Love Into Light - Book Review

Easily one of the top books I have read in 2013, Love Into Light: The Gospel, the Homosexual and the Church by Peter Hubbard addresses a topic that is both highly relevant in our society and yet inadequately (and often inappropriately) taught in our churches.  If you are seeking guidance on how a Biblically grounded, Gospel oriented Christian ought to understand and interact with homosexuality, then this is the book for you.

Near the beginning of the book, Peter Hubbard addresses what I feel can be one of the most challenging problems with how the church has interacted with this topic.  He puts it this way:

I have spoken to scores of men and women who have spent years worshipping in church while battling alone with SSA (Same Sex Attraction). They were terrified to tell anyone, and convinced that if other Christians knew their secret, they would be tagged and discarded. Imagine the trauma of believing that your struggle is unlike any other sin. The preacher makes applications in his sermons to lying, stealing, or marital selfishness. And periodically a man may testify to struggling with heterosexual lust. Or a woman may ask  for prayer regarding anxiety. But these sins seem normal, understandable. And there is hope and help for change. But homosexuality seems different. When it is mentioned in church, it's usually associated with abomination, activism, or antagonism.  Often the pronouns change from "we" to "them." Some sins allow you to be a "we," but other sins require you to be a "them." The "yuck" factor crosses the line of acceptability.

How true that next to last sentence has been.  How often I have heard, and maybe have even maintained myself a "them" mentality regarding homosexuals.

Right after the above statement, he states three goals in this book.  The third of those three goals is:

...that the church, all believers, would shift from reacting to media and political stories, to proactively engaging our homosexual neighbors with the same love and the same truth that Jesus is offering to us.

Even though I thought that the entire book was excellent: again and again dealing with this emotionally charged topic with both grace and truth, I found that the final chapter, addressing outreach, was what truly brought everything together.  Of course to understand that final chapter, I needed to go through the rest of the book, which brought a better understanding to the topic, so that we can go into an outreach mindset with compassion and understanding. Consider this quote near the end:

Paul did not command Titus to preach against "those homosexuals." He commanded Titus to "teach what accords with sound doctrine."  ... According to the letter to Titus, gospel advancement is not to be pursued through hurling insults or lobbing cliches over picket lines. These methods attempt to catapult sound bites over deep trenches rather than living and speaking the story of Jesus before friends and neighbors. Some of us may feel uncomfortable with the New Testament's  method of evangelism. [emphasis mine]

I obviously left some of that quote out.  What does he mean by "teach what accords to sound doctrine"?  What does this look like?  How would one accomplish this?  I've left much out because it would take a book to do this topic justice... So, you should just buy the book!  That final sentence is such a reality for many of us.  We say we want to do evangelism God's way, but when it comes down to it, we can start to get a little uncomfortable and there are too many Christians that eventually default back to that "us" vs. "them" mentality.

I hope that God saves us from this, and more specifically I hope that Edgewood (the church where I pastor) would be a be a place where those struggling with SSA in Danville would come for the truth of the Gospel and the grace of Jesus Christ.

Who Stole My Church - Book Review

A couple of weeks ago a lady in my church, who has been at the church since I was about five years old, told me she was reading a book that she thought I might enjoy.  A couple of days later she handed me the book and told me that I could borrow it if I wanted.  The book was called,Who Stole My Church? by Gordon MacDonald.  The subtitle is, What to Do When the Church You Love Tries to Enter the 21st Century.  It was feeling a bit too close to home, needless to say, I was a tad nervous.

But then I started reading the book.

Here is the premise of the book:  Gordon MacDonald, a real-life Pastor and the author of this book, decided to tackle the challenging topic of Church Change and Church Reinvention by writing a story.  He uses himself and his wife as real characters in the book, but the church and the other characters are all fictional.  He then begins to break down the different topics commonly associated with change through the form of dialogue.  He allows you to discover the correct conclusions by watching the characters discover them as they converse and experience the Bible in relation to Christ's Church in the day to day. He also steers you away from harmful and destructive attitudes by giving you a glimpse of what those stubborn attitudes look like in the real world with real people.

I absolutely enjoyed this book.  I made it through the first half of the book in my first sitting. And since then I have been telling people all about it every chance I get. I am looking forward, if this lady in my church won't mind, to loaning it to others in the church.  I am also considering purchasing a couple of other copies to pass out in the church, I would love to just give a few of these away.

My favorite part of this book is near the end when the topic shifts away from music (and other typical change related discussion) to those who might enter our church. What might they experience?  How are they received?  Lets talk beyond the surface and dig into our hearts.  If we are honest, many of us only want those who will make us feel comfortable coming in the doors of our church.

If you get a chance to pick this up, it is worth the read.  Especially if you are in a church that feels like it is being reinvented or if it needs to be reinvented!

Preaching from the Gospels

The challenge of preaching from the Gospels is, in part the challenge of preaching from narrative.  The best of Western seminaries and theological colleges reinforce the cultural bent toward the abstract, and fill students' heads with the importance of grammatical, lexicographical exegesis. Such exegesis is, of course, of enormous importance. But in students who do not have a feel for literature, it can have the unwitting effect of so focusing on the tree, indeed on the third knot of the fourth branch from the bottom of the sixth tree from the left, that the entire forest remains unseen, except perhaps as a vague and ominous challenge.

