Me and My Ninety-Nine

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”

 

So he told them this parable: “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

 
(Luke 15:1-7 ESV)

One of the challenges I face when it comes to maturing as a disciple of Jesus is working through passages familiar to my head (knowledge) but unengaged in my heart (life change). The parable in Luke 15:1-7 is a classic example, and one where I am learning to grow in joy-inspired repentance.

We know how the story goes. A man loses one of his sheep and does whatever it takes to find that sheep. But when I dwell on this passage a little more and the unaddressed realities in my heart, a couple of things come to my mind. First, am I the kind of person who is not even aware of when a sheep is lost? Do I pay enough attention to the “sheep who are not of this fold” (John 10:16) to acknowledge when one is lost? Second, am I the kind of person who secretly tells myself, “Well, I only lost one. At least I still have the other ninety-nine. Why make the effort to go after the one who is lost anyway? Is that not a bad stewardship of my time and energy?”    Continue at Tim Brister

A Hospital for Hurting Souls

The longer I am a believer the more I marvel at the genius of the local church. The longer I am a pastor the more I marvel that God’s grace would be sufficient enough to save, call, and equip a sinner like me to make even a lame attempt to shepherd a microscopic portion of His sheep. And the longer I am a biblical counselor the more I marvel at the kind of risk-taking love that God calls us to display toward one another as sinners ministering to sinners—together—in a fallen, broken world.

One of the characteristics of this risk-taking love is initiative—daring to come alongside a brother or sister in Christ who is hurting and finding it difficult to take the next necessary spiritual step. Galatians 6:1 makes it clear that this personal, counseling ministry is a family matter. Paul addresses “brethren.” Counseling is a ministry of discipleship within the family of God. In fact, that is what the church is—a visible family of the invisible God. The New Testament most commonly refers to believers in familial terms such as “brethren,” “brother,” or “sister,” which occur some 250 times. The church is the original “brotherhood” (1 Peter 2:17). This analogy has numerous implications. For example, it obligates us to “Be devoted to one another” (Rom. 12:10), to care for one another’s needs (Acts 2:44–45; 4:32; 11:29–30; 1 John 3:17–18; 1 Tim. 5:1–16), and to pray for one another (James 5:13–16). However, the familial commitment of the brotherhood also requires us to exhort, and if necessary, discipline family members who are in sin. The Bible’s plan for restoration is carried out by brethren for brethren.   Continue at Paul Tautges

Spurgeon on the Amusement-Driven Church

As a young Christian I remember stumbling across this statement by Charles Spurgeon on how entertainment and amusement are not part of the tools of Christ’s mission for the Church in the world. The 21st Century church in America desperately needs to hear this. Spurgeon wrote:

An evil is in the professed camp of the Lord, so gross in its impudence, that the most shortsighted Christian can hardly fail to notice it. During the past few years this evil has developed at an alarming rate. It has worked like leaven until the whole lump ferments!

The devil has seldom done a more clever thing, than hinting to the Church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them. From speaking out the gospel, the Church has gradually toned down her testimony, then winked at and excused the frivolities of the day. Then she tolerated them in her borders. Now she has adopted them under the plea of reaching the masses!

My first contention is that providing amusement for the people is nowhere spoken of in the Scriptures as a function of the Church. If it is a Christian work why did not Christ speak of it? “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, and provide amusement for those who do not relish the gospel.” No such words, however, are to be found.

Again, providing amusement is in direct antagonism to the teaching and life of Christ and all His apostles. What was the attitude of the apostolic Church to the world? “You are the salt of the world,” not the sugar candy; something the world will spit out, not swallow.  Continue at Nicholas T. Batzig

Sheep, Goats, and the Mission of the Church

Can't give you a sermon manuscript---I'm working on my own!---but here's how I think through the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25.

1.  I think your first impression is correct.  I think that when Jesus refers to "the least of these" in 45, that's the same group referenced in 40 when he says "the least of these my brothers."  There are two crucial things to consider here--the meaning of "the least" and the meaning of "brothers."  On "the least," elachistos, it's not quite true that it's not used of disciples anywhere else.  Jesus uses it in Matthew 5:19 to refer to those who will be called "least in the kingdom of heaven."  Paul uses it to refer to himself in 1 Corinthians 15:9 as "the least" of the apostles and in Ephesians 3:8 as "the least of all the saints."  Maybe even more to the point, other than those instances, I don't see any other places where the word is used of humans at all.  Maybe I'm missing something, but there certainly don't seem to be lots of places where elaxistos is used of non-disciples!

