Monthly Archives: June 2010

Today wasn’t your typical Taco Tuesday.  While my friend Brad Smith and I set out in search of some Mexican food we couldn’t help but notice something was different. There were extra exclamation points on Facebook.  There were lines of people outside the movie theater.  We quickly realized the latest Twilight movie, Eclipse, comes out at midnight and teenage girls all across Orange County are excited.

It seems there is a love triangle between a vampire and a werewolf and plenty of young women would like to find themselves in the middle of it.

When the last Twilight movie came out, I actually went to see it and I did a special sermon at True North.  By doing this I learned two things:

#1 – There is no way in this world I will be going to see this next Twilight movie!

And #2 – God Hates Love Triangles

– Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.

Now I know Twilight is just a movie, but this verse is serious.  God is jealous.  His beloved people are cheating on him.  He says in the verse before that he cannot endure how they assemble to worship and are in sin at the same time!  Their hearts are divided between two loves and God hates it!

The truth is jealousy is an attribute of God all of the time.  We’ve been reading this in Hosea on SOTD.  In the New Testament Jesus says the #1 commandment is to love the Lord with all your heart!  He won’t settle for competing with someone else for our affections.

Let’s make sure that God has our whole heart!  We’ll be talking about this tomorrow at Beach Night and here’s the New Moon sermon from the last Twilight movie if you want to listen to it:

Seek God first, nothing else second!

Ahh… The lazy days of summer are here again.  It’s time for staying up and sleeping in.  It’s time to go to the beach.  It’s time for the favorite pastime of high school students: “Doing nothing.”  It’s time to…waste?

Let’s be honest.  Summer is a beautiful season of free time.  But many students will waste it this year.

Please, don’t let this be you.

– “He who gathers in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who brings shame.”

The principle is clear: Don’t waste your summer!  Do work!   Of course summer is a time for fun, but you can also use this free time to grow in your knowledge of God!  Just because you don’t have to be at school at a certain time in the morning doesn’t mean you should sleep in.  What if you woke up early with a specific purpose each day: To seek God in the Bible.

– I rise before dawn and cry for help; I hope in your words.

Right now you have a chance to do something few Christians today can say they have done: Read through the Minor Prophets.  These twelve Old Testament books are a treasure chest into the character of God and how he thinks about us.  If you dive in deep and seek to study what they say, you will definitely come away with a better understanding of who God is and how he wants you to live.

This isn’t just a study you can do by yourself, but you can share it with others too!  You can leave comments about what you are learning on Scripture of the Day that will encourage all the True Northers who read them.  And then you can benefit by reading what they have to say in their comments.

You will also be able to talk about what you are reading in small groups.  This summer our girls are reading Practical Theology For Women and tonight Christa will be leading a discussion at our home.  Our Teen Ministers are reading Finally Alive by John Piper and will going over it at our Saturday meetings.  And something that everyone can be involved in starts this Wednesday as we have our first Beach Night.   We’ll be reviewing what we have learned from our first Minor Prophet book, Hosea.  This week’s topic: God is Jealous.

If you have never been to one of our Beach Nights at Salt Creek before they are unique.  There are plenty of people at the beach having a barbecue or throwing a Frisbee.  But we are doing something more.  In fact, people often stop to watch us as we sing praise songs to the Lord and listen as I preach from his Word.  We’ve taken the classic symbol of summer, the beach, and elevated it to something more, a place of worship.

You can do the same thing with your summer.  You can make it something more than what people typically think it is.  Don’t just take a break from school, but make the most of your opportunity to study God!  The free time is all there waiting for what you are going to do…

Seize it!

Are you ready to get shocked?

If so, then check out what God tells Hosea in

–

“Go marry a prostitute.”

Yeah.  That got your attention.  These are the actual words in the ESV: “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.”

You might be asking yourself, “What in the world is going on!?”

Let me explain.

God tells Hosea to marry a harlot named Gomer and instructs him to name his kids nice, friendly names like “No Mercy” and “Not My People.”  All of these shocking instructions are meant to serve as a symbol.  In God’s eyes, his people were acting like a spiritual prostitute.  They had forsaken him to serve whatever foreign god they thought was best.  Like a jealous lover, God sends Hosea to call his people back to him.  This is the picture of the book of Hosea. God sends Hosea to the Northern Kingdom (Israel, but Hosea calls it Ephraim many times is this book) to rebuke them for their unfaithfulness and call them to repentance.

