you may be?

Please help me out with this list. Are there other questions that should be here? Could some of these questions be refined?