The King of the Dump

I recently switched from Directv to Spectrum.  I had a very old TV that is not compatible with Spectrum’s HDMI only cable boxes.  So I bought a new TV and took the old one to the dump.  You have to prove that you are a resident with your driver’s license and a copy of a recent water bill from the city to allowed to dump.  I brought my license and June’s water bill, the most recent one I could find. The King of the Dump raised Cain with me because of my ancient water bill.  Like I moved to Arkansas but was just dying to get over on him by dumping my TV in his dump. “Did you look at the date on this water bill before you came”, he asked.  “Do you know what ‘recent’ means?” I said, “Look, if it’s that big of a deal, I will go home and find the most current water bill.”  He then said, “I’ll let you dump today, but be more careful in the future.” I think he expected me to kiss his filthy boots at this display of grace.  

Bruce Springsteen has a line in a song called “Badlands” that goes like this, “Poor man want to be rich. Rich man want to be king, and a king ain’t satisfied till he rules everything.” We all want to be king of something. Then when we are king of that, we want to be king of something bigger.  This man was the king of the dump.  It was his prerogative to enforce the rules of the dump strictly, or to give grace.  He clearly enjoyed his kingdom.  I’m sure you all have had similar experiences. 

Why is it that we want a kingdom so badly?  I think it’s because we are so out of control in most areas of our lives that we desperately want to be in control of something.  We try to control our health by exercising and eating right, but we could get a bad diagnosis any day.  We try to control our financial security by investing wisely, but the bottom could fall out of the stock market or real estate market without warning.  We try to control what will happen to our assets after we die, but our kids might squander what we have worked hard to accumulate.  We try to control our relationships by treating people well, but find that we have somehow unwittingly offended someone and we can’t fix it.  We realize that we are not in control of anything. We long for something that we can control with complete and unadulterated authority.  

Jesus dismissed the idea that we are in control of anything. In Luke 12, in the great passage about controlling worry and anxiety said, “And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life’s span? If then you cannot do even a very little thing, why do you worry about other matters?”   We are not in control. God is sovereign and everything happens in accordance with His will and with His plans.  I thank God for that.  If we accept that God is good and God is omnipotent, then what do we have to fear? Most times in life, when I try to be king of my life, I get out ahead of God and I don’t learn the lesson that God has for me in the moment.  In doing that I miss the blessing He has for me and I make a dump out of my own life. 

I tell myself that I don’t want to be king of my life.  I tell myself that I want to be a faithful subject of the only true King.  But am I being honest?  The only way to be a faithful subject is to surrender my life to the true King and let him rule my life.   That means allowing Him to use me however He wants.  It means being thankful for suffering because of the lessons I learn from it.  Most of us try so hard to control our own lives, and then something happens that makes us realize that we never had control anyway.  God did not make me king of my life.  The more I try to be king, the more I usurp His authority and get in the way of the work He wants to do through me.  We have to surrender our lives to him daily.  People trying to lose weight start a new diet every morning. People who want to surrender their lives to God have do it every morning too.  I pray that we will all have the strength and wisdom through the power of the Holy Spirit to surrender to Him.  He’s a better King than we will ever be!

What Have You Done For Me Lately?

What Have You Done for Me Lately?

In 1986, Janet Jackson released a song called “What Have You done for Me Lately?” I admit that I never read the lyrics to the song before today, but some of them are pretty funny.  Here’s the second verse: “Used to go to dinner almost every night, dancin' 'til I thought I'd lose my breath, Now it seems your dancing feet are always on my couch, Good thing I cook or else we'd starve to death - Ain't that a shame?  What have you done for me lately?”  It’s not Shakespeare, but you get the point. 

Last Thursday night was opening day of football season. The Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles were home to the Atlanta Falcons.  The first half was very sloppy and at halftime, the Eagles were trailing 6-3.  They serenaded with a chorus of boos from the notoriously fickle Philadelphia fan base on their way to the locker room.  Did I mention that the Eagles were the defending Super Bowl Champions?  What have you done for me lately?

When we think about God, we often ask the same question.  Yes God, you are the Creator of all that is.  Yes God, you sent your Son to die on a cross so that believing I might have eternal life. But, really, “What have you done for me LATELY?”  There’s a scene in Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian” (Don’t act like you’ve never seen it!) where the rebel group of Jews called the People’s Front of Judea complain about the presence of the Romans, saying, “They've taken everything we have and what have they ever done for us?!”  Then one of the rebels mentions the aqueduct that the Romans built, and they all reluctantly agree that the Romans did build them an aqueduct. Another mentions sanitation, and again they agree.  After several more things are mentioned, their leader says, “All right, apart from the aqueduct, sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?!”   What have you done for me lately?

The Life of Brian is a comedy. I don’t mean to equate our relationship to God with Jews living under 1^stCentury Roman oppression, but it’s a funny illustration.  It should make us realize how much we take for granted the things that God HAS provided, while constantly complaining and griping about the things He hasn’t.  What has He provided for us that we take for granted?  He gives us oxygen for our lungs, water for our cells, rain for our crops, and food for our bellies.  Most of us have clothes to wear, roofs over our heads and have never missed a meal.  In addition, He’s given us a way out of the sin predicament that we are in.  We can’t get to heaven because of our sin, but God made a way.  He sent His Son to die on a cross to pay the penalty for our sin. All we have to do is believe in Jesus for our salvation and our sins are forgiven and we spend eternity in heaven. Is that not enough?

