Thoughts of Hymn

You know when you are sitting in church (well standing in this story because Christians have some weird thing about standing during worship?) Anyway….you know when you are standing in church on Sunday morning and you are giving it your best to even seem like you are in a full on worship? Then from the other side of the room, usually in the back, you hear this beautiful voice singing to glorious God. Again, for sake of story, I am going to pretend that this voice is male, could be female though! He is singing with so much passion it almost sounds like angels serenading you. In the gospel of Matthew the story is told of the Lords supper. We all know the scene, some men gathered around a table full of bread and wine, probably doesn’t smell very good. I am actually going to go on record and assume that the upper room in which Jesus and the disciples had the Lords supper in was probably the first ever man cave. Think about it, big wooded table, food, alcohol, probably had some Sunday night football on and some southern gospel blaring in the background. Anyway, back on course, they go around the table and Jesus, the Christ, presents them with some bread and a chalice. He utters the words, “This is my body, and this is my blood.” Then verse 30 hits us, “When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.” What hymn did they sing? Does it matter what hymn they sang? Obviously not because the author left it out, but I can guarantee this, the voice that our Lord and Savior sings with is one of pure masterpiece indeed. As I sit here on my couch at three in the morning, my radio is tuned into 90.8 fm. For those of you that don’t go that low on the radio dial, it is National Public Radio. I love classical music masterpieces. On this evening I go over to the bookshelf and pull off a hymnal that I have collected along the way, an old 1972 hymnal from an old Methodist church. In it some of the finest songs composed by man, yet some are from the very Psalms that my Lord and Savior breathed into life. My Savior, Jesus, is an artist. He is a musician. He is the voice in the back of the sanctuary singing to His own Father in complete and utter awe. Ephesians 5:19 tells us, “Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” Don’t forget to give God your all this Sunday morning…you never know who is listening. 

Social Reform

I have been reading a book off and on titled The Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ. This morning I opened up to a section titled Jesus and the Social Questions. Surprisingly enough, Jesus did not concern Himself with social questions at all, yet, was the world’s greatest social reformer. Jesus’ preoccupation was of course the soul, and then the community. The book led me to the Gospel of Luke, which is full of parables and sayings of Jesus. What I found interesting was that the series of parables opens with a very personal story of the “sower.” Jesus puts ourselves in the hot seat and asks in a sense, “What kind of soil are you cultivating, and how well are you at planting seeds?” Now I find it no coincidence that Jesus begins the first of His parables with one completely directed at self. He goes on to tell more and more parables, but what I find interesting is that most of them deal with subjects from a community standpoint. In chapter 10 we have the Parable of the Good Samaritan, which I’m sure all of us could read and reread five or six times a day. Then comes the Parable of the Rich Fool, which tells a tale of a man who has too much goods and not the heart enough to share. We can go on and on through the parables and read story after story of Jesus teaching and preaching about community and fellowship. But it comes down to one word, action. Jesus just didn’t sit around preaching and teaching, Jesus travelled, Jesus met with communities, Jesus went in and out of temples and towns spreading love and the good news. I think too many times we get caught up in the latest thing or the newest gossip, or we find ourselves sitting around for numerous hours on Facebook dwelling into other peoples lives, when we could be out and about loving and sharing the good news with others. 

The Kingdom of Heaven

The Kingdom of Heaven March 8, 2012

³ "Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:3

Imagine with me, if you will, a group of us sitting around in a semi-circle. Maybe resting our backs on some rocks or maybe on a cloth bag full of sheep’s wool that we have just bought in Jerusalem from a merchant. (that was a bean bag chair reference for all my youth pastors!) So imagine sitting around in a semi circle taking in all of the aromas of the spring air. The sun beams down upon you and warms you to the core of your being. You feel the wind sweep across your face and in that very moment, you hear the voice of Christ, the One and Only. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

I began my study on this verse by going to the first word that caught my eye. “Poor,” strikes up all kinds of thoughts when I use the word “poor.” So I looked to the Greek dictionary for help on what exactly Jesus meant by “poor.” Ptõchos in Greek means, “To crouch or cower like a beggar,” and then it offers this amazing stark contrast in wordage. “The Greek word “penès” may be poor but he earns his bread by daily labor. The ptõchos is so poor that he can only obtain his living by begging. The penès has nothing superfluous, while the ptõchos has nothing at all.” So with that explanation we can now understand how “poor” Jesus wanted us to be.

