John Piper: Sexual Sin In Ministry

 Wisdom from the heart of a true father!

rgh

“For the last twenty years thousands of men from across America struggling with sexual sin have come to our intensive counseling workshop. Over half were pastors and missionaries.

I wish our experience was unique.

Several years ago a seminary professor told me: “We no longer ask our entering students if they are struggling with pornography, we assume every student is struggling. The question we ask: ‘How serious is the struggle?’”

One missions agency told me that 80% of their applicants voluntarily indicate a struggle with pornography, resulting in staff shortages on the field.

Pornography is just one level of sin, a form of visual sex, or heart adultery. Physical adultery includes an affair, multiple affairs, prostitution, and homosexuality. Other sexual behaviors within the ministry are such heinous “unfruitful works of darkness . . . it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret” (Ephesians 5:11–12).

To face the crisis we must correctly understand the nature of the problem, ask God to search our own hearts, and be committed to restore each one caught in sexual sin “in a spirit of gentleness” (Galatians 6:1).”

http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/sexual-sin-in-the-ministry

Jews And The Promised Land Of Israel

English: Flag of Israel with the Mediterranean sea in the background, in Rishon LeZion. עברית: דגל ישראל בראשון לציון (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was raised in a home by God-fearing parents. Even before  their conversion later in life, they imparted a deep love for the Jews and the land of Israel.

My love for Israel flowed deeper after Christ conquered my life through the gospels regenerating power. He has allowed me the joy of traversing the land of Israel on two separate occasions and even now I anticipate a third trip for ministry in the near future.

With that  background, you can see why I sincerely appreciate John Pipers  relational communication to David Brickner, executive director of Jews for Jesus, concerning  Israel’s future and the promised land.

This is a good read!

Dear David,

Thank you for taking this happy initiative. I am eager to discuss Israel and the Promised Land with you. I love Jews for Jesus. Your leadership, and Moishe Rosen’s before you, have been for me a cause for continual thanksgiving. “To the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16) has never ceased to carry weight with me. I pray we will never lose Paul’s passion in Romans 10:1: “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.”

We both agree that the way God chose to bring all the nations under the sway of King Jesus is astonishing. After sketching it, Paul praised God, “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom. 11:33).

• First, God chose Israel. “The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth” (Deut. 7:6).
• Then, for 2,000 years, he focused his saving work mainly on Israel, “allowing all the nations to walk in their own ways” (Acts 14:16).
• Then he sent Jesus, the Messiah, to Israel, knowing they would crucify him, so that the Gentiles might “receive mercy because of their [Israel's] disobedience” (Rom. 11:30).
• And then, lest we Gentiles think we are the end of the story, Paul told us that Israel “has now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you [Gentiles] they [Israel] also may now receive mercy” (Rom. 11:31).
• And the point of it all? To show that “from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36).

What was Paul’s response to this flabbergasting way of saving the world? Unsearchable! Inscrutable! “Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” (Rom. 11:34).

So, you are right. I believe God has a future for ethnic Israel. And we agree this is not because there are two tracks to glory or two different covenants of grace. Rather, corporate Israel will be saved in the end because she will be grafted back into the same covenant tree with all of us wild olive branches (Rom. 11:16–24). Both Jews and Gentiles become heirs of the promise of Abraham in the same way: “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gal. 3:29).

So I am persuaded with J. C. Ryle that Israel, as a people, will someday be converted to the Messiah and saved:

They are kept separate that they may finally be saved, converted and restored to their own land. They are reserved and preserved, in order that God may show in them as on a platform, to angels and men, how greatly he hates sin, and yet how greatly he can forgive, and how greatly he can convert. Never will that be realized as it will in that day when “all Israel shall be saved.” (Are You Ready for the End of Time? pp. 137–138)

Moreover, I also believe the promise of the Land to this redeemed ethnic Israel is both conditional and irrevocable. Irrevocable means they will finally have it as a special dwelling place when the Deliverer comes from Zion and banishes ungodliness from Jacob (Rom. 11:26).

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/juneweb-only/john-piper-responds-to-david-brickner-israel.html

Grace and Mercy In Divine Disquise?

