The Syrian Refugee Crisis

This post is pretty long, but please, before you get mad at me or are tempted to fire off a nasty response, please do me the favor of hearing me out completely. Like many of you, I imagine, last week my knee jerk response to the terrible atrocities in Paris was to immediately support those who are calling for our country to refuse to admit any Syrian refugees into the United States. Those calls...

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Honoring our government officials

This week I read something that I didn't particularly like in 1 Peter chapter 2: Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. (1 Peter 2:13-14 ESV) I don't like what Peter wrote because it contradicts completely my own fleshly nature which would rather...

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The Oregon School Shootings

There has been a lot said and written over the last few days about the latest school shooting in Oregon. Much of that discussion has focused on things like gun control and mental health, which is certainly appropriate. But in my opinion that focus fails to really get to the heart of the issue. I'd like to briefly address two of those root problems. Much of the discussion that I've seen seems to be...

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The Pope's Visit

Now that Pope Francis’ visit is coming to an end, I wanted to take a moment to share a few observations: 1.      I am deeply concerned about what I term “Pope-mania” – which is really nothing more than the worship of a human being. The Bible is clear that no one other than God deserves our worship – not even an angel, alone another human. When John attempted to worship...

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My take on the Kim Davis situation

I’ve been reluctant to chime in on the whole Kim Davis situation – in large part because I’ve struggled personally to decide exactly what to think of this situation. And even after thinking and praying about this for a couple of weeks now, I will admit I still don’t have all the answers. Let me also acknowledge before I share my thoughts that I know that others who I respect greatly will disagree...

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Telling the truth in a digital age

I think we would all agree that the Bible clearly teaches that we are to speak the truth. Here is just a small sampling of passages that make that clear: Lying lips are an abomination to the LORD, but those who act faithfully are his delight.(Proverbs 12:22 ESV)  Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit.(Psalm 34:13 ESV)  No one who practices deceit shall dwell in...

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The seriousness of sin

In reading the book of Ezra the last two weeks, the main thought that I came away with was just how serious sin is. The people of Israel had violated God's laws regarding marrying foreign women and had suffered God's wrath as a result. But it was not until Ezra and others mourned over that sin, that they finally decided they needed to repent and take some very serious action to deal with their sin....

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How to Help Your Kids Benefit from the Sermon

I ran across this post the other day and thought it had a lot of good suggestions on how to help your kids benefit from the sermon: How Pastors and Parents Can Help Children Benefit From the Sermon Love to hear your thoughts on this. What other suggestions do you hav...

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Singing to One Another in Worship

I was intrigued by this verse from Ezra 3 in my Bible reading today: And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the LORD... (Ezra 3:11 ESV) The word that caught my attention was the word "responsively". My initial study revealed that a lot of modern translations actually leave that word out - which is really a shame because it really is needed to give the sense of what was going on...

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Are we OK with some sins?

I ran across this article last week and it got me to thinking about whether we are really OK with some sins but not others: http://www.faithit.com/9-sins-the-church-is-okay-with/ I know that these are the kinds of sins that I tend to struggle with and I need to remember that in God's eyes they are just as serious as the "big" sins I see in the lives of others. We would all do well to remember Jesus'...

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HOW DOES THE OLD TESTAMENT APPLY TO THE LIFE OF A CHRIST FOLLOWER TODAY? - Part 3

Part 3 of a 3 part post: Let’s work through an example of how this process can be used. We’ll use this command from the Book of Deuteronomy: “When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house, if anyone should fall from it.Deuteronomy 22:8 (ESV) I checked it out very carefully and I am pretty sure that this commandment...

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HOW DOES THE OLD TESTAMENT APPLY TO THE LIFE OF A CHRIST FOLLOWER TODAY? - Part 2

Part 2 of a 3 part post: Now we’re ready to develop three principles that will help us answer the question we’ve posed: 1.     If there is an Old Testament Law that is restated in the New Testament, then it is still binding and valid Most of the moral law fits in this category. In fact, we’ll see this next week as Jesus begins to take several of the Ten Commandments...

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HOW DOES THE OLD TESTAMENT APPLY TO THE LIFE OF A CHRIST FOLLOWER TODAY? - Part 1

I first this together several years ago, but wanted to share it again after a lot of you just finished reading Leviticus with me. It's fairly log, so I'll share in in several parts over the next few days.       Like we find with so many areas of our lives as Christ followers, people often tend to drift to one of two extremes when answering this question. Although it is becoming less...

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Some thoughts on Leviticus

For those of you who have been reading the book of Leviticus with me for the last month or so, I wanted to share a few thoughts: My guess is that if we didn't have some kind of systematic Bible reading plan, we'd probably just skip over Leviticus. It's not easy to read and much of it seems so irrelevant to us in the United States in the 21st century. But there is actually much we can take away...

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A Challenge for Us as Men

I ran across this video on my Facebook feed today and wanted to pass it on to other men.  https://www.facebook.com/GodsNotDeadTheMovie/videos/842824672487983/ This is well worth five minutes of your time to watch this and whatever additional time it takes to think about what you need to do in your life to address this challenge.  About the only fault I can find with the video is how a...

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Jesus, not traditional values, is the answer

In light of yesterday's Supreme Court decision regarding homosexual marriage, I wanted to share with you a post by Tom Terry that gets to the heart of the issue and how we should respond as disciples of Jesus. In part, Tom wrote this: Ultimately, what stands before us is not a nation that has rejected traditional values.Rather, it is a nation that has no faith in Jesus. Why should a nation...

