Theology You Can Use - The Clarity Of Scripture (and the Emergent Church)

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Please signify affirmative by raising your hand. How many of you believe that the
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Bible is clear? I do. How many believe that the
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Bible is understandable? How many believe that the Bible is plain?
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How many believe that the Bible contains propositional truth, truth set up in propositions and statements of affirmation?
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Well, according to the latest fad in evangelicalism and in churches today, you, who raised your hands, are arrogant.
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You are not humble. You are intolerant. How do you know the
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Bible is clear? Who do you think you are to tell me that the Bible is understandable?
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Who are you to set the standard to say that the Bible is clear in what it says?
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You are relics of another eon. You are from the Enlightenment era.
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You are a modernist. And you are not engaged in the conversation. Did you come to get beat up tonight?
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Phil Johnson says, sorry? Yeah. Phil Johnson says, in the milieu of the emerging discussion, the second category of words has been made to sound harsh, unreasonable, arrogant, and extreme, if not downright evil.
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If you think the Bible is clear. For example, the prevailing opinion nowadays is that you cannot be open and certain at the same time.
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A person who speaks with too much conviction is ipso facto deemed intolerant.
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A far cry from the psalmist when he says in Psalm 119, 105, thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
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Tonight we continue the series called Theology You Can Use and looking at the word of God, jumping off from Wayne Grudem's systematic theology on his chapter on clarity.
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Is the Bible clear? We want to have a high view of God's word. We've looked at three words so far.
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We'll look at the fourth tonight and the fifth, I guess, next year. Last time we looked at canon, which books
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God includes in the canon of scripture. Secondly, we looked at the word authority, that God's word is authoritative.
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The third word we looked at was inerrancy, that God's word contains no errors. And tonight we're going to look at this word, clarity.
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That the Bible is clear. It can be understood. Very, very important.
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I just got on Vision New England's 2006 Congress, the biggest evangelical get -together here in New England.
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And still, as of today, one of the keynote speakers is a man who's in this emergent church deal.
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And we're going to look at that very carefully tonight. And I think the emergent church is just typical for the brand of evangelicalism that embraces prayer of Jabez, experiencing
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God while at heart. What else? The Passion movie. I think
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I have some others in here. The Message Bible and other things, purpose -driven, where you just find the lowest common denominator and people without discernment eat it.
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It's just like a child. What is a baby known for? They're known for just whatever's in front of them, they put it in their mouth.
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And we don't want to be like that. We don't want to be tossed to and fro and just have no discernment. We want to understand.
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And my response to those who say the Bible's not clear, I would rather respond in that military mode.
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Is the Bible clear? Crystal. It is crystal clear, and we're going to look at that tonight and why it is important to understand that the
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Bible is plain to the understanding and it is very clear. Here's my premise for tonight.
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I'm going to ask you true and false questions, so it's going to be a class almost, and then you give me the answer, and then we'll talk about it for true and for false as we try to understand, does the
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Scripture ascribe to itself clarity? Can you think of an old word for this discussion? There's an old word for the clarity of Scripture, a synonym for clarity, and it's a little harder to pronounce.
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Perspicuity. Very good. Is the Scripture clear? And we want to talk about that very thing tonight. I can't pronounce that very well, so I'm just going to go for clarity, if you don't mind.
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I like sacerdotal, I like propitiation, but I'm not so sure I like perspicuity.
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That's P -E -R -S -P -I -C -U -I -T -Y, but we'll just say clarity.
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Okay, set in quiz form, true or false as we build our case. Jesus taught that the
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Bible was clear and was able to be understood. True. Or if he didn't teach it, he certainly implied that.
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Any comments? Can you think of anything that might contribute to this conversation we're having right now?
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More on that later. If someone said, I don't think Jesus made the
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Bible clear or said that it was clear, any comments, discussion? Wesley? Excellent.
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Let's turn to Matthew chapter 22. If you have your Bibles, just let me show you that Jesus makes himself very clear, and he assumes clarity of Scripture when he says, haven't you read this?
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He doesn't say, oh, that was vague, and I don't blame you for not understanding it. He says, haven't you read that? Matthew chapter 22, verse 31.
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We could look at much more, many more passages, but let's just look at several, and we'll go on to the next question.
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But he did not think that this was some kind of Bible code or some kind of gobbledygook. It was just plain and relevant.
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Matthew 22, 31, but regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was subliminally communicated with vague shadows and shapes and symbolism by God?
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He didn't say that at all. What was spoken by God? I am the God of Abraham, the God of Jacob, and the God of Isaac.
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Switch those around, sorry. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And so he's saying to these people who deny the resurrection,
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God, even when he calls himself something, I'm the God of Abraham, the God of Jacob, and the God of Isaac.
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He's the living God. When the crowds heard this, they were perplexed and mystified because they didn't know what
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Jesus was saying. He was speaking unclearly. He doesn't say that at all.
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When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching. Go preach on this entire section here.
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Verse 34 says, But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together.
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How about in Mark chapter 7? Let's turn over there. We've looked at Matthew. Let's look at Mark. And as Wesley stated clearly, that Jesus used
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Scripture often and just implied that it was clear. It can be understood. Mark chapter 7, verse 5.
