The latest 9Marks newsletter features the local church. 

Especially interesting was a Bible study class “Living As A Church” on what it means and how to live together as a local church. 

I also enjoyed Kevin McFadden’s review of Dan Kimball’s book, They Like Jesus But Not the Church.

To read the whole newsletter go HERE.

Those who support and/or condone homosexuality often make the comparison between homosexuality and race, that is, equating supporting homosexual rights as morally equivalent to fighting for the civil rights of blacks in America in the 60’s.

Robert Gagnon powerfully and thoroughly refutes that argument in a letter he wrote to Lloyd Jacobs President of the University of Toledo for suspending Crystal Dixon, the Associate Vice President of Human Resources at the University of Toledo, because she rejects the idea that being black is no different than homosexual desires (Dixon is herself black).

This may be some of the best material on homosexuality available!

READ THE WHOLE THING

HT: Justin Taylor

William Weedon posted a letter written by Orthodox priest, Fr. Alexander Schmemann that he wrote to a friend about women’s ordination.

It is well known that the advocates of women’s ordination explain the Scriptural and the traditional exclusion of women from ministry by “cultural conditioning.” If Christ did not include women into the Twelve, if the Church for centuries did not include them into priesthood, it is because of “culture” which would have made it impossible and unthinkable then. It is not my purpose to discuss here the theological and exegetical implications of this view as well as its purely historical basis, which incidentally seems to me extremely weak and shaky; what is truly amazing is that while absolutely convinced that they understand past “cultures,” the advocates of women’s ordination seem to be totally unaware of their own cultural “conditioning” of their own surrender to culture.

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You also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.  (Romans 6:11)

For … when we slip into an old-man way of living, we are living contrary to our true selves; we are denying our true self-image.  Paul does not say in Romans 6:11, “Consider yourselves to be mostly alive to God and mostly dead to sin.” 

What he says is, “Consider yourselves dead to sin and live to God.”  This, then, must be our Christian self-image.

We  must consider ourselves to be new persons in Christ, who have once and for all turned our backs  upon the old self, and who therefore refuse to be identified with it any longer. 

(Anthony Hoekema, The Christian Looks at Himself, 55)

Every day you live you are approaching nearer and nearer to death, to judgment, and to eternity. Consider, therefore, day by day how you shall meet the hour of death, stand the severe test of the judgment, and live during all eternity.

We must exercise diligent care respecting all our thoughts, our words, our deeds, for we must render strict account for all these in the day of judgment (Matthew 12:36).

Consider every evening that death may overtake you this night. And let your thought be every morning that death may come to you this day.

Do not put off conversion and the exercise of good works until tomorrow, for it is not certain that you will see tomorrow is uncertain, but death is certain, and it is always threatening you.

(Johann Gerhard, Sacred Meditations, pg. 156; from chapter 28, “General Rules for a Godly Life” of the edition translated by C.W. Heisler)

…be transformed by the renewal of your mind.  (Romans 12:2) 

Without a renewed min – without the mind of Christ in operation – God will never really be able to hold the reins of our lives.  This is why Satan battles so hard for our minds.  If he can control or thinking, ultimately he will control our lives. 

Therefore, our efforts to change should not be focused on our wrong actions, but on our  wrong thinking.  If we can change our thinking, then our life actions will follow.  (original emphasis) 

(Chuck & Nancy Missler, Be Ye Transformed, 47) 

Go HERE to see how Greg Koukl from Stand to Reason applies critical thinking skills to the claims and arguments of the New Atheists.

HT:  Justin Taylor

For those of us who are Dallas Willard fans here is a rare glimpse into his personal life as you can read what Dr. Willard said at a faculty forum luncheon on the topic, “My Journey To and Beyond Tenure in a Secular University.”

My strategy was this – do really good work. Do work that you would think God had to help you with to get you there, and then do some more. Just stay at it. That’s the only strategy I’ve had is to work in that way. My view is that, if you are in a good field, you must work on the things that are really central and essential to that field. And you ought to believe that God will enable you to do work in that field that will be a benefit and challenge to everyone. And going back to some things that Calvin (Edwards) said so well earlier — what we as Christians want to do — we want to get to the point where people scattered around the academic world are worried about what we are doing. They sit up at night and think about us. They get on the internet, and they chase our work down. I really challenge you to believe that about yourself, whatever your area of work is. Not because you are so good, but because God is so great.

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Kathy Shaidle gives an overview of Black Liberation Theology, the kind of theology Barack and Michelle Obama have been listening to for the last twenty years.  Note especially the last paragraph:

“Like the pro-communist liberation theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of “salvation” in the afterlife is superseded by “liberation” on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.

The leading theorist of Black Liberation Theology is James Cone. Overtly racist, Cone’s writings posit a black Jesus who leads African-Americans as the “chosen people.” In Cone’s cosmology, whites are “the devil,” and “all white men are responsible for white oppression.” Cone makes this point without ambiguity: “This country was founded for whites and everything that has happened in it has emerged from the white perspective,” Cone has written. “What we need is the destruction of whiteness, which is the source of human misery in the world.”

If whiteness stands for all that is evil, blackness symbolizes all that is good. “Black theology,” says Cone, “refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.” Small wonder that some critics have condemned black liberation theology as “racist idolatry” and “Afro-Nazism.”

Furthermore, according to Cone, “black values” are superior to American values. Sure enough, the “About Us” statement on Trinity’s web page includes the following Cone-inspired declaration: “We are an African people, and remain ‘true to our native land,’ the mother continent, the cradle of civilization.”

