The Biblical Man: The Fear of the Lord

// March 28th, 2008 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Proverbs: The Fear of the Lord – Mark Driscoll

[Preached 10.14.2001 by Pastor Mark Driscoll]

Proverbs is clear that wisdom proceeds from a living relationship of fear and awe with God who is the Lord, a title that is also often attributed to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Proverbs: Knowing God – Tim Keller

[Preached 10.10.2004 by Dr. Tim Keller]

THE FEAR OF THE LORD IS:

1) Beginning with God…

“Your relationship with God cannot enrich you spiritually the way your gym membership enriches you physically. It can’t just be another thing on your shelf, another add-on, another way to help you live a better life. Your relationship with God must be…is…the most central thing in your life.”

“The question is not “How can I use God to live the life I want to live?” No, it must be “How is the way that I’m living, getting me to God?”

2) Knowing God…

“The Fear of the Lord is a life-rearranging, joyful awe and wonder before the greatness of who God is and what He’s done.”

“Fearful Joy” – down in the dust kind of joy, joy that humbles you, because it is unmerited, it takes off the melancholy burden of self importance, of always having to prove yourself and live up to expectations.

“Follow your fears” – If you follow your fears, you understand what your heart is most after, what your heart is looking to most for significance, worth, security and identity. Your “fear” points to your “idol,” your greatest love, what you most fear losing, the main passion of your heart and life, the core of your identity. If your “fear” is God, then you move into knowing Him personally.

3) Trusting God…

Most of us start out with conditional trust in God: “I’ll trust/obey/submit my life to God (Christ) if my life goes better, If I have more strength, If I find what I’m looking for, etc.

Again, we see that anything less than unconditional trust is simply a front for reinforcing our idols, our functional saviors. Something else is your fear, your trust, your God, you’re just using God to get to it.

Examples:

Barbara Boyd – illustration of the size of the universe, Scripture says the Lord upholds it all just with the word of his power: Is this the kind of person you ask into your life to be your assistant? (we all are guilty of this, e.g. examine your prayers).

Elizabeth Eliot – Wisdom differential between a sheep and its shepherd. Anger, anxiety, bitterness, and confusion comes from refusing to put ourselves into the hands of the Great Shepherd, or putting Great Shepherd-like prerogatives to someone else: father, spouse, family, friends, etc. and they always fall short.

Two Questions to judge whether you’re unconditionally trusting (“In all your ways acknowledge Him”):

1) Are you willing to do whatever God says in Scipture about this area of your life, whether you agree with it or not?

2) Are you willing to accept anything that God sends in this area, anything that happens, whether you understand it or not?

If not, something else is your fear.

4) Understanding the Grace of God…

Proverbs 3:5-6; 9:10; 16:6; 19:23; 20:9; 23:17-18; 28:14

The Fear of the Lord is another one of those mega-themes that appears throughout Scripture. Do a search on it and you will find an unbelievable number of references to this concept. Apparently, it’s important. We’re going to take a look at what it it means to fear the Lord, and how knowing God and his love is impossible without it.

Job 1:8
Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

Job 28:28
And he said to man, ‘The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding.’ ”
Psalm 2:11
Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling.

Psalm 40:3
He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the LORD.

Psalm 147:11
the LORD delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love.

Proverbs 1:7
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.

Etc. …..

The Gospel According to Oprah

// March 26th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Uncategorized

GOOGLE VIDEO: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO OPRAH

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM5ILOsHLnw]

It is our duty to be critical and discerning when it comes to who we listen to, what books we read, and what perspectives we adopt into our own worldview. In addition, the God-given responsibility of every man is to protect his flock. As Christ used the metaphor of shepherding (He is the chief shepherd and we are His flock), so He said that we are supposed to do likewise, caring for and protecting our loved ones. In biblical marriage, a man who loves his wife and family does his best to provide for them financially, does anything to protect them physically (i.e. he would die for them), and also strives to protect them spiritually. A godly wife and mother would also want to protect her husband and children from danger. When it comes to spirituality in our society, there is “a meteoric shower of facts” coming at us at all times, people telling us to believe certain ideas and be “converted” to their way of seeing things. As we’ve been studying in “The Biblical Man” class, there are worldviews being peddled in our culture that are completely in conflict with Christianity. In fact, some of them are so sly and crafty that they fly under the title of “Christianity.” And it takes the hard work of discernment to know what’s what.

