February 2020 – Tri-Valley Baptist Church

“Seeing Him with the Eye of Flesh or the Eye of Faith”

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Feb 232020

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “Seeing Him with the Eye of Flesh or the Eye of Faith” By: Ron Woodrum

When we hear the name Jesus, we automatically have an image appear in our minds. It is an image that has been introduced to us somewhere, in our Sunday School literature, in pictures, illustrations etc. For most of my generation our image comes from a popular painting by Warner Elias Sallman. Sallman and his parents were first generation immigrants from Finland/Sweden. They settled in Chicago in the early 1900’s He sang in the choir at his Church in Chicago. There he met his wife Ruth. He was an artist who apprenticed with some of the best artists during the day, and attended the Chicago Art Institute by night. In 1924 a major denomination commissioned him to make a charcoal sketching of the head of Jesus. He used the only historical document that he could find that described the physical appearance of Jesus. It read: “He is a man of medium size with a venerable aspect, his beholders both fear and love Him. His hair is the color of ripe hazel-nut, straight down to the ears, but below the ears wavy and curled, with a bluish and bright reflection, flowing over His shoulders. It is parted in two at the top of the head, after the pattern of the Nazarenes. His brow is smooth and cheerful, with a face without a wrinkle or spot, with a reddish complexion. His nose and mouth are faultless. His beard is abundant, the color of His hair, not long, but divided at the chin”. After doing several sketches he chose to do an oil painting. His oil painting was astounding! The Church of God formed Warner Press, and asked him to replicate the painting, obtaining the copyright to the painting. They began to distribute copies of the painting. For the next 30 years Sallman’s HEAD OF CHRIST was distributed throughout the world, churches, clubs and service organizations. The USO printed small copies which were given to every soldier, sailor, and airman that enlisted. It became the most popular picture of Jesus known. Sallman had over 100 drawings, illustrations, and paintings that became property of Warner Press. They are all displayed in a gallery in Anderson, Indiana. Though this image is forever burned in our minds, and held dear to our hearts, it must be said that it was not likely an accurate reproduction or representation of what our Lord Jesus Christ really looked like!

The document that Sallman used was a letter purported to be written to the Roman Senate, and to Caesar Tiberius, by a Roman official named Publius Lentulus. The author claimed to be a contemporary of Jesus, serving either before or after Pontius Pilate. The Lentulus family was very prominent in Rome. Even one member became Governor of Syria around 60 years before Christ. But this particular document has no history that can be traced to the first century. It was apparently written in Greek and translated into Latin. The oldest copy dates back to AD 1421-as an ancient document sent to Rome from Constantinople around that time. Copies of it were all over Europe shortly after that. Frederick Munter, a historian scholar, (1761-1830), claimed that he could trace the letter back to the time of Emperor Diocletian, (244-311 AD), but he had no documentation to verify that claim. Most historians consider it a fraudulent document. Eventually the consensus of the Church agreed with St. Augustine of Hippo, who wrote in his day: “What His appearance was, we know not!” It seems strange that we have images and busts of Julius Caesar, Augustus, and even the evil madman Nero, on coins, and statuary, but no reproductions of Jesus. It is probably just as well because any genuine reproductions of our Lord Jesus Christ would have likely been turned into relics and idols. We must be content with the statement of the Apostle Peter who said, “whom having not seen, ye love” (I Peter 1:8). Until then we would do well to heed the words of William Blake:

“The vision of Christ that thou dost see

Is my vision’s worst enemy

Thine has a great hook nose like thine,

Mine has a snub nose like to mine

Both read the Bible day and night

But thou readest black and I readest white!”

Peter saw Him with the eye of flesh. John saw Him with the eye of flesh. Matthew saw Him with the eye of flesh. Mark saw Him with the eye of flesh. We have only seen Him with the eye of Faith. The eye of faith has been formed by the Words of the authors of Scripture. They did not give us a vivid description of how tall he was, what His hair color was, but Mark gives us a vivid running account of the Father’s Righteous Servant who serves, sacrifices, and saves all who encounter Him, and open their lives to Him. He is the “same yesterday, today, and forever” and those of us who encounter Him today find Him to be everything we need Him to be for us. We are the more blessed indeed. Jesus told Thomas, “you have seen and believed, but blessed are those who have never seen, but will believe!” (John 20:29). That is the blessing of the eye of faith!

