The Southern Baptist Convention, in an official statement entitled, On the Sin of Gambling [click to open], declared:
The Southern Baptist Convention has a long history of opposing gambling in its various forms, such as casinos, lotteries, racing, and other gambling schemes; and WHEREAS, Gambling violates the principle of neighbor-love, necessitating the financial loss and harm of many for the gain of a few, enjoying entertainment at the expense of others (Exodus 20:17; 22:21; Leviticus 25:17; Deuteronomy 22:1–4; Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Romans 13:8–10; Galatians 5:14; James 2:8). The SBC made nine declarations against the sin of gambling.
Read moreJohn Piper received this question in Ask Pastor John: “Hello Pastor John .... The bets I place are rather modest at $20–$50 a week. Is modest online sports gambling sinful?”[1] I will return later to give Piper’s answer. I quote this young man to show that this is an important question that is often asked.
Maura J. Casey wrote a devastating article titled "Gambling with Lives." Casey relates some personal gambling tragedies:
A friend of mine told me that to escape the burdens of motherhood she would go to the casinos at 2 A.M. to gamble until 6:30 A.M., when she would go back home and get her kids ready for school. Until the day she didn’t go home in time—unable to stop playing the slots. A worried state legislator called to tell me her husband emptied her sixteen-year-old son’s college fund to gamble at the casinos. A bank manager told me about a customer who inherited $1 million and—aided by using the ATM machines at the casino to withdraw money—gambled it all away. A woman who worked at my daughter’s day care moved her family to Florida in a desperate attempt at a geographic cure after her husband drained money from his ten-year-old’s savings account and couldn’t stop going to the area casinos.[2]
Read moreSome Bible teachers advocate that there is healing in the atonement of Jesus on the cross based on 1 Peter 2:24: “By whose stripes we are healed.” Can you imagine the audience of Peter who were suffering persecution for their faith and witness being confused if Peter was teaching because of Jesus’ atonement, you should not be suffering. These persecuted believers were not suffering because of a lack of faith or sin. Additionally, they would have been equally confused because some of their loved ones had died. People don’t of good health.[1]
Read moreThe Christian apologist, John Lennox, who holds a Ph.D. from Oxford and another from Cambridge, rightfully contends that Christianity is distinct from every other religion. All of the religions of the world teach that the unsaved must do religious works and earn God’s acceptance somewhere in the future. Christianity teaches that when we “believe,” which is an act of our will to receive Christ as our Savior, God accepts us right then, and then we work for him.
Lennox tells how he proposed to his wife, Sally. When he proposed, he handed her a cookbook and said, If you cook more good meals than bad meals over the next 40 years, I will accept you, and we can get married. Not really; he was illustrating what the world's religions advocate.
That is what the world's religions teach. Acceptance has to be earned and is at the end of someone’s life only if the unsaved has performed more good works than bad works.
Read moreIn John 14:6, Jesus made an eternally important declaration about salvation: “I am the only way to salvation or heaven.” I was talking to my friend Keith Thrasher about this sermon on John 14:6. He told me that the Lord used John 14:6 to lead him to salvation. Keith was more agnostic before salvation. In 2005, He was working at the Illinois Department of Corrections in a maximum-security facility, the same prison that housed the state’s death row.
Read moreOne of the main prophets and/or leaders in the Kansas City Prophets movement was Bob Jones (no relation to Bob Jones of Bob Jones University in South Carolina), the movement's visionary. He was said to have been specially anointed with supernatural visions from the Lord and a prophetic gift. However, he was quoted as saying that the general level of prophetic revelation in the movement's "prophets" had an accuracy level of about 65 percent. He said some prophets were as low as 10 percent accurate, with some of the "most mature" prophets having a rating "approaching 85 percent to 95 percent." [1]
Deuteronomy 18:20-23 is the test of a prophet in the OT. A biblical prophet has an accuracy rate of 100 percent.
Read moreCharlie Kirk was hated! The man that Charlie Kirk called pastor said that Charlie Kirk received death threats every day. That is why he had a security detail. The parents of the man who allegedly shot Charlie Kirk said their son had become more political and obsessed with Charlie Kirk. Hear what Jesus Christ said to his followers: “If the world hate you, you know that it hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18).
Read morePaul Scott Wilson presents his view of interpreting and preaching called the Law-Gospel view in Scott M. Gibson’s and Matthew D. Kim’s Homiletics and Hermeneutics (Baker Publishing Group, Kindle Edition, 2018). Wilson’s one text, one theme, one doctrine, one need, one image, and one mission is just another way of saying what many homileticians describe as one preaching unit or the text (one text), one MPS (one theme), Argumentation (one doctrine), Interest Step in the Introduction (one need), Illustration (one image), and Application (one mission).
