Did Anybody Else Watch This?
Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 11:02AM 
It is the custom in our home that on Christmas morning I get up early, build a rip-roaring fire, make the coffee, and get ready for the family Christmas (which I celebrate with my wife and two sons).
While I was enjoying the fire and waiting for the sleepy-heads to get up (we were all zonked from our Christmas Eve service and a late night at my mother-in-laws', and my sons just finished up their finals, so they were pretty fried), I made the mistake of turning on the TV. I had heard about recent terrorist threats, so I wanted to check the news. I turned on Fox news only to see Rick Warren at Saddleback.
Did anyone else see this? It was absolutely awful. Apparently, I've misunderstood the meaning of Christmas. I thought it had something to do with the Incarnation and with Jesus coming to save me from my sins. No, Jesus came to give me purpose and to give Rick Warren slogans. Warren did not preach from a text. He repeatedly turned gospel into law. He spoke in clichés and referred to his "peace" plan over and over. It was the worst bunch of self-promotion in a pulpit I have ever seen. Don't even start me on the "worship service," or whatever that abomination was . . .
And no, my objections are not that of the typical cranky Reformed guy looking down his nose on evangelicals. There was no "evangel" at all. Even the liberal Episcopalians doing "Lessons and Carols" (which I watched before I went to bed on Christmas Eve) came closer to the gospel and the true meaning of Christmas than did Warren, the "Bible-believing" evangelical pastor. It was awful . . .
I hope Fox news sticks with the news and doesn't ever do this again. I reluctantly turned on CNN and then gave thanks that terrorists did not attack.
After I turned off the TV in disgust, we enjoyed our family Christmas! No thanks to Rick Warren and Fox news.
Reader Comments (97)
Hot or Cold, Flip that question around. If it WAS up to us, then why did Christ have to die?
See, Moses, in Deuteronomy, puts before the people the paths of life and death, and beseeches them to "choose life". If we could choose life, if we could choose the path of righteousness, then we wouldn't need to be ransomed. But we can't choose that path, as history has shown over and over again. So Jesus died as a sacrifice to propitiate the judgement we deserve because of our sins, one sin of which is the out and out rejection of God. If you watch carefully as you read anyone one of the gospel accounts of Jesus ministry, you'll see that people aren't choosing to follow Jesus without him first calling them to do so. Without the call, the can be no faith at all.
And even then, most of those people turned away from him. Only his mother and a few people who cared about him as a person stayed with him as he died on the cross. It was up to them, they could have followed him all the way to his death, they all could have made that decision... after all, they'd heard Jesus preach about what was to come. Why didn't they? THEY WERE THERE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!
No, we aren't capapable of making the decision that Rick Warren say we can make. Just read Romans chapters 3, 4 and 5. Then tell me what kind of decision we're capable of making.
Yes, Jesus called (action), but the people responded (reaction). Without the reaction to accept, we are in the reaction of rejecting Him.
It's called Free Will.
Was Lazarus in the tomb unwrapping his own bandages? Or was he dead as a doornail and "stinkith?" Was Abraham searching for God? Was Moses?
Where in the entire Bible is any believer making a decision to follow God? Christ himself is the "Chosen One."
Meanwhile, the confusion lies in getting the categories of "free agency" (real individual actions & culpability) and God's Sovreignty understood clearly.
It's good to study the Ordu Salutis.
It's better to read God's Word and appreciate the simplicity of the gift of salvation that is offered to each of us.
My Savior is a Gentleman -- He stands at the door and knocks. It's our choice whether to answer.
Chicken first? Egg first? How does that affect my salvation? In fact, I have read nothing in any of the posts that affects my salvation. Republican? Democrat? Reformed? Lutheran? Evangelical? Whether I've read Rick Warren's book or whether I've dabbled in witchcraft.
The gift of salvation is just that -- free, but not pushed upon any of us. We will never be sin free. Being forgiven for our sins is an ongoing process, a process which is called grace.
Christ was the ultimate sacrifice for our sins, but if we believe that Christ's death alone accomplished our redemption, then we must believe we can live any kind of degenerate lifestyle and not have to be held accountable for our misdeeds and sins. When we accept His forgiveness, we are no longer held accountable. But, it is a daily, ongoing walk.
Why did He have to die? Because God saw that His chosen ones were unable to live their lives in accordance with His Laws. Seven times, His beloved Israel strayed away from Him after committing to serve Him and love Him and only Him. Jesus was a gift first to the Jews. Only after he called Paul was the message to be carried to the Gentiles, and that was so that the Jew would be moved to jealousy.
By sending His Son to die on the cross for our sins, He once and for all covered the sins of each and every one of us through the ages. We, however, have some responsibility to believe and accept that this was done for each of us. It becomes real when it becomes personal. It becomes personal when we walk the daily walk.
The Holy Spirit takes up residence in our heart and becomes our teacher, our comforter, our guide through life.
