Josh Benner

Category: Faith

  • Popular pastor says evangelicals are too concerned with winning

    Popular pastor says evangelicals are too concerned with winning

    Atlanta based megachurch pastor Andy Stanley has a new book coming out titled “Not in it to win it: why choosing sides sidelines the church.” 

    From the description of the book: 

    “Is it possible to disagree politically and love unconditionally? The reaction of evangelicals to political and cultural shifts in recent years revealed what they value most. Lurking beneath our Bible-laced rhetoric, faith claims, books, and sermons is a relentless drive to WIN!

    But the church is not here to win. By every human measure, our Savior lost. On purpose. With a purpose. And we are his body. We are not in it to win anything. We are in it for something else entirely. That something else is what this book is about.”

    Umm…

    We’re in the middle of a major cultural shift where numerous things have become mainstream which are antithetical to the gospel, and Andy Stanley wants to concern himself with evangelical Christians trying too hard to win? 

    A baker in Colorado had to go all the way to the Supreme Court to assert his right not to have to bake cakes for gay weddings. And he’s been harassed by LGBT groups ever since. This week, a handful of baseball players for the Tampa Bay Rays refused to wear pride themed jerseys and they’ve been vilified. Chick-fil-a is a constant source of ire because the company has evangelical Christian values and used to donate money to some causes who had the audacity to affirm traditional marriage. Charlotte, North Carolina lost the 2019 NBA All Star game because the state would not allow transgender people to use their preferred bathroom. And countless other examples. 

    There’s incredible venom and vitriol against any who stand up to these social pressures. The culture bullies anyone who stands up against these social issues and labels them as hateful and bigoted.  

    And Andy Stanley wants to say evangelicals are too focused on winning? 

    Evangelicals are just trying to stand up against being forced to comply with this paganism of our society. 

    Think of all of the major cultural institutions who have thrown in with the progressive left in the culture wars. The media, Hollywood, social media companies, higher education, healthcare, (increasingly) big corporations, professional sports, and on and on and on. 

    And so with all of these major institutions already being to the left, Stanley’s comments are easy to make about those on the right. It’s easy to say that too many evangelical Christians and leaders make too much of an idol of politics. But what’s hard to say is that there are too many liberal churches who have embraced abortion and the LGBT movement and that these beliefs are unbiblical. 

    I don’t find Stanley’s thesis to be particularly interesting or original. Russell Moore says similar things, Beth Moore, the Gospel Coalition, Tim Keller in his own cryptic way. I feel like I see a similar commentary every week. In the mainstream Christian media (Gospel Coalition, Christianity Today, Religion News Service), the call for political moderation only seems to go one way. It’s the argument that evangelicals are too conservaitve (and everyone else is just fine).   

    “Evangelicals are too political.” I think of churches where I’ve served and attended. And yes, more people were probably voting republican than democrat. But politics was not the focal point of what we were doing or what was being taught. And someone who believed differently about politics was still welcome (and many such people served these churches in meaningful ways). 

    Are there evangelical churches that are more politicized than the churches that I’ve attended and served? I’m sure there are. 

    But for every evangelical church that wants to conflate republicanism with the gospel, there are rainbow flag waving churches who clearly have cast their own political lot with the left. For those churches, not only are they too political, but they’re also out of step with the Bible. Where’s the call for these churches to repent? 

    Stanley argues “By every human measure, our Savior lost.” It is true that Jesus willingly gave up his life for his people. Jesus was unjustly arrested, tortured, and crucified. And he also never turned a blind eye to sin.

    A common argument I hear is that evangelicals should be more loving to our neighbor. Stanley writes, “The moment our love for or concern for country takes precedence over our love for people in our country we are off mission.” I would argue that part of loving the country and the people within the country is wanting what’s best for both the country and its people and that the progressive cultural issues which dehumanize the unborn, which say that gender is a social construct are both bad for the country and for its people.

    It isn’t loving to stand idly by. Yes, we can’t force people to live a certain way, but we should stand up to a society that is trying to force a contrary set of values upon us and everyone else. And one of the tools to combat these issues is politics, how we vote, who we vote for, and what we support. 

