It’s Just a Distraction
Be aware of the schemes of the devil and avoid being distracted from the main thing. When we go to share Christ, let’s actually share Christ! We need to tell folks about sin, and righteousness, and the coming judgement. People need to hear about their great need, and they need to hear that God in love sent His Son to die for sinners. Jesus died on the cross to save sinners and He was raised from the dead, proving that He is everything He said He was.
But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.
2 Corinthians 11:3
We used to walk around college campuses to try and strike up gospel conversations after I graduated from college. Its amazing how many people were willing to talk about the state of their souls. Unfortunately, most that we met either gave lip service to the gospel or would outright deny it. One thing that came up fairly frequently, almost like people were reading from the same playbook, was a denial of the sufficiency and authority of Scripture. I can’t tell you how many times I heard someone say, “You know that book was written by men, right?” And I used to, rightly, do my best to show that it was God’s word, written through men, and that it was infallible, authoritative, and perfect. But one thing I began to realize was that this was just a distraction.
What I don’t mean is that the doctrine of Scripture is unimportant and shouldn’t be addressed. It is of paramount importance. We must be willing to stand on the word of God. But as important as the doctrine of Scripture is, there is one thing that it isn’t: It isn’t the gospel. It’s one thing to defend the Scripture, it is another to share the gospel through the Scripture. We give people God’s word like a sower sows seeds (Luke 8:11). We hope that they hear it, believe it, and are saved from the wrath to come. God’s word is living and active and sharper than a two-edged sword, so in our evangelism it is crucial that we share the word (Heb 4:12).
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Schaeffer: “We Live in a Post-Christian World. Do Not Take This Lightly!”
“We must realize that to know the truth and to practice it will be costly….We must keep on speaking and acting even if the price is high. We must keep on preaching, even if the price is high. There is nothing in the Bible that says we are to stop. The Bible rather says, keep on, keep on.”
I was recently reminded that one of my favourite prophetic voices of last century, Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984), in one of his volumes utilised some of the most well-known prophetic books in the Old Testament. So I hastily went to my shelves, grabbed the thin book, blew off the dust, and read it once again.
And I am so glad I did. I refer to his very important book, Death in the City (IVP, 1969). The material in this book is actually based on a week-long series of lectures he gave at Wheaton College in Chicago in 1968. The talks centred on Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Romans 1 – a heavy-duty combination indeed – and how they relate to the West.Those who know me and my writings know that I often speak about the West in terms of being past its use-by date, and now seemingly under the judgment of God. Yet here was Schaeffer a full half-century ago saying the same thing and making prophetic warnings about it.
Romans 1 of course speaks about God abandoning a people (see verses 18-32), while Jeremiah and Lamentations warn about and bemoan the fact that God is judging his people, with the seemingly inviolate temple and city of Jerusalem both being utterly destroyed by Israel’s enemies.
It is in that light that Schaeffer examines the contemporary West, and sees no other option than to say we too are under the just judgment of God. The entire 143-page book is a must-read, but let me try to distil some of the highlights here for you.
The book begins with these trenchant words: “We live in a post-Christian world.” He details the enormity of what this means and then says: “Do not take this lightly! It is a horrible thing for a man like myself to look back and see my country and my culture go down the drain in my own lifetime.”
The West has abandoned its spiritual heritage and is now wallowing in sin, immorality and apostasy. “There is only one perspective we can have of the post-Christian world of our generation: an understanding that our culture and our country is under the wrath of God.”
This is serious business: “Do you think our country can remain as it has been after it has thrown away the Christian base? Do not be foolish. Jeremiah would have looked at you and said, ‘You do not have the correct perspective. You should be crying’.”
How should believers respond today? We must pronounce hard truths to wake up a dead culture and a dead church: “Our generation needs to be told that man cannot disregard God, that a culture like ours has had such light and then has deliberately turned away stands under God’s judgment. There’s only one kind of preaching that will do in a generation like ours – preaching which includes the preaching of the judgment of God.”
