John 3:30

He Must Increase, I Must Decrease

Grace

The Face of Evil

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Today is Tuesday, July 21. In recent times, 2 videos have been made public claiming to show that Planned Parenthood intentionally harvests human organs from the babies they murder and sell them. Christians are incensed and are hoping that this will be the turning point in the effort to convince our government to stop subsidizing Planned Parenthood.

I saw a tweet which I considered most poignant after the first video was released. The person (I forget who) said when they look at the eyes of the lady in the first PP video, they expected to see something demonic, or different. But he said what was scary was that all he saw were human eyes. How apropos.

I remember reading a story about the DaVinci painting, The Last Supper. Legend has is the Leonardo painted the Christ first, and in doing so, he passed over hundreds of models until he had found a young man who had the gentle, innocent and soft features which he figured represented the sinless Son of God.

As the story goes, DaVinci, 6 years later, visited the local prison to find a satisfactory model for his representation of Judas Iscariot, the man who would betray Jesus.

For weeks, DaVinci searched for a man with a hard callous face, with a countenance marked by scars of avarice, deceit, hypocrisy, and crime; a face that would delineate a character who would betray his best friend. 1

Finally, Leonardo found a man convicted of murder. While finishing his masterpiece, the young man began to sob uncontrollably. He said to DaVinci, “Do you remember me?”

“No, I have never seen you before in my life,” Leonardo replied.

“I am the man who modeled Jesus for you so many years ago!” said the young man whose life had been destroyed by his sin.

Of course, this story is generally considered mythical, but the human lesson is clear in a twofold way. First, anyone can fall into sin and become something they did not seem to be. Secondly, I would add that we can’t judge by appearances as DaVinci thought he could.

Despite that fact, we still try. We still lock the doors when certain “types” of people are walking by our car at a stoplight. We avoid that aisle in the grocery store, or that side of the street because of some of our preconceived notions of what evil resembles. I will note that sometimes you may be acting wisely – it just depends on what criteria you base your judgement upon.

But in the technology age, with facial recognition software and the ability to generate human images using computer programming I find it not surprising that Google has an image generator, however poorly publicize it is. It is this software which is used to help police to draw images based on witness testimony.

What is neat is you can create your own new face with it. You can enter criteria such as blue eyes, blond hair, etc., but you can also enter attributes like “beautiful,” “funny,” “outgoing,” or “party pooper.”

Google has analyzed over 5 trillion images and indexed the attributes associated with the file, including the comments made concerning that file. So you post a picture of your kid on Facebook and 179 people comment “Cute!” and you have a chance that your kids’ features will be part of the “Cute” algorithm. So using what must be a severely cool algorithm, Google is able to take features from its database of images and morph them into a “face” which personifies those features. With the amount of data analyzed, and taking into account the local proxy server you are using to connect to the internet, it is reported to be accurate over 99.99% of the time in producing an image which the person requesting “completely agrees” matches the attributes requested.

So I gave it a shot. I figured let’s see what our society has labeled the face of evil. Keep in mind that hundreds of thousands of PP supporters would have attributed to abortion providers like the ones in the videos mentioned earlier qualities like “successful,” “beautiful,” or “caring” so I didn’t really expect to see their likeness. Plus, I went with “male,” which I found interesting that there is still that option, but I digress.

I am a precise kinda guy, so I entered a whole number of attributes. I figured I’d just use a list from the Bible:

1 Cor 6:9 …fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers…

Couple of quick word searches and a click and here is what was generated after only about 4 seconds. Notice the eyes and the mouth. Obviously, if you see someone like this, avoid him at all costs. Click the link then you can close the newly opened tab.

Click here to see the face of EVIL.

Do you get it? Again, the interpretation is twofold.

1) Our ideas of what is evil are not only irrelevant, they are foolish. Clouded by our own sinfulness, we have no ability to really identify evil. Only God’s Word really gives us a basis for that judgement.

2) I’m evil.

