60% of the Brain is Controlled by the Nose

  

Yep, that’s what the Dog Whisperer said.   I love the Dog Whisperer.  I aspire very much to be more like him.  But when he said that, I couldn’t control myself.  I had to post it for public ridicule.   As you all know, 85% of all statistics are invented on the spot.  And 100% of us have at some time supported our good and true points with dumb and false statistics.  So remember: Put your dog’s collar up higher on its neck.  And don’t forget that 60%, not half, not most, but 60% of the brain is controlled by the nose.

Anger and Anxiety

Last night we had a concert of prayer in which we prayed through Romans 12.  When I read the command “Do not repay anyone evil for evil” I thought about how crazy it makes me when my children fight with one another.  So too it grieves the Holy Spirit when there is discord between brothers and sisters in Christ.  As it is in my home, so it is in the church.  The insanity never stops until someone just decides to act like Jesus and not repay evil for evil.

Last week I was reading Psalm 37 and I noticed that the word translated “fret” in verses 1, 7, and 8 (Do not fret—it leads only to evil) is the same word usually translated “be angry”.  The word means burn.  Both anger and anxiety are a kind of burning.  When you burn at someone, then you are angry.  But when you are just burning within (reflexive stem) then you are fretting, being anxious.  The angry heart and the anxious heart are both hot hearts.  They both need to cool down. 

Both anger and anxiety are totally fruitless.  The anger of man cannot accomplish the righteousness of God.  And who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?  Anger and anxiety are two different ways the human heart overheats when confronted with its impotence and finitude.  May the Lord quiet us with his love (Zeph 3:17).

Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.
Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.
Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret– it leads only to evil.

                -Psalm 37:3-8

Predestination is not the Gospel

(excerpt from a sermon on Romans 8:32) 

If God has already done the thing of infinite cost, if he’s already sent His Son to shed his blood and die for us so that we can be justified, then it is impossible—having purchased our redemption at such a cost, having already paid the full price—it is impossible that he will change his mind and not bring to completion our glorification.  It’s already paid for and he paid it while we were still enemies and now he has called us friends.  A Savior who shed his blood for his enemies does not break his promise to his friends.

Do you see then how important it is to keep the cross at the center of our theology?  We’ve been considering over the last few weeks the golden chain of verses 29 and 30.  Foreknowledge, Predestination, Calling, Justification and Glorification.  But now I want to warn you that there is a danger that faces you when you come to understand these great doctrines.  When the truth of predestination finally clicks for people, they get very excited about it, and that’s good.  But the danger is that you’ll let election and predestination displace the cross as the center of your theology.  When people neglect the cross and just talk all the time about the decrees of God, bad things happen.  Ironically, their assurance is actually undermined.  Perhaps you have read of some Calvinists who have agonized for years, fearing that they were not among the elect, fearing that they were rejected by God.  This kind of suffering comes from neglecting the cross and making everything about predestination.   If they would just go to the cross and quit trying to inquire into matters too wonderful for them, they could have full assurance.  Let us remember that predestination is not the gospel.  You are not called to believe in your predestination.  You are called to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.  You are called to believe that Christ died for sins according to the Scriptures.  That’s the gospel.  All those who are appointed for salvation believe that gospel.  Don’t ever even ask the question, “Am I predestined?”  It’s the wrong question.  Just repent and believe the gospel.  If you do that, then the answer is yes, you are predestined.

Mind Games Writers Play

I love my job, and my favorite part of my job is preparing sermons.  So don’t hear me complaining in this post, I’m not.  But as a preacher who writes manuscript sermons, I do have the equivalent of a 12 page college thesis paper due every Sunday.  So I have acquired a whole host of little games I play that more or less help to keep me writing, and I am always looking for new ones.

When I first started preaching 14 years ago, I worked all day Saturday.  But when the kids started school, I realized that Saturday should be a family day and I needed to finish on Friday night.  After a year or so of trying, I finally got into the habit of finishing on Fridays.  I observe a “Friday phone fast”—no calls.  I also make plans to meet someone for a scotch for happy hour Friday and that’s the carrot that keeps me pressing for the finish line. 

