The New Adventures of an Old Preacher

It is a wonderful, beautiful day in the Florida panhandle. Nature is pretty awesome here when not being pushed around by a hurricane.

Tomorrow, God willing, I travel to Fresno, California to participate in the Spiritual Growth Workshop hosted by the Woodward Park Church of Christ. This is my second time to be involved in this area event which brings together a thousand or so. I will not be back until Monday night so I will not be blogging for a while.

Thanks for dropping by anyway and say a prayer for my travel!

Early on it started with Pride. Pride became bothered by Worship not being quite polished enough. He made a convincing and ultimately successful argument to spruce Worship up. Sensing a trend Church Growth got involved. Church Growth decided a spruced-up Worship would be an attractive avenue to further his agenda and redefined Worship as an evangelistic tool. “Just get Worship right” he proclaimed “and he will grow!” Soon afterwards Music came forward. He claimed that unless the right Music was involved Worship- regardless of all else- would always flounder.

As a result of the work of Pride, Church Growth and Music, Selfishness next came to influence Worship bringing along with him Tension and Strife. These three brought My Way in and together they turned Worship against itself often leaving it wounded and directionless. Worship still survives but wonders if he can ever just be Worship again.

Any thoughts?

In the latest issue of Preaching magazine Ken Gosnell has written an article entitled “Preaching and Blogging” in which he asserts, “blogging will change how preaching is done.”

He writes: “With a blog in tow, the preacher will be able to post a sermon idea at the beginning of the week and give the congregation a chance to respond. By Sunday, when he delivers the sermon, many will already be tuned into the topic. This allows the congregation, as well as other online participants to be actively engaged in the process and to be able to share their own ideas and thoughts. This can truly be a way to make a sermon topic last much longer than 30 minutes on Sunday morning. In fact, it can be a continual thought and living topic. Soon a preacher that does not blog with his congregation will be out of touch and behind the pack.”

Maybe I am already behind the pack but I confess that I have never considered using a blog in this way. Have you?

More from Mr. Gosnell: “Preachers will be able to use blogs to bridge the gap between what they think they know about their church members and the views that the members really have.”

Interesting. Next he lists six reasons why blogging will change preaching.

* Get input before Sunday
* Increasing Accountability
* Enhance the Preacher’s Transparency
* Improve Preparation
* Opportunities for Discipling
* Working Collaboratively

He does admit that getting member’s cooperation may at first be a daunting task, but is convinced this is the wave of the future.

What do you think? Do his points have any merit? Will blogging change preaching?

You hear the word all the time- extremist- and it is almost never used kindly. Extremes in whatever form are simply not healthy or productive. History is full of damage done by those with extreme views acted out.

Extremists did damage in Christ’s church of the first century. Some saw personal merit as the answer to their approach to God. Others saw a cheap kind of grace as their ticket to heaven. Neither represented the balance of God embodied in Christ. One of the earliest descriptions of the Savior identified him as being “full of grace and truth”. (John 1:14) His ministry and life was a perfect blending of the gift of grace and the power of truth. The extremists who came later lost sight of that balance and consequently lost sight of Christ himself.

The law keepers who prided themselves by their ability to define down truth and justify themselves before God through acts of their own merit had an illusion of godliness but still came up empty despite all of their efforts. Paul addressed some of them and their extremes in the book of Colossians.

Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules; ‘Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!’? These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack an value in restraining sensual indulgence. (2:20-23)

Then there were those who saw grace as an easy out to sin. Grace to them was a permission slip to do what they wanted. Jude said of them:

They are godless men, who change the grace of God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord. (vs. 4)

Their approach failed too. Paul dealt with a similar attitude in 1st Corinthians 6:12-13. Here he even quotes the approach of this failed philosophy. “Everything is permissible for me.” was the idea. He added that “everything was not beneficial” though and concluded that this extreme will only end in destruction.

Paul knew as we should that extremes nearly always end in destruction of some type. This brings us back to the balance of God- the perfect blend of truth and grace.

