Author Archives: Jeff

For all you goldfish lovers.

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Since Chris Nye is at a hip and cool conference this week, he won’t have time to tell me not to post his words. Plus, he emailed them to me. Plus plus, below is part of a story about a goldfish.

This Sunday Chris will teach our middle schoolers on the Resurrection of Jesus (John 20:1-23).

Chris wrote a little preview for us:

I can remember when my first goldfish, Bowser, died. I had bought Bowser on sale at the local pet store after begging my dad for 25 cents. He was trying to talk me out of it, telling me that I wouldn’t feed it, that cleaning the bowl would be difficult, but I insisted over and over again that I would take care of him and love him forever.

It would be only three weeks before Bowser died. But I would like to take this time to defend myself: I fed Bowser, I cleaned his bowl, and I even gave him a nice spot in the shade on the counter in the kitchen. Even though I followed all the directions perfectly, Bowser still died.
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What’s Your Type? Wired to engage the Bible.

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We all talk about the things we are excited and confident to speak about. I’ve noticed many men need both of those elements (enthusiasm and confidence) to open up, whereas women are more apt to speak on themes and topics they are excited about, and ask questions when we lack confidence. So, while I rejoice that women around the globe are diligently studying the Scriptures, I lament that us men tend to let others seek God for us and we’ll just sit here and watch. We’re missing out.

Yesterday I borrowed from the May/June 2011 Bible Study Magazine feature, Breaking Down Your Bible Study Type. The author listed five types of people who engage the Bible: the Newbie, the Perpetual Planner, the Nonconformist, the Extreme Extrovert, and the Ascetic. I confessed I am a mix between the ascetic and the nonconformist, which isn’t always help since I lead people and its often helpful for a pastor to set the pace and pattern and not deviate from it. Thus I’ve learned to color between the lines and trade color crayons with other people too.

Are their others? I think so. Today I want to expand the list of “types” to include many of those I interact with weekly.

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What’s Your Type? Breaking down how you engage the Bible.

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I’m a sucker for good content wrapped in stellar design. So, when a publisher like Logos takes an interest (Bible study) and wraps it in a magazine with great typography, apt use of white space, and plenty of well-made charts, I have a hard time setting it aside.  The magazine passes what I call the ‘six foot test’ — from six feet away do you want to move closer and read it? Yep. Things like that don’t get thrown away; they have some alluring quality making you want to hold onto them.

Bible Study Magazine is a great monthly read. And it’s not just for Bible nerds. Anyone from a novice to the curious to theo-dorks and everyone in between would benefit from BSM.

Their May/June 2011 issue has a special section “9 Ideas for Better Bible Study.” One of the nine is #2: Breaking Down Your Bible Study Type. An intro from author and BSM associate editor Rebecca Kruyswijk:

What’s your Bible study “type”? Are you the newbie or the planner? The nonconformist or the extrovert extreme? We don’t like to think we fit into categories, but we certainly need to examine the habits that keep us from interacting with the Bible.

Recognizing who we are, and how we’re wired, will help us launch into meaningful and life-transforming devotions before God. Kruyswijk gives five categories or labels for people who seek to study the Bible:
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So beautiful it hardly seems real.

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Video of the Milky Way galaxy in a timelapse which grasps only a fraction of its vast beauty:

The One God created all this. He spoke it into being. How great and beautiful this Creator must be!

Just as Nehemiah described as he prayed:

You alone are the LORD. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you.
—Nehemiah 9:6

 

A transforming moral imperative. (It’s more fun to obey.)

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“Christians today will understand that biblically authentic Christianity is never merely a matter of rules and regulations, of public liturgy and private morality. Biblical Christianity results in transformed men and women—men and women who, because of the power of the Spirit of God, enjoy regenerated natures. We want to please God, we want to be holy, we want to confess Jesus is Lord. In short, because of the grace secured by Christ’s cross, we ourselves experience something of a transforming moral imperative: the sins we once loved we learn to fear and hate, the obedience and holiness we once despised we now hunger for. God help us, we are woefully inconsistent in all this, but we have already tasted enough of the powers of the age to come that we know what a transforming moral imperative feels like in our lives, and we long for its perfection at the final triumph of Christ.
—Don (D.A.) Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, pp. 31-32.

