Backpack Radio: Oneness Theology and the Trinity [01/16/11]

Oneness Theology and the Trinity [01/16/11]

Backpack Radio is a weekly program featuring the pastoral staff of Roosevelt Community Church. The focus of BPR is street-level apologetics for the 21st Century. We also hit on doctrinal issues, too.

Oneness Theology is sometimes called Oneness Pentecostalism. Prominent examples of Oneness Pentecostals include TD Jakes, Tommy Tenney, and even cult leader Arnold Murray. Big denominations include the United Pentecostal Church International (UPCI) and many of the Apostolic branches. Adherents claim that their non-trinitarian view of God is biblical and simpler - but is this the case? These are some of the issues we explore in this program, where we even interact with some clips from a Oneness Pentecostal pastor from New Mexico.

URL LINK: http://backpack.podbean.com/2011/01/17/oneness-theology-and-the-trinity-011611/

TO DOWNLOAD: http://backpack.podbean.com/mf/web/hbak92/1-16-2011-BPR.mp3

Bible Reading Plans for 2011

Best Bible Reading Plans for 2011

There are many Bible reading plans to choose from for the new year, but perhaps the best place to start for the most options is the ESV reading plan. They offer multiple reading plans and methods of subscribing, such as RSS feeds, iCal schedules, daily emails, mobile access, and printable plans. The ESV site also allows you to listen to the audio as well. The ESV Bible Podcasts are probably some of the best daily audio plans for reading through the Bible in a year.

Check out the ESV Bible reading plan here. 

There's also a selection of plans available at: http://www.youversion.com/reading-plans/all
Happy New Year!

NOTE: this is a re-post from my homie Brian Auten over @Apologetics315

Thoughts After the Sermon, “God’s Adoption Plan for Eternity to Come” Romans 8:18-30

Thoughts After the Sermon, “God’s Adoption Plan for Eternity to Come” Romans 8:18-30

by Vermon Pierre, Lead Pastor

Some reminders and further thoughts from last Sunday’s sermon, “God’s Adoption Plan for Eternity to Come” Romans 8:18-30:

1. All creation is looking forward to and depending on the adoption of Christian believers as sons of God. All the renewing glory that our world is meant to experience will come in the wake of God fully completing his plan to adopt us into his family.

2. The Holy Spirit will help us along the way to that final reality. The Holy Spirit has been given to us to encourage, motivate, remind, and even pray for us as we travel towards eternity. Prayer is an especially important way the Spirit helps us, since prayer helps us to address and overcome the anxieties of life we must face before we reach the end of our journey (Philippians 4:6-7).

3. God himself serves as the guarantee that we will reach the end of the journey and live forever with our Father God in a renewed cosmos. God choose us for himself since the beginning of time, intending to adopt us and make us like Jesus. This is God’s plan. He has ensured this plan and he will most certainly complete his plan.

Thoughts After the Sermon, “God’s Adoption Plan from Eternity Past” Ephesians 1:3-6

Thoughts After the Sermon, “God’s Adoption Plan from Eternity Past” Ephesians 1:3-6

by Vermon Pierre, Lead Pastor

Some reminders and further thoughts from last Sunday’s sermon, “God’s Adoption Plan from Eternity Past” (Ephesians 1:3-6):

1. God chose you to be his son. Always guard your heart against apathy or indifference about that statement. Before there was anything, before there was even time, God set his heart and mind on the believer, determining to graciously love us to the point of death and sacrifice. He was willing to risk the perfection within himself so that we might join him in his perfection.

2. God loved us in spite of ourselves. You could say that God had the file on us beforehand. He knew how naturally disobedient and destructive we were. He knew how totally opposite were from him, preferring selfishness, ugliness, greed, and lust instead of his grace, beauty, righteousness and love. God knew all of this – and still he decided to adopt us.

3. Being in Christ means that believers have a fundamentally new identity. “In Christ” is our last name now, and will be our last name forever. This identity gives meaning and purpose to every experience of life. Those who have “weak” identities in our city (like for example the poor, the immigrant, the orphan, the single parent) have an identity that will never perish or fade, an identity imbued with all the forever blessings that are possible in this universe.

