Sunday sermon review - Finish well

Last week I had to do two funeral services. One for a very sweet church member who died from cancer and another for the mother of a church member. They were both the same day as well.

Thursday was a long day.

Spending that much concentrated time on ministering in the face of death really got me thinking about how to finish well.

Paul in 2 Timothy 4:6-8 showed us how to run through the finish line. All day on Thursday I was thinking about an article written by John Piper about how to deal with cancer. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006 and wrote some very challenging thoughts. I think they are very helpful in thinking about how we can finish well. I have copied the text below:

I write this on the eve of prostate surgery. I believe in God’s power to heal—by miracle and by medicine. I believe it is right and good to pray for both kinds of healing. Cancer is not wasted when it is healed by God. He gets the glory and that is why cancer exists. So not to pray for healing may waste your cancer. But healing is not God’s plan for everyone. And there are many other ways to waste your cancer. I am praying for myself and for you that we will not waste this pain.

1. You will waste your cancer if you do not believe it is designed for you by God.

It will not do to say that God only uses our cancer but does not design it. What God permits, he permits for a reason. And that reason is his design. If God foresees molecular developments becoming cancer, he can stop it or not. If he does not, he has a purpose. Since he is infinitely wise, it is right to call this purpose a design. Satan is real and causes many pleasures and pains. But he is not ultimate. So when he strikes Job with boils (Job 2:7), Job attributes it ultimately to God (2:10) and the inspired writer agrees: “They . . . comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him” (Job 42:11). If you don’t believe your cancer is designed for you by God, you will waste it.

2. You will waste your cancer if you believe it is a curse and not a gift.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). “There is no enchantment against Jacob, no divination against Israel” (Numbers 23:23). “The Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11).

3. You will waste your cancer if you seek comfort from your odds rather than from God.

The design of God in your cancer is not to train you in the rationalistic, human calculation of odds. The world gets comfort from their odds. Not Christians. Some count their chariots (percentages of survival) and some count their horses (side effects of treatment), but we trust in the name of the Lord our God (Psalm 20:7). God’s design is clear from 2 Corinthians 1:9, “We felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.” The aim of God in your cancer (among a thousand other good things) is to knock props out from under our hearts so that we rely utterly on him.

4. You will waste your cancer if you refuse to think about death.

We will all die, if Jesus postpones his return. Not to think about what it will be like to leave this life and meet God is folly. Ecclesiastes 7:2 says, “It is better to go to the house of mourning [a funeral] than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.” How can you lay it to heart if you won’t think about it? Psalm 90:12 says, “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Numbering your days means thinking about how few there are and that they will end. How will you get a heart of wisdom if you refuse to think about this? What a waste, if we do not think about death.

5. You will waste your cancer if you think that “beating” cancer means staying alive rather than cherishing Christ.

Satan’s and God’s designs in your cancer are not the same. Satan designs to destroy your love for Christ. God designs to deepen your love for Christ. Cancer does not win if you die. It wins if you fail to cherish Christ. God’s design is to wean you off the breast of the world and feast you on the sufficiency of Christ. It is meant to help you say and feel, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” And to know that therefore, “To live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 3:8; 1:21).

6. You will waste your cancer if you spend too much time reading about cancer and not enough time reading about God.

It is not wrong to know about cancer. Ignorance is not a virtue. But the lure to know more and more and the lack of zeal to know God more and more is symptomatic of unbelief. Cancer is meant to waken us to the reality of God. It is meant to put feeling and force behind the command, “Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord” (Hosea 6:3). It is meant to waken us to the truth of Daniel 11:32, “The people who know their God shall stand firm and take action.” It is meant to make unshakable, indestructible oak trees out of us: “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers” (Psalm 1:2). What a waste of cancer if we read day and night about cancer and not about God.

7. You will waste your cancer if you let it drive you into solitude instead of deepen your relationships with manifest affection.

When Epaphroditus brought the gifts to Paul sent by the Philippian church he became ill and almost died. Paul tells the Philippians, “He has been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill” (Philippians 2:26-27). What an amazing response! It does not say they were distressed that he was ill, but that he was distressed because they heard he was ill. That is the kind of heart God is aiming to create with cancer: a deeply affectionate, caring heart for people. Don’t waste your cancer by retreating into yourself.

8. You will waste your cancer if you grieve as those who have no hope.

Paul used this phrase in relation to those whose loved ones had died: “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). There is a grief at death. Even for the believer who dies, there is temporary loss—loss of body, and loss of loved ones here, and loss of earthly ministry. But the grief is different—it is permeated with hope. “We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). Don’t waste your cancer grieving as those who don’t have this hope.