That worked for many years, but then I started giving myself the carrot whether I had finished Friday or not.  But this actually has been good, for I write better from 8-10am Saturday than from 4-6pm Friday.   So now I don’t mind finishing Saturday morning.

I also can’t write sitting still.  I’m a pacer.  I was part of a team walking challenge a couple of years ago and I wore a pedometer for a month.  I always had the most steps on Fridays.  One Friday I had 10,000 steps before noon without leaving the office.

I used to play darts.  This helped me for a while because I would just throw darts between paragraphs rather than walk a lap around the fourth floor of the office building.  The dart board kept me tethered closer to the keyboard so writing actually went faster. 

I have trouble working in the office now.  Even though the phone doesn’t ring, there’s still too many reminders of other things to be done besides the sermon.  So I go out to restaurants and coffee shops.  The trick is to find a coffee shop that doesn’t have free wireless access to the worldwide waste of time.  I also have to case out restaurants to see if there is plenty of room for me to pace without getting dirty looks from the management or suspicious looks from other diners. 

There’s a restaurant in downtown Champaign called Guido’s that I don’t even like that much.  But for some reason I am highly productive in there.  So if I’m lagging behind on Friday afternoon I’ll go to “the magic booth” and pray for that elusive hour of efficiency.   Sometimes I get more done in an hour than I do all week.  But it takes a lot of mental game playing and manipulation of circumstances to create the perfect conditions, to prepare the way for the Muse.

But I need some new tricks.  Any of you writers out there want to share yours?

I just invested in a Cambodian rice farm

Yep.  I helped to finance a roof repair and some good quality seed for this person.  You should try it, it’s fun!  You can read more about it at Brant’s blog.

Good Friday

Tonight we are having a Good Friday service with another church in town.  There will be four meditations on the cross, one from each of the four gospels.  I’m doing Matthew 27:37.  Rather than post that here prematurely, here’s what I said at the 2000 Good Friday Tenebrae service.  Eight years ago already, wow.

“They will look on Him”  That’s what we are purposefully doing tonight.  Let us look on Him.  God says in Isaiah “Look to Me and be saved”  That’s all it takes, a true believing look to Him.  Look on Him, turn your face toward Him.  Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

John puts extraordinary emphasis on the fact that both blood and water flowed from the pierced side of Jesus.   We understand the significance of the blood. We speak of being washed in the blood and we rightly mean forgiveness.  The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin, writes John elsewhere.

We may not be as aware of the great significance of the water in the writings of John.  Water is a symbol, especially in John, for the Holy Spirit.  When Jesus tells us in John 7 that if anyone believes in Him streams of living water will flow from within him, John explains to us in verse 39 that by this he meant the Holy Spirit.

So I believe the hymn “Rock of Ages” gets it exactly right “Let the water and the blood from thy riven side which flowed, be of sin the double cure.  Cleanse me from its guilt and power. The blood cleanses us from the guilt of sin.  The water of the Holy Spirit cleanses us from the power of sin. 

But the important thing to see in John 19 is that both the blood and the water come out of the side of the crucified Jesus. As you kneel in faith at the foot of the cross, the blood of Jesus pours down upon you, but also the water of the Holy Spirit is poured out upon you.  Where do you go for the forgiveness of your sins? The foot of the cross.  And where do you go for the fullness of the Spirit?  The foot of the cross.  Where do you go for power to resist temptation and to overcome sin?The foot of the cross. The Holy Spirit is poured out at the foot of the cross.  If you are going to walk by the Spirit, you can’t let yourself get far away from the cross.

But the blood and the water also remind us of the horrible violence of the death He died.  The fact that these Scriptures are fulfilled assures us that even in death, He reigns.  But because of the great depth of our sin, overcome only by the depth of his love, he chose to bow his meek head to mortal pain before taking up his power to reign.  He submitted to death and gave darkness an hour.  Jesus said “This is your hour—when darkness reigns”

Worth Far More Than Rubies

I’m sure you’ve thought to yourself many times, “Wow, Mike’s wife is awesome.  What is the secret of her sublime awesomeness?”  Well, it defies simple explanation, but I believe I can let you in on a part of it.   Below is her favorite poem, she can recite it from memory.  She found it written in her grandmother’s journal.  She’s a third generation practitioner of this principle and that’s part of what God has used to make her so awesome.

