Book Review: Gods at War: Defeating the Idols that Battle for your Heart by Kyle Idleman

These days I rarely finish a book. I am currently reading through so many books I can barely keep track of which ones. I usually peruse a book, find what I want, and leave it buried in my increasing treasury of books on Kindle. This changed recently. In preparation for a sermon on idolatry I came across Kyle Idleman’s book entitled Gods at War. The book title caught my attention and so I downloaded it into my kindle and two seconds later there it was. I confess I had never heard of Pastor Idleman, and my first impressions of a mega pastor (which he is; pastor of the fourth largest church in the country) have not changed. The writing style filled with little stories and illustrations hurt my intellectual feelings from the start. But then I just kept reading it. The side bars with research and even the funny footnotes kept me reading it.

The reading is meant for a lay audience, but I confess this pastor needed it just as much. Idleman argues that “until that god is dethroned, and the Lord God takes his rightful place, you will not have victory” (22). I am not even sure where to start. I have had so many idols over the years.

As I read the book I realized that the premise was not much different than the biblical theological work of G.K. Beale who wrote that we are what we worship, whether for our ruin or for our good. Beale wrote his work in an academically driven style. Idleman is Beale for Dummies.

The time I waste. The things I treasure. Everything had become a god. “Never in the history of humanity has there been so much entertainment and so little satisfaction” (121). I am so easily entertained, and yet that entertainment fails to find the satisfaction that it intends to give. Why? because it is not meant to give it.

Who is your god? That question kept coming back again and again to haunt me. I have read Keller and I am quite aware that the second commandment is more thorough than simply constructing a physical icon, it also deals with the heart of the matter; really, the heart is the matter.

What a simple, at times silly, but overall profoundly revealing book. Don’t read this book. If you do, you will start hunting more effectively for those gods that tempt you in every direction. Come to think of it, read it. Be a hunter. Choose this day whom you will serve. “You shall have no other gods before me,” says Yahweh.

*See also, We Become What We Worship by G.K. Beale

This world is not my home…or is it?

Those who follow me on twitter may see several tweets with the hash-tag #Ruthproject. The Ruth project is a new work I am working with a fellow pastor from Birmingham. We are working on a commentary on Ruth. But this will not be just a normal, exegetical work, it is actually a pastoral and theological labor focusing on the nature and goal of redemptive history. We will focus on the content of Ruth’s majestic love story, but also detailing why Ruth serves as a miniature picture for all of God’s history.

We will offer a theological framework for how we are to look at redemptive history and how God is working in it. The commentary hopes to be practical, pastoral, and layman-friendly.

Here is a quote from the introduction:

What you believe about the future shapes how you live in the present.  If your final expectation is just to go and dwell forever in ethereal heaven, compare what your world view and your practice would be to someone whose final hope is of dwelling in a renovated and perfected physical creation in a resurrection body.

Lord-willing we will be able to provide a manuscript draft to our publisher by the end of the summer. Our goal is to have it published by the Family Advance Conference in November.

Dave Hunt Dies

dave-hunt-woman-rides-the-beast-catholic-church-vaticanI had the opportunity to meet Dave Hunt on a couple of occasions. I sat attentively in one of his talks where he opposed Calvinism. If my memory serves me right, he said something like this:

I was amazed at what I discovered when I deeply researched Roman Catholicism. I came to the conclusion that it is not a Christian Church. I could not believe how much falsehood they affirmed. But I was even more deeply amazed when I began researching Calvinism. It is a web a lies. It causes people to trust in the philosophies of men rather than in the Word of God.

In those days I had been reading through Norman Geisler’s Chosen, but Free. I thought it was a good response to the Calvinist claims. I even taught a Sunday School class in a Baptist Church following that paradigm. I now see Geisler’s treatise as the blending of a schizophrenic philosophy with a high dose of mis-characterized Calvinism.

A few years later Dave Hunt came to town (Tampa Bay) to lecture on this supposed highly problematic doctrine. This was before the publishing of What Love is This? Even then, I had already imbibed of a good dose of Tulip Theology thanks to Michael Horton’s Putting Amazing Back Into Grace. Hunt’s lecture was filled with silly analogies, and my zealous Calvinism saw it for what it was.

