Arminianism's Updated 5 Points!

As most of you know, I am what people would call a Calvinist, so I found this hilarious. You know in a world where people are trying to remove the labels from themselves and come together under a banner of false love, I am growing more and more certain that labels are actually a good thing.

For years the church has argued for and against certain subjects. People who believed one way were labeled one thing, people who opposed were labeled another. I find it fascinating to see how people are willing to drop those labels so quickly now. I'm a younger person, but I cannot understand why division is looked on as a bad thing. Jesus said he came to divide father and son, mother and daughter and so on. If Jesus said he came to do that, why are we surprised that it has happened. Let's put it another way: We all long for unity in the church, but there are certain beliefs that people bring into the church that are not compatible with the Bible. We must be willing to draw a line for truth.



If we do not fight for truth, we are missing the point. Jesus said he was THE TRUTH. That is an exclusive statement. It means that Buddha is not the truth, it means Hindus do not have the truth. It doesn't matter if Buddha said Jesus was a cool guy or not. If he did not repent and put his faith in Christ, his thoughts on Jesus are irrelevant when it comes to real truth. Why are Christians trying to be so politically correct? Do you not realize that truth is not subjective. By Jesus saying that HE is the truth, he is saying that their is an objective truth and it is not based upon what you feel.



So, I'm still trying to find out who I am in regards to labels, but this much is true...I am a Christian. I believe there is only one way to God and that is through Christ Jesus. So all you Calvinists out there, stand up and be proud. All you Armenians out there, wear your label proudly. Don't be ashamed of who you are or what you believe. Don't believe the lie that unity should be done at all costs. True unity comes only in having one mind and being in one accord.



PS. Sorry it has been so long between posts. With summer almost over, I will hopefully have more time to devote to this blog. Thanks!

The Lost Art of Preaching...

In today's world of topical sermons and seeker-sensitive attitudes, one would wonder how someone like John Calvin or Charles Spurgeon would fare in our day. I think one of the biggest problems facing the church today is it's drive to change the way the message is being presented. All for the sake of being relative.

I do believe the church should be able to speak a language that the culture understands. I dislike attending a service that stresses the need for the "anointing" or if the preacher uses words like "regeneration" without explaining the meanings of those words for the unbelievers in the audience. I think sometimes we speak a "Christianese" that no one else understands.

Preaching itself should not change. Many churches want to turn the sermon into "story hour" at the church or maybe eliminate it altogether in favor of dramas or poetry readings. I am not against the use of any of these mediums in the service. BUT, I am NOT in favor of replacing the sermon with any of these.

The other issue, which I think is just as deadly, that is infiltrating our churches is the fact that preachers almost never preach through a book of the bible any more, instead they preach on topics. Topics range from love to kindness to prayer to the end times. Now I am not saying the bible does touch on all of these topics, but the problem is that preachers are picking the topics and picking 10 verses to support said topic and then delivering messages on that topic that may or may not align with the whole word of God.

Here's a common example: I recently heard a preacher on the radio preaching on love. This is a popular topic. He picked some verses out of the bible (including every preachers standby in 1 Cor. 13) and then proceeded to explain what love is. It is patient, kind, etc. You get the point. The problem was not that this was not biblical. The problem came in what he didn't say. He never mentioned got around to speaking about true love which is God. He never mentioned the atoning work of Christ on the cross. He never explained the good news. He went on to challenge his congregation to "love more" and the love their neighbors better and to love God better.

Most of you can see the problem in this already. We preach love, equip them to love, send them out the door to love and they fail. Why? They get outside in the church parking lot, the husband gets mad at the wife and the next thing you know, love is thrown out the window. Love is not something that we can "do better". It is a fruit. In order to truly love, the way God intends for us to love, we must have a change in nature. Repentance must come first along with the forgiveness of sins in the name of Jesus before one can love like that. God must regenerate your heart. This all could have been explained in the sermon, but that might have offended someone. So it was left out.

I heard someone describe it this way. You have to grow a beard. You don't just decide to have one. I tried to have one a 12. It didn't happen. No matter how hard I tried, the beard just didn't grow. Now, I could have went out and taped one on. It would have looked like a had a beard, but upon close inspection everyone would have known it was a fake. The same is with love. It is something that grows from your relationship with Christ. You can go out and tape some love on, but in the end, people will know that it is fake and when they see the heart hasn't been changed.

Sometimes we need to rediscover our roots. Great preachers like Calvin did not preach very many topical sermons. Instead he preached directly from the text. He went through entire books of the bible. He did not skip around like modern day preachers do. He instead devoted his life to proclaiming the word, in the way God said it. He preached directly from the Hebrew and Greek. He spoke very simply and instructed his people in a way they could understand.

According to S.J. Cole, who wrote an essay on John Calvin here, Calvin would preach an average of 170 sermons a year. This is far more than the average of 50 to 100 for most American pastors. Calvin preached two different sermons on Sunday, as well as one sermon every day of the week, every other week (at 6 or 7 am depending on the time of the year). He preached 189 sermons straight through the book of Acts, which took him five years to accomplish. He preached 5 sermons of the one chapter of Obadiah, 25 sermons on the 5 chapters of Lamentations, 123 sermons on the book of Genesis, and so on. This is in conjunction with everything else he did, including the writing of The Institutes of the Christian Religion and lecturing pastoral students three times a day every week that he wasn't preaching every day.

