BEDLAM AMONG THE BOOKMANS

BEDLAM AMONG THE BOOKMANS

The John Bookman family is in turmoil; a cyclone has hit their hearth and home. 

The Bookmans have come to understand grace, that salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone; no works, no feeling sorry for their sins, no walking down an aisle, no begging God to save them, no shedding great tears of repentance, no promises to do better in the future, and no giving up of their sins. 

Understanding this and believing this has brought them into the Kingdom of God and they're a thankful family. But they are also a family in an uproar and the cause of the furor is the church in which they've been ensconced since the Flood. Their roots go deep into the bedrock of the First Church. John is a deacon there, and has been since Hector was a pup. In fact, no one can remember when the venerable Mr. Bookman wasn't a deacon. 

Barbara Bookman's roots run deep, too. She's the president of the Women's Missionary Union, the go-to girl when there's work to be done, a visit to be made, and a meal to cook. All the ladies of First Church admire and envy Barbara's casserole dinners which she prepares with care for the sick and the recovering. Barbara guards her casseroles from the envious; she keeps her recipes in a safe deposit box at the Wells Fargo Bank ten minutes from her home. Others may contribute to the "Pan-Sational Cook Book" of the church, but Barbara never does.

Their children, Bobby, Brittany, and Basil are in the Sunday school and the youth groups appropriate for their ages. The children had been in the Cradle Roll since birth. Even their dog, Bocephus,  attended First Church on "Bring-Your-Pet-to-Church-Sunday" when the pastor was teaching about Noah's Ark. 

When the light of the glorious gospel of Christ dawned on John and Barbara Bookman, it also occurred to them that the First Church wasn't teaching salvation by faith alone in Christ alone. They were disseminating a "gospel" shot through with works, moralism, be-goodism, and doing something in addition to trusting Christ alone.

John went to the pastor, Pastor Goodpasture, to talk to him about the gospel, but he, a man who preached six inches above contradiction, got all huffy at John, telling him, "It just can't be that easy! You have to do something!"

Pastor Goodpasture  became especially splenetic when, as John was talking about I Corinthians 15:3-5 and John 3:16, he thought about his parents who thought some works had to be involved in salvation somewhere. He got really angry and stormed out of the room, but then realized it was his office, so he came back and listened some more, but when all was said and done, John got nowhere and he knew it.

The Bookmans realized that a false, Lordship salvation gospel, like a microbe, had infected everything in First Church from the deacons to the Sunday school teachers, to the youth pastor. They had come to understand that the First Church was infected with legalism--works plus faith for salvation and a steady stream of man-made rules to keep so they could be "good" Christians.

John and Barbara, not knowing what to do next, began searching the Scriptures and ran across some hard words: "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you" (II Cor. 6:17).

That verse applied directly to the Bookmans and they knew it. Paul was talking about the false teachers who were luring the Corinthian believers away from the truth and he was telling them to get away from them and get away from them now. There was no getting around that verse, and that's what caused the family explosion. The Bible was telling them to get themselves and their children away from the false teachers who had infected and infested the First Church and into a grace oriented church free of legalism, one which presented the accurate gospel and taught the Bible, not man's rules.

But the Bookmans were ingrained at First Church. Their toil, their tears, and their tithed treasures were there. Their grandparents had started it. And, to them, the most important thing of all, their friends were in that church. 

Leave their invested treasure? Leave their ancestral heritage? Leave their friends? Say it isn't so, Paul!

As their turmoil continued, John and Barbara crashed into Matthew 8:21-22, which caused more mental pandemonium: "Another of the disciples said to Him, 'Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.'  But Jesus said to him, 'Follow Me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead.'"

They realized that, since they had the salvation issue settled,  if they were going to be followers of  Christ, they had to let their heritage and their friends go. 

They realized that the whole thing boiled down to this: What did they love more, their heritage or the gospel?  Their present power and prestige or the gospel? What did they love more, their friends or the gospel?

John and Barbara Bookman have enough biblical information. The will of God is clear.

What do you think they did? 
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Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, and the author of Truthspeak. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing sue.bove@gmail.com and requesting "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Newsletter."

Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:

notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org

 

MOMMY AND DADDY DIGGING WITH THE DEAD

MOMMY AND DADDY DIGGING WITH THE DEAD

It comes across to us as one of the most insensitive statements ever made. Jesus has been issuing a call for discipleship and when He invites one man to follow Him, the man tells the Lord, "Let me first go and bury my father." To this request, Jesus answers, "Follow Me; and let the dead bury their dead."