Spiritual discernment is a gift of the Holy Spirit that strengthens over time through growing in your faith, being in community with other believers, and seeking God’s wisdom in Scripture. Discernment, in its most basic form, is the ability to decide between truth and error, right and wrong. In a more narrow definition, it is the process of making careful distinctions in our thinking about truth. First Thessalonians 5:21-22 teaches that it is the responsibility of every Christian to be discerning: “But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; abstain from every form of evil.” The apostle John issues a similar warning when he says, “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). According to the New Testament, discernment is not optional for the believer-it is required.

The key to living an uncompromising life lies in one’s ability to exercise discernment in every area of his or her life. For example, failure to distinguish between truth and error leaves the Christian subject to all manner of false teaching. False teaching then leads to an unbiblical mindset, which results in unfruitful and disobedient living-a recipe for disaster. Without discernment, Christians are at risk of being “tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine” (Ephesians 4:14).

If you believe in and love the true Jesus Christ—the second person of the Trinity, our God who became a man to give himself as a perfect sacrifice of atonement, to reconnect us to God the Father, to defeat Satan, Sin and Death, and to usher in true peace—and you believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, and you understand the Gospel, then it is relatively easy to discern true Christianity from most “False Gospels.”

In our next study, we will be digging deeper into discernment and the various spiritual disciplines of a Christian life. But as this issue is pertinent for those of you struggling to engage missionally with Oprah’s disciples, I thought I’d provide a repository of information to help you get equipped. Here are some links to help you learn more about New Age Spirituality, Neo-Paganism, and “Oprahism,” so that you can shepherd your flock, be missional, and “contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 1:3):

What is the New Age Movement?

New Age Movement: New Age of Old Occult

Should Christians Watch Oprah Winfrey?

The Secret: Self-Help Gone Nutty (LA Times)

The Teachings of Abraham…

Oprah Winfrey and Her Self-Help Saviors: Making the New Age Normal

The Gospel According to Oprah

God is Jealous of Oprah? Oprah New Age Blasphemy

The divine Miss Winfrey?

Is Oprah a Cult Leader?

Is Oprah Peddling Snake Oil?

Oprah’s Counterfeit Christianity

Here is a blog discussion excerpt that I also found helpful:

‘Oprah and Friends’ to teach course on New Age Christ

Jesus Christ being reinvented, redefined, and blasphemed and, this false New-Age Christ teaching is about to make huge inroads into the world, with the help of the queen of television talk shows, Oprah Winfrey.

Oprah Winfrey, beginning January 1, 2008, on her daily radio program will offer a year-long course on the New Age Christ , in a lesson a day and completely cover the 365 lessons from the Course in Miracles ‘Workbook.’ 

Listeners will be encouraged to buy A Course in Miracles for the year-long course, and an audio version, recited by Richard (John Boy Walton) Thomas will be available on compact disc.

Those who finish the Course will have a wholly redefined spiritual mindset-a New Age worldview that include the beliefs that there is no sin, no evil, no devil. A Course in Miracles teaches its students to rethink everything they believe about God and life, and, bluntly states: ‘This is a course in mind training’ and is dedicated to ‘thought reversal.’

The Course in Miracles -in reality-is the truth of the Bible turned upside down.

Oprah told her television audience that Williamson’s book, A Course in Miracles was one of her favorite books, and that she had already bought a thousand copies and would be handing them out to everyone in her studio audience. Oprah’s endorsement skyrocketed Williamson’s book to the top of the New York Times bestseller list .

