Only yesterday, I received some distressing news. In fact, the news went with me to bed. It lay next to me and stared into my open eyes. It was on the ceiling, and it whispered in my ear. It haunted me until the ebb and flow of consiousness exited, and sleep took hold in a blur of restful worry.
It was this simple statement: “[They are] going to see if Rob Bell can come to Wayland and speak at chapel.”
Some of you don’t really understand how much that worries me or for that matter, why it worries me. While this is not a post about the harms of a ministry like that of Rob Bell’s, I will say that my first concern is not for what is there in his ministry. Rather, it is a concern for what is not there. Namely, the gospel of God, clearly taught and preached. I know that this comes from a lack of respect for God’s Word. Where you find a lack of respect for God’s word in a ministry, there you will find a lack of faith in God’s Word in a ministry. Where a minister has a lack of faith in God’s Word, there you will find those to whom he ministers lacking faith in God’s Word, too. Frighteningly enough, very few of today’s evangelical church members even know what the gospel is, and this is due to an infantile and weak understanding of the Bible and of the very religion to which we hold. What’s more, while they will be held accountable for not searching deeply and heartily the Scriptures on their own, their pastors, entrusted by God to guide them, will be held accountable all the more. May they tremble at that truth. You who seek to lead God’s people through the preaching and teaching of the Word, tremble at that truth, too.
That is all I will say about Rob Bell. Unfortunately, many of my friends really like him. I say this to them with respect, gentleness, but honest and concerned boldness: If you want to grow closer to God, you could do a whole lot better than to listen to this man.
Nevertheless, my point is this: Worry haunted me into the night.
How does one fight this?
I suggest this one truth: preach the gospel to yourself.
Listen to the edifying and eloquent preaching of a newborn heart, and spurn the dismantling and eloquent taunting of indwelling sin.
It comes to this: To whom will you listen? The fleshly man or the spiritual man.
Here is a concept by Dr. Paul Tripp, a Biblical counselor whom I discovered through the ministry of C.J. Mahaney,
“No one is more influential in your life than you are because no one talks to you more than you do. You’re in an unending conversation with yourself. You’re thinking to yourself all the time, interpreting, organizing, and analyzing what’s going on inside you and around you.”
It’s really true. Who do you hear most of all? Not mom, not dad, not friend, not pastor, not brother or sister, not girlfriend or boyfriend. More than anybody else, you hear…you.
Isn’t that an amazing truth? It’s true because you live inside yourself. The only one who knows you better than you is God, so as far as mankind is concerned, you are the most influentual person in your life.
So, you have to decide: When should I listen to myself?
First and foremost, you must understand, how incredibly depraved you really are.
“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick, who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9
Must I also type out all of Romans 7 for you to display and present the complexities of the human condition. Paul knew it…you know it.
So friend, who do you listen to? I share with you one quotation from D. Martyn-Lloyd Jones’ book Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures:
“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?”
Did you see that? Read it again.
My problem last night was that I was not telling myself what is true.
That statement from Martyn-Lloyd Jones set me free last September when I first read it. It set me FREE.
What do I need to do? Preach the gospel to myself.
Jesus Christ, the living and abiding Son of God, came to earth and lived a sinless life. He NEVER sinned. EVER! He lived a sinless life, and he was scourged and beaten and mocked and reviled and hated until he was led like lamb to be slaughtered on a device of torture, that bloody-yet oh so beautiful-cross. That’s the most beautiful blood in the World! It poured and spilt to the ground as he died, praying for those who killed him. And on that cross, he bore my sins. When he died, reigning sin in my life died, too. Death died, too! There is nothing in my future that will take that from me! Nothing! Christ has finished it. What’s more, three days later he rose again. He killed my sin, and he killed my shame. I am free in Christ. What have I to worry about. “He who did not spare his own son but freely gave him up for us all-how will he not with him freely give us all things?” Romans 8:32
Because of Christ, what have I to worry about? It’s finished. Seek first his rightousness, that rightousness imputed to me by faith in Him. That is the gospel.
