CALVARY HERALD | |
| Volume 13, Number 1 | January-March 1997 |
In This Issue ... |
| Rule #10: Don't Preach, by Pete Hurst |
| A New Profanity, by Byron Snapp |
| Necessary Consequence: Manufactured Meaning, by C. Michael Holloway | Second Thoughts, by Pete Hurst | New Members, by Felicia Moerder | Session News (not included in on-line edition) | Christian Worldview Student Conference |
In case you didn't know, the tenth rule of how to keep your kids free of drugs is "Don't Preach." I know this because last summer while I was letting my fingers do the walking, I read this in the Yellow Pages. Being a preacher I noticed the word "preach" in some filler material for this particular page in the directory. This public service gem went on to explain that "one of the greatest deterrents to drug use is simply talking with your kids. But don't preach or you'll lose them. If a conversation lasts more than five minutes, you're preaching."
The word "preach" does have a most negative connotation in the world and the church. "Don't you preach to me!" someone says in a huff. "Well, I don't mean to preach to you," someone says apologetically on another occasion. Long ago, many churches quit using the words "preach" or "preaching." The order of service never mentioned "sermon" or "preaching" but the tamer words of "message" or "sharing." Ministers are seldom called preachers unless someone is telling a joke or ridiculing a minister.
The church growth "experts" in our day are not favorable toward preaching. When justifying their entertainment-oriented "worship" services, they refer to the preacher as a talking head. In a past article I supplied this phrase as a substitute in various verses where preaching and preachers are mentioned. It certainly affords those who disdain preaching an excellent opportunity to make fun of our Lord, His activity, and His instructions.
Although the dictionary supplies a definition relating to a negative use of the word preaching, Christians should try to use it regularly in the positive way that our Lord did. Christ preached. Christ was a preacher. Christ commissioned others to preach. He gave instruction on the content of preaching and commanded that the gospel was to be preached to all creation. Get a concordance and look up the various words that are translated "preach." Study the circumstances and the purposes of God.
Now why should I mention these things? Do I have the Rodney Dangerfield get-no-respect syndrome? No, I appreciate the love and acceptance of the congregation where I preach. I often say to visiting preachers, "Our people come to listen and be taught. You don't have to entertain them, just preach the Word."
I mention this to warn us not to follow the world or many in the church. God has designed preaching as one means to delare His message to all peoples. Preaching in itself appears as foolishness (I Cor. 1:21) to the world, both in its message and method. But our Christian faith is declared when we use godly means and speak the truth even though it may appear foolish. Perhaps you have thought, "I could never invite so and so to church. They'd never listen to the preaching." Aren't you reasoning like the world? Of course they won't listen unless the Holy Spirit is pleased to open up their heart, but your problem is you don't even believe in the means God has given. If the problem is with my preaching, then what have you done to get them under the preaching of the gospel in another church? If you haven't done anything, then this is unbelief on your part and you need to repent. Witness to them, pray for them, and work to get them under the faithful preaching of God's Word wherever that might be.
Granted all preaching is not acceptable. There are those who preach without love, and those who do not preach the gospel. In these instances it is the person and the lack of God's truth that is the problem, not the means.
We should accept God's means and cultivate the best use of it. Seminary training will tell you about outlines, poems, humor, and illustrations, but the best preaching and its best use will have more significant ingredients. Preaching must be God's truth in the power of God's Spirit. The preacher is God's messenger, presenting God's message, not his own. He knows that without the Spirit's work, all is in vain. He is under commission from God to declare the whole truth to the whole person, in love but without apology. People must come to hear God's message, not to be entertained. They are to pray for the success of God's Word, examine what they hear, and apply it. Christians want to be preached to; they hear God in it encouraging, enlightening, and convicting.
As Christians, we have better rules than the world.
Rule # 1: "preach the Word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. (II Timothy 4:2).
Rule # 2: "But the Word of the Lord abides forever, and this is the word which was preached to you." (I Peter 1:25)
Rule # 3: " Obey all rules."
What do the following two news account have in common? At first glance, they are seemingly disconnected. On reflection, however, a relationship between the items is evident.
Last year a St. Louis, Missouri high school teacher allowed her eleventh grade students to use profanity in class skits and creative writing. In fact, on review, school officials discovered that in these classes, profanity was used every twelve seconds on the average. The teacher was fired.
She sued the district for violating her rights. She claimed that there is no good reason why profanity should be banned in the classroom. She won. A federal court recently ordered the school district to pay the teacher $750,000.
How times have changed. In my high school days a generation ago, one seldom heard a male teacher curse. It was unthinkable that a female teacher would use profanity. Neither sex would expect students to curse - not even in drama. If, however, God is meaningless in the educational philosophy of government schools, then a logical consequence is that His name is nothing more than another word. This brings us to another event that occurred during the Christmas holidays.
On Christmas eve, the President attended services at the Washington Cathedral. Reportedly as he was in line to receive communion, a lone voice spoke to him. The individual, a pro-life activist and a minister said, "God will hold you to account, Mr President." Reportedly, after the communion service ended, Secret Service agents surrounded that person as he was accused of threatening the president's life. They later followed him as he left.
