A Gentle Question - Why?

I watched a major league pitcher serve up a ball to a sure-fire home run hitter—a hanging curve right up there in the strike zone—a hitter’s dream. As the pitcher watched his offering disappear into oblivion the camera caught the frustration on his face and his mouthing the one word, “Why?” over and over again. “Why? Why?" In other words, "Why did I throw that pitch?”

As discouraging as it was I’m sure he got over it. But it occurs to me that we all face serious Why questions. And these are Why questions not quickly gotten over; questions that can haunt us throughout life, at death, even into eternity. For Christians it might well be the unspeakably painful Why of a life wasted by disobedience. I’m thinking of the times God showed us His leading and we said, “No.” We had a better idea.

God used a tract to move missionary James Fraser to a life of obedience in Burma. It asked: "If our Master returned today to find millions of people not evangelized, and looked—as of course He would look—to us for an explanation, I cannot imagine what explanation we should have to give. Of one thing I am certain, that most of the excuses we are accustomed to make with such good conscience now, we shall be wholly ashamed of then."

The last sentence haunts me. It means that there will be no defense. No justifying. No other word for our disobediences. No excuse will stand and we will be “wholly ashamed.”

That’s one very big, WHY.”

Does it haunt you? For many it means nothing. Maybe because they believe there can be no regrets once we die. However, I think that our good conscience excuses help explain why North America no longer leads in world missions. It is also why almost 7,000 unreached people groups number more than 50% of the world population.

Closer to home, excuses might account for neighbors, family members, and coworkers who are still unsaved. Or it might help to explain why agencies like TEAMS cannot find missionary home staff and why there is so little interest in career missionary opportunities—little interest but plenty of those good conscience excuses. And sadly, they are excuses that any thoughtful person should be wholly ashamed of now—not to mention then, when Jesus might finally ask us His own Why question.

When Isaiah (6:8) offered himself in response to God’s Who question—”Who will go?”—he never again had to worry about the Why question. Know that God is still asking that question and He will continue to do so until that Day—the Day He finally asks it one last time.

America's Ugly Exported "Gospel"

Watch an excerpt of John Piper protesting the prosperity gospel and the ugliness that follows when teaching goes beyond Scripture; but then, exulting in God, whose glory shines in suffering.

America's Ugly Exported "Gospel"

In Affliction, Consider Christ

ReceiveTheWORD focuses on the absolute sufficiency of that Word; proclaiming and proceeding, as it does, from an all-sufficient Godhead. Pastor Joel Beeke's article at the Reformation21 blogpost addresses the perennial issue of affliction in order to show that the Bible is enough. This will serve to move the believer toward godly understanding of and response to such trials. Read prayerfully. Willingly. Thankfully.

For extended reading on this general theme read the following by Philip Ryken - especially Part 3:

The Crook In the Lot Part 1

Two Dangers That Lead To Destruction - The Crook In the Lot Part 2

Why God Allows Suffering - The Crook In the Lot Part 3

What Can We Gain From Calvin Today?

One answer comes from Doug Wilson, Pastor of Christ Church, Idaho:

We gain, he says, "His rock solid, absolute confidence in the Bible."

He goes on to say that Calvin is not like "a modern day inerrantist who says the Bible is technically true but is still somehow apologetic over the fact. He doesn't have his hat in his hand, trying to persuade someone to please accept him even though he believes the Bible."

"The Bible is not something that takes a test from the world. The Bible is, in Calvin, that which administers the test to the world."

From Cornelius Van Til

"The Bible is authoritative in everything it addresses, and it addresses everything."

One Hymn's Testimony To the Sufficiency of God and His Word

If Thou But Suffer God To Guide Thee

If thou but suffer God to guide thee
and hope in him through all thy ways,
he'll give thee strength, whate'er betide thee,
and bear thee through the evil days.
who trusts in God's unchanging love
builds on the rock that naught can move.

What can these anxious cares avail thee,
these never-ceasing moans and sighs?
What can it help if thou bewail thee
o'er each dark moment as it flies?
Our cross and trials do but press
the heavier for our bitterness.

Be patient and await his leisure
in cheerful hope, with heart content
To take whate'er thy Father's pleasure
and his discerning love hath sent,
Nor doubt our inmost wants are known
to him who chose us for his own.