I know so well the beauty of neat rooms,
Bright curtains and the warmth of polished brass
Wide window sills with plants in colored rows,
Serenity that comes from shining glass
But these, dear Lord, are not important things,
Nor will they leave their mark in days to be,
My children will forget my ordered rooms,
In after years, but when they think of me
May they remember that I laughed much and think
Upon the way I shared their gaiety
How I read them stories from old books, of brave, fair days
And somehow made them see a wider world
O, help them understand
That always, always, I have deemed it more
My task to be as gentle as I could
Than keep clean rugs upon a dusted floor

Happy 16th anniversary to my excellent wife!

Anger Management

One day a few months ago I was feeling very angry at someone.  No, it wasn’t you.  But I couldn’t stop fuming and having arguments with this person in my head.  I went to volunteer at the T.I.M.E.S. center that day and there just happened to be an article on anger management in the News-Gazette lying on the counter.  I read it and found its simple tips to be very helpful.  Here’s a few of them:

• think about something other than what is making you mad
• write out your thoughts and throw them away
• exercise
• don’t talk when you are angry
• when you do talk, speak directly, don’t fall into the rumor mill
• go outside
• remember a calm time and place
• give yourself a time out

Then I read Psalm 121 and found it to be even more helpful in calming me down.  Today I sang Psalm 121 again and I better understood two reasons why this psalm is so calming. 

First, it addresses the fear that often is behind our anger.  We get angry because someone or something is threatening our security.  But in Psalm 121 it is promised that the Lord will watch over your going out and your coming in from now unto eternity.  So chill.

Second, we often become angry because we are experiencing the frustration of a blocked goal.  In Psalm 121 we acknowledge that our help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth and not from our anxious striving.

I encourage you to sing it.  Here it is in common meter from the Scottish Psalter. 

1  I to the hills will lift mine eyes.
       From whence doth come mine aid?
2  My safety cometh from the Lord,
       who heav’n and earth hath made.

3  Thy foot he’ll not let slide, nor will
       he slumber that thee keeps.
4  Behold, he that keeps Israel,
       he slumbers not, nor sleeps.

5  The Lord thee keeps, the Lord thy shade
       on thy right hand doth stay:
6  The moon by night thee shall not smite,
       nor yet the sun by day.

7  The Lord shall keep thy soul; he shall
       preserve thee from all ill.
8  Henceforth thy going out and in
       God keep for ever will.

Defining Hypocrisy

What is hypocrisy?  I believe that this word is often used inaccurately.

We sometimes think of hypocrisy as a question of motives.  But hypocrisy is not doing good things from impure motives.  If we all waited until our motives were pure to do good, nothing good would ever get done, we will always struggle as long as we are in the body with a measure of selfishness and impurity in our noblest actions.

I learned this from some wise counsel I received early in my Christian life.  I was a junior in college and it was the first time I had ever led an evangelistic Bible study.  And one day I said to a friend who was a little older and was a mentor to me… “I think that my next door neighbor has become a Christian, and I want to go ask him and find out, but I’m not sure that I should.  I’m afraid that I want to know just so I can say ‘Yay! I led someone to Christ!’ and get a notch on my belt and congratulate myself.”  And he had a great answer.  He said, “Well, your motives probably are impure, so just confess your sin of pride to God and go talk to your neighbor anyway.  If he has become a Christian then he needs your encouragement and exhortation to get into the Word.  Why withhold good from him just because your motives aren’t pure?”  So you see my impure motive was sinful, it was selfish, proud and probably several other sins mixed in there, but it wasn’t hypocrisy.  Doing good with an impure motive is not hypocrisy.

Here’s another inaccurate way we use the word.  We often say someone is a hypocrite because they do not practice what they preach.  Or we say of ourselves “I feel like such a hypocrite, I tell my kids to do one thing and then they catch me doing just the opposite.”  That ever happened to you?  Well it’s bad not to be a consistent example to your children, but that’s not hypocrisy.  No one perfectly practices what they preach, so that’s not a good definition of hypocrisy.  By that definition hypocrisy is no different from being a sinner.  The sin of hypocrisy is more defined than that.

