I read a quote from C.H. Spurgeon over at Pyromaniacs today:

Men are perishing, and if it be unpolite to tell them so, it can only be so where the devil is the master of the ceremonies.

Out upon your soul-destroying politeness; the Lord give us a little honest love to souls, and this superficial gentility will soon vanish. I could with considerable refreshment to myself pour sarcasm after sarcasm upon religious cowardice. I would cheerfully sharpen my knife and dash it into the heart of this mean vice. There is nothing to be said in its favor.

It is not even humble; it is only pride of too beggarly a sort to own itself.

I loved how he worded this, “Out upon your soul-destroying politeness“. What great use of words there. Politeness is meant to be cordial and make others feel good. When I think of politeness, I think of doing the things my mother always told me to do: always say please and thank you, don’t point, don’t stare, don’t make fun of others, hold open the door and such. Obviously this is a different kind of politeness, this is the kind of politeness where you hold back the real message that is not very acceptable for fear of offending someone.

I’ve often asked myself this, “If I really believed what I believe, that those without a restored relationship with God will spend eternity in hell, why aren’t I more vocal about it?” and an even better question, “If I really believed a soul could be redeemed, why aren’t I sharing this with every person I run into?”

Look at the story of Philip and Nathanael in John 1:43-45:

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

Philip didn’t seem to waste any time telling Nathanael, as soon as he found out who Jesus was, he found Nathanael and told him. I think this sense of not wasting any time combined with the impolite message is much needed today.

Reclaiming the Mind Ministries has been posting some great theological-type questions lately. As always the comments really add to the discussion as well so have a look:

• What do you Mean by Free Will
• What do you Mean God is Sovereign? Four Options
• Grudem: Predestination Based on Foreknowledge Still Does Not Give People Free Choice
• Does the Bible Condone Slavery and Polygamy

Enjoy!

Perfect. Al Mohler has a post titled “A Church for Atheists?” I thought some of the similarities might be beneficial my post earlier today. Enjoy!

My good friend and realtor extradorinare Dave passed this article my way. It seems Florida is considering offering a license plate with a cross, a stained-glass window and the words “I believe” on it. This would be in addition to the plethora of other sports team and college university logos already offered by the state. Obviously there is opposition to this, it could be seen as state-endorsed religion (a big no-no according to the US Constitution). One law-maker was quoted saying:

“It’s not a road I want to go down. I don’t want to see the Star of David next. I don’t want to see a Torah next. None of that stuff is appropriate to me, I just believe that.”

So this got me thinking. It is easy to say that Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam are religions because it’s always been that way. But when you get down to it, how do you define religion? Belief in God? There goes Buddhism. Belief in an afterlife? See ya Hinduism (sort of). So what distinguishes religion from other belief systems?

During the course of a week millions of people flock to large meeting places, some indoor, some outdoor, some capable of holding thousands, some only a few dozen, to join with each other in their common love for a particular thing. During their meetings they express their excitement in various ways, sometimes in song, sometimes in silence, sometimes with clapping, other times you’ll see arms stretched towards the heavens. There are common rules at these gatherings that most folks will follow and there are consequences for breaking these rules. But even when these folks aren’t gathered together, they still connect and read and experience whatever it is they worship. There are websites, radio stations, TV channels, books, magazines and plenty of merchandise devoted to their similar object of affection.

Is this how you define religion? Does that sound like church or the NFL to you? You really could substitute just about any passion in that last paragraph I just used sports because I see a lot of parallels between the worship of our favorite teams and the worship of God. One could argue that no one really considers sports to be of eternal consequence but what about religions that don’t even believe in an afterlife?

This seems like a difficult question, I mean let’s face it, Jedi is considered a religion in the UK so I’m not sure anyone has really nailed this one down.

So, after all that, what do I think? From a legal standpoint you have to define it somehow, otherwise everyone would claim themselves as a religious organization on their income tax forms and not have to pay taxes. But how about from an eternal standpoint? I think Tim Keller says it well when he says “religion is I obey and then I’m accepted by God”. Religion is a way to get what you want from God be it blessings, health, happiness, or a good spot in heaven. Religion turns God into a genie-in-a-bottle. Someone to give you what you want and to make everything go smoothly in your life. Here’s what Christ says about all this, “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” Jesus says we’re not to give up parts of our lives or follow a set of rules to gain favor, He says we’re to give up our entire lives and follow Him; a person, God.

I don’t like thinking of Christianity as a religion but yet I can’t escape it. I just hope that, given the animosity that seems to exist against organized religion, my practice of following Christ will be seen as so different it doesn’t even have the smell of religion.

My good friend Andrew posted an article from Paul Graham titled Be Good. The article hints at the idea of running a business like a charity in order to make money. He cites the example of Craigslist which has been very successful by providing folks something they want but with a not-for-profit business strategy.

Andrew asked the following questions:

• Does this principle match up with Scripture?
• If so, why is it still sometimes hard to determine what is right?
• Also if so, why aren’t Christians the most decisive and least confused people you ever meet? After all, don’t we have the ultimate Moral Compass?
• Is it wrong, as believers, to think like this?

I’m going to think over these for a few days and post something here later on this but if you’d like to join in the discussion, head over and answer some of these good questions.

