Back, Back, Back, GONE!

I started back with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at Seneca High School yesterday, and the Lord was gracious!  It was my first opportunity to speak to the baseball team, in addition to the girl’s basketball team- who have been putting up with me for a couple months now.

My plan was to review things we have talked about over the last couple months with the basketball girls, find out what they remember, refresh their memory, and try to find out issues they would like to talk about over the next month or so.  But, only one of the basketball girls was there on time (the rest trickled in later).  So, I was standing in front of the baseball team for the first time without having prepared anything to say to them.  But, by God’s grace, I think I knocked it out of the park!

I started by introducing myself and telling the guys about my baseball “career”- I played in high school and went through the off-season baseball stuff my freshman year in college before deciding to focus on basketball.  If you’ve ever spoken in front of people, you can tell when they are not listening.  That was the case at this point.  We were in the “old gym” at Seneca, and judging by where the baseball guys were looking, everything in the gym was interesting- except for me.  I had my audience so engaged that the girl’s basketball coach and the baseball coach were carrying on a conversation- about 5 feet away from me, without whispering!  But, it got better.

I wanted to find out a little bit about the baseball players, so I asked how many of them professed to be Christians.  About half raised their hands.  I asked where they go to church, and pointed to a couple who had raised their hands.  A couple of them acted like they didn’t see me point to them, broke eye contact, and looked at the floor.  One said he occasionally goes to Southeast Christian Church.  I asked what he meant by occasionally, and he said about once a month.  A couple of others named other churches in town.

Then, I held up my Bible and asked what it was.  One kid said that it is the Word of God.  I said, “exactly,” and then asked what that means.  Another said that we have to obey it.  I said, “we have to obey it- or else what?”
“We go to hell,” he replied.

“We obey the Bible or we go to hell?” I asked.
When he said yes, I asked him if he has obeyed the Bible.
“No.”
Where are you going then?
“Hell.”

After he said this, he started back-tracking.  He tried to claim that he has obeyed the Bible, but I wasn’t letting him off that easily.  After all, he was the one who said if we don’t obey the Bible then we go to hell, AND he admitted that he has not obeyed the Bible.  After some discussion, I told them that if that were the end of the story, then we would all go to hell- because we have all failed to obey the Bible.  Not only have we done what the Bible tells us not to do, we also have not done what the Bible tells us to do.  At our best, we fail to love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, souls, and might (Deut. 6).

After they agreed that this is bad news and that we are in bad shape, I told them I was going to make it seem even worse before making it better.  I talked about Exodus 34:6-7, where God says that He forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin- but He will by no means clear the guilty.

We are guilty, and God will by no means clear the guilty.

I asked them how God can claim both that He forgives transgression, iniquity, and sin; and that He will by no means clear the guilty.  Silence.  I asked some questions leading them toward the right answer, and finally one of the girls said Jesus died for our sins.  ”Exactly!”

One girl said that she didn’t get it, and asked if I would put everything together.  I explained that Adam and Eve sinned, and were separated from God.  And, because of them, we are all sinners and we have also all sinned against God.  We have disobeyed His Word and we all deserve to go to hell.  But God sent His Son, Jesus, to live the perfect life that we could not live, perfectly obeying God, and then He died to pay the penalty for our sins in our place.  God does not clear our guilt, He transfers it to Christ, who paid the penalty for our sins in full on the cross. What great news, especially against the backdrop of the bad news of our situation and what we deserve!

Possibly the most encouraging part happened when FCA was over.  One of the girls asked to speak to me, and asked if all that we had talked about applied to her.  I think she understood her position before God, that she deserves judgment and hell as the penalty for her sins, and that her only hope is in Christ.

Pray for my Seneca FCA kids, that they would love God and love Christ and love the good news that we can draw near to God because Christ died for our sins in our place!

To Love God Like That.

Job lost everything.  He had more to lose than you and I could imagine, and lost it all.  I don’t really appreciate all of the livestock that he had because we don’t rely on it the way that they did back then.  We live in a different world.