Perhaps few people today know why the face of Lincoln is engraved on the American penny rather than on one of the larger coins. The reason for this goes back to the boyhood days of David Brenner, who had known nothing of liberty and much of hunger and want in Russia. After coming to America, where he found both liberty and opportunity awaiting him, Brenner became a famous sculptor, and was the man responsible for placing the face of the man who had said, "The Lord must love the common people, He has made so many of them," on the most lowly coin of the United States. Brenner's idea was that there would be more pennies minted than any other one coin, and consequently there would be more of them in the pockets of the common people.

The next word I come to is “spirit.” Lower case ‘s’ so Christ is obviously speaking of our own personal spirit. Interestingly enough, only because it gave me chills sitting here reading it, the Greek word for ‘spirit’ is pneuma. Now, the thing that gave me chills is that pneuma means “to breathe, as of the mouth and nostrils.” One of my favorite verses in the gospel of John comes after the disciples find the empty tomb. Jesus appears to His disciples in chapter 20, and He offers them peace and sends them away, the next sentence says, “And with that He breathed on them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit.” I love to think of how close you would have to be to feel Christ breathe on you. Now obviously, this is not a literal text, He was not getting the sides of their faces all wet and sweaty by breathing on them, however I do think that He wants us to understand how close we need to be to Him. My wife is reading this as I am writing and she says “well how do you know Jesus didn’t physically breathe on them?” So I take her back to the scriptures, to God’s word. It’s His words that He breathed out into a man, and that man took them and wrote them down. He breathed into that man. It is our duty and our passion and it should be our desire that we feel Christ breathe on us DAILY! There is only one way to Heaven and that is by receiving Christ as Lord, now we can argue that all day, but until you have had Jesus, the King of the world, breathe on you… you’re not going to heaven. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Blessed are those indeed who take in the air of Christ. Blessed are those indeed who inhale all that the Holy Spirit has to offer. Blessed are those indeed who walk daily with the Lord, side by side, holding hands. Strolling down the sandy walkway towards life…

Supreme Blessedness

Supreme Blessedness February 28, 2012

The Beatitudes

¹ Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, ² and he began to teach them, saying:
Matthew 5:1, 2

The beatitudes or supreme blessedness as defined by Webster’s Dictionary. In the Gospel of Matthew the order in which this amazing sermon comes forth is patterned like this. Chapter 1, we get the family tree of Jesus and then begins the story of His birth. Chapter 2 we finish up the story of His birth. Chapter 3 gives us the introduction of John the Baptist and finishes with the baptism of Jesus Christ. Chapter 4, right after His baptism, Jesus is tempted by the devil. After the devil’s failed temptation of Jesus, He begins His ministry in Nazareth. Once His ministry begins, we are told that Jesus selects His first set of disciples in verses 18-22 of chapter 4. Chapter 4 ends with Jesus performing His first set of miracles by healing the sick. Chapter 5 picks up with Jesus’ first of many amazing sermons, yet this one comes as instruction to His disciples. In Luke’s account of the beatitudes, the instruction comes right after the selection of the twelve disciples. For this reason, a great scholar once called the beatitudes, “The Ordination Address to the Twelve.” So if I understand this correctly, Jesus is doing His first “lesson” to His students. If this is the case, how much more important is this Sermon on the Mount to us who call ourselves servants of the Lord? Maybe this isn’t just a basic sermon to all believers. This is instruction to those who call themselves servants or shepherds for the Lord. For this reason the Sermon on the Mount has also been called, “The Compendium of Christ’s Doctrine,” “The Magna Charta of the Kingdom,” “The Manifesto of the King.”

It is also understood by many scholars that the Sermon on the Mount is not just one single sermon as originally thought. Rather, it is thought that it is an epitome of all the sermons that Jesus ever preached. William Barclay gives reasons for this thought in his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount. He says this about the idea that the Sermon on the Mount is a selection of sermons.