4. Being adopted by God means we now act like our God and our new Father. God choose us for himself so that we might be like him, “holy and blameless.” Certainly one example of how God acts is in how he  loved us with a gracious, predestinating love. In what ways are you choosing to graciously love people, whoever they are, or even in spite of who they are?

5. From Henry Alford, “The end, God’s end, in our predestination to adoption, is, that the glory,—glorious nature, brightness and majesty, and kindliness and beauty,—of His grace might be an object of men and angels’ praise: both as it is in Him, ineffable and infinite,—and exemplified in us, its objects.”

Thoughts After the Sermon, "What Do You Really Want?" Exodus 20:17

Thoughts After the Sermon, “What Do You Really Want?” Exodus 20:17

by Vermon Pierre, Lead Pastor

Some reminders and further thoughts from last Sunday’s sermon, “What Do You Really Want?” (Exodus 20:17):

1. Desires are normal. Desires are good. The problem comes when normal good desires become obsessive desperate craving desires. These are the kind of desires that enslave us. They lead us to spending lots of time desperately trying to attain things, people, status . And the sad truth is that what we are seeking after is not really worth seeking after in the first place! We go after things that aren’t worth what we think they are worth. And even when we attain them, we soon find ourselves with new yearnings for something more and better than what we just attained.

2. God ransoms us from the slavery of our desires through Jesus Christ. And now in Christ, we are given new and better desires. Desires for things that will last forever! We stop running the race of this world, filled with cheap pathetic prizes, and instead run the race of the kingdom of heaven, where the prizes are things like an unfading crown of glory, a powerful glorious imperishable body, and a home forever with God.

3.Desiring  after God’s eternal kingdom gives the motivation to want the best for other people. We now see each relationship as potentially being an eternal relationship through Jesus Christ. So we won’t covet what our neighbor has but rather desire God’s eternal best for our neighbor.

4. Desiring after God’s kingdom serves as the constant reminder we need to be content with what we have right now. See for example 1 Timothy 6:10-12 and Hebrews 13:5-6. Grabbing hold of and cherishing the eternal life we will have and indeed already have with God through Christ is what will help us be content during the short human life we are living right now, no matter if we have a lot or a little during that life.

5. As always, it’s ultimately all about having Jesus. In a real sense, what we must do is appreciate that we have all we need already in Jesus. What we need to do is continue holding on to him and see how he meets every need, want, and desire that should come as time goes on if we keep holding on to him. The Psalmist puts it well for us, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God [i.e. our Lord Jesus] is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” (Psalm 73:25-26)

6. From D.A. Carson’s devotional book, For the Love of God:

“Christians make their evaluations in the light of eternity. ‘The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever’ (1 John 2:17). Pity the person whose self-identity and hope rest on transient things. Ten billion years into eternity, it will seem a little daft to puff yourself up over the car you now drive, the amount of money or education you have received, the number of books you owned, the number of times you had your name in the headlines. Whether or not you have won an Academy Award will then prove less important than whether or not you have been true to your spouse. Whether or not you were a basketball star will be less significant than how much of your wealth you generously gave away. The one “who does the will of God lives forever” (1 John 2:17).

Thoughts After the Sermon, “Respecting Human Life” (Exodus 20:13)

Thoughts After the Sermon, “Respecting Human Life” Exodus 20:13

by Vermon Pierre, Lead Pastor

Some reminders and further thoughts from last Sunday’s sermon, “Respecting Human Life” (Exodus 20:13):

1. Human beings are made in the image of God. This is the essential point to understand and embrace. If you see that we are people made to uniquely represent God – to be like a high definition photograph of God – then that will begin to significantly influence how you think about and treat other people. It will make you someone who will want to stand for and defend the sanctity of life.

2. “While were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Rom 5:10). That means that while you and I were busy being murderers – murdering people but through hateful or angry thoughts or words or attitudes – God moved towards us through Jesus Christ. He gave him Son to rescue us murderers from a judgment we deserved and adopted us into a family we did not deserve. Wow! Thank you God for your grace and love!