 

Today: groan with the earth.

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It’s not every year the the events of Holy Week align with Earth Day. But, when we think about it, it makes more than a little sense that Earth Day (today) is also Good Friday. Tonight I get to speak a meditation on the crucified Christ. We will gather to sing about the day God-in-a-bod died, the climax to the Story of the world.

The created world we live in has a stake in what happened on the day the Creator suffered at the hands of His creation. We not only trash the earth with our consuming and wastefulness; we trash the Creator with our willful sin and rebellion. (Seems like one is the symptom, while the other is the cause.)

Paul helps us see this connection:

18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we await for it with patience.
—Romans 8:18-25

While we know the Holy Week leads up to Easter, the day to celebrate the ultimate Victory, we recognize we live in a good-friday-world, full of suffering and rebellion. We suffer not as complete victims, while the created order was not complicit in our rebellion. So, we meditate on Earth Day as part of the truths of Good Friday, in hopes that the full weight of what happened on Resurrection Sunday will be ours. Christ conquered all His enemies — sin, death, Satan, and our rebellion — to bring us to God. The Creator makes us His change agents in this world, as we experience the power for transforming coming not from us but from Him and through us.

In this hope we who trust in Christ have been rescued, and are being rescued. Celebrate Earth Day by looking to the Cross where our Savior — our only Hope — willingly gave Himself for us.

 

Fear and Desire.

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Kari writes:

The Long Road“Fear and desire are the motivators of all that we do. And of course they are connected. We desire that which will take us as far as possible from our fears, and we fear that which will take us as far as possible from what we desire. Both can be good, both can be bad. But we are wise to consider them and get down to the bottom of both–because whether we like it or not that’s what will drive all that we do.”

 

Worth a read: Counterfeit Gospels.

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The Good News in 3-D:

  1. The Gospel Story // Creation ➙ Fall ➙ Redemption ➙ Restoration (the storyline of Scripture, and of the world)
  2. The Gospel Announcement // Jesus Christ our Substitute, who gave Himself for us in order to bring us to God
  3. The Gospel Community // Jesus purchased a people to embody His message, people who live in a new reality, being zealous for good works, living His life

We need all three to faithfully believe, embody, and proclaim the Good News of Jesus. When we negate one, we have a partial or incomplete gospel, that while perhaps not direct heresy will dissolve the foundation of our hope in Christ. These are ‘counterfeit’ Gospels, where we have tweaked God’s message to soften it and suit our preferences. Just about every time, counterfeit gospels represent either a dilution of the truth or a truth that is out of proportion. Sadly, these watered down versions never satisfy our longings.

Author Trevin Wax summarizes the message of his new book — Counterfeit Gospels: Rediscovering the Good News in a World of False Hope — with a video trailer:

Wax takes aim at these six ‘counterfeit’ gospels Wax in his book (p. 210):

 

Follow along: Holy Week readings.

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Here some helpful tools for tracking the words and works of Holy Week. Spanning from Palm Sunday to Resurrection Sunday (Easter), we see the life of Jesus on display in and around Jerusalem. The plot thickens as His life mission will climax in his agonizing death, leading to His triumphant resurrection. He truly laid death in His grave, conquering all His enemies (sin, death, and Satan). Our hope is in the One who for love gave up His life so we may live. The innocent died in place of the guilty, the just for the unjust, in order to bring us to God (1 Pet. 3:18).

Let us remember the words of our Lord:

“This is why the Father loves me: because I freely lay down my life. And so I am free to take it up again. No one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own free will. I have the right to lay it down; I also have the right to take it up again. I received this authority personally from my Father.”

—John 10:17-18, The Message

See It

Visual graphic of the events of Holy Week on a timeline (via BibleGateway.com). It is a visualization of the ‘Who,’ ‘What,’ and ‘Where’ of Holy Week.

For example, to below is a closeup of the chart showing Jesus in Gethsemane and his betrayal by Judas. First Jesus draws aside Peter, James, and John and entreats them to pray while Jesus also prays. Then Judas and a crowd arrive; Judas betrays Judas with a kiss, Jesus is arrested, and the disciples flee, while Peter and John follow at a distance. The visualization shows you the main actors in the story and provides Bible references for you to read the story yourself.