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The Pharisees and the scribes asked him, Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with impure hands?
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What was happening? Yeah, and they're supposed to do all these extra traditional ceremonial washings that weren't in Scriptures.
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Why do you do that? Why do you let them do it? It's not a problem of the disciples doing it. Jesus, they're your disciples.
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It's kind of like when the parents have a disobedient kid and the dad says to the mom, Aren't you going to get your children to obey?
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Right? They're representing. And whoever laughed, they know that they've done that before. They've heard it done, at least.
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Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with impure hands?
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And Jesus said to them, Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites as it is written.
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This people honors me, he goes for an Old Testament quote, with their lips, but their heart is far away from me.
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But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men. And so I think it is very clear that Jesus, he doesn't say the word of God is clear, but he just assumes it is in his everyday language, especially when he quotes it.
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Would you turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 10 and let me show you that Paul, too, assumed that what he said as he wrote scripture was clear.
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2 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 10,
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For they say his letters are weighty and strong, but his personal presence is unimpressive and his speech contemptible.
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When the false apostles and prophets were blasting Paul, why were they blasting him? Because he spoke in symbolism and it was vague and you couldn't quite understand it.
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No, his letters are weighty and strong, but his personal presence is unimpressive and his speech contemptible.
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He can write a good letter, and they assumed that it was understandable and clear, but he looks really bad and he can't preach.
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You know, as my old pastor used to say, it's one thing if you look good, but you can't preach, at least they can look at you, and there's someone to look at.
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And if you aren't good looking, but you can preach really well, at least they can listen to you. But for Paul they said, the guy's ugly and he can't preach.
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But they didn't say anything about the letters, they said the letters are weighty and strong. It goes on to say verse 11, let such a person consider this, that what we are in word by letters when absent, such persons we are also indeed when present.
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Our lives are represented by what we preach and what we write. Paul just assumed that there was clarity.
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You could read 2 Timothy chapter 3, that the Bible is clear enough to save you. 1 Peter chapter 1, that the
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Bible is clear enough to save you. Hebrews chapter 4, verse 12, that the Bible is clear enough to what?
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Cut through all kinds of intentions. Number two, true or false?
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The first prerequisite to understanding God's word is that you must be born again.
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You have to be born again to understand the Bible? I mean to really understand it? Okay, true. Let's go to 1
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Corinthians chapter 2, verse 14. If you don't know this verse, I'm going to encourage you to memorize it sometime.
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When I used to go to Gold's Gym in North Hollywood, we had the American Gladiators working out there.
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Remember those guys? Forget the guys. The girls were ten times bigger than I was. You know, can
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I work in? American Gladiator ladies even. And I'd meet these people, and I'd start preaching the
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Bible to them, and they'd say, well, I almost agree with the Bible, but there's a certain verse that I don't really, I don't believe that.
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I'd do all my research, I'd get all my background checks, and I'd get my commentaries, and I'd tell them the answer, and they'd say,
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I repent and believe. No, they'd say, well, but there's that other verse.
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I'd do all my homework, I'd get back everything, stack them all up, and quotes, and typing, and everything, and hand it to them, and they'd say, well, yeah, that's true.
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I see where you're coming from. But what about Matthew chapter 8? It just went on and on and on.
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Well, 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 14, as you've learned in the Bible Institute, if you've been attending, is crucial to realize what kind of people you're preaching to.
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And unbelievers could understand grammar, and they could understand the language, but they can't understand it properly, spiritually, 1
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Corinthians chapter 2, verse 14. But a natural man, an unbeliever, does not accept the things of the
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Spirit of God, number one. Number two, they are foolishness to him. And number three, he cannot understand them.
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Why? Because they are spiritually appraised. The Holy Spirit is the one who has to open their eyes and mind to understand what these words mean.
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How about John chapter 8? There's a good illustration with Jesus. If you have your Bibles, turn to John chapter 8.
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And let me again remind you that if you want to understand the Bible as clear teaching, you're going to have to have the
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Holy Spirit as the resident truth teacher who dwells within you. John chapter 8.
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I mean, can you imagine? Sometimes if you think I'm a difficult preacher and a hard preacher, just imagine if Jesus came in and preached sometime.
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Or how about John the Baptist? Ezekiel? Isaiah? I mean, we would all be back row
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Baptists because we wouldn't want to be close to that flame -throwing kind of guy. I mean, it's just amazing. Listen to Jesus.
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Remember Jesus' philosophy was if the people realize they have no righteousness in and of themselves,
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He ate with them, drank with them, fellowship with them, was very kind and compassionate.
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But if the people He was ministering to had their own self -righteousness, He went after them.
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John 8 .43 Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear my word.
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Why can't you understand what I'm saying? This is not a matter of some kind of code or He's speaking
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Navajo. He's speaking the language that they would understand. And here's the answer. How about this?
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You are of your father, verse 44, the devil. You have no spirit of God, but also,
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I'll tell you who you are. You're one of Satan's children. That is amazing to me.
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And you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.
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Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature. He is a liar and the father of lies. By the way, he's your dad.