Good grief! Doesn't He care? This is outrageous! After the news of a death of a loved one, our humanity gives wide latitude to accommodate whatever a person says, be it said in anger, despair, or frustration. "Certainly," we'd say, "take as much time as you need." 

Is Jesus being harsh and out of bounds? Only if we give the text a superficial reading. 

What appears to be going on here is that the father of the man to whom Jesus has issued the call to follow Him isn't dead. The custom of the day was that when a person died in the sultry Near East, the funeral was that day, the interment within 24 hours. Had this man's father been ill and dying, the man wouldn't have been with Jesus, but would have been at home making the arrangements. How could he not be with the family at the time his father was to be buried? What was he doing out and about and in the presence of Jesus if that were the case?

No, what's much more likely is that the man is telling Jesus that he'll follow Him, but not now. "Wait until my father dies, then I'll join You," is what he's saying. How many years will that be? Who knows? He wants to delay doing what Jesus wants him to do now so he can see to his parent(s) in their declining years. 

No, that's not discipleship. In discipleship Jesus is first; He has the preeminence.

We learn from this that the permission of one's parents isn't necessary in order to follow Christ. He and His will have priority over parents. A disciple doesn't seek Mommy's or Daddy's permission to do God's will. This is a major reason why many never go to the mission field--they're caving in to Mommy and Daddy who've pitched a fit because they'll be taking the grandchildren away to some distant land; Mommy and Daddy must come first or they'll get all huffy.

Then comes Jesus' famous statement: "Let the dead bury their dead." This statement is a paronomasia. He's saying, "Let the [spiritually] dead bury their [physically] dead," using the same word ("dead") in two different senses. Brilliant!

Now, let's think further about this statement.

The marching orders for the disciples had nothing to do with mending society. Their message after Christ's earthly ministry was that all men everywhere needed to repent ("change their minds") about how one becomes righteous before God (faith in Christ alone, rather than works).

We believers are citizens of a kingdom which isn't here, Christ's kingdom, but it's coming. We've been removed positionally from the kingdom of darkness and transferred over the kingdom of Christ (Col. 1:13).  Since we are seated with Christ in the heavenlies (Eph. 1), since our citizenship is in heaven, we're to set our minds on things above, not on the things of the earth (Col. 3:1-2). 

If we try to establish His kingdom now before He comes, what do we get in return? Absolutely nothing. We will fail, no doubt about it. Efforts to pass laws won't bring in His Kingdom. The unbeliever doesn't want His laws and is only embittered and angered when we try to force him to live like what he's not, a Christian. We have a problem if we expect the spiritually dead to act as if they are spiritually alive and will applaud our efforts to make them share a biblical worldview.

Remember the Reconstruction after the War Between the States? The radical Republicans tried to force the South to bend to its will and produced a region of the country called, "The Solid South." For a hundred years, because of the Radical Republicans, the south would vote for a yellow dog it it ran on the Democratic ticket rather than a Republican. If we expect the praise of the unbeliever, we'll wind up depressed and disillusioned, bitter and broken. 

I was in the home of a lady whose TV was tuned to MSNBC. It was constant and went on and on and on, no matter what happening in the home, even if we were trying to have a conversation. (A good practice to follow with guests in the home is, if you're going to watch TV, watch TV; if you're going to talk, talk, and turn off the TV.)

A woman once complained that I didn't visit her enough. But whenever I did, she never turned off "Jeopardy" or the weather report, or whatever was on, so I concluded she was a chronic complainer who really didn't want to visit, and I certainly didn't want to watch the weather, so I didn't return.)

I know what you're thinking: you're thinking, "MSNBC? What a waste of her time." But where's your focus? Fox News? Facebook? The Supreme Court? The Congress? The President? The Republican Party? The Tea Party? The Democrat Party? David Barton calls for Christians to focus on making the U. S. into a theocracy by taking over "education, the media, the government, religion, and entertainment." (This is called "Dominion Theology" but that's not the role of the church. He's basing this on Is. 2:2, a promise given to Israel at the Messiah's Second Advent, not something for the church to do.)

Our focus is to be on Christ. The man called to discipleship was focused on Mommy and Daddy.

The activities of the Congress and the Supreme Court are activities of the spiritually dead. The activities of the Tea Party and the Libertarian Party are the activities of the spiritually dead and to focus on those activities is to grab a shovel and dig with the dead. (The key words in this case are "focus" and "priority.")

