Modern Parables is a great video series that retells the parables of Jesus through 21st century dramatizations. Each video is about 15 minutes long and is supplemented by Bible Study material. Their videos are creative and high-quality, and their curriculum is theologically conservative. It would be a great resource for any Sunday School or small group. You can view one of their trailers here.

The company has just announced a special offer for foreign missionaries and prison ministry directors:
As former missionaries ourselves, we realize these two groups are especially underfunded and under-resourced. For a limited time therefore we are donating to prison ministries and missionaries operating outside the U.S. a complete set of Modern Parables digital downloads for free. We have set up a page that enables ministries to request a free download of the $99 digital set. Please forward this email to friends you know who work in these important ministry areas. Or click here to request a set now.

Note: you will need a high-speed connection to download the videos.

What would happen if we removed the sermon from our weekly order of service? We could add a couple more songs in its place, maybe throw in a skit or some other artistic demonstration, have more time for prayer and fellowship, and still get out early.

To many, a sermonless church may sound like a good idea. It would make the service shorter, more entertaining, and probably more appealing to unbelievers. It would give pastors more time during the week for planning, programs, and visitation. But in so doing, the church would kill itself. A sermonless church is like a rootless tree. It will eventually dry up and rot because it has lost its source of spiritual nourishment.

Of course, most churches do not omit the sermon, but rather shorten it, simplify it, or approach it in such a way that it has lost its centrality within our worship. Many church members have even learned to “tune out” at this point in the service.

My friend Bret Capranica offers a good list today of what happens when preaching loses its place of centrality within the life of the local church:

• Personal intake of Scripture becomes tiresome

• Personal prayer becomes little more than religious day-dreaming

• An atmosphere of worship gives way to a craving for entertainment

• Truth is replaced with preferences

• Discipleship is dismissed by the cult of personal excitement

• Culture becomes central

• Creativity becomes a mantra

• Personal desires become dominant

• Tradition becomes foundational

• Counseling becomes, at worst, psychological, and at best merely conservative Dr. Laura-type of advice or simply relational

• Fellowship becomes superficial

• Unity becomes merely relational

• Missions becomes nothing more than temporal societal betterment

• The gospel becomes self-help

• Discipleship becomes nothing more than a mere decision

All this will be true because people, for people’s sake, become the focus and God becomes a servant to their own lust for centrality (2 Timothy 4:1-4) – our thoughts are no longer tethered to what God has systematically revealed to us about Himself. In the end, people are not best served where they are most prized.

When expository preaching is not central in our life:

• We ultimately and over time won’t feel fed, satisfied, fulfilled

• The grass will always look greener in another ministerial field

  …because ultimately, God, truth, and His glory is not what we crave. Or perhaps we are misinterpreting our cravings and feeding them with the wrong things.

When expository preaching is not central in the church’s life

• It will give way to the whims of culture

• It will be replaced by the mystical

• It will be sapped of true spiritual power

• It will be shallow in terms of spiritual depth

• It will be empty of the Glory and majesty of God

The pastor or teacher who fails to feed his flock regularly is doing them a tremendous disservice, slowly starving them to death.

For a recent message I preached on How to Listen to a Sermon and get the most out of God’s word, you can listen to my podcast here.

Photo credit: ConspiracyofHappiness

As a visual learner, I’m a big fan of maps, charts, and graphs. So when I came across this illustration of the government stimulus package, it was a real “aha” moment for me. And while a picture’s worth a thousand words, this chart’s worth about 820 billion dollars.

I have real concerns with the government trying to control a free market economy. The beauty of capitalism is that the system naturally corrects itself if the government just stays out of it. As Will Rogers put it, “Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.” Yes, some businesses will fail, but others will take their place. Just imagine if IBM had received a massive government bailout in the late 1980’s. Microsoft may have never emerged as a new leader in technology and innovation.

I believe much of this recession is owed to increasing government programs, taxation, and regulation. According to Romans 13:4, the main purpose of government is to be “a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.” In other words, government should protect its citizens and punish wrongful behavior. Government was God’s gift to the world to bring stability and the rule of law to human society after the Flood (Gen. 6:11-12; 9:6).

Clearly, the US government has outgrown this original plan. It’s now heavily taxing and regulating everything, and driving many businesses overseas. But while I believe our government has grown much too big, I’m also reminded to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s (Matt. 22:21) and to submit to the governing authorities God has placed over me (Rom. 13:1). I don’t agree with how our state and federal government are handling this financial crisis, but I still need to honor God by honoring my leaders.

HT: Tim Challies

Last Sunday, I preached on John 15:1-11, where Christ presents Himself as the Vine – our true source of life – and urges us to abide in Him.

One saint who learned the joy of abiding in Christ was Hudson Taylor, missionary to China and founder of the China Inland Mission. After making this life-changing discovery, Taylor wrote the following in a letter to his sister, who was herself a mother of ten kids and familiar with the pressures of ministry and the Christian life. It’s a long quote, but captures something of the delight of abiding in Christ.