My response: Repentance and belief.
If you are worrying about tomorrow, repent and believe the gospel of God.
If you are worrying about this country, repent and believe the gospel of God.
If you are worrying about your friends because many times, they don’t seem to be concerned about holiness, repent and believe the gospel of God.
Preach the gospel to yourself.
I suggest C.J. Mahaney’s sermon from New Attitude 2008 entitled God’s Word and our Feelings at www.newattitude.org. In it, he exposits Psalm 42.
It set my brother free, and it will set you free, too. So what can I say about the possiblity of this guest speaker coming to speak to lost souls who need the gospel here at my school? I cite this truth:
“And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole word as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come….false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand.” Matthew 24:10-14, 24-25
I think the key here is that people like this man will come and lead many astray. “See, [he has told us] beforehand.” People will even attempt to lead astray God’s elect. But Jesus is so careful when he adds, “if possible.” I praise God’s name that a man like Rob Bell has no power to touch God’ s elect. It’s not possible. In addition, the gospel WILL be proclaimed to all the nations. There is no doubt about that because my Lord said it will be.
I am arrogant and prideful to think that Rob Bell has enough power to thwart God’s will. And oh how many are much worse than he. Even Oprah and her pluralistic mysticism can’t touch my Lord and his sovereign will to gather his people to himself.
Truth has set me free from worry. Listen to the truth of the newborn heart, born again by the living and abiding word of God. Cultivate that truth in your heart by hiding it there. Do you even what’s true? I tell you where to find it: God’s own Word. Know the Word, and you’ll know how to fight worry. That’s how I do it.
Working with you to listen intently to the eloquent preaching of a newborn heart,
Vince R.
Prayer is so, so, so hard. Have you thought about it? “No it isn’t,” you say, “all you have to do is talk to God.” Well, yeah, that’s not the hard part. The hard part is talking to God more than just a little bit and more than just once a day and without distraction from the flesh. “Oh,” you say, “well one must struggle indeed if he only prays a little bit once a day.” But I hardly mean for my readers to excuse themselves by saying, “Well, at least I pray three or four times a day. He’s not talking about me.”
The issue here is not numbers. The issue here is not length. The issue here is not oratory skill and profundity of speech during prayer. The issue is desperation. The issue is humility. The issue is urgency. The issue is the Lord’s coming.
Prayer is the highest activity of the human soul, and therefore it is at the same time the ultimate test of a man’s true spiritual condition (there is nothing so much as prayer life that tells the truth about us as Christian people.) Everything we do in the Christian life is easier than prayer.
-D. Martyn-Lloyd Jones
Well, you know, as much as I esteem and respect this preacher, I must pain myself in seeing if these things are true. Experientially, I must say, when my prayer life flourishes, so do my works flourish. What does that mean? Do I mean that my works are always beautifully fairy-tale, such as an instance when I am preaching and God sends revival in the middle of the message? Well, no that’s not what I mean by flourish, and I will never use revival and fairy-tale together again in any other context. Revival is no fairy-tale.
But why does it seem like it?
Revival seems like a fairy-tale because we pray like it is.
So, as I was saying, experientally, I find I am most fruitful for the Lord when I am most prayerful for the Lord. I must clarify, however. I by now means mean to say that God’s harvest is dependent on my prayer. How arrogant and blasphemous to the Almighty to suppose such a thing to be true! What I do mean here is that I (me personally) experience the most joyful obedience to the will and word of God when I am most prayerful.
“Well, Vince,” you say, “you speak experientally, but you would definitely be one who would say that experience has no validation on truth apart from Scriptural subjugation.”
Yes, I would say that, so allow me to look at Scripture to see if these things Martyn-Lloyd Jones says are true. (Let us be Berean as in Acts 17.)
Well, first, does not the scripture exhort us to ”pray without ceasing” in 1 Thessalonians 5:17?
