Resolved

By far the highlight of my year thus far (and for a long time to come, I’m sure!) is the Resolved conference which I had the privilege to attend this year with 13 other people from Christian fellowships on campus. It was an awesome experience hearing the word of God (Ps 119:103) and letting it do its work in my heart (Heb 4:12).

The theme this year was "the gospel." I ask you: could there be a better theme?! I was pumped to hear the central message of Christianity spoken of by such knowledgeable men of the faith. And I was not disappointed in the least (Is. 55:11). I figured at the very least it would help me articulate the message to other people, but the sermons dug deep into my heart and probed depths of the magnificence of the gospel that I never could have dreamed of knowing. If I had to pick a favorite sermon, it would be CJ Mahaney's exposition of Isaiah 53. The line that rings in my head over and over again is: "Heaven doesn't get over the cross!" If you can set aside the cross as a nice little thing that God did for us way back when, you do not appreciate the absolutely astounding nature of Christ's sacrifice. I will definitely be looking forward to the audio recordings of these sermons as they get posted on the Internet.

In all there were 9 sermons and 1 panel discussion, for a total of 12-15 hours of biblical expository preaching. We heard from CJ Mahaney, John MacArthur, John Piper, Rick Holland, and Steve Lawson. We heard about the accomplishments of the gospel (Rom 5:6-11), the supremacy of Christ (Heb 1:1-4), the shamefulness of the message (1 Cor 1-2), atonement and justification (Luke 18:9-14), the suffering servant (Isaiah 53:1-6,10), the cost of discipleship (Luke 14:25-35), God is the Gospel (Habakkuk 3:17-18, and others), humility (1 Cor 4:6-13), and the relationship between missions and God’s glory (Rom 11:36, and others). As I have said already, these were all heart-wrenching sermons, and well worth the time to travel down and listen to them.

I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions this year, but after that conference, I felt compelled to resolve to do something! CJ Mahaney counseled us to focus on maybe 2 or 3 things to take away from the conference and focus, meditate, and work on as we come back to life as it is normally presented to us. These are three resolutions I determined to do follow, and I would appreciate everyone’s accountability in all these things.

1) Resolved, to cultivate within myself a spirit of humility and slay the spirit of pride.

2) Resolved, to adjust my mindset continually to be focused on the person of Christ and His atoning work finished at Calvary.

3) Resolved, to daily meditate on the Word of God not merely as an apologetic but exercise, but as the result of a personal and meaningful relationship between a slave and his Master, the saved and his Savior.

Again, I had a wonderful time there, almost beyond description. It isn’t often that you get together with 3000 Reformed (college aged) brothers and sisters and listen to five godly men who are dedicated to proclaiming the sovereignty of God and the truth of the Word. It was a wild ride indeed, and I highly recommend it! Resolved is coming back next year as well to Palm Springs in mid June. That is right when the quarter system schools get out, so you don’t have to worry about not being able to do schoolwork. The theme will be heaven and hell. Speaking of heaven, I got a book by that name at the bookstore that they had for us down there. It’s by Randy Alcorn, and it looks really good so far, so maybe I’ll let you guys in on a book review when I’m done! Thanks for hanging in there and being faithful to wait for my not-so-frequent blog updates, all. Until next time.

For from Him and to Him and through Him are all things.
To him be glory forever. Amen.
-Romans 11:36

Examine Yourself

Are you a Christian? Then do what the Bible says and MAKE SURE! Here is a sermon to help you do just that. The video should play automatically. If that gives you some trouble, go here. Scroll down and look for the green video boxes. The first is a 4 minute sample clip. The second is the full sermon.

I pray this is edifying for you.

Evan

Jehovah's Witnesses

Why You Should Never Tell a JW, "No thanks!"

That might seem like a strange intro for a post, but I really do have a reason for wording it that way. You see, I've realized that when we get people like Jehovah's Witnesses coming to our door to spread their false doctrine, telling them to go away is like saying, "No thanks, I don't have the time or concern to deal with your soul right now, please go infect someone else with your damnable lies." How many of us want to say that? I certainly didn't when one came to my door this Christmas break!

This time I talked to him and asked him lots of questions. If you do not know much about a certain cult (There will invariably be lots of people who belongs to a certain group that you are not familiar with. This is OK! Just ask questions. It is the best way to get information and the best way to find out if they are teaching sound doctrine). Apparently these are really common questions, because he kept saying that all my questions were answered in this little book that he had. He offered it to me, so I took it, wanting to have an authoritative reference book from which to learn JW docrine. It's really small, so I was able to actually read through the whole thing in a relatively short amount of time. What I did was scour through it with an orange highlighter, and marked it up, noticing all the "interesting" things that were said in there.

