Temptation's Deceit

Listen to this brilliant description of how temptation takes a Christian captive (with the help of unbelieving friends) from Augustine's Confessions. I give you the entry in its entirety here. It is from book 6, and it is worth taking the 2 minutes to read and another 10 at least to meditate on and apply to your own sin matrix.

He is in the middle of describing a friend of his when he writes...

He had gone on to Rome before me to study law—which was the worldly way which his parents were forever urging him to pursue—and there he was carried away again with an incredible passion for the gladiatorial shows. For, although he had been utterly opposed to such spectacles and detested them, one day he met by chance a company of his acquaintances and fellow students returning from dinner; and, with a friendly violence, they drew him, resisting and objecting vehemently, into the amphitheater, on a day of those cruel and murderous shows. He protested to them: "Though you drag my body to that place and set me down there, you cannot force me to give my mind or lend my eyes to these shows. Thus I will be absent while present, and so overcome both you and them." When they heard this, they dragged him on in, probably interested to see whether he could do as he said. When they got to the arena, and had taken what seats they could get, the whole place became a tumult of inhuman frenzy. But Alypius kept his eyes closed and forbade his mind to roam abroad after such wickedness. Would that he had shut his ears also! For when one of the combatants fell in the fight, a mighty cry from the whole audience stirred him so strongly that, overcome by curiosity and still prepared (as he thought) to despise and rise superior to it no matter what it was, he opened his eyes and was struck with a deeper wound in his soul than the victim whom he desired to see had been in his body. Thus he fell more miserably than the one whose fall had raised that mighty clamor which had entered through his ears and unlocked his eyes to make way for the wounding and beating down of his soul, which was more audacious than truly valiant—also it was weaker because it presumed on its own strength when it ought to have depended on You. For, as soon as he saw the blood, he drank in with it a savage temper, and he did not turn away, but fixed his eyes on the bloody pastime, unwittingly drinking in the madness—delighted with the wicked contest and drunk with blood lust. He was now no longer the same man who came in, but was one of the mob he came into, a true companion of those who had brought him thither. Why need I say more? He looked, he shouted, he was excited, and he took away with him the madness that would stimulate him to come again: not only with those who first enticed him, but even without them; indeed, dragging in others besides. And yet from all this, with a most powerful and most merciful hand, You plucked him and taught him not to rest his confidence in himself but in You—but not till long after.

Augustine has an uncanny ability to diagnose the methods sin uses to deceive us. What a blessing he is for all who'll read and meditate on what he says!

Lesson: NEVER trust in your own ability to beat sin. The moment you do, not only to do you commit the sin of pride, but you set yourself up to further commit the sin you think you can beat without the Spirit's power.

Warnings to Pastors (Ezek 2, 3, 13)

If you are a Christian it is important you read this post, but if you're pastor or if you're close to your pastor, PLEASE take a moment to read these critical passages from Ezekiel.

There are large movements within Christianity today that need to take God's message through this little-read prophet VERY seriously because He makes scathing indictments of ministry philosophies and strategies that are very popular today.

Ezekiel 2:6-7 "And you, son of man, neither fear them nor fear their words, though thistles and thorns are with you and you sit on scorpions; neither fear their words nor be dismayed at their presence, for they are a rebellious house. But you shall speak My words to them whether they listen or not, for they are rebellious."

Priority #1 for your pastor is to preach and teach God's Word (cf. 2 Tim 4:1-5) regardless of the results ("whether they listen or not") because lack of response to God's Word does not mean we need to "do church" differently, but it means rebellion marks the people.

Ezekiel 3:17-19 "Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman to the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from My mouth, warn them from Me. When I say to the wicked, 'You will surely die,' and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked way that he may live, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. Yet if you have warned the wicked and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered yourself."

God will judge you for keeping God's warnings of judgment from people. Being "encouraging" with a "positive message" at the expense of warning people with God's Word about their sin, in the end, is a totally discouraging, unloving, disheartening and negative message because being silent or speaking a peace God does not give is fake and it keeps God's message of rescue from them, and therefore, from you.

And, not talking about sin robs the Father of the glory He deserves for planning our salvation, it robs Jesus of the glory He deserves for defeating sin, death and hell on the Cross, and it robs the Spirit of the glory He deserves for His work of opening the eyes of sinners to their sin and need for a Savior.