“The Christian Life-Hard or Easy? Egg Hatched or Bad? Happy Hypocrite? Shaping Saint?

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Feb 162020

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “The Christian Life-Hard or Easy? Egg Hatched or Bad? Happy Hypocrite? Shaping Saint? By: Ron Woordrum

I love the passage in Mere Christianity where C.S. Lewis talks about whether the Christian life is hard or easy. “It’s both”, he says, “hard as death in the beginning, and then as his life begins to work within us and transform us, it becomes relatively easy, because He does the work of transforming us. We are to hand ourselves over to Christ, to be ploughed and resown. We are to have the bad tooth out, and a new tooth given us. It is like death. But then, He lives with us and helps us to do impossible things. In that way it is easy! As we experience moments of victory, a new sort of life is spreading throughout your system” and that is the way sanctification works. “At first it is the idea of ‘putting on Christ’…dressing up as the Son of God…to become a real son. This is not one of the many jobs a Christian has to do, or a special exercise for the top of the class. It is the whole of Christianity. Christianity offers nothing else at all! The Christian way is hard and easy. Christ says, ‘give me all. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you! I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it! No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there. I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it…but to have it out! Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires that you think are innocent as well as the ones wicked-the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours’ ““The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing is to hand over your whole self-all your wishes and precautions-to Christ. But it is far easier than what all we are trying to do instead. For we are trying to remain ourselves…and all the while trying to be and do good…which we on our own can never accomplish. When Jesus said, ‘be perfect’, He meant exactly that! He meant we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder-in fact impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: but it would be a jolly sight harder for the egg to learn to fly!-while remaining an egg! We are like eggs at present. You cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad! This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else. It is easy to get muddled about that! It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different aspects- education, building, missions, and holding worship services. The Church exists for nothing else than to draw men to Christ, to make them little-Christ’s. If they are not doing that, all the Cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose!”

Then Lewis alludes to the Happy Hypocrite, (by inference). He says, “The story is told of someone who had to wear a mask, a mask which made him look much nicer than he really was. He had to wear it for years. And when he took it off he found that his own face had grown to fit it. He really was beautiful. What had become a disguise had become a reality!” Frederick Buechner identifies that tale, in his book Telling the Truth, as a story written by Max Beerbohn titled The Happy Hypocrite. Mr. Buechner summarizes the story: “In the Happy Hypocrite Beerbohn tells about a regency rake name Lord George Hell, debauched and profligate, who falls in love with a saintly girl, and in order to win her love, covers his features with the mask of a saint. This girl is deceived and becomes his bride. They live happily ever after until a wicked lady from Lord Hell’s past turns up to expose the scoundrel she knows him to be and challenges him to take off his mask! So sadly, having no choice, he takes it off, and lo and behold beneath the saint’s mask is the face of a saint he has become by wearing it in love.”

The moral of the story, and Mr. Lewis’ reason for making reference to it is this: we are not yet what we pretend to be (Christ like), but the more we desire it, and yield to Him, the more we will become like Him. Virtue by definition is the habit of a right desire. Habitually yielding to Him will eventually form Him in us, by the power of mind-renewing. You may be wondering what is the difference in acting like Christ when we are not yet like him and hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is acting in one way we never intend to become. The man in the Happy Hypocrite was a corrupt man who pretended to be a saint and became a good man. Thus the word “Happy” in the title. The book is worth hunting down and reading. For us what can become a hopeful disguise can and will become a reality…if we let him hatch us and shape us into that saint! It’s hard. Impossible really! But it’s easy!

“A Word from God at Closing Time?”