 We have a higher focus--following Christ to make disciples. Like someone said, if we do that, if we make just one disciple, we'll do what the Apostles did--we'll leave the world a better place than we found it.
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Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, and the author of Truthspeak. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing sue.bove@gmail.com and requesting "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Newsletter."

Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:

notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org


 

HELICOPTER PARENTS

HELICOPTER PARENTS

Helicopter parents is the term for parents who hover over their children, the sort of parent we’d call “overprotective.” An example of helicopter parenting occurred in Colorado Springs in 2012, where, at a neighborhood event, a whole host of parents got way too involved.

You’re thinking, “Well, after all, what parent hasn’t gotten worked up during their child’s Little League or Youth Football game?” (I've seen parents running up and down the sidelines of soccer games screaming at their child.)

But this wasn’t a baseball or a football game. This was a neighborhood Easter egg hunt! Unruly parents hurdled over the rope marking the boundary of the hunt, and started scooping up the eggs for themselves, since, as one parent said, “You better believe I'm going to help my kid get one of those eggs. I promised my kid an Easter egg hunt and I want to give him an even edge." This, in spite of the fact that there were thousands of the colored eggs lying in plain sight for the kiddies.

With the larger reach of their biscuit hooks, these helicopter parents easily pushed the children aside to grab the goodies. How proud they must have been at the end of the day.

One parent, however, takes the award for "Most Hovering Mother of the Year." She has two boys in college and she schedules  every hour of their lives, in addition to monitoring their personal email accounts and bank account balances. She obtains copies of every syllabus and emails them their homework assignments for every class, which they never miss because she gives them wake-up calls every morning. She performs all these services as she holds down a job. How's that for hovering! 

Wow! Has she never heard of the biblical responsibility that parents train their children to be independent? I wonder if their bosses are going to give them a wake up call every morning to make sure they're not late to work. (They won't, but she will.)

I can picture her at dinner when the lads are home from college. I can see her filling each spoon with food, placing it their mouths, then massaging their throats for safe swallowing.

Parents have become super safety conscious. Gone are the halcyon days of being a child and bouncing around in the breeze in a fast moving pickup. No. By law, the parent must purchase a car seat in which they must always buckle their little bodies. I remember seeing a pack of at least nine Cub Scouts in the back of a white pickup arriving to play a baseball game singing, "How Much is that Doggie in the Window" at the top of their lungs, having a great time. (They piled in the pickup and left in a depressed state: we beat them to win the championship.)

Today, when a child skates or rides a bike, the latest, safest helmet must be atop the cranium and buckled snugly under the chin. (Not saying these are bad things, just sayin'.)

At Port Washington in New York, officials at Weber Middle School are worried that students are getting hurt during recess. They've instituted a ban on footballs, baseballs, lacrosse balls, or anything that might hurt someone on school grounds. They're not only banning playing football; tossing the pigskin is also verboten. The Port Washington czars have also banned cartwheels and games of tag.

 Did you hear the story of the ultra helicopter mother? She wouldn’t let her kids play football, baseball, basketball, or soccer. She relented and did let them compete on the chess team, but they had to wear helmets. (That’s a joke; lighten up!)

Let's move to an area where helicopter parents are as rare as congressional fiscal responsibility and it's the one area in which we need them. In fact, we might say that it's an area in which parents show little, if any, interest at all in their child's safety. I'm talking about their spiritual safety, the biblical education of their children.

I'm not talking about the parent who drops the child off at the door of the church for Sunday school, then heads for Starbucks; that's too obvious to mention.

I'm talking about something deeper; something that escapes our notice because it's culturally ingrained in us. It's the separation of the child from his parents for his spiritual training.

Let me explain by asking, "How well do you know your child's Sunday school teacher?" "How well do you know what that teacher is teaching?" Is he/she presenting the accurate gospel or does he/she have works mixed into it, like Lordship salvation? How about the youth pastor? How well do you know him? Ever quizzed a Sunday school teacher or a youth pastor on the gospel? Have you just assumed they're OK? How about visiting your child's Sunday school class so you can hear what they're hearing? How about taking an in-depth look at the teaching and the ministry of the youth pastor. After all, you're trusting them with you kids, and what if you learned that your children are learning the ways of the world in that group?

Are you assuming that the teacher at your Christian school is presenting faith alone in Christ alone, or are you depending on the school's doctrinal statement to tell you? Be careful. One parent learned that the principal didn't agree with his own school's "faith alone" statement. He said, "There just has to be more to being saved than 'just believe.'" (He was firing teachers who taught faith alone.) When it came to the teachers in the school presenting the gospel, one parent found the situation to be desperate.

