Wonder why I'd never heard it.

They say there are two parts to every sermon: what and so what?

The "what" is the doctrinal and "so what" the practical.

There's a little storefront church in Metairie, one of those "Unity" kinds, that bills itself as dealing with "practical Christianity." Like there's any other kind. If it's not practical, pertaining to normal people living their everyday lives, it's not the authentic, biblical variety.

You often find the "so what" in Scripture with the "therefore" passages. On the basis of what has gone before, here is how we are to live.

The Bible is filled with them. First, we'll take the ones in I Peter, then some of our favorites from the rest of the New Testament.

--1:13 "Therefore, gird up your minds for action, keep sober in spirit...." On the basis of all we are in Christ and all the Father has done for us, let us get up and get busy in the work Christ has called us to.

--2:1 "Therefore, putting aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisy...." Since we have been born again by incorruptible seed, God's Word, and cleansed by Christ's precious blood, we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of ill-will and mean-spiritedness and ugly behavior.

--4:1 "Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose...." Few things restore our perspective like focusing on the Lord Jesus' sacrifice of Himself on the cross.

--4:7 "The end of all things is at hand; therefore, be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer...." This is about what has been called "living in the light of the Second Coming." Instead of going off the deep end and delving into fanaticism, be clear-headed and right-minded. Control yourself; only then will you be able to pray with purpose.

--4:19 "Therefore, let those also who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right." On the basis of the promises of God to those who suffer and persevere, get it right. It would be a shame to go through all that suffering for nothing.

--5:1 "Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ....shepherd the flock of God among you." On the basis of all Christ has done and God has promised, the pastors are summoned to shepherd the people of the Lord faithfully.

--5:6 "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you...." God is great, you are not, so stay humble.

Let's admit the obvious here: there are plenty of times when "therefore" is not actually spoken (or written), but implied. My thesaurus lists numerous synonyms for "therefore:" consequently, so, as a result (or consequence), hence, ergo, for that reason, accordingly, then, that being the case, and thus.

Here are a few of everyone's favorite "therefore" passages--

--Romans 12:1 "I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice...."

The first 11 chapters of Romans goes into great detail to lay before us the wonderful love and mercies of God. On the basis of all that, Paul says, we should give ourselves completely to the Lord.

The "therefore" here could refer to the doxology found at the end of chapter 11. That makes sense.

We don't have to choose. Let's believe both are true.

Kent Hughes, in his outstanding commentary on Romans ("Righteousness From Heaven"), gives this outline on Romans 12:1-2:

la -- The basis of commitment (the mercies of God)
1b -- The character of commitment (this commitment has 2 prominent traits: it is total and it is reasonable)
2a -- The demands of commitment (do not be conformed; but be transformed)
2b -- The effect of commitment (you will be able to discern God's will)

--I Corinthians 15:58 "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord."

This is the great resurrection chapter. After establishing that Jesus actually rose from the tomb on that first Easter morning and was seen by hundreds, Paul answers two questions: how are the dead raised and with what kind of body? (See vs. 35 where he asks this and following, where he answers)

Then, he concludes with a promise of Christ's return, a passage many of us have read at the gravesides of saints. "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet...."

But we are not to sit around on a mountaintop waiting. There is work to be done. "Therefore"--on the basis of the Lord's resurrection and our future resurrection, since He has made these glorious promises concerning everything beyond this life--we should be steady, stationary, productive, and optimistic.

--Ephesians 4:1 "I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called...."

Perhaps no epistle cleaves as neatly between the theological and the practical as clearly as Ephesians, right down the middle, 3 chapters each. Purists will point out that practical admonitions can be found among the theology and doctrinal insights throughout the practical. No question. But primarily, the first 3 chapters give doctrine and the last 3 answer the "so what" question.

--II Peter 3:11 "Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness."

Christians hold citizenship papers in two worlds. We have loyalties to each that do not contradict the other. We are to be good stewards of this one and to prepare for the next one. We must keep our balance between the two and our focus on each.

This earth will one day be destroyed. The recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile remind us how fragile life on this planet really is. In light of that, we must live faithfully and godly.

Jesus had some "therefores" of His own on this subject. Toward the end of the great 24th chapter of Matthew, the eschatology chapter, He said, "Therefore, be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming." (24:42)

"Be on the alert then, for you do not know the day nor the hour" (25:13).

Amen. Thank you, Lord. Even so, come Lord Jesus.

I've saved the last item from our newspaper of a few days ago, knowing it had to furnish material for this blog but waiting for the moment. That moment has arrived. It has to do with the 3 candidates for Kenner mayor. Not a pretty thing.

The other two items are from today's Times-Picayune, one regarding a Saints football player, a free agent, who wants to stay with the team but is "not feeling love from the front office," and the other pertains to a candidate for city council in Kenner.

Let's take care of the last one first. It's the simplest.

The two candidates for this council post are compared side by side, ages, background, etc. I don't know either, but since I live in River Ridge and not Kenner, that's all right. What struck me was the company one of the candidates owns.

"Bill and Jerry Investments, Inc." That's the name of his company.

Now, I'll buy Ben and Jerry ice cream. I'll watch Tom and Jerry cartoons. But invest my hard-earned savings with Bill and Jerry Investments? I dunno. Sounds shaky to me. I'd be more comfortable if they used last names.

It reminds me of the time I flew Jet Blue airlines. I wanted the attendants to act more professional, and not spend their time playing games in the aisles with passengers. The short pants and polo shirts they wore didn't inspire my confidence, either.

I sat in a meeting Tuesday night with the board members of Global Maritime Ministries and noticed the new executive director of New Orleans Baptist Association, Dr. Duane McDaniel, sitting there in his suit and tie. Now, he's a classy guy and would look distinguished in a tank top and gym shorts. And maybe it's just me, but I like the way he presented himself. He looked professional.

The next time you see a pastor running around in ragged jeans and flip-flops, ask yourself what kind of confidence he inspires in you.

Second item. The disgrunted Saints player.

Sharper made $1.7 million last year. Not exactly chump change, but he feels he's worth a lot more. And since he's now a free agent, at liberty to peddle his services elsewhere, he would like the Saints to show more interest in keeping him here. And to pay for the privilege, of course.

The headline across the top of today's Times-Picayune reads: "Darren Sharper: The Saints Haven't Shown Me the Love."

Let's see how to put this.

The Saints fans adore the guy. When he appears at a sports store to autograph NFL material, the lines go out the door.

But in his mind, "the Saints" are not the fans. The "Saints" are the front office. That would be the coach and general manager, the people who offer the dollars and the contracts. And Sharper is feeling slighted.

Do we dare tell him the truth? At age 34, he doubtless knows it now: football is a business.

Just because you had a big year and helped the team win all the marbles does not mean what you think it should at the bargaining table.

I notice in this morning's paper that Nomar Garciaparra just signed a one-day contract with a Red Sox farm team, then turned around and retired. He wanted to go out as a member of the team where he made his mark and was so beloved by Sox fans.

I'm betting no money was involved. Front offices are notorious for casting off players who have given their heart and soul for a team but who are beginning to reach the advanced age of--gasp!--34. (Sharper's age. Garciaparra is much older. He's 36.)

The funny thing about this business of age is that if your church called a pastor who was 36, some would criticize the decision because he is too young.

Now, on to the last item, the one I've saved.

The city of Kenner, Louisiana, a New Orleans suburb of perhaps 80,000 souls, abutting the larger municipality of Metairie, will elect a new mayor on March 27. Three candidates are vying for the job: Louis Congemi (who is also a former mayor of Kenner), Phil Capitano (ditto), and Mike Yenni, a youngster with limited experience but a great family history.

Louis Congemi served as a councilmember in Kenner, then put in 8 years as mayor before moving on to the parish council. His big brother Nick was the longtime police chief in Kenner.

Phil Capitano served as mayor for only 2 years (2004-2006) before being beaten in an election by the present mayor, Mr. Muniz.

Mike Yenni, age 37 I think (too old for the NFL), has never held elective office but served the present and past mayor in various capacities. What makes him a viable candidate is his grandfather Joe Yenni was a highly respected mayor (and has a boulevard named for him) and his uncle Mike Yenni (both Yennis are deceased) was likewise a popular local politician. The parish government building is named Yenni. If you live in Kenner and carry that name, you're going to get a lot of votes.

But each candidate has a major flaw.

With Louis Congemi, it's his health. Recently, he was hospitalized with pneumonia and his wife Mildred told a gathering that he was pulling out of the race for health reasons. He never did officially, and now declares he's back in.

With Phil Capitano, it's money problems. In 1989, he took bankruptcy, and it looks like he might have to again. A local bank is suing him for $212,000, saying he hasn't made a payment on his home in six months.

Capitano admits to diverting $25,000 of his personal money into his political campaign instead of paying on that note. No doubt he feels if he can regain the mayor's office, he'll have a nice income and can hold fund-raisers and pay off the house. Is this irresponsibility? or simply a business decision?

And then we come to Mike Yenni. Which was not his name originally.

He was born Michael Maunoir, but when his mother divorced his father, he chose to change his name to her maiden name, Yenni. His mother and the original Mike Yenni were siblings.

Yenni says he took that name 12 years ago, long before deciding to run for office. Okay. If you say so.

It gets worse.

On his website, Mike Maunoir Yenni says he previously served as "Director of Communications with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office." That has a nice ring to it.

Problem is, there is no such position.

This, we now discover, was only one of several whoppers put forth by Mr. Yenni. In a former position as "director of the Jefferson Parish Citizens Affairs Department," he claimed to oversee "the departmental operating budget of $116 million dollars." It turns out he was high by some $115 mil.

That department had a budget of a little over one million.

Again, on his website he says he developed "an emergency plan that would coordinate efforts among all departments in emergencies or catastrophes."

Maybe he did. However, Mr. Capitano, the mayor under whom he served, begs to differ. "He was never involved in the projects he claims. In fact, when I took office he was in charge of the city scrapbook."

Pow. Take that!

Capitano says Yenni is an untried novice who has spent his entire life on the public payroll and took the revered name of Yenni only to enhance his candidacy.

Capitano himself has spent 16 years on the public payroll. He claims, however, to be a successful businessman who has worked in the rough and tumble workaday world. The reality of all this is he is asking the voters to put into the mayor's office a man who has shown an inability to handle his own financial affairs.

Columnist Drew Broach says the choices facing Kenner voters is "a fibber vs. a deadbeat."

If we add Congemi back into the mix--and this week he's decided with Capitano and Yenni cancelling each other out, he stands a good chance of getting elected--then it becomes a choice between a fibber, a deadbeat, and a sick man.

If you are the pastor search committee and find that all your candidates are unqualified, you toss out the whole bunch and start over. But what do you do when you are the voter and all the candidates are unqualified?

Louisiana faced that dilemma in 1992 when Edwin Edwards and David Duke met in a runoff for governor. Duke was a former KKK leader and Edwards a former governor notorious for his swagger, his live-in girlfriend, and his crooked cronies.

