“It is not the duty of the clergy to blunt the sharpness, to soften the hammer, to quench the fire. Woe to the preacher who protects the people from the Word that kills, because he protects them also from being made alive – truly and forever alive.  Woe to the preacher who acts as a buffer, deflecting the force of the Scriptures to soften the blow, because in protecting the people from the stroke, he prevents their healing” (Robert Hart).

This is a woe that cannot be misunderstood. We’re not talking about preaching. This is talking about proclaiming. And what’s being proclaimed is the very Word of God.

We read in the book of Ezekiel, Chapter 2, how the Lord God himself challenges Ezekiel in this same manner:

“1 He said to me, “Son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you.” 2 As he spoke, the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet, and I heard him speaking to me.

3 He said: “Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me; they and their fathers have been in revolt against me to this very day. 4 The people to whom I am sending you are obstinate and stubborn. Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says.’ 5 And whether they listen or fail to listen—for they are a rebellious house—they will know that a prophet has been among them. 6 And you, son of man, do not be afraid of them or their words. Do not be afraid, though briers and thorns are all around you and you live among scorpions. Do not be afraid of what they say or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious house. 7 You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen, for they are rebellious. 8 But you, son of man, listen to what I say to you. Do not rebel like that rebellious house; open your mouth and eat what I give you.”

9 Then I looked, and I saw a hand stretched out to me. In it was a scroll, 10 which he unrolled before me. On both sides of it were written words of lament and mourning and woe.”

We notice the similar warnings between Mr. Hart’s words and what the Lord proclaimed over 2000 years ago in the book of Ezekiel. The warnings are similar in the sense that they challenge the speaker to not hold back what needs to be said; to not be complacent in the words that need to burn; and to not be afraid of the fire that comes out of his mouth.

“Woe to preacher who acts as a buffer, deflecting the force of the Scriptures to soften the blow.”  This is the reason why the prophet must never look to speak for his own interests but for the interests of God.  For the Lord said to Ezekiel, “You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen, for they are rebellious.”

“If his labors in the pulpit amount to a lifetime of standing between the people and the word of God, reducing its effect, taming it and making it polite, presentable, and harmless, he will have nothing to show for it in the end but wood, hay, and stubble, instead of gold, silver, and precious stones” (Hart).

This second paragraph of the article takes me directly to Ezekiel 37. Here we will see a bridge that is very much built of the same message that Mr. Hart is saying.

“1 The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

I said, “O Sovereign LORD, you alone know.”

4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! 5 This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.’”

7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.”

Oh the sadness of the man who spends hours in prayer and meditation, seeking the Lord for a word to his people, and the moment he receives it he assumes to be ready for the task.  He prepares the passage, he sets the time and the hour where he will bring this word of God. He waits for the introduction. He’s brought to the altar of God behind the pulpit.  And instead of releasing the sweet fragrance and aroma of sacrifice to the living God he brings the sacrifice of Cain, that which in God’s eyes is despicable and not accepted.  And we look among the congregations of today and the dry bones of the valley are no more alive after the man has stepped down from failing to offer the proper sacrifice.  And the Lord says to him as he said to Cain, “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?”  The goal of God is that the word of prophecy should do exactly what the word did when Ezekiel proclaimed it. “Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones and say to them, “Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.”‘  So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, “This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.”‘ So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.”

“He will have nothing to show for it in the end but wood, hay, and stubble, instead of gold, silver, and precious stones” (Hart).

“If the passages that have been read speak of life and death, then elaborate on life and death.  If they speak of repentance, then preach that men should repent.  When they encourage faith, proclaim faith.  When they warn of hell and the judgment to come, then blow the trumpet as a faithful watchman on the walls.  When they comfort, speak as a pastor who feeds the sheep” (Hart).

This third section of this message is clear as the Word of God says in 2 Timothy 4:

“1 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: 2 Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. 3 For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.”

The reason the Lord God Almighty commands us not to mask the words that he puts on our tongues, not to put flowers on them and make them sound sweet and delightful, is because of the warning of what is yet to come. Verses 3 and 4 say “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.  They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” God is making it clear that this will happen in the last days.  He warns that foolish, sweet-talking, delightful expression are the very thing that people are going to want to hear.  Sad to say they are already doing it. Their itching ears have been scratched for them. And the church is responsible for doing it.

“Let the meaning of the Scriptures be expounded to their full effect; proclaim from them the truth that affects the eternal destiny of the souls in your care.  It is far easier to preach if a man will ride the Scriptures like a wave, letting them make their own point and arrive at their own destination” (Hart).

And finally, how is it that the prophet or man of God should carry out the proclamations that God has put on his tongue? The Word of God is very clear. 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 says:

“6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 However, as it is written:

‘No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him’—

10 but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. 13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. 14 The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment:

16 ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord
that he may instruct him?’