Besides that, elaxistos, "least," is just the superlative of mikros, "little."  And Jesus uses that quite a lot to refer to his followers.  Matthew 10:42, for example, says, "Whoever gives one of these little ones a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will be no means lose his reward."  You could look also at Matthew 18:6, 10, and 14.

Which brings up Matthew 18:5.  That's not talking about the needy, I don't think.  It may be talking about the child who's sitting on Jesus' lap; I think it's even more likely that it's talking about disciples who are like that child.  After all, Jesus has already made that metaphorical pivot in verse 4 from the child himself to those who must be like that child, and then in verse 6 he actually brings it home by talking about "one of these little ones who believe in me."  Keep Reading >>>

Amusing the Goats or Calling the Sheep?

Mike Riccardi oversees the membership process at Grace Community Church in Los Angeles. I dont know him personally at all but I loved all he had to say in this article below. 

I believe it will be especially encouraging to Pastors in revealing our most important task in Christian ministry. I recommend it highly:

“And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.” – 2 Corinthians 4:3

 

In 2 Corinthians, Paul writes primarily to defend his own apostleship against certain men whom he later dubbed false apostles (2 Cor 11:13). These men were teaching that Paul was not a true apostle, and were advancing many attacks against both his character and his ministry, to the point that the Corinthians began to doubt Paul, and thus doubt the gospel he preached.

For example, these false apostles accused him of being under God’s judgment because of his constant sufferings. The thought was that if Paul was really sent from Christ he wouldn’t have such opposition and turmoil, but rather that God would bless him. And so in 2 Cor 1:3-11 Paul defends himself by saying that his sufferings for the Gospel are actually a mark of God’s favor. Far from discrediting him as an apostle, sufferings are a badge of his authenticity as a minister of Christ. They also accused him of vacillating, and “purposing according to the flesh” (2 Cor 1:17) because he had changed his plans about coming to Corinth. And so in 2Cor 1:15-22 he defends himself by saying his word to the Corinthians is not yes and no, but yes, just as all God’s promises are yes in Christ. Another accusation was that he was uncredentialed—a sort of Johnny-come-lately apostle, not part of the original twelve. And so in 2 Cor 3:2 he asks the Corinthians, “Do we need letters of commendation to you? You are our letter of commendation. The fact that you now know Christ because of the Gospel we preached to you is evidence of our authenticity.”     Keep Reading...

The Devil is in the White Spaces

It is always shocking to me when people tollerate, follow, and even adore teachers who clearly flaunt biblical standards for conduct, and then act surprised when false teachers and outright heresy are entertained in the church. “Naïve” doesn’t even begin to describe this kind of complicit partnership with false teaching. Because the Scripture warns that “Satan comes as an angel of light,” we simply cannot marvel when his deceptions have somehow “crept in unawares.”

Second Timothy 4:3 predicts that, “the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching.” Too often people assume these opening words to mean that one day, as evangelical ministry marches on with expansive gospel-momentum, a blatant, rather foul stench straight from hell will mount an offensive against sound doctrine so sudden and obvious that all who love Christ will cry out in unison, “Damn the heresy!” If only that was the way it worked.

Instead of opposing the truth with blatant lies, Satan does a far greater work in the white spaces between Paul’s words. When the Apostle warns that “a time is coming,” we shouldn’t imagine a sudden plunge from the heights of doctrinal precision, but rather a slow, imperceptible decline via subtle spiritual optical illusions. The enemy knows that discerning shepherds would never allow their sheep to suddenly deny truth and turn aside to doctrines of demons. His tactics have to be implemented over long periods of time, introducing slight, unnoticeable deviations to the truth. So just exactly how was the enemy able to bring us to the place where we no longer endure sound, in-depth preaching and teaching, and yet celebrate casual conversations with false teachers?    Keep Reading...

9/11 Ten Years Later

The September edition of Tabletalk is out. This issue examines the decade proceeding the events of September 11, 2001. It pays special attention to American’s response to and demands of God, and it instructs Christians on how to interpret and react to the various issues surrounding and springing from that dark day. Contributors include R.C. Sproul, John Piper, Marva Dawn, C.J. Mahaney, Paul David Tripp, and R.C. Sproul Jr.