I am so glad that I have been reading this commentary by Carson.  I absolutely know that I could easily miss the forest for the trees, so to speak. My tendency is to drill deep on each verse and attempt to figure out what that verse is about.  I love the wealth of information that can be found in each individual sentence.  I don't want to miss any small bit of divine inspiration, and I don't want anyone else to miss it either.  But I think that he makes a very good point in his recommendation for John.

I want the people at Edgewood to see the forest.  I know that they might miss a tree or two along the way, but if they would but see the big picture.  Carson adds to this by saying,

Rightly done, preaching from the Gospels enables a congregation to put its Bible together, and then to find the Bible's deepest and most transforming application emerging from this vision.  To put the matter another way, John's stated purpose in composing the Fourth Gospel is not that his readers might believe, but that his readers might believe that the Christ, the Son of God, is Jesus, and that in believing they might have life in his name.

Adding more to his advice on preaching through John, he adds this final bit of opinion, that I am seriously taking to heart:

...those who set out to expound John's Gospel, as opposed to one of the Synoptics, often find themselves enmeshed in 'vain repetition'. John's vision is more narrowly focused than that of the Synoptists. For all the wealth of his presentation of Jesus, his own application, made again and again with driving force, is that his readers should believe. Many a preacher has begun a series on this book only to find that his application is becoming boring even to his own ears, and abandoned the series at ch. 7 or ch. 9 or the like.

He goes on to say that the series should go on to " ... focus on Jesus himself, on the fathomless Christological wealth bound up  in this Gospel."

I would be the preacher enmeshed in vain repetition.  I know I would. I hope to avoid that by heeding this godly advice and focusing on the forest even though my brain loves gazing at the trees.


The Gospel According to John (Pillar New Testament Commentary)

I just want you to listen...

I have been trying to think of some commentary to add to this clip, but I just don't think I can do better than the video's description from YouTube:

"Don't try to fix it. I just need you to listen." Every man has heard these words. And they are the law of the land. No matter what.

I will say that I am almost positive that I have had this exact conversation, except without the nail.

 

HT: 22 Words

windows into the reality of God

Yesterday I read through the entire Gospel According to John.  I did this, and will hopefully do this several more times, as preparation for our upcoming study on this Gospel.  I also started blogging my way, verse by verse, through this book.  I am up to John 1:12 as of this morning.  To cap it off, I started reading some commentaries on John, to get a better feel for the book.  It has been very interesting and enlightening, after only a few days, but it has also had a negative effect on me: I am starting to feel overwhelmed by this task. I am starting to realize that this Gospel account, even though the simplest of people can read it and find encouragement and insight, it is also very, very deep.

It's uniqueness was my first clue.  Now, I have known for quite a long time that John was different than the other three gospel accounts, but I didn't realize how unique it actually was.

It omits so many things that [the other gospel accounts] include.  The Fourth Gospel has no account of the Birth of Jesus, of His Baptism, of His Temptations; it tells us nothing of the Last Supper, nothing of Gethsemane, and nothing of the Ascension.  It has no word of the healing of any people possessed by devils and evil spirits. And, perhaps most surprising of all, it has no parables...
William Barclay, The Daily Bible Study Series, The Gospel of John (Volume I)

Some of those differences I was aware of, but more than one of them was a surprise to me.

These unique aspects, along with many other tidbits that John includes, that the other Three Gospels do not, are not meant to be interesting points of trivia, so you can win that next game of Bible Trivial Pursuit.  No, this is important to the whole understanding of this book.  Why did John not include these other items, what was his goal, what was he trying to get across.  Why was John so selective in the stories that he did include?

William Barclay, learning from Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 230), shares what he believes is the key insight into understanding this Scripture.

The feeding of the five thousand is followed by the long discourse on the Bread of Life (chapter 6); the healing of the blind man springs from the saying that Jesus in the Light of the World (chapter 9); the raising of Lazarus leads up to the saying that Jesus is the resurrection and the life (chapter 11).  To John the miracles were not simply single events in time; they were illustrations, examples, insights into that which God is always doing and what Jesus always is; they are windows into the reality of God. ...

He goes on to say,

John did not see the events of Jesus' life simply as events in time; he saw them as windows looking into eternity, and he pressed towards the spiritual meaning of the events and the words of Jesus' life in a way that the other three gospels did not attempt.
William Barclay

I am seeing these glimpses through the windows already in my own reading of John, and it is making my head spin.  I wish I had more time to study this book before I start preaching it, but I believe that God is leading me to this Gospel account for just these reasons.  With several new people at our church, I believe that what they need to see and learn most of all is who this Jesus actually is.  I suppose I will just have to use the extra time that God has given me.

If you are the praying sort, I would appreciate your prayers, that I might speak boldly the mystery of the gospel. (Ephesians 6:19-20)

Free eBooks by R.C Sproul

Right now the ebook versions of the Crucial Questions series by R.C. Sproul is free. The announcement on the Ligonier Ministries website reads:

To further help Christians know what they believe, why they believe it, how to live it, and how to share it, from today the eBook editions of R.C. Sproul’s Crucial Questions series will be free forever.

So, there is no rush to go grab these. (Although I went immediately and grabbed all of them.) They have epub format available, but they also have links to the Kindle version and the iTunes version.

Check it out now and go get some questions answered.

http://www.ligonier.org/blog/rc-sprouls-crucial-questions-ebooks-now-free/

Logic + Math + Wibbly Wobbly Infinite Stuff

William Lane Craig speaking on why actual infinities cannot exist, meaning that there is a beginning to the universe.



I love this stuff.