1. “Anyone who heard it in its present form would be exhausted long before the end. There is far too much in it for one hearing. It is one thing to sit and read it, and to pause and linger as we read; it would be entirely another thing to listen to it for the first time in spoken words.”

2. “There are certain sections of the Sermon on the Mount which emerge, as it were, without warning; they have no connection with what goes before and no connection with what comes after. For instance, Matthew 5: 31, 32 and Matthew 7: 7-11 are quite detached from their context.”

3. “The most important point is this. Both Matthew and Luke give us a version of the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew’s version there are 107 verses. Of these 107 verses 29 are found all together in Luke 6: 20-49; 47 have no parallel in Luke’s version and 34 are found scattered all over Luke’s gospel in different contexts. It has been suggested that, after Jesus definitely chose the Twelve, He may have taken them away into a quiet place for a week or even a longer period of time, and that, during that space, He taught them all the time and the Sermon on the Mount is the summary of that teaching.”

Scholars thought that this series of “sermons” were delivered during the first year of Christ public career. John Peter Lange calls the Sermon on the Mount the “central-point of Christ’s ministry in Galilee.” There is also a couple important points to be aware of in the first two verses where Jesus shows His proof to be a Rabbi. Number one is that it says “When Jesus saw the crowds… He sat down.” This was important because sitting was the accepted posture of synagogue or school teachers. (Luke 4:20, Matthew 13:2, 23:2, 24:3.) Another important point is the use of wording in verse 2, “and He began to teach them.” The usages of the word teach in the Greek is didaskõ meaning to teach or to instruct. The other word used in the Greek is to preach which is used in Matthew 4:17, “From that time on Jesus began to preach.” This Greek word is keryssõ which means to preach, herald, or proclaim.

William Barclay says in his commentary that “The Sermon on the Mount is greater even than we think. Matthew in his introduction wishes us to see that it is the official teaching of Jesus; that it is the opening of Jesus’ whole mind to His disciples; that is the summary of the teaching which Jesus habitually gave to His inner circle. The Sermon on the Mount is nothing less than the concentrated memory of many hours of heart to heart communion between the disciples and their Master.” It is amazing to think that the select few people that Jesus invited to walk along with Him throughout His years of ministry were also invited to sit with Him while He gave some of His greatest of teachings. Teaching someone is so much more personal and intimate than preaching to someone. In the Sermon on the Mount, it said that Jesus taught them. One on one so to say, and to think that even today we are blessed to be taught one on one by Jesus Christ Himself. Are you taking advantage of this blessing daily? Are you sitting and learning, sitting and listening? We have the very words that Christ spoke in a book and we are able to hear Him vividly through prayer and meditation, so I ask you, are you learning?

Like Christ

Like Christ February 24, 2012

I am so frustrated as of late because I keep going back and forth between books and I cannot stay on one book. I have what my mother would call, ‘a nest,’ built in my living room. If you are an avid reader much like myself, and somewhat scatterbrained, then you may know what I am talking about. At the foot of the coach is a pile of bibles, commentaries and various other books that pertain to the 14 subjects I am currently studying. I don’t think it is bad studying that many subjects, it is just difficult to keep them all separated. *Authors note, I may have exaggerated a little bit with 14 subjects. After a quick count I have roughly five different studies going. One study on the Gospel of Matthew, one on the Gospel of John, one study on the book “Like Christ” by Andrew Murray, one study on the book “Not a Fan” by Kyle Idleman and finally a study on a book that I just received called “Song of Solomon for Teenagers” by Chris Ray. It would be easier to not read so many books at one time if I would stop purchasing books at such a rapid rate, but in my defense the authors also do not stop writing books, so what is a guy supposed to do? The Song of Solomon book came to me via email from youth specialties. So far it is a fabulous book where the author takes and breaks down the Song of Solomon into terms that are reasonable and giggle-free for teenagers. I am looking forward to developing this book into a study for my students. However that is not what I am blogging about today. I wanted to discuss another study I am doing on the book by Andrew Murray called “Like Christ.” Now I have spoken of this book before and I am a huge Andrew Murray fan. He really takes this idea of being a follower of Christ and takes it to the next level. On page 36 of his book Mr. Murray says “There is nothing that weakens the power of Christ’s Example so much as the thought that we cannot really walk like Him.” WOW! What an amazing thought. Not only are we fools to believe that we cannot be just like Christ, but we are actually weakening His witness by not walking as He walked! So while there will be those who call me self-righteous and arrogant for trying to be just like Christ, I can tell them that they are being terrible users of the gift that Christ has provided us with. To not be just like Christ is a waste of every last lashing that He took for our sins. Murray goes on to say “Jesus is my Example because He is my life. I must and can be like Him, because I am one with Him. Grant this, my blessed Lord, for Thy love’s sake. Amen!” I think that those words need no explanation only praise.