Understanding YOUR adoption shapes your child’s understanding of THEIR adoption, part 3

All Things New

Last week we talked about where you came from and who you were before your adoption in Christ.  It wasn’t a pretty picture.  Now let’s look at who you are in your new adopted family. (Please take some time to look up and read these passages in their context)

1.  Because of adoption, you were given a new life

Ezekiel 11: 19-20:  “And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God”

Ephesians 2:  “And you WERE dead…BUT GOD…made us alive together in Christ…”

You were dead, but God made you alive.  He gave you a new life at great personal cost to himself. Because of Christ’s death and resurrection, you are no longer a child of the enemy.  You are now a child of God.  You are no longer enslaved to death.  You are now alive. When you hear the word “adoption” your first thought should be: life.

2.      Because of adoption, you were given a new identity

Galatians 4: “…you WERE enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.” but we were redeemed “…so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his son into our hearts crying, “Abba! Father! So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”

There are many other places in the NT that talk about how we are “no longer” slaves (Hebrews 2, Romans 6 & 8, Galatians 5) instead we are seen as sons and daughters of God! We were dirty, worthless, and had nothing to offer. We were not desirable.  Yet God adopted us and because of our adoption we now share in the inheritance of Christ! We are clothed in righteousness instead of sin.  We are beloved children instead of rebellious enemies. Our identity is now: Christ.  

3.      Because of adoption, you were given a new purpose

     
  Read 2 Corinthians 5: 16-21. The most quoted/known part of this passage is verse 17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation the old has passed away; behold the new has come.”  Take some time to read the context of this passage. We are told that because we are a new creation we are now given the ministry of reconciliation.  How beautiful! We are adopted into a family that has a purpose, a reason for existing. We were not just pardoned for our sin, but we were assigned the same purpose that God himself has for creation! We get to participate in his plan to redeem people to himself from every tribe, tongue, and nation.  This is only because of adoption. We could have been justified and sanctified without then being adopted by God, but because of adoption, we now share in Christ’s inheritance and purpose. Because we are sons and daughters of God we are duty bound to fulfill the ministry we have been called to.

How should our understanding of these truths influence the way we speak and think about us adopting children?

There are dozens of parallels, but a few stand out to me:

1.          You got a new name, so should they.  Despite what the world and psychologist may say, there is nothing wrong with it and name changing is a biblical concept.  You have a new name because you are now a new creation, so do not feel guilty about renaming your child.  There is something significant and meaningful about picking your child’s name. Since the beginning of time (Adam, Abraham,Isaac, Israel, etc) being assigned a name was important. You do not HAVE to give a new first name (We didn’t with Mya, but did with Marcel), but then at least assign a very meaningful middle name.  It is a powerful way to relate to your child since you both have new identities and new names, all because you were both adopted.  Marcel Vermon Pierre. Mya Hope Pierre. Judah Justice Pierre. I love to talk with Marcel and Mya (and someday Judah) about why we picked those names and how excited I am to also have a new name because of what Christ did for me!

2.       You should never fear that you are not equipped to help your child work through whatever comes up as a result of their past.  IF you understand who you were before Christ and who you are now that God has adopted you into his family THROUGH Christ, then EVERYTHING your child goes through you can personally relate to.  Every time Marcel speaks to me about his hurt or pain, his eyes light up when I share a story that mirrors his—only I speak of it through a spiritual lens. Your child was abused physically by a biological parent? You were abused spiritually by the devil. Your child was treated like dirt? You were a slave to dirt. Your child has uncommon fear?  You were owned by fear. Your child worries about being unlovable. You were unlovable. 
    My children have yet to share something with me that I could not relate to. Empathizing with their pain has been healing for my children and has knit us into a family. Our conversations always end with Marcel saying how thankful he is for having such a good God who loves him. 
 

