Wayne Grudem, in Systematic Theology, has some words on “proofs” for the existence of God. These same ideas are equally applicable to the whole field of apologetics, in my opinion…

The value of these proofs, then, lies chiefly in overcoming some of the intellectual objections of unbelievers. They cannot bring unbelievers to saving faith, for that comes about through belief in the testimony of Scripture. But they can help overcome objections from unbelievers, and, for believers, they can provide further intellectual evidence for something they have already been persuaded of from their own inner sense of God and from the testimony of Scripture.

- Systematic Theology, Wayne Grudem.

In other words, apologetics cannot change unbelievers’ minds, it can only defend the position believers already know to be true. This fits with the Scriptural basis for the study of apologetics as a defense, not an evangelistic argument:

1 Peter 3:15

15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, (ESV)

It also fits what Scripture tells us about the unbeliever’s ability to understand spiritual truth without the presence of the Holy Spirit:

1 Corinthians 2:14

14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. (ESV)

How many times do we find ourselves wondering why unbelievers don’t believe? Wonder no more – they do not and cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God.

John 12:37-41

37 Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, 38 so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:

“Lord, who has believed what he heard from us,
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”

39 Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said,

40 “He has blinded their eyes
and hardened their heart,
lest they see with their eyes,
and understand with their heart, and turn,
and I would heal them.”

41 Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. (ESV)

Apprising Ministries has a post describing Doug Pagitt’s view of preaching. Among other things, Pagitt describes preaching and says:

…you stand up and give a speech that was created in isolation, is meant to be offered to the most broad cross-section of people possible and delivered from your sole perspective, it seems to me that you are giving a speech.

Pagitt then points out that he is unable “to separate that type of preaching from making a speech,” except by saying that somehow, preaching is worse than speech-making.

Here’s the only problem…

What he has described is not preaching.

1. A sermon is not “created in isolation.”
A sermon is created by a minister of the Word, but he draws on the power of the Holy Spirit. (Not to mention commentaries written by hopefully godly men who have preceded him…)

2. A sermon is not “meant to be offered to the most broad cross-section of people possible.”
A sermon is meant to be offered to the church, which is comprised of believers gathered together to worship, praise, and learn about our Father in heaven. There are probably some parts added in for the unsaved (hopefully, those parts can be referred to as “The Gospel”), but there is definitely a specific target (the church). Even if we point out that “the saved” and “the unsaved” by definition include “everybody,” we still can’t say that it’s “the most broad cross-section of people possible” because the “targeting” of the sermon is still directed at two (and only two) very specific groups or roles – the saved and the unsaved. It’s not directed at a hundred different marketing demographic groups, despite the trends of the church in the past 40 years-ish. You’re not preaching to the “twenty-somethings” or “the boomers” or “young marrieds” or “professionals,” you’re preaching to the Body of Christ.

3. A sermon is not “delivered from your sole perspective.”
If it is, then Pagitt is right – that’s a speech. And if you’re a pastor delivering such a “speech,” then repent with fear and trembling, because what you are supposed to be doing is preaching the Word, in season and out of season. Not your perspective. You are to be giving the sense from the book, not the funny thing that you read in the newspaper last week.
This is not to say that a pastor’s personality will not be a part of teaching – it will. But it will not be the “sole perspective” nor even the primary one.

My prayer for Mr. Pagitt and his readers is this…
If they are somewhere where this kind of “sermon” is being preached, then by all means, get out. Find a church that preaches the Word of God and the trust committed to the ministers is guarded.

But what can I say, that’s my prayer for everyone…

Well, I’m obviously still working on the design of the site… It will probably be in flux for a while, until I find a look and feel that I like enough to stick with. I’ve given up on the idea of building my own layout, and instead am using “canned” layouts from Blogger and other sources. I want to concentrate more on content than on the design.

Also, another quick note… I’ve decided after much consideration to remove the “Photos” and “Links” sections of the site. They hadn’t been updated for quite some time, and I decided to refocus the site to emphasize the blog. So they’re gone. In the meantime, if you want more to read than my site, then first of all WHY??? And secondly, check out the links in the blogroll to the right.

A quick note about the blogroll: the fact that a site is linked does not mean that I endorse what they say. It just means that I have found stuff on their sites interesting enough to read on a regular or semi-regular basis. That’s all. Sites will also come and go periodically from the blogroll as I find newer, more interesting ones, or as I simply lose interest in some of them.

At some point I’ll put together a whole big disclaimer page but that’s it for now.

Quick trivia: The spell checker on “Blogger” doesn’t recognize the following words: blog, blogger, blogroll.