Now people don’t have to know where, when, or how to get clean water because it’s piped into our homes.  We don’t have to worry about problems caused by all of our “human waste” cause that’s piped out of our homes.  We don’t really know how to feed ourselves- unless you count earning money, buying groceries, and preparing food in a kitchen to be doing so.  Men who had to hunt or farm if they wanted to eat and feed their families probably wouldn’t call that knowing how to feed ourselves.

Men in Job’s day had to know these things.  And, in a lot of ways, livestock meant life back then.

And Job lost more livestock than we could imagine.  More importantly, he lost ten kids. I don’t imagine that Job was too attached to his livestock.  People usually only have cooky attachments to animals when they only have one.  He had a lot more than one, so losing the livestock probably really only affected him economically.  Sheep, camels, oxen, and donkeys can be replaced.

Children can’t.  After being struck by messenger after messenger after messenger with news that all of his livestock was gone- all of it- the last messenger struck most violently.  All of his children were dead.  All of them.

I haven’t lost a whole lot in my life- especially when you stack my losses up next to Job’s.  But, when things don’t go my way I pretty much act like a 3-year-old who doesn’t get his way.  Which, saying that doesn’t really work because I have two 3-year-old nephews who typically act pretty well when they don’t get their way.  Typically.  But, when things don’t go my way, I tend to act like them on those occasions when they act like every other 3-year-old in the world.  I may not outwardly throw myself on the floor, legs kicking, arms flailing, and vocal chords working really well- but I far to often do so inwardly.

When I think about Job, and the way that he responded to losing far more than I have ever even had to lose, and far more than I could imagine losing, the analysis of my problem is simple:  I don’t love God enough.

Job loved God so much, and understood so well that God is in control and that God is good, even when (maybe especially when) it doesn’t seem like it, that when he received the worst possible news, he fell to his knees and worshipped God.  He worshipped God!

I stub my toe and respond closer to the way that Job’s wife advised him to.  Job loses thousands of livestock and ten kids and worships God.

While the analysis is simple, the solution is at least less so.  How do I get from here to there?

Lime Green!?

If things that are not lime green look lime green to you, could that mean that you might have had a concussion?  If so, I might have had a concussion!

Louisville got a bunch of snow the last couple of days- I think I heard that we got 5 inches Thursday!  Thursday afternoon a couple of my roommates and I went to “Dog Hill” at Cherokee Park.  A couple had an inner tube like the kind you pull people on behind a boat, except it is made to use like a snow sled.  They let us use it.

The second time I went down the massive “Dog Hill” on the borrowed tube, I was determined to go fast!  I had the need, the need for speed.  So I ran pretty quickly- as quickly as a tall, lanky guy can run in old tennis shoes in the snow, at least.  At the top of the hill I jumped on the tube and away I went.

As soon as I got started, the tube spun around so that I was looking back up the hill- unable to see anything in front of me.  What was in front of me was a ramp that some kids had made of packed snow.  This might not sound like much, and if you had seen it then you would say that it didn’t really look like much either.  That’s what I thought, at least.  Before I hit it with a pretty good head of steam.

As I slid down the hill without knowing what was in front of me, I wondered where that ramp was that those kids had built.  And then hit the ramp.  I don’t know how long I was in the air, but I was in the air long enough to think I might not ever come down.  In addition to being on my stomach with my feet toward the bottom of the hill, the tube was at an angle where I couldn’t see where the ground was.  I didn’t think I would ever land!

The first thing that hit the ground was the tube.  The second thing that hit the ground was my chin.  Hard!  I closed my eyes on impact, and when I opened them everything around me was lime green.  Yes, I said lime green.  The snow was lime green.  The sky was lime green.  The trees and people around me were lime green.  Everything was lime green.

I had just started going down the hill, and still had a lot of hill left, so once I shook my head a couple of times and everything was back to the color it was supposed to be I rested my head on the tube and coasted down the rest of the way.

So, is seeing lime green a symptom of a concussion?