Here are a few other notes to think about as we start reading this book.

Sin is spiritual adultery.  When someone forsakes God for sin, it is like a married person committing adultery.  Now make that personal.  When YOU commit sin, it is like YOU committing adultery against God.  Sin is a very big deal.

God will punish sin.  God may be a jealous lover, but he is not an emotional softie.  He hates sin, and he will punish it!  Hopefully, you caught onto this when you read the names of Hosea’s kids.

God has a plan to restore his people.  In

says, “Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.”  God may be punishing his people but he is not done with them forever.  We know that the way God is going to restore his people is through Jesus Christ.

Repent.  That is the answer.  God wants the Israelites to forsake their sin and return to him.  Likewise God wants people today to leave sin behind and turn to him!

So buckle your seatbelts.  Get ready to learn more about God as we see his jealous love.  Get ready for the idols of your own heart to be exposed.  And get ready to repent.

What in the world is a prophet?

Maybe the first things that come into your mind are someone who could tell the future, a guy who had a weird name, and a guy who wore weird clothes.  None of these ideas really capture what being a prophet was all about.

A prophet was a spokesperson for God.  Think of them as preachers who preached sermons that had been written by God.  Because God knows the future, some of these sermons included predictions about events before they happened.  But more than they tell us about the future, the writings of the prophets tell us about God.  We get to see how God really feels about his people.  We get to see what God really thinks about sin.

This summer on SOTD, we will get to know God better by reading through the twelve books known as the Minor Prophets.  These prophets were not under 18 years old, and they certainly were not less important than the Major Prophets.  Their books are just shorter.

You will not understand the Minor Prophets unless you know about the world in which they lived.  They came on the scene during a time known as the “Divided Kingdom.”  After Solomon died, the Israelites split up into two kingdoms, one in the North (called Israel) and one in the South (called Judah).  Eventually, both of these kingdoms rejected God and turned to idolatry.  God uses the prophets to call his people to repent and warns them of coming judgment from big nations to the North of Israel (like Assyria and Babylon).  Sadly, this judgment is exactly what ends up happening.  The Jewish people are taken into “Exile.”  Some Minor Prophets preach before the Exile.  Some come after the Israelites return to the Promised Land.  In fact, some do not even preach to Israel but to other nations (like Jonah to Ninevah.)

Now that the stage is set, buckle your seatbelts for a journey through the Minor Prophets that will have a major impact on your life.  Today I read about a pastor who planned on preaching through these books quickly but ended up taking ten years because they were so powerful.  Do not expect us to spend the next ten years of True North on the Minor Prophets, but do expect to be surprised about how powerful God’s truth is.

See you on Thursday when we start with Hosea!

Good.  What is good?

When I hear this question, my mind starts spinning with all the possibilities.  In-N-Out Burger. Beach Nights.  Playing with my nephew.  In-N-Out Burger.  The World Cup.  You get the picture.

We use the word “good” so often that it begins to lose its meaning.  But have you ever wondered if God has a different definition of good than we do?  Think about this verse:

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (

)

God’s definition of good is even better than ours because he defines it according to his purposes instead of our desires.  Our desires want comfortable circumstances, but God’s purpose is to make Christians more like Christ.

Now we can really understand this great verse!  If you are a Christian, God is working all (yes, ALL) of the circumstances in your life together to make you more like Jesus.  This truth is a wonderful promise!  Even when bad things happen in your life, you can trust that God has a greater purpose in your trials.  If you want to hear more about this good news, check out Pastor Mike’s sermon about it here at the Focal Point website.

Christians should desire nothing more than becoming like Christ.

God promises that he will work everything in their lives for that purpose.

Now THAT is really good.

I love it when my car smells like pizza. I love the sound of ice slushing around in a cooler as I make a turn.  I love walking onto a high school campus as students turn to gawk at the food I am carrying.  Yes, my friends, it’s campus lunch time!

Today I went to my last campus lunch of the year.  As I was driving, I thought about all that God has done since school started back in September.  He has raised up a team of high school students to preach the gospel on their campuses.  He has drawn big crowds of teenagers to hear the Word.  He has saved students and brought them to True North.  And most people don’t even think of lunch as a legitimate period at school!

