Thoughts on Luke 16:14-16

Luke 16:14-16
The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him. And he said to them, "You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God. "The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it."


The Pharisees had major problems. Jesus never shied away from confronting them with the error of their ways. In this little discussion he has with them many things jumped out at me today.

Here are some of my thoughts:

#1 - “What is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.”
What they prided themselves on and was applauded by men was actually offensive to God. And these men were seen as the cream of the religious crop. Empty religious acts may fool many people, but not God.

I should not seek to be put on the proverbial pedestal. My name may never be known among the “who’s who” lists. But, am I loving the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, and mind? That is what truly matters.

#2 – "The Law and the Prophets were until John, since then the good news is preached.”
The Law and the Prophets bear witness of the coming Messiah. The one whom John the Baptist said, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” And he also said, "I am unworthy to even untie his sandals.”“

#3 – “Everyone forces his way into it.”
The Pharisees and many others believed that you could force yourself into God’s kingdom. They had more laws, stipulations, and requirements than the Texas Penal Code Book. And they prided themselves on keeping every single one. Why? They thought it earned them a special place with God. The truth was quite the opposite.

That same idea is prevalent today. I talk to so many lost, churched people who still believe in some type of works based salvation. You cannot force your way into the kingdom of God.

#4 – Not one iota of the law has passed away.
An iota is a Hebrew vowel point. It was literally a tiny dot that was added to the root consonants of a Hebrew word. It was small and seemingly insignificant.
Jesus says that not one iota will pass away.
Here is the point that jumped out at me. The context is crucial. He is conversing with the Pharisees who prided themselves on keeping the law. Jesus demonstrates that they have not and this is what judges them. There are two ways they have not kept the law.
First, by their additions and subtractions they have elevated their own opinions above the law of God. They have created stipulations that allow them to get away with things that are contrary to the law. Jesus gives them an example in the following verses.
Secondly, the major purpose of the Law and Prophets was it pointed to the coming Christ. Here He is, Jesus, and they have rejected Him, and thus rejected the law.

I am thankful that God's grace is not something that I can earn. I pray that all my service will be more than a religious act, but an act of true devotion, love, and worship of the Messiah who died for my sins.

Forgiven Much

Luke 7:47
“He who is forgiven little, loves little.”

I have been thinking a lot lately about the ten commandments. Specifically, I have been thinking about the use of the law in evangelism. This is not new, but it is new to me. I have always made a point to highlight the concept of sin with anyone I witnessed to. This is a must. In fact, evangelism without any mention of sin is not biblical evangelism.

But, recently I have been more intentional in using the ten commandments to confront people with their specific sins. This is biblical and serves a great purpose.

If people are unaware that they have broken the law and deserve the full punishment for their iniquity they will be unlikely to see the need for a Savior.

Luke 7:47 takes place as Jesus is eating dinner at a self-righteous Pharisees house. While eating, a known sinful women comes in and anoints Jesus’ feet with her tears and expensive perfume. The Pharisee objects because Jesus allowed a sinner to touch him.

At this moment Jesus turns to Simon Peter to make a point using an illustration. There are two men who owe money. One owes fifty bucks(denarii) the other owes 500. The owner of the money cancels the debt of each man. Who would be more grateful? Obviously the one who owed more. The one with the greater debt.

The Pharisee didn’t see himself as a sinner, and therefore saw no need for a Savior. The woman understood the depth of her iniquity and responded with gratitude and sacrificial love.

The Pharisee was just as much a sinner as the woman, he just refused to see it. Therefore, he did not respond to Christ in the same way the woman did.

There are many people who come to Jesus as an insurance policy or because they want a better life. They love God very little. It is different when someone comes to Jesus because they are confronted by the magnitude of their lawlessness. They are painfully aware that they have broken God’s law and stand in the path of facing the full judgment for their sin. The run to a Savior and stay with that Savior who rescues them from the depth of their iniquity. They love much!

I am beginning to see the need to confront people with the ten commandments to make it clear the reality and severity of sin. Hopefully, this will produce believers who love Jesus much!

Too Important To Miss

Take from the Baptist Press:

Flood of pornography breaching the church
Posted on Jul 6, 2007 by Jerry Pierce/Southern Baptist TEXAN
GRAPEVINE, Texas (BP)--

Divorce lawyers are noting its increasing influence.In Great Britain, it's blamed for a 20 percent jump in sexual assaults perpetrated by kids as young as 11.In the United States, the adult film industry sees it as a $13 billion a year business -- more money than mainstream Hollywood generates.

