Faith for Faith

I have heard it said, “The one thing that we can learn from history is that no one learns from history.” It does not take much to validate this statement. We see it in politics where present governments repeat the mistakes of past governments, we see it in families where children repeat the mistakes of their parents, and we see it in religion where traditionalists misapply the truth behind practices of the past. We all return like dogs to the vomit of our predecessors, and we like them all reject the nourishment of those who by wisdom rejected the viscous cycle of willful obstinacy.

And in the case of religion whereas this traditionalism against truth reared its fleshly head in the Jews who were thus blinded to the Messiah for whom they were looking, and in the Catholic church whose papal decrees and councils blinded it to the Gospel of our Lord, so too now many Baptists have taken up with great zealotry the doctrines of believer’s baptism and baptism by immersion without regard for the foundation upon which it was built. These have perpetuated divisions in God’s church by holding onto the spoils of a battle long past, and these have cherished the spoils and yet have forgotten and even contradicted those who fought the battle that produced the spoils.

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Theology | No Comments »

What is speaking the truth in love? It is a question that I seem to ask to myself incessantly, for there are many who take offense to many of the things that I write and speak, and there are many who claim that I do not write and speak in love. It is a question that judges me whenever I hear of the offenses and the hostilities that some of my writings raise, and it is one that causes to me to examine every topic that I address and every word that I use to address them. It is a question that haunts my soul and my very purpose for existence, and one that causes me to question the very path that I have walked thus far. And being such a reoccurring question, I have addressed it before in my soul and in my writings and will likely address it for the rest of my life.

What then is speaking the truth in love? If you were to take a random survey of people in our country, you would likely receive a host of different answers. If you were to ask the question of a person of a postmodern persuasion, you would likely get an answer similar to, “Speaking the truth in love is not speaking at all, for truth is relative to the individual, and to force one’s opinion of truth upon another is offensive and intolerant and therefore unloving.” If you were to ask it of another, you might get the answer, “Speaking the truth in love is sharing what is true in such a way that it presents one’s view of truth as an opinion thereby making compliance to it optional and thus making it inoffensive.” If you were to ask it of one who professes to be a Christian, you might get an answer like, “Speaking the truth in love is sharing the truth of God’s Word in a way that is not judgmental and that withholds matters that might offend a person and turn them away from a church or the Faith.”

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Theology | 2 Comments »

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection (Rm. 12:9, 10a).

The apostle Paul, in the twelfth chapter of his letter to the Romans, continues in the paragraph that begins in verse nine with the practical exhortations that are built upon his theological discourse that precedes this present section in chapters one through eleven. Having solidified the Roman church’s knowledge of God in Christ, he continues to demonstrate how that knowledge is to transform one into the image of Christ and to destroy his conformity to the world (cf. v. 12:2).

In verse nine, the true knowledge of God in the face of Christ by faith exhibits itself in genuine love toward those in the church. What is interesting in this verse, and yet so wonderfully applicable, is the first instruction given by the apostle to exhibit genuine love, namely, “Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” In other words, the first and primary step to loving the church genuinely is to despise evil and to love good. For if love toward Christ’s church is to be practiced truly and rightly, it must always be done in the context of holiness. For any love that attempts to demonstrate itself apart from God’s decrees and demands for holiness in his Bride is not love at all, but it is hatred. For true love is always concerned first with the glory of God and second with the state of a person’s soul, and to attempt to love a person without regard God’s glory or without regard to their soul, despite sentiment, demonstrates a cold callousness that is concerned more with ease and feigned peace than it is with pressing a soul unto godliness.