Read moreCraig Blomberg refers to one of his colleagues, Professor Elodie Emig, who “once suggested to me a remarkably concise big idea that incorporates all three lessons of the similarly structured parable of the two sons in Matthew 21:28-32. In this parable in which a son who refuses to work in his father’s vineyard later changes his mind and goes to the vineyard, in which a son who says he will work in fact doesn’t, and in which the father pronounces the former rather that the latter as having done his will, the three prongs of the passage can be neatly summed up with the affirmation, “Performance takes priority over promise.”[1]
Read moreI had a homiletics teacher, Steve Brown, who taught us, that if you have a thought in the study that you think is to bold or shocking to say in the pulpit, say it. I would not go that far. But Jesus, in his parables, did make some shocking statements or at least introduced the element of surprise. Craig Blomberg acknowledged this dimension of parables: “More often than not, there was a surprising reversal between the character a first-century Jewish audience would have expected to be the hero or good example and the one who actually turned out to play that role.”[1]
Read moreThis post is a review of “Redemptive-Historic View” by Bryan Chapell in Scott M. Gibson’s and Matthew D. Kim’s Homiletics and Hermeneutics: Four Views on Preaching Today.
I agree with Bryan Chapell when he warns that the redemptive-historical view of forcing Christ into every text has “been abused, in ways that are now obvious to us, by ancient allegorism that sought to make Jesus ‘magically’ appear in every Bible passage through exegetical acrobatics that stretched logic, imagination, and credulity.”[1] This is a candid admission.
Read moreCraig L. Blomberg in his Preaching the Parables noted: “Preaching a parable is a novice preacher’s dream, but often an experienced preacher’s nightmare .... At first glance, the parables appear familiar and straightforward, but thoughtful students soon realize they have fallen into a quagmire of interpretive debates.”[1]
Read moreSome Bible teachers advocate that there is healing in the atonement of Jesus’ on the cross based on 1 Peter 2:24: “By whose strips we are healed.” Can you imagine the audience of Peter who were suffering persecution for thier faith and witness being confused if Peter was teaching because of Jesus’ atonement you should not be suffering. These persecuted believers were not suffering because of a lack of faith or sin. Additionally, they would have been equally confused because some of their loved ones had died. People don’t of good health.[1]
Read morePeter tells Christians to be subject to difficult bosses in 1 Peter 2:18-20. Here is an illustration for this text provided by Steven Cole at preceptaustion.org on this passage. One way to apply this is consciously to recognize that you don’t work primarily for your employer; you work for God. Howard Hendricks tells the story of being on an airliner that was delayed on the ground. Passengers grew increasingly impatient. One obnoxious man kept venting his frustrations on the stewardess. But she responded graciously and courteously in spite of his abuse.
Read moreThis is a review of Abraham Kuruvilla’s “Christiconic View” in Hermeneutics and Homiletics: Four Views of Preaching. Kuruvilla brings some crucial corrections to the Christocentric view, but he also agrees with it on other points. This review will highlight these differences.
Read moreI appreciate and agree with Kenneth Langley’s opening statement: “Preaching should be God centered because God is God centered and wants us to be God centered in everything we do. All God does he does for his glory, and all we do—eating, drinking, and certainly preaching—we do for his glory (1 Cor. 10:31).”[1] I also like the way he refuted authors like Christocentric preachers like Tim Keller, C. J. Mahaney, and Edmund Clowney who contended that David is prophetic of his Greater Son. Langley responded, “I disagree that ‘it is impossible not to see Christ in his passage.’”
Read morePeople love good stories. Children, for sure, love stories and ask for the same story to read over and over again. I don’t know how many times I have read Alice in Wonderland to our boys. I would finish reading a story, and they would say, “Read it again, Daddy.”
Jesus, however, did not tell stories just to entertain; He preached biblical stories, parables, to persuade! Donald Grey Barnhouse was a great sermon illustrator who used illustrations to persuade his congregation to be doers of God’s Word. He said, “All of life is an illustration of Christian doctrine.”
Read moreMuslims Know Who Their God Is
In addition to the Five Pillars of Islam, which are the core practices of Islam, there are the Six Articles of Faith, sometimes referred to as the Six Pillars of Faith. The Six Articles of Faith are: Belief in God, His angels, His books, His messengers, the Last Day, and divine decree. The Six Pillars of Faith are put into practice in the Five Pillars of Islam.
The Muslims, unlike the Samaritans and the Athenians, find their doctrine of Allah explicitly codified in the Quran. The Muslim god, Allah, is not the same as Christianity’s God.
Read moreSome call this question the “same God controversy.”[1] Former President George W. Bush said this in an interview: “I believe in an almighty God, and I believe that all the world, whether they be Muslim, Christian, or any other religion, prays to the same God. That’s what I believe.”[2] I agree with Jared Wilson’s response to Bush’s ecumenical statement:
I think we come at this answer too easily, too thoughtlessly, simply assuming that because these three religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—are all monotheistic and share some historical heritage, they must worship the same God. Because lots of people worshiping one God does not mean they are worshiping the same God.[3]
Read moreThe Qur’an prescribes that righteousness is earned by keeping the Five Pillars of Islam: "Righteousness does not consist in turning your face towards East or West. The truly good are those who believe in God and the Last Day, in the angels, the Scripture, and the prophets; who give away some of their wealth, however much they cherish it, to their relatives, to orphans, the needy, travelers and beggars, and to liberate those in bondage; those who keep up the prayer (salat) and pay the prescribed alms (zakat); who keep pledges whenever they make them; who are steadfast in misfortune, adversity, and times of danger. These are the ones who are true, and it is they who are aware of God." (Qur'an 2:177)
The Five Pillars of Islam are the foundations or pillars on which Islamic belief and practice rest and are necessary to earn righteousness to enter Paradise.
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