Brad’s Blog

I am currently reading Desiring God by John Piper.  Today my post is on Piper’s chapter about love.

Piper calls love “the labor of Christian hedonism.”  Piper is continuing to discuss the problem with giving to God out of duty.  The following quote is really good.  “If you come to God dutifully offering Him the reward of your fellowship instead of thirsting after the reward of His fellowship, then you exalt yourself above God as His benefactor and belittle Him as a needy beneficiary - and that is evil.”

I have to be honest with you.  I am getting really bored with this book.  I had such high expectations going into it.  It is not that the book is bad, it just seems to go on and on saying the same thing.  Piper works to make sure that he is not misunderstood but that also causes the book to seem to ramble endlessly.

Part of the issue with the book is that Piper is tackling words that have been misused and mis-defined in the church and in the world.  He is carefully making sure that the reader has the proper understanding of a concept and is then not pulled to either extreme.  I do appreciate how Piper does this.  I like how he helps the reader properly understand joy, worship, love, feelings, etc.  These are often misunderstood words in Christendom.

Piper defines love as the overflow of joy that gladly meets the needs of others.  I like this definition.  I think that accurately describes what true love is and what the true motivation for helping others is.  Piper states that if we are not pursuing joy (biblical joy, not worldly joy) that we can not really love people or please God.

Piper does use many Bible references to back up his points, especially the book of Hebrews.

Next time, we will look at the chapter on Scripture.

So, I was reading a story the other day on ABCNews.com. The story can be found here. I have also posted the story here on braddena.com in case ABC takes it down at some point.

The title of the story was “Nobody Goes to Hell”: Minister Labeled a Heretic. Be sure and read the complete article.

First off, this is just a poorly written article and is biased. It starts off by saying that virtually every human culture in history has had some notion of a horrible afterlife. But, then it goes on to call hell a medieval vision. It also says that fire and brimstone are not preached as much in today’s age of reason. Ah, how smart we are? We are so brilliant today that we have outgrown those childish notions that those poor dumb people had in the past. Understand that I say this tongue in cheek.

Never mind the writing. Let’s get to the real point of this post.

Carlton Pearson, the subject of the article, is a pastor of a former mega-church. He is man-centered from start to finish. He is heavily influenced by the Charismatic Movement. This article is unbelievable. In one man’s life, we see the the last couple of centuries of church history run its course in one man. As I said, he is very man-centered, so his life starts off right where Calvinism (God-centered) was abandoned and Arminianism (man-centered) took over in the U.S.

He is very Charismatic, so he is very much caught up in experience and emotion over truth. He was fascinated with and trained by Oral Roberts. The article even states that Pearson’s stage presence is what makes him a huge success.

Then in Pearson’s life, he was met with a crisis of faith. He did not have truth to fall back on. His roots were in man-centered and Charismatic theology that emphasized experience and emotion. This caused him to begin to elevate his own reason above the revealed Word. Pearson clearly had a poor understanding of God’s holiness and man’s sinfulness.

Once Pearson was at this point, he quickly abandoned the inerrancy of Scripture. This is the first step toward liberal theology and the abandonment of God altogether. In fact Pearson even states that he now believes the Bible is not the word of God but a book by men about God. So, in Pearson’s short life, we have now seen the rise of man-centered theology, the influence of the Charismatic Movement, and then the rise of Liberalism. This sounds amazingly like church history in the U.S.

Pearson next states that God gave him a revelation that hell is not real but something created by man on Earth. Thankfully, the article states that most people left his church, which is what the Bible commands of Christians. Unfortunately, it sounds as if some Christians did not treat him with love and prayer but treated him harshly.

It is interesting that Pearson states he has asked God to show him if he is wrong. During this time, he lost basically his entire church and was diagnosed with cancer. One would think that he might at least give some consideration to if this is his “sign from God.”

The article ends with this quote from Pearson, which is basically a complete abandonment of God altogether. “My hope is that, that people will learn to love themselves, accept themselves and celebrate themselves. That’s pretty dramatic, but I think it’ll save the planet.”

The question is obviously raised, “if there is no hell, then what is the gospel (good news?” What kind of good news did we need? Why did Christ have to die? Why even bother being a pastor? Rarely do we see bad theology have such broad-sweeping consequences in one man’s life.

I have never seen these verses from the Apostle Paul and Apostle Peter so sadly illustrated in one life.

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry. (2 Timothy 4:1-5; NIV)

But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping. (2 Peter 2:1-3; NIV)

So sad and a reminder that but by the Grace of God, there go I.

I am currently reading Desiring God by John Piper.  I am continuing my discussion of Piper’s treatment of worship.

The definition that Piper continually gives to worship is, “Worship is a way of gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of His worth.“  He says that without the engagement of the heart, we are not really worshiping.

