Lord Jesus, I pray for my brother Mike this morning. You know how hard transitions are — after all, you gave up heaven to become flesh on this broken earth. You know the way Mike’s heart is being torn by this transition:  relationships that have become dear, work that — while at times a pain — has become “normal” for him. The struggles and challenges at Redemption have never been easy, but You have sustained him through them. Our hearts become bound and knitted together through these kinds of struggles. Lord, You know he is still working through the transition out of the military. So there are a lot of losses going on right now. When we make these moves, there are always things we must leave that we never understood were so dear to our hearts.

Lord, was it this hard on Abraham when you told him to leave home? Was it this hard on David when Saul drove him out of Jerusalem? How about David, when Absalom was driving him out of Jerusalem? Or Daniel and his friends when they were taken into exile? And especially Jesus? Lord, we confess that transitions are hard. Loss of the familiar, loss of relationship, loss of weekly routine, loss of weekly preaching. Lots of loss.

And then, Lord, there is the unknown of the future. Lord, I’m sure Mike is looking at coming to the seminary and asking all kinds of questions that can’t be answered until he lives and works in this environment. Lord, he might be worried about the expectations. What about the people he is working with? And then, Father, there are the questions about moving “home” with family and old friends. Lord, you know that “home” is never the same when we come “back.”

So, Father, here is my brother. Give him the confidence that You will never leave him or forsake him. Give him the assurance of Your love. May Your Holy Spirit be very real to him, providing comfort and care, as well as the kick in the butt that we all need to take the next step. Help him to pastor Redemption well in the transition. This is Your church, Lord, not Mike’s. May he make the transition easy on the next pastor. Give the elders and the congregation the capacity to see You, trust You, know that You are going to lead them in the next steps.

Lord, we are broken. We are desperate. Here we are at this age, and we are still like children. But that is okay. When we are weak, You are strong. So let us be weak, Lord. Only that You would be glorified. Magnify Your name in us. May Jesus Christ be praised in our weakness. Amen.

“Success, true love, and the life you’ve always wanted. Many of us placed our faith in these things, believing they held the key to happiness, but with a sneaking suspicion they might not deliver. The recent economic meltdown has cast a harsh new light on these pursuits. In a matter of months, fortunes, marriages, careers, and a secure retirement have disappeared for millions of people. No wonder so many of us feel lost, alone, disenchanted, and resentful.

But the truth is that we made lesser gods of these good things – gods that can’t give us what we really need. There is only one God who can wholly satisfy our cravings – and now is the perfect time to meet him again, or for the first time.

The Bible tells us that the human heart is an “idol-factory,” taking good things and making them into idols that drive us. In Counterfeit Gods, Keller applies his trademark approach to show us how a proper understanding of the Bible reveals the unvarnished truth about societal ideals and our own hearts. This powerful message will cement Keller’s reputation as a critical thinker and pastor, and comes at a crucial time–for both the faithful and the skeptical.”

But as strange as it may sound, I still believe that God is calling me to a greater passion for service to those in need.  Don’t get me wrong, God isn’t telling me that I am not doing enough to please him; He is saying that my passion should spring out of the joy of my love for Christ–that would make the serving easier.  I want my service to be out of my gratitude and love for Christ and not just out of guilt and being on the payroll.  This leads to anger and burnout. I am asking the Lord to help me walk in His example.  He took time to refresh Himself and spend time in prayer and meditation while He worked to meet the needs of those around Him. He was a gentle, loving, tireless and effective servant of His Heavenly Father–I want to be like that and you do too.  Today we must submit to the leadership His Holy Spirit in order to know what Jesus knew about service.  He will teach us how to serve others with the passion and vigor that comes with our being the grateful children of a generous Father. If you love Jesus, you will serve the way He served.  He was glad to do it and He did it with passion.  Pastor Mike

The Problem of Evil (taken from lecture by Dr. Jerram Barrs)

The Seven pointed curse:

1. God is separated from humanity, for he must judge evil and have nothing to do with it

2. Humanity is alienated from God. Paul said “no one seeks God”, we fear him, and we are hostile toward him, our only hope is that he will pursue us

3. We are alienated internally, separated from ourselves we struggle with self-hatred, covered constantly in shame, our very hearts deceive us!

