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The Sword and the Blog 

A Response to a Response to a Gospel Tract

8/1/2018

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One of the ways that our church works to proclaim the gospel is through distributing gospel tracts and literature.   One of our newest pamphlets includes a photo of an aborted baby.   This tract is used to expose the evil of abortion and other sins that have become rampant in Clark county.  We have received a lot of different responses to this tract.   Yesterday we received this message:

Thank you so much for the pamphlet of the aborted fetus that my young child found!
You bastardize the word of God, and turn Jesus's beautiful message of love, tolerance and forgiving into self serving ugliness.
Shame on you, shame on your blackened misguided heart, and shame on you for traumatizing my innocent young child. Pigs

"I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive. "
Notice how the person used the word "aborted fetus."  That is a clue to what they really think about abortion.  I decided to write them a response.  This is it:
Greetings in name of Christ,
My name is Joseph Spurgeon. I am the pastor of Sovereign King Church. We received a message from you regarding a pamphlet you received or found. We understand your concern about your small child. We love children which is one of the reasons that we work to put an end to the holocaust that is happening in our land. 3000 of the smallest children are murdered in Louisville, Kentucky every year. Many of those murdering their children are from Clark County. The Bible teaches us to not take part in the wicked deeds of evil but rather to expose them. Our pamphlet, we realize exposes evil in a rather blunt way. We live in a culture that has become dull to the sins it tolerates and even celebrates.
Many who profess Christ have been deceived by smooth and flattering speech of men who are slaves not to the Lord but to their own sinful lusts. The book of Jude warns against these false teachers who creep in unnoticed, “those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”- Jude 1.4
These false teachers have created a Jesus who is more akin to a hippy psychologist teaching tolerance to sin rather than the Jesus of the Bible who said it would be better to cut off your right hand than to use it for sin and go into hell. They have rejected the God of the Bible who hates sin so much that the only way that a sinner can come into his presence is by the bloody sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Yes, Jesus did teach love and he did come to pay for the sins of his people and thus bring forgiveness but his love is not the easy-going, turn a blind eye to sin, never offend someone kind of love. His love speaks truth. His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, convicts us of sin so that we may be humbled, acknowledging our total helplessness apart from the work of Jesus on the cross.
It is our intention in the pamphlet you received to speak truthfully and bluntly about the sin of our county. We love Clark county enough to see it with eyes open. If you took the time to read the entire pamphlet, you also will realize that we acknowledge and own Clark county’s sin as our own. We realize that we are sinners who have spurned the word of God. We are pigs and worse than that. We do not deserve the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.
The beautiful thing is that He gives his grace and mercy to sinners. God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble. You and I both need even his grace to be humble. I am dependent upon his mercy and grace daily. Praise God! He is a good Father who gives grace. Our mission has never been to puff ourselves up but to expose sin and point people to the help for their sin. We realize that this pamphlet will not make us many friends. We realize that many will just become angry and respond with hatred for the truth. We believe that the Holy Spirit will use the proclamation of God’s word even in a pamphlet to convict people of their sins and then point them to Jesus. The Holy Spirit may also use it to harden the hearts of those in their sin so that they reject Christ. We trust the Holy Spirit to do his work. Our task is simply to be faithful.
Anyways, I thank you for reaching out to us. I hope you will have the opportunity to teach your small child about the gospel of Jesus. Teach your child that children are a gift from God. As a small child they can be used by God to put an end to something as wicked as abortion. You will be surprised at what a young child being taught the truth will understand. For example, most likely the pamphlet you received was put on your vehicle by a young child. The children of our church love to hand out gospel tracts and literature against abortion. Some of them were doing that this week.
May God bless you,
Joseph Spurgeon
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Abandoned by the Elves

3/7/2018

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Ephesians 3:13-19 NASB Therefore I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf, for they are your glory. For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,  from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,  that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,  so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
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Paul suffered significantly to take this good message abroad. He was despised as a traitor by the Jews and mocked as foolish by the gentiles. The Jews ran Paul out of their synagogues, had him beaten, and tried to stone him to death. Paul proclaimed that Christ is Lord over all nations, Christ is King of Kings. Yet those nations and those kings imprisoned Paul.

The temptation for the churches that Paul had planted was to be ashamed of Paul. They were tempted to want nothing to do with him because they feared persecution.

“Paul, you are doing things the wrong way and you are causing problems for all of us other Christians. If you would just calm down a bit, perhaps they wouldn’t hate you so much and they wouldn’t hate us. Paul, if you were more like Jesus they wouldn’t persecute you.”

Paul knows they will be tempted to be ashamed. 
In Verse 13 he says, “Therefore I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf, for they are your glory.” Don’t be ashamed of the persecutions I am facing. They are for you. They are so that I can take the gospel to the nations.
Just as bad, they would also be tempted to lose faith when they saw Paul being persecuted. If the one who had planted their church was being persecuted, what could they possibly hope for. How could they possible stand when the time came for them. Paul says don’t lose heart. Don’t lose faith, these tribulations I am facing are for you.

Paul who was mocked, despised, persecuted for Christ, and who the church would be tempted to be ashamed of or lose faith over then says in verse 14: "For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. " He bows his knees before the Father. Even though Paul from a worldly perspective had reason to complain, grumble, or rebel, he didn’t. Rather than thinking of himself, in humble submission he bows his knees and prays for the church in Ephesus. Rather than becoming bitter at those who would be tempted to be ashamed of him, he is concerned for them. Rather than focusing on the the tribulations he was facing, his worry was that they would be strengthened. And so he bows the knee.

Those of us engaged in certain ministries that are confrontational, i.e. abortion ministry,  often face deep persecution and hatred by the world.  As we are persecuted,  other Christians often are   tempted to despise us, be ashamed of us, or lose faith.

 We often feel like the dwarves at the beginning of the Hobbit movie who watched the elves abandon them in the battle. 

We cry out to the Lord, "where are all your people?"  When grow tired and frustrated at other Christians who aren't involved in the same ways we are or who on the surface don't seem involved in any battle at all.
We can respond in one of two ways. One, we can start despising them, be ashamed of them, and lose faith in them. We can become those who constantly belittle the church.  In our minds, all pastors are out to build their own kingdoms.  We can complain about the ministry industrial complex.  We don't need them anyways, they are just a bunch of ecclesiasticrats. 


Or we can bow the knee to our heavenly Father and pray that our brothers and sisters are strengthened by the Holy Spirit so that Christ may dwell in their hearts by faith, and that they may know the fullness of the love of God. We can have true concern for other believers who may be called to other battles.  We can gently encourage, exhort, and call for our brothers to join in the battles God calls them to. If we love the Father we will love all the Fatherhood that gets its name from him.

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