…As to work — mine was never so plentiful, so responsible or so difficult, but the weight and strain are all GONE. The last month or more has been, perhaps, the happiest of my life, and I long to tell you a little of what the Lord has done for my soul. I do not know how far I may be able to make myself intelligible about it, for there is nothing new or strange or wonderful — and yet, all is new!…

Perhaps I may make myself more clear if I go back a little. Well, dearie, my mind has been greatly exercised for six or eight months past, feeling the need personally and for our Mission of more holiness, life, power in our souls. But personal need stood first and was the greatest. I felt the ingratitude, the danger, the sin of not living nearer to God.

I prayed, agonized, fasted, strove, made resolutions, read the Word more diligently, sought more time for meditation — but all without avail. Every day, almost every hour, the consciousness of sin oppressed me.
I knew that if only I could abide in Christ all would be well, but I could not. I would begin the day with prayer, determined not to take my eye off Him for a moment, but pressure of duties, sometimes very trying, and constant interruptions apt to be so wearing, caused me to forget Him.
Then one’s nerves get so fretted in this climate that temptations to irritability, hard thoughts and sometimes unkind words are all the more difficult to control. Each day brought its register of sin and failure, of lack of power.
To will was indeed “present with me,” but how to perform I found not.

Then came the question, is there no rescue? Must it be thus to the end — constant conflict, and too often defeat? How could I preach with sincerity that, to those who receive Jesus, “to them gave he power to become the sons of God” (i.e., Godlike) when it was not so in my own experience? Instead of growing stronger, I seemed to be getting weaker and to have less power against sin; and no wonder, for faith and even hope were getting low. I hated myself, I hated my sin, yet gained no strength against it. I felt I WAS a child of God. His Spirit in my heart would cry, in spite of all, “Abba, Father.” But to rise to my privileges as a child, I was utterly powerless.
I thought that holiness, practical holiness, was to be gradually attained by a diligent use of the means of grace. There was nothing I so much desired as holiness, nothing I so much needed; but far from in any measure attaining it, the more I strove after it, the more it eluded my grasp, until hope itself almost died out, and I began to think that — perhaps to make heaven the sweeter — God would not give it down here. I do not think that I was striving to attain it in my own strength. I knew I was powerless. I told the Lord so, and asked Him to give me help and strength. Sometimes I almost believed that He would keep and uphold me; but on looking back in the evening — alas! there was but sin and failure to confess and mourn before God.

I would not give you the impression that this was the only experience of those long, weary months. It was a too frequent state of soul, and that towards which I was tending, which almost ended in despair. And yet, never did Christ seem more precious; a Savior who could and would save such a sinner! … And sometimes there were seasons not only of peace but of joy in the Lord; but they were transitory, and at best there was a sad lack of power. Oh, how good the Lord has been in bringing this conflict to an end!

All the time I felt assured that there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical question was — how to get it OUT. He was rich truly, but I was poor; He was strong, but I weak. I knew full well that there was in the root, the stem, abundant fatness, but how to get it into my puny little branch was the question. As gradually light dawned, I saw that faith was the only requisite — was the hand to lay hold on His fullness and make it mine. But I had not this faith.

I strove for faith, but it would not come; I tried to exercise it, but in vain. Seeing more and more the wondrous supply of grace laid up in Jesus, the fullness of our precious Savior, my guilt and helplessness seemed to increase. Sins committed appeared but as trifles compared with the sin of unbelief which was their cause, which could not or would not take God at His word, but rather made Him a liar! Unbelief was I felt THE damning sin of the world; yet I indulged in it. I prayed for faith, but it came not. What was I to do?

When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from dear McCarthy was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God revealed to me the truth of our ONENESS WITH JESUS as I had never know in before.

McCarthy, who had been much exercised by the same sense of failure but saw the light before I did, wrote (I quote from memory):
“But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One.”

As I read, I saw it all! “If we believe not, he abideth faithful.” I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed!) that He had said, “I will never leave thee.”
“Ah, THERE is rest!” I thought. “I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I’ll strive no more. For has not HE promised to abide with ME — never to leave me, never to fail me?” And, dearie, HE NEVER WILL.

Nor was this all He showed me, nor one half. As I thought of the Vine and the branches, what light the blessed Spirit poured direct into my soul! How great seemed my mistake in wishing to get the sap, the fullness OUT of Him!

I saw not only that Jesus will never leave me, but that I am a member of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. The vine is not the root merely, but ALL — root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit. And Jesus is not that alone — He is soil and sunshine, air and showers, and ten thousand times more than we have ever dreamed, wished for or needed.

Oh, the joy of seeing this truth! I do pray that the eyes of your understanding too may be enlightened, that you may know and enjoy the riches freely given us in Christ.

Oh, my dear Sister, it is a wonderful thing to be really one with a risen and exalted Savior, to be a member of Christ! (Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, pp. 158-62).

For the second year in a row, the Resolved Conference will be held just down the hill from us in Palm Springs. I don’t plan to attend this year, but I HIGHLY recommend it for any college-age adults in the Southern California area. The music and preaching are outstanding.

Start saving your nickels and dimes now, and be sure to register by March 15 for the early-bird discount. Here’s the new promo trailer…