One Less Quiver in the Preacher's Arrow

In his commentary on the Gospel of Mark from the NIGTC series, R.T. France (on pg 430), speaking about the composition of the crowd at the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem in Mark 11, points out that the crowd which praised Jesus, singing "Hosanna" is not the same crowd who would later crucify him. He bases this on the fact that the processional following Jesus to Jerusalem began in Jericho. The Greek phrase, putting their identities beyond doubt, according to France, is proagontes kai oi akolouthountes - the ones going before and the ones following. This is the same pilgrim group that has been traveling with Jesus throughout Act Two of Mark's Gospel.

There is no warrant here for the preacher's favorite comment on the fickleness of a crowd which could shout 'Hosanna' one day and 'Crucify him' a few days later. They are not the same crowd. The Galilean pilgrims shouted 'Hosanna' as they approached the city; the Jerusalem crowd shouted, 'Crucify him'.

Confessions of a (Former?) Reformed Celebrity Fanboy

Some of these thoughts have been gestating for awhile, but ever since I read "A Not-Famous Pastor's Take on Evangelical Hollywood," I have felt somewhat affirmed that I ought to share my more recent struggles. I write this without a bit of cynicism or sarcasm. This just comes from a place of honest struggle.

While I don't wish to dramatize every little decision in my life, one of the greatest struggles I have dealt with is simply coming to terms with the possibility that I may be called to be a pastor. I have touched on this frequently here and there in the last few months on the blogs. The truth is, it is very hard not to compare yourself to the celebrities of the preaching world. I know that this is not something that these godly pastors would want to have happen because of their ministries, but it is a reality for myself and for many others, I am sure.

The truth is, we are living in a day and age when I have at my finger tips every single sermon that John Piper has preached since starting preaching back in the 80s. I can listen to thousands of sermons from the heavyweights. And if you're just listening to listen, there is nothing but healthy and good eating to be done. But what if you're like me, and you want to be a great pastor and show Christ to your people someday? Well, that's when the celebrity pastor thing becomes a little bit trickier. Yes, the responsibility lies with me to be a grown up and have realistic expectations of life in the ministry and not get too excited about Paul or Apollos. But what if I'm not getting sectarian because of Paul or Apollos? What if I'm just paralyzed at the thought that each Sunday when I'm preaching to these people, many of them will be going home and listening to far more substantial, robust, careful preaching than I could ever hope to deliver from my pulpit?

Perhaps the fact that I have 30 years' worth of sermons from Piper, MacArthur, and Ferguson on my iPod cheapens the preaching, just like it cheapens Led Zeppelin's discography to know that you could download the whole thing in 15 minutes from the internet.

Sermons were meant to be studied, poured over, and prayed over. I can get them at the touch of a button. At one point while I was in college, I listened to 8 hours of preaching a night at my overnight job at Target. While I was fed, I never really appreciated the blood, sweat, and tears that must have gone into each and every sermon. The digging, the reading, the praying, the linguistics involved, the people in the pastor's mind as he was working the sermon out... it all gets lost because it's just raw consumption with no interaction, no personal touch.

Morrissey (the former lead singer of the band The Smiths) was being interviewed once, and they asked him what music he's been listening to. He said (and I'm paraphrasing because I can't find the quote), "I just keep listening and listening. I'm like an obese person who eats even when they don't enjoy it. I just consume so much that it all sounds the same to me after awhile." What if we're becoming like that today with regard to preaching. "Preaching? Oh yeah, I can get that whenever I want. Yeah, Piper's pretty good. My pastor doesn't sound anything like him, but at least I can hear him whenever I want."

I think that the celebrity culture that exists in the Reformed world today is introducing a subtle cheapening of preaching. After all, if I can get it and hear it this easily, and it's always so GOOD, how can my pastor's Sunday sermon NOT seem cold, dry, and lifeless in comparison?

I have two great and godly pastors - Pastor George Granberry and Pastor Rick Franks. Pastor Rick has taken me under his wing, as it were and spent a great deal of time with me mentoring, discipling me, and just spending much needed time encouraging me to grow in the Lord and to develop the traits that a good pastor needs to. And you know, as much time as I spend listening to Piper and Keller, one thing I know is that it wasn't John Piper who called me after my daughter had to be admitted overnight to the hospital. And it wasn't John MacArthur who got in touch with me to see how my foot was doing after I sprained it on the job. It was these men. Men who minister to me week in and week out.

I do not envy my pastors. Just like I don't envy the wife of a man who won't cancel his subscription to Maxim magazine. I know the comparison is horrible, but how can the pastor or the wife ever compare to what the man is getting the rest of the week? The airbrushed falsity of the magazine is similar to the airbrushed picture of the life of the much better pastor across the street who comes to you without any baggage, without making any demands of you, without asking anything of you. He delivers the Word, packaged up perfectly to the 'T' and then he goes, once the audio file is finished. Meanwhile, your pastor comes down from the pulpit, perhaps he's a big socially awkward, and maybe he trips when he's coming down from the pulpit. At the church potluck, you hang out with him but have trouble making small talk. It's these flaws, these imperfections that give the preaching of the Word it's power - because it comes from earthen vessels who are unable, under the gaze of their congregations, to present the illusion of perfection or meet any unrealistically high standard.

