Seven things worth more than money

According to Proverbs, there are seven things worth more than money:

1. 1. Righteousness.

Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath,
but righteousness delivers from death. Prov 11:4 (NIV)

2. Kindness

A kindhearted woman gains respect,
but ruthless men gain only wealth. Prov 11:16 (NIV)

3. Peacefulness

Better a dry crust with peace and quiet
than a house full of feasting, with strife. Prov 17:1 (NIV)

4. Wisdom

Of what use is money in the hand of a fool,
since he has no desire to get wisdom? Prov 17:16 (NIV)

5. Integrity

A fortune made by a lying tongue
is a fleeting vapor and a deadly snare. Prov 21:6 (NIV)

6. A good marriage

Houses and wealth are inherited from parents,
but a prudent wife is from the LORD. Prov 19:14 (NIV)

7. A good name

A good name is more desirable than great riches;
to be esteemed is better than silver or gold. Prov 22:1 (NIV)

Newsweek's desperate case for gay marriage

On December 6, 2008, Newsweek magazine published a front-page article by Lisa Miller, entitled, "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage." Miller's article has created a firestorm of controversy in the religious community. And no wonder. Miller appears to have had more training from the political community in how to write spin than from Biblical scholarship in how to interpret scripture.

The so-called "case" that Miller builds for gay "marriage" is arrogant, ignorant and desperate.

The arrogant case

Miller arrogantly attacks scripture's clear meaning, referring to the bans on homosexuality in Leviticus as "throwaway lines in a peculiar text" and then has the audacity to say that Paul was "not talking about what we call homosexuality at all" in Romans 1:26-27. For the record, here is the text that she finds so unclear: "For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error." (Romans 1:26-27, ESV) As if this claim is not outrageous enough, Miller even claims that the Bible "neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman." Apparently she has not read Genesis 2:18-24, Proverbs 5:15-20, 1 Timothy 3:2, 12. Miller is so haughty as to pronounce from her throne on high that "no sensible modern person wants marriage-theirs or anyone else's -to look in its particulars anything like what the Bible describes." Which brings us to another major problem with the article: ignorance.

The ignorant case

When Miller says that "no sensible modern person" wants a marriage like one in the Bible, it appears that she missed the Song of Solomon, and the rapturous married love that is celebrated in that wonderful Old Testament book. Actually, her quote is referring in particular to the polygamy of Old Testament heroes like Abraham, David and Solomon. What she fails to notice is that the Bible is brutally honest about its "heroes," showing them with all of their faults. In fact, scriptural narrative reports the problems that resulted from polygamy, including the jealousies of Abraham's wives, David's sexual sin, and how Solomon's wives drew his heart away from the Lord.

Miller refers to Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well in John 4 as a "message of acceptance." Jesus reveals himself to the woman at the well, "no matter that she had five former husbands and a current boyfriend." Again Miller misses the point. Jesus does not praise the woman, but rather points out to her that she is living in an immoral relationship, while at the same time showing her that he cares for her soul, in much the same way that Jesus forgave the woman caught in adultery, but told her "go and sin no more" (John 8:11).

The desperate case

Finally, Miller is so desperate to try to justify homosexual marriage that she makes incredible stretches of logic and ridiculous claims. She repeats the popular claim of gay activists that David and Jonathan had a homosexual relationship, simply because David spoke of their deep love for one another in 2 Samuel 1:26. It is amazing how anybody could read about David's lust for Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11 and think that 2 Samuel 1:26 referred to homosexual love.
In dealing with Paul's condemnation of homosexuality in Romans 1, Miller's article makes the laughable claim that "recently progressive scholars have argued" that Romans 1 was really condemning the promiscuity of emperors Nero and Caligula.
In her final leap of logic, Miller lists the marriages of Moses to the foreigner Zipporah, of Queen Esther to a non-Jew, and of Mary and Joseph as examples of "marriages that defy convention" in the Bible. Desperate to find anything to back up her preconceived ideas, Miller reasons that since these marriages were unconventional, the Bible must therefore justify gay "marriage" as well.

All of this reminds me of something my father, a retired U.S. Army chaplain, told me about Bible interpretation. To illustrate that any two scriptures can be taken out of context and made to appear to say something that they do not really say, Dad gave these two verses: "Judas went and hanged himself…Go ye therefore and do likewise." Lisa Miller's Bible interpretation is just about as dangerous, and Newsweek magazine should be ashamed to print such dribble without even considering another viewpoint for balance.

Missing the love dare?

If you have been reading the "love dare" daily devotionals on this blog and wondered where they went...
Our church finished the 40-day love dare challenge, and since the love dares took up so much space on my blog, I removed them. But if you would like to do the love dare, you can get the book The Love Dare by Stephen & Alex Kendrick, B & H Publishing, 2008. It's available at LifeWay Christian Stores. You can email me for more information at brotherbob@windstream.net.