The bumper stickers that year read: "Vote for the crook," referring to Edwards.

That's how Edwin Edwards came to be elected. Before long, he was taking money under the table for awarding contracts for gambling casinos. Now, past 80 years old, he is on the last leg of a large prison sentence for racketeering.

"None of the above" seems to be a good choice for mayor in Kenner this year.

But then what would we do for a government? Answer: do without. We've tried the other ways; what would be wrong with giving this a try for a while?

Good. Glad to hear it.

As I got it, a group in the church doesn't care for your leadership. They find fault with your sermons. They probably don't like the color of your tie (or worse, the fact that you don't wear one).

What makes their opposition dire is that they are the leaders of the church. Not a good thing.

Unity is always better than division.

You came close to resigning, I was told. You probably felt, "If I don't have the support of these elected leaders of the church, then I'll not be able to do anything here."

You actually wrote out a resignation, perhaps to see what it would feel like.

It felt wrong. You knew you were displeasing the wrong One, the Father who sent you there in the first place.

So, you chose to hang in there and try to give leadership to a church that is not sure it wants any.

Welcome to the ministry.

Scripture says, "It is good for a young man to bear the burden in his youth" (Lamentations 3:27). Whatever else that means, I suggest it is saying, "You might as well learn early on what you've gotten yourself into."

You have chosen to "hang in there with Jesus."

In some respects--not in major, literal ways, but somewhat--it feels like a cross where you are suspended.

Hang in there.

Now, young pastor, the situation you find yourself in can do one of two things to your ministry (actually, it's HIS ministry; He has just called you to work in His field for a short time):

It can destroy you and end any further usefulness you have to the Kingdom.

It can be the best thing that ever happened to your ministry.

It depends on what you do with this opposition and harassment.

First, take those people who do not like your style, who don't care for your preaching, and who wish you would do them a favor and leave--if you let them, they will rob you of your joy, steal any pleasure you have in serving the Lord, and undermine any future you have in this work.

If you are normal--and I'm betting you are--you were already wondering if you could cut it. Preaching is hard work, coming up with something good to preach is tough, and then doing it before people who don't appreciate it makes it doubly difficult. So, you begin to have thoughts like, "Maybe they're right. Maybe I should have gone into some other work. I'm not cut out for this."

Cut it out.

Don't do it. That's enemy talk. He loves to discourage a good field-hand for Jesus. And no wonder. If he can stop you from working and send you to the bunkhouse, he has won a rare victory over the Lord.

You ask, "But if I can't lead this little congregation, how in the world can I expect to pastor a larger church?"

Answer: one has nothing to do with the other.

There are plenty of small congregations no pastor on earth can lead successfully.

Pastor, I can take you to ministers who were run off from their first church, but went on to a second one and did outstanding work.

I'll be greatly disappointed if I get word you are hanging your head in the pulpit, muting the message, and tempering the call for men and women to obey the Lord.

If you let the fear of these people and the hunger for their approval drive what you do in the Lord's work, you'll soon be out of work and it will be a good thing.

God doesn't want His preachers to cringe in the face of opposition or discouragement. Jesus told the first disciples, "I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves" (Matthew 10:16). What could be clearer than that?

Opposition is not only par for the course, young pastor. It is the course.

God uses it in your life. The abrasion will scrub away the barnacles picked up from too much time immersed in this world's ways. "It is good that I was afflicted," the psalmist said. "That I might learn thy ways" (Ps. 119:71).

Stand up straight, look them in the eye, smile the smile of the saved and the knowing, and speak out the word Christ has given you as though you were had just been voted most-effective-preacher-of-the-year by the Heavenly Panel itself!

We said one of two things could happen to your ministry as a result of the narrow ridge you are now walking: you can grow discouraged and quit. Or, it can be the best thing that ever happened to you.

Those critics are doing you a big favor, whether they mean to or not. (Let's not automatically attribute satanic motives to them; most of them doubtless mean well, but don't have a clue how they are to relate to the shepherd the Lord sends their way.)

I can think of five lessons you are learning at the hands of these critics:

1) The pastor must not get his affirmation from the people in the pew. Jesus said, "I do always do the things that please the Father" (John 8:29). That's the plan.

2) The pastor must look unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of His faith. The best prayer you will ever pray is also the simplest: "Father, what will you have me to do?"

3) The pastor will be a man of deep, intense prayer or he won't make it. Since prayer is need-driven and faith-powered, your love for the Lord and your concern for the opposition must drive you to your knees to seek the Lord's will, His presence, His victory. If it doesn't, get your resignation ready. "He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they should pray and not to faint" (Luke 18:1). Pray or lose heart and quit; those are every pastor's choices.

4) When all is said and done, the only accolades you long to hear are those from the Master: "Well done, good and faithful servant...."

5) Congregations must be taught about the care and support of their preachers. In many respects, this is the most difficult job on earth. We must never go into this work expecting to be universally loved and appreciated--worst of all, that should never be what led us into the ministry in the first place!--but one would think that the people of the Lord would love their pastors and pray for them and encourage them.

They have to be taught. And some have been taught otherwise.

Young pastor, I do not know everything about the Lord's will or His churches. But I have observed a few things over many years in the ministry.

1) You will not stay at this church the rest of your ministry. God has an ending date for your work there. So, knowing it's for a short time, give Him your all and your best.

2) The next church will be different. A friend of mine went to a new church and wrote a letter back to his former congregation: "We have the same people here; they just have different names." There's something to that, that all churches are alike in many ways. But they are also vastly different. Each congregation is like your children--each one resembling the other, but complete individuals with their own personalities.

3) The lessons learned in this church will make you a better pastor and stronger preacher for the next.

4) You will have some great joys and some hard times in every church you ever pastor. It goes with the territory.

John F. Kennedy used to say the presidency would be a great job if it weren't for the Russians.

Lyndon Johnson, who followed him, would probably have said the same if it had not been for the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon would have said the problem was the same war. For Gerald Ford, it was the economy. For Jimmy Carter, it was "the malaise" in the country. For Ronald Reagan, it was the Russians and the economy. For George Bush, it was Saddam Hussein. For Bill Clinton, it was "the economy, stupid." (That was a famous line erected in their campaign headquarters to remind them to stay on course with their message.) For George Bush Junior it was terrorism. And today, for Barack Obama, it's the Middle East, it's health care, it's the economy.

It's always something.

It'll be that way with every church you serve. Some will be more joys than headaches, but the spiritual migraines are part of the picture.

After all, if pastoring people, leading churches, and preaching sermons was easy, the Lord would not have to "call" people to do it. He would erect a divine employment agency in a strip shopping mall and have to turn applicants away.

It helps me to remember the way the Lord called young Jeremiah into this work.

First, He said, "I have appointed you a prophet to the nations."

He explained that Jeremiah was to preach to "the kings of Judah, to the princes, to its priests and to the people of the land."

"Everywhere I send you, you will go, and all that I command you, you shall speak."

Well, that doesn't sound too bad, does it? You get to be a pastor to prominent people, be seen on television by the masses. This could be all right.

But wait. The Lord wasn't through.

Secondly, He said, "I'm sending judgment on this nation. These people have forsaken me and are worshiping gods they have made with their own hands. And I've had it up to here."

Uh oh. This sounds bad.

It was. "They will fight against you."

Thirdly, God has a command: "Do not be afraid of them."

Easy for you to say, Lord.

God gave Jeremiah two powerful incentives not to fear his critics: "I will be with you to deliver you" and "if you get stage fright, I will humiliate you before these people." A promise and a warning.

Fourthly, He gives one more promise. "Now behold, I have made you today as a fortified city, and as a pillar of iron, and as walls of bronze against the whole land."

Do you know what happens when a rotten tomato is thrown at a bronze wall? Nothing. Because nothing will stick to a bronze wall.

They will fight you, God says, "but they will not overcome you, for I am with you to deliver you." (All of this is the first chapter of Jeremiah.)

That's what you have gotten yourself into, young pastor. You are following in a noble tradition.

Lose the perfectionism. Lose the fantasy of being acclaimed the most popular man in town. And, more than anything else, lose the fear of rejection from people who don't have a clue that they will some day stand before the Lord and give account for their treatment of His minister.

"Let no man despise thy youth," Paul wrote to his young pastor friend, Timothy (I Timothy 4:12).

Later, Paul would add, "For God has not given us the spirit of timidity, but of power and love and a sound mind" (II Timothy 1:7).

And again, "You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus" (II Timothy 2:1).

Who decides who steps to the microphone to receive an award?

When a movie's name is called as the winner of "best picture" or some other category in which a number of people have collaborated, who decides which member of that crowd stands, walks to the front, accepts the kiss from Penelope Cruz, and addresses the billion people who are tuned in?

Do they work this out in advance? Is it spontaneous? Do people get their feelings hurt when the wrong person steps up and takes credit?

Michael Curtiz directed "Casablanca," the incredible movie (my favorite) which took home several Oscars from the 1944 prom. He was named best director and the movie best picture of the year.

The other night, a Turner Classic Movie program on the three Warner Brothers was played. It's a new bio done by the granddaughter of one of the three--Albert, Harry, and Jack. Cass Warner makes no bones about it, that Jack was the rascal in the bunch. He talked the other two into selling the studio to a Boston firm, then the next day repurchased it so it would belong exclusively to himself. The rest of the family never forgave and never forgot.

An executive who worked on "Casablanca"--I failed to notice his name--told what happened when they announced the best picture award. "I was rising to my feet when I noticed Jack Warner already on his way to the front. He accepted the Oscar like he had had anything to do with this movie. It was my movie. I'm the one who made 'Casablanca' happen!"

A generation later, he still had not forgotten the offense or forgiven Jack Warner.

The line often attributed to Ronald Reagan goes like this: "There is no limit to what can be accomplished if you don't care who gets the credit." (It is also attributed to Walt Disney and others.)

That sounds great. And it's almost true. But not entirely. It matters a great deal who gets the credit.

Watch the owner of the company promote your colleague for the work you did. It hurts to the core of your soul.

Give public praise to the wrong person for a job well done and you will find out in a heartbeat that who gets the credit matters a great deal.

Few things demoralize a team like the wrong person getting an award for the work they did.

"Give honor to whom honor is due" (Romans 13:7).

For those of us who merely watch movies, the credits at the conclusion of a picture seem endless and are meaningless. But to those who make the films, the credits are their lifeline. They count on their names being seen by executives planning future movies. "Let's get the guy who did the makeup on that movie." Or the costumes or lighting or editing or sound.

Credit matters.

It matters who gets the credit if the leader singles out one or two when many people were equally responsible for the job.

It matters who gets the credit if the leader names some members of the team and forgets others. (Pastors are notorious for this. The minister suddenly decides to express appreciation to his staff and begins naming names. Invariably--it doesn't matter how large the church is, either--he will leave someone out. It must come with the call into the ministry, because every preacher does it! A smart pastor will have the list in front of him when he starts calling names.)