There were several heresies littered through this book, but I suspect that many Christians would not be able to defend themselves against the lies if a JW should 'witness' to them! It was obvious to me, hearing this man's testimony, that this is what happened with him as he was first approached by JWs. He said that he started seeing things in orthodox Christianity that didn't line up with the Bible. The example he gave was the Trinity! I wonder how many people could defend the deity of Christ and the Trinity from the Bible should someone object (1 Pet 3:15)?

Now, for anyone who might think I'm just being nit picky or overly critical, let me say that this is an absolute essential of the Christian faith, therefore you need to be able to defend it! If you do not believe that Jesus is Divine, you are on a very direct path to hell (John 8:24). You are on the wide road of destruction, and the end does not look good for you. Your Jesus cannot save you. You need to repent and put your trust in the true savior right now. This is not a debatable issue! Yet it is one that JWs deny. They're Christ is not Divine and is a created being; therefore, he cannot save!

It is important to remember to keep things in the proper perspective when dealing with issues such as cult-members coming to your door. They don't have the true gospel; the Christian does. That is a very big deal (Gal 1:8-9)!They need to be evangelized, rather than looked down upon for trying to evangelize others. They're fervor should put anyone to shame who does not pursue the souls of others with the same intensity. Let me encourage you to learn how to defend your faith against the cults, and, furthermore, how to share your faith with cult members so that they realize they are not in the truth and need to be regenerated!

I will do my best to help you to do this is my follow up blog on this topic. Stay strong in the faith. Do not judge in the non-essentials (Rom 14). Do not budge in the essentials. Let's serve the King with our whole hearts.

Home for the Holidays

So I'm home for the holidays! Three precious weeks of freedom. I need to use them well, so I figured I'd spend a little while writing a blog - something I don't do enough. This one is not a really focused blog, just a few little musings about some things that have recently come to my attention.

1) On looking forward to better days

We all know those days we can't wait for. Especially this year around Christmas time that day is obvious. Everyone wants that day when they can rip open their presents to come super quickly. Some of us - yours truly - look forward to said days so passionately that we forget we have been graciously been given this day by God, and all the other days behind us, but not tomorrow. There are no guarantees for tomorrow.

Probably most of us are familiar with the verse in Matthew where Jesus says, "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble" (Matt 6:34). This is speaking of a practical way to tackle everyday life - take it one day at a time! We can apply this principle also to days that are going really well for us. Don't waste your todays looking forward to your tomorrows.

2) On the meaning of what is said

I recently came to the realization that the Bible does not always mean what it says. Now, before you spam me and send me viruses or post evil comments, let me explain. A while ago I had a chat with some guys outside a Harvest Crusade Festival. Their hermeneutic is really interesting. The motto, as I found out later on their website, is "God says what He means and means what He says." I thought, that sounds good. We can finally get away from the allegorically interpretations of Genesis and the gospels and get down to the meat of what the Bible says. Little did I know that they were more than serious about their literalism. Of course, I reject much of their theology (although they do hit the nail on the head in some places), because the Bible simply "doesn't mean what it says" sometimes in the same way that we "don't mean what we say" when we muse that someone "has ants in their pants" or that we are "so hungry could eat a cow" or that our large football playing friends "are tanks."

Apparently to some people, the Bible isn't allowed to use metaphor. "That's what the text plainly says" they will tell you, reminiscent of something I myself have told people many times over. Perhaps you'll be accused of twisting the text to meet your own theology. Foolishness I say. The men in that group at Harvest Crusade actually thought wisdom was a person who stood on rooftops shouting at people (cf. Proverbs)! They then took those verses (which portray wisdom as a female) and combined them with the fact that Jesus is God and that Jesus is called "the wisdom of God." From this they concluded that God was a female. They also concluded that the Bible is Jesus, since both the Scriptures and Jesus are called the Word of God. It has been rightly noted that such wooden literalism could build a fleet of ships! (Mr. Holding's words from his site www.tektonics.org).

Keep in mind that God is called a consuming fire (Deut 4:24), a sun and a shield (Ps 84:11), a rock, a horn, and a fortress (2 Sam 22:3). Perhaps we are to conclude that God is a physical flame. Maybe he's just a huge ball of burning gas. No, no. He is a big metal plate used for blocking arrows with 2 straps in the back to put your arm in. Oh wait, He's actually an inanimate chunk of minerals... for... standing on? You can see how utterly ridiculous this sort of reasoning gets.

So don't twist scripture and turn something historical into something super mystical or secret if it is unwarranted. But come on, when you're reading a Psalm, don't assume that God actually has wings we go under (Ps 17:8). If something sounds weird, check out the context, including the literary context. Word pictures are extremely common everywhere. Paul used them often. Jesus used them often. We should take them as such.

So in that sense I reject the strict literalism of "The Bible says what it means and means what it says."