Heard this song for the first time this evening. Could it be that it has taken all these years of Kingdom  journey for me to finally glimpse the mystery of grace and mercy in divine disguise?  

I am afraid that as it is so often with angels, the answers to my supplication  have come to me as strangers and I entertained them unaware.

Oh Lord, I believe, help my unbelief!

What a savior!

rgh

Unashamed of The Gospel of God’s Wrath!

 This Glorious Gospel of Penal Substitution is the grace based means of propitiation accomplished by  a loving and righteous God! So disturbing is Gods effectual mercy in action, that men like Rob Bell are unable and unwilling to: Believe it! Embrace it! or Proclaim it!

Yet, Isaiah 53 screams “it is true!!!!!!”  This powerful reality fueled the Apostle Paul with the courage to proclaim with certitude, “I am not ashamed of the gospel” and do so in the process of unpacking the wrath of God! [romans 1:16-18]

The clips in the following video are even more impacting by the worship song that enters into the narrative.  

rgh

Another One Bites the Dust

Image via Wikipedia

My comments  will certainly evoke the angst of those who rush to prop up corrupt ministers as if they are victims. These Corinthian type sympathizers boast with  inordinate pride that they are under commandment not to be  judgmental so they choose rather to lovingly restore back to ministry the” man of God” who has merely ”fallen”. 

They also advocate a false moral equivalence by arguing that we all deal with sin. Excuseeee me! If that is the core issue, why does God set authenticating standards for his ministers in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. Such secualrized  reasoning is intellectually Goooooofy!

However, In the name  of [unprincipled]  mercy, they reject  God’s own vocabulary for  pseudo ministers whom the Apostle Paul identified  as corrupt “ministers of satan”. 

Choosing ignorance sustained by denial, these compromised compassionates promote the very thing that God himself wars against. 

Paul the Apostle said it like this in 2 Corinthians 11:11-15,”And I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us….. 

For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.”

Now read this news report and you will see why I am ticked!

rgh

“ Police say a pastor at an upstate New York church embezzled more than $400,000 from the credit union where he worked. Jason LaPierre, pastor at River Church in Kingsbury, is charged with writing himself hundreds of personal checks over four years while working at the Hudson River Community Credit Union in Corinth, 40 miles north of Albany.

LaPierre was a human resources and marketing executive at the bank. The thefts were discovered last year and he was fired in December. He was arraigned Wednesday on charges of grand larceny and falsifying business records. Phones for LaPierre and the church were out of service Thursday.”

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Legal/Default.aspx?id=1273722

Pastoral Infidelity and Restorative Justice

Image via Wikipedia

Ministry Today sponsored a   “Summit on Integrity” back in November. With scandals being reported almost weekly, the gathering of ministers was designed to address steps for strengthening ministry marriages, integrity in finances and truthful disclosure, purity in sexual morality,  being examples in our communities of influence,and  revolutionizing the present climate of suspicion and loss of influence presently characterizing ministry leadership.

Here are a few examples documenting why such a sacred convocation was absolutely necessary:

NATIONALLY

>Some studies seem to indicate that one in eight ministers (who are still in their leadership position) have committed adultery, and up to 37% of ministers “have been involved in inappropriate behavior with someone in the church” (p.19).

>In a  Leadership journal article called “Restoring Fallen Pastors”, Eric Reed transparently declares that no one knows how many of the 19,200 pastors required to leave ministry each year do so because of a moral lapse.

> Peacemaker Ministry states that of the 1,500 pastors who leave their assignments every month in the United States, moral failure is one of the three main causes.

> Pure Life ministries reports 37 percent of Pastors admitted to struggling with pornography.

Locally In LaGrange

>Pastor commits adultery,splits the church,divorces his wife, and then cohabitates for years with the adulterous.

 >Married youth minister attempts to seduce the Pastors teenage daughter, the sin is covered, he resigns telling the congregation, that like Martha,  he has been to busy in ministry and not spending enough time with Jesus.

 >Pastors wife discovers he is in an adulterous relationship.Forced to resign and confess to congregation, it comes out that he   flagrantly lied during his supposed confession.

 >Worship minister commits adultery, is allowed to remain on staff only to commit adultery again. 