It matters who gets the credit if it was not deserved. The other workers see and notice and care. Something dies within them, something vital to the next project.

It matters who gets the credit if it was given just because the person is a squeaky wheel, and this was done to placate him. What the leader is now doing is rewarding griping. Hereafter, he's sure to get a bigger crop since that is the weed he's fertilizing.

It matters who gets the credit if the project leader acts as though he did it all by himself/herself.

Anyone who thinks "who gets the credit doesn't matter" is not living in the real world.

Lawmakers want their names on legislation so voters will know they were responsible. After all, they'll be running for re-election soon.

Athletes enjoy seeing their names and photos in the newspaper or on television so they stand a chance of playing at the next level. To be even mentioned as a contender for the Heisman Trophy is a football player's dream. Golfers invited to play at Augusta know they have arrived.

Writers have their bylines.

Authors want their names on their books, and the bigger the better.

The rest of us have our blogs.

Managers, pastors, owners and other kinds of bosses tend to run to extremes in the matter of giving credit and showing appreciation.

Some can never get the words out of their mouths: "You did a great job." Their people are starving for a positive word.

And some are so effusive in their constant praise that any honor from them is meaningless; they are guilty of praise-inflation.

We pastors have a perverse streak in us. We teach our people that they are not working for "the praise of men," as Scripture puts it somewhere. Such impure motives robs service of its reward.

And yet, even we preachers love to be singled out for a job well done. Oh, the Sunday plaudits at the sanctuary doors do not turn our heads. But let the local newspaper call attention in an editorial to something we have done well and you would think we had won the Oscar. The nearest university, the military base, the chamber of commerce, some local entity outside your immediate congregation, tosses you accolades for community leadership and you will find out in a heartbeat just how much you value receiving credit. You are thrilled. And well you should be.

If you deserved it, they did well in honoring you.

Now, take that plaque and drop it into a box in the garage. That's where it belongs. (Okay, keep it on your bookcase for a week or two. Enjoy it a few days, then retire it to the garage.)

My brother Ron says, "Flattery is like perfume--it smells good, but if you swallow it, it'll make you sick."

The two most important pieces of counsel I can think of, both for myself and every shepherd of the Lord's flocks, are these:

1) Don't need recognition.

Do not want or expect or labor for appreciation or awards or recognition of any kind. That way, you'll never be disappointed. But then, once in a while, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

2) Instead, give recognition.

Be faithful in appreciating others around you. Paul told church people in his day, "Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching" (I Timothy 5:17).

Clearly, the Lord is not against us receiving honor and appreciation in this life. In fact, Scripture promises that we will receive honor when we stand before Him some day. (See I Peter 1:7, among other places.)

At the same time, ultimately all honor and glory belong to the Lord. The final words of the Lord's prayer remind us that "Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever." There's nothing contradictory about this. When someone honors my child, I'm blessed. I do not see that as stealing praise that should have been mine.

Now, on the other hand, if my child swells with pride on receiving praise, if she hogs all the credit and feels no debt to anyone else, if he becomes boastful, then Dad is not happy with his offspring.

One of the oddest sagas in Scripture concerns the death of King Herod Agrippa the First. God put this man on His hit list when Agrippa beheaded the Apostle James and then arrested Simon Peter. Not long after, Agrippa traveled to the Tyre and Sidon area and spoke to a vast, adoring crowd. Wanting to win Agrippa's support, the people began to chant, "The voice of a god, and not of a man!" Herod swelled with pride, his ego finally receiving the worship he felt he deserved.

No one was prepared for what happened next.

"Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died." (Acts 12)

If the Lord was still doing that today, there would be a massive run on caskets before the week ended.

I'm betting that someone in your life could use some appreciating today. The last thing they need is a little golden statuette to decorate their mantelpiece. Most would prefer a few good words, a few dollars more, or a few days off.

Go ahead. It might spoil them, but that's their problem. Take the chance.

An event occurs in the community that attracts the attention of the world and shocks the members of his church. His people experience a mixture of grief, sadness, amazement, and anger. The event is front-page news for a week.

The thoughtful pastor decides there are moral dimensions in play here and spiritual lessons that need to be addressed.

The pastor decides to preach on that subject next Sunday.

Start praying for him. This is the toughest kind of sermon he will ever preach.

David Crosby did just this last weekend. He went about it so responsibly, approached it so carefully, and pulled it off so successfully, I felt other pastors would be interested in what he did.

Since June 1, 1996, David Crosby has led the historic First Baptist Church of New Orleans. Some eight years ago, he led them in a total relocation from the St. Charles Avenue site to an all new facility located at 5290 Canal Boulevard. Since Katrina (date: August 29, 2005), this church has been on the front lines of the rebuilding and renewal of New Orleans. My judgement is there is no pastor in the city more involved, more knowledgeable, and more caring than David Crosby.

Last Sunday, he titled the message: "The Danziger Bridge Conspiracy: A Confusion of Loyalties." The text was II Samuel 11:14-21,27, the account of David's adultery with Bathsheba and the participation of Joab, his general, in covering it up.

It's important for a pastor to know that David Crosby did not surprise his congregation with this sermon. He told them in advance, asked for their prayers, and involved several in internet (e-mail) discussions on how to approach the subject.

Telling the congregation in advance could also have served as a notice to anyone who chose to be absent that day for whatever reasons. Perhaps the event involved some family member or close friend and the pain was still fresh.

The front of the church bulletin Sunday introduced the sermon with background information:

"The Danziger Bridge is a vertical lift bridge which carries seven vehicular lanes of U.S.Route 90 (Chef Menteur Highway) across the Industrial Canal in New Orleans not far from the Baptist Seminary. When this bridge was completed in 1988, it was the widest lift bridge in the world. The structure itself is intriguing and unique, standing with its four great pillars towering above the highway and canal.

"Police responded to reports of gunshots on the bridge on September 4, 2005, in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Officers shot six civilians. Two of them died.

"Last week the lieutenant in charge of the police officers, Michael Lohman, pled guilty to the charge of conspiring to cover up the true nature of the shootings. Mr. Lohman worked the security detail for First Baptist Church for a number of years and is known to many of our members. The pastor's sermon this morning will be a response to these tragic developments in our city."

A poignant connection with the thrust of his sermon.

The subject at hand (in this blog) is how a pastor addresses an event that has sucked all the air out of the community and left everyone breathless.

1) He prepares well.

That includes praying hard.

The front page of the bulletin gives evidence of the background study David did on the Danziger Bridge. What he did not have to do was tell the congregation about the hurricane; they know this all too well. Had he been preaching this sermon in another city, he would have needed to give a fuller background on Katrina.

We mentioned that David involved church members and several preacher friends in this. Twice I received e-mails from him, outlining his thoughts to that point, asking for input. In all, he spent two weeks on this message. My observation, however, is that the sermon was all David's and was definitely not written by a committee. (Just felt the need to make that point.)

2) He considers the feelings and sensitivities of everyone involved.

This is the reason many pastors shy away from preaching on such issues. It's so easy to offend someone, to misspeak, to leave an impression of guilt or innocence he never intended.

David read a statement from a church member concerning Michael Lohman's kindnesses when he worked security at the church. Apparently, he would take Wednesday night meals with the congregation periodically. They appreciated this man. They wondered how such a fine man could participate in such a criminal coverup.

No attempt was made to excuse what Lohman and the other officers did. Nor was the pastor a judge and jury to convict them. He stayed with the story.

3) He looks for scriptural lessons and biblical stories that parallel this event.

What David found was the way King David's nephew and general, Joab, willingly went along with the conspiracy to keep the adultery from Bathsheba's husband Uriah, then to have him slain in battle (II Samuel 11).

4) He looks for some connection between the event and the points he wished to make. David Crosby found them in the "four lofty posts" of the Danziger Bridge.

The four points of his sermon were represented by those posts. He raised four question:

a) "In a world like ours, who is at risk?"

Answer: we all are. "There is no criminal class. There are only ordinary people like you and me who make bad decisions." The Bible tells us to "watch your heart." It is "desperately corrupt."

b) "What am I at risk for doing?"

We risk letting our arrogance and our pride destroy us. "Youth, the day will come when your closest friend will ask you to do the wrong thing. He'll tell you that it's everywhere, that you're a fool to resist. If you succumb to peer pressure and the urging of your friend, your house will go down in flames."

c) "When am I most vulnerable?"

Uriah was killed in the chaos of battle. "These policemen on the bridge that day were armed to the teeth. Looters were everywhere. Order had broken down. The temperature soared above 100 degrees. There was no proper water, many did not know where their families were. And they were sent to the Danziger Bridge."

"One day it will be you in the pressure cooker. You'll have to make a decision. Get ready--it's coming. One poor choice can undo everything."

"A diamond is a hunk of coal under pressure and heat. This is your opportunity. Like Esther, you have 'come to the kingdom for such a time as this.'"

"The pressure can blur your vision, cause you to panic, make a bad decision."

d) "How do I protect myself?"

"In Psalm 51:4, David confessed his sin. He did not blame anyone or excuse himself. 'Against thee only have I sinned.'"

"Establish today the transcendent loyalty in your life. If it's to your family or friends, you will falter. Only one deserves your full loyalty: Jesus as Savior and Lord."

"We are followers of Jesus first and foremost. Organize all loyalties in your life under this over-arching one."

"In John 8:29, Jesus said, 'I do always do the things that please the Father.' This is personal integrity."

"Train yourself to refer to this loyalty in all decisions. Then some day, you will hear the Savior say, 'You have been faithful over a few things; I will make you ruler over many."

5) He wrote out the sermon.

A few times, when he wanted to express himself just so, David read whole paragraphs of the sermon. At other times, he walked away from the pulpit and spoke directly to the congregation. Even then, however, no one doubted that he was staying fairly close to the printed script, even though his manner was conversational and personal.

My observation is that this is not a pastor who normally carries a printed manuscript into the pulpit. The typical sermon would not require it. This was anything but typical, however.

6) He makes the sermon available.

At the conclusion of the service, Pastor Crosby announced that the printed manuscript of the sermon was available and the recorded message could be found at the church's website, www.fbno.org.

7) He refuses to engage in autopsies on himself and the sermon thereafter.

"What did I do wrong?" "Could I have said it a better way?" "What if someone misinterprets it?" This Monday-morning quarterbacking, this second-guessing oneself, is self-destructive and accomplishes nothing good. Avoid it at all costs.

As with everything else we do, the best sermon any of us can deliver will still have its flaws. We're not into perfection here. We do not have all knowledge. We are imperfect people, sinners all.

Eventually, the pastor simply has to leave it with the Lord and go on to the next message. After all, he'll be preaching again next Sunday.