9. You will waste your cancer if you treat sin as casually as before.

Are your besetting sins as attractive as they were before you had cancer? If so you are wasting your cancer. Cancer is designed to destroy the appetite for sin. Pride, greed, lust, hatred, unforgiveness, impatience, laziness, procrastination—all these are the adversaries that cancer is meant to attack. Don’t just think of battling against cancer. Also think of battling with cancer. All these things are worse enemies than cancer. Don’t waste the power of cancer to crush these foes. Let the presence of eternity make the sins of time look as futile as they really are. “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” (

10. You will waste your cancer if you fail to use it as a means of witness to the truth and glory of Christ.

Christians are never anywhere by divine accident. There are reasons for why we wind up where we do. Consider what Jesus said about painful, unplanned circumstances: “They will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. This will be your opportunity to bear witness” (Luke 21:12 -13). So it is with cancer. This will be an opportunity to bear witness. Christ is infinitely worthy. Here is a golden opportunity to show that he is worth more than life. Don’t waste it.

What are we doing?

What are some churches thinking? I don’t mean to be judgmental, but do churches really think this stuff is necessary to reach people?

What happened to preaching Christ and Him crucified?

Doctrine of the Day: Giving thanks for Surgery

What are you thankful for? Do you really understand what it means to be thankful? Are you sure? It is easy to say that until life collides with Ephesians 5:20…

Right now I am sitting in pre-op with Meredith waiting for the doctors to take her back into surgery… and I am trying to be thankful because Ephesians 5:20 says I should, “Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”

Notice that little bitty preposition that most of us take for granted: “for.” We are not supposed to merely be thankful IN all things (as in 1 Thessalonians 5:18), but we are to take that huge step forward in Christian maturity and be thankful FOR everything.

This is the same type of principle as “love your enemies.” In Matthew 5 Jesus says that even those who are not in Christ will love people who are loving to them first, but He says that his followers are to love even their enemies.

The point is that we are supposed to go beyond what is easy and expected of all people to do that which is difficult and expected by God of his children. This forces us to rely on Christ and not our own strength. Anyone can love the lovable. But it is only in Christ that we will love the unlovable.

The same is true with thankfulness. Anyone can be thankful for homes, families, jobs, and food. But only those who are in Christ can be thankful for homelessness, loss of a family member, unemployment, and hunger.

“Why should we be thankful for those things?” you ask. That is a great question. Here is hopefully a sufficient answer. It includes a few biblical principles of thankfulness.

1. Biblical thanksgiving is relational. That means that our gratitude is meant to be directed to a person. It is not merely a general feeling or expression of gratitude. Tomorrow people all over the US will say, “I am thankful for ______.” They are not thankful TO anyone. They are just happy that they have ________.

God commands us to recognize Him as the source of every blessing we have (James 1:17). It is not sufficient for a Christian ever say, “I am thankful for ______.” We are commanded to direct our thanks to the source of our joy… God. IF we are happy or thankful in anything we have, it is because God is good and has given us every blessing we have. So, we should ALWAYS direct our thanks to HIM and say, “I thank God for _______.”

2.Thanksgiving = Emotion + Expression. It is very easy to allow ourselves to think that thanksgiving is one or the other, but it is not biblical thanksgiving unless both are present.

For example, emotion without expression never explicitly honors the one to whom you are thankful. I may receive great joy from Meredith when she cooks me a red velvet cake. I may eat 3 pieces, make all sorts of approving noises (“Mmmm… Ohhhh yeah”), I may even say that it’s the best cake I have ever had, but if I never express my thanks to HER then she has not been honored. Similarly, when we love God’s gifts and enjoy health, monetary blessing, and family but never tell Him that we recognize Him as the Giver and our joy is toward Him, then we dishonor him.

Conversely, expression of thanks without the emotion of thanks leads to dry formalism. All of you with children know exactly what I am talking about. You can tell a child to say “Thank you” to grandma when she gives him a birthday gift, but when the gift is not what he expected, his “Thank you” falls flat because it is obvious that his is not truly grateful for his black socks when he had his heart set on an iPod.

True thanksgiving must be heartfelt and expressed explicitly.

3. Our level of true thankfulness depends on how much we value the giver… not the gift. In my previous point the little boy who is ungrateful for black socks, the real issue in his heart is not what he thinks about the socks, it is what he feels for his Grandma.