3.         Too often I hear of women, unable to have children, desperate to be a mother, longing to begin the adoption process, yet their husbands refuse to adopt.  These men claim to be Christian, yet are unable to see a child they adopt as their own child.  Mother’s Day comes and goes each year and they allow their wives to remain barren, while God has given them a beautiful means to bear children through adoption. 
    Of course there is still great pain, loss, and heartache to work through when women cannot conceive, but that pain is different then the pain of being childless for life. That is a pain that is much deeper and greater. A pain no woman should have to go through for life against her will. It also does not compare to the pain of children being parentless. Also a pain that no child should have to face, but many do because too many Christians do not adopt.
    A husband who is struggling to joyfully pursue adoption when his wife desperately wants to be a mother should seek council from a pastor and ask the Holy Spirit to open their eyes to this gospel truth. Their minds need to be transformed and renewed by God’s word in relation to this truth.

I am convinced that Christians do not adopt because they do not understand their adoption biblically.  And to not understand the theology of adoption is to miss the heart of the gospel.  I pray that our churches would be full of men and women who come before God full of awe and wonder that he would adopt them.  I pray that the theology of adoption would so captivate our hearts that we are undone before our Lord and can’t help but look for ways to adopt children or support families who are positioned to adopt. I hope our churches are one day full of families begging for the chance to adopt a child that is in need of a family. This would so beautifully reflect what has already happened in heaven.

Thoughts After the Sermon, "A Name Above All Names" Exodus 20:7

Thoughts After the Sermon, “A Name Above All Names” Exodus 20:7

by Vermon Pierre, Lead Pastor

Some reminders and further thoughts from last Sunday’s sermon, “A Name Above All Names” (Exodus 20:7):

1. “Aseity” is the old time word that describes how God is a self-existing being (it comes from the Latin words a se which means “from himself”). It’s a word that’s worth reclaiming because it reinforces something very essential, namely that God is uniquely and solely God in the fullest sense of that word. He is dependent on nothing. He was never created; he has always simply existed as he is and will always exist as he is. It is because of who he uniquely is that we are called to honor him.

2. Taking the Lord’s name in vain isn’t just about not saying certain things. As was said during the sermon, the third commandment deals with how we represent God. If we represent God in ways other than he has revealed himself to us, than we have taken his name in vain.

3. Here are some of the ways in which we take the Lord’s name in vain:

a) We reduce his name – We make God less than he has revealed himself to be

b) We manipulate his name – God’s name becomes just a prop for us to justify
what we are doing or want to do

c) We dishonor his name – God’s name is in very casual and cheap ways in our
speech, our worship,and through the general way we live our lives.

d) We ignore his name – We don’t acknowledge God as someone we should respect
and honor.

4. A Christian is someone who’s been baptized into the name of the triune God (Matt 18:20). Specifically, this means that as believers bear the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the family name for all who commit themselves to God. It is his name, “Lord Jesus Christ,” that will last forever, and our names will only matter when they are point up to his name.

Understanding YOUR adoption shapes your child’s understanding of THEIR adoption, part 2

"Understanding YOUR adoption shapes your child’s understanding of THEIR adoption, part 2"

 by Dennae Pierre

Whose Your Daddy?

If you are a Christian, then you are adopted by God. Have you ever stopped to think about who your biological father is?

The Devil. Yes, the devil is your birth father. An evil, abusive father whom you were enslaved to.

Check out these verses and look how scripture talks about the unbeliever:

Acts 14:4-12

1 John 3:1-10

Hebrews 2:14-18

My point here is NOT to compare bio family to Satan. My point is that it is important for YOU to understand who your biological family was. You were born a slave to sin. Your thoughts, actions, and words were full of deceit, selfishness, lust, greed, and pride. When God looked at you, all he saw was a man or woman in total rebellion to him, partnering with Satan gearing up to plot an attack against himself and everything that is good, righteous, and holy.

1 Corinthians 6:11 lists a long list of terrible, wicked things and then says to the believers in the church, “and so were some of you!”

The moment you water down who you were before Christ, if you forget how wicked and unholy you really were, then the gospel begins to slip through your fingers. It is only in understanding how wicked you really were, how deserving of death and destruction you were, that you can begin to worship and praise God for his great grace in your life. If you truly believe that you deserved God’s wrath and judgment for your sin and that there was NOTHING you could do to earn his favor, NOTHING you could do to make yourself right in his eyes, then you can really accept that it is ONLY through Christ the God becoming man, suffering the punishment of our sins, that you are now a child of God.