God knows full well when times of gladness
shall be the needful thing for thee.
When he has tried thy soul with sadness
and from all guile has found thee free,
he comes to thee all unaware
and makes thee own his loving care.

Nor think amid the fiery trial
that God hath cast thee off unheard,
that he whose hopes meet no denial
must surely be of God preferred.
Time passes and much change doth bring
and sets a bound to everything.

All are alike before the highest;
'tis easy to our God, we know,
to raise thee up, though low thou liest,
to make the rich man poor and low.
True wonders still by him are wrought
who setteth up and brings to naught.

Sing, pray, and keep his ways unswerving,
perform thy duties faithfully,
and trust his word, though undeserving,
thou yet shalt find it true for thee.
God never yet forsook in need
the soul that trusted him indeed

Words: Georg Neumark; Catherine Winkworth translation

Music and Meter: Georg Neumark, Wer nur den lieben Gott - 98 98 98
This hymn tune has been used for more than 400 hymns.
Alfred B. Smith's is a later tune.

Why I Don't Have A Television and Rarely Go to Movies

I suspect that [others] would not agree on the degree to which the average pastor needs to be movie-savvy in order to be relevant, and the degree to which we should expose ourselves to the world’s entertainment.

I think relevance in preaching hangs very little on watching movies, and I think that much exposure to sensuality, banality, and God-absent entertainment does more to deaden our capacities for joy in Jesus than it does to make us spiritually powerful in the lives of the living dead. Sources of spiritual power—which are what we desperately need—are not in the cinema. You will not want your biographer to write: Prick him and he bleeds movies.

If you want to be relevant, say, for prostitutes, don’t watch a movie with a lot of tumbles in a brothel. Immerse yourself in the gospel, which is tailor-made for prostitutes; then watch Jesus deal with them in the Bible; then go find a prostitute and talk to her. Listen to her, not the movie. Being entertained by sin does not increase compassion for sinners.

There are, perhaps, a few extraordinary men who can watch action-packed, suspenseful, sexually explicit films and come away more godly. But there are not many. And I am certainly not one of them.

I have a high tolerance for violence, high tolerance for bad language, and zero tolerance for nudity. There is a reason for these differences. The violence is make-believe. They don’t really mean those bad words. But that lady is really naked, and I am really watching. And somewhere she has a brokenhearted father.

I’ll put it bluntly. The only nude female body a guy should ever lay his eyes on is his wife’s. The few exceptions include doctors, morticians, and fathers changing diapers. “I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?” (Job 31:1). What the eyes see really matters. “Everyone who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Better to gouge your eye than go to hell (verse 29).

Brothers, that is serious. Really serious. Jesus is violent about this. What we do with our eyes can damn us. One reason is that it is virtually impossible to transition from being entertained by nudity to an act of “beholding the glory of the Lord.” But this means the entire Christian life is threatened by the deadening effects of sexual titillation.

All Christ-exalting transformation comes from “beholding the glory of Christ.” “Beholding the glory of the Lord, [we] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Whatever dulls the eyes of our mind from seeing Christ powerfully and purely is destroying us. There is not one man in a thousand whose spiritual eyes are more readily moved by the beauty of Christ because he has just seen a bare breast with his buddies.

But leave sex aside (as if that were possible for fifteen minutes on TV). It’s the unremitting triviality that makes television so deadly. What we desperately need is help to enlarge our capacities to be moved by the immeasurable glories of Christ. Television takes us almost constantly in the opposite direction, lowering, shrinking, and deadening our capacities for worshiping Christ.

One more smaller concern with TV (besides its addictive tendencies, trivialization of life, and deadening effects): It takes time. I have so many things I want to accomplish in this one short life. Don’t waste your life is not a catchphrase for me; it’s a cliff I walk beside every day with trembling.

TV consumes more and more time for those who get used to watching it. You start to feel like it belongs. You wonder how you could get along without it. I am jealous for my evenings. There are so many things in life I want to accomplish. I simply could not do what I do if I watched television. So we have never had a TV in 40 years of marriage (except in Germany, to help learn the language). I don’t regret it

- John Piper, June 2009