Years earlier I had read some of Hunt’s prophetic literature and found it compelling, especially when he combined the false teachings of cults with the coming anti-Christ. He portrayed the world and its future in such dark categories that it was easy to adopt a pessimistic eschatology. In his latter years, Hunt continued his eschatology talks, but focused his attention on his crusade against Calvinism, or as one endorsement referred to it as the “abuses of Calvinism.”His talks and radio show, and the endorsement of almost the entirety of the well-known Calvary Chapel movement made him an anti-Calvinist rock star.

The reason for this short piece is that Dave Hunt died yesterday. It is common courtesy to extend sympathy to memory of those who have died in Christ. I especially wish peace on his wife Ruth and other family members. Hunt offered some very helpful apologetic material early on. He lived a fruitful professional life. Unfortunately to those of us in the Reformed community, Hunt offered some very unwise counsel. His dispensational prophetic interests created–in my estimation–a distorted expectation in the Christian Church. Many have bought into a misguided eschatology and have as a result offered a poor apologetic for the role of the Church in the culture, and the clear biblical vision of bringing all things in submission to King Jesus.

So as one more important piece of dispensational history departs to the presence of our blessed Lord–and Dave Hunt, in my limited knowledge of him loved His Lord Jesus Christ–let us move history into better theological pastures. Let’s raise a generation of optimistic thinkers who battle cults, but then offer a strong apologetic–a Trinitarian one–to fight it. And as we do so, let us not use our cult apologetic to justify or validate our doomsday theology.

And on the Calvinism front, may God raise gentle Calvinists who will argue for grace from the foundation of grace. When we do so, let us also represent our Arminian brothers with utmost respect.

Rest in Peace, David Hunt.

A Festschrift to Norman Shepherd

Obedient FaithAndrew Sandlin and John Barach have done a great service in providing these essays in honor of Norman Shepherd. Obedient Faith  is “a tribute by students and friends to a courageous theologian’s lifelong stand for a full-orbed, obedient Christianity.” In the preface, Andrew Sandlin observes:

His influence is not thought to rank with his Calvinist contemporaries like J. I. Packer, John Piper, and R. C. Sproul. Yet in the end it may be Shepherd’s distinctive views that prove to be the more lasting and influential. Those views spring from his recovery of the older Reformed idea of the covenant as the overarching theme of the Bible and of the church and Christian life… Shepherd does not merely argue that individual salvation is the outworking of the covenant of grace (true enough); he insists, moreover, that man’s entire relation with God from creation to consummation, from birth to death, is governed by covenant.

I will be posting some quotes along the way. Also, stay tuned for an interview with editor, Andrew Sandlin on the life and theology of Norman Shepherd.

Book Review: Bill Bennett’s “The True Saint Nicholas: Why He Matters to Christmas”

There are too many unknown facts, as Bill Bennett rightly asserts. Much of the historical data is purely speculative with the exception of a few references, poems and prayers in honor of Saint Nicholas. The Roman Catholic tradition has largely exorcised ol’ St. Nicholas from the Church, while the Eastern Orthodox tradition continues to celebrate his life every December 6th.

Bennett provides a pleasant read filled with fantastical stories and a delightful context to the Bishop of Myra.

The records at the very least seem to concur with the general perception that the Saint Nicholas that existed in the days of Constantine (yes, he most likely slapped Arius!) was indeed filled with generosity and abounding in love for all sorts of people.

Bennett illustrates that Saint Nicholas, the Bishop, had become commercialized only a few centuries after his death. The entrepreneurial spirit was alive and well in those days. The life of Saint Nicholas was being used by manipulative men to sell and to attract business. This commercialization is no different than the Americanized Santa Claus (invented much later in the 20th century).

At the same time it is important to note that abuses are always prone to happen, and that simply doing away with the figure in order to avoid the tough questions is no way to handle the matter. Rather, there is a legitimate way to use the history of Saint Nicholas, and its subsequent re-adaptation– with all its colors and jolly-ness in the North Pole Santa Claus– to draw us and our children’s attention to those rare gifts and virtues of the Christian faith.

Bill Bennett connects the modern Santa Claus with the faithful Bishop who suffered and lived for the sake of His Lord. The connection provides us with a healthy knowledge of the origins of this delightfully rotund figure loved by many whose history is frequently forgotten. The book offered a portrait of an ancient figure whose life was dedicated to the giving of gifts and to relieving the suffering of many. For this reason alone, Saint Nicholas is to be celebrated and remembered.