He cites Jeremiah 1:10 and then explains:
Notice the order. First, there was to be a strong negative message, and then the positive one. But the negative message was first. It was to be a message of judgment to the church which had turned away and to the culture which flowed from it. Judah had revolted against God and His revealed truth; and God says that Jeremiah’s message was to be first a message of judgment. I believe the same message is to be ours today. Christianity is not romantic, not soft. It is tough-fibered and realistic. And the Bible gives us the realistic message that Jeremiah preached into his own days, a message I am convinced the church today must preach if it is to be any help in the post-Christian world.
Instead of soft, syrupy and sentiment preaching, we need powerful, Holy Ghost-inspired preaching, one that takes our condition seriously. Says Schaeffer:
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Trumpite Evangelicalism or Bidenist Catholicism?
Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Monday, April 8, 2024
Given the extremity of the president’s rhetoric and the confident damning of any who might demur, it seems legitimate to ask (yet again) how much gender theory and gender “science” Joe Biden has read. One has to assume he is an expert, given that he feels comfortable dismissing anyone who dissents as motivated by hate and bigotry. If that is not the case, then it is worth noting here that it is not just Trump’s boorishness that damages democracy. It is the practice of dismissing anyone who disagrees with you as evil and hateful. That destroys the kind of forbearance and respectful discourse needed for democracy to function properly.Cultural times are hard for traditional Christians. American evangelicalism has proved a fruitful target for those both outside and inside the church who want to stir up popular panic about Christian nationalism, racism, homophobia, and all the other ill-defined but nonetheless mortal sins of our day. Evangelicalism is presented as the root of all contemporary evils. Donald Trump’s recent hawking of a Bible bound together with America’s founding documents simply adds fuel to this fire. But in a week where it seemed that Trump’s would be the most blasphemous action of a leading politician, President Biden outdid him at the last minute, declaring that this year Easter Sunday would be an official day of trans visibility, and predictably characterizing any who disagreed with him as motivated by hate.
As conservatives decried the declaration, so the president’s supporters pointed out that the trans day of visibility has been held on March 31 since 2009. Its coincidence with Easter this year is just that: a coincidence. But this scarcely exculpates the president. There was no need for a formal White House statement on the day. More importantly, the underlying theology of trans ideology that problematizes the human body and legitimates hormonal and genital mutilation assumes an anthropology at odds with Christian teaching, which requires respect for the human body and the distinction of male and female. So the president was still celebrating the desecration of the image of God, even as his opponent desecrated the word of God.
The White House statement was very disturbing yet revealing in its rhetoric. Here is a representative passage:
But extremists are proposing hundreds of hateful laws that target and terrify transgender kids and their families—silencing teachers; banning books; and even threatening parents, doctors, and nurses with prison for helping parents get care for their children. These bills attack our most basic American values: the freedom to be yourself, the freedom to make your own health care decisions, and even the right to raise your own child. It is no surprise that the bullying and discrimination that transgender Americans face is worsening our Nation’s mental health crisis, leading half of transgender youth to consider suicide in the past year. At the same time, an epidemic of violence against transgender women and girls, especially women and girls of color, continues to take too many lives.
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Love Like Men (Part 3 of Biblical Manhood Series)
Do not let the enemy win in your marriage. And do not let the enemy win in your season of preparing for marriage. Repent when you fall short. Stand up, trust the Lord, obey His Word, and repeat when you miss the mark.
Introduction
Over the last couple of weeks we have been talking about the fact that there is a masculinity crisis in this world and nowhere is that felt more profoundly than in marriages. You can think about it this way: if healthy marriages are the bedrock of a community, and healthy communities unite together to form vibrant cultures, then the best way to topple a society is to attack its marriages. If you break that grand institution down, if you spoil the marriage, then you will cripple the nation. And there is no better place for Satan to begin an all out war on marriage, than to focus on the one God called to lead in the home, and that is man.