The relationship between these two events was not humanly planned. Yet we must realize that every society has that which is sacred, which is not to be profaned. "Profane" comes from the Latin word "profamus" which means "for the temple." Thus the word denotes speaking or manifesting irreverence toward the god of a society. From early colonial times until this century, the misuse of God's name was profane and therefore off limits. In times of anger or to stress a point, God's name was used in a sinful, profane way. Yet parents and individuals who at times would use such words would often be careful not to use profanity around their children. They would also not encourage their children to use it in their conversation.
It is interesting that it is God's name that is used in profanity - not Allah's or the name of another false god. At heart, people know of the existence of their creator. In sinful rebellion, it is His name they profane by not using it in a sacred manner. Thus to allow profanity is to also, in effect, say that the God whose name is being profaned is not sacred. Permitting profanity is an attack on Christianity.
This incident should not be surprising. Several years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the Ten Commandments could not be posted on the walls of government school rooms. The third of those commandments teaches that God's name is not to be misused. With the denial of the relevance of those commandments for the classroom, the permissability of profanity naturally follows. Space permitting, we could examine the remaining nine commandments to see how they have fared in the classroom. You may desire to reflect on this.
Being created in God's image, we are conscious of God even though man attempts to suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). Thus we need to inquire, "What is profane today?" Could we be seeing a new profanity rising - the criticism of those in power? One cannot make a generalization nor a rule from one incident. Yet newspaper articles relate similar incidents from time to time. We can rest assured that if that which God has labeled profane is acceptable language, a new profanity will arise to take its place.
Living in a society in which profanity is not profane, it will be easier for the misuse of God's name not to grate on the Christian's nerves. As Christians, we must continually be aware of the sacredness of God's name and only use it accordingly. It will also be easier not to pray for a civil government that permits profanity in the classroom. Yet prayer remains essential. Years ago Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, reminded his hearers of the importance of praying for those in authority (I Timothy 2:1,2). Paul wrote in a day when, without question, those in power saw themselves as above reproach. He correctly realized that earthly governments remained under God's government whether or not those governments realized that fact.
He also knew, and reminded others, that the institution of government itself is part of an orderly society. What was needed in Paul's day and in our day is the regeneration in the hearts of individuals. Only as men and women and boys and girls are made new creations in Christ (II Corinthians 5:17) will they truly understand that God and His name are sacred.
A loss of true sacredness in any society is a cause for alarm. But no matter what may be going on in our society, God's people should use God's name properly, and continually share with others why the triune God's name should never be taken in vain.
The Ten Commandments are meaningless. ...
Now that I have your attention, and before you pick up the phone to charge me with heresy, let me explain. Let's begin with a story.
One of my duties at work is to participate in a group that is developing guidelines for using a certain computer programming language in computer systems that control such things as airplane autopilots. In a meeting of this group last October, we discussed whether the guidelines should contain requirements about what should be done, or prohibitions against what should not be done. One member of the group, we'll call him Sam, suggested that the guidelines should probably contain both. To support his suggestion, Sam cited the example of the Ten Commandments. He mentioned that the Ten Commandments include both commands about what not to do (Thou shalt not commit adultery), and about what to do (Remember the Sabbath day). He should've stopped there.
But, Sam did not stop there. He went on to suggest that people seem to respond much better to being told what to do than to being told what not to do. "For example," he said, "the command against adultery is one of the most often violated, while the command to remember the Sabbath is the most often obeyed, because almost no one works 7 days a week." To him, each person who takes at least one day a week off from work obeys the fourth commandment, no matter what that person might do on his day off. Although Sam did not say so explicitly, it was clear that he believes that it is possible to obey the fourth commandment and disobey the seventh at the same time.
Sam used the phrase "the Ten Commandments," and he even correctly cited the text of two of them; but had he been citing some obscure passage from the Koran, he would not have been any further away from God's truth than he was. He was far away from the truth, because he manufactured his own meaning for the text, instead of determining the meaning that God had given to it.
Manufactured meaning is not new. Jesus soundly chastised the religious people of His day for making up their own meanings for many of God's commandments ("You have heard that it was said... But I say to you").
Manufactured meaning is not new, but it is extremely popular today. This popularity is easy to see in the deconstructionist language movement, which asserts that meaning exists only in the eye or ear of the beholder. This popularity is also easy to see in the radical feminist movement, which asserts that not only do words such as chairman, mankind, and person oppress women, but that people come in at least 5 different genders. Finally, this popularity is easy to see among legal theorists who assert that the Constitution means whatever the courts say that it means.
Manufactured meaning is popular in evangelical circles, too. Although we would never claim that A Tale of Two Cities was without meaning until we read it, although we could not come up with 5 different genders if our lives depended on it, and although we would never conceive of creating a right to kill unborn children from the Bill of Rights, we will happily talk about what a Scripture passage "means to us." We easily forget that what we think a passage means does not matter one whit, unless it agrees with what God says it means. God has given us much liberty through Christ, but that liberty does not extend to manufacturing meaning for any part of His Word.