“As Christ Loved the Church”

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” -Ephesians 5:25-27

One of the greatest things we can say about the risen Lord Christ is that no man ever loved his bride more.  Hebrews 12:2 says that King Jesus endured the cross and despised the shame for the joy that was set before Him.  The rest of the verse tells us that Christ is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.  Returning to the Father and to His throne at God’s right hand was probably a significant source of His cross-enduring and shame-despising joy.  I think it likely that another source of His joy was His bride, being her Groom, and, as Ephesians 5 tells us, giving Himself up for her that He might sanctify her, and the prospect of the joy of presenting His bride to Himself in splendor, holy and without blemish.

I think this is a significant part of what it means to be a man.  Find the best woman you can find, marry her, be fruitful and multiply with her, protect and provide for your family, and love your bride the way that Christ loved His- for the joy of one day presenting her to Christ, sanctified in splendor, holy and without blemish, all by the grace of God, the forgiving and atoning blood of Christ, and the power of the Spirit.

While the men of the world view James Bond, professional athletes, and movie stars as models of manhood, imagine how much better we men of Christ should, would, and could be if we were to reject the world’s “man as man-whore” model for the sake of the model for manhood that the living God has given us, the man who loved his bride more than any man before or since, the man who died and yet lives, Jesus.

Chapter 2

As Gaby watched Jude pour wine into two glasses, she thought of her husband.  Josh was everything Jude was not.  Every characteristic and quality Jude had he used to manipulate people and serve his greed.

As she thought of Josh she experienced a swift and sudden change.  She had been thinking that Josh would forgive her for visiting Jude- as long as she did nothing wrong.  She now thought that just being there proved once again that she was unworthy of such a husband, and she began to fear that she might lose everything.  What if he divorced her and cut her off from seeing the kids?

The kids- there was another issue! Josh and Gaby had three kids: Joshua, Rendy, and Andy.  Joshua was definitely Josh’s, which is more than she could say for the other two.  She knew that Joshua was his because she had been faithful to him until after he had been born, and because he looked just like his daddy.  She wasn’t sure about Rendy, both because she had been with both men when she was conceived and because she resembled her mother more than either of the men.  Andy, however, was a big problem.  She cringed every time somebody pointed out how little Joshua and Andy looked like each other.  They resemble each other about as much as Josh and Jude do, she always thought to herself before pointing to their vague similarities.

When Jude handed her a wine glass it brought her back to the moment.  He gave her yet another compliment, accompanied by the twitch of his neck she knew so well- and despised.  He kept talking, but she stopped listening.  She was once again thinking about Josh.

While she had been counting on Josh’s forgiveness, she had in her mind a line which she had not yet crossed, and she was determined not to cross it.  But now, as she thought that Josh might be jealous and angry if he knew where she was, she saw in her mind a second line that had already been crossed.  As she had reckoned on his forgiveness, she thought she would lose nothing by approaching the first line.  Now, as she reckoned on his anger, she thought she had done enough to lose everything by having crossed the second line already.

Until now she had resisted Jude’s advances.  Condemning herself, and figuring that she was guilty and would lose everything anyway, she resisted no more.

That night, after Jude had gone out to “take care of some things,” Gaby once again cried herself to sleep in his bed.

Chapter 1

Gaby knew she shouldn’t be there.
A married woman should not be alone with a man in his apartment- and especially not with a man like Jude.

“Maybe I can help him,” she thought.  But she knew the real reason she was there: she missed him.  They grew up together, always finding some kind of trouble or another.  Speaking of growing up and trouble, she would never forget when her mom had walked in on them- and kicked her out of the house- in their teenage years.

With nowhere else to go, she moved in with him.  He had enough trouble paying the rent and feeding himself, but he promised her that he would find a way to provide for her too.  It turned out that that way would find them.  They were walking one night when a short man wearing thick glasses and an expensive suit approached them.  He asked to speak with Jude, and pulled him aside.  They spoke for a few minutes, and then the man in the suit pulled out his wallet.  He gave Jude two one-hundred dollar bills and the two shook hands.