Next Sunday's sermon should be one of his more typical kinds. The congregation is as exhausted as he is after this "current-event" message. Now, let the pastor give them one that encourages the faithful, exalts the Lord, tells about Jesus, and delights the heavenlies.

I have no doubt such a pastor will pray for no more newsworthy events in his town for a few months. It takes a while for the preacher to recover from such a sermon. He will be drained for at least a full week.

This is the time to take the children to the park. Do a fun thing, to laugh, maybe to visit the old folks home and make some people happy.

And, I'm betting, he will remember to lift the cops in his community to the Lord from time to time. We depend on them so heavily and are so vulnerable when even one of their number gets it wrong.

The downside of that great news is that a new season gets underway this summer and the Saints win will be ancient history. No sooner had Coach Sean Payton got back into the office on Airline Drive when sports reporters started badgering him, wanting to know, "Can you repeat?"

So much for the kind of good news we get in this life. Almost all of it has a dark side, something that takes the shine off it, that would rob it of a lasting joy. And yet, there are bits and pieces of news here and there that are light years beyond the other kind. They are pure joy and have no negatives whatever.

A few days ago, we gave the first 6 of our even dozen items of good news, the kind that never loses its luster and carries no negatives.

I promised to come back and give the last six. These are mine and the result of a lifetime of trying to live the Christian life. You'll think of more to add to it.

7. When the Lord Jesus comes into your life, you become a child of God.

Not just his servant or friend, but his child. Not his admirer or supporter or member. His child. Not just a convert, a number, a scalp to be counted, but the very own born-again child of the living God.

"As many as received him (Jesus), he gave the power (or right or authority) to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name" (John 1:12).

Now, I suspect you are aware that scripture uses many metaphors and similes to tell us all we are in Christ. There are places in the New Testament, for instance, that tell us we are adopted into God's family. And others tell us we are born again. Isn't this contradictory? Not at all. Each brings something special to the picture.

In the new birth (John 3:3), we leave behind our previous existence and begin our spiritual lives as newborn infants. In adoption (Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:5), we enter at whatever real age we happen to be. The Roman custom of adoption sheds light on this. Instead of the way we do (adopting infants), the Romans adopted fully grown adults in order to have an heir.

So, we are children of God. The Apostle John said, "Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called the children of God!" (I John 3:1) Indeed.

This relationship is forever and can never be undone. We refer to this as the doctrine of eternal security. Once the Lord saves you and brings you into the family of God, you are secure in Him forever.

Jesus said, "And I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand." (John 10:28-29)

My wife once asked a godly layman from a United Methodist Church, a denomination which is historically Arminian, meaning that it teaches the possibility of losing one's salvation, what he thought of this doctrine. He said, "I believe salvation is forever and that I am secure in Christ." Margaret said, "How did you learn this?" His answer was revealing. "I've always known it from the moment the Lord saved me. I've never doubted it."

Far from giving us a license to sin, which detractors say results from this, it gives us an incentive to praise the Lord and serve Him without worrying about our own footing.

9. You become a priest.

Historically, a priest had two functions: he stood before God on behalf of other people, and then he faced those people on behalf of God. He was a go-between.

In Jesus Christ, all who are saved are priests. "He has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father, to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever." (Revelation 1:6) Also, see I Peter 2:5,9 and Revelation 20:6.

When I stand before God on behalf of others, I am interceding in prayer. This is a privilege given to every believer. (See I Timothy 2:1-4) Think of that--I can enter the throne room of God and enter a plea on behalf of a president, a governor, a judge, a pastor, a friend, a prisoner, a patient. I do not need their permission and they need never know of what I did. But God knows, He hears, and He answers.

Nothing you and I do is more about faith than interceding for others. In most cases, we will never know how the Lord answered us. When I lift the president of my country to the Father, asking for wisdom and restraint, for helpful counsel and divine guidance to be given him, I will have no way of knowing to what extent my prayer was answered.

If I have little faith, I will soon quit praying. If I am a person of faith in the Lord and His word, I will continue.

Then, when I turn and face my friends on behalf of the Lord, I am bearing witness to Him. I may be preaching or teaching or simply speaking out about the Lord.

Sometimes people ask the person witnessing to them of Jesus, "What right do you have to do this?" The answer is, "I'm a priest and this is what we do."

It's an incredible privilege.

10. From now on, you are part of the world's answer, not another of its problems.

This point naturally follows the last. If I am commissioned to speak to others on behalf of the Lord and invited to address Him on their behalf, I can make an incredible difference in this world. It's a privilege not to be taken lightly.

But alas, Christians have always taken this dual role too lightly, as though the Lord had not invited us to intercede or sent us to bear witness.

Those who pray and then speak to others about Jesus become world-changers.

If I were the devil, I could spend no better time than convincing Christians not to intercede and not to witness. These two activities better than almost any other define God's redeemed children.

11. You are part of a vast family of believers.

I sat on a folding chair in a store-front church in Singapore and worshiped with 30 or 40 followers of Jesus Christ. Even though I did not understand a word of what was being spoken, I felt right at home.

Here in my city of New Orleans, I have done the same with Vietnamese congregations, with Haitians, Chinese, Koreans, and the Hispanic. In every case, I was at home. These were my people. They were indwelt by the same Holy Spirit and were reading the same Bible, even though the language was unfamiliar. We were brothers and sisters.

At this moment, my spiritual brothers and sisters are in Haiti and Chile ministering to the earthquake-devastated needy in the name of Jesus Christ. As always, their first priority is to find the churches and work through God's people who are already there. Back at home, we send offerings and teams of volunteers and prayers their way.

12. God is faithful.

Whatever else it means to declare "God is faithful," it surely means this: He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (see Hebrews 13:8). He is unchanging (see Malachi 3:6). He can be depended on completely.

I have stood at the graveside of my father and wept. I have knelt and touched the cold marble stone and spoke to my dad, then rose to speak to my Heavenly Father. More than once, I have looked upward and said, "Father, I'm counting on you to be true to your word. You said you were going away to prepare a house for us, and that we would dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

I have paused and, through my teary voice, added, "If it turns out this is only a hoax, I'm going to be so angry at you."

The absurdity of that hits me. I say, "Father, you are faithful to your word. You keep your promise. I believe that with all my heart. We are betting our lives on that."

I treasure the last sentence of Psalm 17. "But as for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied with thy likeness when I awaken."

"Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation, or shifting shadow." (James 1:17)

There is no bad side to His good news.

The night Jesus was born, the angel said to the shepherds in the fields outside Bethlehem, "Behold, I bring you good news of great joy, which shall be to all the people. For unto you is born this day...a Savior, who is Christ the Lord." (Luke 2)

There it is: the best news ever. There is a Savior, His name is Jesus, He is here, and He is for everyone.

It doesn't get any better than this.

The TV news people said today a number of economic indicators are really looking good in this country. We're ready for this kind of "springtime" also; the winter of our economic discontent has been devastating to so many.

But, there's a problem with this kind of good news. Know what it is?

After the Spring will come a blisteringly hot summer. And a few months later, winter again.

After a time of economic prosperity, sooner or later, there will come a downturn, a correction of the stock market, or whatever we choose to call it.

It's life.

So, is there good news anywhere with no shadow to it, no dark side, no "other side of the coin"?

You bet there is.

Here are an even dozen pieces of really, really great news, none of which carry harmful side effects. (Note: A second article will give the last half of this; below are the first six news items.)

He does. He really and truly does. And He always will. Nothing you can do will change this.

Why God loves you is a big question. In the Bible, He tells Israel He loves them not because they are better than anyone else, but "because I loved you." Get that? I love you because I love you. (Deuteronomy 7:7-8)

That's a sliver of what we mean when we say that God is love. He's love all the way down, solid love throughout, with no hollow spot, no rottenness, no pit to choke on, no surprises, no mixture of anything. Pure love.

2) God loves you the way you are.

The line on this goes: "God loves you the way you are, but loves you so much He doesn't want to leave you that way."

But don't miss the first part--He loves you just the way you are.

We humans put all kinds of conditions on our affections. I love you IF you will do certain things. I love you BECAUSE you do this or that. And if you DON'T do this, I won't love you any more.

God does not play those manipulative games. His love is eternal and unconditional.

"God demonstrated His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)

3) God has big plans for you.

Bear in mind, we're not talking about a rank stranger invading your space to impose his plans on you. We're not making God out as a holy telemarketer calling to announce that he really likes you and wants to do some weird stuff with your life. That, I grant you, is the image religious people often leave with the rest of the world. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When we speak of "God," we're talking about the One who made you, who knew you before you were born, who knows you better than you know yourself, and who wants only the best for you. We're talking about the One who is known in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The plans He has for you are both earthly and heavenly. On this earth, He wants to cut you free from addictions and bondages that hold you down, destroy your soul, and ruin your life. Jesus put it like this: "The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly." (John 10:10)

After this life, the plan calls for you to live forever in "the Father's house." See John 14:1-6 and the last of Psalm 23.

4) God loves you enough to let you choose.

Even though the plan is in our best interest, he does not force His plan on us, but let's us decide for ourselves. That surely is the ultimate compliment from the Creator of the universe, a privilege given to no other element in creation to our knowledge.

"Choose you this day whom you will serve," was first spoken by an Old Testament leader (Joshua 24:15).

Jesus said, "Behold, I stand at your door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and sup with him and he with me." (Revelation 3:20) Interesting that the Lord sees salvation as a feast (the enemy will tell you it's a fast!) and even more fascinating that He brings all the makings right up to our front door and asks for admission.

You get to choose. You have to choose. He will not force it on you.

5) Say 'yes' to Jesus Christ and a thousand wonderful things (and no bad ones) will happen.

Umm. Okay, maybe I overstated there. There may well be bad reactions from people who do not appreciate that you have taken Jesus Christ into your life. That's why Jesus told the disciples that they "will be hated by all on account of my name" (Matthew 10:22).

And, living in obedience to Jesus means you will be going contrary to the way this world's system is set up in many areas. You need to know this so you'll not be blind-sided by the difficulties.

By "saying yes" we mean to consciously speak to Jesus in prayer and invite Him into your life as your Lord and Savior.

There are no magic words for this. What he looks for is sincerity in the heart of the one praying.

Bear in mind that once He enters your life, He begins to rearrange the furniture. But that is all good, too.

6) The Holy Spirit is the great Re-arranger. That's all right because He is also the Great Designer.

Once in a while my wife and I visit the home of friends whose daughter is an interior decorator. Their home is amazing, impressive to the extreme, in every corner, on every wall. Until then, I'm quite satisfied with our humble abode. But seeing how things could look when redone by someone who knows what he/she is doing, that raises the bar.

The Holy Spirit enters your life when you receive Jesus Christ. And--this is important, so listen up--gradually, He begins to call things to your attention. "This broken-down furniture will need to go if we're going to beautify your home." "This lean-to on the back of your house needs to be torn down since I'm turning this into a castle." "This ugliness is not good; I have some beauty to put in its place."

