Of the Danger of Too Many On-Line Sermons
On-line preaching can be tremendously helpful. But it brings with it a few dangers. Watch out for false and novel teaching. Watch out for the temptation to find a teacher, any teacher, any teacher at all, who agrees with you and goes against what others are telling you. Use your resources wisely. But do not let your resources take you out of faithful Christian living in your local church. Do not daydream about having a legend for a pastor or feel the urge to reshape your pastor into your favorite conference personality. Be grateful for faithful teaching, but do not assume that simply consuming content has sanctified you.
Preach the word! The Lord commands it. The body is blessed by it. The sermon is a good and necessary thing for the life of the believer.
In today’s world, the believer has access to more of the preached word than ever before. We can read books of collected messages. We can stream our favorite Bible teachers. We can turn on RYM Radio and hear teaching all day long. We can Google the Internet (I hear that’s what the kids call it), and find videos of pastors of small churches we will never hear of in any other way.
But, as a pastor, one who preaches weekly (and hopefully not weakly), can I warn you of a danger or two in too much on-line sermon consumption? I’m quite grateful for the resources that the Lord has placed at our fingertips, but I fear that some believers may move from being helped to being harmed by their consumption of material on-line.
I Know a Secret
One danger of on-line sermons that I think we would all agree on is the risk of consuming false teaching. This is more likely when a believer is listening to a pastor or scholar about whom they know nothing. If you are listening to a message or reading an article written by someone whose scholarship is not being checked by others, you run the risk of novel and even dangerous teaching.
One of the attractions of many an on-line message is the fact that it teaches you something you have never heard before. It is possible to run across a man who is translating the Hebrew of Genesis for himself and saying things about what it means to be human that no faithful teacher has ever taught. If a believer is not careful here, he or she may come away with a damaging, false belief that was all the more dangerous for feeling like it was something secret that no other teacher has brought forth.
I’d bet that you have heard of the problem of Gnosticism in the early church. Among the dangerous beliefs of the Gnostics was the ego-boosting belief that they possessed secret knowledge that was not available to the general public. It was easy for folks to love the fact that they were let in on the stuff that other, ordinary people could not grasp. See any similarities to how some folks feel about that special teacher they have found on-line?
Choose-Your-Own-Doctrine
Do you remember choose-your-own-adventure books? These were popular before video games took the idea to a whole new level. A reader would follow the story of a hero until a particular turning point: enter the cave or climb the mountain? The reader would turn to a different page of the book to find out what happened to the hero depending on the choice the reader made for the hero. Perhaps the cave contained a dragon. Perhaps the mountain led to a castle and a princess. The point was to give the reader a sense of adventure by being able to pick the kind of story he or she wanted to read.
Similar to the draw of novel and dangerous doctrine is the temptation to pick and defend your own favorite teaching. Sometimes people will have a particular point of doctrine they want others to agree with. Instead of examining faithful teaching of faithful teachers, the eager learner will scour the Internet for the one teacher who says it just the way they want to hear. Want to find that Calvinist who dunks on your Arminian friends, no problem. Want to find that Arminian preacher who makes your Calvinist friends look like cold-hearted robots, piece of cake. Want to find somebody who interprets a particular passage in accord with your strange preferences? This one might take a bit more work, but the Internet is a big place, and lots of people have said lots of crazy things over the years; so it can be done.
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Everyone Hides, But Where?
When the news stirs fear in you, do not choose distraction and pretend all is well. Instead, hide in a healthy way – running into the fortress that is our God. That is, our God, the God of angel armies, the God who has chosen to be with us.
For several generations, some of us have lived with relative stability. Yes, our cultures have shifted and changed. And yes, we have seen our military forces participate in conflict. But seismic shifts that rock our world have not been so familiar to many of us. The past few years have changed that. If the world can change so suddenly, then maybe we would do well to be ready for significant events. Actually, if we are involved in church leadership, we should be both preparing our people for the future and preparing ourselves for major moments that will surely come.
Recently, my wife and I enjoyed another anniversary and took some time together in Psalm 46. This is a great passage to soak in for your own benefit. And it is a great passage to be ready to share with others both before and when the need arises. It is a Psalm of healthy hiding.
When the constant stream of news is suddenly shattered by something genuinely significant, where can we go? When the normal rhythm of daily tasks grinds to a halt because something huge is happening, how can we find safety? And when we look beyond the normal news narrative and see such significant and terrible agendas at play, who can be trusted? Psalm 46 points us to the answer.
Psalm 46 falls neatly into three stanzas, neatly demarcated by a Selah to give us the opportunity to contemplate. The first stanza establishes a key thought that is then picked up in a refrain at the end of stanzas two and three. It is a clear Psalm, easy to read, and probably well worth committing to memory!
