Category Archives: 5x5x5 Reading Plan

Posted on

Cautionary Tales: Take A Good, Long Look!

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: I Corinthians 10
Meditation: I Corinthians 10:13

“No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”

Shift Your Focus… One of those “ways out” from temptation that Paul talks about is for us to take a good, long look at the plethora of Old Testament saints who crashed and burned at some point in their spiritual journey.  In the previous verses, Paul writes,

“These things happened to [these Old Testament saints] as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!”  (I Corinthians 10:11-12)

In other words, all you have to do is slow down and do a little Old Testament “rubbernecking” and it will make you think twice about making their mistakes.  You know what “rubbernecking” is?  It’s when you slow your car down and gawk at an accident along the side of the road.  And if you have children in the car, you warn them: “Kids, that’s what happens when you don’t pay attention when you are driving!”  My dad did that to me on occasion, and I’ve repeated the tradition with my children.

One of the greatest defenses against temptation of any kind if to slow way down, take a good, long look, and make the connect between what they did and what you’re about to do.  That little cost-benefit analysis will likely lead you to say, “whoa, I don’t want what happened to David to happen to me.”

Take a leisurely afternoon drive through Old Testament country and look at the wrecks along the path of some of our faith-heroes.  Take one look at what happened to Abraham in Genesis 16.  Abraham got ahead of God’s timing with having a son, and Ishmael was the result. If you are wondering why that should be a warning sign, I’ve got three words for you:  Arab-Israeli Conflict.”  That’s what happens when you don’t trust God.

Take one look at Moses in Numbers 20:10-12.  Moses decided to go a little beyond what God had commanded, and he struck the rock twice when God had told him only to command water to come forth from it.  Because Moses tried to help God out, his disobedience caused him to forfeit entrance into the land of promise.  Let that be a lesson to you:  Even small sins can have huge consequences.

Take one look at David in I Samuel 11.  A midlife crisis in a season of boredom with the unwieldy use of power led to an adulterous affair.  The affair led to a cover up which led to conspiracy which led to the deaths of some innocent people which led to a family in deep and abiding turmoil for years to come.  That’s what happens when you choose a few minutes of fleshly pleasure over self-control.

Take one look at these good people who made bad decisions, and consider the outcome of their actions.  Take one look and then hear Paul’s words loud and clear: “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” (I Corinthians 10:12)

What temptations are you facing?  Just remember, others stronger and closer to God than you faced those same temptations.  They ignored the warning signs and they failed.  And if they could, they would shout, “Don’t you do it!  Just look what happened to me!”

In truth, they are shouting to you.  Their examples are written down in God’s Word for your benefit.  So take a good, long look.  Do a little rubbernecking.

That is your way out!

“Temptation usually comes in through a door that has deliberately been left open.”  ~Arnold Glasow

Prayer… Father, when I am tempted to sin, bring the faces of Abraham, Moses, David and other Bible saints clearly into my mind and remind me from their examples of what happens when we choose not to follow you.

Posted on

Incarnational Evangelism

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: I Corinthians 9
Meditation: I Corinthians 9:22

“I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.”

Shift Your Focus… This verse has been used by Christians to justify all sorts of questionable behavior. Some have resorted to drinking and frequenting bars in order to be a “witness” there. Others have taken up the dance club life in order to bring a Gospel presence in those places. In yet a more trendy example, churches have gone ultra casual in their worship experience—pastors wearing shorts instead of suits, ushers in Hawaiian shirts, singers in flip flops—in order to be more relevant to the culture they are trying to reach.

They have “become all things to all people that they might save some.”

Technically, there is nothing wrong with that—so long as the motive is pure. However, I have a feeling in some cases, perhaps most cases, the motive has not been to proclaim the Gospel but rather to indulge in those behaviors for purely selfish reasons. The reasons are very spiritual sounding, but in reality, that person simply wanted to drink alcohol, or use foul language, or find a potential romantic interest, or wear ripped out jeans in church because they thought it was cool.

If we are going to use that verse to explain our approach to faith—that we have become all things to all people—then it had better be for the purpose of entering the world of the lost with the strategic and expected outcome of pulling them out of that world and into the new and different world of the Kingdom of God. That is incarnational evangelism. That is exactly what Jesus did when he came to earth, born as a baby in a stinky stable in Bethlehem. He entered our world to pull us out of it and into God’s world.