A Course in Miracles is allegedly a ‘new revelation’ from ‘Jesus’ to help humanity work through these troubled times. This ‘Jesus’-who bears no doctrinal resemblance to the Bible’s Jesus Christ-began delivering channeled teachings in 1965 to a Columbia University Professor of Medical Psychology, Helen Schucman.

One day Schucman heard an ‘inner voice’ stating, ‘This is a course in miracles. Please take notes.’ For seven years she diligently took spiritual dictation from this voice that described himself as ‘Jesus.’

Here are some quotes from the ‘Jesus’ voice of A Course in Miracles :

· ‘There is no sin . . . ‘

· A ‘slain Christ has no meaning.’

· ‘The journey to the cross should be the last ‘ useless journey.’

· ‘Do not make the pathetic error of ‘clinging to the old rugged cross.”

· ‘The Name of Jesus Christ as such is but a symbol… It is a symbol that is safely used as a replacement for the many names of all the gods to which you pray.’

· ‘The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself.’

· ‘The Atonement is the final lesson he [man] need learn, for it teaches him that, never having sinned, he has no need of salvation.’

Popular author Wayne Dyer told his PBS television audience that the ‘brilliant writing’ of A Course in Miracles would produce more peace in the world.

2 Brothers, 2 Thieves

// March 15th, 2008 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Listen: The Prodigal Sons by Tim Keller

Read: The Centrality of the Gospel by Tim Keller

The Biblical Man: Plowing a Counter-Culture

// March 5th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Uncategorized

Plowing a Counter-Culture Powerpoint

Plowing a Counter-Culture Sermon Audio. Driscoll. 09.30.01.

Strangeness and the Order of God. Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living. Sermon Audio. Keller. 2004.

The Prodigal Sons. The Vision of Redeemer. Sermon Audio. Keller.

Preaching Morality in an Amoral Age. Article. Keller. 01.01.96.

The Current Intellectual State of Affairs in America. Article. Keller.

Crucial Issues in Gospel and Community. Jeff Louie. Gospel Coalition 2007.

On January 8, 2008, Dr. Peter Jones spoke at the Mars Hill Church Ballard Campus for a Resurgence Event. Peter Jones is the world’s leading scholar on the subject of Neo-Pagan Spirituality, a massively popular worldview that is revolutionizing the American spiritual landscape at breakneck speed and capturing the hearts of people around the world. Oprah has emerged as one of the main purveyors of this form of spirituality, as nearly a million people have already registered for her year-long, global, online, spiritual self-help class “A New Earth,” which she is team-teaching with the author Ekhart Tolle, the “Abraham” of Neo-Paganism. She is indoctrinating soccer moms across the nation, maybe your mom, wife or grandmother, as we speak. In order to understand our culture, we next to understand this worldview. The debate is no longer Christianity vs. Secular Humanism, we’ve moved well beyond that.  A new wave of Spiritualism is changing the paradigm. In this lecture, Dr. Jones discusses the blurring of spiritual lines in culture around us and how we can understand the underlying spiritual framework as we seek to witness and minister to the non-Christians around us.

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.774790&w=425&h=350&fv=poster%3Dfiles%2Fimages%2F%26videourl%3Dfiles%2Fvideo%2Fpeter_jones_2008-01-08_video_walking_in_the_land_of_blur.flv%26title1%3DWalking+in+the+Land+of+Blur]

After you listen to the main session, be sure to check out the Q&A portion of this event as well. Download the Audio Track

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.774791&w=425&h=350&fv=poster%3D%26videourl%3Dfiles%2Fvideo%2Fpeter_jones_2008-01-08_video_pastoring_in_todays_zeitgeist.flv%26title1%3DPastoring+in+Todays+Zeitgeist]

After you listen to the main session, be sure to check out the Q&A portion of this event as well. Download the Audio Track

ARTICLE:

Esoteric Spirituality: Peter Jones

VIDEO:

Expelled: Super Trailer ( coming in Spring 2008 )

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGCxbhGaVfE]

OPRAHISM:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE_YFiAkgDU]

For further information on Oprah, America’s most influential cult-leader, and Oprahism, go to the following post:

The Gospel According to Oprah