There are only two categories of human beings: those who are in Adam, and those who are in Christ. Are you in Adam or in Christ?
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Who should we engage with the gospel? How would you answer that question? Especially, when we consider Jesus’ statement in Matthew 7:6:
Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.
I know most of you are thinking: Shouldn’t we engage anyone and everyone with the gospel. I believe that is partly right, especially when we consider Jesus’ command in Matthew 28:16-20 to go and make disciples. So yes, we should be willing to engage anyone and everyone, but how can we best steward our time in a hostile world, especially, when there are so many who need the gospel?
Let me offer you a few principles that I think might be helpful in answering our question.
(1) We should not consistently engage those with the gospel who are looking for an argument.
Proverbs 17:14 and 18:19 say,
The beginning of strife is like letting out water, so quit before the quarrel breaks out.
A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city, and quarreling is like the bars of a castle.
(2) We should not consistently engage those with the gospel who are fools and do not desire to know the truth.
Proverbs 14:7; 18:2; 23:9 say,
Leave the presence of a fool, for there you do not meet words of knowledge.
A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.
Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the good sense of your words.
I am not asking this question in order to give myself or others an excuse to not share the gospel. We should be willing to share the good news with all who will listen, and even those who will not.
I am, however, asking this question to challenge you to see that our time and resources are precious. As a result, you should spend your time and resources on those who are willing to listen and are actively seeking to know more about Christ.
For instance, there are a few guys who frequent the Starbucks in my town that I engage with the gospel periodically. I don’t, however, engage them on a daily basis. Why? Because they don’t care to know the truth. They are fools who only want to argue that Christianity is not true. For me to consistently engage them is unfruitful and sucks up my time and resources that I could employ to get to know others. Instead of fretting over engaging them, I rest in the fact knowing they have heard the gospel, are consistently prayed for, and if God so chooses to save them, He will work to soften their hard hearts.
Let me challenge you to share the gospel with others, but to be strategic in who you seek to consistently engage. Spend your time and resources on those who are willing to have an honest conversation with you.
What do you think about Christian accountability? Do you think it is abused? Do you think it is negative? Do you think we should hold each other accountability? Beyond what you think, what does the Bible say? What does it tell us we should do? How does it tell us we should exercise accountability in the body? 1 Samuel 15 provides us with an excellent model.
Saul has disobeyed God by not completing the mission God gave him. Instead of completely destroying the Amalekites, he spared king Agag’s life and allowed his people to keep the best cattle to sacrifice to the Lord. As well as he setup a monument to himself in Carmel.
Samuel received word from the Lord regarding Saul’s actions, goes and confronts him, calling him to repent while also delivering bad news. The Lord has rejected him as king over Israel.
Samuel’s actions both tell us accountability is biblical as well as they provide us with a model to follow. Let’s look at the model Samuel gives us.
(1) We should grieve over others sins because they have offended a holy God.
The first action we should take when we learn of another brother or sister’s sin is to grieve. Sin is an affront to God. It’s rebellion against Him. Knowing another brother or sister is in sin, should cause us to grieve.
(2) We should go to the person and confront them with their sin.
After grieving, prayer for wisdom, and checking our own heart’s motives, we should confront the sinning brother or sister, bringing their sin to light and calling them to repent. Of course, we must not do this in a high-handed, judgmental, or self-promoting way, but in a loving and wise manner.
(3) We must confront them with God’s Word.
Samuel doesn’t come to Saul with his own word. He comes with God’s Word. When we go to another brother or sister in sin, we must go with God’s Word as well. Allowing Scripture to point out their sin is important because it is what is judging them, not us. All we are doing is pronouncing God’s judgment on them via Scripture. In this way, we are acting as God’s messenger, not their judge.
(4) We must call them to repent.
Confrontation should not occur for confrontations sake. Rather, its purpose is that the confronted sinner will repent of their sin and enjoy restored fellowship with the Lord. Calling the wayward to repent is an important step of accountability. One we must not neglect because it is what the whole process is driving toward.
For some, accountability is an uneasy topic. It is something they would never dream of doing. For that reason, let me provide you with motivation to hold others accountable and to seek it out yourself.
(1) As God’s people we should reflect His character to the world for His glory.
If we are in sin, we cannot reflect God’s character to the world. Instead, we are actually misrepresenting God, especially if we call ourselves Christians. By holding each other accountable, we are fighting for the purity of Jesus’ bride – the church – and for God’s glory. We should do this and desire this because the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
(2) Unrepentant sinners hinder the church’s witness to the world.