Yes, that’s my mug shot. That’s the face of evil. That’s the face of a murderous, raping, thieving, God-hating, disrepecter of parents, filled with covetousness and reviling. If you can’t imagine your own face with those descriptors, maybe you don’t really believe in the depravity of man? I’m not asking you if you actually committed all those acts in the flesh, but if you know your evil heart is capable because you believe Jeremiah 17:9

Because no one is good. Not one. No one is righteous, not one. (Romans 3:10-12)

But there is hope. Continuing the earlier verse of sins which keep us out of the kingdom of God is the following:

1 Cor 6:11 Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

Look, instead of avoiding the face of evil, why don’t you give the gospel to that person? Tell the faces of evil in your life of the repentance and faith that is found in Christ alone and trusting His sacrifice and glorious resurrection for the forgiveness of sins.

I am glad someone did that for me.

1 – Text from http://www.truthorfiction.com/lastsupper/

P.S. #SorryNotSorry: The entire story about Google Image Generator was concocted to grab your attention.

How to be Good

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Be content with God’s goodness toward you and be thankful for the abundance as it is not owed to you.

1 Timothy 6:6–8 (NASB95)
6 But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment.
7 For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either.
8 If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content.

Goodness is that quality in us which the Holy Spirit produces whereby we desire moral purity and to give charity toward the brethren and the heathen; it is the heart attitude by which our outward behaviors must be judged.

Are you patient or kind or peaceful because you are Good? Or do you try to do those other things to make yourself Good? Your legitimate kindness toward others, your self-control, your gentleness and humility are to be tempered by your Goodness: your moral uprightness as defined by God’s statutes revealed in His Word.

Proverbs 3:27 implies that God, who is always good and knows our need before we do, may seemingly withhold some good thing from us, like a wife or a husband, a job, a position at work or the church. He may let you have a dead child or spouse. He may not save family members as quickly as you’d like, but He is always good and thus, does not withhold good things from them to whom they are due. Therefore, the goodness you expect is either not due to you or it is not what is good for you at that time in His infinite and perfect wisdom.

There’s a preview of today’s Sunday School lesson I’ll teach at Berean Baptist Church where my views may or may not reflect the views of the church :).

Sunday School Series – Fruit

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This week, the Lord allowed me to begin teaching a Sunday School series with the adults at my church. I have titled the series, “fruit.”

My intention is to dig into Galatians 5:22-23, inspecting each attribute listed, but before we can do that, I thought it wise to lay a groundwork concerning the relationship between good works and salvation in the intro.

My goal will be to have the audio edited and uploaded weekly so you can follow along. Here is the first in the series:

Click here for the notes to launch in a new tab.

Note, you can also view the notes and download the audio if you go to the Sermon Audio Page.

I believe from that page you can subscribe for direct updates when a new teaching is posted. Or you can try these links depending on the feedreader you use.
http://www.sermonaudio.com/rss_search.rss?seriesonly=true&sourceid=pulpitandstreets&keyword=Fruit
itpc://www.sermonaudio.com/rss_search.rss?seriesonly=true&sourceid=pulpitandstreets&keyword=Fruit

The Eyes of God

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When the Bible says “God saw” or refers to “God’s eyes” what do you think that means? Is God like we are. I had an opportunity for a short devotion this Sunday at my church and decide to look into the “Eyes of God.”

Notably, I posted about Habakkuk 1:13 years ago here. That is one of the verses I teach about in the above audio.

If you enjoyed “The Eyes of God,” – check out “The Eyes of Man.”

Open Air Sermon and Outreach

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We had an excellent night of fellowship and outreach to downtown Columbus last night after a really great day at a conference by Oikos Community Church where Emeal Zwayne was the keynote speaker.

Christopher Ledezma, Joe Conkle, Christian Duarte, Paul Martina and I traveled up and down High Street in the Short North and distributed hundreds of tracts, had several one on one conversations and the following open air where I used the fruit of the Spirit to try to bring sinners under conviction.

Real Friendship Includes the Gospel

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Real friendship includes the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Many will disagree with me for this nit-picky point, but it is a point to be made, however tangential to the primary argument it is. I discovered an article via Twitter this week.

Overall, the article made good points. Mostly the same rational points made by every reasonable article concerning the “gay marriage” and “photographers, bakers and florists” situation. The point of the article was to explain that refusal to do a gay wedding is not the same as refusal to provide services to homosexuals in general…and that general service refusal is not actually going on. This point was well made.