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Feb 092020

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “A Word from God at Closing Time?” By: Ron Woodrum

In 1860 French Scientist Pierre Berchelt made a startling prediction. “Within a hundred years of physical and chemical science, man will know what the atom is. It is my belief that when science reaches that stage, that God will come down, with his big ring of keys, and say to humanity-‘Gentlemen, it’s closing time!”. As we look around us, seeing the perilous times in which we live; seeing all the end-time players taking their final positions; when we read the daily newspapers and find it sounding like the pages of Holy Scripture, we realize with Berchelt that we are rapidly approaching “closing time!” Jeremiah had been prophesying for forty years that judgment was coming. As he heard the reports of the coming calamity, predicted by the LORD, being fulfilled in historic events, he too realized that “closing time” at hand. So did King Zedekiah. He called for Jeremiah, had him removed from prison, and brought to the Palace in Jerusalem. At that point, in the privacy of the Throne Room, he asked, “Is there any Word from the LORD?” For over forty years, Jeremiah had, through tears, pleaded with his people to forsake their sins, repent, and return to the LORD, and with Everlasting Love, He would forgive and restore them. If they ignored, and continued in their stubborn sin and backsliding, they would reach a point of no return, and see the LORD’S Word is true. But the people were running “helter skelter toward destruction with their fingers in their ears!” Jeremiah would repeat the message of the LORD, one more time without stuttering, to the King and the people.

Years ago, there was a new Doctor that just graduated from medical school. He took up a residence in a small town. An old man was his first patient. The young doctor wanted to make a good first impression and was very nervous as he examined his patient. The old man listed all his symptoms and ailments for the Doctor. The Doctor carefully examined and checked him, and had no clue of his diagnosis. The Doctor asked, “have you ever had this trouble before?” The old man replied, “Yes, many times!” The Doctor smiled, and said, “Well it looks like you have it again!” Jeremiah, unlike that Doctor, knew exactly what was ailing his nation. Sin, in its many varieties had infected them. They had had it before. Now it looks as if they have it again! Without returning to the LORD, there was no cure. He asked them a rhetorical question-“Is there no balm in Gilead?” The answer was “no, not for them!” Another, “Is there no physician in Gilead?” The answer, “no not for them!” Judah, was suffering from the same thing that the Roman Philosopher Seneca recognized. He said, “Men love their vices and hate tem at the same time!” He cried out, “Oh that there was a hand that could reach down from heaven, and deliver me from my besetting sin!” It seems that Judah, and our generation, is caught in the hypnotic paralysis of Satan and sin. Carlos Villas, a missionary to India, tells of an encounter he had in an Indian countryside. He came upon a bird perched on a branch on a bush. It seemed paralyzed-in some kind of hypnotic state. He looked, and close to the bird was a snake, moving slowly bobbing and weaving. The bird was so mesmerized it could not move. It was incapable of flight! Villas, fearing for the bird, decided to rush toward the snake, waving his arms and shouting. The arresting stare of the snake was broken-the bird was freed of its paralysis-and took flight to escape. That is exactly what is wrong with mankind, Villas thought-we are caught in the destructive hypnotic stare and snare of the snake-Satan.