But we have the mind of Christ.”

And the reason it is important to ride the wave of the Word of God, it is for God to expose the man who has not the Spirit of God. “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned” (v. 14). And in this day and age it’s sad to hear and to even say, that it’s no longer the listener who suffers from not having the Spirit of God. It is the speaker that has failed to have it and to receive it to begin with.

Many people realize too late that we don’t arrive at contentment as a destination as much as we develop contentment as a state of mind.  Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 6:6 that “godliness with contentment is great gain.”  And in Philippians 4:11 he writes, “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.”  What is Paul’s secret?

Paul shares it with us: “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13).  Paul trusted God to give him strength to endure any situation he faced.  In the same way, we can gain contentment when we trust in God’s strength and God’s grace to sustain us through any circumstance.  Whether you’re single or married; whether you’re liked, loved, or lonely; the key to contentment is trust.  Believe it or not, if we are discontented with singleness, we’ll more than likely face discontentment when we’re married.  When we define our happiness by some point in the future, it will never arrive.  We’ll keep waiting until tomorrow.  If we allow impatience to govern us, we will miss the gift of the moment.  We’ll arrive at that point in time that we expected to provide fulfillment and find it lacking.

One lady wrote to me, frustrated that people often view a single woman as just marking time until the right man comes along.  “Poor single woman!” she continued.  “The world wants her to fornicate, and the church wants her to marry!  Whatever happened to what Paul said about the blessings of being single?  William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, write, ‘Don’t instill, or allow anybody else to instill into the hearts of your girls the idea that marriage is the chief end of life.  If you do, don’t be surprised if they get engaged to the first empty, useless fool they come across.”  Women (and men) should marry when it is plainly the will of God for their lives, not because they ‘can’t minister’ otherwise, or because of social pressure.”  I can only add a hearty “Amen!” to her comments.

Author John Fischer, speaking as a single, young adult said, “God has called me to live now, not four years from now.  He wants me to realize my full potential as a man right now, to be thankful for that, and to enjoy it to the fullest.  I have a feeling that a single person who is always wishing he were married will probably get married, discover all that is involved, and wish he were single again.  He will ask himself, ‘Why didn’t I use that time, when I didn’t have so many other obligations, to serve the Lord? Why didn’t I give myself totally to Him then?’”

Instead of rushing foolishly into a marriage because of impatience or one day reviewing our season of singleness with regret, let’s commit to using our singleness to its fullest potential.  Singleness is a gift.  Let’s rejoice in it and enjoy its opportunities today.  Let’s practice trusting God by pursuing His kingdom and His righteousness with all our hearts and by leaving the planning to Him.

In this life we will not understand all He does.  But we know in the end, His perfect timing will be revealed. In a poem titled “Sometime,” May Riley Smith beautifully expressed the perspective of heaven we will one day possess:

Sometimes, when all life’s lessons have been learned,

And sun and stars forevermore have set,

The things which our weak judgments here have spurned,

The things o’er which we grieved with lashes wet,

Will flash before us out of life’s dark night,

As stars shine most in deeper tints of blue;

And we shall see how all God’s plans are right,

And how what seemed reproof was love most true.

Then be content poor heart;

God’s plans, like lilies pure and white, unfold;

we must not tear the close-shut leaves apart, –

Time will reveal the chalices of gold.

And if, through patient toil, we reach the land

Where tired feet, with sandals loosed, may rest,

When we shall clearly see and understand,

I think that we will say, “God knew the best!”

Do you believe that God knows best? Then place your life’s calendar at His feet and allow Him to handle the scheduling of your relationships.  Trust Him even if it means not dating when other people think you should.  When God knows you’re ready for the responsibility of commitment, He’ll reveal the right person under the right circumstances.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” God says matter-of-factly, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11-13).  Let’s live our todays for His kingdom and entrust our tomorrows to His providence.  We couldn’t lay our futures in better hands. All we have to do is trust.

The report was on Brian McLaren’s book “Jesus, Reconsidered.”  McLaren advocates a rethinking of Christianity.  For the other side of the debate NPR interviewed Al Mohler.  I am glad they picked someone who represents traditional Christianity, and not some liberal or right-winger.

Mohler pointed to the motives of McLaren and other such teachers.  They are trying to be relevant.  As McLaren himself said, today when a Christian goes off to college, chances are their roommate will be of a different belief system.  “How can you condemns someone to hell who you have come to love?” he asks.  Some statistics are also giving, saying that 2/3 of young people believe people other than Christians can go to heaven.  Mohler says that Christianity is being lost for the sake of relevance.