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Don't say anything bad about my mom, but how about saying all this about your father, Satan? Now, listen to what he says.
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Verse 45. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe me. Very, very interesting.
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Now, Luther talked a lot about the clarity of Scripture. He said, first of all, that there's grammatical clarity, that the average intellect, the average intelligence of a person could understand sentences.
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He also said there's spiritual clarity, that those who have the Spirit of God can understand things.
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And then he called something else essential clarity, quoting Luther. It refers to the understanding of the mysteries of faith of which
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St. Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 13. The Bible thus is grammatically clear to all men of sound mind.
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It is spiritually clear to those who believe in Christ. And it is essentially clear to the saints in heaven who see
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God face to face. There's clarity of the printed words on the text. There's spiritual clarity for those who have the
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Holy Spirit in them. And they really have the mind of Christ once they're in heaven. And it is clear, clear up there.
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I have a question for you. Do you need an official representative from the church denomination to tell you what the
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Bible teaches clearly and what it doesn't? Are you sure? Why is that?
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How can you be a Berean and study for yourself if it's not clear? Jumping ahead.
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Number three. It's all going to come together. The emergent church is coming up.
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Hold on. I know you're all here for that. Number three. True or false. Prayer is crucial when it comes to understanding the
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Bible. In other words, it might be good to pray and say, God, help me understand what I'm reading. True or false and why?
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Why would you have to pray if the Bible is clear? Well, that's part of the ministry of the
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Holy Spirit and He does that. And I think that's probably a good prayer to say, God, I'd like to more understand what you've said in your word.
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Okay, good. Luther said, We ought not to criticize, explain, or judge the Scriptures by our own mere reason, but diligently with prayer, meditation, and seek their meaning.
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The devil and temptations also afford us occasion to learn and understand the Scriptures by experience and practice.
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Without these, we should never understand them, however diligently we read and listen to them.
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It is good to say, God, would you open my eyes so I can understand what you're saying in Scripture.
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Okay, we're building on our foundations here. Number four.
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Some parts of the Bible are easier to understand than other parts. The Bible's clear, but some parts are more easily understood than other parts.
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And so that does not destroy our doctrine of the clarity of Scripture. Revelation is clear. True. But it is hard to understand, even in its clarity.
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How about Paul, when he was talked about in 2 Peter, when Peter said some of the things that Paul writes are what?
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Hard to understand. Absolutely. Let me ask you this.
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Is it pretty easy to figure out in Scripture what the Bible requires for salvation?
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Deity of Christ? Second coming? Not when, but that He is?
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The Bible is clear, even though sometimes there are more difficult things for us to understand.
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Number five. The only thing that a Christian needs to understand the
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Bible is the Holy Spirit. Trick question. That's all you need is the
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Spirit of God. Somebody said to me the other day that some of their friends do not want to come to our church because we don't believe in the
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Holy Spirit. I don't know how we would get saved, how we would be sanctified, how we would be glorified, how we could preach, how we could serve, how anything could happen.
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But what about understanding the Bible? Do you need the Holy Spirit to understand the
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Bible? Yes. Is that all you need? Is He all you need? Now we've got to walk a fine line here because what
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I don't want to become as a Roman Catholic and say you need the magisterium, you need the church, you need the traditions to interpret the
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Bible, but I also don't want to go and say well there's nothing in the local church that can help you and there is something in the local church that can help you understand the
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Bible and they are called teachers. Ephesians chapter 4 verse 11.
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It is He who gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers to prepare
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God's people for the works of service. Point being, if you are on a desert island and you have only the
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Spirit of God and the Bible, can you understand it? Yes. But is there additional help to be found in people throughout the centuries who have studied the
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Word of God and have been gifted by God to help you understand it better? Absolutely. Number six.
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Diligent study is still needed to better understand the Bible. If the Bible is clear, do you still need to study diligently to understand it better?
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Absolutely. Hermeneutics and exegesis. What is hermeneutics by the way and who is exegesis?
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When I said to my Bible Institute class, I thought exegesis was E -X -J -E -S -U -S.
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Exegesis. What is hermeneutics by the way? The art and science of Bible interpretation.
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You got an A in the class too. Good for you. And you audited. How did that work out? The art and science of Bible interpretation and exegesis is actually doing the
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X and O's of the art and science. It is putting hermeneutics into practice and so we have to dig deeply.
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We have historical gap, language gap, a cultural gap, all kinds of different issues of this book that was written at least 2 ,000 years ago.
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Some of it was written a long time ago. Even older than that. And what was happening during the
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Middle Ages is you had a bunch of people who were not interpreting the Bible in a grammatical historical fashion.
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They were allegorizing everything and the Bible became very vague and very unclear because a horse is a rat, a dog is a boy.
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What does this word mean? There's all kinds of levels of interpretation and so you needed the church to tell you how to interpret this allegorically correct.
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We have to look at context. One man said, the new Christian has much to learn and is guided by those who are more mature in the faith.
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God provided pastors and teachers as a way of drawing people near to himself using their lips to teach his own truths.
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There are mysteries. They are harder to understand but we still can. All right.