4. We are alienated from each other, no human has ever had a perfect relationship of any kind.

5. We experience loss of dominion- over ourselves, our work, every area of life in the world, and over creation. We don’t know how to properly care for God’s earth, unable even to control ourselves

6. We are separated body from spirit at death, our bodies break down.

7. Creation itself is subject to decay

Guiding principles:

1. God is not tainted with evil: He is not the tempter. We can fight evil without fighting God

2. The world we know is abnormal

3. We must acknowledge the corruption of the human heart

4. God alone has the resolution to the problems we face

Seven Stones: Our Personal Response to Suffering

1. Weep with those who weep; comfort people with God’s sovereign commitment to never abandon or forsake them (Rom 8:31-39)

2. Humility (Job’s Friends)

3. God is not the author of evil (James 1:13-14)

4. God’s anger and grief at sin, suffering, and death (John 11)

5. God’s passion to make right the wrongs of the world (Rev 19)

6. Passionately intervene on the behalf of the suffering: Prayer is intervention! (James 5)

7. Comfort with the sure and certain hope of ultimate redemption (Rev 21)

But why do people keep showing up for HOTDONUTS?  Here are my reasons:

1.  This is a part of God’s plan to enhance Redemption Fellowship’s efforts in community outreach, fellowship,  youth and young adults ministry and He will bring the people.

2.  Everybody gets something out of this.  It is wonderful to see older Christians, twentysomethings and teenagers enjoying the talents of these artists.  Mentors and mentees are brought together.

3.  We have donuts.

4.  We have a great house band–”The Glaze.”

5.  There is intentionality and focus in the planning of the events.

6.  The Session and the Congregation have “buy-in.”

7.  It is like a Holy Spirit driven Harlem renaissance–well sort of.

Oh yeah, the picture will be hanging somewhere in the church building as a reminder of what God is doing here every fourth Sunday night.  Pastor Mike

1.  You need to know what is happening in your church in every aspect of its existence–money, missions, staffing, ministries, challenges, victories, prayer needs, scheduling, disciplinary actions, etc.  Redemption Fellowship is not the Land of Oz and I am not “that man behind the curtain;” we need all hands on deck to do this.  There is a lot that goes into making the church work and we want you to know that your involvement as a member is necessary and important.

2.  You should not have to use your imagination to try and figure out what we are doing with the resources that God has given to the church.  The leadership wants to tell you up front what’s happening and why we as leaders think it should happen this or that way.  You may not always agree and this is the time for us to love each other into further discussion in the Presence of the Lord.

3.  The meeting is another opportunity for  “family time.”

4.  The church has been paid for by the blood of Jesus, but it is, in an eternal sense, your most important earthly investment.  Naturally speaking, your money, time and talents are the fuel that we run on.  The church is in the world to help bring in the Kingdom of God by preaching the gospel to the lost, supporting missions local and abroad, providing ministries and making disciples.  Don’t you want to know how your investment is doing?  I really think you should be at these meetings.  Pastor Mike

Description of the Reading

This is a textbook that basically delivers instruction on how to develop and preach an expository sermon.  The book suggests that sermon has the basic structure of “explanation,” “illustration,” and “application.”  The book builds around this structure as it seeks to explain how to create a sermon faithful to the original intention of the text.  The book treats the subject of preaching as something that is well done when it is handled as a step-by-step process in which the preacher exposes the text in a way that resembles a sort of “Indiana Jones” type of exhuming original meaning.  The text explains everything from picking a text, developing introductions and conclusions, determining main and subpoints and effectively transitioning between these points as well as how to illustrate and apply the text.  The book has as a continuous thread the use of a proposition statement that depicts how the text’s Fallen Condition Focus (FCF) will be brought forth to the listeners.

Central Concerns of the Author

I know Bryan Chapell; he is what I call a pure preacher.  He is gifted and passionate about sermon preparation and is a master of sermon delivery.  If the church was a baseball team, Bryan would be a designated hitter as these are usually the guys who are pure hitters and don’t have to practice fielding to ball.  Bryan usually hits it out of the park.  I say all this to enhance my remarks on what I think Bryan’s concern are in writing this book. It is my belief that the author is concerned with the proper preparation of faithful and effective sermons and how they are delivered in our preaching to a contemporary congregation.  He wants sermons to be about the grace of God and the work of Christ and he wants the preacher to reach the audience in a way that touches the heart and communicates not just the sin of man but also God’s remedy; I believe he is continually stressing the need for sermons to be relevant to fallen people.  He writes a “basic training” manual for preaching and to me that says that he wants preachers to give thought to each part of the process and not just grab a text, say a prayer for understanding and just start preaching.  He wants the preacher to do the work it takes to present a well prepared meal for people who need to hear a true word from God.  He understands that we live in a society where people don’t pay attention to well and very few want to be told that they need to be saved by God or surrendered to God.  Therefore, he sees the need for our preaching to reach out and grab the listener quickly and hold on to them unto the final application is made.