If that is truly our mission, then our behavior will not be fundamentally modified as we enter the world of the spiritual seeker. A Christian woman will not become a barfly. A believing man will not go trolling for babes in a nightclub. A preacher will dress modestly and respectfully.

The translation given to this verse in the Message version of the Bible helps to shed light on what Paul was saying:

“Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!” (I Corinthians 9:19-23)

That is a pretty powerful motive for winning the lost—and a sure-fire way to become more effective in your witness for Christ. Follow those guidelines, and you will always be contemporary without compromise.

Why don’t you give that some thought!

“Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is.  Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign in sabotage.”  ~C.S. Lewis 

Prayer… Lord, show me how to be current without compromise in my witness to a lost world of your saving grace.

Posted on

Stumblingblock or Buildingblock

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: I Corinthians 8
Meditation: I Corinthians 8:9

“Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak.”

Shift Your Focus… Since I am saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and not by works, I am free from the demands of the law. There is no longer a long list of do’s and don’t’s that I must observe in order to be right with God. I am right with God because I stand before him robed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. So, to paraphrase St. Augustine, I can just love God, and do what I want.

Except….

Except that I no longer live for myself. I am living for God, I am living with my brothers and sisters in the family of God, and I am living as a kingdom agent in an unsaved world. So what I do has consequences. My behavior affects God’s reputation on Planet Earth. My behavior, in some cases, may offend a weaker brother or sister, or perhaps even lead them into sin. May behavior may cause an unbeliever to conclude that there is no difference between a Christian and himself.

I may have divine permission under grace to do certain things, but those things may not be beneficial to me. Paul says it this way a couple of chapters later:

“Everything is permissible”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.” (I Corinthians 10:23-24)

The highest use of my spiritual freedom and the best use of God’s grace is to do things that build up my fellows believers in God’s family and attract the lost to Jesus Christ. That is what most glorifies God. That is when grace is most attractive. That is where spiritual freedom is most powerful.

That is why, even though I don’t have to, I may refrain from taking in certain chemicals into my body, or partaking in certain forms of entertainment, or dressing in certain ways, or using certain kinds of colorful language. I can do those things if I choose, but they may very well become a stumbling block to someone else’s path to God.

And I don’t want to be a stumbling block. I want to be a building block.

“The law works fear and wrath; grace works hope and mercy.” ~Martin Luther

Prayer… Lord, help me to ruthlessly govern my freedom so that it can be leveraged for your highest glory.

 

 

Posted on

Pre-Game Warm Ups

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: I Corinthians 6
Meditation: I Corinthians 6:1-3

“If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life!”

Shift Your Focus… Do you realize that how you deal with life now is simply warm-up for your life to come in eternity?  How you handle crises, resolve disputes, overcome temptation, steward your resources, serve in a ministry, treat your spouse, love your neighbor, control your tongue, get along with fellow believers, and so on, is in truth, preparation for a life of purpose in the eternal world awaiting beyond this one.

That puts everything you do now in a whole new and much more important light.  Earth is getting you ready for heaven—hopefully!  Life is kindergarten, and you are about to enter the first grade—but you first have to attain a certain mastery of reading, writing, and arithmetic…and oh yes, playground etiquette, too!

Heaven will not be about sitting beside a crystal stream, strumming your golden harp and watching the angels dance like sugar plum fairies.  Your eternity is going to be purposeful.  You will have a job to do.  You will be on mission for God, ruling over his unending and ever-expanding creation.  You are going to reign with Jesus Christ.

Therefore, you must learn how to rule and reign now!  And the little corner of God’s kingdom that is represented in the church to which you belong is your proving ground.  That is why serving in a ministry and faithfully attending and financially supporting and preserving the harmony of your fellowship now is so important in light of what is coming next.

That is the point of Paul’s stinging rebuke to the Corinthians who decided to take an unresolved dispute with other believers to a worldly court. He reminds them if they can’t even handle playground stuff like resolving conflicts with each other, how can they be expected to judge the world and administrate angels.  Likewise, if they can’t learn to control their bodies and refrain from sexual sin now, how can they be expected to exercise control over God’s uncontained universe.