I agree.  The whole postmodern approach is tearing apart the church.  Now first let me qualify what I mean by “Christianity” and “the church.”  I do not mean what it has become – a building put up by human hands and taught with human wisdom, full of false gospels and false converts.  I do not mean Christianity as a watered down version of Christ somehow coming to love and redeem us but leaving out the power of God to change our hearts.  I mean faith in Christ Jesus as the Bible teaches (yes, literally), and I mean the church as the Bible says it is – the holy, spotless bride of Christ.

There must be a pure church, and that standard must exist in order to contrast it against any perversions of the gospel.  Otherwise McLaren would be right, Christianity can be changed to suit our culture.  But God transcends the centuries and cultures that come and go.  God transcends fad doctrines and popular teachers.  The message of the cross is timeless.  The Bible says, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” For the sake of cultural relevance these false teachers are rewriting the message of the cross.

Now I am not holding up some ultraorthodox view that says we should stick to tradition for tradition’s sake.  I am not saying we should abandon our culture, burn the NIV Bible and build our houses without electricity to completely separate ourselves.  I am not saying that.  What I am saying is that the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ doesn’t change.  It is a message for our culture as much as it was when the Lord Jesus walked the earth.

They misunderstood his message too.  They thought that he was going to be some kind of political leader who would overthrow an oppressive government.  Or else they saw him as some miracle worker who could solve their maladies, ignoring that he could do more – forgiving their sins and saving their souls.  This lesson we learned from the lame man.  Jesus did not first heal him, but said, “Your sins are forgiven.”  The leaders took offense and questioned his authority to do this.  Then to prove his authority to forgive sin he also healed him, and he got up and walked.

Have we forgotten the power of our Lord?  Have we made him out to be just another political figure, popular teacher, or magic trickster?

I tell you the truth, the church has prostituted itself for the sake of the wolves and their false gospels.  Rather than serving the one who can forgive its sins, the church has turned away from God and followed these false teachers.  Thus the church has become no church at all – no bride of Christ, no one to be united with God in perfection – but a whore.

Where is the true church of Christ?  Where is the spotless bride?  Where are the ones who follow the true and living God and his gospel of salvation?  Where are the ones who believe that he will heal their black hearts, and not just their pocketbooks?  Where are the ones who would rejoice in hearing that their sins are forgiven, regardless of whether their maladies are ever healed?

I don’t know about you, but I am tired of false gospels! I am tired of hearing people pervert the gospel of my Lord, the Lord who I love.  He was and still is relevant.

The cross is not just a love story.  It is a violent story of what it costs to be redeemed.  And yes, blood does need to be shed, for “without the shedding of blood their is no forgiveness of sins.”  There is no forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood because sin has a cost, and that cost is death.  Death exists because sin exists. But Christ paid the price so that death can be put to death just as sin can be put to death.  And this death is not only on the day we die, but NOW as we walk with our God.

The Lord Jesus Christ didn’t stay dead either.  He rose again on the third day.  The postmoderns would have you believe that such a thing cannot happen, and that the resurrection is just another made-up fairy tale.  It is not.  “Without the resurrection you are still dead in your sin, and your faith is useless.”  Death could not be put to death if Christ stayed in the grave.  But he did not!  He rose again on the third day, proving that he is God, Lord of all, the one who can redeem us from our sins, not a mere man but God made flesh for our redemption.  The resurrection means that we too can come out of the grave of our sin and be born again.  Only then can we truly become the spotless church.  There can be no church where there is no death to sin.

Finally, Christ ascended back on high, again proving he is who he says he is.  “And he seated us up with Christ.”  This means that we are where Christ is and can continue to walk in victory over sin, saying no to it, and remaining holy in Christ Jesus.

Holiness is not this lofty ideal handed down to us in paintings and now shown to us on TV by visual effects of shiny white angels with golden halos.  In fact angels can be dreadful beings, ones whom some men have trembled at the feet of when they are seen in their splendor.  No, holiness is not that caricature of something beyond us.  Holiness is given to us in Christ.  It is definitely a standard, but one that is attainable.  It is simply walking in faith the standard of purity that God has laid out for us.  Without faith there is no holiness.  The church today lacks holiness because it lacks faith in the full gospel of Jesus Christ – it only wants the forgiveness, or it only wants the temporal healing without the spiritual death, or it lacks the power or the knowledge of its power to walk in victory.

So what can we do?  Pray.  Fast.  Weep and mourn.  Wail and lament at the loss of our gospel.  But do not stay there.  Find the gospel again!  Find what is real and true about what Jesus Christ did for us.  We are not coming up on some random “holy week” akin to that of any other belief systems.  Next week is Easter.  We are celebrating salvation itself.  Do not prostitute yourselves, and do not prostitute the gospel, for any reason!

