1/14/16 1/14/16

03 The Gift of Trials

This is part of a Bible Study series on the Epistle of James. You can find more information on the complete series by going to the Series Overview.This Week's Text: James 1:13-18Date: January 17, 2016Series: Shoe Leather Theology: Study of JamesThis Week’s Resources:

This Week’s Lighthouse Lesson

Overview of this LessonLast week we looked at the Trouble with Trials (James 1:2-12), and this we we focus on “The Gift of Trials,” (James 1:13-18). There is a subtle shift in this week’s text as James uses a word play with the words trials and temptations. Here is the bottom line: in life everything is a temptation; how we respond to a trial/temptation determines whether it is a gift or strikes a chord deep within us that leads to sin. James lesson is clear, however, God cannot tempt us with evil (v. 13). We must acknowledge that within each one of us is the ability to turn even the good gifts of God into sin. We are at fault. James makes this clear in vs 14-15.How do we resist temptation? How do we stay faithful even in the times of trials? That is the thrust of this week’s lesson. As you study and prepare, may God use His word of truth to produce the fruit of maturity in both your life and the lives of your Lighthouse members.Memory Verse for This Week“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.– James 1:17–18 (ESV)Core Practice: AuthenticityAuthenticity (John 13:33-34): I know and understand biblical truths and transfer these truths into everyday life. Who I am on the inside and outside is a pure reflection of Christ and His Word.Introduction

Looking back at your notes from this week’s sermon, was there anything that particularly caught your attention, challenged or confused you?
January is the start of a new year. Do you find January to be a month of hope or of despair? Why?
What is the best memory you have from the month of January and why is this moment so memorable?

This Week’s Take Home TruthTrials, God’s gift to mature us, can become a temptation, Satan’s tool to deceive us, if we stop trusting God under it and start blaming God for it.Read the Text (James 1:13-18)James turns to the other side of trials, namely, when testing becomes temptation. God tests his people (e.g., Abraham, Genesis 22; Israel, Ex. 16:4; Hezekiah, 2 Chron. 32:31) so that their character is strengthened, but he never tempts (i.e., lures people into sin). Since God cannot be tempted with evil, and he is unreservedly good, he would never entice human beings to sin or seek to harm their faith. God brings trials in order to strengthen the Christian’s faith. He never tempts, however, because he never desires his people to sin. Christians should never blame God when they do wrong. Read James 1:13-18.Digging DeeperIn this section, feel free to develop your own questions to help guide your group’s discussion. Below are some suggestions.

If you had to describe what temptation is to a 10-year old, what words or concepts would you use?
How are temptations connected to trials?
What mistake to we typically make when it comes to the issue of temptations that ultimately leads us to sin?
Describe the “Cycle of Sin” James outlines in vs. 14-15 and how we can combat this deadly cycle.
How can we prepare for temptation and avoid falling into sin? See how the following passages help prepare you to deal with any temptations that may come your way.
What can a person do to stop an evil desire from becoming an actual evil act?

Concluding ThoughtsIn this section, feel free to develop your own questions to help guide your group’s discussion. Below are some suggestions.How are you treasuring God’s Word in your heart? Do you merely dabble in Scripture now and then, or do you immerse yourself in its purifying, refreshing waters? Do you search through it mechanically to satisfy your curiosities, or do you allow it to search you in order to cleanse your heart and mind? Reading, memorizing, and meditating on God’s Word—the greatest and most perfect gift from above—will help you to stand strong in the moment of temptation.Take this opportunity right now to ask the Holy Spirit to do soul surgery in your life. Pray the prayer David once prayed:Search me, O God, and know my heart;Try me and know my anxious thoughts;And see if there be any hurtful way in me,And lead me in the everlasting way. (Ps. 139:23–24)Whatever your particular temptations may be, no matter how relentless they are, the Father is ready to provide the good and perfect gifts that will strengthen your heart with His life-giving power and personal victory. I can tell you from my own, personal experience, focusing on God’s Word works.—Charles SwindollBecoming A House of PrayerPrayer Prompts:

Pray for Pastor Joe and Amy Earle as they work to lay the foundation for the church plant in Sanpete Valley, Utah. Pray that God will open the doors of the community to them and their children, and that He will sovereignly direct them to the house that will become their home and place of ministry.
Pray for Timur Nesbitt as he prepares to leave for Central Asia in June of this year. Pray that God will provide financial supporters for his minister in Central Asia and that God will lead the way in forming a new church.
Pray that as a church, 2016 will be a year when our church family grows in its understanding that Jesus is the Messiah and desires to reign as Lord in the life of every believer (Matthew 16:16).
Pray for our church as we seek to double the amount of funds available for mobilization starting in 2018. Ask the Lord to help us be wise stewards of the resources He provides and give us clear direction as we seek to bring greater clarity and focus to our global outreach strategy.
Pray for couples in our church family who are experiencing difficulties in their marriage relationship. Pray for grace and mercy and for God’s protection over the families of our church.