When I get more excited over a new computer than I do a new suit from Meredith, I am telling her that I love her more when she gives me something extravagant than I do when she gives me something mundane.

Why do I not go nuts over the suit but I do over the computer? Because I love the computer more than I love the suit. So how does that make Meredith feel? I can try to muster up some gratitude for the suit, but she can tell that I don’t really appreciate the suit.

The real gratitude that we are to express is supposed to be over the act of giving, not the specific nature of the gift.

4. Ephesians 5:20 tells us to be thankful FOR everything because we are supposed to believe that God does everything for our good and his glory. We should be thankful for every gift that God gives us. Every trial, every suffering He gives us is part of his plan to conform us to Christ. We should be thankful that He loves us to much to allow us to stay in our present state. He wants us to access more of Christ in our lives for his glory. I know it’s cliché but… no pain, no gain.

So, back to my situation. I now sitting in the surgery waiting room waiting for them to let me know how it all turned out. The question I am asking myself based on Ephesians 5:20 is, “Am I thankful to God for Meredith’s surgery?”

I want to be. LORD, thank you for your grace in Christ. Please help me to be thankful for all your work in my life. I know that you are working all things for my good. Give me the wisdom to accept your gifts with gratitude. Transform my cold heart into a blazing furnace, burning hot for your glory.

Thank you in advance for your work in my heart. Thank you for Meredith’s surgery. You have taught me that my hope and peace is in you and your providence.

Thanksgiving warning

The following was written by Juan Sanchez. He is pastor of High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin, TX. This was the message I needed to hear this week. I hope you will heed his warning also...

The Seduction of the World and the Jealousy of God

As we approach “Black Friday” (supposedly the largest shopping day of the year), it is important to be reminded of the biblical warning, “Beware of worldliness!” In no uncertain terms, the Bible repeatedly warns us against the seduction of this world. Consider these commands: “Do not be conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2)! “Do not love the world or the things in the world” (1 John 2:15)! Worldliness is dangerous because it exposes our true love; it exposes the fact that we are driven by the search to satisfy our passions with things other than God. James reminds us of this fact when he explains the source of sin, saying: “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire” (James 1:14, ESV).

How serious is worldliness? Consider James’ rebuke: “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God” (James 4:4)? The Scriptures could not be more clear. Either you love the world and the things of this world or you love God, for “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other” (Matthew 6:24, ESV).

The Bible presents God as a loving, faithful God who takes a rejected and despised woman, beautifies her, showers her with fine clothing and jewelry and makes a vow (covenant) to be her husband (Ezekiel 16). Within this covenant marriage, God warns that His bride is to have no other Gods, make no idols and not bow down to any other gods, “for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Exodus 20:5-6).

In other words, God is a jealous husband who demands faithfulness. He promises to be all-satisfying, so when his bride seeks satisfaction in something or someone other than Him, He is provoked to jealousy, for His bride commits spiritual adultery. This covenant marriage relationship between God and His people is the basis for James’ calling the people in his congregation an adulterous people, for by their desire to find satisfaction in this world and the things of this world, they have turned away from God, their faithful husband.

This warning is necessary for the western church today. Worldliness is so rampant, so pervasive, that is has become the expected norm and has spawned the market-driven culture in which we now live. Beware of worldliness! I preach to myself and my family, and I appeal to you and your family: beware of worldliness!

How can we know if we are worldly? Here is a two part test — it is not a perfect test, but at least it is a beginning.

Part 1: Take some time out this week to write out your weekly schedule. Write down every activity, no matter how insignificant it may seem to you. Where are you investing your time?

Part 2: On another sheet of paper, write out your budget. Now, look at your check register, credit card and bank statements, cash flow. Where are you investing your money?

I think that this two part test will expose, at least in part, where our hearts are, for where you spend your time and money reveals what you treasure, and “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). Beware of worldliness!

Sunday sermon review - Train up a child

There are two things that absolutely terrify me. First and foremost I fear and revere the LORD my God. When I contemplate his awesome holiness, my conviction of my own sin threatens to overwhelm me. Thanks be to God for sending his Son to take his righteous, divine wrath from me when I believed in his Son as my Savior and LORD.

My other greatest fear is that I will not raise my son well. Before Meredith and I were married I knew that I wanted to have children. They are cute as babies, fun as toddlers and keep you young as teenagers. The only problem with my thinking back then is that as much as I wanted to have children, I had no real concept or desire to BE a father. Those were two mutually exclusive ideas for me.