So what is it?  What is hypocrisy?  Hypocrisy is the intention to create a false impression.  It is trying to look on the outside what you are not on the inside. The word was used in Greek drama.  Remember the mask that is half happy/half sad?  That actor was the hypocrite. He was two-faced.

So you are not a hypocrite if you do not live up to the Bible’s high moral standards for those who profess faith in Christ.  You are a hypocrite if you try to make other people think that you live up to the Bible’s high moral standards.  You are a hypocrite if you try to hide from people the ways that you fail to live out the holy life called for in the Scriptures.  Hypocrisy is all about concealing sins and looking good on the outside so that others will think well of you.  

That’s why Jesus, immediately after naming the sin of hypocrisy, warns in Luke 12:2 “Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known.” Behold the tragic futility of hypocrisy, it will all be uncovered one day anyway, so why hide?  Or look back to what Jesus said of the Pharisees in 11:44  “Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it.”  They are concealed tombs. On the outside they are white and shiny, on the inside they are filled with dead man’s bones and every unclean thing and most importantly, they conceal this from other people.

Pharisees do not walk in the light. Pharisees do not confess their sins to one another and pray for each other that they may be healed.

The Capstone

So I bowed out of the Boar’s Head Tavern yesterday.  I like those guys, but there’s only so many conversations I can have going on in my head at once.  I needed to declutter my mind.  Perhaps I can get back to a little more frequent blogging here.  Here’s an excerpt from a sermon on

Matthew 21:42-44 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: “‘The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’? ⁴³ “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. ⁴⁴ He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.”

I wouldn’t start a new denomination over this point, but let me say a few words about why I prefer the translation “capstone” to “cornerstone” here.  To be sure, Jesus is the cornerstone of the church.  Paul teaches that in Ephesians 2 and 1 Corinthians 3.  But I believe he is making a different point there than the one Jesus is making here, and I believe he has a different OT passage in mind than the one Jesus is quoting.  Paul is thinking of Isaiah 28:16 which says, “this is what the Sovereign LORD says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who trusts will never be dismayed.”

But Jesus is quoting Psalm 118:22 and the Hebrew there says more than just corner, it says the head of the corner, meaning perhaps the top corner or the capstone.  And this makes more sense if you think about the picture the Psalmist is painting.  This Psalm 118 is the same psalm we talked about two weeks ago that contains the word Hosanna.  This is the psalm they would sing on the way up to the temple for the Passover sacrifice.  So the stones that the psalmist is talking about are the stones of the temple.  Now when the temple was constructed, they would have quarried and gathered all kinds of stones at the construction site.  Some would have been chosen for the foundation, and others would have been rejected.  But as the construction neared completion, they would have needed a capstone to fit in place like the last piece of a puzzle.  They looked around among the stones and found one that they had rejected that now fit perfectly as the capstone.  That’s the imagery the psalmist is using to cause us to reflect on how the Lord loves to choose the outcast, to exalt the humble.  King David was rejected by all, but God chose him, though younger than seven brothers, and exalted him to the kingship.  And little Israel after the exile, though surrounded by greater nations, has been shown favor by God and returned to her land.  That seems to be the original meaning of the psalmist. 

But Jesus takes this verse, well-loved and sung every Passover by the Jews, and he reinterprets it.  He says this verse is not about you, this verse is about Me.  I am the true Israel.  I am the stone that you have rejected, but soon you will see that I am the capstone. 

So once again we see that what was promised to Israel is fulfilled in Jesus.  Israel was to be a fruitful vine, but was not and so Jesus came as the true vine.  So also Israel was rejected by men but chosen by God, but Israel was not faithful to her calling.  So Jesus came, the Messiah, the Seed of Abraham, the True Israel, and when he was rejected, the Jews were doing to him what the nations had done to the Jews.  So Israel is exposed as just another wicked nation and Jesus is the only true Israel and the only way to inherit the promises that were made to Israel is to be in Him by faith.

And then there is this threat in verse 44 that he on whom this stone falls will be crushed.   Now cornerstones don’t fall on people; that’s another reason why it’s better to think of Jesus here calling himself the capstone.