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It's going to get a little bit better now. Number seven. At the root, the attack of the clarity of Scripture is really a moral problem.
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At its root, the attack of the clarity of the Scriptures is a moral problem. True or false?
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True. Why? Explain. Prove it. All problems are moral problems.
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Yeah, thanks. Yes, Heather? Okay, great.
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Guess what I have in my notes? It is also an attack on the character of God. God in his goodness and in his kindness has revealed himself to us.
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He's not a God up there saying, oh, I hope this group can figure out how I'm pleased. If they just offer enough pumpkins and enough squash and enough other things,
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I'll be pleased. No, he has revealed himself because he wants to tell his people, I am pleased by this and only this and I'm not pleased by that.
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I like what Mark Twain said. At least he was honest. Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand.
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But the passages that bother me are those I do understand. And he understood what it meant to say, this is what the
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Bible calls me to do. I understand that very clearly. I just don't want to do that because I'm a sinner by nature and sinners by nature don't like to do righteous things.
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God is a revealer of himself. He is not one who hides and conceals himself. He's not playing hide and go seek and slipping behind the tree and hope they can figure me out and they're getting warmer.
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Not at all. God expects his word to be heard and obeyed.
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2 Timothy 2, verse 15, Be diligent to present yourselves approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, pastor, accurately handling the word of truth.
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It can be clear. How about this? 1 Thessalonians 5, 27, I adjure you by the
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Lord to have this letter read to all brethren. Why would you read a gospel, excuse me, an epistle to other churches if nobody could understand it?
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Why would Paul say to Timothy, now for a worship service I want you to get up and read the word of God. When Dave read today, what did
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Dave read? Psalm 139. Why would he have anybody read anything if he couldn't figure it out?
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1 Timothy 4, 13, Until I come give attention to the public reading of scripture to exhortation and teaching. How silly for the
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Bereans to be held up as the model Christian citizen when they could not discern whether the scripture was even right or wrong or clear or unclear.
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Number 8. God has used heresies in the past to help the church think precisely.
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True. There's a heresy, then the church gets together and says, how can we codify what we believe to attack that problem?
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Whether it's the Trinity or even now. I like heresies. How about that? It's a good series title. I like heresies.
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I don't like heresies for what they are, but I like heresies for what they do to me and the church.
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You either affirm biblical doctrine or you turn away from it. It's happened all the time.
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Reaffirming what we believe. This is more of a personal question related to this last true or false question.
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True or false. I as a pastor and we as an elder board worry that a heresy could come through this church that we could not diagnose and defend our people against.
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We worry about that. That something could come along that we don't understand. It catches us unaware.
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And that we could not understand what it is doing to the church and how to combat it. We worry about that.
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True or false. False. Why? Let's turn to 1 John 2, verse 13.
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And this is not trying to be arrogant. This is not trying to be we know it all. It's not trying to be that at all.
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But if you know the Bible, you know the truth and the errors are easily to be seen. And let me show you, even in 1
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John 2, how you can see the different maturity levels in Christians.
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Even you. This is not necessarily talking about leadership only. But we as leaders don't worry about what the next heresy is going to do because we can easily analyze it according to the
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Scriptures. And by the way, it's going to be the same thing that it was 1 ,800 years ago. I mean, when the Jehovah's Witnesses come by, we don't go, wow, that's some wild new thing.
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We just go, that's the Arian heresy of many centuries ago. And so when an emergent church comes along and basically says, if you think you know the truth, you are arrogant and pompous, you don't have to go, well, that's some new weird thing.
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No, it's old error just redone. Look at 1 John 2 .13. I'm writing to you, fathers, because you know
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Him who has been from the beginning. There is a level of Christians, and I have not arrived at this level, there's a level of Christianity that you're like a father, you're like a grandfather, that you just know
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God and you know Him so intimately and you're very mature. You're like a father. There's also a level that's under that.
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I'm writing to you, young men, do you see that in verse 13? Because you have overcome the evil one.
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What kind of tense is that, by the way, for you Greek students, English students, or grammar students?
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I'm writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. That is past tense.
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How can people, how can Christians have overcome Satan? How can he be saying that is past tense?
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Here are the fathers. By the way, the children here, I've written to you children because you know the father. There's three levels of Christian growth.
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Children, gu -gu -ga -ga, translation, Jesus tells me this I know for the
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Bible tells me so. I'm His and He's mine and that's about all they know. There's spiritual grandfathers, or fathers as John would call them.
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You think John, by the way, was a spiritual father? Yes. And then there are young men, we could say young women as well, because they have overcome the evil one by what?
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Because they know the word. It's a past tense thing. I never say to myself, what am I going to do when that heresy somehow comes to the church?
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It's going to catch us unaware because we've overcome the evil one in the sense that we understand the word, we understand the nature of Christ, the nature of man, the nature of salvation, the nature of heresies and we don't sit around.
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We can say protect us from the evil one but we don't say what are we going to do when he comes here? Because by the way, he's probably here and maybe some of you,
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I guess probably on Sunday night you're not. But you never know who the wheat and the tares are. I would encourage you to study that.