The Christian camp to which you send your youth--have you been a noble Berean and checked it out? Many camps are so hungry for counselors, they'll lower their standards and have some leading the campers into grace, others into law. One parent found that the materials used at a Christian camp instructed the children not sin for a day and come back and tell the others how they did it.

This is one area in which I wish there were helicopter parents because their biblical instruction, their introduction to the gospel from someone other than yourself is as crucial as it gets. There one mother who came to a church for the first time who, before she put her children in children's church had a sit-down with the youth pastor and gave him the third degree over the gospel and sat in her daughters' Sunday school class just to make sure all was in biblical order. I say, "May her tribe increase!"

Let's go deeper. Where did we come up with the idea that children must be separated from their parents at church and in Sunday school? What could be better than their hearing and interacting with their parents and other adults concerning the gospel and the truths of Scripture in open discussion, asking questions and getting biblical answers?

I noticed a while back that teens have a difficult time relating to and talking to someone outside their own age group. I've found that it's a rare teenager who can carry on a conversation that's more than a few monosyllables with an adult. Why? Because they're segregated from adults. And that's not their fault--their schools and their churches are keeping them separate.

It would be eye-opening to sit down and figure out how many hours a day/week you and your child are separated. Take a typical first grader--he leaves for school at 7:05 AM and returns to hearth and home at 2:45 PM. That's an absence of 7 hours, 45 minutes per day, and a total of 38.75 hours a week! If both parents have to work to pay the excessive taxes we have to deal with, then it's after school care for the tykes, adding more hours absent from the parents.

We could add to that "lessons mania,"the phenomenon of enrolling children in acting lessons, horseback riding lessons, violin lessons, judo lessons, and on top of that, getting them on soccer teams, softball teams, and youth football teams. All that means more time under the influence of anyone and everyone other than the parents. 

Once the family is reunited at the end of the day, there's the meal to prepare or go get from the local fast food chains, homework to do, and then it's time for bed, so everyone can get up and do it all over again.

Julius Caesar began The Gallic Wars, by writing, "All Gaul is divided into three parts." So is the modern family: father, mother, children finding themselves in an AAA condition: All divided Almost All the time.

You will one day leave your church in the hands of your children and their friends.

That's food for serious thought.
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Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, and the author of Truthspeak. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing sue.bove@gmail.com and requesting "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Newsletter."

Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:

notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org

CHOCOLATE IS A FOOD GROUP

CHOCOLATE IS A FOOD GROUP

It was a few years ago that I was sitting in the doctor's examining room listening to his telling me something I'd never heard before. Oh, I'd heard it about others, but, like the saying goes, "That can't happen to me. Those words are for somebody else; not me." 

What had prompted my visit to the doctor's office happened while I was running with a friend: all of a sudden, I had this perplexing, penetrating, pernicious pain. I described it to the physician: "It was like somebody came up behind me, hit me in my lower back, left side, and just kept on pushing."

He told me right up front: "You have a kidney stone." 

Me:"Does that mean surgery?"

Doctor: "By the time they're through with you, you'll wish you'd had surgery."(This scared me. I thought he was talking about the doctors, but he was referring to the stone as "they.")

So much for bedside manner; this doctor never went to charm school. 

He went on, "Drink eight glasses of water a day, and you'll never get a kidney stone. And no soft drinks."

Me: "Now  you're telling me?"

Doctor: "Eight glasses of water a day, and no Dr. Peppers." That sounds boring, but I believed him.

The Mayo Clinic says that I should exercise 150 minutes a week and do strength training at least twice a week to live a healthier and longer life. I trust the Mayo Clinic and the study they did. It rings true.

Dr. Lilian Cheung, a lecturer in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, says that I need about two cups of fruit and two and a half cups of vegetables per day. I believe the good doctor Lilian when it comes to nutrition.

A man and his fiance are having a disagreement in his driveway. He's a Christian. The argument  heats up. He loses his temper, his face is turning red and she's not backing down in this verbal battle. He clinches his fist and hits her right in the face, knocking her down. Her head hits the concrete and she's dead on impact. Long story short, he sits in a Dallas prison today, a convicted murderer.
You ask, "Can a Christian do that? Kill someone?" 

People answer: "No way. A Christian couldn't do that. He must not have really believed or he wouldn't have done that."

A believer looks a man right in the eyes and, with intent to deceive, lies to him. He's lying and he knows it. Given another opportunity, he lies again and he knows he's lying. Can a believer do that?