This is why the world sees many Christians as hypocrites. If we want to regain our name in the world, we have to start calling people to repent of their sin and to follow God. Accountable then becomes a way for the church to fight for its witness in the world.
(3) Accountability is for your joy.
When we live in obedience to God, we experience the most joy. Think about a time when you were living in rebellion to God. Were you joyful then? I know that when I am in rebellion to God, I am not joyful. Now think about a time, when you were living in line with God’s commands, were you joyful then? I know that is the time when I am the most joyful.
Accountable, confronting others with their sin, and calling them to repentance is far from negative, rather it is a way for us to fight for other’s joy.
(4) Accountability helps us finish the race.
Salvation is pictured both as a definitive historical event that happens in our life and as something to be attained at the end of our life. By holding others accountability, we help them to finish the race. We help them to obtain salvation.
James 5:19-20 says,
My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
For those reasons and more, we should hold others accountable. It is a grace – gift – God has given us. It is not something negative. It actually is something positive, and something we should desire.
Next week, I will celebrate my one year anniversary at my first church. Over the last year I have learned many valuable lessons, especially when it comes to preaching. Let me share with you some of the main preaching lessons I learned this last year.
(1) Be Yourself in the Pulpit
God has made us all different. Trying to sound like your favorite preacher will not work. Believe me, I have tried and I have failed. It is taken a year, but I am just now getting comfortable with being myself. It has made a difference in my preaching, as well as it has allowed me to connect with the people in a way I have not connected in the past.
(2) Get to Know Your People
The only way to know the questions your people are asking and the things they are dealing with in their personal, public, and family lives is to be around your people. If you want to make your applications pertinent, your illustrations connect, and the text come alive, you need to know your people.
(3) Use the Sermon Template You Get from Preaching Books, but Don’t be Afraid to Modify It
Most introductory preaching books and classes will provide you with a basic outline – Explain the text, Illustrate the text, and Apply the text – for each major point in your sermon. I believe that is a good rule of thumb, but don’t feel like you have to follow it to a “T”.
For instance, I have found that I can’t always think of an appropriate illustration for one of my major points. When I first started, I thought I needed one no matter what, so I would force an illustration in a section. The result was an awkward illustration that did not add much to the sermon. Over time and through loving, constructive criticism from my wife and others, I have learned that if I can’t think of an illustration, I should not force one.
(4) Know Your Time Limit and What Your People Can Handle
Don’t think you have to preach for forty-five minutes, or an hour, just because your favorite preacher does. If you can hold your people’s attention for twenty minutes, then preach for twenty minutes. If you can hold their attention for thirty or forty minutes, preach for thirty or forty minutes. Preaching to meet a self-imposed time limit is neither wise nor helpful.
Along with knowing your time limit, you should also be sensitive to what your people can handle. If they are accustomed to listening for thirty minutes, don’t come out of the gates on your first week preaching for an hour. It takes time for an attention span to grow. If you recognize this and slowly creep up to your target time limit, you will serve your people better and insure they will get more out of your sermons each week.
(5) Preach Different Genres and Both Testaments
Your yearly preaching schedule should include more than one genre and both Testaments. Doing so will not only help you develop your skills, but it will teach your people the importance of both the Old and New Testaments, as well as how to interpret all of Scripture.
(6) Limit Your Use of the Original Languages from the Pulpit
It is only natural to want to reference the original languages in your sermon. After all, you have probably spent several years in seminary talking through the text in Greek or Hebrew. While these languages should play a major role in sermon preparation, they will quickly cause your people’s eyes to glaze over if you refer to them too much. A wise preacher limit’s his use of them to times when they will help their people understand the text better.
(7) Commit to Preaching through Books
Working through a book from start to finish will serve to challenge both you and the congregation. When you commit to preaching a book, you are forced to deal with every verse in context. Doing so will help you grow in your understanding of Scripture, allow you to preach difficult and pointed texts your congregation needs to hear without feeling attacked, keep you from preaching only your interests, and give you a better chance of accurately interpreting God’s Word.
(8) Read Both Commentaries and Other’s Sermons, but Don’t Preach Them
Commentaries are a preachers best friend. They help us understand difficult texts and think of applications we may not have thought of otherwise. Likewise, reading sermons will help you to understand and apply the text, as well as help you to pull back from the technical nature of most commentaries and give insight into how best to structure your sermon. While commentaries and other’s sermons are helpful, it is important we don’t preach them, but do our own work.
