A Pastor's Thoughts

Tradition holds that Psalm 16 is called The Golden Psalm of David .  This Psalm is a Psalm of praise.  Psalm 16 is a parallel poem.  David writes about his “Confidence in the Lord” and then he writes of his “Experience of Faith.”  This couplet is repeated once. David acknowledges that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is his God.  David speaks of his confidence in God by calling God his refuge.  David explains that those who follow other gods will not be supported by David. David then tells of his experience in choosing God.  He uses imagery from the time of Jacob taking the promised land.  When the land was taken, Jacob cast lots to give each tribe their portion.  David says that God is his portion and his cup.  God is his provider and sustainer.  He then says that God holds his lot.  God hold’s David’s dice.  In other words, God is in charge of all the random events in David’s life.  For Christians, there are no random events, there is no such think as luck or fate.  Sovereign

Every service, store and product has a Terms of Service .  Terms of Services tell the customer what to expect from the seller.  In many ways, Terms of Service is the explanation of the contract.  Terms of Service came into being when people figured out they could sue companies when they did not like a product or a service.  Companies wrote out all the rules of engagement and posted them somewhere and that, they believed, protected them from law suits.  When a person goes to a hardware store and buys a ladder, the ladder is covered with all sorts of stickers which are the ladder’s terms of service.  So when a person misuses a ladder they cannot sue the store or the manufacturer. Recently Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook was called before Congress.  He was summoned because over the past many years, Facebook has been taking the data of their users and selling it, manipulating it, categorizing it and making all sorts of money offering it to advertisers.  One company, Cambridge Analytical, got

The modern view of fellowship for Christians is, simply put, recreation where Christians are present.  In the Bible, fellowship usually took place with a shared meal at someone’s home.  Fellowship is different than focused worship because there are other activities, usually recreational activities that the Christians are involved in together.  During this recreation, the fruit of the Spirit are being expressed, spiritual gifts can be exercised, love for one another, honoring one another and the rest of the one another commands are active. Back in the day I attended a church that obtained group tickets for the Oakland A’s baseball games.  Usually twenty members of the church would all carpool up to Oakland and spend the day, together, watching a baseball game.  Because baseball tends to be slower than other sporting events, there would be opportunity to catch up and talk about all sorts of things.  The idea here is that Christians watching a baseball game would act differently than p

Romans 12:15-20 gives a very strong command to get along with one another.  This command was written to the churches in Rome, so it was written to Christians.  When people get saved, many things happen in the spiritual realm.  Our sins are atoned, we are forgiven, we are adopted, we are redeemed and we have moved from death to life.  Our spirit is actually regenerated.  Some people who come to Christ while on the rock bottom may have a miraculous deliverance and change.  Our church has Teen Challenge, a Christian recovery program, come and share every year.  The testimonies of those people are passionate and dramatic.  Other people are saved while growing up in a Christian home and there is no visible miraculous change. After a person is saved, they must continue to live their life.  If they are obedient, these new Christians will join a church and will find that there are people just like them and people very different.  Everyone in a church is still human and is still living in th

I was recently slandered by a fellow pastor.  I am not sure what set him off, but he came at me with a scathing set of accusations.  Because he is a brother in Christ and a pastor, I confronted him with my observations asking if I missed something or misunderstood.  His response was to slander me again.  Therefore I chose to sever fellowship with him.  Breaking fellowship is a difficult thing to do and I do not do it lightly.  Psalm 15:3 states who does not slander with his tongue For those who read Psalm 15, this command needs to be taken personally, but it can also be seen that slander is a sin that God commands Christians to avoid.  So when I am slandered by a fellow Christian, I need to look into it and if the offender does not repent, it is still my responsibility under Christ to forgive. When I broke fellowship with this pastor I told him that I would not speak of these events again, that I would delete all communications between us and that I had forgiven him.  I deleted al

Psalm 15:4 states in whose eyes a vile person is despised,     but who honors those who fear the Lord; who swears to his own hurt and does not change; I knew someone who seemed like a nice person and I offered to let him preach during an upcoming vacation.  After that offer was given, we had a falling out.  So what do I do? According to this Scripture, I made a promise.  That promise was made without duress.  Then the situation changed and if I continue with my promise, it will "hurt".  Not physically, but I will let someone who seems to not like me very much, into my pulpit. The point of Psalm 15 is that godly people, people who want to have a close relationship with God will be people who keep their word.  Even if the  situation changes.  If I withdraw the invitation, then I am being disobedient to this Scripture.  The issue is not theological, but personal.  That is why the "hurt" will be emotional, my pride will be hurt.  That is something for me to con