This week, have a listen to Kirk Cameron share the gospel with a stranger

“And there they continued to preach the gospel” - Acts 14:7

Each Tuesday a different reflection on the gospel and its continual effect on our lives

I think I share this guys’ love for books. Stephen offers a few suggestions for C.J. Mahaney’s challenge to master a short list of gospel-centered books. I particularly appreciated his suggestion to talk about the books we read with others…this means we have to be reading the same books as our friends. I would appreciate any advice on how to go about doing this, it’s difficult for folks to commit to reading the exact same book at the exact same time on the exact same schedule. Any help?

I received an email today asking for a screenshot of the ESV on the Kindle, I figured it has been a while since I’ve posted on my beloved Kindle so here it is.

Text Size

I’ve taken screenshots of the ESV at different text sizes. It’s interesting to note that only the book’s text size changes when you increase/decrease the font size; the navigation menus do not. This is something to consider if you are planning on using the Kindle for its ability to increase the font size, you will have to keep in mind that the menus will stay the same size no matter what you do to the font size. Click on the thumbnails for a larger view:

Text size 1

Text size 2

Text size 3

Text size 4

Text size 5

Text size 6

Text size 6 with navigation menu open

You’ll also notice that as you increase the text size, you increase the line height spacing which really cuts down on the number of verses you can display on one page.

Contrast

The contrast in these screenshots is not representative of the actual Kindle. The Kindle’s screen looks more like a newspaper with a light gray background and black text. I’ve used the Kindle for hours at a time in typical room lighting and never had any issues with eye strain though.

Awkward Navigation

After using this thing for a few months I’m still not able to look up passages as fast as I can with a paper Bible. It is fine for jumping around during a sermon or class but if you are studying something in depth, you’ll probably end up using ol’ faithful. For me the benefits are still the same:

• full text search
• having lots of books on one device
• plenty of good content available
• ability to take notes with a keyboard
• free internet access!

I found a site with a good description and a tool to help aid in the memorization of long texts. Basically, you write out the text once and then plug the text into a converter that will give you the first letter of every word. Reading over the first letters seems to be a good way to help in your memorization though I can’t say this has worked for me yet (I just found it today!).

A definition first from the 9Marks website:

Expositional Preaching - a sermon which takes the point of the text as the point of the sermon

Kind of short but it gets the point across if you have never heard of expositional preaching. I would think most people are familiar with topical preaching, where the preacher picks a topic, loving your neighbor for example, and then finds supporting verses in the Bible that back up his argument. Expository preaching differs in that the preacher picks a text and then opens up the meaning of that text for the duration of the sermon. We have an early example of this in Nehemiah 8 when Ezra read through the Law from early morning until midday and gave sense to the reading so that the people could understand (verse 8). So topical preaching would answer the question what does God’s word have to say about xyz and expository preaching would answer the question what does God’s word say?

The pastor at my family’s church is difficult to categorize but he is typically textual (he begins with a text but that text is not always his main point). A few weeks back his Easter sermon (audio/video) was an exposition of Luke 24 (The road to Emmaus). I have heard so many people say how great a sermon it was over the past few weeks. It was a great sermon no doubt, but I suspect the reason for all the buzz is that we really love expository preaching and here’s why I think that:

1. Not from man, but God - Nehemiah 8:8 said they read from the Law of God. When a preacher opens up a text his hearers know that they are hearing from God’s word and not just a topic. They know that for the next 30-60 minutes they will be hearing what God has to say.
2. Digging down, not across - usually in a topical sermon, the preacher needs multiple references to make his point. You’ll typically bounce from place to place in the Bible without really dwelling on any one particular text. Expository preaching parks you on one text for the majority of the sermon, it says in Neh. 8:3 that they read from morning until midday, that’s a long time to be in the word. When the sermon is finished, you have spent all that time in one spot, pondering what God is saying and digging deeper into one text rather than skimming the surface of a few.
3. Fellowship in the word - next time you’re listening to a sermon, listen for a phrase like “and then it says in verse 3…” and watch the congregation. You’ll see a wave of heads drop down in unison to look down at their Bibles and see what the next verse says. It’s a great sight. But the best part is knowing that you’re all reading the same text, struggling through it, questioning its meaning and application for your lives. Neh. 8:1 tells us that the people gathered as one man in the square to hear the reading of the word of God. They were unified in their desire to hear the word and later on (verse 17) they were unified in their application of it.
4. Great worship results - after hearing the word, the people went away to eat, to drink, to celebrate a great festival because they understood the words which had been made known to them (verse 12). The word convicts, it pierces, it breaks down pride, it divides but it in the end it always brings about worship. The people mourned first (verse 9) but were soon brought to a place of thankfulness and joy in God. We thank God for His word and the wisdom and truth found in it.
5. Application is given - in verse 14 it says they found written in the Law what they should do. When we spend time searching through a passage, the application of it to our lives is easily found. There is no question as to the application when it comes directly from the text and no outside source.

Topical and textual preaching are necessary for the growth of the body and have their place on Sunday mornings. Expository preaching has such an impact and lasting effect because of the length and breadth spent directly in God’s word, searching for its meaning and application for our lives.

I’d like to hear from you, do you prefer one type of preaching over another? Is it important one way or another? Would you add to my list of 5 reasons? Thanks!

John MacArthur’s personal claim is that he is committed to expository preaching and is one of the finest expositors of God’s word today if you would like to hear more.