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Helpfully though, we can look to church history and the biggest time in church history when the clarity of the
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Bible was attacked was during the medieval time when basically Rome took over.
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And when I say Rome, I don't mean the city of Rome, I mean what? The Roman Catholic Church.
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The Bible to Rome was difficult, it was obscure and it was hard to understand.
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It was not clear. Thomas Aquinas had all kinds of allegories and a man named
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Martin Luther came along and next to the bondage of the will, I think his view of the clarity of Scripture turned the
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Reformation right side up. Luther said, If many things still remain obtuse to many, this does not arise from the obscurity in the
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Scriptures but from our own blindness, our want of understanding. If there's a problem with the clarity of Scripture is the problem with God he didn't communicate clearly?
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That's why MacArthur says this emergent church idea, and I'll explain what it is in a second, is so damaging to the church because it says this,
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God cannot communicate to you clearly enough for you to believe and understand. Open theism says
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God doesn't know the future. Emergent church says God can't communicate to you now. That's bad.
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Well, I'm going to run out of time so here's what we're going to have to do, not talk about Luther and the Reformation but we're going to talk about the emergent church.
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What is the emergent church and who are these people? The emergent church has all kinds of leaders but probably the biggest leader is
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Brian McLaren, pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church near Washington, D .C. and he is going to be one of the main speakers at New England Vision.
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What is it called again? Vision New England. How many people have ever been there by the way? They've had some good speakers over the years, haven't they?
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How much is it even? A couple hundred bucks or something to go now? And I'm going to make some statements by Brian McLaren quoted by him and you tell me what you think of those statements.
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I'm going to quote from several books but mainly from A Generous Orthodoxy. Certainty, the context is the
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Bible, is overrated. History teaches us that a lot of people thought they were certain and we found out they weren't.
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Doesn't the religious community see that the world is changing? Doesn't it have anything fresh and incisive to say?
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Well, it's the same old story. You've got to come up with something new. McLaren.
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Belief that clarity is sometimes overrated and that shock, obscurity, playfulness and intrigue often stimulate more thought than clarity.
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Clarity is overrated so you've got to use these other things. McLaren. The last thing
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I want is to get into that nauseating argument about why this or that form of theology, dispensational, covenant, charismatic, whatever, our methodology, church cell, megachurch, liturgical church, secret church, blah, blah, blah.
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It's the last thing I want to do. Time Magazine this year, the top 25 most evangelical Christians.
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Who was on the list, do you think? Brian McLaren. And he said this when he was asked to address the gay marriage question.
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Quote, You know what? The thing that breaks my heart is that there's no way I can answer it without hurting someone on either side.
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The Bible's not clear. When asked about discipleship and evangelism, quote,
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I must add, though, that I don't believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion.
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It may be advisable in many circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their
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Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish context. This will be hard, you say, and I agree, but frankly, it's not at all easy to be a follower of Jesus in many
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Christian religious contexts either. No wonder Charlie Crane has...
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I almost said freaked out, I don't want to... Sorry, Charlie, you're listening to this, I know, tomorrow at work. Charlie was writing
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Vision New England saying, how can you have this man come and preach? I asked MacArthur about him, he said, he's not a
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Christian if he believes what he says. Brian McLaren, you think about the clarity of Scripture here.
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I don't think we've got the gospel right yet. What does it mean to be saved?
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When I read the Bible, I don't see it meaning, I'm going to heaven after I die. Before modern evangelicalism, nobody accepted
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Jesus as their personal savior or walked down an aisle or said the sinners pray. The whole universe,
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McLaren said, cannot contain God, so how can you claim your religion can? How can you be sure?
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He said, how can I say anything about God with certainty? This is just shocking to me.
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People are going to pay $200 to go there to hear this guy, and Vision New England doesn't have enough spiritual discernment to know.
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When it comes to issues such as the exclusivity of the gospel, the identity of Jesus Christ as both fully human and fully divine, the authoritative character of Scripture as written revelation, and the clear teaching of Scripture concerning issues as homosexuality,
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Al Mohler said, this movement simply refuses to answer the question. So what you do is you say, well, how can
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I be so sure? How can I be clear? So what do I know about gay marriage? What do I know about Jesus? I don't know. What would you think of a movement like this?
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What would you think their opinion of expository preaching might be? Any guesses? Verse by verse preaching?
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They don't really do it because it's not in vogue. The second kind of guy in charge of this emergent movement, his name is
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Dan Kimble, and he's at the Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz. And so I took the kids there last year with Kim, two years ago now.
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Is it two years ago? And so we went in, incense, candles. You don't go for the word because it's not clear, so you have to experience
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God. It's the presence of God. And so it's dark. You can go to this little prayer area, and you can draw things on the wall, and communion's in the center, in the front.
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You can come up and take communion any time you want. So the kids are all sitting in this place, and cool pictures and stuff, and all this stuff looking around, some tables, some pews.
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Certainly no Bibles or no hymnals. And so it was so funny. The kids looked at me and said, Is this a jerk?
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It's just like so anti. Some lady got up, and she began to preach, except it wasn't preaching.