When God decided in his infinite wisdom to give Asher to us, reality set in: I am now responsible to raise this child, God’s child, in God’s ways. As excited as I was on that glorious day, December 5, 2006, I feared for my son’s future. Of course I trust that God is sovereign and that He ultimately guides my son’s path, but God had now given me the task of discipling this little boy. Even now, my heart still skips a beat.

But I need not remain in my fear. It is healthy to have a certain trepidation about the weighty things of God. I should feel the significance of what God is calling me to do as a father, but that does not mean that I should feel hopeless or helpless. For God is my Hope and my Help. He has gifted us through his Son to have the grace we need to fulfill his calling. In fact it is the very righteousness of Christ that God has already accepted in my stead. So now my responsibility is to display the righteousness of Christ for my son.

My job is to point him to Christ always. That means every day I must trust in Christ for my own sustenance and satisfaction. By modeling for my son what it means to be dependent on Him I am training him in God’s grace.

But a mere wordless example of following Christ is not enough. I must also teach Him about the LORD, my God. I must declare his mighty works. Asher needs to hear the lofty requirements of the Law. He needs Paul to explain to him that he is a sinner who cannot attain salvation by his own merits. He needs to hear Jesus proclaim clearly, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” He needs to be taught that it is only by grace that we are saved through faith, and that we are to live by that same faith in God’s grace every day.

I must teach him the Bible. I must teach him the gospel. I must teach him the way of God’s grace.

God has given me the responsibility to train up my son in the way he should go. He has given that responsibility to all parents.

This Thanksgiving I thank God for my son. But more than that, I thank God for giving me the privilege of discipling my son. I am so unworthy, but by God’s grace I will obey His commands and trust in Him to see it through.

Doctrine of the Day: God's Providence

What are your plans for today? I am sure those are fine plans, but you do realize though that God is in control of what really happens today, right? Not just today but tomorrow as well… and the next, and the next, ad infinitum into eternity.

It is really easy for us to get caught up in the daily grind of our lives and forget that “The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps” (Proverbs 16:9). We also forget Psalm 2:1-4 where the LORD laughs at people who rage and plot against Him thinking they can actually thwart God’s plans. God is sovereign over this world, his creation mind you. Nothing happens apart from his permission or his active decree.

There is a heresy that is gaining traction among many who would call themselves evangelicals today. This heresy is called open theism. It has actually been around for a while. Open theism basically states that the future is open to God or that He does not know with certainty what exactly WILL happen. He knows all the myriad possibilities but that the actual unfolding of the future is as unknown to Him as it is to us.

The rationale behind this heresy is that in order for us to truly have free will to make any decisions with the power of contrary choice (in other words our decisions are not acted on by any outside influence), then God CANNOT know the future because that would mean our choices were already set in stone.

So an open theist would say that God does not know what will happen tomorrow because I could decide to faithfully love my wife or I could decide to leave her and go to Antarctica, which is where I would have to go to escape her fury : ) The point is that God can’t know what I will decide because that would mean that I really didn’t have the ability to choose something different. If God knows that I will choose to leave my wife, then I really don’t have a choice in the matter and staying with her is not an option.

The problem with open theism is that it is foolish. It is foolish because it sets humanity up as having supreme importance and worth. In other words it makes man “Lord” instead of God.

Instead of starting with the Bible and searching it exhaustively to discover how God has revealed Himself and taking that revelation of God as absolute fact, open theism starts with a metaphysical presupposition, “I chose what I am wearing today, therefore I have free will” and concludes then that God cannot possibly be what He says He is, the sovereignly ruler over his creation because that kind of sovereignty would ruin my idea of my free will. God’s true character is subordinated to man’s nature.

This is a common error when trying to arrive at what theology we will adhere to. Starting with man and then working to understand God is getting it backwards. We start with God, seeking to know Him in his fullness from Scripture, THEN we can rightly understand who we are, created in his image, yet completely subservient to Him and his plans since He is LORD of all.

Now, back to divine providence.

God’s word is clear that God is sovereign over his creation and that He determines what is going to happen. There is no such thing as luck, fortune, chance or fate. There is God wisely governing and implementing his plan for his creation.

Isaiah 46:9-10

Remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, 'My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,'

There are three very obvious things here that should shape our understanding of God’s sovereign providence.

1. God is God, and there is none like Him. In some ways this sounds a little too obvious to us Christians. But this is very important to remember every day! Let me state this another way: You are NOT God. You are not omniscient, omnipotent, omni-anything!! We are to submit completely and happily to the LORDship of Jesus Christ. We trust Him for all things, even our decisions and plans. He is central, not us. We are to live so that He gets all the glory, not us. We need to stop trying to relate to God as if it is OUR will, OUR lives that are most important.