People say, "No way. He can't be a believer and lie like that, maybe once, but surely not twice."

 Billy Graham and Charles Templeton were partnered in evangelistic campaigns in the late 1940's, both fast friends who spoke in tandem to great crowds. But Graham wasn't the big draw. It was Templeton who drew the crowds that Billy also spoke to. The big name was Charles Templeton. He made the headlines, not Billy. Billy was second fiddle. People came to hear the first oratorical fiddle and that was Templeton. Templeton was the man. He knew it, the crowds knew it, and Billy Graham knew it.

One day, Charles calls Billy to a meeting and tells him, "I no longer believe the Bible. Jesus was the the best there ever was, but He wasn't God. I'm quitting, resigning everything. I'm going to school, to Princeton, if they'll take me, so I can study the new theologians. Come with me, Billy."

And Templeton, the best there was at the time, did just that. He denied Christ and Him crucified, denied His deity, His resurrection, all the miracles, and headed for groves of academe, where he studied the neoorthodox theologians, especially the German ones.

Wait a minute! All that time drawing great crowds, all that time preaching the gospel. What a fake! He must never have really believed. A true believer couldn't ever deny Christ, could he?

The scenarios above are real events. The Christian who killed his finance in his driveway joins two believers who murdered someone--Moses and David ("a man after God's own heart"). The man who lied twice and compromised his wife by doing so? You know him, that was Abraham, the man the Bible calls, "The friend of God."Believers one and all.

And Templeton? He joins Demas, co-worker of Paul, who deserted the faith, and left Paul in the lurch. Why? Because his love "for this present world" overwhelmed his love for Christ (II Timothy 4:10). It happens all the time. Send a Christian kid to college and he comes back spouting atheism.

We can add David's son, Solomon, to the bad boy list. If you want a sordid snapshot of the last years of King Solomon, author of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, read I Kings 11:1-8 and note his turning into a rampaging polygamist which led to his prostration before Chemosh, Molech, and other gods and goddesses of stone. Solomon, Demas, and Templeton are in the line up of those who left the faith.

Can a "real" Christian do any of those things, really?

Of course! A Christian can do anything he wants to do. Sure, he pays a price, a high one, like jail, for example, and/or divine discipline and self-induced misery, misery like Abraham endured when his wife wound up the personal property for another man's pleasure because he lied and put her in that position. (You can read the rest of the story in Genesis 12 and Genesis 20.)

Peter turned coward and denied the faith. (John 18 and Galatians 2) In the Galatians text, when Paul confronted Peter, he didn't say, "Peter, you must never have really believed, or you wouldn't be doing what you're doing."
Nobody says of the liar Abraham, and the murderers Moses, David, and the deserters, Solomon and Demas, and the coward Peter, "They must not have really believed."

Let's back up.

 Here's a confession, a mea culpa: I don't drink eight glasses of water a day. Maybe some days I do, but not many. I don't exercise 150 minutes a week; there are just too many other things that need to be done. Sometimes I get in an hour a week. Strength training? That means a gymnasium and people sweat in those places. Fruits and vegetables? Fruits and vegetables are rabbit food; I consider chocolate a food group.

Nonetheless, I really believe that I should drink eight glasses of water a day and walk 150 minutes a week. I believe I should eat a prescribed number of servings of broccoli, spinach, and turnip greens (the nastiest vegetable known to man) and two cups of apples and oranges a day.
You can say, "You're inconsistent. You believe those things, but you don't do them," and you'd be right. But you can't say that I don't trust the study of the Mayo Clinic or that I don't believe the doctor with the poor bedside manner is right when he prescribes eight boring glasses of water a day. I do. My being inconsistent doesn't mean that I don't believe what they're saying.

Are you always consistent with what you believe? Do you believe the highway speed limit is 55? Do you go 60? 70? 80? If so, you're inconsistent with what you believe, but you believe the posted speed limit. Your inconsistency doesn't mean you don't believe the signs on the Interstate.
Our inconsistencies, even severe ones, blatant ones, heinous ones, don't mean that we never trusted Christ. Our inconsistencies mean that, during that time, we're being carnal, living like the unbeliever. Those patterns of carnality don't mean we're lost or didn't believe the gospel in the first place.

(What about Templeton's denial of the faith? Did that mean he was lost?--see Romans 11:29 and II Timothy 2:13.)

Always remember: It's the Object of your faith that saves you and keeps you saved, not the consistency of your faith (Hebrews 10:10, 14).