The process is painful only if you resist.

He's making your life a showplace. A showpiece. "You are chosen...that you may show forth the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light" (I Peter 2:9).

He's making you exhibit A. A demonstration house for the world. Really, He is.

But he does it, not you. So relax and trust Him.

So, how does all this sound so far? Six bits of outstanding news. There's more to come, but please don't sit around waiting for the rest. Get in on what you already know to be available from the Living God. Turn to Him in faith and ask Jesus Christ to come into your life and take over.

You'll soon be writing your own notes, not about 12 pieces of good news, but 12 thousand! (Remember, you heard it here first.)

Unless you belong to a conservative or even fundamental Christian church, you've probably not heard much about the blood of Christ lately. I'm not sure why. I do know that a quick scan of my bookshelves turned up not a single sermon on "the blood."

I heard of one Baptist church where it's actual church policy that no hymn celebrating the blood of Jesus will be used in a service. What they do with all the Scriptural texts on that subject beats me. I'm guessing that some leader has let the mania for political correctness drive his common sense from the room.

Jesus said the new covenant was "in my blood" (I Corinthians 11:25).

The writer of Hebrews said, "Without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" (Heb. 9:22).

The Apostle John wrote, "The blood of Jesus Christ...cleanses us from all sin" (I John 1:7).

"Who are these clothed in white robes, praising the Lamb of Heaven? And where did they come from?" an elder asked. The Apostle John, in the midst of his vision, uttered, "You know who they are." The elder said, "These...have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." (Revelation 7:13-14)

Paul told the elders of Ephesus, "Shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood" (Acts 20:28).

You can preach a lot of sermons and ignore the subject of the blood of Jesus, but you'll have to pull a Thomas Jefferson to do it. (You will recall he took scissors and cut everything out of the New Testament which did not conform to his concept of God. He was more honest than many today who do the same thing, although without the shears.)

To the best of my knowledge no one has done with the doctrine of redemption through the blood of the Lamb what J. Sidlow Baxter did in "The Master Theme of the Bible." The first chapter of that book presents a broad summary of the entire message of Scripture on this subject.

I'm going to lay out the outline he uses, then add a word or two at the end which I hope readers will not skip.

In Genesis 4, the account of Abel and his lamb.
In Genesis 22, Abraham offers a lamb in the place of Isaac.
In Exodus 12, the Passover Lamb is slain on the eve of the Exodus.
In Leviticus, the sin-offering lamb is slain on the altar of sacrifice outside the tabernacle.
In Isaiah 53, the Lord lays the iniquity of us all on the suffering lamb.
In John 1, there is "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."
In Acts 8, the Ethiopian official learns that the lamb of Isaiah 53 is Jesus.
In I Peter 1:18-21, we are redeemed by Jesus' blood, "as of a lamb without spot or blemish."
In Revelation 5, John sees the Lamb of God enthroned in Heaven.
In Revelation 21-22, the Lamb reigns in a New Jerusalem over the new heaven and new earth.

According to Dr. Baxter, the emphasis in each of these passages changes slightly, and we're given a fuller explanation as we go along as to the redeeming work of Jesus, God's Lamb.

1) In Genesis 4, the emphasis is on the necessity of the lamb.
2) In Genesis 22, the emphasis is on the provision of the lamb.
3) In Exodus 12, the emphasis is on the slaying of the lamb.
4) In Leviticus 16, the emphasis is on the character of the lamb.
5) In Isaiah 53, the emphasis is on the Person of the lamb.
6) In John 1, the emphasis is on the identity of the Lamb, Jesus.
7) In Acts 8, the emphasis is on the further identification of the lamb, Jesus the Christ.
8) In I Peter 1, the emphasis is on the actual blood of the lamb.
9) In Revelation 5, the emphasis is the enthronement of the Lamb.
10) In Revelation 21-22, the emphasis is the everlasting kingship of the Lamb.

This, Dr. Baxter says, is a clear example of the progression of revelation. That is, the Lord was revealing additional aspects of the Savior's atoning work as time passed, His people grew, and Scripture was being written.

Theologians have wrestled with the meaning of the work of Jesus on the cross for all these twenty centuries, trying to get a handle on what He was doing, what He accomplished and how best to put it into words.

Many of our readers will find Dr. Baxter's summation fascinating.

1) For Abel, the lamb was a propitiation. FOR SIN.
2) For Abraham, the lamb was a substitution. FOR ONE PERSON.
3) In Exodus, the lamb is protection. FOR ONE FAMILY.
4) In Leviticus, the emphasis is on absolution. FOR ONE NATION.
5) In Isaiah, the emphasis is expiation. FOR ALL THE ELECT.
6) In John 1, the emphasis is removal of sin. FOR THE WORLD.
7) In Acts 8, the emphasis is salvation. FOR WHOSOEVER.
8) In I Peter, the emphasis is redemption. FOR ALL HISTORY.
9) In Revelation 5, the emphasis is government. FOR THE UNIVERSE.
10) In Revelation 21-22, the emphasis is His eternal glory. FOR ALL ETERNITY.

(For brevity, we've combined two expositions from Baxter. In one listing of the ten references he laid out the scope of Jesus' shed blood, which I've included at the far right in all caps.)

I first heard Dr. Baxter present this at a statewide conference in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in the mid-1970s. He was up in years then. His charm, his heavy British accent, and his sense of humor captivated the crowd. Somewhere, I still have cassette tapes of that meeting. In my head, I can hear his voice like it was last week.

Some will think our British friend may have overstepped in the conclusions he drew and the inferences he made from some of the references above. If so, my own feeling is "he didn't step very far." It's pretty impressive, if you ask me.

The first time I heard this, I felt the same way I did the first time I heard someone present the typology of the Old Testament tabernacle: "I had no idea." Both were stunning revelations.

Pastors will want to bear in mind that in preaching a sermon that included all of the above, Dr. Baxter was addressing an audience made up of preachers. I seriously doubt he would have gotten the same appreciative response in a typical Sunday morning service somewhere. This is probably not something a pastor should attempt to cover in a single sermon with a typical church crowd.

This is more suitable for a sit-down Bible study time with those who enjoy in-depth digging into Scriptures. The average guy in the pew will have scant knowledge of Abraham's lamb (actually called a "ram" in most Bibles), the scapegoat of Leviticus or the incredible insights of Isaiah 53. A pastor will not want to dump this entire load on the congregation at one time.

We will conclude with Dr. Baxter's final paragraph of the chapter in which he presented what he calls "the master theme" of Scripture, followed by a little story of my own.

"See that stately oak tree, proudly reigning on yonder hillside? How did it become the noble, mighty giant that it now is? Was it by bowing and cringing to hostile winds or sudden tempests? No, it was by holding on and standing firm. The more the storms tore in among the branches and ripped off the leaves, the deeper went the roots, and the stronger grew the trunk, and the sturdier became the branches. Even so, this is no time for us to be apologizing for our evangelical message. Like Goliath's sword, there is 'none like it!' I believe that if we hold our ground, and refuse to pander to the whims of a sick society, and preach more prayerfully than ever redemption through the Lamb, we shall yet win new triumphs."

Some years back, a few days before the First Baptist Church of Charlotte, NC, was to dedicate its new sanctuary, I arrived in the parking lot behind the church. Workers were putting the finishing touches on the grounds.

"Hey, Fred, come here and look at this." Our administrator, Fred Brockway, loped over to see what the pastor had on his mind.

I pointed out the red stain on the new sidewalk. "Look at that. Can we get that off? It looks terrible."

Fred said, "What happened there, pastor, is that the workers tracked that red clay onto the sidewalk and then poured the sealer over it without washing it down."

"It's there to stay?" I said.

"The only way you could get that red stain out, pastor, would be to remove the sealer, pressure wash it, then re-apply the sealer. It's a rather involved process."

"And one we don't have time for," I asked.

"Afraid not," Fred said.

I wouldn't be surprised if that red stain is still decorating that sidewalk after these two decades.

Reminds us of the stain on the souls of many of us. Cleansing a soul is serious business.

"What can wash away my sin?" the song asks. You know the answer.

Interestingly, when we use bracelets and beads to present the gospel, sin is almost always represented by the color black. Scripture, however, has another color in mind.

"Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." (Isaiah 1:18)

I heard him tell this story 15 years ago and have repeated my version of it ever since. Last night I found the notes taken from that message and felt that readers would enjoy it.

A traveler was making his way by foot through a strange and foreboding countryside. When a violent storm arose, he was forced to seek shelter. Coming upon a monastery, he was pleased to see a light shining through a window. He knocked. A monk came to the door.

"Come in, come in, stranger," said the monk.

The brothers fed him and let him warm by their hearth.

"Would thou care to spend the night under our roof rather than return to the storm?" said the abbott, the head monk.

"I would indeed and I'm grateful," said the traveler. "But in order to do so, I will need a few items. Could you please provide for me a rubber suit, a pound of butter, and a bass saxophone? Also, if you have it, two duck eggs and three turnips fresh from the garden."

That night, all kinds of noises came from the visitor's room. No one slept in the monastery that night.

The bad weather continued. The next night, the abbott invited the stranger to remain another night. "I thank you," he said, "And, if you would be so kind, I will once again require the use of the rubber suit and bass saxophone, and another pound of butter, two more duck eggs and three turnips."

That night was a repetition of the first, the strange noises filling the air, driving sleep from everyone. In all, as the storm lingered, the stranger stayed three nights. By now, the monks were beside themselves with fatigue.

On the morning of the fourth day, the sun came out.

As the visitor was leaving, the abbott walked out with him. "May I ask you what that was all about, this business of the rubber suit and the bass saxophone, the butter and eggs and turnips? All that noise coming from your room? We are beside ourselves with curiosity."

The stranger said, "It's an old family secret. I can tell you if you agree never to tell another living soul."

The abbott agreed never to breathe a word of it to anyone. So he told him.

That's why we still don't know what that was all about.

(We will pause a moment for you to groan. And maybe laugh a little.)

Ah, mysteries.

We don't like them.

And yet, Calvin Miller says, mysteries are all around us and we even need them, particularly in our faith. God has planted various mysteries in the faith which you and I hold dear. There is the mystery of the Trinity, the mystery of the incarnation (Jesus' being all man and all God), and the mystery of the Lord's supper. You'll think of others.

Here are a few mysteries mentioned in Scripture....

--The mystery of the Kingdom. (Matthew 13:ll; Mark 4:11; Luke 8:10) To outsiders, the Christian faith may make little sense. However, the insider--the believer who is indwelt by the Spirit and instructed by the Word--understands the mysteries of the Kingdom, Jesus says.

--The mystery of the resurrection and what happens afterward. (I Corinthians 15:51) Now, to us this mystery has not been fully explained. Only the broad outlines are visible; the rest remains in the realm of mystery.