How the Book may affect my preaching

I intend to employ as many principles from the book as I can.   I believe I am at the point where I can assume that the Lord has given me this text to make some adjustments to my preparation process.  The book is simple and easy to follow.  I attended the required homiletics classes during my seminary years, but never really got the hang of preparing a sermon as a step-by-step-process; as a result I see that I may be omitting some very important steps such as “formally” developing a fallen condition focus based on man’s needs and God’s gracious solution.  I tend to pick the text and eventually bump into the FCF somewhere during the process. I also tend to preach from narratives, so I was especially interested in the chapter that talked about using narratives to bring out biblical principles.  I believe that the book has caused me to think about the amount of time that I am putting into sermon preparation and whether I am using the time as efficiently as possible.

Book Review by Mike Higgins–yes, I do read books

Book: The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text by Sidney Greidanus

Description of the Reading

When I first started reading this book, I figured it would be difficult and extremely technical as compared to the other books that I had read on the subject of sermon prep and preaching.  I was initially bogged down in the early chapters on historical-critical method and the various types of criticisms that can be used to help preachers prepare to preach a text and I just knew this book would be a tough read.   I tend to get frustrated when I have to constantly stop and look up technical terms or re-read sentences to understand what they are saying.  However as I got out of the “hedgerows” and into chapter four, things got better.  And as it turns out, that this book has greatly informed my sermon preparation.  The detailed descriptions of the different types of literature in the Bible and how to interpret this literature, helps me see the scriptures more clearly.  I am a “systems” type of person and I appreciate it when something helps me see how parts of the system fit into the whole.  I am thankful for Greidanus’ guidelines for interpretation as they have reinforced the fact that the Scriptures may all be inspired by God, but they are not all the same and must always be preached as dictated by their appropriate genre (history, wisdom, epistle, poetry, etc.)

Central Concerns of the Author

The bottomline up front is that the author wants the reader to understand that the bible is about God; God’s love, redemption, judgment, plans, etc.  He wants the reader to understand that all of the characters in the bible are accessories to grace, mercy or judgment, but that God Himself is what the Scriptures are about.  Next, I believe the author is concerned that preachers prepare sermons that say what the original authors intended.  I believe the author wants the reader to understand that doing the proper exegesis of a text and understanding the literal, historical, and theological interpretation of the text in view will serve to provide a sermon that is true to the original audience but also relevant to the contemporary congregation.  The author stresses that we should always pick a complete unit to use as our preaching text and that text should be treated with various litmus tests to bring out what is really before us. The author wants us to understand that preachers are given the task of bringing people the word of God and that this task is worth doing well.  He seems burdened to get us (preachers) to “slow down” and put time into doing justice to the work of “rightly diving the word of truth.”  The author presents his feelings of disappointment when preachers isolate a set of scriptures outside of their proper context and then tries to use them to support a personal agenda, for example using Malachi 3:8-10 just to get people to pay their tithes without considering the surrounding scriptures to tell the whole story.  The author challenges us to treat the genres of Old Testament prophecies, histories, poetry and narratives and New Testament gospel narratives and epistles in accordance with their genres so as to get the maximum understanding out of the writings.

How the Book may affect my preaching

This book has already caused me to slow down and dig beeper into the historical, literary, and theological meanings of the ‘preaching unit” (see, already I am adapting the language of the book).  I am presently preaching through The Gospel of Mark and have discovered that, according to Greidanus, I employ the “inductive” form of preaching.  This was refreshing as I personally did not know what my style was called.   I just pick a text and pray over it, stay with it, live and sleep with it until I feel I understand it and then preach it.  I have never stopped to classify my form of sermon prep, I just employ what gets me where I am going.  I have always thought that the sermon was a trip to a conclusion that I, as a preacher, help the congregation to arrive at using transitions or helpful road signs along the way.  I especially love preaching New Testament narratives, and Greidanus’ book has deeply influenced how I look at this wonderful genre.  Of course, I will consult Greidanus’ guidelines when I am preaching from any of the other types of  literature in the scriptures.  The important thing to me is that this book provides guidelines that will make my sermon prep not only simpler, but better–more impacting.  As an army guy, I am always looking for something that will enhance ‘mission accomplishment.”  I am always looking for the “regulation” that covers what I am trying to do—maybe that’s what I love about the reformed faith—it has a theology for almost everything!

Greidanus has done the preacher a great service and I wish I had read this book sooner as I see a lot of my own mistakes highlighted in its pages.  I am seriously concerned with preaching that keeps Christ as the central character and does not focus too much on the other characters of a narrative.  It is so easy to give too much attention to the faith and circumstances of the Syro-Phenician Woman in Mark Chapter Seven and forget about Jesus’ call to persevering faith, His compassion, and His sovereignty over demons.  I hope to remember how the author calls us to remember that the Bible is “God’s words about God.”  I am also reminded by the book that I tend to moralize things especially in the conclusion of my sermons and I have started watching that tendency very closely as not to nullify God’s grace.  Good book.