Moore to the Point
By Russell D. Moore. Russell D. Moore serves as the teaching pastor at Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky. In addition, Dr. Moore is the Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Find sermons and other resources to help Christians engage the culture from a biblical worldview at www.russellmoore.com.

Why Fannie Lou Hamer Is a Name You Should Know

— Friday, October 31st, 2008 —

A few days ago I mentioned on my Twitter feed that I was enjoying a new biography of Fannie Lou Hamer, one of my heroes. I was surprised to hear almost immediately from my former student here at Southern Seminary, Regina Gibson, who now serves with LifeWay Christian Resources as a specialist for ministry to young adult women.

It turns out, Mrs. Hamer was Regina’s great aunt. Regina didn’t know she was famous, just that she meant a lot to her family. Regina’s aunt is famous, all right–but not as famous as she should be. You can read Regina’s thoughts on Mrs. Hamer here.

Fannie Lou Hamer is a name all Christians should know. She was a civil rights activist in Ruleville, Mississippi, in Sunflower County. Her name is not as celebrated as some other, more famous, figures in the civil rights movement, but it should be. She was a committed Christian who believed the Bible taught the dignity of all those made in the image of God, and she suffered much for it. She is the one who said so memorably that she was “sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

She also understood that she wrestled not against flesh and blood so she refused to hate her enemies, even those who with their sneering white supremacy were quite easy to hate.

What Vampire Romance Novels Tell Us About Our Mission Field

— Friday, October 31st, 2008 —

This morning’s Halloween edition of the Wall Street Journal looks at the trend of “paranormal romance novels,” books in which the heroine falls in love with a vampire, a werewolf, or a shape-shifting warlock.

Journalist Laura Miller thinks there’s some cultural importance to the fact that this genre is selling so well among American women. She writes:

“Here lies one of the unique pleasures that the vampire romance can provide for its female readers: the opportunity to enjoy an 18th- or 19th-century courtship while remaining a 21st-century woman.

“The problem with historical romances is that if you want a man who behaves like Mr. Darcy, you have to live within the constraints imposed upon a woman like Elizabeth Bennet; in addition to the lack of voting rights, credit cards and any chance of pursuing a profession, there is the fun-squashing little matter of virginity taboos. In order to bask in the chivalry of a Regency-era gentleman, a modern woman can be magically transported back to his time (another popular romance device), but she’ll still be stuck in a society where she hasn’t mastered the rules and her freedoms are severely curtailed.

“Make the gentleman immortal and he brings with him into her modern world not only his ancestral estate and fortune, but an anachronistic understanding of how to treat a lady. Replete with old money, the vampire hero has plenty of leisure time to embroil himself in politics (fictional vampire societies tend to be complex and conspiracy-ridden hierarchies) and to woo the heroine.”

I find all this a little creepy, and very sad. What does it tell us about the American sexual-industrial complex that women feel a need to fantasize about undead blood-feeders in order to imagine a courtship in which men are less, well, predatory than they seem right now?

Seven Reasons Why Halloween Judgment Houses Win So Few People to Christ

— Friday, October 31st, 2008 —

1. They’re not scary enough. To speak of hell, Jesus used the imagery of a garbage dump overrun with worms, a place where babies were once sacrificed to demons (Mark 9:43-48). Teenagers in plastic red devil masks and styrofoam pitchforks usually don’t convey what it means to “fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb 10:31). The answer isn’t better technology, though, since nothing we could conjure up can convey the anguish of the damned walled off from relationship with God.

2. They assume people’s problem is that they don’t know about judgment. But the Bible says they do. All of us have embedded within us a conscience that points us to the Day of Judgment (Rom 2:15-16). We have a “fearful expectation of judgment” (Heb 10:27). The problem is we block it out of our minds, diverting ourselves with other things. The problem isn’t that lost people don’t hate hell enough. It’s that they don’t love Christ. Hell is the Abyss they run into in their flight from him.

3. They abstract judgment from the love of God. I know most “Judgment Houses” present the gospel at the end. But in the Bible the good news doesn’t come at the end. The prodigal son leaves the father’s house, but the father is eager to receive him back (Luke 16:11-31). The awful news of God’s judgment is always intertwined in Scripture with the message of the gospel of a loving, merciful God. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).

4. They abstract judgment from the glory of God. The prophet Isaiah doesn’t see that he’s “undone” first by the horror of judgment. He sees it in light of the glory of God’s presence (Isa 6:1-6). The Apostle John tells us the glory Isaiah saw was Jesus of Nazareth (12:47). When we preach Jesus, the glory of God breaks through (2 Cor 4:6). Some people recoil at that light; some people run to it (John 3:19-21).

5. It’s hard to cry at a Judgment House.

A Theology of Laryngitis

— Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 —

Scattered about my desk right now are about fifteen Sugar-Free Ricola cough drop wrappers, and a lukewarm cup of some grassy herbal tea. I’ve lost my voice. Again. This has happened before, several times. The weather changes. I’m over-commanding the chords. And then it’s gone.

The worst was my wedding day. Unable to croak out a sound, I feared I wouldn’t be able to repeat my vows in front of God and those witnesses, or even to say “I will.” So I spent that morning buying Fisherman’s Friend throat lozenges at Wal-Mart, that afternoon drinking some “Red Zinger” tea my aunt had souped up. Like Carol Brady just in time for her Christmas song solo, my laryngitis lifted, just before the ceremony.