Calvin suffered from many physical problems during this time as well: impaired digestion (he only ate one meal a day), migraines, lung hemorrhages, perhaps tuberculosis, chronic asthma, kidney stones, hemorrhoids, frequent fever, and gout. Even with all these issues, he still managed to preach the word.

A Few Key Points on Preaching

1 - Preach expositionally. This is very important. We should be in awe of God and his power and might and never seek to promote our own agenda from the pulpit. Topical sermons tend to promote one's own ideas about God, but not God himself. Let God do the speaking.
2 - Preach Jesus in every text. Jesus is found throughout the Bible. If we ever loose sight of him, we have lost sight of everything. Everything we do should be about Jesus. Period.
3 - Preach humbly. If we truly understand who we are, wretched sinners, then we will preach accordingly. Paul says he was the chief of sinners, yet his messages are still effective because it was not his message, but God speaking directly to the hearts of man.
4 - Preach repentance and forgiveness. One without the other will not do. We must have both. Some churches focus on one without the other. We must endeavor to preach both and do it constantly.
5 - Preach to refute false teaching. Our world is littered with false teaching. Some churches have chosen to ignore it. Others have indeed promoted it themselves. We need to endeavor to preach to the true gospel and make sure we point out the false ones.

We don't need a REVIVAL!

I've come to the conclusion (call me crazy), but I don't think the church in the US needs a "revival" as so many church-goers are praying for. In case you aren't aware of this, thousands of churches in America pray for revival everyday. I preached a sermon one time saying that if you draw a box in the ground and revival starts in that box then it will spread to others. Most church-goers tend to think revival is the answer to their woes.

With church attendance dropping and public perception of the church at an all-time low, most people think that the answer is revival. I have to disagree. I've been doing a lot of listening lately. I haven't talked much. As a matter of fact, I have only preached one time in the past several years. God has had my ear. I have been investigating several different trends in the western church and have to this astonishing conclusion. Most church-goers do not know the bible. Forget revival, we need a REFORMATION.

You see, if you ask any John Doe christian out there what the message of the gospel is, you will likely get a myriad of responses. And, only a few of those responses will hit anywhere near what the gospel actually is. This is very bad. Forget praying for a revival. We don't even know the word enough to proclaim Christ's death on the cross and the repentance of sins.

Here is what we "know": God loves you, he wants a good life for you, he wants you to be happy, he wants you to have lots of money and good job, he wants you to have your heart's desires.

This is all hogwash (except that God really does love you, but you must repent). God never promises you a good life. He doesn't care if you own a Lexus or not. The only thing that matters is that you accept his death on the cross as punishment for your sins and that you repent of those sins. You can't do this on your own. He has to do this in you. He is the one that is the author of your salvation. You don't choose God, he chooses you.

Revival assumes that people were once alive, but now are dead and in need of being brought back to life. I tell you this. If you don't know the Word, you were never alive to begin with. Maybe you experienced some emotional induced, feel-goodness that made you think that God was with you. Maybe you recited a prayer that meant nothing to you. None of that saves you. God alone is responsible for salvation. You must have faith and faith must be given to you.

One of my favorite sections in Scripture is when Jesus asks his disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" And some of them guess at it, but Peter gets it right. He says, "You are the Christ." Jesus then tells him that he is blessed because flesh and blood did not reveal this to him, but God in heaven. Did you notice that last part. I used to think Peter was smarter than the other disciples, but he wasn't. God revealed it to him. It had nothing do with Peter and his wits.

If you study the Reformation you will learn that biblical literacy was at an all-time low during this era. Very few people owned a bible and even less could read one. This is in stark contrast to the age we live in, in one way. We have bibles all over the place. We have camouflage bibles, girl bibles, boy bibles, marriage bibles and all the like. Yet, just like those people during the age of the Reformation, we do not know the bible.

This is very scary. The bible warns us that during the last days there will come a great falling away and that people will run to and fro looking for teachers to scratch their itching ears. People want to find pastors that will tell them what they want to hear. Does this sound familiar in our age of having to have good self-image and self-esteem and so on? We are ripe for the picking when it comes to the great apostasy that is spoken of in Scripture.

Pray for a Reformation. I am trying to figure out how to do my part. I preached the gospel to a co-worker the other day. He did not repent, but I think it may have been the first time he heard the true gospel given the questions he asked and the comments he made. Pray for him.

My Very First Post!

The initial post! Here goes...I started this blog for a couple of reasons. Mainly I wanted an excuse to write again. I love to write and consider myself a writer, but at times have just plain gotten lazy about it. Hopefully this will keep me more motivated.

I also wanted to draw some attention to a serious problem. The problem is that the Church has been hi-jacked and the label of Christianity is being placed on ridiculous stuff. My next few posts will give you an example of what I mean.

I also want to tackle some tougher issues as well, such as doctrines of sin, beliefs about the Bible and other important truths that are dear to the Christian faith. I want to discuss leaders such as Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, Mark Driscoll, Al Mohler, Pat Robertson and what their respective ideas on Christianity are doing to the church.

All in all I want to keep it humorous though. I think we can get a little too serious sometimes and at other times we are not serious enough. So, I hope you enjoy the ride!