 >Wife of a minister is discovered to be involved in a lesbian relationship and confesses to congregation.

 >Pastor is fired or forced to resign from multiple congregations for moral failure but continues to Pastor in the area.

 >Even more recently is a congregation with whom  I had been affiliated,  the Pastor was discovered to be very uncharactered, had marital issues,and sorely  lacked financial integrity. Congregants assumed a posture of denial  sustained by  enabling leadership. This eventuated  in the Pastorhaving to be  removed  two weeks ago because of  marital infidelity.

 These national and local illustrations are mere tokens of the moral crisis among ministers today. It behooves the church to prepare itself to address the issue of restorative justice that must be effected when ministers of the gospel disqualify themselves from public ministry.

Restoration is defined by The Barnabas Ministry as, “The process of the renewing of the mind and the rebuilding of relationships which have been severely damaged or destroyed by the immorality of the pastor or Christian leader with  the goals of the restoration process  to see the person restored to God, to himself, to his family, and to the body of Christ.”

I agree heartily with this emphasis that refrains from  targeting restoration back to public ministry.Why? Infidelity involves more than breaking of  the marriage vows.   At it’s heart is the evil leavening of ones entire character through antinomian covetousness, idolatry, deception, illicit sex, covenant breaking, lying,stealing and moralizing hypocrisy.

  John Armstrong  lays out the following principled points that are worthy of consideration in his book, “Can Fallen Pastor’s Be Restored”.

1) Adultery is a unique sin (I Cor 6:15-20). “Its uniqueness . . . is not in its degree of evil but rather in the direct way sexual sin strikes at the body, and through the body, at the whole human personality” (p.61).

2) Therefore immorality “has such serious and lasting consequences that its reproach never fully departs in this life (Prov 6:32,33)” (p.48). Thus adultery is a greater sin than most others because of its consequences, which include the destruction of trust, which is so important to Christian leadership (see pp. 52,53).

3) “Adultery by pastors . . . is an even greater sin than adultery in general. Why? . . . Their sin becomes a grievous public assault upon the nuptial image of Christ (the groom) and the church (His Bride), because the pastor is called upon to be a role model of purity as an under shepherd in service to the Bridegroom Himself” (pp.68,69).

4) A pastor who has committed sexual sin no longer meets the qualifications of an elder since he is no longer above reproach and blameless (I Tim 3:2).

5) “In general, men who fall sexually have followed a pattern of deception, misinformation, and outright lying for months, if not years. . . . All sin is deceitful, but sexual sin seems particularly able to deceive and to harden the human heart of those caught in its follies” (pp.105,6).

6) The early church held to complete disqualification from pastoral ministry when an elder had sinned sexually (chapter 7). (These arguments are repeated in chapter 9).

Some may  immediately point to King David’s pre-meditated adultery and murder. While that really is  “apples to oranges” since David was serving as a government ruler and not in the office of pastor, very few who appeal to David apply all that God said with the full implications of his sin. Yes, David was forgiven, but the prophet told him the sword of judgment would never leave his house. David’s sexual iniquity trait had severe consequences upon his own family and  the people he governed, even though  he received God’s forgiveness:

 *The child of David’s sexual pleasure becomes sick unto death

 *A loyal trusted friend is murdered to cover David’s sin                                                                        

  * David’s oldest son by Ahinoam rapes his half sister

   * Absalom imitates David’s sin on a grander scale by pitching a tent

      upon the Palace roof and has public sex with David concubines before all Israel

   * One son is murdered by another son

After considering the full impact of David’s iniquity trait, we shouldn’t be so quick to cite him as an example in order to minimize the sin or the pain that is comensurate with infidelity.

rgh

 http://barnabasministriesinc.org/pub/restoring.htm

http://www.svchapel.org/resources/book-reviews/5-church/227

http://www.amazon.com/Can-Fallen-Pastors-Restored-Misconduct/dp/0802414125

http://www.purelifeministries.org/speaking-ministry

http://www.ministrytodaymag.com/index.php/ministry-news/65-news-main/18996-charismatic-church-leaders-commit-to-integrity-at-orlando-summit