Periodically, I will have random thoughts or see stuff on the web that I’d like to share, but by themselves don’t merit a full blog post. So, I’ll gather them together into aggregated posts under the heading “Random Thoughts.” Welcome to installment #1…

The Kingdom of God
JollyBlogger has a post today about a lecture by Richard Pratt on the Kingdom of God. Not sure I follow this statement in section 3: “Jesus said that the kingdom comes when God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.” I suppose I’ll have to download the lecture and give it a listen…

“Index of My Love for Righteousness”
There’s a great quote on “Think About These Things” from D. A. Carson about testing our faith and practice:

One of the most terrible indices of how far a people have strayed from righteousness is the degree to which they can no longer perceive their own guilt. Men and women who truly love righteousness and integrity are invariably aware when they breach it. The most holy people are the first to confess their sin with shame and contrition. The most guilty people are blissfully unaware of their corruptions and idolatries. So we must ask ourselves: where on this sort of spectrum are our churches found? Or our culture? Are we characterized by profound contrition, or by a frank inability to think that we have really done anything all that wrong?

Al Mohler on Drug Therapy
“Do we just take a pill to mask spiritual problems?” Food for thought here.

And that’s it for today’s random thoughts. Until next time…

Well, Shannon is still struggling with morning sickness, but the Preggie Pop Drops seem to be helping.

In the meantime, today we had another doctor’s visit, but this one was scheduled, thankfully. And we got another ultrasound! Doesn’t it look just like me?

We had a bit of disagreement during the visit about the nickname to use for the baby. We both agreed that we’re not terribly fond of “peanut,” but we couldn’t pick what name to use. Why don’t you help us? Update: The poll is no longer active. Sorry.

All in all, we are wonderfully blessed with this pregnancy.

Oh, and did I mention, we got to hear the heartbeat again? Now you can, too! Click here to download an MP3 of the baby’s heartbeat.

Well, almost the END of week 8…

We had a scare last night (Thursday). We got home from the Indianapolis Indians game, and Shannon had some bleeding. We called the after-hours emergency line for the Ob/Gyn, and the doctor on call told her to come in first thing this morning, and they would do an ultrasound (we were scheduled for one for next week anyway, the first one).

He said that if the baby had a heartbeat this morning, that there was less than a 5% chance that we’d miscarry, but if there was no heartbeat, then we already had. He also said to keep an eye on the bleeding, and if it worsened, to call him back.

Needless to say, we had a tense night. We prayed, we asked some friends to pray for us, and we waited.

This morning we went in, and there it was. Our baby. Just hanging there. Upside down. With a strong heartbeat in the 190′s. WOW. So everything is A-OK. Praise God! And a very special thanks to those who prayed with and for us last night, we deeply appreciate it.

While things were quite frightnening last night, the wonderful blessing out of this is that we got to hear the heartbeat and see the baby (or blob, really) a week early!

Romans 8:28

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

Reformation Theology: Plaeze wtach yuor Spellnig on htis blog

This is awesome.

I’ve seen information about this research before, but someone incorporated it into their blog as a posting. Shannon read it and just about freaked out. (That’s always a good thing in my house. Or should I say, Taht’s aywlas a good tnhig in my husoe.)

Hm, this would make an interesting software project. A “still recognizable word scrambler.”

Update: Too late. Someone beat me to it: Stephen E. Sachs, “The Jumbler”

Luke 10:2

2 And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. (ESV)

In several parables, our Lord used the analogy of a sower and his crops, including, of course, the Parable of the Sower.

What a glorious picture this is for evangelism! The sower does not try to avoid the wayside. He does not horde his seed near the stony places. He does not look upon the thorns and say, “The seed will get choked there.” He does not stop to test the soil, poke his finger in it, and say, “Here I will get a good yield.”

No, he does none of these things. He takes the seed, and casts it far and wide. He knows some will fall along the wayside. He knows that some will fall on the stony places. He knows that some will be choked by the thorns. And he knows that some will fall on good ground and yield a crop.

Does the sower know which particular seeds will fall where? He does not. But he trusts in the providence of God to say, “This seed will yield a crop.”

Let us spread the seed far and wide. Some will fall on the wayside. Some will fall on stony places. Some be choked by the thorns. But some will fall on good ground. Therefore let us go out and gather the harvest, as our Lord commands.

If only there were a way that drivers could somehow signal their intention to turn… Perhaps some kind of specialized equipment installed on vehicles…

Ah, the joys of the morning commute.

Anyway, as you may have noticed (insert sound of crickets chirping), the site redesign is making progress. It’s still a work in progress, as is obvious from the right-side banner stopping abruptly half-way down the page. That will be corrected as soon as I can figure out how to either correct the HTML/CSS layout I’m using, or replace it. (Any fellow geeks out there with insight of how to stretch the div element, post a comment. Otherwise, I’m going back to “old-school” with a table layout. I’ll do it, too!)

From Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, D.C.:

George Gallup reports that Americans revere the Bible, but they don’t read it. And because they don’t read it they have become a nation of Biblical illiterates. 4 Americans in 5 believe the Bible is the literal or inspired Word of God. And yet only 4 in 10 could tell you that it was Jesus who gave the Sermon on the Mount. And fewer than half can name the four Gospels.

- from the sermon “What Does God Want of Us? An Overview of the Whole Bible”