Kathy Keller on Rachel Evans

If you want a satisfying response to Evans, look no further. As Keller concludes:

Rachel, I can and do agree with much of what you say in your book regarding the ways in which either poor biblical interpretation or patriarchal customs have sinfully oppressed women. I would join you in exposing churches, books, teachers, and leaders who have imposed a human agenda on the Bible. However, you have become what you claim to despise; you have imposed your own agenda on Scripture in order to advance your own goals. In doing so, you have further muddied the waters of biblical interpretation instead of bringing any clarity to the task.

As a woman also engaged in trying to understand the Bible as it relates to gender, I had hoped for better.

Third Review of “The Church-Friendly Family” by Luke Welch

Review of The Church-Friendly Family

The Church-Friendly FamilyIs the church is a ministry to families? Should Godly families steer clear of the world? What is the point of the family? And what is the point of the church? Pastors Randy Booth and Rich Lusk aim us in the right direction as their new book, The Church-Friendly Family, compels us to rethink these questions through a Biblical lens.  God has a family and that family is the church.  Our own families are pictures of the church.  The church reaches out to the world through families. The authors show us that the Body of Christ is primary in God’s plan, and this does no harm to our own families; rather, it gives them strength, blessing and purpose.

Many times over Randy Booth and Rich Lusk offer us wise and pastoral insight into ways that churches and families can mature for the sake of the kingdom.  They offer correction, encouragement and vision for families, and churches, and especially for fathers and husbands.  Booth explains the major shift we need to make: “We must come to see the Church as the primary family and our individual families as outposts of the Church.”  The Trinity is a community.  So is the church.  So is the family.  But sometimes we allow our families to become insular, hiding from the world in the church, and sometimes even hiding from the church in our homes.  When we open our families to being modeled on the church, and being changed for and through worship, then we become effective outposts for God’s mission.

Randy Booth also encourages us that we will have to die and be resurrected to get to the proper place in God’s work, allowing God to clean and heal us of the way we operate in family, church and world:

Following Jesus begins with forsaking our relationships with other people, ourselves, and our possessions. All of these relationships are corrupted by sin. As soon as we come to Him, He sends us back to all those relationships, to ourselves, and even to all our material possessions to truly love them as new men in Christ.

A resurrected view of how our own families work as part of the church affects parenting. We form our children’s identity as part of the church and as ambassadors of Christ’s church for the world. We want them to grow up to remain vitally connected to the body of Christ, and to be both free and strong enough to draw the world into the church as well.

Parenting is missional says Rich Lusk, looking at Jeremiah 29.  It is God’s way of growing the church.  Not because high birth rates are a natural way of growing church rolls, but because God saves the world through godly families settling into the surrounding world to bless it. Referring to Psalm 127, Lusk asks us what the point of a full quiver of straightened arrows is.  Is it to be decorative and out of the way of war?  No.  Families are to have children, to make and keep them Godly , and to show them how to go out into the war for the hearts of the world.  Our children will then direct men back to the church, to meet with Christ there.

But godly child rearing requires several things: Fathers need to take responsibility for how they love and listen to their wives.  How they honor them.  How they find their own wives to be their own lady wisdoms (as seen in Proverbs).  Beyond loving our wives well, we must also view our children as God views them – Psalm 128 tells us that our children are covenant members – olive shoots around the family table.  We are to believe that they own the kingdom, and treat them as Christians, (that is, as family members) from the beginning.  This means understanding our families and even our children as having their proper identity in Christ.

Not only do families need to be stretched (in a way dying to be reborn in God’s image), but churches need to be transformed as well.  Churches can also be insular, fearing that worldliness may corrupt their holiness. But God calls us to imitate the Lord Jesus, who went about doing good works, and who was seen enjoying God’s creation (food and drink) with people unfit for the Synagogues.  We need to let the world in, practicing hospitality, but without compromising the word of God.  There is plenty, Lusk argues, that we can concede to make the gospel available to non-believers without losing biblical worship or holiness.  We may, however, have to die (to comfort), and be raised again as a church truly interested in reaching and saving our neighbors.