It is troubling that Barack Obama’s closest friends and allies subscribe to an explicitly racist doctrine. Even more worrying is that the main exponent of Black Liberation Theology sees Obama as a kindred spirit. In the wake of the controversy surrounding Obama’s pastor and Church, Cone said: “I’ve read both of Barack Obama’s books, and I heard the speech [on race]. I don’t see anything in the books or in the speech that contradicts black liberation theology.”

It’s tempting to see figures like Cone and Wright as fringe actors with no constituency in the wider black community. Yet Cone considers himself to be the natural successor to Martin Luther King, Jr., and not everyone finds the comparison jarring.

Similarly with Rev. Wright. At a summit of black pastors held shortly after the recent controversy broke, many defended Wright’s sermons as part of the “prophetic preaching” tradition embodied by the assassinated civil rights leader.

Said Rev. Frederick Haynes III, senior pastor at Friendship West Baptist Church: “If Martin Luther King, Jr. were pastoring a church today, it would look very much like Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois, and the sermons you would hear him preach would sound very much” like Wright’s.

Stacey Floyd-Thomas, who teaches ethics and serves as Director of black church studies at Brite Divinity School in Texas, explained that King, foreshadowing Wright, had once called America “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Moreover, said Floyd-Thomas, King was assassinated before he could deliver his scheduled Sunday sermon entitled “Why America May Go to Hell.”

Black Liberation Theology, in short, cannot be dismissed as a minority view. Americans are thus left with the troubling knowledge that millions of their fellow citizens consider them to be “devils,” having been taught to think this way by their religious leaders. They must wonder, too, why they should entrust the presidency to a man who has surrounded himself with those who actively despise the very country he seeks to lead.

READ ENTIRE COLUMN 

HT: Michelle Malkin

As promised in the sermon this morning, here are the sermon notes from the message I preached on John 14:6.  I have also included a couple of quotes that were not on the original handout.  I spent some time in second service elaborating on the fourth point which is by far the most important one and is key to our arguement and understanding of why we can be saved only by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.  The few Scriptural passages that I included here just do not do justice to the significance and importance of the point.   

Life Notes  (sermon notes) for a sermon delivered  Sunday, May 4, 2008 at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Houston, Texas.                                                                         

The title of the sermon was, “Is There Only One Way To Be Saved?”

1.         There is only one way to heaven because God tells us so

On one occasion the evangelist D. L. Moody, addressed a group of church workers. After the meeting he was confronted by an angry woman who said, “Mr. Moody, do you mean to tell me that I, an educated woman, taught from childhood in good ways and all my life interested in the church and doing good, must enter heaven the same way as the worst criminal of our day?”

“No, maam,” said Moody. “I don’t. God does!”

Deut. 4:35 (ESV)  To you it was shown, that you might know that the Lord is God; there is no other besides Him.

Deut. 4:39 (ESV)  Know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other.

Deut. 5:7 (ESV)  You shall have no other gods before me.

Isaiah 45:5-6 (ESV)  I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God; I equip you, though you do not know me, that people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other.

Isaiah 45:18 (ESV)  For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it empty, he formed it to be inhabited!):            “I am the Lord, and there is no other. 

Isaiah 45:21-23 (ESV)  Declare and present your case; let them take counsel together!  Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the Lord?  And there is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me.  “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth!  For I am God, and there is no other.  By myself I have sworn; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return: ‘To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.’  

Isaiah 46:8-9 (ESV)  Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind, you transgressors, remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me,

Hosea 13:4 (ESV)  But I am the Lord your God from the land of Egypt;  you know no God but me, and besides me there is no savior.

John 14:6 (ESV)  Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Acts 4:12 (ESV)  And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

Philip. 2:9-11 (ESV)  Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

If someone wants you to believe that there is more than one way to heaven, your response should be that of Martin Luther who said:  “Must we believe your poor dreams without Scripture, and you will not believe our plain Scripture?”  

3.         There is only one way to heaven because logic and truth demand it

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” John Adams

Different world religions cannot all be true or lead to the same destination because they make mutually exclusive truth claims about how Jesus is and how we are saved.  The law of non-contradiction states that it is not possible that something be both true and not true at the same time and in the same context. It means that two opposite or antithetical propositions cannot both be true at the same time and in the same way, the very thing the advocates of religious inclusivism affirm (there are many different ways to be saved, the major world religions really all teach the same thing, etc.)

Possibly the best cure for those who want to violate the law of Noncontradiction was proposed by a  “medieval Muslim philosopher by the name of Avicenna who suggested a surefire way to correct someone who denies the law of Noncontradiction.  He said anyone who denies the law of Noncontradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned.”  (Norman Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, 57)

4.         There is only one way to heaven because only Christ died for our sins

Faith in Christ is the only way to be saved because only Christ’s death on the cross and the shedding of His blood is sufficient to atone for our sins thus allowing us sinners to be united to and dwell with a pure, righteous and holy God.

John 8:24 (NIV)  I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.”

Hebrews 9:22 (ESV)  without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

Revelation 1:5 (ESV)  Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood

Revelation 5:9 (ESV)  And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation,

John Owen said, “Without absolutes revealed from without by God Himself, we are left rudderless in a sea of conflicting ideas about manners, justice and right and wrong, issuing from a multitude of self-opinionated thinkers.”