When Jude walked back over to her, he told her that they would not have to worry about rent or food this month.  ”How?” she asked, as the man in the suit approached them.
“Go with him,” Jude replied.   She did not trust the man in the suit, but she trusted Jude, and so she went.

Jude was not in the apartment that night as she cried herself to sleep, and he was not there when she woke up.

When he came home, his usual confidence and charm were missing.  ”Do you like being poor and hungry?” he asked.  ”Do you like worrying about how we’ll pay for food and rent?”

“Of course not,” she responded, “but we’ll figure out a way- just like you said.”

“That’s just it,” he said. “I’ve figured out a way.”  As he said this, he pulled out a long, black dress that looked too slim for any woman to wear.  He held it out to her, without looking at her tear-stained face.  As she took it she peeked at the price tag- nearly two hundred dollars.

“Was this the money from last night?” she asked, as the memory and the tears came back.  ”I thought that was supposed to be for rent and food.”  As she watched him struggle to find the words, she understood.

As time went on, what she did never got any easier.  But she did cry less and less, and Jude let her keep more and more of the money she earned.  Soon she was not the only girl “working” for him.

And now here she was, alone with him again.  The apartment and the clothes had changed, but he was still the same Jude.

My Brother.

Boy, I’m proud of my brother.  Dr. Denny Burk posted the video of “An Evening of Eschatology,” where Pastor John Piper moderated a discussion between Sam Storms, Douglas Wilson, and my brother Jim Hamilton on their views of eschatology.  You can watch the video here.

Just something to note: 
Douglas Wilson – 56 years old
Sam Storms – 58 years old
John Piper – 63 years old

Jim Hamilton – 35 years old.

From One Hamilton to Another

Josh Hamilton (no relation) has had quite a roller-coaster life.  From first overall pick in the 1999 Major League Baseball draft to kicked out of baseball because of a drug addiction that resulted in multiple failed drug tests, to back in baseball, to the big leagues, to All Star, to homerun derby hero. 

The roller-coaster recently hit another down-turn, and some folks want to kick the guy while he’s down.  You see, Hamilton credited his faith in Jesus Christ as the reason he fought to kick, and did kick, his drug problem; and as the reason that he was able to save his marriage.  Pictures recently emerged of Hamilton in a bar, shirtless, doing things with women who are not his wife that no man should do with women who are not his wife.  So much for Jesus Christ helping him kick the drug addiction and save his marriage, right?

Not so fast.

Let’s think about this for a second.  Because of Adam and Eve, we know that each and every one of us wakes up a sinner every single day of our lives.  I like the analogy that an apple tree does not become an apple tree when it produces its first apple.  Rather, it produces apples because it is an apple tree.  So it is with you, me, and Josh Hamilton.  We don’t become sinners when we sin.  Rather, we sin because we are sinners.  Every one of Josh Hamilton’s sins- past and present- merely proves the good news of Jesus Christ.  God created a good world, man sinned and God cursed the world as a result of man’s sin.  Every person who has descended from those first two sinners in the garden of Eden is a sinner and therefore needs the mercy of God that is only found in Christ Jesus.

God promises not to leave the guilty unpunished (Exodus 34:7).  We are all guilty.  He will leave none of us unpunished.  Jesus said He is The Way, and that there is no other way to the Father.  This is so because our guilt- the guilt of each and every one of us- will be punished in one of two ways. 

Door #1- we pay the penalty for our guilt, and suffer the punishment of God.  God is eternal, and sinning against God carries an eternal penalty.  Therefore, hell is eternal.  God is the most valuable Person in the universe, and sinning against God is greater than the greatest evil imaginable.  Therefore, the fires of hell are greater than the greatest punishment you or I could imagine.  God will not leave the guilty unpunished.  This eternal, extreme punishment of suffering for eternity in the fire prepared for the devil and his angels is the punishment that we all deserve.  And, all who do not choose “Door #2″ will certainly suffer this fate.

