New Life Baptist Church, College Station Texas

Well, ok, we’re not on vaca­tion together. But that’s because we told them there weren’t enough bed­rooms at my in-laws’ lakehouse.

Well, ok, that’s not really the rea­son we aren’t on vaca­tion together. But we are on vaca­tion at the same time. You can read about Kevin’s plans here. He is going on Sab­bat­i­cal for three full months after seven years of ser­vice to Uni­ver­sity Reformed Church. What a great bless­ing from his church family!

I wanted to take a moment to say “Thank You” to our church fam­ily as well. You are a joy to serve and we will miss you this week. Thank you for pri­or­i­tiz­ing the health of my mar­riage and my fam­ily. Our time off each year is a sweet times for us and replen­ishes us for fresh ser­vice to God and to you. We love you and will see you soon!

Please join us this evening at 5pm as we con­sider “The Para­ble of the Per­sis­tent Widow” from Luke 18:1–8. This is the third week in our “Para­bles” series, which we will wrap-up next Sun­day night. Tonight’s mes­sage is enti­tled, “Pray­ing with Bold Assur­ance.” We will learn in tonight’s ser­mon that we can “pray always and with­out los­ing heart,” as Luke says in verse one, because we have a per­fect Medi­a­tor in Christ. The per­sis­tent widow had no medi­a­tor and an unjust judge, but we have a per­fect Medi­a­tor and a per­fectly right­eous Judge who loves to hear and answer the prayers of His peo­ple. We hope to see you tonight at 5pm!

I appre­ci­ate cre­ativ­ity. I do. But when I heard on the radio that Denny’s Restau­rants were cel­e­brat­ing “Bacona­lia,” I thought that things were get­ting a lit­tle out of hand.

So I went to the web­site. And I was wrong. Things are way out of hand:

1. There is an entire sec­tion of the Denny’s web­site ded­i­cated to Bacona­lia, com­plete with a his­tory of Bacona­lia, hol­i­day cards, and even songs writ­ten just for the occasion.

2. The menu now fea­tures seven (7?) items that are not nor­mally served with bacon. Bacon is now the main ingre­di­ent on these items which include Bacon Meat­loaf and (pre­pare to throw up a lit­tle in your mouth) a Bacon Maple Sun­dae (as in ice cream). Would you like some cho­les­terol with your trans fats and calories?

3. There is a “Bacon Cam,” which allows you to view the sight and hear the sound of siz­zling bacon 24 hours a day, 7 days a week if you’d like.

Maybe Harold Camp­ing was right about the end of the world.

Sum­mer Mem­ber­ship classes begin on Tues­day, June 7th. Every prospec­tive mem­ber needs to attend both classes (6:15–8:30 pm on the 7th and 14th) and a 20-minute per­sonal meet­ing with one of our pas­tors. If you are plan­ning to come to our sum­mer mem­ber­ship classes, please sign-up online by click­ing here. This will ensure that we have enough mate­ri­als for every­one. You might also want to begin read­ing through our State­ment of Faith, Church Covenant, and Thabiti Anyabwile’s book, What is a Healthy Church Mem­ber? If you have any ques­tions, please con­tact us. See you on June 7^th!

I try to use our Mon­day blog posts to hit on areas that were not touched on or not touched on enough dur­ing last night’s ser­mon. As I con­sid­ered pride and humil­ity, it occurred to me that there are ways that we can sin in pride with­out even know­ing it (much like we framed desir­ing the approval of man as a form of cov­et­ing last Monday).

I wanted to pass on one of John Piper’s old “Taste and See” arti­cles to you. This one is called, “The Pride of Being Afraid.” All of us strug­gle with the fear of man in one form or another. I think it will serve you well as you con­sider how the fear of man can even be a form of pride. I will copy and paste the arti­cle in full below. Enjoy!

“The Lord has used some unusual texts in my life to help me begin to over­come the fear of men. One of those texts is Isa­iah 51:12 where God says, “I, I am he that com­forts you; who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass?” Doesn’t that strike you as strange when he says, “Who are you that you are afraid?” The mean­ing is that God regards fear of men as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of pride. When we say “Who do you think you are, barg­ing in here like that,” we mean, “You are pre­sump­tu­ous and arro­gant to barge in here.” So when God says, “Who are you that you fear mere men,” he means, “You are pre­sump­tu­ous and arro­gant to be afraid of men.”

Now I had never thought of my being afraid to wit­ness, or my being afraid to risk some kind of embar­rass­ment, as a sign of pride. It felt like a weak­ness, and who is proud of weak­nesses? But now this text has helped me see my fears in a new light.

Fear of men really is a mark of pride. It is pre­sump­tu­ous. It pre­sumes to take over a respon­si­bil­ity for our com­fort which God has said he wants to han­dle. Fear gets up on the throne and shouts: “Don’t do that; you will get egg on your face. You’ll be humil­i­ated.” So fear takes over the role of pro­tec­tor and guide and com­forter. But these are roles that belong to God. The Lord says very emphat­i­cally, “I, I am he that com­forts you!” So when we allow our­selves to fear the dis­plea­sure of man we are act­ing arro­gantly. We are pre­sum­ing to set our wis­dom above God’s promise.

