In this episode of Ask Pastor John podcast, John Piper identified six ways to detect prosperity gospel.
1) The absence of a serious doctrine of the Biblical necessity and normalcy of suffering. Acts 14:21, Romans 8:23, John 15:20
2) The absence of a clear and prominent doctrine of self-denial. Rom 8:13, Phil 3:8
3) Absence of serious exposition of Scripture. The pastor has favorite topics he goes back to over and over. Be suspicious of topical preaching.
Maybe you are not grumpy; you just stew. You feel like you have the right to be moody– you’ve earned it. It is a way of exacting emotional payment from a disappointing life. Grumpiness provides momentary relief, but it always involves a splitting of the self. You go through the motions of love, but anger smolders just below the surface like a simmering rant. Like Judas in his betrayal of Jesus, outwardly you are kissing, but inwardly you are betraying. The result? You’re split.
In Tim Keller’s podcast entitled Seeing Him as He Is, he read quotes from Puritan minister John Flavel and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis. I was listening to the message on a public transport on my way home last night and for some reason I was grinning from ear to ear when Keller read them. I played that part of the podcast again and again to savor the beauty of the quotes.
Here’s the one from CS Lewis’ book Weight of Glory:
We want something else which can hardly be put into words–to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves–that, though we cannot, yet these projections can, enjoy in themselves that beauty grace, and power of which Nature is the image. That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can’t. They tell us that “beauty born of murmuring sound” will pass into a human face; but it won’t. Or not yet. For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendour of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy. At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in. When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.
Read Exodus 32:1-6.
This passage has always puzzled me. Barely three months after crossing the Red Sea, the Israelites were found worshipping a golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai. What’s more puzzling was that Aaron seemed to be under the impression that they were actually worshipping the LORD Himself. How come?
Drew Dyck, in his book Yawning at Tigers, suggests a few reasons. He mentioned that Egypt was an idolatrous nation. When the Israelites slipped back to idolatry, they were simply reverting back to the way of life they were most familiar with. Old habits don’t die easily. Idolatry was Israel’s default religious practice for 400 years. Crossing the Red Sea didn’t change it yet.
Dyck believes, however, that something more was at play. When God appeared to the Israelites in Exodus 19:16-19, the spectacle was very terrifying. The writer of Hebrews summarizes the scene with words like fire, darkness, gloom, storm, trumpet blast, and the disembodied thundering voice of God that Moses ended up saying, “I am trembling with fear.” The presence of God was too much for the Israelites that they asked for God to stop speaking to them.
When the people gathered gold and asked Aaron to fashion an image of a god, what they were doing was basically create a manageable, domesticated, less frightening, totally tamed version of God. They didn’t want the awesome presence of divinity; they preferred something or someone that is scaled-down to their level. Dyck writes:
R.C. Sproul on the threefold use of the law.
The first purpose of the law is to be a mirror. On the one hand, the law of God reflects and mirrors the perfect righteousness of God. The law tells us much about who God is. Perhaps more important, the law illumines human sinfulness. Augustine wrote, “The law orders, that we, after attempting to do what is ordered, and so feeling our weakness under the law, may learn to implore the help of grace.” The law highlights our weakness so that we might seek the strength found in Christ. Here the law acts as a severe schoolmaster who drives us to Christ.
Life never lacks for improvement—in ourselves, in our relationships, in just about everything. But all our brave stabs at getting better, if they ever change anything, are incomplete at best, complete failures at worst. Sometimes much worse.
Unless . . .
The gospel of Jesus Christ is the great “unless” of life—both for those who already believe (but can’t believe the messes they’re still capable of making), as well as those who don’t yet believe but just know their way isn’t working.
Jojo Agot 