----The mystery of the gospel. (Ephesians 6:19; Colossians 1:26,27 and 4:3) Paul asks for prayer as he "makes known" the mystery of the gospel. So, he's clearing up this mystery for his audience. Readers will recall that first century citizens of the Roman world often thought Christ-followers literally ate His body and drank His blood--were cannibals. So, there was much to clear up.

In the Colossian references, the mystery which has been "hidden from past generations," is now revealed: Christ in you. That generally refers to the Lord indwelling everyone who puts faith in Him, but it specifically means Jesus Christ indwelling Gentile believers, the last thing any Jew would have expected (in spite of all the Old Testament teachings given to prepare them for this).

--The mystery of iniquity. (II Thessalonians 2:7) This refers to the devil and how he works. We are not ignorant of his devices, Paul tells us (II Corinthians 2:11), but there is still so much we do not understand. As far as I can see, the Scriptures nowhere aims to make any of us experts on satanology. Rather, we are to focus on Jesus Christ.

--The mystery of faith. (I Timothy 3:9) Bear in mind that a mystery in Scripture is anything that cannot be known except by divine revelation. Faith is that way. "It is the gift of God," Ephesians 2:8-9.

--The mystery of godliness. (I Timothy 3:16) This involves the life and work of Jesus, Paul says.

Couple of thoughts here....

1) We do not like mysteries. We prefer everything neat and orderly and understandable. Even when Scripture forbids it, we still kick our OCD into gear and try to arrange everything for the Lord.

I will not forget my first encounter with Jehovah's Witnesses who sat across the conference table from me at my church. They scoffed at any notion from me that a particular doctrine or the details of one were "a mystery." They had it all figured out and had neatly scissored out anything not conforming to their doctrine.

We must beware of that temptation.

2) The other temptation we must watch out for is to overly obsess with speculation on certain mysteries. The details of Revelation--the seals, the books, the signs, the dates--have drained off the energies of untold numbers of Christian workers who could have spent their time to far better use.

Perhaps the most popular temptation is to speculate on the Antichrist, who he is and what he is going to do.

Professor Michael W. Holmes, in his NIV commentary on Thessalonians, identifies a long list of candidates for the antichrist named by Christians through the centuries. The various Roman emperors were first, followed by the Vandal invaders who sacked Rome, Mohammed, various popes, the papacy itself, Emperor Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX (who each identified the other as the antichrist), Martin Luther, King George II of England, Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon III, each side in the American Civil War, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, the League of Nations, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, the United Nations, Khrushchev, the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev (the birthmark on his forehead was the mark of the beast!), King Juan Carlos, Pope John Paul II, Anwar Sadat, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, the New Age Movement, theologian Matthew Fox, Henry Kissinger, and both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, and so forth.

Someone told me this week he'd heard England's Prince Charles identified as the antichrist. Thirty years ago, I recall Christians naming a teenage Indian guru as the one.

One wonders why God's people have not figured out that a) we're never going to know, b) if God wanted us to know, He would have told us, and c) when we engage in this kind of speculation and name-calling, we hold ourselves up to ridicule before the world. Shucks, we even hold ourselves up to ridicule to one another by doing this.

There. Thank you for getting us off on this, friend Calvin Miller.

To my knowledge, no one has suggested Calvin as a candidate for the antichrist. But you never know; there's still time.

Incidentally--a word to pastors here--I would never ever tell that story of Calvin's in a sermon. Tell it and no one will hear a thing you say for the next 10 minutes. They'll be sitting there in frustration, trying to figure it out, and a tad angry at you for passing along a story that has no clear solution.

But it's a fun story, isn't it. (When I've told it over the years, usually to pastors in informal settings, I drop in all kinds of paraphernalia that the stranger required before he could spend the night with the monks. It really doesn't matter what he took into that room with him since we never learn what he was doing in there in the first place.)

26:41 minutes -- 11 Megabytes -- MP3
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This week, a friend in another state emailed that the membership of her church is being plundered and savaged by adulterous affairs. She is asking for prayer.

Yesterday, healthy "ministry marriages" was the subject of our "Interpersonal Relationship Skills" class at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Toward the end of the session, we talked about how the enemy sabotages the Lord's people through the lies of adultery.

I recommend J. Allan Petersen's 1984 book "The Myth of the Greener Grass." It should be bought and devoured and kept by every married person, particularly those in the Lord's work.

Here is my own personal list of the devil's lies concerning adultery. See if any have been dangled before your eyes.

This line is heard by every marriage counselor, usually spoken by a truly nice person who is being torn apart by an affair, and trying to justify the damage they are inflicting on their marriage.

Say this to yourself real slowly: "Marriage is not about love; marriage is about commitment." Carve it in stone. Erect it over your doorway. Inscribe it on your heart. Teach it to your children.

2) "This affair is a harmless bit of fun."

Men are more likely to buy into this. The adage goes that "women will use sex to get love; men will use love to get sex."

For reasons I don't pretend to understand, men tend to separate sex and love more than women do. For women, they go together "like a horse and carriage," as the song puts it.

The quickest way to dispel the myth that this is all harmless is to answer one question: Would your husband/wife agree?

As a longtime pastor, I have seen the damage adultery has wrought on ministries and marriages. It drops a bomb into the trust and the very soul of the faithful mate. I can see them as they sat in my office, broken-hearted, wondering why he did this, why he was willing to destroy everything for this dalliance. I had no answers beyond Romans 3:23.

One wife sat across from my desk, wringing her hands endlessly, as she cried out what she had learned about her husband's unfaithfulness. I had always heard about people "wringing their hands," but until that moment had never actually seen it. The image has been permanently inscribed on my mind.

Had that unfaithful husband seen the pain he was going to inflict on this woman who had given her life to him in marriage, he would never have done what he did.

That's why it's a lie, that this is all harmless. It's as harmless as swallowing strychnine, as innocent as force-feeding rat poison to your children, as benign as Timothy McVey's parking that U-haul truck filled with ammonia nitrate in front of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. It's deadly business.

"My punishment is greater than I can bear." Those words from Cain (Genesis 4:13) after slaying his brother have been echoed in every generation since, as those who disobey God's laws to get their own pleasure keep finding out. Too late we discover it was not harmless at all. On top of all the pain we caused, we threw our own hearts and souls into a cauldron of misery and torment.

3) "I deserve this."

"I've worked hard and long. My spouse doesn't appreciate me. This is going to meet a real need in my life. It's for my own good."

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Tiger Woods now admits that this was the lie he bought into as he engaged in serial adulteries. He was different from lesser mortals. The only difference, he discovered, was that he could play golf better and had more money. But when it came to the expectations of his wife and the relationship with his children, he was no different from the guy across the street who teaches math at the local college.

4) "The rules that apply to other people do not pertain to me."

A variation of Myth #3 ("I am different") is what I call the "rich person rule." It also goes under the name of "the celebrity principle." As he confessed the sinful behavior that brought down the PTL empire, Jim Bakker said, "Somehow, we just felt that the rules did not apply to us."

They do. Whether you are the box office heart-throb of Hollywood or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or the pastor of the biggest church on the East Coast, you too are human. Step off a curb into traffic and you will die, overeat and skip the exercise and you will get fat and die early, cheat on your spouse and he/she will be devastated and you will find your marriage in big trouble.

The rules that govern all our lives make no exceptions.

5) "I can do this and walk away from it unharmed and go right on with my life as before."

The Apostle Paul says that when a man "goes into a harlot," he becomes one with her. (Can't find the reference at the moment, but when I do, I'll insert it here.) Whatever else that means, it surely implies there is a spiritual joining of the two people in an affair that neither expected or can account for. Perhaps they thought this would be an innocent bit of fun; they discovered they have entangled themselves in each other's psyche.

Nothing will ever be the same. The gate is open, the fence is down, and all kinds of forces will flow in and out now.

My observation is that the person who participates in a single affair--particularly if he/she is in the ministry--will be surprised to discover opportunities for more such illicit connections on every hand and doing them easier and easier to achieve.

Warning: disaster ahead.

6) "I can have all the great things in my life--the love of my family, the adoration of my children, the ministry God has given me, the respect of my community--and this also. I do not have to give up anything for this."

This one is targeted to ministers more than the others. At least, they seem to buy into its lie more than non-ministry people.

Suppose it didn't happen that way. Suppose the devil said to a minister who is considering a tryst with some sweet young thing who has caught his eye, "All right, pastor. Go ahead and do this, but you need to know what it's going to cost you. It will cost you everything. Your wife will find out, she will be devastated and take the children and leave. The church will learn of it and be horrified. The deacons will fire you and you will be the butt of jokes all over town." No one would ever do it.

That never happens, of course, because it's the very thing the enemy of all that is good and holy does not want you to know.

Instead, the voice saying these very things is the Holy Spirit within you.

I can take you to so many longtime friends who learned this lesson the hard way. They know the reality of the adage that "sin will take you farther than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost you more than you ever wanted to pay."

7) "This will meet a need in my life."

An affair might meet a need for some attention and comfort, I'll grant that. But dishonoring your vows, forsaking your Lord, betraying your spouse, and violating everything you have ever stood for will create a thousand more needs for every one it meets.

Your life has never been as complicated or as messed up as you are about to make it when you cheat.

8) "I deserve to be happy."

This seems to be a "biggie" for women, for reasons I do not understand. Perhaps it's because there is so much unhappiness among married women; I don't know. Ruth Bell Graham wrote that many women make the fatal error of expecting their husbands to be to them what only Jesus Christ can be. It's a sure recipe for misery since no man can meet the deepest needs of his wife's heart. Only Christ can.

The ache inside which she is trying to quieten with another man will not be filled by him or anyone else. It's a spiritual void, meant to be satisfied only by a genuine, living relationship with the Creator who made her. "He satisfies the hungry with good things," said a young woman of her Lord in Luke 1:53.

9) "Being married to that other person would be light years better than my present marriage."

This is probably the biggest myth of all. A man or woman is locked into a boring marriage. The daily routine of cooking meals, going to work, cleaning house, paying bills, taking care of the kids, and running endless errands necessary to live in this world take their toll. Gradually, he/she begins to fantasize about some hunk or beauty they know. Discovering that the other one is interested serves to fuel the imagination.

Psychologists speak of something called "the expulsive power of a new affection." When you fall in love with a new person, the emotional charge blows the old affections out of the water. Compared to the way you feel about Edna Faye, you never did love Mary Sue at all. Marriage to Edna Faye would be heaven on earth.

Too many good people have learned the hard way that after they divorced Mary Sue and married Edna Faye, life was pretty much the same as before. The house still had to be cleaned, the meals cooked, the jobs done, the bills paid, the kids seen to, the inlaws dealt with. Very little had changed. Too late they discovered they had paid too great a price for too small a return.

10) "After what my husband/wife has done to me, this is just evening the score. He/she has this coming."

