Truth In These Days

The Enemy Problem:What Donald Trump Can Teach Christians about Hating Their EnemiesHeath Lambert  Honesty About Enemies This past Sunday on 60 Minutes, President Trump made a very candid admission. It came in response to a question from Ross Douthat, who asked if the president could forgive his enemies like Nancy Pelosi and James Comey if he had to in order to go to heaven.  Before answering, the president was eager to make clear his position that his enemies are extremely dishonest and very bad people. He asked Douthat to consider what his enemies put him through with indictments and investigations. But he finally admitted, “I want to be honest.” “The answer is no.” He said, “I cannot do that because I do hate some of my enemies and I always will.” Now that is an amazing statement. It is not amazing because now we finally know how the president really feels about his enemies. We already knew that. Neither is it amazing because the president was brutally honest. The president is regularly honest to a shocking degree. After spending my adult life in Christian ministry, what is so amazing to me about the statement is howmuch the president has in common with a lot of Christians.  It is easy to sit in judgment on the president. It is much harder and far more important to use the opportunity of his statements to evaluate our own hearts. The truth of the matter is that when it comes to enemies, a lot of Christians share the same feelings as the president even when they do not share his honesty. Trust me on this. I talk to Christians all the time, and a lot of them spend a lot of energy hating their enemies even if they would never say so on 60 Minutes. You should consider whether one of those hateful Christians is you.   The Existence of Enemies We can begin that consideration with the admission that we all have enemies. An enemy is someone you perceive as having mistreated you. That mistreatment does not have to be extreme to be bad. Enemies wound in ways that can be small and private as well as public and life-defining. It is also the case that some enemies and some mistreatments are only perceived. In Galatians 4:16, the Apostle Paul asks, “Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?” Some of the people in ancient Galatia decided Paul was their enemy, not because he had done anything wrong, but because they did not like the good thing that he did. It is possible to wrongly label someone an enemy because of your misperception rather than theirmistreatment.  Whether the mistreatment is real or perceived and whether the harm is large or small, the Bible is honest that we all have enemies, and we all need to learn how to respond to them.Responding to Enemies The biblical instruction on responding to our enemies begins with what we must not do. In Matthew 5:43, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemies.’” Jesus makes clear that, in his day, the word on the street was that, just as you love your friends, so you should hate your enemies. Over 2000 years later, the conventional wisdom is still that hating your enemies is a normal part of life. The President of the United States is only the most public voice to repeat the common sentiment. There is something very easy and very basic about hating your enemies. When people hurt and mistreat you, there is a sinful instinct to want to respond with retribution and vengeance. When there is no action you can take against your enemies, at least you can hate them in your heart. That is the enemy problem. When we are honest, most people are tempted to hate their enemies the same way as President Trump.  But Jesus’s instructions on responding to enemies does not stop with honesty about what is commonplace among sinful humanity. He goes on to explain what must be true of anyone who would follow him. In Matthew 5:44, Jesus commands, “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” We all would love it if our enemies would stop mistreating us, but Jesus’s solution to the enemy problem does not require a change in the hearts of our enemies, but in the hearts of those of us who have been mistreated by them.  Jesus’s words touch our attitudes and our actions. Attitudinally, Christians must do more than avoid harsh feelings of bitterness, hatred, and animosity. We must nurture a tender heart of affection and care for our enemies. Regarding our actions, Christians must never seek to bring harm to those who oppose us but must be alert and watchful for opportunities to care for and serve our enemies. Engaging our enemies in loving actions often takes tremendous wisdom and care, but one loving action we can always undertake is to pray. We can pray that God would show kindness to our enemies, that he would bless their lives and families, that he would allow us to be restored in relationship to them, and that he would help us to grow in love for them. When you truly pray for your enemies, you will discover that it is possible to hate your enemies or to pray for them, but you cannot do both at the same time.  