[click image to enlarge]

Read It

Justin Taylor has attempted harmony/chronology of the words and actions of Jesus in the final week of his pre-resurrection life (with help from the ESV Study Bible). Here are links, organized by day:

 

Download all of the Scriptures above compiled into one PDF document: Holy Week Timeline (37 pages).

Also, see the geography and harmony of Holy Week re-enacted in Google Earth.

Let this week be full of contemplation, and consider the great cost of God the Father crushing God the Son, to reconcile us and the world to Himself.

 

Deo Volente — trust God and do the next thing.

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Deo Volente is Latin for “God willing.” The idea comes from James’ pen:

13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
—James 4:13-17

My wife has counseled countless ladies on the simple principle of trusting God and then do the next thing. Obey in the small task or responsibility right in front of you. Especially when confused, depressed, or at a loss of God’s voice. We know His will; it’s what He placed before us. Then He will reveal His heart and will to us more and more, as we joyfully obey from the heart.

[Thanks to a friend for sending me a text, signing off with Deo Volente.
Helped me make sense of God’s will right in front of me.]

 

The Name of Victory.

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“[God] raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms. 21 Now he is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else—not only in this world [age] but also in the world [age] to come.” —Ephesians 1:20-21, NLT

A question for you: How can Jesus rule over something both present and future?

He is not limited in the ways we are. We have a hard time reigning over our emotions during the morning commute.

The Present Age is where sin reigns and everything is disintegrating.

It began with the Fall in Genesis 3; as soon as Adam and Eve sinned, they experienced spiritual alienation from God, emotional alienation within, social alienation from others, and physical alienation from creation. (They were defeated and dejected in every area of life, in place of where they were created to experience joy, peace, and harmony.)

In other words, the present age is when everything is falling apart (eventually) — spiritually and emotionally, socially and physically. Social alienation from one another, and physical alienation from nature/the created world.  (Psalm 96 helps us see  about what the created world will experience when all things are made right and God heals it.)

The Age to Come will be where total victory is complete. It is both when and where,’ in that when Christ fills all things and we are complete in Him, and the whole created order has been judged and redeemed, then we will be fully in God’s glorious presence.

When Jesus came to earth He brought the power of the age to come, so we can experience it now. In Ephesians 2:6 we read that when we are in Christ we are now seated with Him (in the place of victory we will enjoy in the age to come). Victory is eventual and future, but it is now present and real. We stand in victory as we stand in Christ, for He stands in total victory.

Right now we live between these two ages. We see glimpses of what ‘shall be,’ and even hope for that world to enter our world. The only way we will live with the hope of the world to come is if we are enthralled with the One who is our Victory. Jesus won the fight against sin, Satan, and death. He purchased the life to come by completing the life that is. He is the one we believe in. Our imperfect faith is in the Perfect Savior. As Tim Keller reminds us, “We are not saved because of the quality of our faith but because of the object of our faith.”

Jesus is the one who has redeemed, is redeeming, and one day will redeem all things according to His good pleasure. We cannot want one aspect of this without the others. So, for the person who ‘trusts’ Jesus for eternal life but lives as if this life is all there is — that person does not have Jesus ruling over his or her life. (He is not actively saving this person today, so has this person been saved? Seems like that person will go on trusting in their decision to believe in Jesus, but not actually believe in Jesus.) For that person there is no victory now, so how shall there be victory awaiting in the life to come?

When we recognize how we are alienated from God (in every way possible) through own own choices and desires, and that this dysfunction leads our social alienation from others whom we were designed to love, we will come to realize how broken our whole lives really are. We will begin to recognize what an emotional wreck we are (I am). So, we turn to Jesus. Today. Right now. And again this afternoon, and tomorrow morning. Every day, and every moment we recognize our continual need. We’re disintegrating. He is bringing us back together, reconciling us to God and making us whole.  He is our victory. He rules our hearts today. One day He will right all things and rule the world the way it’s meant to be.

That’s how He is able to rule all things in this age and in the age to come.

(Some of these notes from Gospel in Life — Witness: An Alternate City)
Photo Credit: lucianotb