We do not post all of the feature articles or the daily devotionals from the issue, so you’ll have to subscribe to get those. But for now, here are links to a few select columns and articles from this month:

• “Ten Years Later” by Burk Parsons
• “Ten Years Later” by R.C. Sproul
• “Where Is Your Hope?” by Marva Dawn
• “Happy Pastors” by C.J. Mahaney
• “Living in Light of the Gospel: An Interview with Paul David Tripp”
• “Sheep, Wolves, Snakes, and Doves” by John Piper
• “The Days of the Dead” by R.C. Sproul Jr.

Columns from Tabletalk Magazine

Goat Membership for More Buck

Kevin DeYoung wrote the following letter to a colleague who was thinking of establishing two sets of memberships in his church, one for believers and another for unbelievers.

While Scripture tells us that external membership to the church is validated by public profession of faith in Christ, pressure to rake up the numbers has prompted many to accept as bona fide members those who do not even make the slightest hint that they have been acted upon by the Spirit through a faith that expresses itself in confession (Rom. 10:9), thereby deconstructing beyond recognition what it means to be a part of God's covenant people.This letter is really addressed to many who are contemplating the leap to liberalism, in an attempt to dissuade them from the path of unfaithfulness to their calling: Keep Reading...

Jesus Keeps His Sheep

In his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, Thomas Watson has a great discussion of the preservation of the saints (a.k.a. the “P” in TULIP or the last part of the Canons of Dort).  He says “a saint’s perseverance is built upon three immutable pillars.”

1) Upon God’s eternal love.  We are inconstant in our love to God; but he is not so in his love to us.  ‘I have loved thee with an everlasting love;’ with a love of eternity (Jer. 31.3).  When once the sunshine of God’s electing love is risen upon the soul, it never sets finally.

2) Upon the covenant of grace.  It is a firm, impregnable covenant; as you read in [2 Sam. 23.5] ‘God hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure.’  This covenant is inviolable, it cannot be broken; indeed, sin may break the peace of the covenant, but it cannot break the bond of the covenant. Keep Reading...

Two Cents, and Not a Penny More, on Love Wins.

I have  mixed feelings about putting this post up, mostly because I don't think very much else needs to be said about Rob Bell's book Love Wins.  If you haven't seen Martin Bashir's interview with him on MSNBC, you need to.  It tells you everything you need to know about the book and Bell's approach to these issues:  He clearly has about six highly-crafted and exquisitely ambiguous things to say, and is doggedly determined to avoid---at all cost---giving straight answers to any questions about what he really believes.  Bashir calls him out on it, and it's a service to the church and the world that he does.

Several friends have already done a great job of reviewing the entire book.  Both Tim Challies's and Kevin DeYoung's reviews are helpful pieces of work.  So this isn't going to be a full review.  That said, I do think it might be useful to point out a couple of details that I haven't seen talked about much, and that Bell simply got flat wrong.  You know the old quip about lawyers?  "Always confident, sometimes right."  That's an almost perfect description of Bell in Love Wins; he writes with amazing confidence about certain facts (word meanings, Jewish backgrounds, historical issues), and yet if you just pick up a dictionary or google a quote, you realize that what he's saying is simply wrong.  Pointing these things out isn't just a matter of "picking on" Bell, either.  It's a matter of doing our best to make sure little errors don't become part of our atmosphere.  Otherwise,  before we know it we'll have people in our churches saying, as if everybody knows it already, that Luther was a universalist and that the Bible doesn't have a concept of "forever."  So in the interest of preventing that, here are just a handful of the things that Bell gets flat wrong in his book. Keep Reading>>>

Protect the Flock by Excluding Visitors

Elders are called to protect the church from people who would do them spiritual harm (wolves among the sheep). One of the ways we try to do that in our church is by not allowing people to get very involved in the life of the congregation until they are members. 

So in our church, non-members are welcome to attend and participate in the public services of the church.  We are happy to have them in our Sunday morning gathering, our Sunday evening gathering, and our fellowship meals.