My wife likes this song

Movie review: "Fireproof"

This past Tuesday my wife and I saw an early pre-release screening of Fireproof, the new movie from Sherwood Baptist Church of Albany, Georgia, the same people who did Facing the Giants and Flywheel. (Can they make a movie that doesn't start with the letter "F"?)
The movie opens September 26 in 800 theaters across the country, but we were given the opportunity to see an early showing for ministers. They handed out tissue at first, and I gave the tissue to my wife and said, "Here, you may need this." She handed a piece back to me and said, "You may need it, too." She was right.
Fireproof is a better film than Facing the Giants for several reasons. For one thing, they spent more money on the movie, which made for better acting (professional actor Kirk Cameron played the fireman), better quality cinematography and more realistic action scenes. They spent $500,000 on this movie, which is a low-budget film by Hollywood standards, but Facing the Giants was done for $100,000.
But more importantly, the storyline of Fireproof was much more believable than Facing the Giants. There were no miracles in the sky, just a gut-wrenching, struggling marriage. The movie pulls no punches in showing how hard it is to work out a marriage. Men and women will relate to the characters, and it will force couples to evaluate how they treat the man or woman in their lives. The movie makes great use of humor, like in the former Sherwood movies, but this time the humor is more sophisticated, particularly the use of the recurring theme of the neighbor who watches the fireman lose his temper.
Fireproof is very clear about presenting the gospel, and does so in a way that is very appealing and reasonable. It shows how Christ is the answer to our struggles with marriage, and does so without preaching to the audience, rather, the movie lets the audience discover this truth alongside of the struggling husband and wife.
I enjoyed Facing the Giants, and while I enjoyed Fireproof, it was much more than that. Fireproof caused me and my wife to talk about our marriage relationship as we drove home. I believe that God will use this movie to strengthen good marriages and save struggling marriages. I would encourage anybody who is married and anybody who is thinking about getting married to go see this movie. When you do, don't thank me for recommending it. Don't even thank Sherwood Baptist Church for making the movie. Thank God, who made marriage.

NOTE: Read the first comment below for information about how you can get tickets for the showing our church has booked on Saturday, September 27.

UPDATE: The movie Fireproof opened on Friday night, September 26, and was the third most popular movie that night, even though it was only in 839 theaters, whereas the 5 movies that were behind Fireproof in popularity were showing on 2,500 screens.

Families Never Fade in a Day

Words of wisdom from Kenny Grant

What a great revival we had this past week with Rev. Kenny Grant.

As promised, I have collected some of the one-liners that Brother Kenny shared with us this week.

Here are a few quotations:

"I want to be brief tonight, but I probably won't be."

"If you can't say 'Amen,' say 'Oh, me.'"

"We're fooling ourselves if we say we worship God and we live like common yard dogs."

"We make a big deal out of building God a house because we don't want Him in our own house."

Talking about men being under Christ's headship before being head of the home: "You gotta be under what you're supposed to be under before you can be over what you're supposed to be over."

"Missing men produce broken boys."

"A wife's job is to complete her husband, not to finish him off."

"The church is like Noah's ark; there might be a stench on the inside but there's a storm on the outside."

"Sin takes you further than you planned on staying and costs you more than you planned on paying."

Regarding the prodigal son and the elder brother: "The one who started out out, ended up in, and the one who started out in ended up out."

"Love isn't a fall. Love is a climb."

"Love isn't blind. Love just knows how to overlook the junk it can see."

"Safe sex is a myth. You can't do an unsafe thing in a safe way."

"The only safe sex is sacred sex. And the only sacred sex is married sex."

"Girls will play at sex because they really want love, and boys will play at love because they really want sex."

"I know we're not perfect people and this isn't a perfect world, but this Bible is a perfect book and we cannot dumb it down."

"Failure doesn't have to be final."

When Love Grows Cold

“What happened to your marriage?” the friend asked.
“I don’t know. We just drifted apart. We don’t love each other anymore. The divorce was final last week.”
That conversation is repeated thousands of times every day in America. The sexual revolution after World War II didn’t bring us happiness, it wrought havoc on the family. From 1960 to 1980, the divorce rate climbed from 10% to 50% before staying at about 50% ever since then. The percentage of single adults went from 6.5% to 20% in that same period, and single adults now number 30% and climbing, as fewer and fewer people are willing to commit themselves to marriage. (Willard Harley, His Needs, Her Needs, p. 9)
What is happening to marriage? What causes love to grow cold and die? Is there anything that can be done to turn it around?

[Read the full posting in the first comment below.]

Finding true love

Three times Solomon’s bride says it: “Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires” (NIV), or “until the appropriate time” (HCSB). (Song of Solomon 2:7; 3:5; 8:4). She is saying, “True love waits until marriage! Don’t arouse sexual love until the proper time.” This is also implied several other times in the song, such as in 2:15 “catch the foxes that ruin the vineyards in bloom” (warning to stop the temptation to ruin the relationship too early) and 4:12 “you are a garden locked up” (referring to her virginity saved for marriage).
The Song of Solomon shows the shallowness of Hollywood’s view of love. Hollywood makes movies that say true love is all about sex. In the current movie, The Holiday, the stars of the movie hop in bed with each other almost immediately after they meet, and then after having sex many times, they discover true love.
I wonder what Solomon’s bride would say if she saw that movie? She would probably jump to her feet in the middle of the film, spill popcorn all over Solomon and shout, “Are you crazy? Don’t light the fire too soon or you’ll get burned!”
I know cohabitation is common in our society today, but it’s also common for Americans to eat too much and get up to their ears in debt. Just because it’s common doesn’t make it good for us.
You see, when you have sex with somebody, you have left part of your body with that person. You think that you can have sex with somebody you’re not married to, and then walk away from it without being hurt? You know what that’s like? Suppose it was 20 degrees outside, and there was a light pole covered in ice. Suppose you went up to that pole, stuck out your tongue, and let it freeze to that pole. Then you tried to rip your tongue loose and walk away. You could get loose, and you could walk away, but there’s no way you can do it without leaving a part of you behind. If you’ll forgive the pun, that’s just a “taste” of what it is like to have sex with somebody outside of marriage.
True love waits until marriage to give itself away.