But read the following excerpt from this article At DennyBurk.com (emphasis my own):

Consider the case of Barronelle Stutzman, a florist in Washington State who is being sued by the attorney general of the state for refusing to involve her business in a gay wedding. You can watch her in her own words in the video above, but here’s what happened. Stutzman had been serving a gay couple in her flower shop for over ten years. She considered the men to be her friends, and they considered her to be their friend. The two gay men said that throughout their decade long friendship, they did not know that Stutzman believed homosexuality to be a sin. She didn’t treat them any differently than anyone else. She was a friend to them and served them while knowing full well that they were gay.

Do you notice anything strange here? The two gay men said “they did not know that Stutzman believed homosexuality to be a sin” which followed a sentence about a decade long friendship.

Does that sound like friendship to you? Because it sure does not sound like friendship to me. The idea of calling yourself a friend to someone without having ever reached out to tell them how to be forgiven by God and reconciled through Jesus Christ would be laughable if it wasn’t so despicable.

Correction added 03/13/2015: I do not know for certain whether Stutzman shared the gospel with these men. What we may infer is that she didn’t confront their homosexual sin. It was wrong of me to assume she had not done so simply because they didn’t know her stance concerning sexual sin.

Friends love each other. Those who love others care more about others than themselves. When you love people, you tell them the gospel because you fear for his or her soul. (Romans 10:17)

I’m not talking about someone who claims to casually know a gay man, or has an acquaintance who is gay whom he barely saw. Remember, according to the story – the florist and these homosexual men were friends for a long time.

Friends don’t let friends go to hell without warning them. Friends care more about what is best for the other than their own feelings or fears or hurts. (Proverbs 18:24)

Real friendship includes the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Look, my goal is not to bash this woman or her lack of evangelism. It is entirely possible that the “friendship” being described in the article is an exaggeration. My point is that IF you consider yourself to be a friend to someone, and you’ve never gotten deep enough in a relationship for them to know you believe the Bible then you are not really a friend. This applies equally to me. Street preaching and passing out tracts is no excuse. And those acts, although noble, are no help to your friend when he meets the Lord. We must reach out to people we know, including our neighbors and those we call friends.

If someone doesn’t know that Jesus is #1 in your life, then you aren’t really a good friend.

I get it. I have a LOT of casual acquaintances. People who know me, and I know them and I haven’t shared the gospel with them or handed them a tract…yet.

I’m not talking about those folks: like the person who calls you his friend even though you just walk by him daily in Starbucks because you go at the same time – or you’ve seen him 10 times at the gym and barely said a few words to each other.
I’m referring to the people in your life to whom you actually consider yourself a friend: the people who would act shocked tomorrow if you told them the truth about your faith. (2 Cor 6:14-18)

This is the ultimate problem with the method of evangelism called friendship evangelism about which Tony Miano has written and spoken extensively already.

Real friendship includes the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Today is the day. Repent of your selfishness and your desire to be loved by men, and being making sure that people know what you believe. It would be better to simply be honest and forthright with them about it than to have them find out when you have to refuse them some service like what happened to the woman in the article. Worse, when all your “friends” find out you’re a Christian because people on Facebook start spamming your page to criticize your beliefs.

Just in case you are confused here’s a list of things I did NOT say nor imply:

  • You cannot be a friend to a nonbeliever or have a nonbelieving friend.
  • It is OK to refuse to help people because they are gay.
  • You must share the gospel with every person you meet or you are a bad Christian like the florist in the article.

In summary, here are things which I DID say or imply:

  • True friendship includes making known the gospel of Jesus Christ.
  • If people around you are shocked that you are a Christian, you’re doing it wrong.
  • You and I are the problem. Not gays. Not the florist from the linked article. It is the failure of people like you and me to consistently share the gospel that is the problem.

So join me and let’s begin fixing the problem. Let’s herald the name of Christ and not be ashamed of the gospel for it is the power unto salvation. (Romans 1:16;10:13-14)

Because real friendship, real love, and actual Christlikeness include the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Added 03/13/2015: Although it is possible to “share the gospel” with someone and not confront their specific sin of homosexuality, I continue to maintain the position that to be considered friends with a person and for that person to have no idea that you consider homosexuality to be sin is problematic.

Many thanks to sister Kim Arnold for lovingly pointing out the fact that we truly do not know from the article whether Baronelle had share the gospel.