Door #2- we take the offer that God gives us.  The offer of forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with God, and eternal life by believing in Jesus.  Because God punished Jesus on the cross, although He and He alone was innocent, the penalty that He paid removes the guilt of those guilty ones who believe in Jesus.  Each person who believes in Jesus receives two gifts from Jesus.  The first is that we receive His “penal substitutionary atonement.”  The simply means that He paid the penalty (penal) in our place (substitutionary), and by doing so atoned for our sins.  The second gift is that we receive His righteousness.  We have failed God both negatively and positively.  We have been both too bad and not good enough to get to heaven.  The forgiveness of our sins and the payment of our penalty merely gets us out of hell.  We still lack what we need to get to heaven; namely, the righteousness of God.  We are to be righteous as He is righteous, and perfect as He is perfect.  Only by receiving the gift of the righteousness of Jesus by faith can we have the righteousness and perfection of God necessary to be in His presence.

Josh Hamilton, like all Christians, has chosen Door #2.  This does not mean that he is no longer a sinner.  This means that he has been declared righteous before God, but he has not yet been made perfectly righteous.  That day will come.  But, until he dies or Jesus comes back he is and will be a sinner, and his sins merely prove it.  And they prove that he still needs this good news of Jesus every single day, just like you and I do.

Why is abortion a “choice” we should defend?

Rape is a choice, and a choice nobody (I hope) defends. Not all choices are good choices, and we neither should nor do defend all choices. The “pro-choice” stuff is just an effort to distance abortion from abortion. Abortion is an ugly reality, so those in favor of it realize they will find more allies with the label “pro-choice” than with the more accurate label “pro-abortion.”
Nonetheless, why is abortion a choice that we should defend?

Mohler-rific!

I doubt that there is anybody in the world who could listen to Dr. Albert Mohler speak and not think, “He is WAY smarter than me!”  The guy is brilliant, and has practically read every book known to man- which probably go hand-in-hand. 

Dr. Mohler spoke Wednesday morning on the status of the SBC.  In a nutshell, he used two great analogies that should be cause for concern in the Southern Baptist Convention.  General Motors and indoor, enclosed shopping malls.  The analogies were great, not just because they were brilliant and creative, but mainly because they were fitting.  You can watch and listen to Dr. Mohler’s address here.

At one point in the message, Dr. Mohler mentioned regenerate church membership (only those who have been “born again” [John 3], a.k.a. “regenerated” by the Holy Spirit, can become church members).

I think that regenerate church membership is a very significant issue in the SBC. In my experience, regenerate church membership was neither understood nor practiced.  I think that SBC church membership is far too often make-a-decision, walk-the-aisle, say-the-prayer, and get baptized church membership instead of regenerate church membership. 
 
I personally made the decision, walked the aisle, said the prayer, and got baptized when I was six; although I was unregenerate until I was 23.  My name was written in the membership roll at an SBC church long before it was written in heaven (temporally, not theologically).  I know several Christians who were baptized more than once because they were in the same situation.  More importantly, I know several who call themselves Christians, but find the assurance of their salvation in who they are and what they have done (members of such-and-such church; made their decision, walked the aisle, said the prayer, and got baptized on such-and-such date) instead of finding their assurance in who Christ is and what He has done.

One priority in the SBC, I think, should be getting rid of “ghost members”- people who do not actively attend, have moved away, or even died; yet are still on the membership roll.  Another- which is easier said than done, but nonetheless necessary- should be better understanding and applying regenerate church membership.  These go hand-in-hand, I think.

We try to make sure that a person bears the fruit of regeneration before admitting him or her into the church as members, and if a member does not appear to be regenerate (he does not actively attend, for example), we treat him or her like an unregenerate person and remove him or her from the membership roll.

At the end of the day, we should desire to see people’s names written in heaven more than we desire to see their name written in our membership roll.  If a person is unregenerate, his name is not written in heaven (John 3:3).  Therefore, his name should not be written in our membership roll.  We are only hurting him, and hurting our church (and the SBC), by allowing him to be an unregenerate church member.