Andrew Murray also speaks about suffering as a process to becoming more and more Christ like. Again I find this timing a bit interesting, but he says this, “If one do well, and suffer for it, and take it patiently, this is acceptable with God; such bearing of wrong is Christ-like. In bearing our sins as Surety, Christ suffered wrong from man; after His example we must be ready to suffer wrongfully too. There is almost nothing harder to bear than injustice from our fellow-man.” He continues on, “In what our fellow-creatures do to us, it is not easy at once to recognize the will of God, who thus allows us to be tried, to see if we have truly taken Christ as our example.” Basically what he is saying is that God allows me to come into this trouble to see if I shall glorify Him in it.

I know that people love to say, “Well if God is such a loving God then why does He allow bad things to happen?” How about the fact that the worst possible thing that could happen to Him did. He sent His Son to die for us. So for us to get so depressed when our light bill isn’t getting paid or our water pump on our 1997 Ford Festiva goes out. Things happen in our lives, which we consider “bad” so that we can show our commitment to Jesus through our constant determination to make it through the storms of life. If life were one free flowing river of water then there would be absolutely no honing process, or no need to desire a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ.

So what’s the point? What is the reasoning behind becoming more and more like Christ? Where does becoming a better person get me? You don’t have to be a “good person” to be in the government because a majority of those people are so immorally corrupt. So what point or reward is there for becoming a better person? Besides the fact that it is good for your own conscience, if we were all immorally corrupt what would our world look like? Nobody really knows that for sure, but if I believe what the bible tells me, at some point this world is going to face some terrible times and our ethics and morals may be tested to the fullest.

Theologia Crucis

Theologia Crucis February 23, 2012

The Cost of Being a Disciple

²⁵ Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: ²⁶ "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple.