    I too would say that we should not make idols of politics or make saviors out of politicians. Politics and “winning” are not all important. But they are also not unimportant. 

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  • The woman at the well. Studying John 4:1-9

    The woman at the well. Studying John 4:1-9

    In John 4, Jesus is on the move. He’s left Judea and is journeying into Galilee. He’s venturing out of Jewish territory. 

    John 4:1-2 says: 

    Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2(although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 

    First thing I want to focus on is where the text says that Jesus had to pass through Samaria. That’s relevant because it will be the location of our story today. There actually more than one route Jesus could have taken. But where the text says Jesus had to pass through Samaria, it’s an indication of the divine will. Jesus had to go this way because it put him in a place to have a divinely appointed meeting. 

    John 4:5: 

    5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

    John makes a reference to Jacob and Joseph. In the Old Testament, Jacob is the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. And the region to which Jesus has traveled is an area of land that had been owned by Jacob and given to Joseph.  We see that in Genesis 48. It’s this land to which Jesus has come. 

    The humanity of Jesus

    John 4:6:

     6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. 

    When the text talks of Jesus being worn from his journey, it is a reminder to us that Jesus is human. During his earthly ministry, he experienced fatigue. We see him sleep. We see times where he eats and drinks. Times where he goes off by himself to be alone. He was fully man. 

    This verse tells us it was the sixth hour. That’s relevant to the story. In first century Jewish time keeping, the first hour was sunrise, so in it being the sixth hour, it’s around noon. 

    All of this is setting the scene for what follows. 

    John 4:7:
    A woman from Samaria came to draw water.

    Background on Samaritans 

    We need some background. 

    When we were looking at passages in Isaiah over Christmas, one thing we talked a lot about was how Israel split into two kingdoms. You had a northern and a southern kingdom. 

    In 722 B.C, the northern kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians. 

    Thousands of the Jewish people from the northern tribes were deported from their land. The Assyrians procreated with the Israelites, and so you had an ethnic group who was half-Jewish and half-Assyrian. 

    That is the ethnic group which became known as the Samaritans. There are still Samaritans today. It’s a very small community of about 800 people and they mostly live in Israel. There are some very significant distinctions between Jewish people and Samaritans. 

    Samaritans do not believe the entire Old Testament is scripture. They only believe in the first five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. 

    Since they do not believe in the entire Old Testament, Jerusalem is not the sacred place to them that it is to other Jewish people. Because if all you have are the first five books, the Jewish people had not yet reached Jerusalem. 

    Instead, the sacred site of worship for the Samaritans then and now is Mount Gerizim. And actually, about half of present day Samaritans actually live there. 

    In the first century, there had been a lot of animosity between the two groups. About 160 years before Jesus had this interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well, a group of Israelite soldiers had destroyed the Samaritan temple at Mount Gerizim. 

    And there was later retaliatory attacks.  

    In John 8, when he’s being questioned, Jesus will be asked if he’s a Samaritan or has a demon (John 8:48), which essentially puts those two situations on the same plain. 

    The Samaritans were looked down upon. These two groups hated each other. 

    Within a generation of the life of Jesus, official Jewish teaching from their scholars ruled that Samaritans were inherently unclean and defiled. 

    In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus gives the Parable of the Good Samaritan. A lawyer is questioning Jesus about the command to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus tells a parable about a man who had been severely beaten, left for dead. A priest and a levite both come by the man and stay on their journey, but it’s a Samaritan who sees the man, tends to him, sees that he gets taken care of. The Good Samaritan is the hero of the story. 

    It’s a spectacular picture of selflessness and love for your fellow man. 

    But when you understand that parable in the context of the hatred that existed between the Jews and the Samaritans, it makes the story all that much more striking. 

    I go into those details because the tensions will also color our passage this morning in John 4. 

    Give me a drink

    So we return to the passage. The woman is coming to the well in the middle of the day. Unusual for her to be coming to the well alone and also at the hottest point of the day.

    It was generally women who would come for water in the morning. The fact that she’s going at an off time alone suggests that she possibly doesn’t want to interact with others. 