But my voice is gone again, and I’m frustrated. I’m a pastor and a professor and an administrator. More importantly, I’m a dad, a husband, a friend. My connection to everyone important to me has been reduced to sterile text messages, banal emails, and a series of nods, waves, and homemade sign language. I notice now how often I try to sing along with Hank Williams, and nothing comes out. I notice how tempted I am to call friends to talk, and can’t make it happen.

Millennia ago, a blessed priest named Zechariah faced a far more terrifying round of laryngitis. When an angelic being appears to him in the temple, Zechariah questioned him regarding the message of a son named John who would soon be born to the priest and his wife Elizabeth. The angel removes the priest’s voice. When Zechariah leaves the temple, the people gathered around, but he couldn’t teach, couldn’t explain. Instead, “he kept making signs to them and remained mute” (Luke 1:22).

I never paid that much attention until this morning as to why this was so significant.

Sermon Manuscript of “Joseph Is a Single-Issue Evangelical”

— Monday, October 27th, 2008 —

Joseph Is a Single-Issue Evangelical: The Father of Jesus, the Cries of the Helpless, and Change You Can Believe In

A Sermon Preached by Russell D. Moore

Alumni Memorial Chapel

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

October 16, 2008

I played a cow in my first grade Christmas pageant. And I had more lines than the kid who played Joseph. The cattle were lowing and the babies were awake, but Joseph never really had much to say. He seemed to be not much more than a prop for Mary and the doll in the manger, the one who merely shrugged his shoulders and stood beside her when the innkeeper said there was no room in the inn. But the way in which Joseph was portrayed in this play was not altogether uncommon. For many of us think of Joseph as nothing more than a bit character in the biblical storyline. Matthew, however, portrays him as something vastly different than that in this text. He presents Joseph as a character in a story–a story that has played out before and is essential to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Matthew informs us in the first chapter that Joseph was a just and righteous man; the Holy Spirit even commends his life and faith. We see this same walk of faith in the writing of one of Joseph’s other sons, James, who was the pastor of the church at Jerusalem and writes about religion that is “pure and undefiled,” that visits “orphans and widows in their affliction,” (James 1:27) and speaks of faith as not merely agreeing to a set of facts but as something that lives and breathes and carries itself out into life. What I want to ask this morning is, could it be that the kind of tumult around us as we carry out the mission of the church, as we seek to reclaim and expand upon the legacy that has been given before, could that same kind of tumult have surrounded this man Joseph? And could it be that the walk of faith that God commanded and commended in Joseph of Nazareth is the very walk of faith that he still calls us to today?

Jesus Doesn’t Keep the Minimum Wage Laws: Following Christ When God Doesn’t Seem Fair (Matt 20:1-16)

— Sunday, October 26th, 2008 —

Economic Collapse Isn’t the Worst Case Scenario: Why It’s Hard to Walk Away from Security and Toward Jesus (Matt 19:13-30)

— Sunday, October 19th, 2008 —

Joseph of Nazareth Is a Single-Issue Evangelical: The Father of Jesus, the Cries of the Helpless, and Change You Can Believe In

— Thursday, October 16th, 2008 —

Joseph of Nazareth Is a Single-Issue Evangelical

— Thursday, October 16th, 2008 —

This morning, Oct. 16, Dr. Russell Moore preached in our chapel service at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. The title of the sermon was, “Joseph of Nazareth Is a Single-Issue Evangelical: The Father of Jesus, the Cries of the Helpless, and Change You Can Believe In” (Matt 2:13-23). You can listen to the semon here.

Posted by Robert E. Sagers, Special Assistant to the Senior Vice President at Southern Seminary.

Jesus Didn’t Die for a Campus Ministry: The Spiritual Danger of Unchurched Spirituality

— Monday, October 13th, 2008 —

Katherine grinned slightly as she saw the banner out of the edge of her eye. “Welcome Back Students,” it read. The sign hung above the familiar brick building that, despite the cold, seemed to radiate with warmth and light, as students played table tennis inside. This was Katherine’s campus ministry group headquarters, a place very different from the awkward, often dead, congregation she knew back home. Here she learned to share her faith, and to cry with hurting friends. Here she learned that Christianity was about more than the Southern Gospel quartet tunes and awkward church committee meetings she’d seen at her home church. This seemed like home.

Many college and university students know exactly why Katherine resonates more with her campus ministry than with any particular local church. A campus ministry can be unmatched in helping students connect with other like-minded believers, especially in an ideologically hostile academic or social setting. Campus ministries can help equip Christian students to defend the faith, to serve the poor, to be held accountable to one another. A good campus ministry is a gift from our Christ. But it is no church.

The reason many college students identify primarily with a campus ministry rather than with a church is not because of any flaw in most campus ministry organizations. It is because, too often, we evangelical Christians have a deficient view of the church. We assume that it is any gathering of people who believe in Jesus and who do churchly things. Many Christians assume the church exists simply to help us learn more about Christ and pool our resources for missions. If that’s the case, a campus ministry can do all those things, and more. But the Scriptures tell us the church is much more than that.