The numbers are staggering: up to 45 million "unique" users visited adult websites in a recent month, as tracked by Nielsen Net Ratings.With the advent of wireless handheld devices, porn is accessible via mobile phones and similar devices."Certainly, this is going to make it easier to view porn in more places than ever," Pamela Paul, author of "Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families," told USA Today."The flood of pornography in our culture has desensitized society and has contributed to the fact that our nation is wandering aimlessly in dangerous, uncharted territory," Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said in a statement e-mailed to the Southern Baptist TEXAN.

That flood has entered the church doors, leaving anecdotal and documented evidence that families and churches are being damaged, mostly by Christian men -– some of whom are ministers -- who succumb to what Land calls a cheap imitation of God-designed sex."Sexuality is a far bigger and more troubling issue in the church than any other moral issue," Land said.The National Council on Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity reports that an estimated 2 million

Internet users are addicted to pornography. Christian men are among them.In an August 2000 survey of its readership by Christianity Today magazine, 36 percent of laymen who responded had visited a sexually explicit Internet site, of which 44 percent visited such sites "a few times" in the past year.Additionally, the six-year-old research showed that 51 percent of pastors admitted pornography was a possible temptation, 37 percent said porn is a struggle and 33 percent had viewed Internet pornography at least once a year.

A PASTOR'S REPORT

One pastor who spoke to the TEXAN about the problem said the incidence of sexual immorality in the church, with pornography as the culprit, has increased in the last five years.The pastor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he has counseled two fellow ministry leaders regularly over the last year who have lost their ministries because of porn and related problems. One lost his marriage and the other is fighting to keep his, the pastor said.One was a para-church leader whose wife discovered his addiction. "He's doing treatment, he's doing counseling, he's doing accountability," the pastor said. "He's doing everything he can do."The man did not have extramarital intercourse, but "he was doing the pornography, topless bars.... He spent thousands of dollars on this type of stuff. This guy was in ministry."

The pastor estimated that "80 percent of all young ministers have at some point struggled with this on some level. Now, that may be as simple as he got sent a naked picture and he looked at it and that was the end of it. But on some level, I would say virtually every minister under the age of 30 has had some kind of experience with it in their adult lifetime."He added: "If you're talking about just men in general under the age of 40, I'll tell you it's well above 50 percent that at least occasionally use pornography. I'm saying Christian men. Statistics show that as well."

Henry Rogers, corporate chaplain at Dallas-based Interstate Batteries and author of the book "The Silent War: Ministering to Those Trapped in the Deception of Pornography," told the radio audience of "For Faith & Family" that porn's proliferation is "ripping the soul out of the American male."Rogers said the problem is "within the church walls and not only in the pews but in the pulpit as well."The mind is the battlefield, Rogers said, noting the crucial Christian discipline of taking thoughts captive."We have an adversary who wants to take us out," Rogers said. "He may wait 10, 15, 20 years. There is no age at which we can relax, thinking we are immune to sexual temptation."Rogers added: "Confession is a powerful deterrent to temptation."

HOPE FOUND IN A BOOK

Stephen Lawhon, 32, a member of Central Baptist Church in College Station, Texas, and a longtime Christian believer, said he attempted to fight the temptation of pornography for years until he found hope in the simple warnings of Scripture.Lawhon said that even though he grew up in a Christian family, his occasional encounters with porn as a kid led to a problem that he recognized as early as age 15."I started seeing porn at 11 or 12 years old. There would be a dirty magazine outside somebody's house. It just escalated from there. I always had an unquenchable thirst for it."All the while, he was a leader in his youth group. He even recalled talking to his youth minister once about it."He prayed with me and patted me on the back and said, 'Hey, it's going to be alright.' That was it. And that's not a slam on him. We just didn't know what to do with this back then. We just didn't talk about that stuff," Lawhon said.

In college at Texas A&M, Lawhon said he joined Central Baptist and was in college ministry leadership there, though he still battled pornography."I was leading this double life. I had this secret compartment tucked away. When it really took off for me was when it became available online. I would never get caught dead buying pornography. But I would download it in my room. It scares me to think where I'd be now if I had the access that kids and men have today," he said.He once got rid of his external computer modem, then he got rid of his computer altogether. But his compulsion led him to the school computer lab, where he'd download porn on floppy disks, he said.After meeting his future wife, he told her he had struggled with pornography, but he said she underestimated the problem.

He thought that once he was married he would no longer desire pornography, but he was wrong."The pastor who married us told us whatever problems we bring into our marriage would be magnified in the marriage. He was right, and I nearly lost my marriage over it."Lawhon said he bought book after book on the subject, but, "It wasn't until I picked up the Bible that [God] really showed me He wrote the book thousands of years ago on this subject. It wasn't until I was truly broken that I started climbing out of it."