Psalm 15 is a Psalm of David. David asks this very profound question in the first verse. O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent?     Who shall dwell on your holy hill? David is asking the great I AM who can and who shall enter the Tabernacle on God’s Holy hill.  At the time David wrote this, there was no temple.  Worship for God took place in the Tabernacle which was a huge tent where God lives.  Mount Zion was the traditional location of where God lived.  So, David asks God, who can come up there and fellowship with you.  Who does God want to hang out with? The answer is given in a poem based on parallelism.  Each of the five points consists of two lines or two phrases which complement, explain or show opposite points.  The focus of this list of righteous behaviors and attitudes is that this list is person-to-person.  It talks about how a person treats a friend and a neighbor.  For the ancient Hebrew, this would be seen as how Jews should treat each other.  If Jews treat each o

I have written before about people inventing a version of God that is palatable for them.  People desire a God who is totally love and accepting of all their sins.  People want to be able to live anyway they want and at the end of time, God comes over, gives them a big hug and accepts them into eternal happiness.  This form of universalism is directly from the pit of hell, because it is not true.  It is not only a lie, it is dangerous because it gives false hope to people who do not fear God and find no reason to. From eternity past, God has had a standard.  It would be better to say that God is the standard.  God is perfectly righteous and holy.  There is no variance, no shadow, no lie, no falsehood or anything sinful or evil in God.  God cannot sin, he cannot lie and he cannot be anything but perfectly holy. God desires the same standard for his followers.  God requires of his people, perfect obedience, perfect holiness and perfect perfection.  To be in the presence of God requir

People all over the world find it very entertaining to judge God and tell God what he should or should not be or do.  Many people even go as far as to create their own religions.  There are the major religions of the world like Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and Sikhism.  I have also run across hundreds of people in my computer job days, where they would explain that God was this way or that way.  I would explain that they were probably the only person in the world who believed that about God and they would explain that God was big enough to be whatever any individual wanted. If the truth about God is presented from the Bible, people tend to express that God is unfair or mean or no fun or inconsistent or some other human judgment on the almighty creator of the universe.  It seems that everyone, even many who claim the name Christian, want God to be their personal butler for prayers, blessings and truth.  Sadly, God does not come to humans and ask what he is supposed to be today.  God

Remember that the progressive left in America believe in the basic goodness of people, if people will only be given a chance, they will be good.  This idea is pervasive in schools and colleges and the Federal government.  Back in 2014, the White House wanted to see what could be done to stop the school to prison pipeline that was so common in eastern states.  Children would get in trouble in the 6th or 7th grade and this would start a cycle that would end up in them being in prison as adults. After millions were spent by the government to come up with a plan, they settled on the plan to give children counseling instead of detention.  This would be for non-violent crimes.  Assault was included in non-violent crimes.  The test case for this new program was Broward County , Florida, the exact same place the recent school shooting occurred.  This program would be paid for by the Federal government, which means tax dollars.  When a person 18 years old or younger was caught in a crime up t

In Romans 1:18-20 Paul is telling the residences of Rome that God has and is and will reveal himself in nature.  The plants and animals and things in the sky show God’s eternal power and divine nature.  ( Romans 1:20 ).  In other words, when a person sees a tree or a bird or the stars in the sky, these things are broadcasting the evidence of God’s eternal power and divine nature.  Yet, it seems, people look at a tree and see wood, they look at a bird and they see evolution and they look at the stars and see random chance.  According to Romans, this is because they suppress the truth. ( Romans 1:18 ).  In other words, they know the truth, they see the truth, they realize the truth, the even might understand the truth, but they push the truth down and deny that this truth exists.   Romans 1:20 ends by stating that this evidence has been obvious and clear since the creation of the world, which took exactly six days, such that people who suppress the truth will be without excuse. The q

Psalm 14 begins by saying that the fool says in his heart that there is no God.  Psalm 14 is is about the atheist.  Someone who denies God, either theologically or practically, will live a corrupt life.  A theological atheist has determined from a studied position, that God cannot exist or must not exist.  These are few and far between.  Most atheists are practical atheists, which means they live as if there is no God.  This group is much larger.  They are the people, when asked, will say that they believe in God, but there is no evidence of a religious conviction.  In fact these people do not even give a thought to God during their lives, except during times of trouble, like a death in the family or a health crisis. Psalm 14 says they are corrupt and do abominable deeds.  One question that needs to be asked is, why?  Why would a true believing Christian act differently than an atheist?  If people were basically good and people were their own righteous and just master, then there wou

