Tommy Mann

In Psalm 21 David is praising God for delivering him from his enemies in battle. In the ninth verse he says, “You will make them as a blazing oven when you appear. The LORD will swallow them up in his wrath, and fire will consume them.”   That is terrifying imagery, as the previous verse said God would “find out” all His enemies. I know some people do not believe in a literal hell, and while it is true that word does not appear in this psalm, the idea of unbelievers in the afterlife is always associated with fire, as they are depicted here in a blazing oven. When I hear this phrase, blazing oven, I can’t help but think of the three bold young men Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who were thrown into a fiery furnace for refusing to worship Nebuchadnezzar’s golden idol. But they were not harmed by the fire because there was a Fourth Man in the furnace with them, none other than Jesus, the Son of God. They were protected from the flames, even though they technically deserved it for br...

  Two famous men lived at the same time in the mid 19 th   Century. One was Charles Spurgeon, one of the most beloved men to ever stand in the pulpit. The other man was Karl Marx, the communist leader whose ideals resulted in the death of millions of people around the world.     Part of Marx’s strategy was to supplant Christianity because he viewed it as the greatest obstacle to his goals. Recognizing this, Spurgeon was an outspoken critic of both Marx and his socialist ideals. This was more than just political disagreements, but was Christianity vs. atheism. Marx was successful in turning many pastors towards socialism, but it was a Godless religion, one that minimized the cross and the sacrifice of Jesus.   Marx wrote  The Communist Manifesto,  but he didn’t write alone. He had a coauthor named Friedrich Engels. Engels was asked near the end of his life who was the one person he disliked most in the world, and he replied with one word: Spurgeon. The ...

I can still remember my coach’s old mantra, “How you practice is how you’ll play.” If you goof off in practice, you will goof off in the game; but if you take practice seriously and treat it as if it is the game, then when the whistle blows you will do what has become second nature. How you practice is how you will play.   John would agree with my coach, but he was more concerned with how Christians practice in the game of life. In 1 John 3:7 the Apostle wrote, “Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous.” Let no one deceive you. This is common sense stuff, so don’t listen to the false teachers that will tell you otherwise. You must practice righteousness if you want to be righteous. You must make a habit of doing the right thing, every time, even when no one is looking. Day in and day out we must do the right thing because Jesus is righteous, and we should be as well. What you practice is how you’ll live. In v.8 John c...

At next week's Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting, messengers will vote on a resolution stating that we favor banning pornography, and this is a measure that I will support.   As Christians we should oppose any form of pornography because of God’s Word. In Matthew 5:27-28 Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” That is right before He said to pluck out one’s eye if it causes him to sin. John warned the church of the things in the world we should shun, which include the lusts of the flesh and the lusts of the eyes (I John 2:16). Job made a covenant with his eyes that he would not look at a woman in a lustful way (31:1). Plenty more examples can be cited from both Testaments.  But even if we could not make a plain case from the Bible, we should still oppose pornography for other reasons. Those who view porno...

  When teaching people how to read and apply the Bible, we often focus vertically and within. By vertically I mean our relationship with God in heaven. We ask questions of the passage like, “What does this teach me about God?” or “What promise from God can I claim in my life.” By focusing within I mean introspection. We ask questions of the passage like, “How can I demonstrate this positive trait in my life?” or “Am I guilty of making the same mistake this person made?” But in his book  Seven Arrows: Aiming Bible Readers in the Right Direction,  Matt Rogers mentions a horizontal element of application. By horizontal he means our relationship with other people, specifically, the church. He wrote: “The result of sin is that mankind is separated from one another, living in tension, division, and strife. The result of the Gospel is that all of those who are in Christ can be united to one another by virtue of the fact that they have all been made part of God’s family. This fac...

  In 1 Kings 3 we read about King Solomon and his famous demonstration of wisdom. When two women came to him, both claiming to be the rightful mother of an infant, Solomon asked for a sword to be brought to him so he could divide the child in two and give each woman half.   The rightful mom said she would rather give the baby to the other woman than to see her son hurt, and thus revealed herself to be the true mother. But in that same chapter, before the king is threatening to divide a baby, he shows us that he was divided within himself. Here is what the third verse says: “Solomon loved the LORD, walking in the statutes of David his father, only he sacrificed and made offerings at the high places.” How is it possible to love the Lord and offer sacrifices at the high places? That means he brought offerings to other gods, the ones worshipped by his many wives. Solomon followed the practice of political polygamy, marrying the daughters of other heads of state to form alliances. ...