Oh, how sweet it is!!
your theology is dangerous and out of place on this blog. if you 'choose' to saved then you might also 'choose' to let go of Christ and his merits...if any part of it is up to us...our obedience, faithfulness, etc. then we are surely damned. thanks be to God that it is Christ's hold on us!
Ro 3:9There is no one righteous, not even one;
Ro 3:11 there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
Ro 3:12 All have turned away,they have together become worthless;there is no one who does good,not even one.”
Ro 3:13 “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
Ro 3:14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
Ro 3:15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
Ro 3:16 ruin and misery mark their ways,
Ro 3:17 and the way of peace they do not know.”
Ro 3:18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
We have a free will to sin. We free to sin as much as we want. Free as a bird. But as you can see, we have no will or even desire to seek God. This is Paul's point of Romans chapter 3.
Peace
Perhaps I am out of place posting the Truth on this blog.
Sorry!!
I don't think you understand the Truth. Study the Word without preconceived ideas and, the Lord willing, you will see it.
that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth."
If we imagine the Eternal God didn't plan from the very beginning to save the Gentiles, do a word-search in the OT on "Gentiles." (Space wouldn't permit all the references.)
Jesus Christ a "gentleman"? And the verse for that is where?
Meanwhile, here is a list (not exhaustive) of the titles of the Lord:
http://www.apuritansmind.com/ChristianWalk/McMahonNamesOfJesus.htm
I am trying to fathom how a "savior" can really "save" anybody if they aren't "allowed/invited" to? Which makes them no savior at all...
Hot/Cold, were you ever involved in an emergency where the Paramedics came? Trust me, when those guys grab you - they do their stuff to save you, whether you want them to or not!
This is what it means to be R.E.S.C.U.E.D.
The Ordu Salutis IS in the Bible!
Romans 8:29-31
1) On the one hand, I believe that an unsaved person CANNOT understand the things of God's Spirit (I Cor. 2:14), and CANNOT walk so as to be subject to God's Law and please God (Rom. 8:7,8) ... due to his or her utter depravity before God ... and that he CANNOT, in and of himself, even trust Christ - and thus that faith itself is a gift of God (Phil. 1:29), and that people come to and believe in Christ precisely because of God's work of granting it (Jn. 6:65) and drawing people to Christ (Jn. 6:44).
Nevertheless...
2) I also believe (on the other hand!) that we are justified by faith (Rom. 3:28), and that faith is, at its essence, conscience and deliberate trust in God and in His provision for our eternal salvation. Thus God neither saves nor condemns anyone, "kicking and screaming" against his or her will. In other words, God's work in a person's heart that leads him or her to a saving relationship with Christ is not a matter of "coercion" but of "persuasion."
This (moderate) Calvinistic view of the relation of divine sovereignty and human responsibility is often known as "compatibilism" (congruence, etc.), and is (in my view) ably defended by people like John Frame ("The Doctrine of God"), D. A. Carson ("Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility" and "How Long, O Lord?"), Bruce Ware ("God's Greater Glory"), J. I. Packer ("Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God"), etc., is (again, in my opinion) wonderfully stated in passages such as Gen. 50:20; Acts 2:23; etc., and is illustrated in the way God used human instruments in the process of giving us His Word, such that all Scripture is God-breathed (II Pet. 1:20,21).
At least that's my two cents!
So I think we can (and must!) do our best to uphold the twin facts that (1) no one can or would come to and believe in Christ on his or her own AND (2) it is also the obligation of people to trust Christ for salvation, and our obligation, as ambassadors for Christ, is not only to tell people the objective facts of the gospel but also to urge people to be reconciled to God through Christ by placing their faith in Him.
I like Paul's emphasis along these lines in Romans 9-11, where Rom. 9 emphasizes divine sovereignty, and Rom. 10 human responsibility (and Rom. 11 both!). Thus, while I am pretty dogmatically deterministic (vs. indeterministic) in my philosophy/theology, I simply am of the persuasion (no one held a gun to my head on this one!) that we must do our best to upold both "DS" and "HR" and see their concurrence.
If you're in California, and it's possible to get there, you might try John Macarthur's church. I don't know what it's called, but if you Google "John Macarthur, Grace To You" you'll find it.
zrim
"I feel that I am to liberal for the fundamentalists and too conservative for the evangelicals." i hear ya. but i would not recommend johnny mac at all. pick up dg hart's "lost soul of american protestantism" and you may find yourself in the confessionalist category (neither liberal nor evangelical). i did.
zrim
Yeah, I know it is very difficult to do BUT if a person of dispensational and freewill doctrine does not do it the chances of them leaving that position are slim.
Most are blind to the truth willfully.
The reason the reformed folk hold to the doctrines of grace is that it is the truth. Those who hold to dispensationalism and freewill do so because of ignorance (willful or not) and pride.
Frank