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Category: Gospel
The Gospel According to Lot
Then the men said to Lot, “Have you anyone else here? Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone you have in the city, bring them out of the place. For we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.” So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, “Up! Get out of this place, for the Lord is about to destroy the city.” But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting.
Genesis 19:12-14
The story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah would make an epic movie. You’ve got your good guys: Abraham, Lot, and the angels. Your bad guys: everybody else in town. Violence, dramatic tension, a narrow escape, major pyrotechnics, and the good guys take the day. Epic, I tell you.
But that’s just what’s happening on the surface.
If you look closely, you can see the light of the gospel casting a shadow over Sodom. A shadow that’s the size and shape of a cross.
The city of Sodom was so wicked that God personally came down to deal with it. Judgment was coming. There was hell to pay—quite literally.
God revealed His plan of destruction to Lot, His only follower in Sodom. But God didn’t stop there. Did Lot have anyone in town that needed to be rescued from the coming devastation? Hurry! Go get them and urge them to flee!
“My sons-in-law!” thought Lot. Perhaps he raced out the back door, slipped carefully past any of the blinded mob left on his front porch, and scurried surreptitiously through town to avoid other hostile neighbors. Arriving at the respective homes of the two men betrothed to his daughters, he must have pleaded with them to drop everything and come with him. It was the only way they could be saved.
But they wouldn’t go with him. They didn’t believe him.
The next morning, judgment came. And that handful of people—righteous Lot, and those who believed with him that God would save them if they left everything behind and followed Him—were the only ones spared.
Is that shadow becoming clearer?
This world is a frightfully wicked place. And, one day, God is going to come down personally to deal with it. Judgment is coming. It will be swift, it will be terrible, and it will be final. God has revealed this to us in His word. He has also revealed to us, His followers, the plan of escape: Jesus.
But God doesn’t stop there. Do we have friends and loved ones who need to be rescued from the very real and eternal hellfire and brimstone that await them if they stay in the Sodom of their sin?
Jesus tells us to “go out and…compel them to come in” (Luke 14:23), and that they “must be born again” (John 3:7).
This isn’t some kind of “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” game we’re playing here. It’s urgent, a matter of life and death.
Eternal life. Eternal death.
And God’s way is the only way out.
God didn’t offer Lot’s sons-in-law the option of having their cake and eating it, too, by remaining in Sodom and being saved from His wrath. And it doesn’t work that way for us either. We don’t get to have Jesus and continue to rebel against Him by remaining in our sin.
Just as Lot’s sons-in-law could not survive God’s judgment any other way than fleeing the sin of Sodom and following God’s escape route, there is only one way we may escape. We must flee from our sin and into the forgiving arms of our crucified and risen Savior.
This is the gospel with which we must compel them. It is the only gospel that saves.
“If sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. And if they will perish, let them perish with our arms around their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for. – C.H. Spurgeon.
It’s OK To Be Ordinary
Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.
Titus 2:3-5
Love our husbands and children.
Be self-controlled, pure, and kind.
Work at home.
Be submissive to our own husbands.
In other words: ordinary.
I didn’t see anything in there about changing the world or living out great big enormous dreams, did you? I think, often, as 21st century Christian women, the evangelical culture can make us feel like we are failures if we don’t have some sort of huge ministry or preach the gospel on the street corner every day. In Titus’ day that sort of thing would have been unbecoming for women. In our culture, women have more opportunities to be involved in various ministries than back then, but we have to remember that God calls us to faithfully serve Him in whatever life circumstances He has put us in. And He has not called the vast majority of us to be ministry superstars or Christian celebrities.
He has called most of us to be ordinary.
Staying home and pouring the gospel into our families or being a gospel influence to others at work or teaching Sunday school or sharing the gospel through volunteer work, and so on, though it may not amount to much in the world’s eyes, is success and faithfulness in God’s eyes. And that’s all that matters.
You’re not failing God if you’re ordinary.
SoteriObamaGigliology and You
Is Louie Giglio a living martyr or a coward? What do you think of our shiny new state church here in the U.S.? If you haven’t heard about The Giglio Imbroglio, allow me to bring you up to speed.
Pastor Louie Giglio was invited to say a prayer at President Obama’s inauguration ceremony later this month. Being a Christian pastor, it should have been expected that he would have preached at some point on what the Bible says about the sin of homosexuality. Someone with a pro-homosexuality group dug up a sermon from decades ago in which he had done just that, and, yada yada yada, Pastor Giglio – pressured, or not, by the Inaugural Committee (that’s a little murky at the moment)— decided not to do the prayer. Ok, are ya with me? Good.
I’ve read a bit about this debacle over the past few days (though I have a few disagreements with some points, all of the articles hyperlinked above are excellent) and most of what I’ve read seems to be focused on Louie Giglio. But Louie Giglio isn’t alone on the stage of this little drama.
There’s another player. Our President.
Although all the details and communiqués were being handled by the Presidential Inaugural Committee, as President Truman used to say, “The buck stops here.” Right at the feet of President Obama. Ultimately, he is responsible for the “unvitation.” If he felt that the Committee was out of line in their statements or actions, he could have intervened. Instead, he has been silent, which implies consent.
Our President consented to the press release from the Inaugural Committee which said in part:
“As we now work to select someone to deliver the benediction, we will ensure their beliefs reflect this administration’s vision of inclusion and acceptance for all Americans.”