In verse 23-24, Paul prays for the believers at Thessalonica in this way:
Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.
I, of course, believe that Paul may have interjected this prayer for no reason at all except that it is true. He would want God to sanctify his people and present them blameless on the day of Jesus Christ. But the only thing that makes question the interpretation that says that Paul just wanted to pray for the believers in this way without any logical flow in his text seems to deny the context of verses 23 and 24. Why does Paul end his previous thoughts (and subsequently the entire letter) with this prayer?
In verses 12-22, Paul lists an entire section of exhortations like: “respect those who labor among us” (v. 12), “esteem them highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves” (v. 13) “admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be paitent with them all” (v. 14), “[Don't repay] anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone” (v.15), “Rejoice always” (v.16), “pray without ceasing” (v.17), “give thanks in all circumstances” (v. 18), “Do not quench the Spirit” (v.19), “Do not despise prophecies” (v. 20), “test everything; hold fast to what is good” (v. 21), “Abstain from every form of evil” (v.22).
What’s with these seemingly unrelated admonishings?
Well, I think that the entire chapter from its beginning will help you understand that.
Chapter 5 is about the end times, that is, the second coming of Christ.
Paul begins in verse 1 by speaking rhetorically to the believers.
“Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you.”
So why doesn’t Paul just stop there and end the letter? Clearly, they do need to have something written to them because he continues for 27 more verses. I believe that verse 1 is a rhetorical verse.
They SHOULDN’T need to have anything written to them about this topic, but he WILL write about it because they do need him to write about it. It’s a manner of speaking, very Greek and very rhetorical. Paul is a master of speech, language and rhetoric.
(Understanding rhetoric and logic will help you immensly in understanding Paul. In fact, the only book in the New Testament that this won’t help as much is probably Revelation. It’s probably more Hebrew in its genre of literature. We westernized Americans just have so much trouble thinking that way. I know I do. Revelation puzzles me. )
In verse 1, however, Paul is emphasizing the fact that they should not need him to correct them on this issue, but he will because there are some among them who are not urgent about the Lord’s second coming. It’s a shaming way of speaking to them.
In verse 2, he continues this way of speaking.
“For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”
Can you feel his sarcastic rhetoric? “You yourselves are fully aware…surely you are. After all, Jesus, himself, used this phrase. You ARE aware of the words of Christ, are you not?”
We even talk like this when we argue and persuade; we just don’t really ponder how western it truly is.
How wonderfully Gentile Paul speaks!
It’s how you debate. It’s extremely Greek. To whom is Paul speaking? Greeks, of course. (Paul would whip my tail in a debate, for sure.) To speak historically, note how the renaissance, the enlightment and the reformation almost came hand in hand. What was the point of that new age of thinking? Well, really it was nothing new. It was a return to Grecco-Roman ideas and ways of thinking. There is nothing new under the sun. Luther and the other reformers understood this, why do you think they were so powerfully attuned in using it against humanists and others who toyed with God’s word? The Renaissance and the enlightment brought the slippery slope for humanism. The Reformation brought the strong rock of God’s word.
Luther and the reformers were very aware of this way of speaking, and God used it to shake his church back into shape. Soli Deo Gloria!)
Nevertheless,
In verse 3, Paul mildly abandons his way of speaking, in so much as he no longer emphasizes his intent of shaming them, and he begins to speak more doctrinally and illustratively.
“While people are saying, ‘There is peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.”
Verse 4 finds Paul beginning to speak more truth still yet with an edge of loving sarcasm again.
“But you are not darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief.”
I hope you kind of see what I mean when I say he is being persuasive by using what we would call sarcasm. He is not using it disrespectfully and unlovingly, but he IS rebuking them. “But you…brothers.” Do you see the sarcasm sprinkled with love when he tells them things he knows they already know, yet at the same time, he inserts the loving gesture of calling them brothers?
Verse 5 finds him continuing his illustration of dark and light, night and day.