To complete the sentence with which I opened this column: The Ten Commandments are meaningless ... unless their meaning comes from God Himself, through the Scripture. Consider the two commandments Sam cited in the meeting last October.
Only Scripture can tell us what it means to commit adultery. Some may say that a man commits adultery only if he has sexual relations with someone who is not his wife, but the Scripture says: "whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:28), and "whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery" (Matthew 5:32b).
Only Scripture can tell us what it means to remember the Sabbath day. Refraining from working is certainly a part of it, but it is not the only part, as passages such as Isaiah 58:13, Luke 4:16, and Acts 20:7 make clear.
Of course, this principle applies to all of Scripture, too. Only Scripture can tell us what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves. Only Scripture can tell us what it means to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Whenever we resort to manufacturing our own meaning, instead of discerning---through the illumination of the Holy Spirit---God's meaning, "we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."
The principles of logic that we've studied in previous installments of this column, and the ones we'll study in future installments, can help us discern God's meaning, if, and only if, we resist the temptation to manufacture our own meaning for those things we do not like or understand. May God grant us the grace to accept His meaning for His Word.
Hypocrisy is one of the major charges the world levels at the church. While, unfortunately, this charge is often correct, the world is blind to its own hypocrisy. Consider a few examples.
(1) The American Academy of Family Physicians reports that 99% of doctors they surveyed are convinced that religious beliefs can heal. Studies in California and at Dartmouth Medical School have shown a remarkable health benefit in those involved in prayer. While we would not acknowledge that all these prayers and belief systems are true and acceptable to the true God, the question I'd like answered is why people actively practicing their religion aren't given a 50% deduction in health insurance premiums.
(2) Consider Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson. High school sweethearts facing murder charges in Philadelphia because they went to a motel for Amy to have their baby and then Daddy Brian tossed it in a dumpster.
Government school health classrooms are often covered with posters that warn of pregnancy and usually depict a baby as the enemy to teens with life before them. Amy and Brian learned this lesson well. What they didn't learn was that if they could have found a nice, squeaky clean hospital a couple of days before Amy went into labor, they could have had their baby killed and tossed in the garbage in a safe and legal way.
(3) A recent news article noted an interest in the book of Genesis. Time magazine covers, a Bill Moyers television special, and a number of new books treat the various events and persons in Genesis. None of this proceeds from an awe and reverence of God and His revelation, but the unique stories and personalities, many of which are very ugly and immoral at times. With some we have to agree, much in Genesis among God's people is very ungodly at times.
However, with all this preoccupation with Genesis, not one of these "experts" sees in Genesis the reason for the problems or the answer there promised. The problems began when Adam and Eve chose to be God (Genesis 3:6) and the answer to their sin is a salvation through Another (Genesis 3:15). It is no wonder the rest of the Bible isn't better understood, because men in their pseudo-scholarly blindness can't get through the first three chapters.
We welcome Mallory Booth and her husband James to our congregation. Mallory transferred her membership in December, and James hopes to be in a New Members class soon. Originally led here last summer through the friendship of the Hurst family, James and Mallory say it was the solid preaching from the gospel that kept them coming back. They live in Newport News, along with their one-year-old daughter, Morgan. James, a Hampton native, is a security officer for Alpha Omega Security & Investigations, Inc. Mallory is originally from Mississippi, but spent most of her life in Colorado. She is an administrative assistant for Marriott International. Although work and family responsibilities keep them busy, James enjoys playing volleyball and basketball, while Mallory likes cake decorating and exercising.
Chris and Grace Ann Cashen responded to an invitation from the Hughes family to visit our church last summer. They've been a part of our congregation ever since. Along with Christopher (7), Katie (5), and Anna (4), they live in Va. Beach. Chris works in Norfolk, where he maintains a legal practice of his own, and also is established in a building partnership with Jimmy Hughes. Originally from the Midwest, Chris came to Hampton Roads in the early 1980's as a civil engineer for the Navy. It was here that he and Grace Ann met and married. Grace Ann is a homemaker and former teacher, with a special interest in dance. Chris enjoys running and reading. The younger Cashens each have their own special interests: Christopher likes soccer, Katie enjoys skating, and Anna loves dolls.
Ken Dorian professed faith in Christ before the Elders in November. He and his wife, Donna, and their children, Kenneth, Jr.(8), and Courtney (6), have been a part of our church and school for quite some time. They reside in Hampton, but are originally from the Philadelphia area. Ken's job as a Machinist's Mate First Class with the Navy brought them here. He heard about Calvary from Jim Weill and another friend in the Navy. Ken and Donna like to read in their free time and Donna has a special talent for organization -- a talent she uses regularly in her job as a clerk at Video Update. Currently, Ken volunteers with Operation Breakingthrough and the ministry to foreign Bible students. He also ushers on Sunday mornings.