No Passion, No Preaching

There is an idea floating around my head of throwing a "10-minute party" each Sunday after I teach. The party would be by invitation only. Those invited would be people interested in or believing they have a call of God upon their life to preach.

For ten minutes after each study they would dissect what I just did. What was the homiletical idea? How did I start the introduction? At what point did I draw illustrations? How did the outline contribute? What were the transitions? Was the conclusion appropriate to the subject? Maybe more of a party for me than for them.

Often I will say while I am teaching, "It is not preaching if it's not practical." If I have not made truth practical, I have not preached.

That is true from the listener's side. Equally true from my side is there is no preaching without passion, for preaching is truth shot-through a prism of human personality and Holy Spirit anointing. That means a dominant note in preaching has to be intensity. Well, I have to be intense. I preach to reach the back row.

Study the preaching of the apostles. It was far from the familiar Sunday fare of legalism, humanism, and political correctness wrapped in aphorisms.

There is no reason why your ministry should not achieve visible results, provided you keep alive within you a sense of the wonder of the facts you preach and of the urgency of the issues with which you deal. Every Sunday morning when it comes ought to find you awed and thrilled by the reflection – "God is to be in action today, through me, for these people: this day may be crucial, this service decisive, for someone now ripe for the vision of Jesus."

—James S. Stewart, Scottish preacher, Heralds of God, 1946, p. 47

Lessons Never Learned from History

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
—George Santayana, Reason in Common Sense, 1905

People talk about being "postmodern," but really we live in an a-historical age. Our people are prisoners of the past because they never learn it, and hence learn from it. That is why to the Greeks history appeared to be circular, and to Hegel it looked like a repeating scenario of truth-antithesis-synthesis—because we never really learn the truth! The reason we never learn from history is because learning requires change. People have to actually change if they have truly learned. In order to say you have learned, new decisions have to be made. For humanity, here are five lessons we never learn from history.

Lessons Unlearned

1. A global economy cannot immunize us from war and tyranny (and neither can science or technology)

Modern rational empiricism is not enough to keep us from fighting new wars. And certainly the Palestinians are not rational enough (as an example). Ever since the 1993 Oslo Accords Israel and the west have extended them a carrot. This carrot, to include statehood, means entrance into the global economy, with all the prosperity that implies. Don't expect them (or the Iranians) to go for it. Theirs is a religious objection (the North Koreans, on the other hand, are greedy and might just accept the carrot over the stick—if it is a long enough carrot).

2. Freedom is not a globally shared value

Desire for power is the true universal human value. Six thousand years and you would think we had learned this. Since this point is the hardest to accept, let me spend a paragraph on it. Nations and individuals often choose the perceived security of a dictator (like maybe Russia as a modern example) to the responsibilities of freedom. China and Russia both had democratic revolutions in the last century; they ended in brutal tyrannies. Confucius said that order flows from above. This ideal produces persistent despotism until the King of kings returns.

Okay, I see you still don't believe me, so let's take an illustration closer to home. Latin America is right next door to the U.S. It has vast resources and an industrious population. Yet many Latin American countries have never developed enduring institutions of democracy. (Sure, it would be easy to cite South American examples, but Cuba is only 90 miles away!) This lesson is why . . .

3. The Middle East is the cradle of civilization and the graveyard of empires

It doesn't matter that some of the empires had good intentions. Washington D.C. is the new Rome, and America is the new Athens. Along with those ancient civilizations, we share the idea that,

LAW: the strong have a duty to come to the aid of the weak
COROLLARY: pre-emptive war is necessary against bullies, and we will be welcomed as a liberator by the victims

And Middle Eastern history says, Not! Rome fell as much by getting caught in the cycle of nation-building, annexation, and the terrorism that followed, as from anything else.

4. Lust for power is a universal human value, but religion is the most powerful motivator of nations

Watch. The U.S. was founded on the truth "self evident," that "all men are created equal." And yet the Constitution was crafted to state that some men in America were only equal to three-fifths of a human. Why? Because those men and women were viewed as property, not persons. Righteous indignation against that immoral idea led to a Civil War. The Civil War led to over 620,000 deaths (about two percent of the population, or the equivalent of over six million today). This finally settled our understanding of the definition of freedom—as a moral issue. (Freedom may be settled, but fairness, on the other hand, is still "the struggle.")

5. Nations do not rise and fall because of enigmatic social and economic forces, but because of decisions made by individuals

Harry Truman believed that America was ordained to bring freedom to the world. Every President since has believed the same, to a greater or lesser degree. Truman knew that to achieve this we must become a superpower, and so we did.

What lesson does the Bible teach us?

Study Moses, David, Solomon. Examine the interplay of kings and prophets and foreign relations.
LAW: there is a moral dimension to history
COROLLARY: you cannot separate public and private morality

Any nation is able to be just as ruthless as its leaders (as shown in the book "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust," by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen).

History is a great self-help course; especially Bible history.

How Deep Is Your Love?

How deep is your love
I really need to learn
'Cause were living in a world of fools
Breaking us down
When they all should let us be
We belong to you and me

—The Bee Gees, 1977


What Are We Here For?

I write this for my own enjoyment. I am embarrassed by the people who say they read my blog.

This entry will not appeal to you. We live in a day of seeker-sensitive, need-meeting oriented churches and services. I am much less therapeutic, preferring to make you look into your Bible instead of inside yourself to get the answer. And I find that sometimes we need to be reminded of the basics.

We were made to worship. Church exists because Christ calls his people to assemble for his worship.

The Old Testament is a narrative of worship. The Patriarchs worshipped as they wandered. Israel worshipped in the wilderness with a tent and an ark. When they settled in the land the tent became a tabernacle, and finally a temple.

God was worshipped in a sanctuary. The sanctuary was a place where God dwelt. It was a buffer zone between a holy God and an unholy world. It was the cusp where the Kingdom of God was conceived. So the sanctuary served as the focal point of worship. But the building was nothing apart from obedience. This is worship.

There was a place and time. They worshipped on the Sabbath and during the Feasts. They prepared for worship by circumcision. The elements of worship were prayer, praise, scripture reading, preaching, almsgiving and sacrifice. But the sacrifice was nothing apart from obedience. This is worship.

We worship God in spirit, but according to the truth. Principles first laid down in the Old Testament transcend dispensations.

The church is the new royal priesthood. Every believer's heart is now the sacred dwelling-place of the divine nature.

We have a time when the congregation comes together: Sunday. Some churches have services Friday or Saturday, but we still honor his resurrection when we meet on Sunday, for he was the sacrificial Lamb of God.

We prepare for worship. Circumcision is nothing, but baptism relates you to a local body. Baptism links us to Christ by a good conscience. Baptism marks our entrance into a body of believers. Baptism states that we are living according to a new life and walking in a new way.

If we make everything worship then nothing is worship. God is worshipped by our coming together. We offer the sacrifice of prayer and praise. Think through this.

ELEMENTS OF WORSHIP
1. Preaching the word (discipleship goal 1)
2. Prayer and praise to God together (discipleship goal 2)
3. Observing the ordinances (discipleship goal 3)
4. Giving an offering (to enable discipleship goal 4)

At the end, there is no temple (Rev 21:22). There is no Sabbath, for it is now the Sabbath rest (Heb 4:9-10). There is unceasing praise, and no need for sun or moon to regulate sacred time (Rev 21:23). There is preparation, for we have washed our robes (Rev 7:14-15).

There are still elements to our worship. We pray (Rev 5:8). We sing (Rev 19:6). The scroll is read and the word is proclaimed (Rev 5,14). We share a supper with the Lord (our marriage supper, Rev 19:6-8).

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.