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Follow Up on Last Sunday's Message

I received this from Nate Kugler this week and thought it was really good and I wanted to pass it on to all of you: As a PS to your message, you said ‘Heart work’ is God’s work but we have an important role. For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?  But we have the mind of Christ.  (1 Cor. 2:16) Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit...

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Worshiping as God desires

In Deuteronomy 12, Moses makes it very clear that the way we worship is to be determined by God and not according to "what is right in our own eyes". It is also clear in that chapter that we are not to pollute our worship by incorporating practices from other religions that God sees as an abomination. Although we would never do that deliberately, that can occur in some ways that are very subtle at...

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What God does and what I must do

In Deuteronomy 1, we see the balance between what God does and what I must do. As I read through that chapter, I noted all the things God had done for His people. He had set the land before them (vv. 8, 21); He had given the land to them (vv. 20, 25, 36, 39); He went before the people, fought for them, carried them and showed them the way (vv. 30-33). But in order to actually possess the land the...

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Job - Religion to Relationship

To me the book of Job is not primarily about suffering. It is more about how Job moves from being very religious to having a relationship with God. That journey is summarized near the end of the book: I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you;(Job 42:5 ESV) I want to be able to say that in my life. I want to go from just hearing about God to seeing Him with my spiritual...

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How being self-focused clouds our ideas about God.

In Job 32, Elihu speaks for the first time in the book. What strikes me about his words is how self-focused he is. The words "I" and "me" dominate his words. And twice he even admits that what he is about to speak is "my opinion". Even though he is young, he is impressed with his own wisdom. While it is true that Job's three friends who have already spoken often had wrong ideas about God, Elihu certainly...

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Be careful with how we view our circumstances.

In Job 29:1-5, Job looks at his circumstances and concludes, wrongly, that God is no longer with him. Our present conditions - good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, easy or hard - are a very poor barometer of God's love and concern for us.  God had allowed Satan to test Job because God knew that this process was going to result in Job's relationship with God being take to a whole new level. The...

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Sometimes fewer words are better

In Job 25, Bildad's words are few and for a change, what he says is actually true. God is sovereign and holy and no man is capable of being righteous before God based on what he does. Man is indeed a maggot. But what Bibldad fails to see is God's mercy that is extended to man through His Son, Jesus. This seems to be a common mistake that Job's friends make. They understand that God is holy and righteous...

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Seeing beyond this world.

The biggest difference between Job and his friends is that Job had the hope that he would one day see his Redeemer face-to-face - in the flesh. His friends, on the other hand, didn't seem to be able to see life beyond the few short years that man has on earth. Because their sole focus was on what they see with their physical eyes, they had no hope. And that really clouded their view of God and of...

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How to Know God

One of the things we see consistently in the book of Job is that Job and his friends make the mistake of determining what they think they know about God strictly from their own personal experiences. We should not be quick to condemn, however, since we often do the same thing. We cannot truly know God apart from His revelation of Himself that is found in His Word. We have to evaluate our experiences...

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Knowing God vs. Knowing About God

It is really interesting to watch Job's journey as the book of Job progresses. At first we see he knows a lot about God and for the most part that understanding is pretty accurate. He certainly has a much more accurate picture of God than his friends, for sure. He understands God's sovereignty and accepts that the struggles he is experiencing are under God's control. Yet at this point Job still lacks...

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The Theology of Job

In reading the book of Job, we need to be careful not to use it alone as a source for our theology. Job, like many places in the Bible, merely records the conversation between Job and his "friends" without commenting for most of the book on the accuracy of their theology. In some places, they exhibit an accurate understanding of God, but their main premise that Job is being punished by God because...

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Can we be too religious?

In Matthew 23, Jesus pronounces seven woes on the scribes and Pharisees. Not only were these religious leaders called hypocrites by Jesus, but their religiosity had blinded them to the fact that they were actually preventing people from coming to God rather than helping people enter into a relationship with God. Their religious exterior covered up the pride that they had on the inside. The problem...

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Why Jesus spoke in parables

One of the things I love about the Bible is that I can read a passage that I've read many times before and find something new that I hadn't seen previously. Such was the case with Matthew 13 - especially verse 18.  “Hear then the parable of the sower: (Matthew 13:18 ESV) In that verse, the word "then" is key. It reveals that Jesus is using the parable of the sower to show how His teaching using...

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Knowing God

All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.(Matthew 11:27 ESV) It is possible to know about the Father apart from the Son. But it is not possible to really know the Father except through Jes...

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The cost of following Jesus

In Matthew 8:18-22 Jesus' words seem a bit harsh.  Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. And a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Another of the disciples said to him, “Lord, let...

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Praying "us"

It's interesting that Jesus' model prayer in Matthew 6:9-13 uses plural pronouns ("our", "us" and "we"). I'd love to hear your thoughts about why that is significa...

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Using Scripture Profitably

When Jesus is tempted in the wilderness (Matthew 4), He responds to Satan using Scripture. But Satan also tries to use Scripture to tempt Jesus by taking a verse out of context. This shows why it is so important to have a good handle on the Bible as a whole and not just a few favorite verses here and there. That's why it is so crucial to have a plan to read systematically through the Bible...

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A genealogy that shows God's mercy and grace

It is really unusual to see women listed in Bible genealogies. And in his genealogy of Jesus in the first chapter of his gospel, it is interesting that out of all the women who bore the men listed there, Matthew chose to mention the 5 that he does: Tamar - a woman who was impregnated by her father-in-law Rahab - a prostitute Ruth - a Moabite Bathsheba - an adultress Mary -...

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