But we don't let people attend small groups or serve among the children or lead music until they are members.  In order to join the church, a person must be examined by the elders and approved by the congregation.  Once a person has been through that process, we feel reasonably comfortable that they are safe (that is to say, not a wolf). 

But until the point, we don't want to encourage people in the church to look to that person as a leader by putting them up in front of the congregation to lead singing.  We don't want them teaching the children of the church.  We don't want people to completely let their guard down and trust them in the way we ask members to trust each other in small groups.

People who are "regular attenders" but who haven't joined the church sometimes feel like our policy is exclusive.  But ultimately my responsibility is to the flock over which the Spirit has made me an overseer.  And besides, they are welcome to pursue church membership at any time.

And if you're looking for an awesome sermon on church membership, Jonathan Leeman preached one at my favorite church yesterday.

HT: 9marks

Shepherding the Sheep

Throughout Scripture,sinners in general, and God’s people in particular are described as sheep. And those God sends to lead them are equally frequently called shepherds (Acts 20:28; 1 Pet. 5:1-4). We will look first at the character of the sheep, and then at the character of the shepherd. We start with the sheep because the key to leading as a shepherd is in understanding the nature of the sheep.

The Sheep

1. Sheep are foolish
2. Sheep are slow to learn
3. Sheep are unattractive
4. Sheep are demanding
5. Sheep are stubborn

Continue Reading>>>

How Do You Make Christ More Appealing? A Good Word for Preachers

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. (John 10.27)

Have you ever been overcome with frustrated despair as you wonder how to get through to your professing Christian friend?  Have you looked into the eyes of an unbeliever and asked yourself how you might bring them to Christ?  Have you wondered how you might appeal to them and somehow have them follow the Savior?  If you are a pastor, have you sat in your study and wondered how you might help people to get it?

To one degree or another all believers have struggled through such thoughts. 

Often times though  in our noble ambitions we find ourselves retreating to unbiblical means.

We aim to make Christ more appealing to the one who seems to not think that he is so.  This usually means giving Jesus something of an extreme makeover so that the eligible unbeliever might be one over.  We might be tempted to change his message, his tone, his requirements, his work, his kingdom, and his demands.  Suddenly our ostensibly noble goal has placed in our hands the tools of idolatry as we craft a Jesus that looks like the rebel.

But this is not the way it works. Keep Reading>>>

Of Sheep and Shepherds

David Murray draws on his Highland experience to speak of sheep and of shepherds. Sheep are . . .

• foolish.
• slow to learn.
• unattractive.
• demanding.
• stubborn.
• strong.
• straying.
• unpredictable.
• copycats.
• restless.
• dependent.
• the same everywhere.

The shepherd is a sheep.
The shepherd . . .

• is patient with his sheep.
• knows his sheep.
• values his sheep.
• loves his sheep.
• observes his sheep.
• feeds his sheep.
• leads his sheep.
• speaks well of his sheep.
• pursues his sheep.
• rests his sheep.
• perseveres with his sheep.

More from David on leadership here.

Bible Illiteracy, Unbelief, and Goats in the Sheep Pen

What Pastors are Called to Do…And not to Do

If you think that you are called to keep a largely worldly organization, miscalled a church, going, with infinitesimal doses of innocuous sub-Christian drugs or stimulants, then the only help I can give you is to advise you to give up the hope of the ministry and go and be a street scavenger; a far healthier and more godly job, keeping the streets tidy, than cluttering the church with a lot of worldly claptrap in the delusion that you are doing a job for God. Read the rest HERE

WATCH OUT FOR THE WOLVES IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING

We are not talking here about minor disagreements, but fundamental big picture issues. The "God" of these false prophets is not the same as that of the Bible; "salvation" means something entirely different and the means to be saved often makes some reference to Christ (which is why it is so deceptive), but it is never Christ alone who saves, but Christ plus the contribution we are all supposed to make to the cause.

In contrast, biblical salvation is by grace alone, received through faith in Christ alone, all to the glory of God alone, and works (the things we do) play no part, except that they are the fruit of a life transformed by Christ. The Scripture in Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us, "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." The things we do (works) are the fruit, not the root of our salvation. Read the rest HERE

Little Ones Perishing: Don't Miss the Meaning

Sheep

Feeding Sheep or Amusing Goats (C.H. Spurgeon)

HT: Symphony of Scripture