The words of Jesus to love and pray for our enemies seem hard because they are. Loving those who do not love us is opposed to every sinful instinct in humanity. When we feel the difficulty of this command, we need to remember that Jesus Christ is not telling us to do anything he has not already done. Jesus himself had enemies. One of them was you. Jesus’s response to his enemy problem is described in Romans 5:10, “While we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.” Every Christian is a former enemy of God who has become a friend through the love of Jesus on the cross. When we receive the gift of eternal life through faith in Jesus, we receive that gift from God who loved us even when we were his enemies. That gift of love changes the hearts of everyone who receives it. It is ultimately impossible for one of God’sformer enemies to receive his undeserved love without eventually extending that love to the enemies who have done far less to us than we have done to him. Just as loving enemies is opposed to every sinful instinct in fallen humanity, when you know what Jesus has done for you, hating your enemies is opposed to every righteous instinct in redeemed man.   Loving Your Enemies and Divine Judgment In Matthew 18, Jesus tells the story of a servant who was forgiven by his master for a massivedebt he could not afford to pay. That same servant refused to forgive his fellow servant of a much smaller debt. The master of the unforgiving servant was outraged that one who had received such mercy could fail to share it and so cast him into prison. Jesus extends the lesson of that story to you and me when he says in Matthew 18:35, “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”  Those words from Jesus Christ mean that Ross Douthat’s question to the president was not hypothetical. Jesus is clear that our eternal life depends on our ability to address the enemy problem in our hearts by extending love to those who have mistreated us. That is true, notbecause loving our enemies earns our salvation. It is true because people who cannot extend love to their enemies prove they have never received in their own hearts the love for enemies that comes from Jesus to all who trust in him. Donald Trump’s statements about his enemies are disappointing and tragic. They are also expected. What should not be expected is the way so many Christians today behave in exactly the same way. The teaching of Jesus and the sacrificial love of Jesus make love for enemies one of the most fundamentally Christian realities in the world. It is scandalous that so many Christians refuse to follow Jesus’ words on this. Any Christian accustomed to living in an attitude of hatred toward their enemy is choosing to live in opposition to Jesus and is ultimately choosing their own destruction. It is like stabbing yourself in the chest with a knife and expecting your enemy to die. Hating your enemy can do nothing to them but does potentially eternal damage to you. The unfortunate words of Donald Trump point us to the better words of Jesus Christ. When we listen carefully, every Christian will know they need to pray. Of course, we need to pray for President Trump. But we also need to pray for the sin in our own hearts. We need to pray that the Christ who gave his life for us would transform us into people just like him. We need to pray, from the bottom of our hearts, that we would be the people who solve our enemy problem by extending the Love of Jesus to those who mistreat us.

In this episode of Truth in These Days, Heath Lambert reflects on a recent tragedy in the news and the sobering reminder it offers about the brevity of life. He points to what Scripture says about our time and the hope we can have in Jesus Christ. It's a timely, gospel-centered word for anyone who needs to hear it.- 0:00 – The news- 0:48 – Final words- 2:10 – What Scripture says about our time- 3:04 – Hope in Jesus- 4:01 – Another voice on the radio- 5:03 – Closing appeal

In this episode of Truth in These Days, Heath Lambert responds to a shocking announcement out of a church in Cleveland, Ohio. He looks at what the Bible actually teaches, and explains why this story matters for churches and Christian leaders far beyond Cleveland.- 0:00 – A shocking announcement- 2:39 – What the Bible teaches about marriage- 6:08 – Requirements for spiritual leadership- 7:06 – Why this story matters for your church- 9:25 – Closing call to prayer and repentance

The Sin Silently Killing America(And Also, Your Soul)Heath Lambert  A Silent Killer In our contemporary secular age, many sins threaten the future of America. The ongoing holocaust against the unborn is one of the greatest tragedies in human history. Our nearly complete embrace of every form of sexual immorality including pornography, pre-marital sex, adultery, homosexuality, gay marriage, and the transgender insanity are all absolutely eroding the foundation of our society. Our culture-wide inability to recognize and speak the truth is an unsustainable attack on reality. The way we find it impossible to have strong disagreements without hating our opponents is ending our ability to communicate about the things that matter. Many sins contend for the destruction of America. Those obvious sins get lots of attention. This week, I don’t want to talk about the obvious, butabout a destructive sin that hardly anyone talks about because hardly anyone recognizes it. That sin is the love of money. Before we can understand how this sin is silently destroying our country, it is necessary to understand how it is destroying you.  