Ezekiel 13:3, 6-8, 10 "Thus says the Lord GOD, 'Woe to the foolish prophets who are following their own spirit and have seen nothing. ... They see falsehood and lying divination who are saying, "The LORD declares," when the LORD has not sent them; yet they hope for the fulfillment of their word. Did you not see a false vision and speak a lying divination when you said, "The LORD declares," but it is not I who have spoken?' Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD, 'Because you have spoken falsehood and seen a lie, therefore behold, I am against you,' declares the Lord GOD. ... It is definitely because they have misled My people by saying, "Peace!" when there is no peace.'"

Don't get caught up with the references to visions and divination. The point here is they're saying "God says" when He never did for the purpose of making the people feel good with messages of "Peace" when there really is no peace for them. In other words, God does not support liars who say He says things He never did.

Regardless of the results, God is against you if you preach ANYTHING other than God's Word. If results were the measure of success, Joel Osteen (the supposed most successful pastor in the US who Larry King wondered may be the successor to Billy Graham [read transcript here]) is woefully unsuccessful compared to Roman Catholicism, Islam and Mormonism who God must be blessing because their results are so spectacular.

Bottom line: Preach God's Word, convenient or inconvenient, because you will "incur a stricter judgment" (James 3:1) as a pastor. Live and serve with the results of your judgment in mind.

What if Jesus Had Never Been Born?

If you haven't seen read this yet, please take a few minutes to read this short meditation on the question What Would Not Be If Jesus Had Not Been Born? here.

Before I go to bed tonight, I think I'll spend a few minutes meditating on this question in my journal. If you have any you'd like to add, please take a second to leave it in a comment below. Merry Christmas!

Chapter 7, The Enemy Within (Pt 2)

Have you ever wondered why you can watch all 9 Friday the 13th movies in one sitting (something 4 friends and I did in high school--what a colossal waste of time on awful trash!), but get instantly tired when it's time to pray? Or, you can focus like a laser beam while you track down the enemy in Halo 2 on the Xbox, but suffer from sudden onset ADHD when you sit down to read your Bible?

The reason why this happens to you & me has to do with my next question.

Have you ever tried to kill a bug that knew it was going to die? In high school we had to catch bugs and mount them on cardboard. I don't know if the bugs knew they were going to die when I put them in the "death jar" (a mayonnaise jar filled with cotton balls that were dipped in nail polish remover), but they squirmed and buzzed and writhed and thrashed about until the fumes overtook them.

The reason it's so hard to pray and read your Bible is because when you do them your flesh dies. As a result, it "resists with its last breath anything that smacks of communion with God, because [your sinful flesh] suffocates in his presence. If you draw close to God...prepare to see the flesh scratch and claw like a wounded badger" (73).

That scratching and clawing is the inability to stay awake and the inability to focus and the sudden need to clean your hairbrush or mop the kitchen floor. This is part of the war against yourself, your enemy within.

So, now that you know what it is and one of the many ways it works, it should be a little easier to fight and beat it. I know when I sit down to read my Bible, I expect to get tired, I expect to begin to read with the motive of filling my head with facts rather than filling my heart with Christ, I expect to get tired when I kneel or lay down to pray so I pray while journaling, or pray while walking, or pray standing up. What do you do?

Chapter 7, The Enemy Within (Pt 1)

The flesh's assault of the mind is so critical to fighting the battle against sin that Lundgaard devotes a second chapter to it.

Here, he summarizes that chapter by saying "The job is killing the flesh. The strength we have is the Spirit in us. And God has given us tools to finish the job" (70).

These tools are what he outlines throughout the chapter. However, before getting to them, let me say first that this is another in the long line of tragedies regarding the shallow, image and hype driven, edu-tainment church movement.

A church that does not solidly ground people in the Bible not only robs people of God, the One for whom they were made to be satisfied in, but also keeps them from having the tools to fight sin in order to enjoy Him. No Bible means no sword to fight with, and no armor to be protected by. You cannot hope to survive, let alone thrive as a Christian if you are one of those Christians who "are ignorant of the power of these tools [to fight sin] and how to use them" (70).

Enough of that soapbox. The tools to fight sin are rather simple to say, and hard to implement in our fast-paced, noisy culture. I guess that's why they're called spiritual disciplines.

These are meditation and prayer, namely, meditating on God with God, speaking to Him "as you contemplate him, humbling your soul before him, adoring and admiring him, delighting in him and giving him glory" (71-2).

Second, meditate on the Living Word (Jesus) in the Written Word (the Bible), or, study with the goal of having experiential knowledge of your Savior. Search your heart to make sure that you "never let [this] be your goal to search the Scripture to find a new insight to tickle your hunger for learning or to have something neat to share wieth your small group" (72). As a grad school student in apologetics and Bible, I often fell--and still fall--into this, and need to guard my heart against it diligently.