Translation: Louie Giglio’s Christian beliefs about homosexuality, which come straight from the Bible, do not “reflect this administration’s vision.”
Let me say that again. Christian beliefs about homosexuality, which line up with what the Bible clearly says, are opposed by our President.
Why is that important?
Because our President believes he is a Christian.
And so do a lot of other people who share his beliefs on things like homosexuality and abortion.
If that describes you, before you get mad and stop reading, in fairness, hear me say something:
Sanctification (progressively becoming more and more Christlike) is a process. People who get saved, especially as an adult, bring a lot of entrenched opinions and thought processes with them to the cross.
Am I saying you have to become pro-life and anti-homosexuality (notice, I did not say anti-homosexual) before, or in order to, get saved?
No.
Am I saying that five minutes or a week after you get saved, you’ll be pasting “Choose Life” and “One Man, One Woman” bumper stickers on your car?
No.
What I am saying is that a person who has genuinely been born again has a God-created desire to know, trust, and obey God’s word.
Even if it’s hard.
Even if you don’t like it, initially.
Even if you don’t completely understand it.
The desire, inextricably interwoven with your love and affection for Christ, born in your heart when you were born again, exists.
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. II Corinthians 5:17
Do you have that desire?
Do you wrestle with the things in God’s word that are difficult for you –perhaps things like homosexuality- in order to understand, embrace, and obey them?
Or, do you war against the things you find in the Bible that you don’t like- rebelling against their inherent truth, rejecting them, twisting their meanings to suit your own opinions, and refusing to accept them?
If it’s the latter, you need to be afraid.
Be VERY afraid.
Because the Bible makes it clear that you aren’t saved.
By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked. I John 2:3-6
But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ. I Corinthians 2:14-16
You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. James 4:4
Christians desire to keep God’s word, just like Jesus did. Christians lovingly call sinners to repentance from their sin and to faith in Christ, just like Jesus did. Christians think like Jesus did. Christians reject the world’s values rather than promoting them, just like Jesus did.
My dear friend, if you find yourself constantly battling against God’s word, I urge you, please examine your affections and the fruit of your life, thoughts, and behavior in the mirror of God’s word. It doesn’t matter if you’ve repeated a prayer, filled out a card, been baptized, taken communion, faithfully attended church, served as a teacher, deacon, elder, or pastor, had someone assure you of your salvation, or even if you just “feel saved”. If your life and heart don’t match up with what Scripture says is true of a Christian, you are not genuinely born again.
Please, turn away from your sin- all of your sin -and put your faith in Christ’s finished work on the cross, and in His bodily resurrection, as payment for that sin. If Cain taught us anything, it’s this: you can’t come to God on your own terms. You have to approach Him on His terms.
Or, to borrow from a mantra oft repeated by some in the homosexual community:
If you’re going to accept Him, you have to accept everything about Him.
There’s Mor Than Just Chikin at Steak* Here
*Yes, I know I spelled it wrong in the title. That was on purpose. See the cows? :0)
If, this far into the game, you don’t know about “Chick-fil-A-gate” –as I’m calling it– you must have been living in a cave over the past few weeks. Without internet access, newspapers, cable TV, or, especially, social media.
In a counter response to the homosexual community’s response to Dan Cathy’s response (you’re following this, right?) to an interviewer’s questions, former governor/presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee created a Facebook event called “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day”. Basically, he’s encouraging all who agree with Mr. Cathy’s position on traditional marriage to support him and the restaurant chain (and make up for any business he has lost from the pro-homosexual community) by showing up at their local Chick-fil-A next Wednesday (Aug. 1) and buying some chicken.
In the broad scope of things, this day of appreciation is a nice idea, but one that will quickly be over when Chick-fil-A employees mop up and lock up at close of business. For better or worse, the whole brouhaha will soon blow over and people will go back to their lives.
Or will they?
You see, I’m betting that in a counter-counter response to the Chick-fil-A supporters, there will be some pro-homosexual groups of protesters who also show up. (Don’t hate on that. As long as they aren’t breaking any trespassing, traffic, etc., laws, they are well within their Constitutional rights to do so.)
That’s why I say there’s more at stake here than just chicken.
What if you had a chance to impact one of those people for eternity? What if you could play a part in making next Wednesday the turning point in someone’s life? What if you could be the first person ever to show someone what real Christianity looks like?
As nice of an idea as it is to throw Chick-fil-A some love, Jesus didn’t command us to support businesses we agree with. He commanded us to carry the gospel.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you;” Matthew 28:19-20a
If we walk into a Chick-fil-A next week, past a group of people who are dying in their sins, and ignore them, are we any better than the priest and the Levite who left a beaten and bloody man to die in the road rather than rescuing him? Even if they aren’t conscious of it themselves, these people have been battered, bloodied, and enslaved by Satan.
And we’re going to “pass by on the other side” to buy a chicken sandwich?
“Go and do the same” as the one who showed mercy, said Jesus.
Take them a cooler of iced down cokes. Tell them you love them. Ask them if there’s anything they need. Show them you love them by taking the time to take an interest in them, personally. (Nobody feels loved if they think they’re just a notch on your spiritual belt.)
And share the gospel.
You might get laughed at or cursed at or mocked, but there’s no greater way to show mercy than to show someone the Savior.
Your chicken sandwich could change somebody’s life.
Forever.