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17 minutes. I could tell it was 17 minutes because there's a clock in the back wall. For any of those who want to get that present from me for Christmas to put right back there,
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I'm going to unplug it every time. I don't need a clock around here. And so Kim said,
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You've got to go confront that pastor. This place is an abomination. They don't even preach the word.
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It was all the social stuff. There was nothing going on. And I happen to be married to a woman who actually thinks
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I should probably live everything I preach and believe. Strange, I know.
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She said, You need to go confront that guy. It's a shame to the gospel. So I said, in typical
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Abendroth bravado, Are you kidding me? No way, man.
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I'm on vacation. So as the Lord would have it, we got up and walked out because it was so abhorrent to the
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Lord and to us that we walked out. And then there stood Dan Kimball. Hi, how are you? So to make a long story short, and I think
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I've already told you the story, I just said, I'm not doing very good because this place is a shame to the gospel.
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That was received very well, if you might imagine. He said, Who are you? And that's arrogant. And to where you're from.
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And I thought, What does it matter where I'm from? I'm from Massachusetts with a bunch of West Boylstoners.
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It doesn't matter where am I from. And so I finally said, There is no passage in scripture like Second Timothy, Chapter four, verse one.
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Can you find anything like it? I solemnly charge you. I adjure you in the presence of God, even
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Christ Jesus. By the way, this is the Christ Jesus who is going to come and judge the living and dead.
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He's going to have a kingdom. He's going to appear. Preach the word. That's what we do.
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We preach the word and we preach because we're told to and because it can be received. And it's clear. Dan Kimball said,
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Quote, We should be returning to a no holds bar approach to worship and teaching so that we gather. And there's no doubt that we're in the presence of God.
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I believe believers and unbelievers in our emerging culture are hungry for this. This is about clever apologetics.
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Our careful, exegetical and expository preaching are great worship bands. Emerging generations are hungry to experience
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God and worship. It's about experiencing God and worship without the word. Stained glass windows,
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Kimball said. They're taken out of the church, put stained glass up again, except you have to do it in video now because it's too expensive.
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So just put them up there anyway. Light and cheery sanctuaries are said by Kimball in his book,
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Emerging Church, need to be darkened because darkness is valued and it displays a sense of spirituality.
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D .A. Carson said, Emergent Church has feelings over rational thought, experience over truth.
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It has a contemporary definition of tolerance. It is more for inclusion than exclusion.
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And I don't want to pave this way to the mystical ecumenism. You know where it's all going, by the way?
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Where do you think this is all going, if you had one guess? Mystical Roman Catholicism.
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Do you think these guys will stand up and say Rome's apostate? How many people heard MacArthur's Papacy and the
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Pope CD? Were you shocked or what? It's amazing.
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If I get up and say one thing against the Roman Catholic Church in this pulpit on Sunday morning, do you know what I get? Well, not so much anymore.
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What I used to get? I am a Catholic basher. And John gets up and said,
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By the way, the Roman Catholic Church is an apostate, heretical, abhorrent heresy that needs to be dealt with by the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ because it's the wrong gospel.
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And all this stuff is... Here's what you do. If you want to affiliate with Roman Catholics and others and be ecumenical, you need to make sure that the
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Bible isn't so clear on justification so your view of justification and my view of justification are the same so we can all be together.
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By the way, there's abortion out there and poor people and we need to all get together to take care of those social issues. That's what they'll say.
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Leonard Sweet said, Postmoderns want a God they can feel, taste, touch, hear and smell, a full sensory immersion in the divine.
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One man said, In these emergent churches I observed icons, statues of Mary holding baby Jesus, Jesus hanging on the cross, candles, incense, relics and statues of the saints.
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Even in the Lutheran Church, how do you think the Lutheran Church is now arm in arm in bed with the
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Roman Catholic Church after Luther and the Reformation? How do you think that happened? You decrease the clarity of Scripture.
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John Shaler described the link between merger mania and people's confidence in a clear
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Scripture when he said this, Whoever is of the opinion of ecumenicalism will simply set aside all doctrinal differences and declare them to be irrelevant.
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But in that lies the confession that they regard it to be labor lost to objectively ascertain the truth.
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In other words, some consider it an impossible task to find objective truth in Scripture, while the question of objective truth also concerns verbal inspiration, divine authority.
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Shaler highlights the issue of clarity, We want to say that a man can only possess the truth through Holy Scripture, but also that Scripture really offers clear truth to every man.
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And he goes on to say, I think he's right. You want ecumenism? Just water down the truth and cut off the corners.
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Now, we're pretty much out of time, but I have an article that I just want to quickly give you. And Carl, would you hand that out?
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I'm just going to read just a couple of quotes. And I want you to know that if you don't love clarity of Scripture, you are going to turn into a mystical papist, and you are going to not see these things clearly.
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And I don't want you to do that. Sometimes it is hard to just hear truth proclaimed, but that's what
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God has called us to do. This is an article called, The Emergent Delusion, a critique of McLaren's book,
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A Generous Orthodoxy. And I'm not going to read through this tonight, but what
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I am going to do is after it's handed out, read you a few quotes, and I want to let you decide, what should we do something about this?