1/13/15 1/13/15

Dealing With Difficult Issues: Hebrews 6

As a Bible teacher/preacher, you need to know how to answer difficult issues, questions, and passages within the Bible. In an effort to give insight into how to deal with difficult passages, I’m providing a look inside how I tackled a particularly difficult text—Hebrews 6.Without doubt, Hebrews 6 provides one of the greatest theological challenges for the Bible teacher to interpret. Charles Swindoll calls Hebrews 6 the “Rubik’s Cube of the Bible.” Many commentators choose to either skip Hebrews 6 altogether or provide a brief overview, leaving the difficult text for others to try and explain.In his introduction to Hebrews 6, J. Vernon McGee notes,

This chapter, by all odds, contains the most difficult passage in the Bible for an interpreter to handle, regardless of his theological position. Dr. R. W. Dale, one of the great minds in the earlier field of conservative scholarship, wrote: I know how this passage has made the heart of many a good man tremble. It rises up in the New Testament with a gloomy grandeur, stern, portentous, awful, sublime as Mount Sinai when the Lord descended upon it in fire, and threatening storm clouds were around Him, and thunderings and lightnings and unearthly voices told that He was there.
Every reverent person has come to this section with awe and wonder. And every sincere expositor has come to this passage with a sense of inadequacy, and certainly that is the way I approach it.[1]

Many have offered an explanation to Hebrews 6, but in the end, the best answer may be “I’m not completely sure, but here’s what I believe based on my understanding of what we do know about God’s character.”

Proceed with Caution

That statement drives my perspective on dealing with difficult, thorny theological issues. This is not to say that we should not struggle to find good answers to difficult questions, but it is more of a caution: I want to resist placing God in a box so that the mysteries of God make sense to my finite mind. I except that there are many aspects of God’s character and workings that are left shrouded in mystery, and to forge an answer that makes sense to me may, in the end, only diminish who God is in both my mind and the minds of those under my teaching.

My Perspective on Hebrews 6

After studying extensively the many theories of interpretation of Hebrews 6, here’s where I’ve landed: I believe the writer to the Hebrews is describing true Christians in verses 4 & 5. The words he uses are spoken with certainty:

4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come,

The Writer Is Referring to True Born-again Christians

While there is debate among commentators and even among our pastors at First Family, I believe the writer is referring to true, born-again Christians. Many argue, for example, that the writer is not referring to true believers, but only to those who have nibbled at Christianity. They point to the words “tasted” used in vs. 4 & 5 and suggest that these were people who never fully digested the gospel and/or the heavenly gift. The problem is that the same word (geuo) that is translated “tasted” in 4 & 5 is used in Hebrews 2:9 when the writer tells us the Lord Jesus tasted death for everyone. No one would argue that when Jesus tasted death, he only nibbled at death and never really died.

Likewise, the word translated “enlightened” (photizo) is the same word used in Heb. 10:32 where the writer declares, “But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings…” No one doubts that in this reference the writer is referring to believers and to their salvation experience.

If we approach this passage and try to prevent our theological leanings from influencing our interpretation of the Scripture, it is difficult not to accept that the writer is referring to fellow believers in vs. 4 & 5.

The Dilemma: Can True Believers “Lose Their Salvation”?

The dilemma comes in v. 6 when he notes that if they then have “fallen away,” it is impossible to restore them again to repentance. Read simply, it appears what the writer is saying is, “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened (saved), and then turn away, to be restored again.”The problem with this simple explanation is that this is contradictory to many other passages that teach the eternal security of the believer. (See John 5:24; John 10:27–28; John 6:37–40; John 6:44–47; 1 Peter 3:2; 2 Cor. 5:1; 1 John 2:19.) At First Family, we believe completely in the eternal security of the believer. We believe that when you are born into the family of God, there is nothing that can take you from Him, even your own rebellion.

I’ve often compared this to the physical relationship a parent has with a child. A son may wander far from his mother and father, but there is nothing that can erase the fact that he was born their son. He is part of their DNA. So it is with spiritual life.

My Resolution to the Problem

So what do we do with the difficult words of Hebrews 6? I rely on what the Bible tells me about the Lord Jesus and His Character.

In John 10:27–28, Jesus tell us,

“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and no one shall snatch them out of My hand.”

Jesus gives us eternal life, and He states emphatically, that we “shall never perish.” Moreover, He assures us that no one can snatch us out of His hand. No one. Not Satan, not even our own foolish rebellion.

