I went to church today, but didn’t have to

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“On the first day of the week, let every one of you….” (I Corinthians 16:2)

A heavy snowfall had paralyzed the city. By church time only the janitor and the preacher had shown up.  As they stood there, trying to decide what to do, the pastor said, “People today just aren’t as dedicated as they should be.” The janitor said, “No sir, and we wouldn’t be here either if they didn’t pay us!”

Today, the second Sunday of December, I’m at the halfway point of five banquets in a six-day period.

Thursday night, it was the “President’s Christmas Dinner” at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.” I wasn’t the speaker or anything, but they set me up a table and I sketched a lot of people.  Then, the next night, after driving nearly 400 miles, I did the annual “pastors and wives Christmas banquet” for two associations around Minden, Louisiana where my buddy Randy Hales is the director of missions.  I sketched nonstop for a couple of hours and did my stories for 30 minutes and drew some more, then drove over two hours back to Vicksburg, Mississippi where I’d reserved a room.  Came home Saturday. Then, that night, I did the “Christmas family dinner” a few blocks from my house for Grace Community Bible Church, drawing everyone and sharing my stories.

I slept like a baby last night.

Two more to go.

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The Unexpected Christmas

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“That is one of the reasons I believe in Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed.” –C. S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity”

Nothing about the Christian faith is as we might have expected. Get into the business of a virgin birth, a sinless life, a vicarious death, and a resurrection, and have it happen to a Jew in First Century Roman-dominated Judea and all bets are off.

Consider just the unexpectedness of the Christmas event itself, the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.

1) Matthew 1

–The lineage of Jesus contains an interesting lineup of characters, including several women of questionable character: Tamar who seduced her father-in-law, Rahab the prostitute of Jericho, Ruth who was the subject of gossip in Bethlehem, Bathsheba who was the “other woman” of David’s fall from grace, and of course, Mary herself, the target of malicious gossips throughout Nazareth.

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Speaking to strangers and spreading Christmas

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One.

There were three people in front of me at the Walmart checkout. I was on my way to a drawing assignment and stopped to pick up a large sketchbook.  Walmart has them cheaper than the art store, although David Art of Metairie is a great place with wonderful people and I keep them in business.

In front of me was a Hispanic lady with a toddler in her shopping basket. I opened the sketchbook and did a hasty drawing of the child.  I signed it and handed it to her.  She was thrilled and said, “Merry Christmas.”  That was around November first, and she was the first one to greet me in this way this season.  A Spanish pastor friend heard this and laughed, “We Latinos love to celebrate our Lord’s birth for months!”

Two.

Driving the interstate that day was no fun. We were returning from visiting our son and his family (I’m working hard not to say the truth here, that we were visiting our grandchildren!) and all day long the highway had been beset with rain, fog, mist, at times so heavy we turned on the blinkers and leaned forward to see the lines on the pavement.  But finally, we arrived and checked into the hotel and drove down the street to the Cracker Barrel restaurant.

“You have a 15 minute wait,” the hostess said.  That was fine.  Margaret began browsing and I hung around close to the line.

Behind me stood a young mother with her daughter about 5 years old.  Now, I’m the grandfather of six little girls (little, ha!  They range in age now from 16 to 24.) and love children. So, I struck up a conversation with the child.

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Autumn: My favorite time of the year and of life

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The title of this piece came from my buddy Jim Graham of Atlanta in a recent email.  We’re close to the same age and appreciate so many of the same things–our Lord, our families, our country, our friends, and retirement living. We both love stimulating conversation, to spend an evening with a good book, to take a walk in the park as the sun is setting, and to listen to a good symphony or the harmony of the Everly Brothers.

Jim and I are both enjoying our Autumns.

Everyone knows about autumn as a time of the year.  And who doesn’t love that?

Many people agree with Jim and me that autumn is also the best time of life.  Consider some ways in which these days–Jim and I are in our early to mid 70s, just spring chickens!–are the very best….

1) We don’t have to go to work.  (I am well aware that many seniors do have to work because of a thousand factors, and my heart goes out to them. But most people our ages are fully retired, and if they work, it’s only to do what they love.)

And yes, I am working. I preach every opportunity I get, blog every day, sketch at events to which I’m invited, do a cartoon each weekday for the Baptist Press, and such.  But these are labors of pure love.

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Sometimes saying less is more; but rarely.

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“…and if necessary, use words.”

St. Francis of Assisi said we should preach the gospel, and if necessary, with words.

Or did he?

The online source called Wikiquotes has a dozen or more variations of the “preach the gospel; if necessary use words” line.  But they say, there is no indication St. Francis ever said anything of the sort.

I suspect the reason that line appeals to many of us is that we tire of all the wordiness of God’s people, frequently as a substitute for action. The danger is we may react too far in the opposite direction.

