If you are interested in hearing the full sermon, you can find it here.

Naturally, this made me curious, and because The Preacher is just that nice of a web site, I did a few searches of my own and found Life Without Limbs, the home page of Nick Vujicic, a 20 something Australian man who was born without arms and legs and who now travels the world sharing his testimony and the message of salvation through Jesus Christ. Even if this wasn’t the guy you were looking for, this is someone you might want to read about. Also, check out the video below

It’s Friday and the Almighty is spending the evening at home. He’s met someone you see, someone named Chad, and, well, He likes him oh so much. So, sprawled across his infinite pink bedspread, He is waiting by the phone, His elbows resting on His enormous fuchsia pillow, His cell phone in front of him: He is praying that Chad will call. Next to Him on the bed is a pad of paper where He has written, “Jehovah and Chad 4eternity (4real)” and “Jehovah loves Chad! AWESOME!!”. Suddenly the phone rings and the sound of Nichole Nordeman’s Legacy fills the air. In His excitement, the Alpha and Omega fumbles with the phone before answering. Breathless, He lifts it to His ear, only to be disappointed.”Hey J, has he called yet?” asks the Holy Spirit.”No, but I’m sure he will,” says the Self Existent One, I’ve made it so clear how I feel about him.”

“I don’t know,” says HS, “earlier today I was talking to an angel and he said he was talking to another angel and that angel told him that he saw Chad in the library and Chad was totally talking to Buddha.”

“Are you serious? This totally can’t be happening to me. I’m like God Almighty and stuff, y’know, and he’s my Chad. It would just be so dreamy if we were together!”

“I know,”  says HS, “I know. Sooner or later, he’ll come around.”

“I just hope you’re right.”

Jehovah ends the call and then buries His face in His pillow.”Oh Chad,” He sobs, “how I love you so.”

I hope the above scenario seems ridiculous to you. I hope that if you thought I was being serious, you would think me guilty of blasphemy. Let me assure you, I am not being serious. But can I submit to you, that this is exactly what we do when we preach an Arminian gospel?

If God is who He says He is, then it is He who does the choosing. If He is who He claims to be it is He who has ordained all things. I have written previously about the co-existence of free-will and predestination and won’t go back into it in any depth here, but I do want to declare to you that Jehovah is the Sovereign God, the I AM. Though He loves us, it is not with a fretful, trembling love. He is no tender-hearted girl hoping and praying that some will come to repentance, that some will come to know Him.

What do you say?

Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her.

Sarai makes it clear that she believes God has kept her from having children. She recognizes that God is the one who opens and closes the womb, but at the same time, she also doesn’t believe it, because she tells Abraham to go into Hagar and see if God will bless it and give him children (as if God does not control the womb of Hagar as well).

What happens next? We all know the story. Hagar brings forth Ishmael, and fourteen years later, Sarah née Sarai, brings forth Isaac, a son of her own. A few years later, Ishmael is sent away, and he grows up away from his father and his step-mother and brother. The next time we see Ishmael in Scripture, he is meeting Isaac to bury their father. Go a few verses further and we are reading Ishmael’s obituary as it were.

And these are the names of the sons of Ishmael, by their names, according to their generations: the firstborn of Ishmael, Nebajoth; and Kedar, and Adbeel, and Mibsam, And Mishma, and Dumah, and Massa, Hadar, and Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah: These are the sons of Ishmael, and these are their names, by their towns, and by their castles; twelve princes according to their nations. And these are the years of the life of Ishmael, an hundred and thirty and seven years: and he gave up the ghost and died; and was gathered unto his people.
(Genesis 25:13-17)

We know a little more about Isaac. We know that he married Rebekah and that he had two sons, Jacob and Esau. We know that he became wealthy. We know his story in greater detail without having to look it up. But, here is my question:

If we accept the premise that the spiritual counterpart to bringing forth children is seeing souls born into the family of God, then what is the spiritual counterpart to going in unto Hagar?

I believe that as Christians (both individually and collectively as the Church), we often find ourselves in situations that bring us to say, the LORD has restrained us from bearing. The LORD has not given us souls. We know and testify that salvation is of God, that it is by the working of His spirit and by His hand alone that sinners come to repentance, but at the same time we do not believe it, because we go in unto Hagar. We go in to the world and we say, perhaps by these methods that we once thought were wrong, we might raise up souls unto God. What it terrifying is this. More often than not, by these methods, we see fruit.

What we have forgotten is this, Ishmael had twelve sons, each of them a prince with castles and land, and Issac had only two, one of them a shepherd living in semi-exile. If someone looked at the fruit of Abraham’s life, at his child with Hagar and his child with Sarah, which one would they conclude was more “successful”. Would they conclude that going into Hagar was such a bad thing after all? Could they even conclude that it was a good thing? Based on Ishmael’s life, would the modern church have told Abraham: Go down into Egypt and purchase from the slave blocks one hundred Hagars and get them all with child and raise up an army of Ishmaels? Sometimes, I wonder.

What I am saying is this: the ultimate fruit of Ishmael was not determined in his or in Abraham’s lifetime. In many ways it has still not been completely determined and will only be known in full, in eternity. But It is no different with our methods of winning souls today. It is not immediate results that tell us whether we are doing the work of God or not. There was no lack of people to dance around the golden calf that Aaron made, yet Noah preached 100 years and only reached his household.

What do you think? Does this hold up to the light of God’s Word? Have we gone in unto Hagar? If so, how do we make things right?

Let me know what you think.

We are spiritual beings, and that’s important to remember, if for no other reason than the fact that we are constantly forgetting it. And it’s so easy to do. We wake up in the morning, and the first things we are faced with are the pressing demands of our bodies.