The Anchor Holds

I also take great comfort in how the writer ends this difficult passage in Hebrews 6. He reminds us that we have reason to hope. Why? Because the source of our Hope is none other than Jesus Christ. In Heb. 6:19–20 he states,

We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek

I love the word picture he uses here–the anchor of our soul. Jesus is sure and steadfast, even in the midst of the heaviest of life’s storms.I want to leave you this week with the words of one of my favorite songs, The Anchor Holds, by Ray Boltz. They capture perfectly the hope we have in Jesus in spite of how large the sea of life is and how little our boat feels at times.

The Anchor Holds

I have journeyed
Through the long, dark night
Out on the open sea
By faith alone
Sight unknown
And yet His eyes were watching me

Chorus

The anchor holds
Though the ship is battered
The anchor holds
Though the sails are torn
I have fallen on my knees
As I faced the raging seas
The anchor holds
In spite of the storm

I’ve had visions
I’ve had dreams
I’ve even held them in my hand
But I never knew
Those dreams would slip right through
Like they were only grains of sand

(Chorus)

I have been young
But I am older now
And there has been beauty
That these eyes have seen
But it was in the night
Through the storms of my life
Oh, that’s where God proved
His love to me

(Chorus)

——————————————

Notes:

[1]]J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible Commentary: The Epistles (Hebrews 1–7), electronic ed., vol. 51 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1991), 102. ↩

11/25/11 11/25/11

Logos Bible Software & the Kindle Fire

I am learning to use my new Kindle Fire. My favorite Android app so far is Logos Bible Software. This, after all, is the reason I purchased the Fire. I’ve had mobile access of my Logos library for a year or more via my iPad, but as much as I love the iPad, it’s not my favorite reading device. When it is time to do some casual reading, the Kindle is my device of choice. I’ve owned a Kindle 3 for just over a year. If there were books in my Logos library I wanted to read on my Kindle, I had to export the text from Logos for Windows or Mac to a .rtf file, and then send it to my Kindle via Amazon’s free document service. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked.

When I saw the introduction of the Kindle Fire in September, I pre-ordered one on the spot. (It is an early Christmas gift.) I had two motives for purchasing the Fire: 1) access to my Logos library on a Kindle-like device; 2) the added benefit of reading with a touch screen rather than e-ink, which requires a light.

If I keep those two objectives in mind, then I am very satisfied with my Kindle Fire. In my opinion, the Kindle Fire is not an iPad killer. I don’t think Amazon designed it to be an iPad killer. The device is clearly built to consume media, and it does this very well.

With the addition of the Logos Bible Software app in the Amazon App Store, I am now set for reading nearly any book in my library. Unfortunately, the current development of the Logos app limits its value as a study tool. Before I can read a Logos book for serious research or study using any mobile device, the Android or iOS apps will need the capability to highlight text, create notes, and have my notes and highlights sync with my desktop version of Logos Bible Software.

According to the good folks at Logos, these features are on the way, but there is no mention of a timeline.

8/6/11 8/6/11

Jephthah: Faith That Forgives

1. Introduction

a. Text: Hebrews 11:32-35
b. Text: Judges 11-12
c. Overview of Sermon
d. The Big Idea

2. Setting the Context: The Period of the Judges

a. Judges Place in OT Timeline

b. OT Has Two Bookends

Abraham - c. 2100 B.C.
Jesus Christ - 3/4 B.C.
Mid-Point: David - 1000 B.C.

c. The Period of the Judges

400 Years of Darkness
Begins with the Death of Joshua & Caleb
Ends with the Levite's Concubine, a Story Reminicent of Soddom & Gomorrah, and civil war
A Land Without An Earthly King
The Book of Ruth Takes Place During the period of the Judges

d. Key Verses – “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes”. Judges 21:25

e. Cycles of Disobedience

f. Hegel's Quote – “History teaches us that man learns nothing from history.”

3. Jephthah The Man - Judges 10:17 - 11:11

a. Father Was Gilead of the Tribe of Manasseh

b. Son of a Harlot (Illegitimate) – mother possibly non-Jew

c. Forced out of his father's house by Gilead's legitimate sons

d. Jephthah fled to the land of Tob (near Syria)

e. Became a Robin Hood of sorts and was known as a "man of valor" v. 1

4. Jephthah’s Triumph Over the Ammonites – Judges 11:12-28

a. Elders go to Jephthah and ask him to lead them against Ammonites

b. Jephthah agrees after some dialog.

c. Jephthah attempts dimplomacy (11:12-28)

5. Jephtha's Tragic Vow 11:29-40

a. What did he vow?

