You Are A Slave!

Everyone is a slave! The only differentiation is who or what our master is. Don't fall for the great humanistic lie that freedom consists of the ability to do what you want, when you want, with whoever you want. Ultimately, that is a road of slavery to depraved human lust.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1:18-32)

Solomon concluded his philosophical pondering in the book of Ecclesiastes with these sobering words:

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)

But there is a slavery worth pursuing . . .



So what is your slavery? The Lord Jesus Christ is so worthy to be our Master! If you still find this a bitter and difficult pill to swallow then allow Paris Reidhead to illuminate your mind:

Spying Out The Land – My Life In Denmark (Part 2)

In the Danish summer of 2006 my family and I travelled to Denmark for a four week holiday in anticipation of our upcoming transplantation from Australia. After years of groping around in the theological dark I was now starting to get a decent grip on the fundamentals of the Christian faith that I had only previously known in a superficial way.

Reading the Bible had set off the alarm bells that something was wrong in my local church context. Hearing Ray Comfort's sermon Hell's Best Kept Secret had helped me to join the dots on the large chunks of missing information in the "gospel preaching" I had been hearing. Paris Reidhead's old sermon Ten Shekels And A Shirt literally revolutionized my understanding and practice of mission and evangelism. Paul Washer's teaching on The Meaning of The Cross had finally helped me to grasp the essential doctrine of Penal Substitutionary Atonement. I was finally learning how to find the best waterholes and drink deeply in those places.

Armed with this new knowledge and zeal I placed great importance on interviewing (interrogating) potential pastors from local churches in the area we were going to live. I was about to find out that zeal and knowledge were great, but I hadn't considered the wisdom needed to deal with CEO style church leaders where pragmatism is their modus operandi. I asked great doctrinal questions about his view of the Gospel, the authority of Scripture, being seeker sensitive, evangelism, and biblical preaching. Unfortunately I framed all my questions in a way that required a yes or no answer. How do pragmatists with a decent smartitude deal with these situations? That's right - the pastor I interviewed was a lousy preacher who happened to be expert in the art of discerning the answers I wanted to hear. And the way I framed my questions only made his task easier.

If there is a major lesson I learned out of all this it is this - ask prospective church leaders open ended questions. Ask them to explain the Gospel to you as if you were a lost sinner. Ask them for the major reason that someone should become a Christian. Ask them about how they prepare sermons, practice church discipline, and select elders (if at all). Many of us find ourselves between a rock and a hard place when trying to locate a healthy local church. Something that I found very helpful (and a frightening reality check) was Todd Friel's document How To Find A Good Church. I heartily recommend that you print that document and use it to save you a lot of time and heartache in your search for a local church. 9 Marks and The Masters Seminary also have useful church directories.

I left my interview/interrrogation with a false sense of security. As we will learn in my next posts, when I returned to Denmark permanently (six months later) I would learn my lesson and the harsh reality of living in an apostate land. Save yourself the pain of this by learning from my experience. And if you can watch this without crying - you can also learn from the "snow job" Rick Warren (who is the Yoda of pragmatism) did on John Piper:



Go On To Part 3
Go Back To Part 1

Crisis??? That's Not A Crisis

I hear a lot of talk these days about the global economic crisis. I have even felt the brunt of it in recent weeks losing my job as my employer slid into bankruptcy.

But every day I look into the mirror and see a far bigger crisis. My continual ageing bears witness to the law of sin and death. It is the ultimate statistic (that one out of one people die) and we are all subject to it. How much energy are you investing right now in this temporal life in contrast with pondering matters of eternity. I cannot promise that you will feel the brunt of this economic crisis but I can promise the crisis of a heart that is the drumbeat of your own funeral march - every beat being a countdown to the last. Are you ready for the day of judgment?

The Lord Jesus said what does it profit a man to gain a fortune and lose his soul. How much do you value your soul? How much do you care about people who are destined for hell? How much do you care about the Lamb of God receiving the reward of his suffering? How much do you care about God gaining glory from your earthly existance?

Here's Paris Reidhead to offer some perspective . . .



Nuff said!

The Bottom Line with Mission - God's Glory

I hear a lot of people, when talking about mission, about having a heart for the lost. But there is one thing that precedes it . . .



Ohhh how worthy is our Creator of all blessing and honor and glory and praise

Preach and preach for His glory

To hear the whole sermon go here:
http://www.onceuponacross.com/sermonaudio.html

The Day I Came Out (Part 1)

The four walls of a church building are a great way to conceal the message God gave His Church to tell a dying world full of hell bound people about their only hope of rescue.

This story is about the day I came out of these four walls and took the message of the glorious Gospel to the public place.

Summertime in Denmark, where the reformers trod 500 years ago, and what can we expect to find outside the four walls of a small (very small) church building. For one - a rock festival. I've always maintained that I love the summers in Denmark - it's just the other 11 months I have a problem with. I decided to head down to a nearby music festival, where thousands of young people were indulging in activities designed to speed up the death process, find a public place, stand on a soap box . . . actually my tool box, and preach the Good News.

I always get very nervous when I do this because it's one thing to make a spectacle of yourself, but the indifference and apathy can be quite suffocating in europe. When I got there I saw hundreds of people lying around drunk, hung over, or trying to drink away their hangover, many of whom were smoking things that didn't look like normal cigarettes. When I saw what was going on around me I burned with extra urgency to tell these people about their Creator, about sin, righteousness, judgment, the Cross, resurrection, repentance, saving faith and eternal life.

We walked past a tent where there was police sitting. I assumed they were there to deal with drug use and drunkenness, or maybe if someone attacked me . . . yeeeaaaah right!!

I found a place outside the venue on a local road where hundreds of people were walking back and forth between the campsite and the concert venue. I stood up and started preaching and managed to draw a crowd of about 25 people or so. Some of the faces seemed to express genuine conviction, but then another face of conviction appeared in the corner of my eye. It was a guy dressed in a police uniform walking my way and it was not the walk of a man responding to an altar call. As he came closer I could see that it was not so much a look of conviction but more of a desire to see me convicted - legally speaking.

The policeman arrived just in time to hear the end of the message. The only similarity between this and a church service was that he wasn't planning on inviting me back. We got tracts out to some of the gathering before the long arm of the law told me I had to stop and leave right now. I told him I thought it was a public place (we were on a pedestrian thoroughfare) and I wasn't impeding traffic flow. He told me that it wasn't public (though he didn't say who owned it) and I was making people embarrassed. Ummm . . . hello, who's the minority group here??? He then told me something that excited me telling me to go and preach in "speakers corner". My eyes lit up as I asked where this speakers corner was - "London" he replied.

Please pray for those of us who preach in this part of the world.



This video captures the reason why we preach an do mission. Ultimately it is to bring glory to a glorious Savior.

To hear the full sermon "Ten Shekels and a Shirt" by Paris Reidhead go here:
http://www.onceuponacross.com/sermonaudio.html

It is one of the most profound sermons I ever heard and what really stirred me to preach for God's glory.

Go On To Part 2