God promises to be our com­forter and pro­tec­tor, but we deny the cred­i­bil­ity of God’s word and allow fear to set the lim­its of our obe­di­ence. Every time we let fear hin­der us in an oppor­tu­nity to share the gospel we are proudly regard­ing our emo­tions as a more trust­wor­thy por­tent of the future than the promises of God are. So it makes very good sense that God should say, “I, I am he that com­forts you; who are you that you should be afraid of man who dies?”

This has helped me a great deal. It is not just a com­mand: Fear not! It com­bines two pow­er­ful motives: 1) it stresses that God loves to help us in our scary times (“I am he that com­forts you”), and 2) it stresses that God is very offended and indig­nant when we do not believe this promise. I love to think that God is my con­stant help and com­fort, and I hate to think of offend­ing God by the pride of unbe­lief. There­fore, Isa­iah 51:12 has been a great help in over­com­ing fear in my life. I hope God will use it and oth­ers (like Luke 12:4–7) to help you too.”

Please join us tonight for week two of our “Para­bles” series as we con­sider the “Para­ble of the Wed­ding Feast” from Luke 14:7–11. The mes­sage is enti­tled, “Humil­ity: The Real Path to Exal­ta­tion.” In this pas­sage of Scrip­ture, Jesus observes the guests at a Pharisee’s home jock­ey­ing for the places of honor at the din­ner table. Rather than affirm­ing this culturally-accepted prac­tice, Jesus reveals the pride behind those actions and calls His lis­ten­ers to humil­ity. How­ever, real humil­ity only comes from God through faith in the per­son and work of Christ — the One wh0 hum­bled Him­self that we might be exalted. We hope to see you tonight at 5pm!

I believe it is a good prac­tice to peri­od­i­cally eval­u­ate how we do every­thing in life, and that includes our prac­tice of the spir­i­tual dis­ci­plines. Recently, I decided to take a step back and con­sider my daily, focused time spent in Scrip­ture read­ing, med­i­ta­tion, and prayer (my “quiet time”). I wanted to be more inten­tional with that time, and wanted to have some reg­u­lar ques­tions I asked of myself each day. Addi­tion­ally, I wanted to have slightly dif­fer­ent ques­tions that I asked of myself at the end of each week. So far, I believe God has used this new process to help me to bet­ter apply what God speaks to me through His Word and prayer. I am hope­ful that this process and these ques­tions will be help­ful to you as well.

Daily Ques­tions

1. What will it look like for me to func­tion­ally set my hope in God today?

This ques­tion is aimed at spe­cific appli­ca­tion of the Gospel to the spe­cific day ahead of me. If I have a busy day ahead of me and many things to do, I will have to ask God to help me trust Him as I seek to work hard and honor Him. Get­ting every­thing done should not be the goal; hon­or­ing God and trust­ing Him as I work as hard as I can should be.

2. What temp­ta­tions will there be for me to sin today?

This ques­tion focuses on think­ing ahead to poten­tial pit­falls. Do I have a meet­ing with a dif­fi­cult per­son today? Is there a unique chal­lenge before me which causes me to feel inad­e­quate and there­fore to become tempted to anger?

3. How is God call­ing me to die to myself today?

This ques­tion requires me to think of oth­ers rather than myself. How can I serve oth­ers rather than look to be served by others?

Sab­bath Day Questions

1. Where have I seen evi­dence of God’s grace this week?

Too often, we are peo­ple who com­plain to God about what is wrong with our lives rather than praise Him for the 99.5% of things that are going absolutely great.

2. How have I been respond­ing to trial, dif­fi­culty, dis­cour­age­ment, and setback?

As a self-centered, whiny per­son who is prone to com­plain­ing about every­thing, this ques­tion is espe­cially impor­tant for me.

3. What temp­ta­tions and sins have been most ensnar­ing to me lately?

If asked this ques­tion by a mature brother or sis­ter, many of us (includ­ing me) might say, “Um, I’m not really sure. I guess I’ve been kinda pride­ful and stuff.” Well, if that’s my best answer to how I’ve been tempted to sin and how I’ve sinned lately, I sim­ply haven’t been pay­ing atten­tion to my soul. At all.

4. How have I been lov­ing and pas­tor­ing my wife this week?

The most impor­tant things in life should be eval­u­ated seri­ously and reg­u­larly. This needed to be an explicit ques­tion for me.

5. How have I been lov­ing and pas­tor­ing each of my kids this week?

See above.

6. How have I been lov­ing and pas­tor­ing my church this week?

For you, this ques­tion may be reworded, “How have I been lov­ing and pas­tor­ing oth­ers this week?” Oth­ers will include church mem­bers, room­mates, friends, neigh­bors, cowork­ers, and peo­ple you inter­act with in the com­mu­nity. Remem­ber: you are an ambas­sador for Christ, and the only one many peo­ple will ever come in con­tact with. Take the job seriously!