b. The outcome of the battle

c. Greeted by his daughter

d. Daughter's response

e. Jephthah's action

f. Three Interpretations

Jephthah redeemed his daughter (Leviticus 27)
Jephthah fulfilled his vow and dedicated his daughter to Tabernacle service (Ex. 38:8; 1 Samuel 2:22)
Jephthah sacrified his daughter

6. What can we learn from Jephthah?

a. The danger of a blended faith

Jephthah is an excellent illustration of someone with a blended faith. A blended faith is defined a part reliance on the Lord and part reliance on ourselves. We have all heard that a blended faith is in fact impossible, either we fully trust in the Lord or we don't. The truth is, however, most of us have a blended faith, and just like Jephthah, even though the Spirit of the Lord is within us (v. 1), and we know the promises of his Word and outwardly trust in those promises, we still hedge and rely on our own strength and abilities and so-called wisdom to get us through life. In this case, Jephthah felt the need to create a bargain with God, a vow, to ensure his victory.

b. The reality we still make regrettable decisions today

At first read, we tend to speed through the story of Jephthah's tragic vow and think, "Wow, that is indeed terrible," and then move on. The truth is, we still make this same, regrettable decision today.
A couple of months ago Jen Coleman sent me a link advertising a "spring sale" at Amazon.com with more than 250 books for sale, most priced at $2.50 each. This was a bad thing for me, because a book sale to me is like putting a bone in front of a dog. One of the books I purchased and read was a book called Unplanned, the memoir of a young woman named Abby Johnson who had served as a clinic director for Planned Parenthood in Texas. Not only was she an abortion provider, but she had experienced two abortions herself. It was in part the loss of these two children and her never-ending quest for forgiveness that ultimately lead her to renounce her leadership within Planned Parenthood and become an outspoken prolife advocate.
What I realized as I studied this passage, and I really believe the Lord showed me this, is that there are many, many, women today who have experienced Jephthah's pain from sacrificing a child, and like Abby Johnson, they continually are in search of that ultimate forgiveness. They have cried out to the Lord and sought forgiveness only to have the self-condemnation and agony drown out the song of forgiveness. As a result, you may be one who lives in pain for a decision that was made years ago, and each and every time you attempt to begin walking in freedom and forgiveness, the accuser of the brethren is right there to drag you down back into the darkness of your grief.

c. A renewed appreciation for God's grace, mercy, and forgiveness

You see, I want to share with you a fundamental mistake I made when I began studying for this message. Like many people, I read the tragedy of Jephthah’s life through the lens of what is right and what is wrong. I started with the realization that Jephthah is listed in the Hall of Faith in the book of Hebrews. And while I know that each of the men and women listed had their own areas of weakness and failure, I found it implausible that God would honor someone who actually sacrificed his own daughter. Everything about that is wrong. But then it hit me like a ton of bricks – these people are not listed because of the works they performed, they are listed because of their faith. Now we know that, but somehow in our man-based worldview, we really don’t understand that.

Here’s what we know about Jephthah:

1. He was a great man of valor who fought triumphantly and was used by God to deliver his people from a dreaded enemy.

2. He was a man who made a tragic vow and in spite of the legal options available to redeem his daughter, Scripture tell us he fulfilled his vow.

3. He was a man of faith, and as such found approval in the eyes of the Lord as a righteous, just man.

I cannot explain all of this, but I do know it gives me a renewed appreciation for God’s grace, mercy, and forgiveness.

d. A peaceful resolution

Finally, I come away from this story of Jephthah with a peaceful resolution to live my life as a trophy of grace with my complete trust and faith in the finished work of the cross. We all have things in our past that cause us great shame and guilt.
But I want to remind you that there was another Father who sacrificed his son 2000 years ago. It wasn’t because of a rash vow or used as a bargaining chip, it was because this Father loved us and wanted to redeem us from the bondage of sin. And just like Jephthah’s daughter, this Son went willingly to his death, not begrudgingly, but to the Glory and Honor of his father.
Folks, don’t walk in darkness. Instead, walk by faith in the glory and light and presence of Jesus Christ.

4/15/09 4/15/09

Bible Use in the U.S.

According to the national Study of Christian Attitudes and Behavior conducted by Christianity Today International and Zondervan in 2006, 95% of all U.S. people who label themselves as Christians have a Bible in their home. Active Christians have an average of six Bibles. 25% of Active Christians bought a new Bible in the past 12 months. 57% of respondents say they have read the Bible, and 63% of Professing Christians make this claim compared with 98% of Active Christians. However, only 18% of respondents read their Bibles daily, 19% 2-3 times a week and 39% once a month. Among Active Christians, 35% read their Bible daily, 28% 2-3 times a week and 37% once a week. Christianity Today 4/09