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If this is the latest thing, then I think I'm going to preach a little bit about it, because it's so relevant. Maybe if you're a couple, you just take one and share it, or something like that.
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Alright, here's what I'll do. I'm just going to read you a few more, just so you know that I'm not wild. Well, you already know that I am wild, but I'm not crazy.
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Turn to page 3, if you will, and it's numbered at the top, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
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We can know God. We can know Him clearly. He expects us to know Him. And listen to what the grandfather of the
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Emergent Church, not by his own self -proclamation, but just kind of the most influential. There are three columns, bottom left -hand column.
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You can see my little squiggly line there. The squiggles mean I might read it tonight. How do I know the
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Bible is always right? And if I am sophisticated enough to realize that I know nothing of the Bible, without my own involvement in the interpretation,
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I also ask how I know which school method, our technique of biblical interpretation is right.
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Can you imagine if I'm a pastor, and I get up and say, I don't know if I understand anything about the Bible. How long would you listen to me?
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First of all, you should be saying to me, we pay you money so you don't have to dig a ditch to get money so you can study all day long.
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You better know what you're talking about on Sunday. We're going to give you one week to find out. By the way, the cheetah starts running tonight.
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When I go home tonight, guess one of the most deploring thoughts that I have to think about tonight. You just pour everything into Sunday morning, and you pour whatever you have left of Sunday morning into Sunday night, and then you realize it has to happen all over again.
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That's why if you have a pastor, and every three years he goes, you know what you do if I was a pastor and left every three years to go to another church?
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I just keep preaching through Ephesians every place I went. Now I have to come up with something new, and preach a new passage, because you already have heard what
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I preach, and you expect some new passages. It's like one day I thought, you know, I'm tired and I'm sick, and I preached on the thief on the cross one time, and I'll just study a little bit more this time, and nobody will ever know, and I'll just preach that again, but I'll add in a few extra things, and Luke, and good for the people here anyway, even if they remember it.
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I got up and preached it, and it's great to think about the thief on one side, and how he's repenting to the other thief, and the grace of God, the sovereignty of God, everything else, and then afterwards
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Steve Nelson said, oh thanks very much Mike, I really appreciate that. He said, I especially like those few extra new points you gave us when you preached it this time.
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If you're a pastor, you better be clear. This is what we believe, this is what we don't believe. By the way, our statement of faith, is it eight points?
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Is it 80 points? It seems like 800 points. There is clarity in that statement of faith.
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Third column on page three, bottom right, McLaren writes, you can see my squiggle there, many of those little churches within Roman Catholicism, in the contemplative tradition, emphasize how
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God may be mystically experienced through contemplation, through a quiet mindfulness.
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If you don't think it's going to Rome, that's where it's going. Turn the page please, to page four. By the way, he's post mill, and he's after planetary salvation.
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Okay, you can see my squiggly there, page four, column one. I wrote
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New Age on top, that's what that says. I felt that every tree, every blade of grass, and every pool of water, become especially eloquent with God's grandeur.
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Somehow they seem to be transparent, or perhaps translucent is the better word, because each thing in its particularity, was still utterly visible, and unspeakably important.
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These specific concrete things, became translucent, in the sense that a powerful, indescribable, invisible light seemed to shine through.
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It was the exuberant joy, of simply seeing these masterpieces of God's creation, and knowing myself to be among them.
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It was to be one of them, and to feel that we all, creatures, molecules, and phenomena, were together known, and loved by God, who embraced us, into the ultimate we.
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I mean, I've been to India two times, and I'm reading Hinduism. That's what I'm reading. Page four, column two, bottom.
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Why are you a Christian, McLaren? The image of God, conveyed by Jesus, as the son of God, and the image of the universe, that resonates with the image of God, best fit my deepest experience, best resonate with my deepest intuition, best inspire my deepest hope, and best challenge me to live, with what my friend, the late
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Mike Iaconelli, described a dangerous wonder, which is the starting point, of a generous orthodoxy.
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Keynote speaker, at the largest New England, gathering of evangelicals.
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I'd ask you what that means, but I don't know what it means, to tell you if you're right or wrong. Page five, and we better finish.
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I mean, a critique is a critique, but you need to know. Best thing you could do, maybe you study, the debate between Erasmus, and Luther, and the
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Reformation. Erasmus says, Scripture's not clear, regarding the will of man. Luther said, it's very clear. It's crystal clear.
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It's just the latest thing, under the sun, that's not new. Page five, column one, top left. I am a
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Christian, because I believe, in all these ways, Jesus is saving the world. By world, I mean the planet
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Earth, and all life on it, because left to ourselves, unjudged, unforgiven, and untaught, we will certainly destroy, this planet, and its residents.
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I have news for McLaren, it will be destroyed. It's called, the ultimate Earth day, in the book of Revelation.
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This planet was temporary, and only made to last, for a certain amount of time. Should you dispose things, in the
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MDC reservoir? No, but it's not going to last forever, and we are not about, cosmic salvation.
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Are we? Are you sure? Are we clear? So wild.