And, I want you to think about it this way, if manliness, godly masculinity, and a man’s role in the home is a targeted attack launched consistently by Satan, then what we really need to know and understand is how to fight back. And we do not fight with swords and shields…We do not fight with domination and aggression…We fight by orienting our life to what the Bible says, by doing what it tells us to do, and by refusing to be moved when the fiery arrows of Satan come! That is our warfare, brothers. To know and understand what the Bible says about Biblical manhood, to orient our lives in that Godward direction, and refuse to be moved from off that spot.
The enemy may attack and he may win a ground back in this culture. But we must be resolved that he will not win in this arena. He will not move us from our purpose as men. And there is no better passage to teach us about this than Ephesians 5:23-33, where we learn 5 ways that we must love like men!
And the first is that we must have a Shepherding kind of love. Ephesians 5:23-24 says this:
Shepherding Love (Eph. 5:23-24)For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.
The first aspect of manly love is godly leadership. Men have been called to lead in their homes in the same way Christ provides love and leadership to His church. And this is not a suggestion.
Think about it like this, the Church is blessed because of the leadership of Christ. We do not moan and groan under His sovereign rule; we flourish under it. And that is the case because we are no longer wandering in the valleys of the shadow of death, we have been brought into His strong, life-giving, stabilizing love, and we are infinitely better off because of it. We joyfully follow Him out of death and enjoy the life giving benefits of His rule without a whimper of objection.
Well… In the same way, men, God has called you to diligently lead in your homes. He has called you to bring your family together under your leadership. He has commanded you to bring life into your home through your godly care. He has called you to provide the same kind of benefits Christ brings to the church, albeit in a temporal way.
Suffice it to say, your family ought to flourish, spiritually speaking, under your consistent, godly, Christ honoring, active leadership. If you are leading correctly, your family will thrive. If your family is spiritually weak, emotionally sickly, relationally at each other’s throats, experiencing interpersonal decay, chaos, in-fighting, rampant immorality, or is declining in any perceivable metric, then your leadership needs adjusting and repentance.
It is not enough to point the finger at your wife and kids like Adam. And you certainly cannot succeed as a husband and family head if you adopt Adam’s passive care. You just can’t.
You have to stand up, buck up, grow up, man up, and lead. You have to take a look at your family and ask some hard questions about yourself. Are they struggling because of my failed leadership? Are there things I need to stop doing? Things I need to start doing? So that I can be more like Jesus, a better head over this family, and so that my clan can more faithfully honor God?
These are hard questions, but the buck stops with you. You did not marry into a democracy where everything is decided after spirited debates on a senate floor. You are a God appointed King, called to rule with the love and affection of Christ, for the good and health of your family. If you fail, the family will suffer. If you repent, the family will grow.
The first aspect of loving like a man, is having the guts to lead like Jesus. To shepherd like Jesus. To have a shepherd’s love.
The second aspect of Loving like a man, is to have a Sacrificing kind of love. Look at verse 25 of this incredible passage.
Sacrificing Love (Eph 5:25)Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,
Here the love that Christ has for the Church is qualified in His desire, and joy, to give Himself up for her. His love was demonstrated by His willingness to give His life for her, and her life, health, and vitality, would be impossible without His sacrifice. These are wonderful and glorious truths of the Gospel that we celebrate and say amen to each week…
But what we as men often forget about is that these things have been required of us. Paul begins with “husbands love your wives”. And just in case you are not clear on what that means, it means being like Jesus and giving yourself up for her.
This means that your leadership cannot be used to advance your own agenda. You wake up for your family, go to work for your family, provide for your family, serve your family, go to sleep protecting your family, repeat and die in honor like a man who sacrificed for His family
And not just in those ways…Think about what Jesus did. He went to the cross! He gave His life for the spiritual well-being of His bride!
That means manly love sacrifices everything to make sure the people around us are thriving spiritually. It means praying with your wife. It means leading family worship with your kids. It means making them go to church when they do not want to go. It means modeling Christ like leadership when others want to cut corners. It means pointing to Jesus in the way you discipline… It means comforting your wife and children with the Gospel. It means putting yourself second so that someone else can benefit!
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