Stopping to Think

  Photo by eberhard 🖐 grossgasteiger on Unsplash Colossians 2:13-15, "And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, triumphing over them in him." (English Standard Version) How do you see the cross? Do you look at it and see a place of defeat? Does it seem like the great tragedy of history? Paul tells us in Colossians 2 that the only defeat that day was suffered by Satan and his hordes. Not Christ. He triumphed at the cross. There he took the plan that Satan, and Judas, and the chief priests, and all the enemies of God meant for evil, and he turned them upside down. Instead of being defeated by death, he stole its power. "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the l...

  Photo by Trevin Rudy on Unsplash An (appreciative) Response to Michael W Martin and Bryan A Nash Introduction In their paper, “Philippians 2:6-11 as Subversive Hymnos” , Michael W. Martin and Bryan A. Nash argue that, though contested of late, the categorization of Philippians 2:6-11 as a hymn is correct. They do this by comparing the ancient rhetorical theory of hymnos with the text in question, and then looking at the key difference: Christ is praised for some most unusual reasons. The Marks of a Hymn Examining ancient textbooks which address the genre of hymnos, Martin and Nash first point to four markers which allow the identification of the hymnos genre (95-109). Species of rhetoric. There is a close relation between genres of hymnos and encomion , thus hymnos is set apart by the next three markers. Subject. Whereas encomion takes as its subject man, hymnos is dedicated to a god.  Length. Here both hymnos and encomion share length, as opposed to epainos , which are b...

 Yesterday our church celebrated its one year anniversary of meeting together as a local congregation. Our guest speaker was Mike Hulinsky, lead pastor at LeMars Bible Church. As he preached from Galatians 6:7-10 , his first point was simply a restating of verse seven: you reap what you sow. This seems obvious, intuitive, and you almost ask, why, Paul, is this even necessary to state? But there is a reason he needs to say it: we don't want to believe it. We want to think that our actions don't have consequences. We want to act like they don't.  Wild Oats There used to be a phrase, which I don't hear as often anymore, but I think that has more to do with a change in vocabulary than a loss of the idea. You'd see someone, usually a young man, making some very foolish decisions with their life, and it would be described as sowing their wild oats. Johnny is doing a lot of partying and spending time with girls who are sexually indulgent, just sowing his wild oats. Ronnie ...

I sat at the table, drinking my daily cup of coffee. Enjoying the treat of having cream in said coffee, I opened my Bible to Philippians 1. The pastor had preached from that chapter yesterday. Reading aloud to the four year old on my lap, verse 22 struck me. "If I am to live on in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me."   (ESV) In verse 21, Paul declares that, " to live is Christ, to die is gain." This is the better known verse. And in many churches we hear frequent reminders of why death is gain. "My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better" (v23). But why can Paul say to live is Christ ? Because of his certainty of the truth of verse 22. That is, there are no doubts in his mind that an extension of his life would serve Christ and His church. More life equals more fruitful labor. Is this true for me? Do I walk in that same confidence? Is my desire to live a long life tied to fleeting things like seeing my grandkids...

The Nature of Christianity (I originally preached this as a sermon in 2012, and posted the notes here on 06/23/12. This is a reworking of those original notes, hopefully a little more readable.) Our topic is Christianity. That may seem a broad or obvious topic. But for us to understand properly how Christians are to live, we must first understand what the nature of Christianity is. The reason this is foundational is that what you really  believe defines who you really  are. You will always, always , act in accordance with what you truly believe. So if we miss the boat on the meaning of Christianity and believe something apart from the truth, we are in big trouble. And frankly, I believe much of what we might call current evangelical teaching has, if not missed the boat entirely, hung its legs out into the shark infested waters. This being said, I want to give you three negative statements right out of the gate in relation to the nature of Christianity. 1) Christianit...

What Does Go? A Brief, Positive, Framework of Biblical Sexuality Preface: A little over a year ago I wrote, “Does anything go?” What I want to do this morning is give a slightly longer (though still unjustly brief), positive, outline of the Biblical doctrine of sex. Here is why I think it is important: evangelical Christians tend to be good (at least sometimes) at knowing what can be wrong about sex, or knowing what it isn’t for, but I doubt that very many of us could give a good explanation of what it is for. (And I’ve made this point in other blog posts, here , and here ). Why does sex exist? Our lack of a solid response here is a problem, a very big problem. We live in a society steeped in assumptions about human personhood and sexual expression that run totally contrary to what the Scriptures would teach us, and often times we ourselves buy into these same assumptions without realizing it. And when our underlying assumptions meet the commands of Scripture, we run into probl...

On more than one occasion I have heard or read a quip to the following effect, "If you want God to speak to you, read the Bible. If you want Him to speak audibly, read it out loud." It gets me every time. I love the snarky, and helpful, rebuttal it contains of a certain type of subjectivism which wants more from the Christian walk than prayer and Bible reading. More than talking to and hearing from God? More than conversing with the Creator? Come on. So I appreciate the quip. However.  I do think it could be made more Biblical. It would look something like this: If you want God to speak to you, read the Bible. If you want to hear Him audibly, hear the Bible preached . The centering of Christian experience upon the personal Bible reading time is a rather modern development. It requires a few things which for most of church history simply have not been the case (this point is largely drawn from the observations Carl Trueman, Professor of Church History at Westminster The...