I hope these ques­tions will serve you well!

If you have been pray­ing about join­ing New Life, our next mem­ber­ship classes are just around the cor­ner. At New Life, we offer our mem­ber­ship classes three times per year. Our sum­mer classes will be held on Tues­day, June 7^th and Tues­day, June 14^th from 6:15–8:30 pm. Per­sonal meet­ings will be held on Tues­day, June 21^st. Each prospec­tive mem­ber needs to attend both classes and a 20-minute per­sonal meet­ing with one of our pastors.

If you are plan­ning to come to our sum­mer mem­ber­ship classes, please sign-up online by click­ing here. This will ensure that we have enough mate­ri­als for every­one. You can also get a jump-start by read­ing through our State­ment of Faith, Church Covenant, and Thabiti Anyabwile’s book, What is a Healthy Church Mem­ber? We’ll ask you to do all three in class, so you might as well get started on your home­work early! If you have any ques­tions, please con­tact us. See you on June 7^th!

In last night’s mes­sage (“The Empty Promise of Cov­et­ing”), we cov­ered the para­ble of the rich fool in Luke 12:13–21. Jesus warned us to be on guard against all cov­etous­ness because our lives don’t con­sist of what we own. Cov­et­ing is an empty promise because it pro­motes the lie that if we just had some­thing or more of some­thing, we would finally be happy. But to be rich in any­thing and poor toward God is ulti­mately undesirable.

We are really sophis­ti­cated sin­ners, and we don’t only covet mate­r­ial things. We also covet intan­gi­ble things like the approval of oth­ers. We think that if we could only receive approval from peo­ple or more approval from peo­ple we would finally be sat­is­fied. This point was brought home to me when I read this arti­cle from the AP last Wednes­day. The arti­cle stated that one week after Osama bin Laden’s death, Pres­i­dent Obama’s approval rat­ing hit its high­est point in two years — 60% — accom­pa­nied by the sta­tis­tic that more than half of Amer­i­cans say that he deserves to be re-elected. 73% of Amer­i­cans now say that Pres­i­dent Obama can effec­tively han­dle ter­ror­ist threats.

You know what this reminds me of?

“They brought the don­key and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. Most of the crowd  spread their cloaks on the road, and oth­ers cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that fol­lowed him were shout­ing, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the high­est!” (Matt. 21:7–9)

“Pilate said to them, ‘Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?’ They all said, ‘Let him be cru­ci­fied!’ And he said, ‘Why, what evil has he done?’ But they shouted all the more, ‘Let him be cru­ci­fied!’ So when Pilate saw that he was gain­ing noth­ing, but rather that a riot was begin­ning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, say­ing, ‘I am inno­cent of this man’s blood; see to it your­selves.’ And all the peo­ple answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our chil­dren!” (Matt. 27:22–25)

In one week’s time, the crowd went from try­ing to force Jesus to be their king to forc­ing Pilate to cru­cify him. You see the same treat­ment of Paul and Barn­abas at Lystra. One sec­ond, the peo­ple are per­suaded that they are gods (Acts 14:11–13), and the next sec­ond they decide to stone them (v. 19). Pres­i­dent Obama isn’t the only one who has ever received ire and ado­ra­tion from the same peo­ple in less than a week.

Isn’t it strange that we stake so much on the approval of oth­ers? We covet their approval, but cov­et­ing proves to be an empty promise. We either give every­thing to win the approval of oth­ers and never receive it, which leaves us dis­il­lu­sioned; or we give every­thing to win the approval of oth­ers and do receive it, only to dis­cover that hav­ing their approval didn’t sat­isfy (or didn’t last more than a few moments).

Are you one who cov­ets the approval of oth­ers? Ask some hard ques­tions about why you do what you do and say what you say. Is it to please God or to please oth­ers? If it is to please oth­ers, why do you seek their approval?

Many of us seek the approval of oth­ers because we do not func­tion­ally believe that we have the approval of God through faith in the per­son and work of Jesus. This truth sets us free from the need to win the approval of oth­ers. When we stop try­ing to win the approval of oth­ers, we can really love and serve them instead of use them to meet our need for approval.

Please join us tonight at 5pm as we begin our a new series on the para­bles of Jesus. Each of the next four weeks we will look at one of Jesus’ para­bles found in the Gospel of Luke. Tonight, we will con­sider “The Para­ble of the Rich Fool” found in Luke 12:13–21. The mes­sage is called, “The Empty Promise of Coveting.”

We covet because we believe a lie about God — namely that He is not good and that He is hold­ing out on us. As a result, we search for the good life out­side of God in other peo­ple and other things. We believe that if we get those peo­ple or those things or more of those peo­ple or those things, we will finally be sat­is­fied. Of course, we won’t be; but even if we are, we can be rich and sat­is­fied and be poor towards God — just like the rich man in the para­ble. We hope to see you tonight at 5pm!