You are not just forgiven. You are not just pardoned. That would have been gracious of God to stop there. But he didn’t. He then adopted you and made you his child. He became your father, your “Abba.” (Hebrew word for daddy)

SO, how does this relate to how we think and speak of adoption?

 

IF you understand your adoption by God and who your biological family was, then these words should not come out of your mouth (all of which I have heard too many times from Christian families):

“I have considered adoption, but what if the gene to be abusive/drug addicted/ alcohol addicted is in the baby I adopt? That would be too hard for me.”

“I’m afraid I couldn’t love a child that wasn’t [biologically] mine or a child that doesn’t look like me.”

“My child has all these attachment issues and it isn’t my fault…” (then the person usually goes on to explain all the issues that happened in the first few years of their life) side note: I have never met a child with special needs whose biological parent takes the time to explain biologically why their child has down syndrome, ADHD, and sensory problems.

“God just didn’t give me a heart for adoption.”

“We have no choice but to ship off our teen [who was adopted at birth] to some camp a few states away because they are causing too many problems, but it isn’t how we parented them—its because of their birth family’s issues…” another side note: I know several families who have had to send their biological children to similar places they sometimes take responsibility for what they did or simply say, “I have no idea why they ended up this way” they don’t blame it on something from their past.

“My child is disobedient, disrespectful, etc, because they were adopted. We’re just going to love them through it.”

Let’s pretend for a minute that God spoke the same way about us. Here is what he would say (fill your name in blank):

“_________is disobedient, disrespectful, etc, because they used to be a son of the devil. It’s ok though, I understand and will just ignore it and love him through it.”

Please understand that I am not trying to minimize some issues that your child may have as a result of abuse or trauma. I know it is real. When I was a social worker, I worked with hundreds of children who had very real struggles because of evil things that were done to them. A parent watching their child suffer over past hurts and wounds has real, deep pain. I weep over it as many adoptive parents do.

What I am trying to do is encourage us to stop speaking so negatively about children who are adopted as permanently wounded soldiers and to encourage you to reject false assumptions that a child you adopt will never be the same as a child you birth.

It is not true for us and our biological father was more evil and abusive then anything we could imagine. We were brainwashed, enslaved to the price of darkness…

BUT GOD…

Meditate on Ephesians 2:

"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Understanding YOUR adoption shapes your child’s understanding of THEIR adoption, part 1

"Understanding YOUR adoption shapes your child’s understanding of THEIR adoption, part 1"
by Dennae Pierre

Vermon and I are often asked how it is that our children were able to attach so quickly to our family. People also comment on how “lucky” we are that our children do not have any attachment disorders.

It would be dishonest to say that the relationship we have with Marcel and Mya now is the same that it was a year and a half ago. It did take time to attach and there were difficult moments, tears shed, and much prayer; however, all in all, our path of becoming a close family unit has been smooth, full of blessing, and fun.

I do not dismiss the fact that there are children who have attachment disorders, RAD, and issues related to drug exposure that may make the attachment process take longer. I also do not claim to be an expert on parenting or that we have done everything right. I am brought to tears as I think and praise the Lord for his GREAT grace in knitting our family together in the way that he has in such a short period of time. However, I do believe that the single best advice I can give to ANY parent who wants to know how to attach with their child whom they have adopted is to FIRST and FOREMOST understand YOUR adoption. If you do not understand YOUR ADOPTION by God through Christ Jesus then

do not adopt.

Yes, I said it. Do not adopt children unless you have first and foremost begun to think, meditate, study God’s word, and pray about the theology of YOUR ADOPTION by God. Many of the horror stories that the media portrays about adoption (or your friends tell you) come from the adoptive families not fully understanding God’s adoption of his people.

Over my next few posts I would like to explore different aspects of OUR ADOPTION by God and look at how the theology of adoption should then shape our thoughts about our family, our family values, and how we think and speak about our children.