Are you taught by Jesus? June 29, 2009
What two things do Vance Havner, Charles Spurgeon, A. W. Tozer, G. Campbell Morgan, Robert T. Ketchum, and D. L. Moody all have in common? All of them had profound national influence for Christ and a lifetime of successful Christian ministry, and none of would have qualified to be on the pastoral staff most churches because of a lack of formal education. Now there is something to think about. (more…)
Hazard (Pierpont)
I thought you might want to see a picture of the newest member of our “family” This is Heidi’s pup, Hazard. She found him in Kentucky, thus the name.
Tight Times June 28, 2009
Here is some good advice from Mr. Rodgers for tight times:
“The farther I travel in life the more I believe that nothing I buy can
Take away my loneliness
Fill my emptiness or
Heal my brokenness.”
–Fred Rogers
Think of that next time you are doing “retail therapy”
Michael and Farrah June 26, 2009
“It is appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgement.”
Michael Jackson was my age. Farrah Fawcett’s photo was on every other tee-shirt when I was in high school. Both of them are in eternity today. There is a lot of discussion and conjecture about the lives and deaths of these cultural icons, but now they will face the judgement of God as each of us will some day. Fame will not be a factor there. When we face the judgement of God our sin will fall on us or it will fall on the Lord Jesus. When you breathe your last and stand before God will you plead your own righteousness or that of Jesus?
As usual Justin Taylor has compiled a thoughtful post on this subject.
Blasphemy with a Twang
Billy Currington’s new song “People Are Crazy” is a good example of what is bad in so much of country music. It is two parts God, home, and apple pie, and four parts divorce, drunkenness and immorality. This came to my inbox today. What do you think?
“The lyrics of Currington’s popular song describe a conversation between an old man and a younger one in a bar. The old man had lived an unrighteous life, drinking, smoking, divorcing, womanizing, but he and his philosophy of life are applauded in the song. It is repeated in the chorus as follows: “God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy.” The song ends with the younger man putting those words on the old man’s tombstone. Beware of country music. It is of the world, the flesh, and the devil, but its thin veneer of “God and country” makes it palatable to some backslidden Christians. “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul” (1 Peter 2:11).” (David Cloud)
Regular Baptist History June 25, 2009
Dr. Kevin Bauder has been speaking at the GARBC Annual Conference this week. Each evening he has opened his message with comments about GARBC history. Very worthwhile:
GARBC History Number One:
GARBC History Number Two:
GARBC History Number Three:
As usual my brother Kevin has a well-organized page of links for the conference audio here:
John Piper on TV and Movies
Now that the video of the Q&A at Advance 09 is available, I can look at it and feel bad all over again. Here’s what I regret, indeed what I have apologized for to the person who asked the question.
The first question to me and Mark Driscoll was, “Piper says get rid of my TV, and Driscoll says buy extra DVRs. How do you reconcile this difference?”
I responded, “Get your sources right. . . . I never said that in my life.”
Almost as soon as it was out of my mouth, I felt: “What a jerk, Piper!” A jerk is a person who nitpicks about the way a question is worded rather than taking the opportunity to address the issue in a serious way. I blew it at multiple levels.
So I was very glad when the person who asked the question wrote to me. I wrote back,
Be totally relieved that YOU did not ask a bad question. I gave a useless and unhelpful, and I think snide, answer and missed a GOLDEN opportunity to make plain the dangers of the triviality you referred to. . . . I don’t know why I snapped about the wording of the question instead of using it for what it was intended for. It was foolish and I think sinful.
So let me see if I can do better now. I can’t give an answer for what Mark means by “buy extra DVRs,” but I can tell you why my advice sounds different. I suspect that Mark and I would not agree on the degree to which the average pastor needs to be movie-savvy in order to be relevant, and the degree to which we should expose ourselves to the world’s entertainment.
I think relevance in preaching hangs very little on watching movies, and I think that much exposure to sensuality, banality, and God-absent entertainment does more to deaden our capacities for joy in Jesus than it does to make us spiritually powerful in the lives of the living dead. Sources of spiritual power—which are what we desperately need—are not in the cinema. You will not want your biographer to write: Prick him and he bleeds movies.
If you want to be relevant, say, for prostitutes, don’t watch a movie with a lot of tumbles in a brothel. Immerse yourself in the gospel, which is tailor-made for prostitutes; then watch Jesus deal with them in the Bible; then go find a prostitute and talk to her. Listen to her, not the movie. Being entertained by sin does not increase compassion for sinners.
