True knowledge of the true God – John Macarthur

I am listening to this sermon ( true knowledge of the true God.) right now…

John Macarthur:

”In fact, like the Greeks, we have placed an idol in the place of the true God and we ignorantly worship him. I suppose the question can be asked, “Has God created man and revealed Himself, or has man created God and revealed himself?” I think the latter would be pretty much true of the popular God of our country and even of the so-called church. God has become a kind of projection of our own minds, of our own will, of our own tolerances. We have designed a God that is comfortable for us. We have violated Psalm 50:21 which says, “You thought that I was all together like you?” Well indeed that’s the case….”

Read the whole sermon here

”Improving the Gospel”

I am reading ”Proclaiming a Cross-centered Theology”, the 2008 Together for the Gospel conference, in a book!

A great book! As you can see in this short excerpt from page 105, Mark Dever on the ”Social Gospel”:

”May the local church be involved in good works? Yes, but it should be as a reflection of and an attraction to this gospel of Jesus Christ. If alleviating material poverty is taken as a responsibility of the congregation because doing so is part of the gospel, then many younger Christians may choose to serve there and not in evangelism. This could well be the choice of less mature Christians, more nominal Christians, those who would rather do things that the world around them recognizes and values instead of the evangelism that the world rejects and scorns. Your congregation may well continue to do both for a season, but I fear that those who follow you will not. Such a social gospel will slowly but surely lose its supernatural awkward corners and be smoothed to be acceptable to sinners all around. It’s the story of countless churches in our own land. Walter Rauschenbsch and his early twentieth-century followers are instructive for us here. Evangelism will never be appreciated by the world. It is our special task, pastors, to protect the priority of evangelism.”

I love that!

Here, if you are still wondering who Walter Rauschenbsch is…

BP Oil Spill = Revelation 16:3-7?

We read in Revelation 16:3-7:

”The second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it turned into blood like that of a dead man, and every living thing in the sea died.The third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood. Then I heard the angel in charge of the waters say: ”You are just in these judgments, you who are and who were, the Holy One, because you have so judged; for they have shed the blood of your saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink as they deserve.” And I heard the altar respond: ”Yes, Lord God Almighty, true and just are your judgments.”

Remember another place in Scripture where the sea was turned into blood?

You got it, Moses with Pharaoh in Exodus 7:20-25:

”Moses and Aaron did just as the LORD had commanded. He raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials and struck the water of the Nile, and all the water was changed into blood. The fish in the Nile died, and the river smelled so bad that the Egyptians could not drink its water. Blood was everywhere in Egypt. But the Egyptian magicians did the same things by their secret arts, and Pharaoh’s heart became hard; he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said. Instead, he turned and went into his palace, and did not take even this to heart. And all the Egyptians dug along the Nile to get drinking water, because they could not drink the water of the river.”

It happened before and you can see in the two texts that it is a result of God’s judgment.

Now, is it the fulfillment of Revelation 16:3 that is happenning now?

Verse 3 is interesting because it says ”Into blood like that of a dead man”

John Macarthur in a sermon on Revelation 16:

”The second angel pours his bowl into the sea and it becomes like blood, like that of a dead man…thick, black, dark, cooled, coagulated. It just pictures the sea like the pool of blood that would come from a man who had been stabbed and all his blood was lying in a pool. I don’t know what it is that the Lord is going to use to do this.”

It’s almost like he was describing the Gulf of Mexico today…

Now, we’re not trying to guess the date the Lord will return but we still should keep in mind that He will return someday and we should be ready…

”For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.” – 1 Thes. 4:16

My favorite Preacher is Chris Rock

If we could teach Chris Rock to insert a couple of Bible verses in his show, we would have the perfect preacher….  Lots of jokes, entertaining, curse words, F-Word, cleverness, funnny, everything you need…  Simply great!

He is nothing like the old typical ”Outdated/irrelevant” preacher we use to have in our churches…

Ask Chris Rock to read a text from Scriptures and then on with the show. Have him say a ”God bless you, have a good week at work” at the end and… Voila! You have a relevant sermon and something that seekers will finally enjoy at your church!

I hope this doesn’t sound too familiar. Most important, I hope that you’re not shouting ”Amen! That’s what we need!”