Piper goes into a rather long explanation to arrive at the conclusion that we honor God in our worship the most when we say, “It’s my joy” and not “It’s my duty.”  Piper even sums this up more to say that worship is simply obedience to the command of God in Psalm 37 that says, “Delight yourself in the Lord.”

I did like in this chapter how Piper emphasized not to let our worship devolve into mere duty.  I think we all have a tendency to allow that to happen.  We should meditate on the greatness of God and what He has done for us and allow that to transform our minds and fill our hearts.  I completely agree with Piper.  However, I did find this chapter to kind of drag on and on.  I really had trouble staying with him to the end of the chapter.  I hope that the remaining chapters pick up the pace because I am getting a bit bogged down in this book.

Next, we tackle love.

I am continuing to read Desiring God by John Piper.

It is now time to move to chapter 3 dealing with worship.  Piper spends a great deal of time talking about Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well.  Piper discusses how she shifted the focus of the conversation from discussing her sin to discussing where the Samaritans were supposed to worship.  The following paragraph is terrific, and I have seen this many times in people’s lives.

“A trapped animal will chew off its own leg to escape.  A trapped sinner will mangle her own mind and rip up the rules of logic.  ‘Why, yes, as long as we are talking about my adultery, what is Your stance on the issue of where people should worship?’ This is standard evasive double-talk for trapped sinners.“

Piper goes on to say that worshiping God is essentially a way of honoring God, and he quotes Isaiah 29:13 to illustrate this point.   Piper begins to drive home the point that worship is a heart matter and is not merely external activities.  Piper says that our hearts must be engaged in worship and that engagement brings alive feelings, emotions, and affections for God.  (Please understand that he does not mean this in a touchy feely sort of way.  In fact, Piper dispels the idea that worship is about physical feelings.  He is defining feelings as things such as gratitude, hope, joy, contentment, peacefulness, desire, compassion, fear, hate, anger, grief.)

Piper rightly states that we worship God not in any way to get good gifts from God but just because He is God.

I will continue about worship in my next post.

It is with a heavy heart that I write this post. My wife’s grandmother passed away a little over a week ago. She had been sick for the last couple of months, but the death came quickly and was unexpected. We were close to Dena’s grandmother, so this was hard to take.

Thankfully, Nellie had trusted in Christ as her Savior. We know that we will see her again someday and that the goodbye was just for a little while. We are thankful that when we grieve, we grieve with hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). Oh, how much harder would it be if goodbye were forever?

God is a good and merciful God. The same verse that I quoted in my title (Romans 6:23) tells us in the first half of the verse why people die. The verse tells us about how our sin has cursed us and that this world is full of death and decay. This is not the way things were supposed to be. Sin has ruined and corrupted this world. BUT, God is a good and merciful God. He has provided hope in the midst of sin. The same verse in Romans that tells us of our curse also provides us with the hope that God has given us. The verse finishes with …but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. That is grace. That is hope in the midst of the worst that life can throw at us. In one verse, the Bible tells us of our deplorable condition but finishes the verse with what Christ has done for us. Grace is truly amazing.

I have truly been amazed by God’s grace in the last week. He has comforted a family that is hurting. He has encouraged and strengthened. He has provided hope. In something as wrong and evil as death, God’s grace and mercy triumphed. A few days before Nellie died, the doctors ran many tests on her. We were awaiting the results and preparing for the worst. It appeared that she had a long, drawn out, and painful road ahead. God called her home quickly and painlessly in the night. Even though it was hard to let go, and we were clearly not ready, God was so merciful. Nellie did not have to suffer. She did not have to know that she was going to die. She did not have to watch her family suffer knowing she was very sick. God was good.

Don’t misunderstand me. Death is wrong. It is evil. It is not supposed to happen. Death reminds us that there is something terribly wrong with this world. It is solely and completely a result of the Fall and our rejection of God. God is bigger than sin and death though. He has triumphed over it. He has provided light in the midst of great darkness.

When someone dies, it should cause us to do 2 things. First, it should cause us to examine our own lives. We all know that the wages of sin is death, but have you personally accepted the gift of God that is eternal life through Jesus Christ? Have you accepted the forgiveness that God offers us from our sin? The second thing that death should cause us to do is to hate sin. We should see the sin in our own lives and grieve over it. We should see that every time we chose sin, we are making the same choice that Adam and Eve made. We are adding to the corruption of this world. We are adding our stamp of approval to the death and decay around us. We have only ourself to blame when we see death.

To sum up, we grieve for this world right along with the Apostle Paul and await with great hope the full redemption of this world.

For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Romans 8:20-25)

Sorry for the lack of posts this week.  Dena’s grandmother passed away last week, so we were out of town.  I typically write these posts a week in advance.  With being gone last week, I do not have any posts written for this week.

My goal is to have posts available on Monday through Friday.  Hopefully, next week I will get back in a routine.

Thanks for your patience.

Brad