2. He has already declared the end from the beginning… deal with it. He knows exactly what is going to happen tomorrow in my life. Not because He is some kind of medium looking into his crystal ball or reading our palms or looking at tea leaves. He knows the future because He DECLARED it! This is his creation and He does with it exactly what He wants. He is not like some amazing supercomputer who is forced to calculate a bazillion computations on the fly based on our decisions just so He can know what He is supposed to do next. Before the foundation of the world He declared exactly what the “end” would be. Sin did not surprise Him. The death of his Son did not surprise Him.

3. God will win the day. “I will accomplish ALL my purpose.” This is a powerful statement of God’s providence intersecting his omnipotence. He has the authority to declare the end from the beginning, AND He has the power to make it happen. Whoa. That is a whole lotta theology in that one verse! God says that He WILL make sure that his plans succeed. There is nothing we can do to ultimately derail his plans.

So, what does all this mean for us? Well, this means that whatever our understanding of free will is, it does NOT mean that we determine our own future. God has made it very clear that declaring the end is his job and He will make it come to pass.

That means that there is still a paradox of sorts for us in regard to our responsibility over our own sin. If God declared the end from the beginning, did God author sin? The short answer is NO. God did not author sin and we are still responsible for our sin. This is a topic for another day.

But the bottom line for us today is that we must live our lives submissive to the sovereign providence of God.

How do we make our plans? According to his revealed will in Scripture and under the guidance of his his Holy Spirit.

How do we face life’s tragedies? Fully acknowledging that God is providentially guiding those events for our good and his glory.

How do fully reconcile God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility? By submitting to the truth of Scripture and trusting that God is a big God that we will never fully comprehend because He is God.

The Gospel as Warning

Nahum 1:2-8

2 The LORD is a jealous and avenging God;

the LORD is avenging and wrathful;

the LORD takes vengeance on his adversaries

and keeps wrath for his enemies.

3 The LORD is slow to anger and great in power,

and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty.

His way is in whirlwind and storm,

and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

4 He rebukes the sea and makes it dry;

he dries up all the rivers;

Bashan and Carmel wither;

the bloom of Lebanon withers.

5 The mountains quake before him;

the hills melt;

the earth heaves before him,

the world and all who dwell in it.

6 Who can stand before his indignation?
Who can endure the heat of his anger?
His wrath is poured out like fire,
and the rocks are broken into pieces by him.
7 The LORD is good,
a stronghold in the day of trouble;
he knows those who take refuge in him.
8 But with an overflowing flood
he will make a complete end of the adversaries,
and will pursue his enemies into darkness.

“God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” Hmmm… does He now? Yes, the LORD is good and is a stronghold in the day of trouble for whose who take refuge in Him, but what about those who do not take refuge in Him?… well, his plan for them does not seem so wonderful.

We must take care in how we present the gospel. God does love all people. God does want all people to repent. But we must be clear that God first and foremost is Holy and his wrath is already upon those who are not in Christ (John 3:36; Romans 2:5).

The gospel call is motivated by love; our love for the lost and certainly God’s love for the lost, but we must present God in his fullness. To speak only of his love to the lost is to diminish his hatred of sin.

Our message of hope in Christ IS hope because God offers salvation from his wrath if we will submit to Christ as LORD by repenting and receiving the grace of forgiveness. We cannot fully explain God’s love until we first explain why we are desperately in need of his forgiveness.

So, the gospel is good news, and it is a warning. “Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger?” The answer is no one. Even Christ, the Son of God, had to die in order to appease his wrath toward his chosen people. Jesus was able to take his life up again by his own authority (John 10:18), but God the Father still required that his wrath be appeased. It is not merely wiped away or forgotten.

God’s forgiveness of our sin means that He forgives US for committing the sin, and He is willing to reconcile us back to Himself, but the penalty for our sin must still be paid. And Christ endured God’s wrath for us on the cross.

Therefore, the gospel message we share must include a warning about God’s wrath, for that is why Jesus died: to take God’s wrath away from his children who believe in Him. So, God’s wrath will either be satisfied by Christ’s death on the cross for all whose who believe in Him OR it will remain on the unrepentant for eternity. We must warn people of God’s wrath.

The LORD is good! He offers refuge from his wrath. That Refuge is named Jesus Christ. By God’s lavish grace and mercy He promises to forgive us our sins and receive us into his family if we will repent and love Him.