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Fridy Night Bible Study | No Comments »

Were all human beings suddenly to become blind, still the sun would shine by day and the stars by night, for these owe nothing to the millions who benefit from their light. So, were every man on earth to become atheist, it could not affect God in any way. He is what he is in himself without regard to any other. To believe in him adds nothing to his perfections; to doubt him takes nothing away

Almighty God, just because he is is almighty, needs no support. The picture of a nervous, ingratiating God fawning over men to win their favor is not a pleasant one; yet if we look at the popular conception of God that is precisely what we see. Twentieth-century Christianity has put God on charity. So lofty is our opinion of ourselves that we find it quite easy, not to say enjoyable, to believe that we are necessary to God. But the truth is that God is not greater for our being, nor would he be less if we did not exist. That we do exist is altogether of God’s free determination, not by our desert nor by divine necessity (A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, p. 32).

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Continued from Spitting on the Holiness of God, Part 1: The Story

You might be thinking, “What an absurd story,” and you would be right. It is an absurd story. But what makes the story absurd is not the selling of coffee mugs, or the painting of pictures, or the putting on of dramas by Israelites during the Exodus, but it is their response to God’s holiness. People do not behold the holiness of the Lord and then proceed to make him who is holy appear to be common. There is a fear that naturally grips the heart and soul of a man when he realizes what holiness means, and that fear changes his life.

A casual look at the church today would reveal that we are a diseased people. We are people who possess God’s holy revelation, and yet we cannot grasp God and his holiness. Oh, we sing songs with the word “holy” in the lyrics, but we never tremble as a people before the Almighty or even show a sliver of respect toward the Being who is wholly other. We love to embrace the humanity of Jesus Christ and his “likeness” to us, and yet we only ascribe to him deity when he must be so to cover our sins. Do you not see the disease of the church? The symptoms are everywhere:

Disregard for His Commandments
If Christ demonstrated anything in his discourse in the Sermon of the Mount, he demonstrated that the law is not a stepladder, but it is a demonstration of God’s holiness. No man can ever keep the law, because no one is holy but the Lord. This is the very reason that Christ came and died, to demonstrate that he is Yahweh by keeping the law perfectly, and then to die in the place of unholy persons so that they might be counted as holy.

We know this well as the Church. We know that Jesus Christ died for sinners to reconcile them to God, but what we do not know well is the command, “Be ye holy.” What that translates to in practice is an apathy toward to commandments of God because our mistakes are “covered.” For example take the second commandment: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” Now take a look at the phrase, “Any likeness of anything that is in heaven.” Then ask yourself, “Where presently is Jesus Christ?” Now ask yourself if you have ever seen anything that has attempted to portray the likeness of Jesus Christ. Right, they’re everywhere! Pictures of Jesus, crucifixes with Jesus on them, statues of Jesus–all idols transgressing the second commandment. And your response? “What’s the big deal?” “It helps the children.” “The commandment is kinda fuzzy on that.” “I like nativities.” These are real responses from past conversations that show that we in the church want to walk as close to the boundary of Mt. Sinai without being struck down by a holy God. And you will probably lightly nod your head in agreement with that and still keep your pictures of Jesus and your nativities showing that you still don’t give a rip about holiness.

Cornifying God
The next time you step into your local “Christian” “book”store, survey what is there for you to buy. To your right and to the back there’s the t-shirt section, where the t-shirts take catchy secular sayings and manipulate them to put Jesus on a Reeses cup, an Abercrombie logo, or in a punchline from a perverted TV show. To your left you’ll see a rack of auto decals that have things like a fish with an American flag on the inside (because you know, the U.S. is a Christian nation), a Godfather movie logo manipulated to say “GodtheFather,” and a quote borrowed from those infamous billboards, “Don’t make me come down there. ~God.” At the front counter you’ll see a collection of “Christian” erasers, pencils, fingernail clippers, and some Testamints that sanctify your breath. All these are designed to press you on to the comprehension of the holiness of God–to portray God as the glorious, unfathomable, infinite Lord of the Universe and his Son as the Holy One, Yahweh Incarnate in whose presence you would be incinerated. Testamints do that, they really do.