A leader of the FBI used to say that no one ever committed a crime without first justifying it to himself. I suspect it's the same with adultery. We see something we want and start searching for a justification. Fortunately--or not!--there is one around who specializes in supplying an endless assortment of reasons for Christians to do what they really want to do even if it means disobeying God and destroying everything dear to them.

A woman sat in my office once and used these very words, saying that since her husband had cheated on her, she was thinking of getting back at him the same way. As she fluttered her eyes in my direction, I realize long afterward that I should have probably shown her the door. What I did was simply to say, "Get it out of your mind, lady. That's the worst possible thing you could do." When she saw her fluttering and flirting did not work with me, we were able to talk about what she could do to work on her marriage.

Many years later, leading a revival in another state, hundreds of miles away, I encountered this woman and her husband (the same one, thankfully) in the congregation. They had weathered the storm.

I'd like to leave with two observations, one my own and the other from Dr. J. Allan Petersen.

First: No one ever gets up one morning and says, 'Today, I think I will destroy my marriage, wreck my ministry, devastate my children, and ruin my reputation.' Every adulterous affair I've ever heard of began innocently and respectfully. Two people were doing what normal people do, working in the same office, giving and receiving counsel, serving on the same board, traveling in the same automobile with friends, whatever.

We must train ourselves to recognize the danger signs and deal with them harshly early on, or we are goners.

Dr. Petersen lists the lessons on this subject from the life of King David, from his affair with Bathsheba (II Samuel 11-12):

1. No one, however chosen, blessed and used of God, is immune to an extramarital affair.

2. Anyone, regardless of how many victories he has won, can fall disastrously.

3. The act of infidelity is the result of uncontrolled desires, thoughts, and fantasies.

4. Your body is your servant or it becomes your master.

5. A Christian who falls will excuse, rationalize, and conceal, the same as anyone else.

6. Sin can be enjoyable but it can never be successfully covered.

7. One night of passion can spark years of family pain.

8. Failure is neither fatal nor final.

Nothing safeguards a person's heart against infidelity like keeping the relationship with his God and his spouse alive and healthy.

I point out that this great body of water, which flows a couple of hundred yards below my house, is actually composed of individual drops that fell from the sky in a vast basin extending from Western New York State all the way to Eastern Montana.

In the same way, the hundreds of millions of dollars the churches of our denomination send to the fields of the world each year get their start from a child's piggy bank, a widow's pension and a young couple's tithe.

Yesterday, I had an epiphany, one of those moments when you realize there's far more to this than seemed obvious at first.

I was visiting a church not far from where I live. Although retired from being director of missions for the Baptist churches of metro New Orleans, they're still on my heart and anything I can do to encourage one, I want to do it. Mark Tolbert, seminary professor and recent interim pastor of our church, is completing one year as the interim shepherd of that congregation and I do treasure this man. I wanted to hear him preach.

So, yesterday, I worshiped at Williams Boulevard Baptist Church in Kenner, Louisiana.

They received two offerings. The first, in the middle of the service, went for the budget, that is, the full ministries of their church. The second, at the end, was being sent to our International Mission Board for recovery work in Haiti and Chile, following their devastating earthquakes.

I dropped a few dollars into the second offering and something hit me.

Just as there are numerous locks and dams along the great Mississippi River, obstacles we might say, which the waters have to negotiate before they arrive at the sea, the offerings we place in the plate have a number of hurdles to overcome before they reach their destination.

A lock is a device for allowing ships navigating the river to move higher (if they are going up the river) or lower (if descending the river) at places where the natural features of the river do not allow it. Without these, ships and tows could travel only so far before being forced to turn back.

The rain that falls around Lake Itaca, Minnesota, is said to form the headwaters of the Mississippi River. As it makes its way southward, that stream is joined by rushing torrents from the Ohio, the Missouri, and numerous other rivers and creeks of all sizes. Finally, perhaps a full week after its departure, that water flows past my house on the final 95 mile leg before spreading into the Gulf of Mexico.

Along the way, part of that water is diverted into dams and through locks before flowing onward.

And now to the offering.

Before the offering reaches the missionary in Tanzania or the Christian worker in the Philippines, like the waters of the Mississippi, it has to navigate numerous obstacles.

The first is the heart of the giver.

This may be the greatest obstacle of all (I'm tempted to make a bad pun about it being a "lock."). As the offering plate makes its way down the pew, the worshiper sometimes struggles, trying to come to a decision. He writes a check for a certain amount. In most cases, only God and the church's designated counters and the bookkeeper will know what he actually wrote it.

That church member's faithfulness--his generosity, his love for God, his belief in God's promises, his personal commitment to Jesus Christ--will determine a thousand things. Whether his church is able to meet its obligations this year, whether the staff will get raises, whether the children's home in his state will be able to construct a chapel, whether the college can hold that conference, whether new missionaries can be brought on by the North American and the International Mission Boards--all depend on the faithfulness of the guy in the pew who wrote his check Sunday morning.

Mark Tolbert told the congregation yesterday that all the ills of the Southern Baptist Convention could be resolved if God's people did two things: tithed and witnessed.

The second obstacle that offering will encounter on its way to the ocean, once it has been given in the worship service, is two-fold: the counting committee and the bookkeeper.

The outside observer may wonder why these are seen as possible obstacles. Veteran church members know why: not every counter is honest and not every bookkeeper is responsible. My brother was pastor of a church that discovered one of their longtime members, a trusted leader for decades, was taking home about one-fifth of every Sunday's offering which he helped to count. I personally know of church bookkeepers who are in jail today for embezzlement.

One of our pastors told me he wondered why the associational records showed that his church gave nothing to the local ministries last year. "We have it in the budget," he said. When he checked with the bookkeeper, she said, "I didn't know who to send it to." A few days later, we received a large check from that church.

I've known more than one church treasurer or bookkeeper who made a unilateral decision they would not send money away from the church regardless of what the congregation voted in the budget.

Pastors and laymen alike should double-check from time to time to make sure the instructions of the congregation are being carried out by those assigned to disburse the funds.

The third obstacle--in some ways, this should be the second--is the church's own membership and the budget they have voted. Each year, a church will adopt a plan of spending for the coming year. A portion will go toward the national and international ministries of the denomination, depending on the leadership of the ministers and the will of the people. A church with little faith and great fears will keep an increasingly large proportion for itself.

The fourth obstacle is the state convention. The executive director of a state Baptist convention meets with his staff, then with a finance committee made up of members of the executive board, to present a budget to the annual meeting of the denomination in the fall of that year. In many cases in our denomination, the state offices will retain some 65 percent of all monies sent their way by the churches while forwarding the remaining 35 percent to the national denominational office.

In Louisiana, the state office is in Alexandria. Our executive director is Dr. David Hankins.

You would not want Dr. Hankins' job. I have chaired that finance committee and have seen up close a tiny fraction of the headaches he deals with, trying to decide which agency will be fully funded, which gets a raise and which may have to cut back and even lay off employees. As with the local church, the vision one has for the work may matter little if the funds are unavailable to support it.

The fifth obstacle is the national denominational office, which in the SBC is called the Executive Committee, with headquarters in Nashville. Dr. Morris Chapman has served as its president for two decades or more.

Members of our churches (some are pastors, staffers, etc) are chosen annually in the June SBC meeting to serve as trustees of the various agencies of our denomination, including the Executive Committee. EC members then meet regularly in Nashville, conferring with Dr. Chapman on a myriad of issues that concern our work. And once a year, agency heads such as seminary presidents and mission board presidents appear before the EC to present their budget requests for the next year. Once the EC prepares the budget, it is presented in June to the full meeting of the SBC and adopted or amended (and then adopted).

The way the offerings are allocated in that budget is another obstacle--another lock or dam to negotiate--which this river of financial support encounters on its way to the ocean.

The sixth obstacle is the agency or mission board itself.

In the 1970s I served as a trustee of the International Mission Board. Along with every other entity in our denomination, this board--as with the North American Mission Board--prepares an annual budget to lay out the planned expenditures for the next 12 months. It's a tough assignment, one that makes almost no one happy. If every mission station across the planet got all they were requesting in next year's budget, the budget would be twice its size.

In almost every meeting during my time at the IMB in Richmond, we received staff recommendations for expenditures. "The Board requests that we allocate $100,000 to help a Baptist group in one country construct a headquarters building, a similar sum to begin a seminary in Asia, $2,000 to send a certain missionary to a conference, and $10,000 to pay emergency medical expenses for another employee."

We dealt in big numbers, light years beyond our church budgets. But we knew where the money came from: the child's piggy bank, the widow's pension, and the young couple's tithe.

It's a holy stewardship.

There is a seventh obstacle: the mission station itself.

All missionaries assigned to one country or specific area are formed into a "station." The details on this change from time to time, but basically, these people make the decision themselves on priorities and programs where they serve. They vote on their budget requests to the IMB and work together as a team.

And they have a bookkeeper, too. That may or may not be an eighth obstacle.

The final obstacle is the man or woman who purchases the supplies and spends the money that has streamed across the world to his/her place of service.

If we lived in a perfect world we could say that all these gifts flow unabated from the child, the widow, and the young couple and arrive unhindered and untampered-with on the mission fields of the world. But, as long as Romans 3:23 is still in effect, it's not a perfect world.

So, next Sunday in your church, when the deacon prays before the offering something to the effect that "Lord, help us to use these gifts in a way that brings glory to your name," he's putting his finger on something mighty important. Basically, he is asking, "Lord, help us not to put obstacles in the way of these gifts arriving at those whom you intend to receive them, those who need them most."

One final word of explanation.

We've treated the river as a metaphor for the offerings flowing from our hands into all the world. By no means, however, should this imply that the money retained in my local church to pay the light bill, buy supplies, and fund salaries is less important than that which ends up in Tanzania or the Philippines. The money that stays in Louisiana to care for needy children and educate our youth is holy, Christ-honoring, and necessary. That which pays seminary professors who are developing the next generation of pastors and missionaries and that which funds the church planter in Detroit or Tupelo, this too is critical and important.

As a Christian first and a Southern Baptist second, I determine to be faithful in my stewardship. Many, many years ago, my wife and I made the tough decision to tithe our incomes and more, and we have stayed with this commitment. We see this as basic Christianity.

As a Southern Baptist, I want to stay informed about the ministries and budgets of the various agencies that receive a portion of my tithes and offerings. I want to pray for them as they carry out the extensions of my own stewardship and responsibility.

Let us all determine to be faithful and speed the flow of God's money on its way to its destinations.

After all, lives hang in the balance.

The source is an 1898 book, "The Unexpected Christ," by Louis Albert Banks. (My online used book source--www.alibris.com--had five copies; the cost ranged from $20 to nearly $100.)

The chapter in which the story is located is headed, "Christ Cleansing the Temple of the Soul," based from Luke 19:45-46.

"Mr. Spurgeon said that in his young ministry he received a tremendous spiritual uplift which was felt through all his later life by a strange revelation which came to him in a dream.