The Impact of the Love of Money on You The Bible talks about the love of money and its impact on us in 1 Timothy 6:10, “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.” Understanding the nature of this sin requires us to be very clear in at least two ways. First, money is not evil and is not the root of evil. It is the love of money that is the problem not the use of it. Second, we need to be clear what the nature of the love of money is. In a world where we are all deal with money it can be hard to distinguish between the faithful use of money and the sinful love of money. Jesus helps us in Matthew 6:24 when he says, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” Jesus makes the critical issue one of service to a master. Money is a useful tool when used to serve God, but becomes a tyrant when you serve it as a master. We love money when we place it above God and others and in hearts and try to follow its demands instead of God’s. When that switch happens in our heart, the use of money becomes the love of money, we sin, and we are on track for disaster. This biblical truth completely revolutionizes the way we naturally think about money. Every human being has a sinful love of money that typically goes unchecked and unquestioned. Most misidentify the sinful of the love of money as wisdom, good stewardship, or the pursuit of blessings. But the Bible is clear that the love of money is incredibly dangerous. It is at the root of any number of wicked realities. The Apostle Paul makes clear that the love of money is more than enough to lead you away from Jesus and into a horrible world of pangs, affliction, and difficulty. When money takes over your heart, you are guaranteed to get curses rather than blessings. The curses created by the love of money are not limited to our individual lives but extend out to our entire country.   Our Love of Money Is Destroying Our Country If you want to understand the destruction that the love of money creates in our country, there is no clearer place to look than the national debt. The American national debt is now well over $40 Trillion. That is an absolutely staggering amount of money. To help you get the idea, imaginecreating a line of dollar bills laid out end to end. If you did that with every dollar of American debt, you would create a trail of money long enough to stretch to the moon and back over 8,200 times. That same trail of money could wrap around the earth’s equator over 157,000 times. If it doesn’t help to think about a physical trail of money, it may help to understand that, according to the Senate Joint Economic Committee, the national debt in the United States has each American household on the hook for almost $300,000. Whatever your current financial liabilities are, you need to add those six figures to it. Our debt is not only massive but is growing at incredible speed. The United States brings in roughly $5 Trillion of revenue each year but spends nearly $7 Trillion. The government closes the gap, not with new revenue, but with deficits. This all means that lately we have been adding debt at a rate of just over $2 Trillion a year. That means right now that American debt grows by over $4.5 Million every minute. By the time you finish Truth in These Days this week the United States will have added over $45 Million of debt. Since last week’s Truth in These Days, we have added almost $46 Billion to our national total. Unfortunately, no government leader today has any plan to stop the destructive borrowing much less a strategy to begin paying down our debt. No Republican or Democrat is leading any effort to help our government know how to live within its already massive means of $5 Trillion. And the honest truth is that it is not even really their fault. The blame lies with you and me, the citizens of history’s most indebted nation. Our politicians have figured out who we are and what we want. They know the people who vote them in to office would rather have someone who makes pretend promises of free stuff than someone who tells the truth that nothing is free, and bills always come due. American politicians have become experts in our sinful the love of money. Unfortunately, we are all dunces regarding the truth that this love is the root of all evil and will lead to our personal and national destruction. No person and no nation can outrun reality. It is impossible to borrow endlessly without dire consequences sooner or later.  The Solution to the Problem? To begin to solve such a massive problem, anyone with the authority and responsibility to impact the American national debt has a moral obligation to be more responsible, to develop a plan tolive within our national means, and must begin an aggressive repayment of our national obligations. But most of you will not be in any position to make these kinds of impacts. So here are four solutions that normal Christians can begin to make to address America’s catastrophic problem with debt driven by the love of money. First, attack the love of money in your own heart with contentment. The Bible does not only describe the devastating problem of the love of money but gives instructions about how to address it. Hebrews 13:5 says, “Keep your life free form the love of money, and be content with what you have . . .” The Bible tells us to fight the love of money with an attitude of contentment. Contentment is the ethical opposite of the covetousness behind the love of money. A crucial indicator of the love of money is the constant search for more: more clothes, more shoes, more house, more stockpiling of resources. Those of us constantly on the prowl for the newer, the bigger, the better, and the different will eventually learn that it is impossible to satisfy covetous desires. Instead, we need to learn to cultivate contentment by looking to what the Lord has already given and learning to be grateful for what we have instead of constantly greedy for what we do not.  