I am afraid that this is becoming the standard in more and more churches. A Short funny sermon is more preferable than a long, more ”conservative” one…

Of course, we’ll read a text from the Bible and pray at the beginning to make our sermon ”biblical” but what we say after ”Amen” has almost nothing to do with the text we just read…

Instead of preaching and exposing the Word of God, we preach… Actually, we don’t preach. Preaching is not considered an important part of the service anymore.

We love worship, fellowship with others, ect…. But preaching?… ”Please, can’t we keep singing instead?”

Oh! You’re thinking ”I just want people to understand what I say when I preach.” or  ”I want to contextualize the Word.” or ”If they don’t understand that old Christian stuff they won’t believe and get saved”

First, it is the work of the Holy spirit to convince ( John 16:8)

Second, faith comes from hearing the Word of Christ ( Rom. 10:17)

Third, unbelievers don’t understand the Word, because they cannot. The natural man understands not the things of God because they are foolishness to him. ( 1 Cor. 2:14… Read 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and 2 for a better understanding of this)

It takes a miracle from the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Word for someone to get saved…

Please stop asking yourself ”What can I say to convince them?”…. Not your job… Your job: Preach the Word!

”This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.” – 1 Cor. 2:13-14

You’re not even a Christian…

Here’s John Macarthur on Doug Pagitt:

”He’s not a pastor; he’s not a Christian; that’s not a church. When you call yourself a Christian and you call yourself a pastor and you say you have a church, all of that has to be—to be legitimate—defined biblically. And if it’s not, that’s not a church and you’re not a pastor and you’re not even a Christian.” Read the rest…

I certainly agree on Pastor Macarthur on this one. If you are going to call yourself a christian, you have to define what you mean biblically.

You can pastor a christian church only if the Word of God is your only authority and if Christ is the Lord and Savior of it.

Moving away from that is, indeed, very dangerous…

Ask yourself, is it the Word of God that we’re studying at church? or a ”christian book” labelled as a ”tool”…

Ask yourself, are we proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus-Christ and the salvation through Him alone? Or was that Gospel replaced with social works as a mean to ”reach people”

Ask yourself, when preaching ( or listening), are you exposing the full truth of the Word? Or did you ignore passages that are more difficult for the hearers, because you didn’t want to ”offend” the congregation?

This is serious stuff, you might see your church moving from ”Christian church” to just being a ”church” and then, eventually, to just be a ”group of people” with no Christ, no Lord, no salvation, no Bible…. No God…

”Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.” – Heb. 10:23

Is Rick Warren my pastor?

Did anyone notice how Pastor Warren is literally taking control of thousands of churches around the world. Books and booklets are being bought by the thousands, ”Purpose Driven” DVD are being watched in prayer meetings in churches and houses around the world!

Over 30 Millions copies of the Purpose Driven Life were sold worldwide!

They are everywhere. Translated in many language. Here in Canada, we have it in french and a friend of mine goes to a church where they watch a DVD for their bible study…

I read the book and many reviews on it and I must say, there are a lot of different opinions on Pastor Warren.

First thing I want to make clear, I believe that Rick Warren loves the Lord and His Word and that he loves the church. He wants to see as many person as possible commit to the Lord and walk in His ways. I believe that’s what he aims for.

I, personally, do not agree with everything that Pastor Warren writes or say and that’s normal, I think. My goal is not to writes a review or a critique about Rick warren or his ministry. My concern is more about the churches that use those books and teachings, a couple of questions come to mind:

- Why are they using them?
- What is their goal?
- Why is it not the pastor of the church that prepares the bible study?
- Do they accept everything that Rick Warren says without questioning it?
- Is church growth their goal?
- Do they want to have ”great stats” for small groups attendance?
- Is it because pastors don’t have time to prepare an adequate sermon?
- Is it because it ”worked” in other churches?

We should ask ourselves these questions and and be really honest in our answers. We also need to remember one thing, nothing will replace the preaching and study of the Bible (along with prayers and the work of the Holy Spirit in the hart believers) when it comes to growing in the Lord and being transformed by Him. No book can replace the Word of God.

May we love the Word of God more and more everyday…

”All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
- 2 Timothy 3:16-17

”Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.”
- 2 Timothy 4:2