“For you are children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness.”
They are nothing like those of darkness who would be caught surprised by the Lord’s coming.
Verse 6 introduces Paul’s first exhortation.
“So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.”
Because the other things he said in verses 2-5 are true about the believers and the Lord’s second coming, this verse proceeds from those truths as something that should be true, as well. “So then…” Do you see how logic and rhetoric help?
Now, note how verse 7 gives another reason that verse 6 is true.
“For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night.”
He continues illustrating how those caught off guard are like those of the night. Look at it this way:
If,
Night=unprepared for the Lord’s coming
and,
Day=prepared for the Lord’s coming
and,
Night=sleeping and drunkeness
Then,
Sleeping and drunkeness=unprepared for the Lord’s coming.
However, Paul would say, look at verse 8:
“But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.”
So we should look at this way if we want to understand what he means:
If,
Day=prepared for the Lord’s coming
and,
Day=sober, faithful, loving, hopeful saints
Then,
Sober, faithful, loving, hopeful saints=prepared for the Lord’s coming
Now, Paul wants to give a foundation for verse 8 with verses 9-10:
“For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him.”
Why, Paul is asking, do you think that you are children of light and day prepared for the Lord’s coming being sober, faithful, loving, and hopeful? Here’s why, he says:
Because God has not destined his saints for wrath.
But why does he use the word wrath?
Look at Romans 2:5 were it says:
“But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.”
So, we see from this passage in Romans, that Paul characterizes wrath, at times, with the day in the future called the day of wrath “when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.”
So in 1 Thessalonians 5:9, since the whole passage is characterized with end times theology, I think that Paul is using wrath here as that day in the future “when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.”
So, Paul is saying, you are children of light and day, prepared for the Lord’s coming exhibiting faithfulness, lovingness, and hopefulness (all fruit of the Spirit I will add), BECAUSE (if these things are true about you then) you are God’s chosen not destined to face his wrath on that horrible day.
What glory!
Rather, Paul is emphasizing how believers ARE destined. They are destined “…to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” That, Paul says, is how these believers (and you believer) are destined. Not for wrath, but for salvation.
Verse 10, then, emphasizes how urgent yet also how gracious the Lord’s coming is. “[Christ] died for us SO THAT [emphasis added] whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him.”
In verse 10, we see urgency because Christ is returning and grace because even if we are found unprepared for it, we will STILL live with God and not face his wrath.
But, does Paul mean to use God’s grace as a tool to emphasize idleness? May it never be!
Paul means for us to have the fruitfulness of work for the Lord. The fruit of JOY UNSPEAKABLE because we don’t labor in vain when we labor for the Lord. So, therefore, LABOR!
Look at verse 11,
“Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.”
Now comes the list of exhorations in verses 12-22. All beginning with this “Therefore.” There is a reason that “therefore” is there for.
So then, bring it back around, verses 23-24 do not consist of a randomly placed prayer. All of these exhorations for labor are exhortations for works that are sanctifying. They are works preparing us for “the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
“Pray without ceasing” is a sanctifying work.
And now, my point:
Prayer is hardest but definitely most necessary. I hardly expect to be fruitful if I am not praying.
You can do more than pray after you’ve prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed. -John Bunyan
I think I have made it abundently clear how essential prayer is for fruitful labor and how abundently clear it speaks of your spiritual state. Are you prepared for the coming of the Lord? Are you watchful and prayerful working while the master is away? You have not fruit if prayer does not characterize your life.
But if you need a much more effective article citing more Scriptural text and even some historical examples of prayer, here’s an article by the late Leonard Ravenhill entitled “The Gospel of Prayer.”
http://www.ravenhill.org/prayer.htm
“Be ye watchful, for ye know not when the master of the house cometh.” Mark 13:35
Stay up, and pray without ceasing. He’s coming back and we’re not destined for his wrath!
Working with you until the master of the house cometh,
Vince R.