Lawhon said he has found hope and strength from his church family, his wife and, more than any other resource, the Bible, particularly Proverbs 7 and the warning about the harlot who lurks on every corner.He said King David was in the wrong place when he lusted after Bathsheba and committed adultery with her, while Joseph faced his temptation with Potiphar's wife while tending to his responsibilities. Lawhon said that through the lens of Proverbs 7, one can see that Joseph had an advantage because he was where he was supposed to be while David, who should have been at war, wasn't."The Bible talks about how we will not be tempted beyond what we are able to endure, and when we're tempted God will provide a way out. What does that mean? What does that look like in real life? The Holy Spirit is huge in overcoming this. The Holy Spirit will bring accountability in my life.

When I feel temptation coming on, I start to drift where I'm not supposed to drift ... and the phone will ring and it's a friend from church," Lawhon said."My point is, the Holy Spirit brings accountability into our lives. And when that way out presents itself, I have to make a choice to walk that way out."Instead of offering "burnt offerings" by going to Promise Keepers or reading a book or attending another conference, Lawhon said he realized "I was choosing pornography over what God had for my life. I wasn't living in the grace of Jesus Christ."

Lawhon spends much of his time working with college students, many of whom are struggling through many of the battles he went through. He advises them to continually renew their minds by memorizing Scripture and dealing with only one day at a time, because overcoming sexual temptation is fought one battle at a time."I used to rationalize my discouragement by saying, 'I'm gonna mess up tomorrow. I might as well mess up today.' The Lord told me, 'No, you deal with today, Stephen. I'll deal with tomorrow.'"Also, the stigma of pornography is greater than alcohol or drug abuse, Lawhon said, which makes coming forward more difficult.

The SBC's Land said in a 2002 radio interview: "You can go to your Sunday School class and say you have a real problem with alcohol and ask the class to pray for you, but if you go to your Sunday School class and say you need prayer for a problem with pornography, it would be like you set off a stink bomb in the room."

RIPPLES IN THE KINGDOM

The pastor the TEXAN interviewed said one of the ministers he is counseling is "going to do everything he can to recover. He turned himself in [to his ministry], started the counseling process, started the accountability, did a contract with his wife and with me and with some other guys."But even with accountability, vital as it is, "both you and I know that people can lie," the pastor said. "In fact, one of these guys I used to meet with, he did lie to me for a while. When all this started, when he actually was doing some of this stuff, he was lying to me."The man later initiated a meeting and confessed that he had lied."There's no guarantee that goes with accountability. And we're naïve to think that just because somebody sits down and asks the questions that we are always getting the truth. But at the same time, I think it's something important. I think it's something you need to do. It's a process you need to be experiencing, though it's certainly no guarantee."The pastor said it is crucial that a minister allows friends, staff and fellow church members to inspect the cache of his computer anytime to see what sites he has visited.The ravages of pornography and sexual sin among believers has a ripple effect, the pastor said."Particularly when it's someone in ministry. It affects that pastor. It affects his spouse, his family, his children if he has any. It affects his children's friends. It affects his congregation. It affects his immediate family, cousins. It affects his neighbors. It degrades the image of Christ for those who are lost and those in the community who look to that church and those who are considering the claims of the Gospel, those who have just come to know Christ."It's enormous when you stop and think about the negative consequences of falling into the trap. Quite frankly, at least half the time they end up losing their family. And nobody thinks that way. Nobody thinks when they first start looking at porn that 'I'm going to lose my family, I'm going to lose my job.'"Both of the guys I'm dealing with right now, here's what they've lost: They've lost their marriage. They've lost their job. They lost a lot of friends in the sense it will never be the same. They've lost custody of their children and now they are both doing something that they don't really want to do or feel called to do, and they're just trying to get by."--30--Jerry Pierce is managing editor of the Southern Baptist TEXAN, newsjournal of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. TEXAN correspondent Bonnie Pritchett & Dwayne Hastings of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission contributed to this report. Click here to see an earlier Baptist Press story with counsel for women who learn their husbands have a pornography addiction.

Independence Day Reading List

I have this saying that I want to share with you. "Common sense, isn't that common anymore." I see this true in so many different areas of life. Especially when comes to religion in the public square. Both sides of the debate have shown an exceptional knack for a lack of common sense.

I have read to great books on religion in America, religious freedom, the separation of church and state, and some of the historical roots of the Baptist perspective on religious freedom.