    Jesus speaks to the woman at the end of verse 7 and says “give me a drink.” 

    Verse 8 adds the note that Jesus was by himself as his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

    So Jesus asks for a drink. A Jew speaking to a Samaritan. Verse 9, the woman is taken aback. The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” 

    The verse ends with the parenthetical comment that Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. 

    These are two groups who do not get along. As he often does in the gospels, Jesus is unconcerned with social customs or taboos. 

    We see Jesus touch lepers. We see him associating with sinners, with those on the margins. 

    Even within his band of disciples, he picks someone like Matthew who was a tax collector, a profession hated by Jews in the Roman world. 

    And here we see Jesus openly conversing with a woman in an ethnic group who was looked down upon.

    So the woman asks how it is that he could ask her for a drink. But Jesus will flip the conversation. 

    Because the matter of ultimate significance in the story is not about her giving a drink to Jesus, it’s about the water he can provide. 

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  • The Spirit without measure. Studying John 3:34-36

    The Spirit without measure. Studying John 3:34-36

    In John 3:34-36, we see the final words of John the Baptist written in the Gospel of John. In this passage, John is giving powerful insights about Jesus and his relationship to God. 

    John 3:34 says: 

    For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. 

    This verse tells us that Jesus has been sent by God. That is important to understanding how The Apostle John treats the idea of mission in his gospel. The mission of God is a theme which runs throughout the Bible. 

    When I say mission, I mean God’s work to restore sinful humanity to himself and the work of the church in spreading the gospel through which humanity is saved. 

    Different writers emphasize different elements of the mission of God. One thing that John talks about throughout his gospel is the idea of being sent by God. It’s mentioned dozens of times in this book. 

    And while the idea is present in the other gospels, it’s nowhere near the prevalence that we see of it in the Gospel of John. 

    We first see talk of God sending one for ministry in relation to John the Baptist. 

    John 1:6:

    There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 

    None of the other gospels use the word “sent” in conjunction with John the Baptist. Luke says the word of the Lord came to John. Mark says “John appeared, baptizing” (Mark 1:4). Matthew 1:3 says:  In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Jude

    But in the Gospel of John, he was sent. 

    And we see that Jesus has been sent. 

    Jesus has been sent into the world to do the work of the Father. John 6:38:

    For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.

    We see in this gospel that the way in which we treat Jesus is tantamount to the way which we treat God. John 5:24:

     Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. 

    We see a culmination after his resurrection. He’s talking to the disciples and similar to the Great Commission at the end of Matthew, Jesus says in John 20:21: 

    Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”

    It is after Jesus had fully fulfilled the divine plan for his ministry in the world that the one who was sent becomes the sender. And that then puts the onus on the church to fulfill the mission of God. 

    We weren’t sent to do this mission alone. Jesus has given a helper. And the same Spirit who was at work in Jesus during his ministry has been given to all who believe in the gospel to work for the mission of God in the world. 

    The Holy Spirit has been present so far in this gospel, but he’s talked about with far greater frequency in the later part of this book than in the opening chapters. 

    But in the ministry of Jesus, we see all three persons of the trinity at work for the divine plan, and the same is true within the church today. 

    Where it says that Jesus has the Spirit without limit. There were prophets throughout the Old Testament who were endowed with the Holy Spirit for their specific ministry. 

    But they were not equipped with all of the knowledge of the Lord. 

    Illustration – U-Haul 

    When I moved to Illinois a few years ago, I  rented the U-haul truck to move our stuff here, driving in St. Louis there were a couple of hills. One thing I noticed when driving that big truck down hill was that it was equipped with a governor which would kick in and would keep the truck from moving too fast down hill. There were limitations. 

    God did not give the prophets unmitigated access to the Holy Spirit. 

    The same is true today. We see a similar idea in Ephesians 4:7:

    grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.

    Yet God gives Jesus the Spirit without measure. 

    I think about the electricity which comes into our homes. High voltage power lines can carry electricity that is several hundred thousand volts. It’s taken to substations where the power is reduced but the power of the electricity can still be in excess of 200,000 volts before its reduced at additional substations. But even once you get in town, the power is still several thousand volts as it is further reduced in order to be safe to use in our homes which is generally around 120 volts. 