Mocking the Revelation of God
There are few things in life that cause me to lose sleep at night, but I lost sleep two nights in a row over the mockery that happened at a local church this past Sunday. During the morning service, some sacrilegious imbeciles thought that it would be a good idea to put on a drama where someone would act as Moses receiving God’s revelation, and another would, in Wizard of Oz fashion, speak as God over the speakers, justifying to Moses his not entering into Canaan. And what was this drama for? To demonstrate the justice of God? To pay tribute to God’s greatest prophet? No! It was a promotion for some upcoming conference! Really! Someone thought that it was worth making trite the holy revelation of God, through the voice of a puny man, with words that God never spoke, all to advertise a conference! Fools! Praise be to the immeasurable mercy of God that withheld his hand from striking down those who permitted such blasphemy!

All this is to say that God is holy, and we need to be a people who know that God is holy. The American church obviously does not understand the holiness of God, and it demonstrates that by its flippancy toward God, his commandments, and his revelation. We should be utterly terrified at our state, because the Lord is not idly watching.

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Imagine this. It is the 2nd millennium, B.C., at a place between Egypt and Canaan on the Sinai Peninsula. Moses, a prophet of Yahweh and the king/leader of Israel, is about to leave Israel at the foot of Mt. Sinai while he ascends the mountain to receive revelation from Yahweh. Before Moses leaves the Israelites, Moses gives them one last revelation: “The Lord has said, ‘Behold, I am coming in a thick cloud upon the mountain. Take care not to go up into the mountain or touch the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death.’” The commandment from the Lord resonates throughout the millions watching, and the very ground begins to shake from the fearful trembling of the Israelites. One in multitude exclaims, “How holy is Yahweh the God of Israel that even the dirt around his presence will kill a man!” The exclamation is echoed by a quick and unified “Amen!”, and Moses begins to ascend the mountain.

The moment that Moses is out of site and in the presence of the Lord, three groups within the Israelites think of three different ways to respond to the holiness of God that they had just beheld.

The first group was made up of Israelites who had the gift of entrepreneury, and they built a trading stand at the edge of the mountain. At the stand they began to sell things that would help the Israelites remember that the Lord is holy. One of the things that they sold was a coffee mug that had a picture of mountain with a cloud around it; another was a stuffed Moses for the kids that when one pulled a string it said, “Stay away from the mountain, or you’ll die!” Another was a picture of a bridge beside the cloud-covered mountain by famous Israelite painter, Thomak Chichade, and also a t-shirt that said, “What has two thumbs and thinks that the Lord is holy? This guy!”

The second group was gifted artists, and they began to paint different things that portrayed the holiness of God to them. Some simply painted the cloud-covered mountain that Moses ascended; some added a dead person beside the edge of the mountain. Some painted a picture of a bull, explaining that it reminded them of the strength of the Lord. Some painted pictures of the sun, citing that it reminded them of the Egyptian god Ra whom they believed was the closest Egyptian god to the Lord. And some painted pictures of a man since they felt that God had condescended himself to them. They hung their paintings of the holiness of God all around the Israelite camp–in the children’s tents, in front of the altar, and even in the latrines, so that the people could always see a visual representation of the holiness of the Lord.

The third group was a group of gifted dramatists who had a knack for throwing return parties. They said, “Hey, let’s plan a return party for Moses for when he gets back from speaking to the Lord, and we’ll promote it by putting on a drama!” They decided that the best way to promote Moses’ return party was to imagine how the Lord would promote a return party. And that’s what they did. The party planning dramatists built a stage at the edge of the mountain and gathered the people of Israel together. They pulled back the curtains, and their promotion drama began. The scene looked like the top of a mountain with thick fog around it. On its peak was a man prostrate with his face looking upward. Out from nowhere, it seems, a deep voice says, “Moses!” The man lying on the mountain peak says, “Speak Lord, I am listening.” The voice says, “Moses, Moses, you have been up here receiving my commandments for weeks, and the people of Israel miss you a lot. Moses, they miss you so much that they are throwing a party celebrating your return, and it is going to be out of this world. Moses, everyone who is of the people of Israel should come to this party. It is going to be awesome. Thus says me, the Lord.” And thus the party was promoted via dramatization.

To be continued…

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