Finally, meditate on your self in the Word and with God, or meditate with the goal of exposing the secret desires, motivations, and schemes of your heart, "what advantages the flesh has gotten over you, what temptations it has used with success, what harm it has already caused, and what harm it still plans" (72). Ask God to "dredge up the schemes and plots of the law of sin, and drag them into the light of God's presence" (73).

Sovereign Grace Orange County

Please click here to read about an exciting new church starting in Orange County, California.

In the face of the shallow gospel and shallow churches that sadly mark Southern California Christianity, this will--by God's grace--be a truly counter-cultural expression of God-glorifying, gospel-driven ministry the produces an authentic, Jesus-worshiping community that moves from there to reach the lost.

I am so excited about this. Please pray for us as we move forward. Thank you.

Chapter 6, The Enemy Within (Pt 2)

When tempted to sin, your flesh does so with a frontal assault on your mind with the weapon of lies.

The first lie it tells you is that sin really isn't that serious, that wicked, that dangerous, that deadly. By doing so, you forget what it took to rescue you from your sin (namely, the incarnation, humiliation and death of Jesus, the perfect Son of God).

The flesh is also getting you to forget, what Lundgaard calls, the design of grace, which is to make you holy (cf. Titus 2:11-12), as well as the remedy of grace, which is pardon from God and peace with God (64-5).

By forgetting that God's grace is given to make you holy the result is thinking you have the license to "sin so that grace may abound" (Rom 6:1). You take advantage of grace by sinning because you know you'll be forgiven.

This is a lie. It is another gospel that says "You can sin, even just this once, because God will forgive you, and the price for that sin has already been paid. Live it up. Do what you want."

I've especially seen this in reformed kids who think eternal security is a license to sin as much as they want because "once saved; always saved." The books of James and 1 John have a message for them.

This person does not see the utter horror of being deceived into thinking that God's forgiveness is not earth-shattering, but common, no big deal, something He has to do when I confess.

Be very careful if this describes you.

The more you see your sin against the perfectly holy and just God of the universe the more you should hate it, not placate your throbbing conscience that 'Every Christian sins; we will until we die, so it's not serious.'

Also, the more you contemplate the Cross, the less you should think this. If you keep your eyes on the Cross, letting that be the music always playing in the background of your mind, then you will "keep the rottenness of sin and the kindness of God in mind" (66).

A final way the flesh lies to you is with the lie that the things of the world are more fun, more fulfilling, and more pleasing than God (65).

What an awful lie this is!!! The All-Sufficient One, traded in for a cheap knock-off! This is not small thing.

In fact, the Bible says this is appalling, shocking and truly evil: Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the LORD, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jer 2:12-13).

Grandpa Update

My grandpa Hoover goes to the doctor tomorrow to hear about the next step in his fight against his cancer. I think we will find out about the biopsy of his liver, and the condition of his gall bladder and pancreas.

Please pray for his newfound trust in Christ, and that he'll be emboldened to fight, whatever the news, rather than discouraged and ready to give up.

I truly believe this fight is mental and spiritual just as much as it is physical. Trust in God, support from his family and from all of you who are praying means a tremendous amount.

Having a strong support system, I'm beginning to think, is almost if not just as important as having a strong immune system in one's fight against cancer so thank you for being that for him and us.

Chapter 6, The Enemy Within (Pt 1)

The battle against the sin in you begins in your mind. If you loose the battle against sin there, you'll loose the battle.

Or, as Lundgaard says, if "the mind fails to identify a sin as evil, wicked, vile, and bitter, the affections will not be safe from clinging to it, nor the will from giving consent" (63).

We can see this quite clearly in the historical account of Joseph in Genesis 39:6-10. It's pretty clear from his responses to the sexual advances of Potipher's wife that his mind was fixed on the sinfulness of sin and the direction of sin, namely, that all sin is ultimately an act of treason against the authority of God.

Lundgaard concludes this opening section by explaining how Joseph's mind was filled with the goodness and grace of God, and how His kindness and love towards us is what "propels, fuels, drives us to obey" (64).

When I first became a Christian I spent a lot of time dwelling on my sin. Those early years as a Christian were, at times, miserable as I struggled with the difference between what I was before God and what I wanted to be for God.

Within the past year and a half, I've been overwhelmed with my sinfulness as God's given me a clearer picture of my wicked heart thanks to the ministry of John Piper and his talk of being satisfied in God alone. As I saw how much more satisfaction I get from stupid things like traffic opening up on the freeway than I do from God, I mourned my wickedness.

However, it wasn't very long that I began loving God more because He didn't leave me in my sin, but showed and continues to show His grace to me. There are times now when I think I'm more amazed at grace and the gospel than I did when I was first saved.