Second, attack the love of money in your own heart with trust. Earlier, I partially quotedHebrews 13:5, but here is the rest of it, “Keep your life free form the love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’” The author of Hebrews believed the people who needed to follow the command to keep their lives free from the love of money also need to hear the divine promise that God will never leave or forsake his people. That means another problem behind the love of money is worry. We lust after more money because of our fears that disaster will strike, that we will not have what we need, and that our provision depends ultimately on us. The sin of worry looks at life as though God doesn’t exist. That is why the author of Hebrews reminds us that the God who is loves us and is always with us to care for us. None of us will probably ever have all the money we need to make us feel secure. But that is ok. God loves us and we can trust him to give us what we need, rather than fighting to provide it ourselves. Third, attack the love of money in your own heart with generosity. The Bible offers a surprisingly counterintuitive solution to the problem of the love of money. This solution comes from the mouth of Jesus when he says in Acts 20:35 that, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” The lie of the love of money is that you need more and more stuff to make you happy. The truth of the Word of God is that generous giving is better for your soul than constant consumption. The ultimate proof of this is found in the work of Jesus. We read in 2 Corinthians 8:9, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” Jesus demonstrated the overwhelming blessing of giving by offering his life so that everyone who believes could enjoy the riches of eternal life. And now, God’s Word invites God’s people to share in the riches of generous giving. 2 Corinthians 9:6 says, “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.” The Bible is clear that anyone who desiresto receive generous Kingdom blessings must make generous Kingdom investments. Increasingnumbers of Christians must replace our fantasies of buying bigger houses, nicer cars, and more clothes with dreams of investing in the Kingdom in order to shine the name of Jesus in our churches and reach our communities for Christ.  Finally, we can attack the love of money in the political realm by supporting sane candidates for office. Christians, at the very least, must stop bei

Capital Punishment, Pope Leo IX, and Roller Coasters:Three Surprising Life Lessons from News about the Death PenaltyHeath Lambert  Christa Pike and the Death Penalty Americans have been paying special attention to the death penalty lately because of severalstories in the news, not least is the one about Christa Pike. Pike was found guilty of the brutal murder of Colleen Slemmer in 1995 and was scheduled, on September 30, to be the first woman executed by the state of Tennessee in over 200 years. As everyone now knows, that is not what happened, and her extraordinary story has three surprising lessons to teach Christians.  Human Life Is Precious The first lesson is that all human life is precious.  Protests are common whenever a criminal faces the death penalty. The protests come from those who argue it is unjust for the state to execute almost anyone. Their argument is that even the murder of another human being is not a reason to eliminate someone’s life. Many were making that argument about Christa Pike before her scheduled execution on September 30. When officials botched her execution that argument only became stronger.  Christians certainly share the conviction that life is precious. Together with those who object to the death penalty, we agree that the lives of murderers are no less valuable than the lives of theirvictims. The value of human life is found in the fact that human beings are made in the image of God. It is that inherent value and worth that is the moral foundation of the death penalty. In Genesis 9:6, God says, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” The value and worth of every human being means that anyone who would take the life of another ought to forfeit their own.  This obviously biblical teaching has been embraced by the church for millennia. But last weekend objections to this clear biblical principle came from a surprising source. That gets to another surprising lesson we can learn.  We Do Not Need a Pope That second lesson is that Christians do not need a pope.  