    You think of all the possible power, and what we have to power our homes is so minor compared to that. But still powerful. 

    If you’ve ever shocked yourself and it still is very painful. The prophets just had small pieces of the divine knowledge. Some might have had 13,000 volts, some might have had 120 volts.

    Jesus is unlimited in what he has been given through the Holy Spirit. Already discussed this morning, but because Jesus is above all and from heaven, he has the divine knowledge and privileges because he himself is Lord. 

    The opening prologue says in 1:18:

    18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. 

    God is so holy and righteous that no sinful person can go into his presence. But since Jesus is himself God, he is able to make God known and Jesus is the one who is given the Spirit without limit. 

    John 3:35:

    The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. 

    Some theology. What does it mean that the Father has given all things into the hand of the son? Jesus is fully God and fully man. Jesus is also eternally God. 

    John 1:1-2:

    In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. 

    Jesus has always been God. There was never a time when he was not God. Jesus also has eternally possessed all of the qualities of God. 

    He didn’t give up being God to become a man. He didn’t become any less God. He wasn’t a man who was promoted to a divine status later on. He wasn’t created. He is eternally divine.  

    At the incarnation, when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14), Jesus was fully God and fully man. 

    But during the time of his ministry in the world, though he was God, there were aspects of his divine ability which he temporarily laid aside. 

    How exactly that works we cannot understand. There is one being in history who was fully God and fully man and that is Jesus. 

    Again, he is eternally God. 

    And these ideas will unfold more throughout this gospel, but we start to see some elements of the relationship between Jesus and God. 

    Jesus is the one who dies for sins. He bears the divine wrath for our sins. As we’ve already said, he’s the one who is sent. 

    John 5:19:

    Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.

    And several other passages in this book. But the Trinity is a perfect relationship between the three persons. So one thing this verse does is it tells us that the Father loves the Son. And while we see throughout this book that Jesus honors God, it is also God who gives all things to Jesus. 

    So Jesus relinquishes some of his privileges during his ministry yet God also grants him all things. Jesus is sent by God and submits to the divine plan while on earth but Jesus is also enabled to fulfill the divine plan through his life, death, and resurrection.  

     Christology is perhaps the most intricate and complicated are of study within theology. 

    So I realize that’s pretty abstract. We’ll have other places in this gospel where the relationships within the Trinity are talked about at greater length. 

    Verse 36:  

    36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. 

    This verse is a summary of the two routes we can take with the gospel. We can trust in Jesus. Believe in him. Place our seal on the truth of his gospel. 

    The promise is eternal life. The consequence for not believing in him is that the wrath of God remains on you. Not a new idea in this gospel, but again, one we must be constantly reminded of. The gospel message itself. 

    Belief in Jesus, and that alone, is what brings eternal life. Without that, there is no salvation. 

    Jesus is above all. We are of the earth. Jesus speaks the Word of God. We create a manmade gospel where we make ourselves our hope. 

    Jesus bears witness to what he has seen and heard as one who came from heaven and who makes God known. As one who has the Holy Spirit without limit. 

    And it is because of who Jesus is that he is the one who has the authority over admission into the kingdom of heaven. 

    Because he came from there and died so that we could go there. 

    It is through him and him alone. 

    Where have you placed your seal? 

    Is your hope in Christ? Or is it in yourself? 

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  • Eve and the Serpent. Studying Genesis 3:1-7

    Eve and the Serpent. Studying Genesis 3:1-7

    The doctrine of original sin is one that has confounded many throughout the centuries, but especially in recent decades. A talking snake talked Adam and Eve into sinning and that brought condemnation for all of humanity? 

    That is the teaching of the Bible and the event is picked up again and referenced in the New Testament as the event which brought sin into the world (cf. Romans 5:18-19; 1 Corinthians 15:20-21). 

    People question this event. Why would God care so much about people eating fruit of a specific tree? I’d ask why man felt so compelled to disobey? And even now, we continue to question the command! 