Stanza 1 serves to establish a truth that will weave through the whole Psalm. Our refuge and strength is God himself, and our God is always accessible to us. The result is that we will not fear. Four situations are described to underline how secure we are in our God. Even an earthquake, even mountains being relocated, even raging seas, even the normal secure boundaries of creation trembling – even if the whole created order should revert to utter chaos, we will not fear. The character of God is more trustworthy than the apparently permanent mountains and boundaries of the seas? Yes. Selah.
Despite appearances in the first three verses, I do not think the writer is really focused on natural disasters. He seems to be using them as descriptions of having your world rocked. Even a hypothetical upheaval that impacts everything considered permanent and stable would not undermine the reality of God being our ever-present refuge and strength.
In the second stanza, from verses 4-7, the writer zeroes in on the threat of war. He begins with two verses describing the tranquil city of God, the place where he reigns and is present.
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Are You Losing Your Gospel Mind?
What is one of the primary ways our loving Savior meets us as we struggle not to lose our gospel minds? He meets us with the gift of his church. He knows that we need help. He knows we are not spiritually hardwired to make it on our own. So he has ordained his church to regularly gather, that we would remember once again, grieve once again, celebrate once again, and go out and live in light of the beautiful values of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
A Subtle Loss
I don’t know about you, but in the rush and press of life I can lose my mind. No, I’m not talking about going insane and needing to be institutionalized. I’m talking about a much more subtle form of insanity that often inflicts me and a vast number of my Christian brothers and sisters. There are moments in my life when I lose my gospel mind. There are moments when I live as if God does not exist, the Bible had never been written, and Jesus had never lived, died, and rose again. I’m not referencing an intentional walking away from the faith but rather a deformative gospel forgetfulness. Why do I call it deformative? Because in these moments my life is no longer formed by a vibrant rest in a surrender to my Lord but rather it is deformed by other things in and around me. There are times when I lose sight of what is truly important and valuable in life and, when I do, it alters what I desire, how I think, what I say, and the things I do. I am sure I am not alone.
Perhaps during an argument with your husband, wife, or friend, securing affirmation as being right (for once) becomes the most important thing to you. You have lost your gospel mind. Maybe you find yourself doing whatever is necessary to get that job promotion. You have lost your gospel mind. Maybe you’re willing to destroy your relationship with your neighbor over a boundary dispute. You have lost your gospel mind. Maybe you rip vengefully into your teenager because you’re tired of being disrespected. You have lost your gospel mind. Maybe you cling to an unending obsession with your weight and appearance. You have lost your gospel mind. Perhaps a lifestyle dream is leading you into crushing debt. You have lost your gospel mind. Maybe you harbor a pattern of internet sexual sin. You have lost your gospel mind. Maybe you feel an overwhelming anxiety about what people think about you and how they respond to you. You have lost your gospel mind. Or you might demand to be in charge and in control of your relationships. You have lost your gospel mind. Maybe you are passive and complacent when it comes to your faith. You have lost your gospel mind. Maybe patterns of envy and bitterness have robbed you of your joy. You have lost your gospel mind.
Because the radical, life-shaping, and hope-giving values of the gospel are nowhere reinforced in the surrounding culture, we all live in constant need of fundamental gospel-values clarification. We all need to be reminded again and again of what is truly valuable and, therefore, what should be truly formative in life. I’m sure you are aware that it has never been more difficult to keep the worldly, materialistic, and degospelized values of the culture around us at bay. It is harder than ever to quiet the cacophony of voices and think with gospel clarity about what is truly important.
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Phinehas a Type of Christ?
Consider that the actions of Phinehas stop the judgment of God that was breaking out in the Israelite camp. God himself said, “Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel” (25:11). In a greater way, the Lord Jesus has turned away God’s wrath by propitiating it. Phinehas administered judgment, but Jesus took the judgment upon himself.
In Numbers 25, the Israelites sin egregiously against the Lord, and a judgment by plague breaks out among the people, killing twenty-four thousand Israelites. The reason for the judgment was the provocation of the Lord’s anger. The Israelites had yoked themselves with the worship of Baal and committed sexual immorality with the daughters of Moab (25:1-3).
The reason the plague stops is the zeal of a man named Phinehas. He was the high priest’s son, and he had special duty at the tabernacle. According to 1 Chronicles 9:20, he was a chief gatekeeper for the tabernacle. Like his father before him (Num. 3:32), he had a guarding responsibility at the tabernacle.
Therefore, the actions of Phinehas in Numbers 25 were not the acts of a vigilante. Amid the sinning Israelites, a Midianite woman and an Israelite man walked toward a tent to engage in immorality together (25:6). Phinehas knew what the couple planned to do, so he pursued them with the zeal of righteous indignation and judgment. They were defiling the region with their abominable act.
Phinehas took a spear and “went after the man of Israel into the chamber and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman through her belly. Thus the plague on the people of Israel was stopped” (Num. 25:8).
The zeal of Phinehas turned aside Yahweh’s anger. The Lord told Moses, “Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy.
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