The cultural confusion around the tragedy of Christa Pike was made worse with some comments by Pope Leo XIV. Before I reference those comments, it is important to acknowledge that the Pope disclosed this week a cancer diagnosis that he has received. Reports are that the Pope received his diagnosis early and that his treatment is proceeding well. All Christians should pray for Pope Leo. But on October 10, the Pope made confusing statements about the death penalty when he said on social media that, “The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” When Pope Leo refers to the inviolability and dignity of human beings, he is referring to their inherent value and worth that flows from the fact that they are made by God in his image. Pope Leo is certainly correct in affirming the inherent worth of human beings. But there are at least two problems with his statement. The first problem is that his conviction about the inadmissibility of the death penalty is blatantlyunbiblical. We saw from Genesis that God himself, said from his own mouth, that the death penalty is authorized because of the great value and worth of human life. Catholics believe the Pope speaks to the church on behalf of God. Unfortunately, in this case, the words of the Pope are directly contradicted by God himself.  The second problem with Pope Leo’s statement is that it is spoken by one who holds an office that is not biblical. Roman Catholics believe that the Pope, the Holy Father, is the successor of the Apostle Peter. Catholics believe this because they have been taught to believe it through years of tradition. But the office of Pope is neither taught in nor authorized by Scripture. God’s Word makes clear that spiritual authority is mediated by pastors that God raises up in local churches all over the world. The Bible never teaches that God governs his church through one man who shepherds a global flock.  Pope Leo, like everyone else on the planet, is more than entitled to his own position on the death penalty. He is, furthermore, well within his rights to express that opinion publicly. I am doing the very same thing right now. Even though Pope Leo’s view on the death penalty is incorrect, I do not wish him to have less freedom to express his position than I do mine. But when Pope Leo expresses his opinion, he is not doing it as a normal person or even as a religious leader. His opinion can only come in the formal capacity conferred upon him by the Roman Catholic Church. That means when Pope Leo shares his unbiblical opinion, he is doing it from the platform of an unbiblical office.  That makes Pope Leo’s statements more than merely confusing. When he errs in his pronouncements there is no authority within the church to correct him and his error has the potential to confuse billions of people. When God revealed in Scripture the leadership structure for the church, he had very good reasons for not giving us a pope.  In a Sinful World Everything Breaks A final lesson for Christians from news about the death penalty is that, in a sinful world, everything breaks. Romans 6:23 teaches that, “The wages of sin is death.” Sin pays out destruction to everything it touches in this wicked and corrupt world. In a sinful world everything is broken. A sinful world like this one is the only reality that explains the brutal murder by Christa Pike of Colleen Slemmer. A sinful world like this one is the only reality that explains her botched execution when two full doses of pentobarbital failed to end Pike’s life.  The brokenness of a sinful world damages our ability faithfully to meet out legitimate obligations to capital punishment. That is particularly clear with the failure of lethal injection the sole purpose of which is to end the life of criminals in as dignified a way as possible. Instead, in the case of Christa Pike, it resulted in a medical emergency, a stay in the hospital in critical condition, a potentially permanent disability, and the nearly unimaginable trauma of losing consciousness believing you were entering eternity only to wake up in a Tennessee hospital. These are the kinds of problems in the minds of Pike’s attorneys when they said, she has, “Endured punishment greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty.” This terrible reality was obviously no one’s intention. But in a sinful world everything breaks. And it is worse than that. This week, Hassan Kariem visited a Georgia amusement park with his family. While there, he got on the Goliath roller coaster, was ejected from the ride when his seat restraint apparently failed, and he fell to this death at the age of 42. That is a tragic picture of the devastation of sin in this broken world. In the same week a guilty woman laid on an executioner’s table and survived, while an innocent man sat in a roller coaster for fun and was killed.  In Tennessee, there is an investigation to determine what went wrong with Pike’s execution, and in Georgia there is an investigation to determine what went wrong with that roller coaster. That is all as it should be. When disaster strikes those with responsibility must seek to understand what went wrong and try to fix it.  But no human being can possibly fix the root problem of sin and the devastation that it always brings. That means, for now, we are all trapped in a world where disastrously awful things happen for inexplicable reasons. In such a world our only hope is Jesus Christ. Hebrews 9:26 says of Jesus that, “He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” The solution to sin and all its devastation is the death of the perfect Son of God on the cross to erase the power and penalty of sin, and, ultimately, its presence. For anyone who trusts in Jesus we experience the ongoing brokenness of a sinful world with everyone else. But our great hope is that one day Jesus himself will empower our escape from this terrible world of sin and enter us into a world of righteousness, peace, and joy that will never end.