I was on my way to Trabuco Hills.  Austin Jones was preaching.  Austin has really spread the word at his school, sometimes with crowds of over 200.  But many times these big crowds seemed to come just for the pizza.  On a few occasions they even got out of control.  So today we had a new strategy, to preach to a smaller group that filled up a classroom.  Our goal was to have a crowd Austin could interact with.

As Austin began, the room was packed and rowdy.  We had to shut the door so no one else could come in.  Students were sitting on the floor and standing in the back.  As Austin started talking, people were laughing and rudely interrupting what he was saying.

But Austin persisted.  In fact, he got passionate.  He was telling them why they couldn’t procrastinate on becoming a Christian.   He was telling them how their life is a vapor and they do not know how long it will last (

).  He was telling them how their choice to sin hardens their hearts against God (

).  And he told them that Jesus Christ is going to return at any moment (

) and they didn’t want to be left behind.

Suddenly the room was silent.

Then Austin went off script.  He talked about how going to church doesn’t make you a Christian.  He talked about how being a good person won’t get you to heaven.  He said that until the beginning of this school year when he came to True North he had never repented of his sin and put his faith in Christ.  If he had died he would have gone to hell.  But now it was different.  Now he knew he was going to heaven.   In fact, if someone came into the room and shot him right now he knew 100% that he would be with Jesus.

In the back of the room a student raised his hand:

“How do you know who is going to heaven and who is going to hell?

Another hand:

“Are you saying that all of the other religions are wrong?”

And another hand:

“Won’t God just give us ultimate forgiveness?”

Each question Austin answered with verses from the Bible.  And with each question the students in the room paid more attention to what he was saying.  After 39 minutes I had to tell Austin to close in prayer because the bell was about to ring.  It was like everyone had forgotten we were at lunch at a high school and there was free food for everyone.  For a moment, they were all thinking what was going to happen to them when they died.  Pizza was an afterthought.

Afterwards Austin was talking with a couple of students about coming to True North this weekend.  I pray they come.  In fact, we had lunches at OCHSA, San Clemente, Aliso, San Juan Hills, Capo and Trabuco this week and I am praying we will see students from all of them show up at True North this weekend.  Pastor Ben will be preaching on the future and I pray our True North students will be bold to bring their friends.

Because every high school student in Orange County needs to think about life after this life, and at lunch today there was a classroom full of students who did.

Kind of makes me look forward to next school year.  Well, Revival X first.

When we started reading the Book of Acts on SOTD, I remembered a verse that I had memorized in high school:

– “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

This verse lays out the pattern for how we should approach proclaiming the death, resurrection, and works of Christ today.  And it is exactly what we’ll see the Apostles doing in the Book of Acts.

Here are some thoughts from Pastor Mike about the book from the latest CBC newsletter:

REAL MISSIONS – The Book of Acts is a story about first century Christians who, by today’s popular standards, would be considered brash, judgmental, narrow-minded zealots who were fueled by some sort of spiritual imperialism devoid of any real empathy, care or compassion. That theoretical assessment comes largely from today’s redefinition of “care and compassion”, as well as our monumental misunderstanding of what “biblical missions” is and isn’t.

Today we like to talk about “respectfully reaching out in love” or “extending compassion in the name of Christ”; proclamation has given way to “polite conversation” and “preaching” is considered a bad word. A certain modern “evangelical missionary” sought to help me understand missions when she said, “It doesn’t matter what we say to the people, it’s just being there that counts.”

These sentiments may sound “gracious”, but they have nothing to do with the grace we are called to herald regarding a crucified and resurrected King of kings. The Acts of the Apostles tell us of Christ’s Ambassadors boldly moving from city to city, resolutely calling people to repudiate their gods, their idols and their self-interests, instructing them to repent and turn to Jesus Christ so that they by faith might be graciously exempted from the coming wrath of God.

Understandably this did not “go over well” in many cities. The Acts missionary teams were forcefully ejected from several cities – a response that with today’s mindset would require a “modern care extender” to retool her approach, not to mention her message. But much like firefighters attempting to rouse sleeping tenants in a burning building, true love and real compassion isn’t measured by pleasant inter-ethnic dialogue, amiable “moments” and feel-good photo ops, it is biblically measured by the clarity and urgency with which we proclaim our message of eternal life and death.

Join us today on Scripture of the Day to learn from the Apostles how to proclaim the gospel with urgency and clarity!  And if you would like to receive more words from Pastor Mike via email each week, subscribe to the Compass Bible Church newsletter.