Listen to Paul once more:

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age. (Titus 2:11-12)

Accepting grace without honoring truth is extremism that results in a skewed view of who God is and leads us away from him. A truth focus not balanced by God’s grace is equally extremist and results in a harsh misrepresentation of what God expects of us and turns his commandments into burdens.

Either way we lose. Either way we are not equipped to handle temptation God’s way. Either way will not testify to the God of heaven.

Grace through faith (another balance statement of God) saves us. This is God’s work so that we will not fall back on the human tendency to boast about what we have done. But grace does not stop there. It leads us to become God’s workmanship “created in Christ Jesus to do good works“. (See Ephesians 2:8-10) It prepares us to handle temptation, exercise spiritual discipline and model our life after Christ.

This does testify of heaven.

Our challenge is to avoid the dangers of extremes and embrace the beautiful balance of “grace and truth” in Christ.

Not the old television program- the Galatians! They were bewitched by a doctrine of the devil and entangled in “another gospel” (1:6-9) after having been set free by the grace of God. The culprit was legalism and it was taking them dangerously close to edge of this grace. (5:4)

The bewitching was occurring because of a group of Christian Jewish legalists we now call the “Judizers”. They were the apostle Paul nemesis in his evangelistic work with non-Jews including the Galatians. They attempted to impose this other gospel of Jewish law keeping and traditionalism upon Gentile Christians which denied the Spirit’s power to work and God’s grace to sufficiently save. They were working to intimidate, manipulate and dominate the Galatians to cripple their spirituality and quench the Spirit, but Paul would have none of that!

They were born of a “free woman” not a “slave woman” He proclaimed. (4:31) Christ had set them free so why would they want to “be burdened again by a yoke of slavery”? (5:1) This slavery would only lead to a life outside of God’s Spirit instead of one bearing his fruit. (5: 19-25) The opportunity to live this triumphant Spirit-filled life was the very reason that “before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.” (3:1)

Legalism in that Judizing form sought to take away the freedoms the Galatians enjoyed in Christ. It still does in whatever form it morphs into now. It seeks to steal the joy and victory of salvation. It is bewitching because of the way it masquerades and presents itself. But in the wonderful book of Galatians Paul reveals it for the ugliness that it is.

From chapter three he teaches that legalism:

• Relies on Human Effort. Paul asks, “Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law?” He then continued, “Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?” (vs. 2-3) Legalism values merit over grace. It emphasizes human goodness (which apart from Christ doesn’t exist anyway) over God’s righteousness. In so doing it creates an impossible standard for anyone to live by- which, in turn, produces failure, guilt and judgmental spirits. Christ died to set us free from such a doomed system. Grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9) based on the righteousness of God, not on our own merit, saves us.

• Is a Curse. “All who rely on observing the law are under a curse.” (vs. 10) This curse is the reality that no one under a law system will ever keep that law system perfectly. If we seek salvation by merit we will fail every time and the curse will fall upon us. Instead, like Abraham, we should live by the freedom of faith. “Clearly no one is justified before God by the law because ‘The righteous will live by faith.’” (vs. 11) Why stay under the spell of a curse when in Christ we are redeemed from this curse to be “free indeed.” (John 8:36)

• Is a Prison. Legalism enslaves. It is a spiritual imprisonment- putting in locks and chains the empty tomb of Christ. Paul said it. “Before this faith came we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed.” (vs. 23) In this prison reside anger, hatred, discord, selfish ambition, dissension, factions and other fleshly works. It creates an atmosphere of “biting and devouring each other” that can lead to self-destruction. (5:15)

This was not the Galatians calling nor is it ours. “You my brothers were called to be free.” (5:13) Free to overcome sin; free to love one another; free to live faithfully by God’s Spirit; and free to enjoy the blessings of God’s amazing grace.

Be careful not to be enslaved by the bewitching power of legalism in whatever form it takes. Recognize the tantalizing dangers behind this other gospel and avoid it. Know the truth and be free!