Do you get the point?  We must master life now in all of its dimensions—big and small, because it is preparation for the really big stuff that God has waiting for us in the next life.

The school year is coming to an end; kindergarten is almost over.  Are you ready for what’s next?

“To enter Heaven a man must take it with him.”  —Henry Drummond

Prayer…  Lord, remind me that how I handle the details, big and small, in my life today is critical preparation for what is to come.

Posted on

What Would Happen In Your Marriage

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: I Corinthians 7
Meditation: I Corinthians 7:16

“Don’t you wives realize that your husbands might be saved because of you? And don’t you husbands know that your wives might be saved because of you?”

Shift Your Focus… What would happen in our marriage relationships—in all of our relationships, for that matter—if the primary motive was to introduce our significant other to Christ?

I am not talking about badgering a spouse into the kingdom through a non-stop, hard sell verbal witness. I’ve known spouses who have done that—and it rarely leads their mate to Jesus! It often leads them to bitterness and greater resistance to the Good News. C.S. Lewis wrote,

“It is right…that we should be much concerned about the salvation of those we love. But we must be careful not to…demand that their salvation should conform to some ready-made pattern of our own.”

What I am talking about is offering your loved one the real Jesus. I’m talking about showing them what authentic salvation is all about. I’m talking about living every dimension of your life in such a way that Jesus shines through. That’s really what Christians are meant to do, after all. We are to make the Savior attractive (Titus 2:10) to those who are far from him by the way we live—how we respond, how we serve, how we give, how we navigate disappointment, how we suffer, how we freely forgive, how we love proactively and how we extend grace unconditionally.

What if our highest marriage goal was to be living proof of a loving Savior to our spouse? Who wouldn’t be attracted to Christ when we are living that kind of winsome witness!

And even if our loved one already knows the Savior, our assignment is no less. We are to be Jesus to a believing spouse as well. Our living witness to a loving Savior should be the very thing that makes our loved ones want to go deeper in their own relationship with the Lord.

That’s our job—to be Jesus to the people we love. We may be the only Savior they will ever see!

“When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now…. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.” ~C.S. Lewis

Prayer…  Dear God, my prayer this morning is simple:  Help me to so live that my spouse sees you when she sees me.  When I speak, in my body language, in my actions, in my attitude, help me to be the Gospel in the real world of my everyday relationships.

Posted on

Now That’s Tough Love

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: I Corinthians 5
Meditation: I Corinthians 5:5

“Hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.”

Shift Your Focus… In case you haven’t noticed lately, we now live in a culture that openly worships at the altar of tolerance and political correctness. And anyone who dares violate those values is labeled hateful, shunned as a bigot, mocked in the court of public opinion and increasingly, sued in a court of law. As a result, it is now high risk for a church to desecrate culture’s value-gods by tackling moral issues. Even worse, these value-gods, masquerading as angels of enlightenment, have crept into the church, compromising its moral integrity and corroding its very reason for being.

I wonder what would Paul think of the spiritual condition of the American church today? What kinds of immoral behavior would he find being tolerated in far too many congregations? What would he have to say to spiritual leaders who refuse to carry out church discipline and resist holding people accountable for fear of losing members to the church down the street? How would he react to the pride we take at being so inclusive and tolerant that we hardly even mention the “s” word anymore from our pulpits—you know, “s-i-n”?

A few years ago I was helping one of my daughters set up an apartment in the city where she was attending college. As we talked about nearby churches she could possible attend, we saw one within blocks with an outdoor sign that read, “people of all races, genders, and sexual preferences welcome here.” Hmmm! That would have been fine if they were accepting the sinner without condoning the sin, but I doubt that is what they had in mind.

The sharp demands of Paul is this chapter need to be heeded by the modern church! The Corinthians were proud of their tolerance of a man who was sexually involved with his father’s wife (technically, his step-mother). Paul rebukes their misguided acceptance and calls for a can of tough love to be opened up on this man. He was to be put out of their fellowship, and thus, out from under the spiritual covering of their church.