A.W. Tozer agrees-“The deep disease of the human heart is a will broken loose from its center, like a planet that has left its central sun and started to resolve around some strange body from the outer space which may have moved in close enough to draw it away!” Dorothy Sayers wrote of this plight of mankind many years ago. She wrote, “Recently a young and intelligent Pastor remarked to me the other day that he thought one of the greatest strengths of Christianity lay in its profoundly pessimistic view of human nature. There is a great deal of truth in what he says. The people who are most discouraged and shocked at the barbarity and stupidity of human behavior today are those who think highly of Homo Sapiens as a product of evolution. They still cling to the optimistic belief that civilization will finally so influence mankind to rid us of such behavior…for such appalling outbursts of bestial ferocity…are the utter antithesis of everything they have always believed. Now it seems unbelievable that the whole world has suddenly gone mad together”. Sayers continues, “But for the Christian this is not so! He is deeply shocked and grieved as anybody else, but he is not astonished! He has never thought highly of human nature left to itself. He has been accustomed to the idea that there is a deep interior dislocation in the very center of human personality, and you can never legislate to change man from this nature to make him good!” Jeremiah knew that well! Jacques Elull, a Christian philosopher, says it well. “Today no one knows where he is going; the aim of life has been forgotten and the end has been left behind. MAN HAS SET OUT AT A TREMENDOUS PACE-BUT IS GOING NOWHERE!” Is there any hope for our generation? Is there a word from the LORD? Who can share it? Oswald Chambers, author of “Our Utmost For His Highest”, wrote “The people that influence the most are not those who button-hole us, but those who live their lives like the stars of heaven, and the lilies of the field, perfect, simply, and unaffectedly; those are the lives that point us to salvation!” Jeremiah, with his ministry and message did just that! He was God’s Prophetic Word for Closing Time. God is looking for modern day prophets to speak a Word from Him. There is a Biblical story where Joshua encountered some prophets speaking a word to the people. He brought a concerned word to Moses. Moses asked him “where you jealous for me? Don’t be!” Then he spoke a word very relevant for our times! He said, “Oh that all of the LORD’S people were prophets! Oh, that the LORD would put His Spirit upon all of them to speak His Word to the people!” (Numbers 11:29). That is what is needed today-in our desperate hour! It’s closing time-Is there any Word From the LORD? Christian-is there?

“The priority of Pastor’s ministry”.

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Feb 022020

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “The priority of Pastor’s ministry”. By: Ron Woodrum

As we read the Book of Jeremiah, we realize that Jeremiah, the Prophet was given a very challenging assignment. He was called to speak the Word of God, to His people, who were on the verge of disaster, for not listening to the Word, and forsaking the Lord. Jeremiah felt totally inadequate for this assignment. God told him to be faithful, and His presence would be with him during his days of ministry. That did not make his ministry any easier. They rejected his message; they rejected his ministry. They opposed him; beat him; imprisoned him; threw him in a old abandoned cistern; God then told him…”I will give you a Shepherd’s heart, according to My heart, and I will feed (“rau”-“shepherd”) with knowledge (“sakal”- “prudent wisdom”) and understanding (“deah”-“knowledge”). God knew that without that kind of heart, a shepherd’s heart, there is no way that he would be able to faithfully carry out his ministry. There were times that Jeremiah felt that God had deceived him. He decided that he would not carry out this thankless ministry. But he said, “If I say, ‘I will not mention His word, or speak anymore in His name”, His word is in my heart, like a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot!”