Human nature being what it is, the answer is often, no.  We always want more.  We’re always complaining.  We forget to thank God for the prayer He did answer, and continue to worry about the prayer He hasn’t yet answered. We want God to be a cosmic genie in a bottle who grants our every wish.  Jesus said in John 6, you seek me not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.  What have you done for me lately?  Life’s difficulties draw us closer to Him and that’s right where we need to be.  Ultimately, we want to be closer to Him not for what He can give to us, but because of who He is.  

The Eagles came back last Thursday night and beat the Falcons and thousands of delirious Eagles fans cheered.  What had the Eagles done for their fans lately?  They won the game.  But the players know that the fans will turn on them the next time they play a bad first half.  Let’s not be like that toward God.  I have been praying a very specific prayer for some time now and yet God has not yet deemed the time to be right to answer it.  I’m sure you have too.  Let’s love and worship God for who He is and not what He’s done for us lately.  John Piper has famously said, “God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in Him.”  Let’s not ask, “What have you done for me lately?”  Let’s just be satisfied in Him. 

Two New York City Tragedies

I’m sure many of you watched the news coverage remembering 9/11 this morning.  Fox replayed their actual live coverage from that morning.  It brought back the raw emotions of deep sorrow and anguish, along with fierce anger, just as fresh as if it happened yesterday.  I was in Court in Hackensack, NJ, about 10 miles north and west of NYC, representing a client on the morning of 9/11.  It was before the age of smart phone, and so it wasn’t until about 10 am, there I heard rumblings around the courthouse that something had happened at the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan.  When I got out of court and headed for home, I could see the smoke from the WTC and by then had heard the news that both towers had fallen.  Alli was 2 and Brian was 7 months old at the time.  All I wanted to do was to be home with my family.   

I remember as a young boy, my father used to work in downtown Manhattan.  Sometimes over the summer, I would go to work with him.  We would take the subway from Hoboken, NJ under the Hudson River to the WTC stop and then walk the few blocks to his office.  I remember leaning against the buildings and looking up in awe at these buildings that reached literally into the sky.  It would never have entered my mind then or in 2001, that they could be taken down by terrorists.  The memory of the people who died that day; the images of people jumping off the buildings rather than being burned; the sight of those incredible buildings collapsing to the ground will always be ingrained in our minds and hearts.  I still cry thinking about it.  Molly and I and many of our friends from the northeast who will read this post knew several people who died that morning.  We should never, ever forget the evil that occurred that day.

Today, there is another tragedy occurring at Union Theological Seminary on the opposite side of Manhattan.  John MacArthur and other evangelical leaders published a document on September 5, 2018 called “Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel”, which begins, “In view of questionable sociological, psychological and political theories presently permeating our culture and making inroads in Christ’s church, we wish to clarify certain key doctrines and ethical principles prescribed in God’s word.”  The document proceeds to affirm orthodox doctrines of the Christian faith while denying that “political or social activism should be viewed as integral components of the gospel or primary to the mission of the church.  Though believers can and should utilize all lawful means that God has providentially established to have some effect on the laws of a society, we deny that these activities are either evidence of saving faithor constitute a central part of the church’s mission given to her by Jesus Christ, her head. We deny that laws or regulations possess any inherent power to change sinful hearts.” (emphasis mine)

In response to the Statement, Union, which is part of Columbia University in Harlem, issued a rebuttal which begins, “Misguided sociological, psychological and political theories have long fostered biblical misinterpretation.”  The rebuttal then expressly denies the inerrancy of Scripture, denies that “salvation is only found through Christianity, that’s God’s salvific grace is exclusive to any single faith or religion”, and proclaims that “there is no difference in spiritual value or worth between those who are ‘in Christ’ and those who aren’t.  Union affirms that “science and theory’s confirmation that God created humans to live into various sexual orientations and genders-the spectrum of human sexual experience attests to God’s expansive love.  We deny that any love that does no harm should be rejected.”  (emphasis mine) (You can read the full text of the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel and Union’s response on the internet.)

I searched Union’s website for a doctrinal statement without success.  From the above, it seems that Union subscribes to universalist theology that affirms that all people will go to heaven regardless of what they believe, and that the role of religion and of the church is to do good to others.  While we certainly should do good to others, our benevolence does not save us or the person receiving it from the wrath of God.  The only way we can get to heaven is not by belief in anything we have done, but belief that we can’t do anything to merit salvation. That’s why it was necessary that Jesus Christ died on the cross.  He died to pay the penalty that we deserve for our sins, and He rose from the dead.  Believe that and you will go to heaven.  Anything else is belief that your own good works can get you into heaven, something that the Bible unequivocally denies.  To hold to Union’s universalist social gospel, you must discard or de-value the Bible, sin, the wrath of God, the cross, the atonement, the resurrection, the ascension, and the coming day of judgment.  Union calls itself a Christian seminary, yet joins a long list of seminaries and churches that have done just that. 

A total of 2,996 people lost their lives on 9/11.  It was an unequalled tragedy in the history of our nation.  A more subtle tragedy is the number of people who may ultimately lose their souls as a result of the teaching that is coming from Union Seminary and other like-minded seminaries and churches in our country.  As evangelical Christians, we believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, the need for a Savior due to our fallen sinful state, that Jesus Christ came as God in the flesh, born of a virgin, who died on a cross for our sins and was raised from the dead, and the only way to get to heaven is trust in Him alone for our salvation.  That’s an unpopular message today, but it’s the truth.  The only way to prevent the tragedy of people facing God’s wrath and spending eternity in hell is to preach it.   Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father son and Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.”

So let’s love others by preaching the gospel to them, and making disciples.  If people have physical needs, let's meet them where we can, not because that saves us or them, but because they were created in God’s image, God loves them, Christ died for them, and meeting physical needs often provides an opportunity to share the gospel that does save.