    In Genesis 3, we see a paradigm that so often plays itself out in the human heart in regards to our sin. Doubting God’s Word, Distorting God’s Word, rejecting God’s Word, doubting God’s goodness and choosing to disobey. 

    Doubting God’s Word

    Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”

    -Genesis 3:1

    This is how the serpent begins the discussion with Eve. At the beginning, he introduces doubt when he questions God’s word and asks Did God actually say ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”

    He is introducing the idea that God’s Word is subject to human judgment and opinion. 

    Distorting God’s Word

    In response, Eve goes to far and ends up misquoting what God had said. Genesis 3:2-3 says: 

     2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” 

    The problem is that in Genesis 2:16-17, the specific command is: 

    16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” 

    So the Lord commanded not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve changes God’s Word by suggesting that they cannot eat or touch the fruit of this tree. There are other distortions in what Eve says, but for this post, we’ll mainly focus on her adding to what God has commanded. 

    Rejecting God’s Word

    Genesis 3:4:

     4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 

    The serpent flatly contradicts God’s Word and denies the weight of the consequences for disobedience. Again, we see how these issues with the scripture work their way into our own decisions. We doubt God’s Word, we twist it to make it say what we want it to say, we disregard it when it’s not what we like. The results this leads to are disastrous. 

    Doubting God’s goodness

    The serpent continues to speak in verse 5: 

    For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

    I love how Ken Mathews sums this up in his commentary of Genesis. In the serpent’s rejection of God’s word, he is implying “God is not good and gracious; he is selfish and deceptive, preventing the man and woman from achieving the same position as “Elohim””

    False promises 

    After contradicting God, the serpent explains why the rejection of God’s command will actually be better than obedience. The rest of verse 5 records the serpent saying: your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

    Once again, this plays into the heart of human sin. We doubt God’s goodness. When we sin against God’s commands, we are acting as though God is holding back something good from us or that we know better than God. 

    This way of thinking treats God as our adversary. 

    From temptation to sin

    We see the response of Eve in Genesis 3:6: 

     6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 

    With her eyes, she sees the fruit of the tree is good. In eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Eve is seeking out wisdom independent 

    The serpent had distorted God’s Word but not everything he said was an outright lie. He deceived and tempted eve with half-truths. Indeed the eyes of Adam and Eve were opened. But they were open to recognize their nakedness. Eve thought that eating of the fruit of this tree would make her like god. John Sailhamer observed that instead, Adam and Eve realized they weren’t even like each other as shame and hiding were introduced. 

    In the process of this first sin, we see other issues of the human heart. We see the pride of thinking that she knows better than God. There is also covetousness of thinking that true fulfillment will come from something that Eve lacks. These elements in our decisions to sin and our commissions of sin have played themselves out time and again throughout history. 

    The end of verse 6 mentions that Eve gave some of the fruit to Adam. We’re not sure if he heard the exchange between eve and the serpent, and there’s no indication as to what his thought process was which led to the eating of the fruit of the tree. 

    Sin is introduced into the world. 

    Genesis 3:7 says:

    7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 

    The serpent told half-truths. He had given the empty promise that Eve’s eyes would be opened upon eating the fruit. That part was true. For both Adam and Eve, their eyes were opened, and what they saw was their nakedness. The serpent told her she would be like God. This appealed to our desire for glorification. The serpent told Eve that she would have the knowledge of good and evil. That was true too, but what that knowledge brought was the knowledge that Adam and Eve were now evil. 

    Genesis 3 records nothing good coming of eating this fruit. It’s not depicted as some magical moment of bliss. Their eyes are opened. They have sinned. In their nakedness, they sew together fig leaves to cover themselves. It’s an attempt to hide from their sin. But they cannot hide from an all knowing God. 

    Sources: 

    K. A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, vol. 1A, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), 236.

    John H. Sailhamer, “Genesis,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1990), 52.

  • Sermon: The Last Breakfast – John 21:1-14

    Jesus provides a miracle for a group of disciples by providing a huge catch of fish for the group and then hosting them for a meal. In John, the ministry of Jesus begins and ends with meals and in this passage, we see it pointing forward to the mission of the church and the work that the disciples will do when Jesus is gone.

    Sermon manuscript