Words are a big, big deal to the Lord God–the One who spoke the world into being!–as well as to believers.  We hold in our hands a book we call “The Word,” and the pastor brings God’s message from it every Sunday.

“Take with you words and turn to the Lord,” the prophet Hosea told Israel (14:2).

Words are so important that the Lord Jesus Himself is called The Word (John 1:1ff.).

And yet, there are times when words get in the way, and quietness is called for.

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To those of us who love money

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“Now, the Pharisees who were lovers of money, were listening to all these things, and they were scoffing at Him” (Luke 16:14).

“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money….” (II Timothy 3:1-2).

We are conditioned from infancy to love money.

In childhood: Family and friends come to the house and they give the kids money. You go into the hospital for a tonsillectomy and people give you money. You go to church and they ask for money. Your dad takes a job in a distant state and the family relocates there, all for money.  A few years later, the business shuts down and dad is jobless and the family moves back South and you say goodbye to your friends, because there is no money.

And later: You go to college and they ask for money. You take a part-time job to make spending money. You are walking along the sidewalk and you find money. You take a job working in a church and to your surprise, they pay you. You go to a larger church and they pay you more, which is a good thing since you now have to buy a house and send kids to school.

And so goes life.

When you are as rich as Donald Trump, the actual money no longer matters.  One can only eat so much food, wear so many clothes, drive so many automobiles, and live in so many houses.  “Money is how you keep score,” Mr. Trump says.

It turns out money is the smoking gun.  The Pharisees who were the Tea Party of their day–and by that we mean the diehard conservatives, the only true traditionalists, they felt–could be almost excused for their opposition to Jesus on the grounds that He was reinterpreting all the scriptures as they understood them.  Except that their motives were not quite that pure. They lived for money, in the same way untold generations before and after have done.

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God did not call me to preach

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“Fulfill your ministry” (2 Timothy 4:5).

“I want to say a word to my pastor friends who say their passion is preaching.  May I suggest a better way to say this is that preaching is the expression of your passion for Jesus.  Keep the focus on Him.”

I posted that on Facebook earlier today and was surprised at the reaction, all of it positive. Several pastors indicated that coming to this position represented a maturing in their ministry. One said the Lord showed him that he was making preaching his idol. “He delivered me from that idolatry,” he said.

As a senior in college, majoring in history and political science and hoping to teach history on a college level one day, God called me into the ministry.

He did not call me to preach. Not specifically.

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Why this generation is so lost

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“…holding to a form of godliness, althought they have denied its power….always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:5,7).

Anyone looking for the smoking gun which will explain this generation’s gradual, casual descent into despair and darkness need look no further.

In Second Timothy chapter 3, the Apostle Paul, facing a second trial before Caesar which would end in his beheading, is alerting God’s people to the dangers awaiting them. He says, “But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, althought they have denied its power, and avoid such men as these. For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

And that’s just the church people! (see note at the end)

Two things in particular stand out about this generation–if indeed we apply the term “the last days” to our own generation–and qualify as “the smoking gun,” referred to above.

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Let’s build a Christmas sermon!

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Let’s pretend.

Pretend you’ve never done a Christmas sermon before. Pretend you don’t know where to start or how to proceed.

What to do first. Read Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2 over and over until their message is as familiar to you as your name. Listen for the Holy Spirit to draw your attention to something.  You will know by how you are intrigued by a verse or blessed by some insight or puzzled by another.When the Spirit wants you to focus on a text, He often pulls it out and plasters it across your eyes.  Your mind keeps coming back to it.

Stay with Him now.  This could be good.

Do not be in a rush. If you give the Holy Spirit a quarter hour to get through to you–before kickoff or worse, during commercials–He will refuse to play that little game and will leave you to your own devices.

Wait on the Lord.  Seek His will.

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Options the Lord did not leave open to us

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“If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how shall you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” (John 3:12)

One.

Over the years, in theological debates between liberals and conservatives, I recall hearing some say, “The Bible is not a book of science and never was meant to be.  It is not a history book, in the same way it’s not a cook book or a travel guide.  It is reliable in terms of spiritual matters, but should not be expected to get the other things right.”

On the surface, that sounds reasonable enough. Anyone who has read the Bible with discernment admits there are places in Scripture that challenge our understanding as we try to reconcile its teaching with other things we (ahem) “know to be true.”  (This would include the Creation, Noah’s Flood, miracles of one type or the other, and of course, the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection.)

Is it possible to accept Scripture when it speaks of salvation, forgiveness, and eternal life but reject it on lesser matters?

The Lord Jesus, in His conversation with Nicodemus, closes that door and removes that option. He tells this “ruler of the Jews” three things:

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