Now, this recognition and experience of God's grace in my life motivates me to expose my sin to him and others, and desire desperately not to sin against Him more. I can understand what Lundgaard is saying here because this has been my experience.

Chapter 5, The Enemy Within (Pt 2)

Deception has one specific target that it seeks to trick. Lies work on your mind.

Lundgaard pictures the deception of sin like the deception of a fisherman. Sin disguises all that is harmful about sin (the hook) underneath what is desirable about sin (the worm).

I was tricked recently into thinking that keeping some information from a close friend of mine until the “right time" was OK. I reasoned that this information will cause this person stress, so I’ll wait a little while to bring it up.

Causing my friend and myself anxiety and stress (the hook of sin) was hidden underneath a desire to keep the peace (the worm of sin).

This sin is called the fear of man and it was used to get me to believe and like the lie that keeping that information from a friend that needed to be known was a good thing. When that happened, my will assented and I said nothing. This is a very common deception I fall for, and one that I am desperately seeking to change.

When our minds believe sin’s deception, it doesn’t see what sin is or it’s consequences so that the mind makes a false judgment that the sin is actually OK.

Once the protection your mind gives against sin is “dragged away,” your emotions / affections are “enticed” to sin and your will “conceives” or chooses to sin, “carrying out what the mind said was good and the affections hungered for” (56-58).

This is the “strategy” or the “scheme” the flesh uses to tempt you to sin.

The bad news is that, as we’ve seen before, the flesh never rests. It is always plotting and seeking to carry out it’s deception on you in your life.

This is why the author says that we’re dealing with an enemy who is better understood as the never-sleeping “con man within” (57).

Grandpa Update

The doctor told us this morning that my grandpa is doing so well that he's cleared to go home tomorrow.

This is great news, but he has a long way to go since he still has 20% of a tumor near his stomach and, most likely, cancer in his liver.

So, please continue to pray for him. Thank you.

Chapter 5, The Enemy Within (Pt 1)

The sinful flesh that’s leftover in the believer has one goal in mind. That goal is not that we sin, that we reject God, that we get angry at God, that we distrust God, that we get frustrated, that we get depressed, or anything else.

These are all secondary goals to the flesh’s primary objective: your death.

If death is the goal, the means that the flesh uses to accomplish that goal is temptation / deception.

Sin happens because it deceives us. Deception is making “someone believe that things are other than they are, so that he would do something he would never otherwise do” (54-55).

Lundgaard writes that when the flesh deceives you like this, “you will sin” (55).

This is what happens in Genesis 3 when Eve is deceived into thinking Satan had her best interests in mind (he didn’t, God did) while God was jealous (of having rivals), stingy and restrictive (by making one tree off limits rather than seeing His generosity since she could have food from ALL trees except one).

These are many of the same objections I’ve heard while doing evangelism. People don’t become Christians because they believe Christianity is too boring or restrictive, that God does not have their best interests in mind, and that if God were really good He’d let them live how they want.

They’ve been deceived. What about you?

Grandpa Update

My grandpa is doing great!!!

After three hours Dr. Nguyen was able to remove 75% of his stomach and 80% of the tumor.

The other 20% of the tumor was near important veins and arteries, and so he could do nothing there. He also biopsied the liver and found a rice size legion on his gall bladder.

The doctor was very pleased with the surgery saying that he was able to do far more than he thought he was going to be able to do. His last words were "We did all we could do. The rest is in God's hands."

We got to see him around 3:30pm for the first time since leaving him around 9am. While he was quite tired, his spirits were good, his grip was very strong, his vitals were stable, and he was even talking and joking a little.

He has a long way to go to recover from open chest surgery. His stomach is painful, as well as the skin on his chest, but right now it's about letting him rest and get his strength back up.

The doctors expect he'll be at the hospital for a week to 10 days.

Thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers. My aunt is right when she said that God's good hands were all over yesterday's events.

Also, and most importantly, after talking about Christ to him on the way home Thursday night and on the way to the hospital Friday morning, my grandpa expressed his desire to repent of his sins and trust Jesus for salvation. There is a really great story here, but nevertheless, we prayed a simple prayer in his hospital room about 2 hours before the surgery.

I'm off to the hospital now, and plan on spending most of the day there. I don't want him to be alone in any of this. I told him yesterday that throughout my life he has been my biggest fan so now it's time for me to be his biggest fan.

Thank you again for your prayers. Please continue to do so for his recovery. The effects of your prayers were obvious in the weeks leading up to and during the surgery.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.