William Barclay talks on this matter in his commentary simply titled “The Gospel of Luke.” On page 233 Barclay says, “When Jesus tells us to hate our nearest and dearest, He does not mean that literally. He means that no love in life can compare with the love we must bear to Him.” Barclay continues on and says that “there are two suggestive truths with this passage. (1) it is possible to be a follower of Jesus without being a disciple.” He continues by saying, “It is one of the supreme handicaps of the Church that in it there are so many distant followers of Jesus and so few real disciples.” (2) It is the Christian’s first duty to count the cost of following Christ.” In the Church of Scotland, the introduction to marriage ceremony is performed and the minister says this, “Marriage is not to be entered upon lightly or unadvisedly, but thoughtfully, reverently, and in the fear of God.” A man and a woman must count the cost in the same way we should count our cost in our relationship with Christ. Barclay completes his thought on this passage and he says, “If we are daunted by the high demands of Christ let us remember that we are not left to fulfill them alone. He who called us to the steep road will walk with us every step of the way and be there at the end to meet us.” You know, when I looked at this passage when I was a bit younger I thought that Christ must have been an arrogant tyrant that just wanted everyone to focus on Him and worship Him. I mean come on, hating my mother and father? It was only until I was called to ministry and I was asked to leave the comfort of my home in Holland, Ohio with my $32.00 an hour job to follow the path of Christ that I really began to understand. See my dad and I were at odds at the time. I knew that if I walked away from my job, that my dad had desired me to be at for so long, that he would surely disown me this time. However on that hot summer day that I received that phone call I somehow knew that everything was going to be ok. God had called me, “Tim, don’t worry about what your mom and dad will think. I have something far better for you.” From that moment on it wasn’t a matter of hating my mother or father. It was a matter of letting go of all insecurities of what my parents would think. Letting go of all worry and all hesitation to what my parents would be thinking, and place all of that concern and heaviness on my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and trusting Him alone. See, it wasn’t hate at all; it was a matter of trust. It was matter that I was worried about what their opinion would be of me. It wasn’t about hating my parents at all, I was growing up into the man that Christ wanted me to be and I was making a mature decision to follow the path that He has laid for my life. We know this because Christ adds at the end of verse 26, “Yes even his own life…” How is it possible to hate our own lives? Well it is not possible at all, but it is possible to put aside our own desires and to shed all of our own cares and worries about ourselves and to let Jesus Christ reign completely over every aspect of our lives. It isn’t about hate; I feel that Christ used the most extreme of circumstances to get us to realize the importance of our relationships with Him. I believe that this goes a lot deeper than what we really think that it goes. See because when Christ says, “Yes even his own life…” He uses an interesting Greek word for ‘life’ and that is psyche. The definition of this Greek word used in this text is “the soul as the vital principle.” So to my understanding, Jesus isn’t just asking us to hate our own lives, He is saying that we must despise the inner most parts of our souls. Again, putting aside the descriptive words “hate” and “despise” and understanding that He wants for you to understand that He wants control of every last ounce of your life. He wants for you to desire Him in the deepest parts of your soul. To love Him more than you love even your own parents, or your own children. Unconditional love.

²⁷ And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:27

Right before Jesus offers us a parable about the cost of being a disciple He says maybe one of the most popular bible verses that people quote constantly, “And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” Stunning words from Jesus, simple yet very powerful. So after a little bit of research on the Roman cross, it really puts this idea of “carrying your cross” into prospective. Wikipedia states that the average Roman cross weighed well over 300 pounds. Now, depending on which scholar you study, Christ may have carried the whole cross to His death or He may have carried just the top beam used to support the arms and hands. Now if that is the case, this beam weighed roughly 75-150 pounds. Either way, the journey that Jesus was forced to take with His “cross” was a painful one. I would gather from the extreme fashion that Jesus encourages us to live that He is speaking of carrying the whole weight of the cross. Now, again I realize that this is simply a metaphor for how we should live our lives, but if we take the actual example of what Christ was speaking of and paint a picture with it, and then it makes it easier for us to understand.

Further investigation of this subject finds some very good information. The Greek word for ‘cross’ is stauros and has two very interesting definitions that I feel pertain to Christ’s main point. (1) Refers to the cross as “an instrument of the most dreadful and agonizing torture.” Commonly Romans would punish Christians with crucifixion; first they were scourged and then made to bear their own cross to the place of execution. Now to touch on this point first, I believe that Christ is telling us that if we bear the weight of our own cross daily, it will at times be absolute torture. The gospel of John, chapter 15, verse 21 says this, “21 the people of the world will persecute you because you belong to me, for they don't know God who sent me.” (The Living Bible)

Jesus very much understood that there would be a price to following His name and claiming His will for your life. He knew that it would be so difficult that He compared it to His own miserable death on a cross. “The Christian who called his noisy neighbors the "cross" he had to bear certainly did not understand the meaning of dying to self.”—Bible Exposition Commentary - New Testament. Jesus followed His point with three parables about ‘counting the cost’ of your faith.

(2) The ‘cross’ denotes the whole passion of Christ and the merit of His sufferings and death. Ephesians 2:14-16 supports this thought.

“¹⁴ For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, ¹⁵ by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, ¹⁶ and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.”

Verse 14 and 15 define Christ as our ‘peace’ and then verse 16 tells how Christ became our peace, through death and destruction of hostility on the cross. You see, the cross not only represents a large wooden ‘T’ used to execute humans, it is also a metaphor for a way of life. So not only is it our responsibility to bear the weight of the ridicule and hostility of following Jesus Christ, it should very well become a way of life and the constant focal point of our lives.