(9) Don’t Forget the So What
It is important and necessary that we tell our people why the text matters to their life, how it applies to their situation, and how they might implement its teaching. If we don’t, we are not fully expounding the text and we are short-changing our people.
(10) Seek Out Constructive Criticism
Let’s face it, no one is a great preacher from the start, unless you are Charles Spurgeon. It takes time. I have found, however, you can increase your preaching skills more quickly by seeking out constructive criticism. My wife, friends, and trusted congregates all have given me feedback over the last year, which has helped me to right the wrong more quickly.
The goal is not self-glorification, but rather congregational edification. Removing those things from your preaching that hinder others from understanding the text is what you are after. There is no better way to understand what those things are than to ask those who are listening to your sermons.
What is the best way for parents to prepare their children for the attacks on their faith they may face in college?
This question was posed to D.A. Carson in his latest interview with Table Talk Magazine. He provides several answers, but two in particular caught my attention.
He says first,
The home should encourage vigorous Christian understanding. The most dangerous seedbed for intellectual rebellion is a home where faith is sentimental and even anti-intellectual, and where opponents are painted as ignorant knaves, because eventually our children discover that there are some really nice people who are atheists and agnostics, and they can present arguments in sophisticated, gentle, and persuasive fashion.
How do we work this out on a daily basis?
We have to understand that our homes, not the church, is the first place our children should be exposed to studying Scripture. Yes, children need the church, just like we need the church to help us in our theological development. The church, however, should only act as a supplement for what our children are getting at home.
Families should be actively training their children. On a regular basis, they should talk through Scripture with their children, answering their questions, and even raising questions they may face at school, college, or in the work place.
Of course, this means parents must be informed and studying Scripture themselves, in order to facilitate these discussions. While that may take some extra work, it is worth it if we want to see our children’s faith and knowledge deepened, as well as if we want to obey God’s command in Deuteronomy 6:7.
The second of Carson’s answers that caught my attention is the following:
At the same time, both the home and the church should be living out a Christian faith that is more than intellectually rigorous. It should be striving for biblically-faithful authenticity across the board: genuine love for God and neighbor, living with eternity in view, quickness to confess sin and seek reconciliation, a concern for the lost and the broken, faithfulness in praise and intercessory prayer, a transparent delight in holiness, and a contagious joy in God. Even if our children are sucked into intellectual nihilism for a while, over the long haul it is important that they remember what biblically-faithful Christianity looks like in the home and in the church.
Our faith, then, cannot remain solely in the intellectual. Instead, our faith must impact our daily life, affecting our emotions, prayers, confessions, outlook, and even how we interact with others. Intellectual rigor doesn’t have to mean cold dead orthodoxy. On the contrary, intellectual rigor should produce a vibrant, living, and acting faith (James 2:14-26).
When our children see our faith lived out in our homes on a daily basis, they will understand our beliefs have an impact on our lives. As Carson points out, this doesn’t mean they will not question their faith, but it does mean they have a concrete example of what faith produces in the life of a real believer to look to in those times of questioning. Hopefully, the example we set will prove Christianity is genuine.
Every Sunday 1000’s of sermons are preached and heard, and just as many Sunday School lessons and Bible Studies are prepared for and taught. Even though sermons are preached, lessons and studies are taught, many do not address the “so what” of the text. In other words, they do not tell the people how to apply the text to their life.
On Friday’s a few men at our church gather at iHop to discuss Scripture. It is a great time of Christian fellowship and an opportunity to learn from one another. Last Friday, one of the guys reminded me of the importance of the “so what.” He said:
I enjoy hearing the history, and the Greek or Hebrew behind the text. These things are necessary to understand and learn, but one thing I want to know before the sermon, Bible study, or Sunday School lesson is over is why does this text matter to my life?
In other words, he was calling preachers and teachers to provide the “so what” of the text. I agree with him. It is important and necessary that we tell our people why the text matters to their life, how it applies to their situation, and how they might implement its teaching. If we don’t, we are not fully expounding the text and we are short-changing our people.
So this week as you prepare your Sunday School lesson, Bible study, or Sermon, make sure to provide the “so what.” Tell the people why the text matters to their life, and help them apply it.
Christianity Matters 