So as I said, I don't envy my pastors. As long as I keep giving into the Reformed celebrity culture, they are always going to play second fiddle to Keller, Piper, and Ferguson. Who could stand in comparison to such luminaries? Maybe church members like me were really meant to be fed by their pastor and not subsidized the rest of the week by the "big boys." Maybe the internet has presented unprecedented opportunities that I shouldn't be taking advantage of. I don't know... I'm still trying to work through these things. But if I don't verbalize the problems I am seeing right now, will I ever be able to be honest with myself about the strengths and weaknesses of the way in which I was discipled by the radio and iPod for most of my life before finally finding a Reformed church to call home? I really don't know.

[Edit: Let me also suggest that Carl Trueman's post at Reformation 21 is certainly relevant to what I have to say here.]

Christian Leaders Ought to Speak Plainly

I have been watching Rob Bell make the television rounds this week. Good Morning America used a clip from Justin Taylor's webcam that made him look like he was some guy in his bedroom on a Charlie Sheen-style rant. Intercut with this, of course, was the highest quality HD video of Bell pacing the platform with his dapper dress and fancy headset. Sorry, Justin; you're the Sheen wannabe, and Bell's the superstar!

But on to what I really want to say. In the above video where journalist Martin Bashir (the man who took the world inside Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch) actually asks Bell journalistic and pressing questions, I want to point out a lesson for men like us who have future plans to enter the Ministry. Let us speak with clarity. Let us answer questions without fear of the world's judgment. Let us answer questions in a way that the questioner does not need to ask three or four times the same question until we answer "plainly and without horns."

Bell is an embarrassment, to me, in this video. If he could at least have the temerity to say what he believes, he would get a shred of respect from me, but as it stands, I honestly believe he is embarrassed in the context of his conversation with Bashir that he has a watery view of the afterlife. The fact that he calls discussions of one's eternal destiny and its relationship with our decisions and actions in the here and now "speculative" is a joke. The man wrote a book on the subject, for crying out loud! It is not exactly unreasonable that Martin Bashir should expect the man at the table who wrote a book "on the fate of every person who ever lived" to be able to tell us what, in fact, the fate of every person is.

Instead, all Bashir gets is the same repetitive answer Bell gave to GMA... "I begin with the belief that god, when we shed a tear, god sheds a tear." Cry me a river, God. "Okay; I have been for like, thousands of years, and I'm still crying... When's someone going to hug me!?" When Bashir presses him on God's sovereignty and the suffering in Japan, Bell won't give God credit where God gives Himself credit:

Bashir: Which is true, he’s all but powerful and cares?

Bell: I think it’s a paradox at the heart of the divine, some paradoxes are best left as they are.

Fair enough; the guy's no Jonathan Edwards. Maybe he'll at least explain his own views for Bashir (and the rest of the world). Bashir asks, "Are you a Universalist?" Bell responds by saying, "No, I'm not a universalist... Not that there's anything wrong with that..." (My Seinfeld-inspired paraphrase)

Bell:I would say "are you a universalist?" I would say no. that’s a perspective within the christian stream. there’s been within the christian tradition a number of people who have said given enough time, god will win everybody over.

So it would be okay if he was, but he's not. Okay, fair enough. Then Bashir gets really pointed and specific. This is only a seven minute interview, after all. "So is it irrelevant and is it immaterial about how one responds to Christ in this life in terms of determining one’s eternal destiny? Is that immaterial?"

I count Bashir asking Bell this same question a total of three times. It appears he never receives a satisfactory answer. Watch the video to decide for yourself. It is plain to the average viewer that Bashir wants Bell to get down to brass tacks. "Will we get second chances after death?" Bell will not say yes or no. He simply says in the end, "That's speculation." This is why there are theologians. This is why there are pastors. To answer questions like Bashir is asking. What is the point of going to Seminary and reading 700 books and learning Greek and Hebrew if at the end of the day the answer is, "This is all speculation." Well, Bell, go speculate by yourself. Don't experiment with theology in front of an audience of millions.

The questions Bell is asking are too important for him to treat the pulpit like a test tube. Some may think I'm being too harsh, but consider James when he says that "Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness" (James 3:1). Terrifying words for a man like Bell with the audience that he commands. These are terrifying words all of us, really, who have Seminary in our sights.

Piper on M'Cheyne - On Prayer and Preaching

This is a bit old, as far as the internet goes, but I still can't help but recommend the following resource. It is John Piper's biographical message on Robert Murray M'Cheyne from this year's Desiring God Pastor's Conference.

