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Luther_Drank_Beer
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Country: United States
State: Oklahoma
Birthday: 4/26/1979
Gender: Male
Interests: Preaching the inspired, inerrant, infallible, unadulterated Word of Almighty God, Reformed Theology, Church History, Politics, and my lovely wife.
Expertise: Falling short of the glory of God
Message: message me
Member Since:
10/26/2005
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| I, "George", emerge from my studies of the languages in the castle in the Kingdom of Worms to expound on beer. I dedicate this modest modicum of insight into the Lord's brew for a good chap here on Xanga named Patterson.
We shall begin this discussion by quelling the initial reaction of the legalistic Christian that causes them to cease listening and utter muffled cries (muffled by the weight of the Law under which they suffocate their spirits and souls) of how partaking of the fermented barley and hops is an egregious sin against God, by asking a question: "Did Christ die so that I could not drink beer?" For that matter, did Christ die so that I could not dance in my living room with my lovely wife who he made for me? Did Christ die so that I could not enjoy my life on this earth which he made and everything in it? Though rhetorical in nature, I will answer these questions for those who are already mad and not thinking clearly, "No!!"
Now, lest I be misunderstood, I am not condoning drunkeness. Far from it. Drunkeness is a sin. Losing the ability to contain emotions and the baser components of our nature violates Scripture; particularly for those who are called to proclaim, "Thus saith the Lord." However, it is also a sin to "judge the servant of another." We all stand or fall to our own master. And, as Paul points out, if we are indeed a child of His, we will stand, for Christ will cause us to stand.
In conclusion, drink beer (the darker the better; find a good porter and enjoy!) if your conscience will allow it. If your conscience will not allow it, rather than spew judgement against your brother, pray for him. Rather than spending time babbling against it, find a lost person and share the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. If your conscience will allow you to partake of God's good brew then use discernment as to when it is "o.k." and when it would offend a brother, regardless of your convictions. It would do the Church well to learn the difference between 'concession' and 'compromise.' One will be a daily practice the other a daily sin. Where are your priorities Christian? You have chosen to deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow him--are you faithful to the call? Cheers! | | |
| The secular media continues to debate whether or not Islam is inherently dangerous, terroristic, and threatening. Inherently militaristic. You can find verses in the Koran that say Muslims should live at peace with their neighbors and Muslims shouldn't try to coerce their neighbors in to becoming Muslims, etc. But when you look at the Hadith (the interpretive writings of the Koran) you see a very different militancy. And, we must remember, Mohammed himself was a 'bearer of the sword.' But, I'm not a specialist on Islamic theology and I'll let those who are debate about the militancy and warrior culture within Islam. But I want to say as a Christian minister that the bigger problem with Islamic theology is that it kills the soul. The biggest problem with Islam is not that there are those who are willing to kill the body in its name but that it lies about God. It presents a false gospel--an ungospel. These are difficult things to say. This is not polite. But if God is God, if the gospel is the gospel, and if the Bible is God's Word, we have no choice. Our Lord himself said, "Fear not the one who can destroy the body but the one who can destroy both body and soul in Hell."
These are difficult days, pressed on us with urgency. There are difficult things we must say and there are difficult truths we must hold, made difficult not because they are true but because they are denied on such a wide scale in the culture around us. On what authority would we possible say such impolite, impolitic things? There is only one authority and it is the inspired, inerrant, infallible, unadulterated Word of Almighty God. If we are Christians, if we are people of the Bible, then we have no right to negotiate these things away on the altar of cultural accomodation, political correctness, and polite culture. There is no arrogance in this, for it is not ours. We are saved by the grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ, we live to his glory, we testify of his gospel, and we live under the authority of his Word.
In Isaiah 40, we see the corrective to chapter 44. Read verses 18-26. We know the one, true, and living God only by the grace of revelation. We know the one, true, and living God not because we have been so smart to discern him, not because we have been so clever to discover him, but because he has revealed himself to us, by grace. This is the scandal of monotheism, which leads to the scandal of Christianity, which is the scandal of the gospel; there is only ONE God and he will tolerate no others; there is only ONE gospel; and there is only ONE name given under Heaven whereby men must be saved. ONE, ONE, ONE!! A difficult word. An intolerant word we are told. An impossibly impolite word. But it is the one word we cannot avoid and must not evade. There is one God, one Word, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. Paul, in writing to Timothy in 1 Timothy 2:5,6 said, "For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time." THEOLOGY MATTERS.
One by one the idols are falling. And in eternity's perspective they will all fall. Hell's cavernous vault of the false gods will be filled with emptiness. We now face one of history's most strategic moments. We desperately need a generation of Christian ministers, pastors, preachers, missionaries, and evangelists with the conviction of Isaiah, with the courage of Elijah, armed with the gospel of Jesus Christ. In this critical time in history, at this critical historical juncture, at this incredible moment we do not even yet understand, there is one thing we must understand and that is, for the Christian Church, there is no god but God, there is no gospel but Christ's gospel, there is no word but God's Word, and there is no glory but God's glory! | | |
| In our day, it is not so much that we face the physical idols of carved images; no, it is the idols of ideas, the idols of the mind we mostly face. Ideological pluralism, postmodern relativism in all forms that says, "all truth is relative, all culture is relative, all morality is relative, all claims to truth is absolutely relative and noone has a right to say that anyone is wrong and something is true only as far as it fits within the truth context of this culture." "Noone can say there's any absolute right or absolute wrong," say the prophets of postmodernism. And Americans have been imbibing this worldview and recieving it and celebrating it and living it out and putting it on their television sets and teaching it to their children.