In so doing, a number of painful but helpful things would happen: For one, verse 5 says this man would be handed over to Satan, where he would experience the awful pain of life apart from God’s protective presence. Perhaps in allowing his flesh to be battered by Satanic forces, he would come to his senses, repent, and thus his spirit would be saved.

For another, in putting the sinner out of the church, the church would be preserved from this kind of sin taking root and spreading to other believers, according to verse 6. Yet another result Paul talks about in verses 9-12 is that keeping sexual impurity out of their church would keep them distinct from and attractive to a world that was fundamentally sick with sexual sin and thus slated for Divine judgment.

The lesson here is that when churches refuse to execute spiritual discipline in cases of clear and blatant immorality, they lose their very reason for being (see Revelation 2-3). Thinking they are being loving, they are really being loveless. In thinking they are being tolerant, they are really opening their body up to spiritual disease. In thinking they will be more attractive to the world, they are tacitly approving the world’s godless behavior and in reality, allowing the lost to plunge headlong toward eternal punishment.

So what are you to do with all of this information? I would suggest you talk with your spiritual leaders and insist, even demand, that they never shy away from their calling to execute church discipline—even if that means they have to open up a can of tough love on you.

Wouldn’t you agree:  We have a desperate need for some tough love these days?

“The opposite of bravery is not cowardice, but conformity.” ~Robert Anthony

Prayer… Lord, restore discipline to the church.  Give us bold leaders who will not fear the consequences of tough love.

Posted on

The Altar Of Popularity

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: I Corinthians 4
Meditation: I Corinthians 4:6

“‘Do not go beyond what is written.’ Then you will not take pride in one man over against another.”

Shift Your Focus… In a stern but fatherly way, Paul is taking the believers in Corinth to task for their reckless immaturity in choosing preachers based on popular appeal.  He points out that when they engage in this sort of thinking, it is not only a sure sign of persistent spiritual infancy, but clear indication that they have entered into a realm reserved only for the Lord himself:

“Don’t get ahead of the Master and jump to conclusions with your judgments before all the evidence is in. When he comes, he will bring out in the open and place in evidence all kinds of things we never even dreamed of—inner motives and purposes and prayers. Only then will any one of us get to hear the ‘Well done!’ of God.” (I Corinthians 4:5, The Message)

That same sort of preacher-by-popularity mentality is just as persistent a spiritual immaturity in the modern church as it was among the Corinthians.  We are particularly susceptible to it because of our ability to see and hear so many different spiritual communicators via religious television, teaching tapes, radio ministry, books and magazines, and cyber ministries, just to name a few.  As beneficial as these modern media are to the spread of the Gospel around the world, it has also created a culture of Christian celebrity that has not been good for the church.

People now choose churches based on the popular appeal of the pastor, or the cool factor of the church’s architecture, or what kind of need meeting ministries are offered, or if the church has a happening band and a Starbucks located in the lobby.  We have fallen prey to the Corinthian syndrome.  We evaluate our church experience on everything other than what the Lord of the church thinks.  And in so doing, we have exposed our own persistent spiritual immaturity.

The American church would do well to listen to Pastor Paul’s fatherly counsel.  In fact, it would be healthy for us if someone of Paul’s spiritual stature would walk into the church, so to speak, whack us upside the head and tell us to knock it off.  That’s exactly what Paul threatened to do to the Corinthians:

“I know there are some among you who are so full of themselves they never listen to anyone, let alone me. They don’t think I’ll ever show up in person. But I’ll be there sooner than you think, God willing, and then we’ll see if they’re full of anything but hot air. God’s Way is not a matter of mere talk; it’s an empowered life. So how should I prepare to come to you? As a severe disciplinarian who makes you toe the mark? Or as a good friend and counselor who wants to share heart-to-heart with you? You decide.”  (I Corinthians 4:18-21, The Message)

Don’t you think God is just as serious about this sort of persistent immaturity today as he was then?  We had better listen up, or God just may send someone or something like Paul was threatening to do to get us back on the right track.

What say we reject this culture of Christian celebrity and get back to seeing things as God does?  We would be a lot better off if we would!

“Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity.” ~Charles Spurgeon

Prayer…  Lord, deliver us from evil—that is, the culture of Christian celebrity!