Among the most helpful aspects of what Piper had to say were his parsing out of M'Cheyne's advice to those ministers who tend towards the more intellectual side of things:

Since the intellectual part of the discourse is not that which is most likely to be an arrow in the conscience, those pastors who are intellectual men must bestow tenfold more prayerfulness on their work, if they would have either their own or their people's souls affected under their word. If we are ever to preach with compassion for the perishing, we must ourselves be moved by those same views of sin and righteousness which moved the human soul of Jesus.

As I sense the time for seminary drawing nearer, I am more and more frequently made aware of my own prayerlessness and the lack of real faith that such prayerlessness manifests. Elsewhere, M'Cheyne says something else that causes this intellectual to pause:

We are often for preaching to awaken others; but we should be more upon praying for it. Prayer is more powerful than preaching. It is prayer that gives preaching all its power. . . .

As I see it, we need men like this - because I would never naturally come to conclusions like this - and yet I know that they are truths which are Biblical and which come from only a few short years of M'Cheyne's experience.

So anyway, as I say - definitely read/watch/listen to Piper's talk on M'Cheyne. It's absolutely worth it.

Father Mapple's Pulpit

In the book Moby Dick, Ishmael enters the mariners' chapel where all the seamen go the Sunday before setting to sea. Never before have I read a book where an entire chapter of the book is devoted to describing in amazing detail the pulpit of a church. And yet, here we have it in Melville's masterpiece:

Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that had achieved the ladder and the picture. Its panelled front was in the likeness of a ship’s bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship’s fiddle-headed beak.

What could be more full of meaning?—for the pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favorable winds. Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick Chapter 8

I love this book. It has already produced within me such tremendous sentiments and sensations as I have never experienced before in reading a book. It's only a shame that I waited until I was almost 30 years old before reading it.

The Motivations for Conversion

In an article written for Themelios titled "Pastoral Pensées: Motivations to Appeal to in Our Hearers When We Preach for Conversion," D.A. Carson reflects on many of the motivations which, Biblically speaking, we ought to appeal to when ministering the gospel to someone - specifically to non-Christians.

The motivations Carson points to:

• Fear (Heb. 2:14-18)
  
• The burden of guilt (Ps. 51:4)
  
• Shame (He argues shame and guilt are bound together)
  
• The need for "Future Grace" (this is not exclusively a need for Christians)
  
• The attractiveness of truth (John 19:35)
  
• A general, despairing sense of need
• Responding to grace and love (Gal. 2:20)
  
• A vague desire to be on the side of right

Carson is careful to clarify that this list is neither exhaustive, nor is it a list of either/or propositions. Although the modern tendency is to appeal exclusively to God's grace and love, Carson points out in this well reasoned piece that as Christians we do not get to emphasize one of these at these at the exclusion of others, but rather that our responsibility is to reflect the whole range of human need in our preaching, teaching, and evangelizing. In Carson's conclusion he states,

The point to be made is simple: any failure to appeal to the full range of biblically exemplified and biblically sanctioned motivations not only means that there are some people we are not taking into account, but, more seriously, that there are elements in the character and attributes of God himself that we are almost certainly ignoring.

Thank You, Mark Dever, For An Incredible Day

In 2003, Mark Dever preached from his pulpit, Jonathan Edwards' [in]famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." A few days ago I downloaded this to my iPod. My co-worker and I listened all the way through Dever's reading of Edwards' glorious sermon.

A few reasons why I recommend that everyone listen to Dever's rendition:

• There is nothing like hearing the sermon delivered audibly, as it was originally heard.
• Dever's sermonic delivery is full of passion, which is often missing from our own reading of the text.
• Hearing the sermon, all at once, from beginning to end is tremendously affecting.

I was so affected in hearing the sermon delivered, that I was literally in tears as Dever preached the following:

How awful are those words, Isaiah 63:3, which are the words of the great God, "I will tread them in mine anger, and will trample them in my fury, and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment." 'Tis perhaps impossible to conceive of words that carry in them greater manifestations of these three things, viz. contempt, and hatred, and fierceness of indignation. If you cry to God to pity you, he will be so far from pitying you in your doleful case, or showing you the least regard or favor, that instead of that he'll only tread you under foot: and though he will know that you can't bear the weight of omnipotence treading upon you, yet he won't regard that, but he will crush you under his feet without mercy; he'll crush out your blood, and make it fly, and it shall be sprinkled on his garments, so as to stain all his raiment. He will not only hate you, but he will have you in the utmost contempt; no place shall be thought fit for you, but under his feet, to be trodden down as the mire of the streets.

For me, this is literally the most haunting and terrifying image in all of Edwards' sermon. You can find Dever's rendition of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" here. There is nothing quite like being overwhelmed with the holiness of God, contrasted with your own unholiness.

The Best Chapter in the Bible...Perhaps

I wanted to point out this great sermon series that Dr. Derek Thomas has been preaching at First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, MS on, what he calls, "The Best Chapter in the Bible"--Romans 8. Now it is arguable that Romans 8 is in fact the best chapter in the entire Bible (Ephesians 1 and 2 come to mind as an example of other great chapters), but nevertheless, the sermon on Romans 8:28-30 is outstanding, possible the best sermon I have ever heard.