The idols of our age include the idea of human progress as inevitable, of secular humanism that says that human beings are basically good and inclined only to do the good except for the fact that there is social conditioning and there are cultural obstacles to human goodness. Other idols include modern science that reduces everything to matters of supposed scientific objectivity and that which cannot be scientifically verified simply is not true. Other idols, theological idols of our day, include the 'do-it-yourself' religion of American pop culture--just put it together, slap it in the oven, pull it out, put some merengue on top, and eat it and celebrate it. Feed on ashes. These idols are comfortable substitues for authentic Christianity. The great enemy of authentic Christianity is theological confusion and compromise and idolatry thrives on this.
These idols are the idols of our culture but there are other idols to which me must address ourselves; the hijackers and bombers in London have reminded us of that. It is often held, in fact, it is now routinely claimed that Muslims worship the same God as the Christians and the Jews. We must be very, very careful. We look at a biblical perspective: God, the Father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ--if you understand who Allah is then you know he is not this God. Muslims do not worship the same God as the Christians and the Jews. We must be very careful. We must take Jesus at his word, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father." If we really understand what Jesus is saying, then we know that Christians and Jews do not worship the same God. That is a very difficult, heart-breaking statement. We believe in one God who has revealed himself in the Old Testament and the New; but we must be very clear that to reject Jesus Christ is to reject the Father. We must be very clear. It is so politically incorrect. It breaks all the rules of American etiquette. This is no way to hold a dinner party. This is no way to hold a conversation out in the secular sphere. But if the Christian Church will not be clear about the Christian gospel, who will? | | |
| We're told these days that 'sincerity' is the only real criterion for truth and true religious experience. Spurgeon said in reference to the passage from Isaiah, "However sincere he may be, however devout in his worship, however puntual in his observance of his ceremonies, we are perfectly sure that he is a decieved man." This idolator--decieved even in the web of his own deception. "Be not decieved; God is not mocked." V. 18 tells us they have been blinded. Romans 1 tells us that the power of sin is such that the creature will corrupt the knowledge of the one true God; will exchange the glory of the incorruptible God for an image made in the form of corruptible man and of four-footed animals and crawling things. What kind of exchange is this? What kind of rational creature would exchange the glory of the incorruptible God for an image made in the form of corruptible man? Only sin can explain this. Did Isaiah know what he was talking about? Liberal commentators say he's just too hard on the idolators here. He just doesn't understand. Well, tell that to Elijah on Mt. Carmel. There you see a similar sarcasm coming from God's prophet: "Your god has an answer? Maybe he's too busy. Maybe his hearing aid needs to be turned up a little bit. Maybe he's occupied. Maybe he's sleeping."
The Bible, in the Old Testmaent and the New is brutally honest about idolatry; and so must we be. But in these days we're told that monotheism is dangerous. You see, that is the core issue. It is not so politically incorrect when we say that we know God; when we say that Jesus is Savior--so long as we will say a Savior; and so long as this God is a god to be set alongside others and so long as our theology is one to be set alongside others and so long as our Bible is only one book of antiquarian knowledge among many there is no problem. But the moment we say there is one God and he will allow no other gods before him; the moment we say there is one Savior and his name is Jesus Christ; the moment we say there is one gospel whereby men must be saved, then we enter a world of such dramatic political incorrectness as to be ruled out of bounds and out of order.
But brothers and sisters, we had better be very clear about what we believe--monotheism is non-negotiable. The God of the Bible is the one who spoke through his prophet, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God the Lord is one." The claim that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the one, true, and living God is out of bounds but it is non-negotiable. The claim that the Bible is the revelation of the one, true, and living God, the claim that the Trinity is not one way to look at God but the way God has revealed himself truthfully to us, the belief in one God is simply non-negotiable. It's at the heart of Christianity. It's at the heart of biblical faith. Everything else is a form of idolatry--everything else: any other claim to ultimacy, all other gods, all other claims to ultimate truth, all other ultimate allegiances; these are idols of our making. Martin Luther said of this, "Each one fashions God according to his ideas. All religion that is the product of one's thought arises from this. This is why we will be natural born idolators." We come that way from the womb. Sin has so affected us that we are, as Calvin himself said, "born with hearts that are idol making factories."
The human heart can produce idols at a phenomenal rate. We will invent a god much like ourselves. A.W. Tozer, who was always there with a word of incisive insight in terms of the false gods of the age said, "The human heart is idolatrous and will worship anything it can possess." That's what the heart wants to do: it wants to possess things. If it can possess this thing it will worship this thing. But the God who revealed himself in the Scriptures cannot be possessed, he is the possessor, the Sovereign Lord. Sin explains why human beings in their falleness prefer the idols to the one, true, and living God. | | |
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