I have been in ministry now for over 50 years! I was licensed to preach March of 1969. Much of my early preaching was “parroting” the type of sermons that I had heard my Pastor preach. They were topical sermons. He even introduced me to a series of books called “Simple Sermons” Simple Sermons on…various subjects…Simple Sermons for Sunday Morning…Simple Sermons for Sunday Night. These Sermons were brief sermons by a masterful Southern Baptist Preacher Herschel Ford. They were good. But honestly, they were shallow. The biggest problem was, as much as I tried to make them my own, and I did, to the best of my ability, they still seemed “canned”, a lot like serving my people “T.V. Dinners!” When I went away to College, I had the privilege of meeting Preachers and Professors that did not criticize that kind of preaching, but instead showed me a better way. They introduced all of us young students to Preachers who did expository preaching. They preached the Bible. Men like W.A. Criswell; Adrian Rogers; Charles Stanley; Warren Wiersbe; Jerry Vines; J. Harold Smith. These men held the Bible in high regard, the inspired and inerrant Word of God, and they preached it with power. But they preached it with depth and dynamic. We were also taught to study the Word of God to be prepared to preach. We were taught to use commentaries…BUT NEVER TO LEAN ON TO TAKE THE PLACE OF STUDYING THE WORD OF GOD FOR OURSELVES. FOR COMMENTARIES DISAGREE ON MOST EVERYTHING. YOU MIGHT AS WELL FLIP A COIN TO GET THE REAL MEANING OF THE WORD OF GOD. God chose the two most expressive languages to reveal His word in. There are no languages more expressive than Hebrew and Greek. To learn these languages, and to use them in study is to open up a surplus of the Truth of God with such depth, that the depth can never be plumbed, by one person, in a lifetime. We were taught to “Study to show ourselves approved of God, a worker that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth” (II Timothy 2:15). For the first time I understood the immeasurable depths of the Word of God. I was reminded of Ezekial’s vision of the river that began to flow from out of the Temple. “It became water to the ankles; water to the knees; water to waste; then water over the head; water to swim in!” His vision was of the time in the Millennium, when knowledge of the Lord will so flood the earth, it will be “as the waters cover the sea!” (Hab. 2:14). I dedicated my life to “learning as much of the depth of the Word of God that I could”. I dedicated my life to learning how to preach it and teach it so that God’s people could be edified! After all, Paul said, God gave gifted men, “Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, and Pastor-teachers for the edifying of the believers, so that they could together do the work of the ministry”. (Eph. 4:11-12. Jesus told Peter, “If you really love me…feed my little lambs…tend my sheep…feed my sheep!” (John 21: 15-16). The word Pastor (“poimen”-means “shepherd”, and our English word Pastor is just the Latin word-“pastor‘-for the Greek word “poimen”. So, the Pastor’s life centers around “feeding, protecting, and leading the sheep”. Like Jeremiah, the Pastor is only to speak the Words that the Lord gives him from the Word. He is not to preach to “tickle itchy ears!” as will be the trend of the Last Days (II Timothy 4:3). I remember hearing one of the greatest Theologians the world has ever known. His name was Carl F.H. Henry. He became the key leader for the Evangelical Theological Society; He became the first editor of Billy Graham’s magazine-“Christianity Today”. At the Second Baptist Church of Houston, Texas I sat in his class, in 1987, and heard him say that soon we would see a trend away from the Word of God. People would revise worship to focus on music, praise, emotion, and entertainment, and would relegate the preaching and the teaching of the Word of God to a 15-minute addendum to the main part of the service. He went on to say-“The fate of the Bible is the fate of Christianity and even civilization itself. If the world and evangelicals forsake this Book, the end result is Society’s theological, spiritual, and moral suicide.” Woodrow Kroll, of the Back to the Bible ministry said the same thing. He said the New Millennium, with its “seeker friendly Churches” have changed the entire focus of worship, and “the casualty is the Word of God!”

This trend has made it difficult for those of us who were trained to focus our ministry on two things: Winning the Lost and Preaching and Teaching the Word of God. Paul told Timothy “preach the Word, in season and out of season” and “do the work of an evangelist”. He said that faithful Pastors “that rule well should be worthy of double honor, ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO LABOR IN THE WORD AND TEACHING”. The word labor is “kopios”-which means “work to the point of exhaustion”. Shallow teaching doesn’t require that! There was a time when such ministry was held in high esteem, and God’s people could not get enough of it! But now those who appreciate that are few and far between. There is an important truth in Scripture that we have forgotten. Hebrews 13:17 “Obey them that have rule over you, and submit themselves: for they watch for your souls, as they must give an account to God, so that they can do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you!”. The word “obey” is the word “peitho”-means “to trust, look to for direction”. There is teaching and preaching for “little lambs”; There is meat and the deep things of God that God’s people need to be kept from being “swept away by every wind of doctrine”. There needs to be a balance. Pray that I will learn to find that balance. I must preach what God leads me to preach. I must teach what God leads me to teach. But it is my goal to edify my people, and their needs, at the time. I heard Haddon Robinson, the great Homiletics teacher. He was invited to preach at a students Church. He asked him to preach on John 14:1-3. He said he prepared a very good exegetical Bible study on that text. He taught it. Afterwards he felt that the audience of older folks just wanted to hear about heaven and its comforting hope for people that were about to be going there. He said, “I should have sensed that and adjusted my message accordingly”. We need preaching and teaching that comes to the ankles; to the knees; to the waist; over our heads, enough to swim in. It just has to be at the right time. Lord I have that “Pastor’s heart, you gave me that! I need you to feed me both your knowledge and wisdom on how to share it.