I really appreciated this response at GetReligion.org.  There are some pretty good comments after the article as well.

Take another example. Once I ran into a teen who claimed to be an anarchist. I posed a question: If both she and I can do whatever we want and make our own rules, what if our rules contradict each other. For example, what if under my rules I’m allowed to steal her stuff, but under her rules I’m not allowed to touch anything of hers. I can argue that I can do whatever I want, and she can argue that she can do whatever she wants, but our ideas conflict. Again we will only argue in a circle. She could not provide a satisfactory answer for the problem.

I propose that anarchy and relativism have the same root – rebellion. No one wants to be told that what they are doing is wrong or that there is a moral standard other than there own. Surely not all moral relativists are anarchists, but the point still remains.

But reality dictates that there is such thing as right and wrong, and this doesn’t change with feeling. People will always try to rationalize why what they did is okay, even up to the point of murder, but the truth is that murder is morally wrong. Moral absolutes exist.

If you doubt the existence of absolutes, take a look at logic. Logical absolutes also exist. 2 plus 2 will always equal 4. The statement “there is no such thing as absolute truth” is a contradiction. These are logical statements that prove absolute truths.

Our culture teaches us that there’s no such thing as absolute right and wrong. The truth is that the culture is lying, our rebellion is misleading us, and truth does exist.

Listen. How is this not playing God?

It is claimed that this kind of thing is ethical because man has been manipulating genes forever. Just look at the Chihuahua. Forget about the fact that breeding dogs is a completely different thing from splicing up DNA at the molecular level in a lab and putting the pieces of the puzzle together however you’d like. But even a Catholic priest agreed, “that the technique need not raise fundamentally new ethical questions.”

Man has been trying to create things apart from God since the beginning of time. In our time it has lead to the declaration that God is dead and the world living life accordingly. Now science is trying to prove that is true by creating life. Hey, if man can create life, then it is proved once and for all that creation doesn’t necessitate a God, right?

Too bad these kinds of experiments actually prove the argument from design. After all, it did take a group of intelligent scientists a number of years to figure out how to break into a cell and rearrange its DNA to create something new. There wasn’t an explosion in the lab that created a new life form.

But besides this, who can say doing something like this is wrong? Ethics is relative these days, isn’t it? That Catholic priest goes on to say, “From a religious point of view the creation of new viruses or bacteria would not necessarily create a huge problem, depending on how they’re used… The two major principles are to do no harm, and do the work respectfully.”

Interestingly, the scientist behind this whole thing relates in his autobiography “a 2003 dinner in Washington, D.C., during which he described the possible risks of his research to a group of President Bush’s senior science advisers. Venter explained he could synthesize a small virus in less than a week, and more deadly microbes such as Marburg and Ebola in about a month. Venter wrote that one Homeland Security official “just sat there, silently mouthing ‘wow’ over and over.”

I clicked on the discussion board to see what people were saying about this tragedy. I was appalled at the racial prejudice and stereotyping that I read. The people who commented on this tragedy had lots to say about the religion of the man who committed these murders. They had lots to say about immigration. They contended that people of Hindu and Muslim background should not be allowed into America.

Now you listen to me.

The fact that the perpetrator of murder in this story was a Hindu is besides the point. Murder is not a Hindu problem or a Muslim problem. It is not even a Caucasian problem. Murder is a sin problem.

Sin leads to rebellion against God and against his absolute moral law. Murder has been in existence in this world since the Cain murdered his brother Abel. It didn’t take long for murder to enter the human heart and will; it came to pass with the second generation of humanity.

Murder is usually seen as the measure of evil, and “Well, at least I’ve never killed anyone” has become the justification of many to say that they deserve to go to heaven (regardless of their real relationship to God). Jesus said that if you hate somebody you have already committed murder in your heart.

Sin is the root of evil and suffering.

The only way to escape the sinful human nature is to be born again by giving over your life to God and receiving Christ as Savior. Because of the work of Christ, we can be free from the reign of these things in our lives.

Saddleback boasts a membership of 20,000. They do kickin’ worship services, small groups, and every kind of program you can imagine. But the survey shows that one in four congregants are not happy with their experience there. It seems that plugging people into so many programs caused God to take a backseat in their spiritual lives. Many have taken on these programs in replacement of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ – salvation itself.

Now for the good news: Hybels has recognized his error. In the booklet containing these survey results he admits the fault. He says he now realizes that the number of people who attend his church and the number of programs offered is not nearly as important as the spiritual growth and wellbeing of the people coming out to these functions.

I have to say, I deeply respect Hybel’s humility in admitting the problem. Now let’s wait and see what (if anything) can be done to fix it.