There are, perhaps, a few extraordinary men who can watch action-packed, suspenseful, sexually explicit films and come away more godly. But there are not many. And I am certainly not one of them.
I have a high tolerance for violence, high tolerance for bad language, and zero tolerance for nudity. There is a reason for these differences. The violence is make-believe. They don’t really mean those bad words. But that lady is really naked, and I am really watching. And somewhere she has a brokenhearted father.
I’ll put it bluntly. The only nude female body a guy should ever lay his eyes on is his wife’s. The few exceptions include doctors, morticians, and fathers changing diapers. “I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?” (Job 31:1). What the eyes see really matters. “Everyone who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Better to gouge your eye than go to hell (verse 29).
Brothers, that is serious. Really serious. Jesus is violent about this. What we do with our eyes can damn us. One reason is that it is virtually impossible to transition from being entertained by nudity to an act of “beholding the glory of the Lord.” But this means the entire Christian life is threatened by the deadening effects of sexual titillation.
All Christ-exalting transformation comes from “beholding the glory of Christ.” “Beholding the glory of the Lord, [we] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Whatever dulls the eyes of our mind from seeing Christ powerfully and purely is destroying us. There is not one man in a thousand whose spiritual eyes are more readily moved by the beauty of Christ because he has just seen a bare breast with his buddies.
But leave sex aside (as if that were possible for fifteen minutes on TV). It’s the unremitting triviality that makes television so deadly. What we desperately need is help to enlarge our capacities to be moved by the immeasurable glories of Christ. Television takes us almost constantly in the opposite direction, lowering, shrinking, and deadening our capacities for worshiping Christ.
One more smaller concern with TV (besides its addictive tendencies, trivialization of life, and deadening effects): It takes time. I have so many things I want to accomplish in this one short life. Don’t waste your life is not a catchphrase for me; it’s a cliff I walk beside every day with trembling.
TV consumes more and more time for those who get used to watching it. You start to feel like it belongs. You wonder how you could get along without it. I am jealous for my evenings. There are so many things in life I want to accomplish. I simply could not do what I do if I watched television. So we have never had a TV in 40 years of marriage (except in Germany, to help learn the language). I don’t regret it.
Sorry again, for the bad answer. I hope this helps.
Pastor John
GARBC Annual Conference June 23, 2009
This week I am attending the GARBC Annual Conference. For those of you who are uninitiated in this acronym that is General Association of Regular Baptist Churches. It was my privilege to do a seminar on storytelling. It was standing-room only and a lot of fun. Renald Showers, Kevin Bauder, and John Greening are the main speakers. I was “proud” of our own Pastor Ken Pyne, who led worship today. As usual he did a great job. It was wonderful to hear hundreds of really good singing thundering out in worship.
Thimbleberries on Isle Royal June 18, 2009
Matt Steinbeck is a great Christian guy. He is an experienced outdoorsman with a big, red, Dodge truck. Last summer he planned a trip to Isle Royal on the north edge Lake Superior. Kyle, our oldest son was invited to tag along. There were only five men in the party. They lashed a couple canoes to the Dodge and drove to Copper Harbor on the very tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula. From there they took a four-and-a-half-hour, fifty-four-mile ferry ride northwest to the Island. They paddled into the interior of the Island then hiked and portaged across a couple huge interior lakes. (more…)
More ‘Torries Gampa June 8, 2009
I have waited for years for what happened last night. Kyle Kenneth, our first grandson, came to visit the Granville Cottage. He brought his parents and his little brother, Oliver. He is two years old now.
For the first time last night I told him a story and he listened intently to every word. I think he knew that he was about to be banished to bed. I finished my story and it was quiet for a second, then he said; “More ‘torries, Gampa. More ‘torries.”
Ahh, music to my ears. More stories. Little man, you have no idea how many more stories I have for you.
He’s eating Cheerios and blueberries right here at the table while I am writing this.
Someday we will camp together and I will build a fire and we will lie in the tent and as the cool of night closes in the loons call and the crickets sing I will tell him stories until his little head nods into sleep.
Give ear, O my people, to my law; Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old, Which we have heard and known, And our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, Telling to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, And His strength and His wonderful works that He has done. For He established a testimony in Jacob, And appointed a law in Israel, Which He commanded our fathers, That they should make them known to their children; That the generation to come might know them, The children who would be born, That they may arise and declare them to their children, That they may set their hope in God, And not forget the works of God, But keep His commandments. Psalms 78:1-9
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
June 5, 2009
Ken's new book - Sunset On Summer, now available for order, $13.95 each.