"He was sitting in an armchair, wearied with his work. He had fallen asleep in a very self-complacent sort of mood, as his work at the time was unusually successful. As he slept he thought a stranger entered the room, and though his face was benign, he carried suspended about his person measures and chemical agents and implements, which gave him a very strange appearance.

"The stranger came toward him, and extending his hand, said, 'How is your zeal?'

"He took it and placed it in his scales, weighing it carefully. Mr. Spurgeon heard him say, 'One hundred pounds!'

"He could scarcely suppress an audible note of satisfaction; but he caught the visitor's earnest look as he noted down the weight, and he saw at once that the man with the scales had drawn no final conclusion, but was intent on pushing his investigation.

"He broke the mass to atoms, put it into his crucible and put the crucible into the fire. When the mass was thoroughly fused he took it out and set it down to cool. It congealed in cooling and when turned out on the hearth exhibited a series of layers which, at the touch of the hammer, fell apart, and were severely tested and weighed, the stranger making notes as the process went on.

"When he had finished he presented the notes to Mr. Spurgeon, and gave him a look of mingled sorrow and compassion as, without a word except 'May God save you!' he left the room.

"The astonished Spurgeon opened the notes and read as follows:

"'Analysis of the zeal of a candidate for a crown of glory--weight in mass, 100 pounds. Of this, on analysis, there proved to be: Bigotry, 10 parts; personal ambition, 23 parts; love of praise, 19 parts; pride of denomination, 15 parts; pride of talent, 14 parts; love of authority, 12 parts; love to God, 4 parts; love to man, 3 parts. Total, 100.'

"Of all the hundred parts, according to this analysis, only seven parts, comprising love to God and love to man, were pure zeal. Mr. Spurgeon said that he had become troubled at the peculiar manner of the stranger, and especially at his parting look and words; but when he looked at the figures his heart sank as lead within him.

"He made a mental effort to dispute the correctness of the record. But he was suddenly startled into a more honest mood by an audible sigh--almost a groan--from the stranger, who had paused in the hall, and by a sudden darkness falling upon him, by which the record became at once obscured and nearly illegible.

"He fell upon his knees and cried out, 'Lord, save me!' As he knelt there the paper with its terrible analysis became a mirror, and he saw his heart reflected in it. The record was true! He saw it; he felt it; he confessed it; he deplored it; and besought God to save him from himself with many tears, until at length, with a loud and irrepressible cry of anguish, he awoke.

"He had prayed in years gone by to be saved from hell, but his vow to be saved from himself was now immeasurably more fervent and distressful; nor did he rest or pause till the refining fire came down and went through his heart, searching, probing, melting, burning, filling all its chambers with light, and hallowing his whole heart to God.

"He declared ever afterwards that that day was the crisis in his history."

These texts come to mind...

David prayed, "Search me O God and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way." (Ps. 139:23-24)

"You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting." (Daniel 5:27)

"And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory." (I Peter 5:4)

"Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life." (Revelation 2:10)

I told the author (via email) of my appreciation for the book and added, "That year is also special because I made my appearance on March 28, 1940."

After thinking about that a moment, I added, "But don't think me old just because I was born in 1940."

Later, reflecting on that, I wondered why I'd gone to the trouble to say that, seeing as how I do not know that author and don't expect to meet him. Why was that important to me?

I decided it's a personal thing.

None of us want to be pigeon-holed because of demographics or statistics, nor for preconceptions or ignorance. Just because you are a Southerner does not make you a redneck. Living in Mississippi does not mean you are barefooted. All Louisianians do not speak Cajun. All Yankees are not rude.

Here's a short list of assumptions I do not want people making about me. Again, it's just a personal thing. Readers will have your own list.

Do not assume...

1) that I'm humorless just because I'm a preacher.

2) that I'm idle just because I'm retired.

3) that I'm unquestioning just because I'm a Christian.

4) that I'm saintly just because I've been saved since 1951.

5) that I'm intolerant just because I'm evangelistic.

6) that I'm homophobic just because I'm a conservative Christian.

Clearly, this kind of list could go on and on. Don't assume because I'm male that I'm insensitive, because I'm from New Orleans that I'm worldly, because I'm from Alabama that I'm a hillbilly, or because I'm a human being that I'm not an animal lover. Don't assume because I'm a creationist that I'm stupid.

People love to make these generalizations and assumptions based on their preconceptions and ignorance. We call that prejudice. They don't consider your evidence but go immediately to the verdict which they had decided on in advance.

In Jesus' day people made many assumptions about Him.

They assumed because He was man, He could not be God. But He was. (See John 1:14 and 20:28)

They assumed because His disciples were sometimes powerless, that He was, too. He wasn't. (See Mark 9:18)

They assumed because He allowed Himself to be executed on a Roman cross that He was defeated. That was actually when He won His greatest victory. (See John 10:18)

They assumed because no one had ever risen from the grave that He hadn't either. But He did. (See John 20 and I Corinthians 15)

They assumed He was absent just because He went to Heaven and was no longer physically present. He was and He is. (See Matthew 28:18-20 and Hebrews 13:5)

And today, they assume that He is not returning to earth just because He hasn't so far. Wrong assumption. (See Matthew 24:44 and John 14:3)

There are assumptions we can make about Jesus. Here are some that come to mind....

We may assume He will keep His promises. See II Corinthians 1:20.

We may assume He will finish what He has begun in us. That's Philippians 1:6.

We may assume that He has His own reasons for what He does. Psalm 115:3 says this well.

We may assume that even when He seems nowhere in evidence and things are tough for us, He is still present, still watching, and still Lord. Acts 7:56 is a good example of this.

We may assume that whoever turns to Him in simple repentance and faith is welcomed into His care, is forgiven of all sin, and is ushered into the family of God with full rights and privileges thereof. John 6:37 and Romans 10:13 bear this out.

"Thank you, Lord Jesus, for your faithfulness. We praise you for encouraging us to base our eternity on your continued faithfulness. Amen."

"What Billy Graham learned from his contacts with world leaders in all fields...." is the heading.

There are five points:

1) Leadership has its own set of special burdens and pressures.

2) Leadership can be lonely.

3) People in positions of influence are often used by others for their own selfish ends.

4) People in the public eye are often looked upon as role models even though they may not choose it.

5) Many men and women who are leaders in secular fields have given relatively little thought to God.

He noticed, for instance, that rulers in high places have unusual burdens to bear, pressures the average citizen cannot begin to imagine.

Yesterday, a local radio talk show host had one of our congressmen as his guest. After giving a lengthy litany of unsolved problems in this country, everything from jobs to healthcare to the Middle East to Toyota's recall to the inability of congressional leaders to work together, he asked, "So, tell me why we shouldn't kick all of you out and start fresh with another group?"

The politician was gracious--something his host had not been, I felt--but I'd like to have answered the question. In the famous words of Rosanne Rosannadanna, "It's always something." Solve these and there will be a new set of problems.

There might have been a time in the history of the world when rulers had it easy. That time is long past. One has to have a real calling to run for president of this country--or be a complete egotist who does not live in the real world. The problems and pressures are enormous.

Second: the loneliness of leadership is a fact. That's true at every level, but is magnified a thousandfold at the highest.

A friend of mine recently went to his first pastorate after being a staff member of a church for four years. Within weeks, he and his wife were experiencing stress as they had never known it. Even though the town where they live is small, the demands upon his time are enormous. Unlike their life as a staff member, the pastor is on call 24/7. Nothing they had ever done in a church had prepared them for this.

If you will permit an old cliche' here, no one understands the leader except another one. That's why they get together and socialize together, if they do at all. It's why the boss does not socialize with his underlings; they live and operate in different worlds even if they live in the same neighborhood.

Third: People in leadership are sometimes used by others for their own selfish ends.

Here's how that works....

"Pastor, our organization needs to raise a million dollars for the new Blankety-Blank Center. We need a prominent name as chairman, someone everyone knows and respects. Can we count on you?"

Agree to do that and soon you will be accompanying the hired guns from out of town to make cold calls on well-heeled citizens, asking for large donations for this center.

Billy Graham told Ross Perot, "Let's get one thing straight--I'll never ask you for a dime." Perot: "I've never had anybody say that to me. They're all wanting money."

My college president, then retired, called me at the church office. I was impressed. He asked if I knew such-and-such a leader in the city. I did. Could I get him an appointment to see him? I made a phone call and set it up.

And I felt terrible about it. I knew that civic leader with the deep pockets was forever fielding visits from out-of-towners with a cause they just knew he would be interested in investing in or contributing toward.

Four: People in the public eye are looked upon as role models even though they don't ask for that.

I'm certain that's true. My own sphere, however, is the church and my colleagues are pastors. We are expected to be role models and know that it comes with the territory.

Five: Secular leaders often give little thought to God.

No doubt this is correct, too. Billy Graham would be in a position to see that. My opinion is that the public can usually tell when a politician is gratuitously dropping in religious expressions. I always felt this kind of hypocrisy when Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson spoke of God. Later, we learned that each had foul mouths and were users and abusers of people, traits that negate any religious talk emanating from their direction.

Dr. Graham's observations were formed, we can be confident, from his contact with leaders of another generation. The first president he met was Harry Truman, and they got off to a rocky start, according to Graham's own words. After meeting with him in the Oval Office, the Graham team was ambushed by reporters on the front lawn who wanted a chapter and verse account of the meeting. In his naivete, Graham told them. When a photographer wanted a shot of them praying, the team knelt and posed.

When that picture came out and Truman saw it with the accompanying story, he was incensed. As far as he was concerned, they were publicity hounds and had been using the president to further their cause. It was decades before Truman and Graham made up and put this behind them.

Billy Graham certainly had cause to see how people want to use a leader. For that reason, he had a phalanx of associates and assistants around him. He was (and is) such a gracious person, he would accept invitations which his team knew he should turn down.

In 1987, as the First Baptist Church of Charlotte, where I was serving, was preparing to dedicate our new sanctuary in February of the following year, I contacted Dr. Graham to invite him to the occasion. His sister and her family were members, as was Dr. Grady Wilson, the longtime associate evangelist in the BGEA. I was not surprised to learn Dr. Graham would not be able to come--I felt I was imposing by asking. What did surprise me, however, was the letter I received.

It was a full page in Dr. Graham's own handwriting, telling why he would not be able to attend the dedication. I was honored and began making plans for other speakers.

To my surprise, Dr. Grady Wilson said to me, "Don't worry, pastor. He'll come. We'll get him here."

I knew if anyone could pull that off, it would be this friend of over 50 years.

Alas, Dr. Wilson went to Heaven in November of 1987. Dr. Graham came for the funeral, as did all the BGEA team.

Remember the line in the Epistle of James that warns against many becoming teachers because they have the greater accountability? (Jas. 3:1)

It's true of leaders. What they do will influence so many people in great ways and to great extents. It's an awful burden.

Don't volunteer unless you are willing to pay the price and bear the burden.