Justinroy

This morning I passed a tour bus with 411god.net plastered on the side, “do you ever wish God would call you and tell you what to do?” was scribbled in a hipster font underneath the logo, so I had to come home and check it out.

If you’ve ever thought about putting God on hold, now is your chance. 411god.net will call you (morning, mid-day or afternoon) and give you a daily dose of deity. Professionally recorded, 411God.com will read you Bible verses geared to give you confidence in yourself.

Here’s an excerpt from the site.

What if God came to you? What if He helped you know what to do? What if He gave you confidence about your future? How ’bout if He called you on your cell? Would ya answer?

God speaks. He wrote a book and He wants you to know it….Here’s a chance for you to get it on your terms.

Here’s a voicemail from God

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Simple. Convenient. Understandable. Life Changing.

Just to repeat – “Here’s a chance for you to get it on your terms.”

This is American christianity at it’s best (or worst).  It’s lazy, self-centered and takes God’s Word out of context.  I love (/sarcastic) their logo. It emanates ”You’ve been holding the key to success the whole time- it’s your phone”

UGHH…

The church doesn’t need more help to alienate her from God. We’re prone to whoredom; and if knowing God’s Word is knowing God, we’ve made Him a distant relative we send to voicemail when we’re busy.

I’m not going to list all the things I think are wrong with this service but don’t fall for a god that leaves a voicemail, we have enough of those already.

God has made Himself known through creation ,”the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge” and “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). 411God arrives to save the day because you’re too busy to really read the Bible arent you? Wouldn’t it be much more convenient for God to call you whenever you were ready? Why would you want to read the whole Bible just to get to the important verses? We’ll just call and tell you the verses you need to know.

Even if there is some merrit in 411god.net, the Bible is not merely some divine guidebook of disconnected  text messages or voicemails and  the church doesn’t need help turning God’s Word into something it’s not.  Instead of the Bible being God’s story, 411God.net turns it into our daily dose of divine niceties that’ll give you confidence.

All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. Isaiah 66:2

Clarification:
I’m not so much against the service that 411God provides (audio bible) but the assumptions that 411God makes about the Bible and what people really need… Here, take the call, it’s from God

what do you think?

I’m just asking, does the format on sunday mornings matter, or is it a non-issue?

If we “break” the exposition into 3 parts, with singing in between, does it help or hurt the teaching of the word?

Does it help people pay attention, or is it a better way to “entertain” the audience?

What is the goal of the format? (promote worship/promote exposition /Does exposition lead to worship?)

What would induce a change? (i.e. genuine care, kicks and giggles, staying true to God’s word, relevance)

Just some questions to think about.

If you don’t have time to read finally alive, click the above link and download Piper’s sermons on the new birth. They’re very helpful. Click the picture above to download all the sermons. It’s roughly 250 megabytes

One of the clearest examples of God showing his glory was when Moses wanted to see God’s glory, and he said, “Show me your Glory.” (My initial reaction to this verse was to pop in an old Third Day album and listen to Mac Powell sing like a songbird,  but I resisted).

But, back to the subject at hand…(really, you can stop laughing now) God answers Moses by saying, “I will cause my goodness to pass in front of you and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion” (Exodus 33:19). Just so we’re on the same page, Moses wants to see God’s glory and God says he will cause his goodness to pass in front of him.

Then, God fulfills his promise to Moses. Moses stood on Mt. Sinai and “the lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name the lord. And he passed in front of Moses proclaiming “the lord the lord, the compassionate and gracious god, slow to anger abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin (Ex 34:5-7).

The two important Hebrew words are hesed (variously rendered; steadfast love, mercy, covenant love, graciousness) and met (truth or truthfulness).  hased and met are used over and over to describe God’s compassion or goodness in the Old Testament.

The essential thing to grasp is that God’s glory is supremely his goodness

Now, fast-forward to John’s allusion to Exodus in John 1:14.  John already has the reader in Exodus; a Greek speaking Jew would have read the beginning of 1:14 more like this, “the Word pitches his tabernacle, or lived in his tent, amongst us” (carson). So, John is already taking his readers to chapter 25, but then he states,  “and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  John has seen “his glory” glory that can only be from the father, and the only one who can possess this glory must be from the Father (Jn 1:18)

Grace and truth is John’s  word pairing that relates back to hesed and met. Carson seems to think that John is moving his readers back to Exodus and that the glory (goodness) passing in front of Moses was now incarnate, dwelling among them, and they have seen his glory, word-made-flesh……. God’s ultimate self-revelation.

So, how does this relate to the Cross?

It relates to the cross because Jesus, the God-man, is most glorified in the cross, (John 7:39; 12:16; 13; 31-32) therefore, God is most glorified in the cross.  And, what did we say God’s glory was? His goodness. God’s ultimate glory was in the cross because he displayed the ultimate good.  This is why Jesus Christ is the true/real/ultimate revelation of God  (jn 1:9).

With this in mind, when we read that God loves the world  ( Jn 3:16) we should view it in light of God’s character because it took the ultimate revelation of God to display his love for a world that did not know Him. John 3:16 shouldn’t give us warm fuzzies, as if we were lovable, but it should testify to God’s character— that he loved a world that hated him.

In short, God’s glory is found in the cross of Christ because the cross displays the perfect goodness of God’s character, in that, Jesus, the perfect and spotless lamb of God, substituted himself for a people who were in rebellion against him.

Just for a second, think of God’s glory (Ex 24:16/ Is 6) …. How majestic He is and how zealous He is for his own glory (Isaiah 48:9-11)…

Now think of the amount of glory God has (if it could be quantitative) and relate it to how much goodness it took for God to redeem his people. It’s sobering…….(Rom. 3:10-12; 14:23: Heb. 11:6)…… It took nothing less than the God who is necessarily perfect in goodness and power to redeem such a lost world.

Dwell on God’s goodness in view of his awesome glory, and we’ll begin to understand 1 Corinthians 1:29 “so that no one may boast in God’s presence.

I’m teaching a Bible study on John. Here’s the poster I made for it.

I hope to eventually blog some of my notes on John and share some insights.

I also think that the font I used for John 1:14 looks like the font on the front of Crazy Love by Francis Chan

During our church meeting last night, we were encouraged to proclaim what we’re thankful for.  I was surprised that no one mentioned God’s word or God himself, or his immutability. I was silent and didn’t proclaim my thankfulness during the church service; I wrote it down on a note pad.

I praise God for his word, not for it’s conformity to our standard of beauty and truth- but that it is God’s revelation of himself, and it offends me, it exposes me, and it transforms me – giving me the ability to see the ultimate truth and purist beauty that is God through the Glory of Jesus Christ.

I’m still at odds with my silence and why I refused to speak. I wanted to. My “gut” told me it was the right thing to do. Maybe I’m still uncomfortable around EBC. Maybe I don’t feel like I’m apart of the church. I’m sure I could conjure a million different reasons for my silence, all they way down to my selfish, introspective personality that keeps me from developing biblical friendships.

Matthew 5:18

For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.