“To the bathroom,” screams our body, “but you should also start the coffee. Also, how about some breakfast? I’m thinking sausage and pancakes and maybe some eggs… Or a bagel!!! One of those asiago cheese thingies with bacon scallion cream cheese… But first, I need a shower, and a good gargle or two — what did I eat before I went to bed?!? — and by the way, HOW’S THAT COFFEE COMING?!?!”

The rest of the day isn’t much better. In fact, if you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself with your head on a pillow and your eyes tightly closed and you will not have stopped to think a consciously Christian thought since you first opened them that morning. But we are spiritual beings. I want to keep saying that throughout this post, coming back to it as the central thought. We are spiritual, and what’s more, this world is spiritual as well.

Take a second and read the words of Hebrews 11:3

Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

Think about that for a minute: the worlds themselves were framed by the words of God, and the visible things of this world are not made of visible things. This world is a spiritual world, and the things that God has made all point back to who He is. Psalm 19 says: The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork. Day unto day utterest speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. If the heavens declare the glory of God, how much more so should we, who are made in His image?

Tomorrow, I want to talk about some of the specific examples of how we are to be a living message of God to this world, how we are made Father and Son, Husband and Wife, Brother and Sister, so that we may better understand our Heavenly Father and the relationship that we have with him as children, so that we can both understand and proclaim to the world, how Christ loves His bride the Church and so we might remind ourselves from time to time how we should love our Christian brethren. But today, I want to remind you that we are spiritual beings living in a spiritual world, and that we have a responsibility to live like it.

Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.
(2 Corinthians 3:2-3)

As always, comments are welcome.

Which bring us to a second question, namely, what is the Gospel? This requires some explanation. Over the last hundred years or so, there has been a concerted effort on the part of well intentioned individuals to make the message of salvation extremely simple. And it is simple, but without meaning to be paradoxical, the message of salvation is also complex. Here is my definition of the Gospel:

The Gospel is the message of the Bible. It is the commandments that God has given us. It is the news that we are born into sin because of the sin of one man, and that by the sacrifice of one man, the price of sin was paid. The Gospel is in many ways, the story that God is telling. It is the story of Jesus Christ.

And let me be clear here, I am not saying that someone has to know the entire Bible to be saved, but what I am saying is that we don’t know what it will take for any individual person to come to Christ, to experience salvific faith. Look at Abraham: he obeys God and leaves Ur in chapter 12 of Genesis, goes down into Egypt and comes out wealthy, and then he separates from Lot in chapter 13. In chapter 14, he saves Lot and the people of Sodom from Chedorlaomer, refuses the reward of the king of Sodom, and communes with Melchizedek. But he doesn’t get saved until chapter 15, verse 6: And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.And that’s part of our problem. Modern evangelistic techniques teach us to attempt to harvest on every encounter. Never mind that Paul says that some plant and some water. Never mind that if you ask a farmer, he’ll tell you that you spend more time planting and weeding and watering than you do harvesting. We’re taught to close the sale.

Don’t worry if they don’t know enough, don’t worry if this will result in a false conversion, just grab whatever it is that’s growing by the green part, yank it out of the ground, and put it in the ‘Saved’ sack. This sort of thinking terrifies me.

So, what am I driving at? What is my point? Primarily, it’s that we need to be thinking Christians, who safeguard rather than limit the richness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And we need to disciple those that we lead to Christ, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you (Matthew 28:20). And this goes back to part one in this series, because if you are already teaching your wife and your children on a daily basis, you will be ready to deal with the questions that a new convert has. What do you think? If you’ve taken the time to read this far, please take the time to leave a comment as well. Your feedback is useful, and Lord willing, will be responded to.

¹ Etymology information taken from the Online Etymology Dictionary

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.
[this part of the Shema is from Deuteronomy 6:4-9, you can read the full text here]

The name “Shema Yisrael” comes from the first words of the prayer, “Hear O Israel”. So when in Mark 12:29, Jesus says: The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord, every Jew that heard this, knew he was referencing the Shema. This is the first commandment, and a great deal of it is concerning the evangelism of the home.

Before I go any further, let me say this: I am not a good man. I struggle to do the things that the Word of God teaches. They do not come naturally or easily to me. And so, what I say next, I say to myself as much as anyone:

If you are not teaching your wife and your children and discipling them daily in the Word of God, you are not keeping the first commandment of God. If you are not teaching your wife and your children, you have no business going out and knocking on the door of strangers.

This is the core of my frustration with modern evangelism. And I believe the church’s failure in the first type of evangelism has affected the second type (Mark 12:31 – love your neighbor), in that because we believe the salvation and mentoring of our children can be so easily achieved (I take them to church and Sunday School), we have also trivialized the salvation of the world: Here’s a cartoon tract about God, pray this prayer and Jesus has no choice but to be your Savior. Next steps? Beats me… Discipleship? I have no idea what that means.

That’s it for now. There is more to be said about this, but personally, I’m guilty of enough without saying another word or reading another reference. Here’s my question: How do we fix this? How do we turn the boat around? How do we redefine the word evangelism, so that when we hear it, the first people we think of, are those that God has given us the greatest responsibility for?

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that there are many “truism’s” that are unscriptural, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, all’s well that ends well, etc… And so I’ve reexamined a lot of things that I thought I had down pat. But mega churches still bother me. I think it’s verses like Hebrews 13:17

Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you.

The word used for account there is logos. It suggests that the question posed will be, something like, “Tell me, how did the church come to be in this state. Give me an account for the state of this man’s soul.” Not the pastor will be held accountable for the faults of the people, but he will be asked what he did to prevent them and then to deal with them when they occurred. With that sort of responsibility, I guess I don’t see how someone can give an account for the souls of 1000+ people. So, I’m asking it as a question. What do you think about mega-churches? What do you think about the responsibilities of an elder? Am I putting too much responsibility there?