Church has always been obvious to me.  I was born on a Thursday and on that Sunday I was carried into First Baptist Church and placed in the Nursery.  In anticipation of my birth I was enrolled in “Cradle Roll” six months before I took my first breath.  I was listed as “Baby Wilson.” From that moment, I was taken to church twice on Sunday and at least once during the week for program.  When our family moved to the East Bay, because of my Dad’s work, our family started attending San Lorenzo Baptist Church.  I was 1.5 years old and I went to that church every time the doors were open until I left to go to college and then the military. Raised in church made church a habit for me.  Every where I went I found a church on Sunday.  When I was in the military, I attended the chapel on base while in training and eventually a church off base when I reached my duty station. Being raised in church, I was taught all the stories of the Bible.  Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Egypt

There is a universalism that exists today that is so wrong.  It seems to be traced to the universal spiritualism of the 1960s, but certainly this has existed for centuries.  This form of universalism states that because God is love, people can do whatever they want, live however they want, believe whatever they want.  At the end of time, God’s love will cover all sin and disobedience and everyone will be saved and spend eternity with this loving God. Rob Bell, in his 2012 book, Love Wins says that God will send people to hell, but only for a short time.  Eventually, God’s love will win and he will call all those in hell out and into his presence for all eternity.  Hell will then be destroyed.  In Rob Bell’s theology, hell is nothing more than a modified purgatory.  At its core, Rob Bell is preaching Christian Universalism. One aspect that is ignored in this universalism based on God’s love, is that God hates sin.  God hates sin more than he loves people.  That statement may not be

The Good Place is a show on NBC, it has completed two seasons.  Season one is also on Netflix.  I will keep the spoilers to a minimum here, but if you want to watch the show with fresh eyes, then move it along, there is nothing to see here. The theology of The Good Place is very simple.  The show gets it name from the place where good people go and there is also a bad place, where bad people go.  Ted Danson plays an immortal being named Michael.  During the initial interview with people who have recently died, Michael explains that there is only one person in the history of the world who figured out how the afterlife works.  This person was taking many drugs and very high and figures it out. This is the most important part of The Good Place’s theology.  It is a secret.  In this system, there is no revelation, there is no prophet, there is no minister telling the world what is to come.  People need to stumble into the Good Place or the Bad Place without knowing what they are doi

Back in the late 300 AD time, Constantine had converted to Christianity and made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.  He also bankrolled seminaries and theological schools.  From this time, therefore, people arose, debating and writing about what Christianity was, what it meant and how it all worked.  One such writer was Augustine . He wrote about original sin and how people were born into sin and the need for grace.  One person arose to oppose him and that was Pelagius . Pelagius said that people were born neutral or sinless with a completely free will.  People had the capacity, unaided by God, to keep most of the commandments and to please God.  He said that people could, on their own, reason out what God wanted and therefore accept Christ and be saved.  God still did the saving work, according to Pelagius, but God would be sitting back waiting for people to come to him.  Pelagius said that there was a universal grace given to everyone to allow people to have fr

Recently I have been reading through The Plan of Salvation by B.B. Warfield (https://www.monergism.com/plan-salvation-ebook).  In this book, Warfield reviews all the belief systems in the world, not by their name, but by their view of how people get saved.  The conclusion of the book is that there are two views of salvation in the world.  The first is the biblical view that people can only be saved by grace alone, through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.  This is considered the correct, protestant, biblical, Christian view of salvation.  All other views are universalist.  Universalism can mean everything from the idea that everyone is saved to the idea that everyone can be saved, based on their own merit. On one end of that spectrum, we have the unitarian/universalists who believe that all religions are different doors into the same God and that everyone, no matter what they believe, will have eternal life in heaven with God.  They used to state that people had to be sincere with

The Bible is full of promises and statements concerning God’s blessings, his desires for his people and his promises.  From a very young age I was told that we can trust the promises of God, that God always keeps his promises and when everyone else disappoints, God will always come through.  This was all well and good for a person growing up in church and in the Christian Faith.  When I got older, however, and begin to find people who have left church, it became apparent that there is a disconnect between God’s promises and people’s expectations of what God is supposed to do. When speaking of the Psalms, Psalm 1 is a classic example of a promise of God.  It says in verse 3:         He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. People will focus on the last part where it says, “In all he does, he prospers.”  I have had people explain to be that this is a psalm about how ri

David begins Psalm 13 by crying out the phrase “How long.”  David wonders how long God will be silent, how long David will feel bad emotionally and how long his enemies will win.  Four times, David says, “How Long.”  David feels abandoned by God. For Christians today we must never think that God’s silence is a reason to think he has abandoned us or, as some have said, he just does not exist.  I have met many many people in my life who have decided that because a major tragedy occurred in their life, God must not exist.  Because, they reason, if God exists, the child would not have died, the car would not have been stolen, the house would not have been foreclosed on or any number of other “tests” that people choose to put on God.  People choose one event in their life and hoist it upon the altar of belief.  If God does not pass the test, then he does not exist.  I have talked to people who were raised in church, married in church, raised their family in church and when one of these ca