3) On an old friend's blog

I was going down my AIM buddy list and looking at all the updated profiles. I came across one of an old friend from elementary school. He updates his profile whenever he writes a new blog, and I like reading them to check up on how he's doing. In case you're wondering - not well. He's pretty angry at everything it seems like and has no lack of supply of curse words. This blog was no different, except this one caught my eye because it was named "Karma and Other Meaningless Beliefs." Most of it was angry and insulting (not personally, in general), but he did have some notable points.

Essentially it was a rant about people who basically make up their own beliefs and call themselves "spiritual" but not "religious." The idea here is: what makes you think that all of a sudden you come up with your version of spirituality that has it more correct that everyone else? Most people of course realize the arrogance (and unreliability) of their position and conclude that everyone can pave their own path to God. "I'm not the only right one. I'm just the only person on my path! Everyone else has theirs and they all work!" This, of course, is just plain illogical and a glossing over of the difficulties between opposing views.

My conclusion: We need to gently show people where they have not yet fully thought through their beliefs, help them think through them, and point them to the cross.

There was also a good quote, which I fully agree with him on: "No one can realistically be indifferent to the existence of god." He's right! The common cop outs such as "Hell will be a party!" or "I guess we'll find out when we get there" are not reasonable. It's not fun to be punished. Period. I think that's part of the definition or something. It's also not fun to find out that you are going to be punished for eternity simply because you were too wrapped up in your little sphere of comfortable living to give any substantial consideration to the possibility that God exists and that He will judge all evil. That isn't something you're going to want to find out when you die.

My conclusion: We need to gently show people why Christianity is worth considering, help them consider it, and implore them to accept God's sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins - the only way of salvation.

From the looks of the ending of his post, it's obvious that this is not what my friend had in mind. He is only interested in ridiculing anyone with spiritual beliefs. We don't want to ridicule people, we want to love them and lead them and show them God's forgiveness. That's what this whole season is supposed to be about - God's love for His lost sheep (John 3:17).



Merry Christmas, all!

Continuing an Old Tradition

I thought about writing a blog about everything I'm thankful for (and believe me, there is a lot), but I just thought I'd do something a little different. For all you old-timers, you might remember that I started this blog as a commentary on 1 Corinthians , but got "sidetracked" at chapter 11, verse 1. Quite honestly, there are some verses there that I didn't know what to do with, and I was getting better at finding other things to write about (not a bad thing). Anyway, I thought I'd pick up right where I left off and try to tackle ONE of these verses that deal with obscure areas of church behavior and theology.

Since I left off at verse 1, I think I'll pick up at verse two! That makes sense. Lately I've been quite active on the Facebook boards having nice conversations with my Catholic buddies, and verses like this one just have to come up. Now, if you know anything about Catholicism, you'll know that they rely heavily on their traditions to "interpret" Scripture. Of course, I'm convinced that plenty of the time, no interpretation is needed; it just needs to be read! So let's read it:

Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things
and the traditions just as I delivered them to you.

The Roman Catholic would gladly quote this verse to support their emphasis on tradition in the church. Of course, I don't think this verse can be used to justify such a position for several reasons:
1) Paul is talking about specific traditions he delivered to the Corinthians, not tradition in general.
2) Paul doesn't directly tell us what this tradition is. For all we know the tradition could be a reference to staying faithful to the Word of God!
3) Paul isn't advocating the interpretation of Scripture via tradition! In fact, Paul warned the Colossians to "not be taken captive through...the traditions of men" but rather to base our thinking on Christ (Col 2:8).
4) The tradition could be the very next thing he addresses: the hierarchy of authority in the church and proper conduct during prayer (vv. 3-16). In that case, we have it in Scripture anyways, and still are without need of "tradition"!

And ultimately, tradition is never allowed to violate Scripture, but this is exactly what Catholic tradition does. This is the real reason I do not accept the Catholic idea of tradition, because it's gotten to the point where it goes against the Word of God so much so that I cannot even consider the Roman Catholic Church a Christian church. The works salvation wrapped up in the sacraments of Catholicism is directly forbidden in Scripture (Gal 3:10) and those who preach it (a different gospel) are declared anathema (Gal 1:8-9).

We need to be committing ourselves only to Christ's sacrifice and not trusting in our own righteousness to save us. Silly things like eating bread and drinking wine, getting dunked in water, praying repetitiously, and giving money to the church (among others) do not affect our salvation! Perhaps they are effected by our salvation, but they have no effect themselves on our standing before the just Judge.

I hope this encourages you that you can rest assured in your salvation because Christ has paid the full penalty, and requires no merit from you. I also hope this encourages you to live an all the more full and holy life (Lev. 20:7), now that you Christians are free from the control that sin used to have over you. Now these are definitely some things we can all be very thankful for!!!

Well... it's time to get to some homework. Yes... they assigned us stuff over break... >_<