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I mean, I just don't know, what to do with myself. Page five, column two, bottom. The idea, that the
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Christian message, is universally good news, for Christians, and not Christians alike, is some to some, unheard of, strange, and perhaps heretical.
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To me, it has become natural, and obvious. The good news of salvation, is really good news, for the unbeliever.
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It's a good news, for the unbeliever, if they what? Repent, if not, it's news that will damn.
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Worship the sun, kiss him, lest you perish. The psalmist says. And just one more page, and this is the coup de grace.
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Page six, column one, halfway down.
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We must therefore, never underestimate our power, to be wrong about God, when thinking about God, when imagining
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God, whether in prose, or in poetry. You don't know, how deeply I'm moved, by saying the fact, you all might, always be wrong about God.
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And if we are, then we should be watching, the Patriots, six to three at halftime, lame game. What are we thinking?
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The book is published, by Youth Specialties, page six, column two, down in the very middle. Youth Specialties, who publishes, a generous orthodoxy, promotes numerous, mystical practices, including deep breathing,
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Lectio Divina, Ignatian contemplation, labyrinths, Iona, and others.
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Do you want to know, where the guy is coming from? I mean, it is very, very obvious. We think, we can be certain, they don't think, you can be certain.
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Last quote, page six, column three, top, it is generous, it, generous orthodoxy, doesn't consider orthodoxy, the exclusive domain, of pro scholars, alone.
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But like Chesterton, welcomes the poets, the mystics, even those who choose, to say very little, or to remain silent.
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You want to have a good theologian, teach you something? Go to the theologian, that says nothing to you. He's quiet.
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We have that sometimes, for our kids though, it's quiet time, you can't say anything, you have to sit on the couch, and it's quiet time.
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But that would be a theologian, to teach you about God. I mean, you know what my response is?
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What? What? I just don't get it. It attacks the authority, the clarity of scripture.
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Okay, sorry, one more, page seven, column one, halfway down, the
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Christian faith I am proposing, should become a welcome friend, to other religions of the world, not a threat.
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Is that a damning gospel, or is it not? How is it even a question?
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At least the Southern Baptist Convention said, when McLaren was booked to speak there, we will not have him, we've changed our mind, when we really figured out, what he believed.
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Why won't Vision New England do that? I'm not big on letter campaigns, or anything else, but if you want to send a letter to them,
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I think, be my guest. Let me ask you this question, my final question. If you are not certain, that the
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Bible's clear, and you have said, what this person has said, is that good, or is that evil?
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Is it evil to talk like that, about the scripture? About other religions? And that's why, it floored me, and it shouldn't have, when
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I said, when MacArthur asked me, what's the spiritual climate of New England? And I told them about,
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I told them about Vision New England, and then I said, Brian McLaren is speaking there, as a keynote speaker, with Joe Stoll et al, and John MacArthur said,
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Brian McLaren is an evil man. Because it is evil, to say these things, about the nature, and exclusivity of the gospel.
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Can the Bible be understood? The answer is yes. So my challenge to you this week, is will you read it?
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Will you study it? I like what Luther said, I study my Bible, as I gather apples. First, I shake the whole tree, that the ripest might fall.
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Then I shake each limb, when I have shaken each limb, I shake each branch, and every twig. Then I look under every leaf.
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The Bible is clear, so you can understand it, because God is good, and God is gracious, and God wants you to know, everything about Him, properly, and rightly, and biblically, because we can't figure out
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God, on our own, and if we could, we'd probably turn Him, into a golden calf.
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Reminds me of the story, we first moved out here, there's some buffalo farm, in Rutland, is that right? And there was a calf there, that had been prematurely born, and it was stuffed, and it was placed up, next to some kind of dream catcher,
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Indian thing. Have you seen those dream catchers? No? Some kind of Indian, red
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Indian, American Indian thing, where you catch dreams, so you can understand them, and everything. So we're walking around, and you can get, buffalo steaks, and buffalo burger, and buffalo jerky, and everything else.
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So we're walking in, Haley was four, and she got really big eyes. She saw that calf.
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She said, we don't worship idols. We don't worship idols. And if you believe, anything about God, that you didn't get from scripture, you are worshiping an idol.
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And God better make it clear, or he's promoting, his own idolaters, which he would never do.
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Are we clear? Crystal, let's pray. Father, thank you that, you have not let us, buy into all this nonsense.
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And we acknowledge, that is only your grace, that we believe, that scriptures are clear. You've saved us.
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You've revealed your son to us. You have shown us, that we need your son's death, burial and resurrection, as substitutionary atonement.
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And that Lord, we can read the Proverbs, and say, this is clear parenting. We can read the Psalms, and say, this is clearly a way to worship you.
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We can read all kinds of books, and say, this is how we're made right with you, in the book of Romans. And so help us.
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And I pray Lord, for Vision New England, that you would put a stop, to this nonsense, of having people, who aren't even
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Christians, if they believe what they write, and I'm sure they do. And I pray Lord, that you would stop that, and turn that into a healthy, sound, hygienic,
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Christian conference, to promote your word, and promote your gospel, and the clarity of it.
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That Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the father, but through him. And Lord, we acknowledge, that is very clear.