So I commend to you this book. It is a fount of Biblical wisdom deep and wide.  I found myself amazed and convicted and encouraged. I believe it will bless many.  The Church-Friendly Family could be a truly transformative book for churches and for families if it is taken seriously as it deserves to be.  May we all grow to know who we are in Christ, and what he wishes to do through each family, and each church.

A Second Review of “The Church-Friendly Family” by Matthew Sims

By Matthew Sims

If you’re not careful your mind may play tricks on you. After receiving the book, I kept thinking and writing The Family-Friendly Church. The authors though have been intentional with the title. In our seeker-sensitive saturated churches making the church more user friendly for families seems more natural but what Booth and Lusk argue is that the family must orient itself around the church. It’s an emphasis the church and families has lost over the last hundred years. In the foreword Uri Brito sets the stage,

The family is in trouble, and the good news is that the family can be restored in Christ. Salvation is not individualistic. Jesus did not die simply so that certain individuals could be forgiven and restored to new life. He died so that relationships could be restored, so that every aspect of life, including our families, might be healed and made new. . . .

Our families are not ultimate, and they will not be restored and glorified by an exclusive focus on the family. In fact we make our family and its well-being our highest priority, we sow the seeds of our family’s destruction. Rather, our families must be placed in the context of the family of God. The nuclear family does not simply need more advice or exhortation; it needs Jesus and it needs His body. (p. xii)

These two paragraphs sum up well the thrust of The Church-Friendly Family.

TCFF emphasizes that the family of God reverses Babel. The Church brings all nations and tongues together. We see movement from the family of Adam to the adopted family of God (p. xvi,  xvii). They also argue that the family only fulfills its purpose when it aligns itself with the mission of the church. What they strongly argue against is any notion that the good Christian family tends to seclusion. They are not advocating for the back wood Christian home-schoolers who think everything outside is of the world and therefore evil. Rather they argue for robust for families who create, change, and redeem culture. Families who attack the true evils of the world and push it back. Families who align themselves with the church to do this. Booth says,

Within the context of the broader evangelical Church we can hear men honestly attempting to speak to a corrupt culture and calling people to repent, but there is frequently no solid biblical culture to replace it with (p. 8).

He places this failure and responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the men and fathers. We have not created a gospel culture in our own home so how should we expect to create one in the community at large? Booth again sees two errors: either parents who are apathetic or “over-zealous” (p. 15). The latter is a father who sees the problem mentioned earlier but instead of creating genuine culture starting at the top he force feeds his family (ibid). We must rather create the gospel culture by living in light of the gospel as leaders in the home. We do that by loving and serving. I will add that it might do well to pause arguing with egalitarians about headship in the home and start living it out. Stop talking about loving leadership and start serving. Confront the bullies. Decry the abusers. Humbly serve our wife and children. When people see this, they will hopefully respond, “Seems like that guy is willing to die for his family.  I can tell because he’s serving them in every other possible way. He’s prioritizing them over himself.” Continue reading “A Second Review of “The Church-Friendly Family” by Matthew Sims”

The First Review of “The Church-Friendly Family” by Colt Nipps

Reviewed by Colt Nipps

In our time, a “family-friendly church” is touted as being necessary to making any cultural impact at all.  Randy Booth and Rich Lusk have turned that phrase on its head with, “The Church-Friendly Family.”

Wow, what a necessary resource!  The timing of this little volume is perfect because the family is being attacked from outside and within.  It is an easy read (111 pages), but it is packed with scripture and seeped in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It covers a wide range of topics: family, culture, worship, marriage and more.  Yet, the Lord Jesus and our union with him is presented as the tie that binds them all together.

This is a must-read for fathers!  I really appreciate the clear, concise language and the logical format of the book.  It is filled with biblical and practical wisdom with actual ideas to be implemented.  I am always dismayed about would-be “wisdom” with no guidance on how to get started.

Above all, I was excited about the optimism in this work.  Many in our day don’t actually know God’s story, much less how to find themselves in it.  It highlights how Jesus is actually reigning in and through his church and what that means to the family.  Christians can labor with confidence, knowing that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.  We are a part of something bigger than our families.  By God’s grace, we are in the middle of God’s creation-wide redeeming process.