Guarding His Flock Ministries

On Musical Mediatrixes

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us . . . seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus . . . Ephesians 2:4-6

The Matrix: Though defying rational explanation, it is what it is. Foremost, music is spiritual. In whatever venue, whether a rock concert, a national anthem before a sporting event, a funeral, a military parade, or a church worship service, etc.—music delivers powerful experiences to its hearers. Music’s subliminal message can prove mind-altering. One newspaper columnist accounts for its popularity for reason that, “Music is a vehicle that propels [the disc jockey]—and me and so many others—toward the place we might call enlightenment, or God, or the higher consciousness, or Grace.” [1]

But not only is music spiritual, it is also mystical. Like hand in glove, the spiritual and the mystical work together with an interconnectedness that defies rational explanation because however else it might be understood, music is an experience. “Feel the music,” ran an advertisement for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra a few years ago. It may be deduced that the “language” of music is universal because it is neither conceptual nor verbal, but rather experiential and mystical. It’s a language without language. Together. people from different nations and tongues can experience it. Subject to the individual impulses, tastes, and delights of composers and consumers, there is much about music that is ethereal.
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A Case Study of Rahab the Harlot.

Just believe! Such faith, exhibited by many within the pan-evangelical church of, runs a severe risk of being misplaced. For many, faith has become “faith in feelings.” As a friend of mine used to say, Christians these days get all excited over excitements. But if individual and inner emotions become the standard of faith, then such faith finds its origin within one’s feelings, and that is a miserable place for faith to reside. In such a place, faith may be “personal,” but it’s no more than that. Theologians call this fideism, or faith in faith apart from any rational or vilitional considerations. Excess emphasis on emotionalism reduces faith to romanticism, and as such, enhancement of personal faith could be stimulated by reading feel-good books, watching feel-good movies, or listening to feel-good songs. All of this and more can extol the magic of believing.

Have you ever listened to the song, “I Believe!”? The lyrics read: “I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows.” [1] While the lyrics sound upbeat and positive–words that ooze with a message of positivity and possibility–they are essentially false. One drop of rain does not produce an equivalent flower. Flower lovers may wish it to be were so, but it’s not. This is one example of romantic but vacuous faith. Ultimately, faith will rise no higher than the object into which it is placed. If it originates and resides within one’s soul experiences, then that’s where it will remain until disillusionment might extinguish it. But biblical faith demands a subject who believes within, and an object who is believed without. For example, we turn to Rahab the Harlot.

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“For, behold, Thine enemies make an uproar; And those who hate Thee have exalted themselves. They make shrewd plans against Thy people, And conspire together against Thy treasured ones. They have said, ‘Come, and let us wipe them out as a nation, That the name of Israel be remembered no more’.” (Psalm 83:2-4, NASB). 

In the over half-century since the conclusion of World War II, there has resided in the Jewish community a tendency to blame Christianity for the rise of Nazism and the unspeakable evil that befell the Jewish people during the tyrannical reign of, and the Holocaust conducted by, the Third Reich. The senior inter-religious advisor at the American Jewish Committee, Rabbi James Rudin once expressed this conviction: ”Christianity and Christian teachings over the centuries created the seedbed for Nazism to grow in.” [1] Wrongly, I believe, some historians assign blame for the rise of modern European anti-Semitism to Martin Luther. [2] Lately however, such linkage is being questioned.

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"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past . . ."  Romans 3:23-25a

The church, as dictated by the culture’s prevailing mood, tends to ignore what theologians have labeled, “the dark side of God.” Jonathan Edward’s sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God probably would not fly amongst contemporary Christians, who, in their ignorance, connect their concept of God only to the yellow circle of God’s smiling face. Because God is always happy, or so it is presumed, His greatest desire is for us to be happy too! Thus any contemplation about God’s dark side has been dismissed from the collective psyche of many modern Christians.

Scripture records persons hiding from God’s wrath (Revelation 6:16-17). Hiding from wrath is instinctive to us. After all, who of us relished a spanking when we were kids? Yet the ominous personal side of God’s wrath life remains, for it has been observed that Scripture has more to say about God’s anger than it does about His love. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,” wrote the Apostle Paul (Romans 1:18).

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“What’s wrong with tattoos?” the adolescents asked their seventh grade Christian school teacher. On the part of Christian youth the question indicates both a fascination with tattoos and maybe, a temptation to get one. So what’s wrong, if anything, with tattoos?
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Breaking Away from Seductive Spirituality.

“For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 11:2, KJV

The story possesses the ingredients of a modern day soap opera. She was a well-kept, but neglected and desperate wife of Potiphar, a man who had one of the most demanding jobs in the kingdom—protecting the king’s life. Joseph was a handsome, successful, and “unattached” young servant whom Potiphar, head of the secret service, appointed to manage his finances and oversee his household’s day-to-day-operation. As Pharaoh trusted Potiphar with his life, so Potiphar trusted Joseph with his wife.

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A Meditation

In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Quench not the Spirit. 1 Thessalonians 5:18-19, KJV

At one point or another in our lives, all of us have lived beneath our circumstances. At times, the sheer weight of life can “get us down.” I’ve felt that way, and I am sure you have too. The story is told of W.H. Griffith Thomas (1861-1924), a Bible teacher and theologian of a previous generation, who was walking down the street. Approaching a lady he asked her, “How are you faring today Madame?” to which question she replied, “Pretty well under the circumstances.” Thomas then responded, “What, may I ask, are you doing under the circumstances?”
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“What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?”  Romans 9:22 

Hyper-Calvinism asserts that God predestined the non-elect to go to hell. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion John Calvin called it reprobation and wrote that, “there could be no election without its opposite, reprobation.” He then continued: “Those, therefore, whom God passes by He reprobates . . . because He is pleased to exclude them from the inheritance which He predestines to his children.”[1]

Double-predestination as it is also known, claims to find support in Romans chapter 9, especially verse 22 which reads: “What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?” (Romans 9:22, NASB).

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On the Moral Collapse in the Pan-Evangelical Nation.

“There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Romans 3:18, KJV)

Circa 600 B.C. Indicting the people of his day, Jeremiah described that; they “swear falsely,” “refused to take correction,” “refused to repent,” “do not know the way of the Lord or the ordinance of their God,” “were well-fed lusty horses, each one neighing after his neighbor’s wife,” “bend their tongue like their bow“; that “lies and not truth prevail in the land“; that their “sons have forsaken Me and sworn by those who are not gods“; and that “every brother deals craftily and every neighbor goes about as a slanderer” (See Jeremiah 5:1-9, 26-28; 9:3-6). Déjà vu! Any reader of Jeremiah and the other prophets cannot help but notice the uncanny resemblance between the society of Judah then and the evangelical sub-culture now. Fast forward to . . .
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A Meditation on John 5:44.

Deep within the human psyche, in many ways tainted, twisted and perverted by sin, lays a powerful need to be accepted by others. All of us want to feel connected to those who accept us for who we are. But “peer pressure” can have a downside. In her best-selling book, psychologist-author Harriet Braiker called it, The Disease to Please. [1] This disease can plague those in Christian ministry. By the way, that’s all of us! But the need for acceptance and approval from others raises an important issue every true believer must deal with, and it is this: Do we do what we do for acceptance, approval, adulation, and applause from peers, or do we do what we do by faith for the glory of God?
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