On January 16th I was honored to be able to present a sermon on evangelism and how Christians do a better job telling others about Apple products than the Savior of their souls. If I take stock, I am usually more excited about some new tech gadget, or a sports team, or a movie. How about you? The sermon was modeled on the previous weeks sermon by Pastor Paul Jeon on how our prayer life is reflective of our relationship with God.
And yes, I am going to MacWorld.
Yesterday I expounded on Ephesians 6:5-9 for all three services of CCPC. It was hard to get all my thoughts out into a coherent whole as the discussion of slavery is so layered and complex. I had an additional 9 pages (12pt single-spaced) of notes, quotes, and scripture that I could not fit into the timespan. Two things I was able to add during the CCPC Metro service (thanks to the excellent input from my wife) was the question of how do we treat those who serve us in other capacities, like waitresses and stewardesses, and being a master also extends to all of us who lead anyone. Have a listen to Working Like Slaves and drop me a comment if you have thoughts or questions.
Flew back from Portland, OR last week and the trip was fairly uneventful. Well, actually it was a red-eye flight so I slept through most of it thankfully. Speaking of uneventful flights…
Remember how in StarTrek, whenever the Enterprise hits a magnetic-storm or is in combat and the captain says “hard to port!” it cuts to a hallway scene and the people are being bounced around the corridor? Did you notice how Kirk and Piccard don’t often take the time to inform the crew. “Attention crew. There is a Klingon Mark V equivalent photon torpedo approaching the engineering deck on the starboard side. We are about to turn hard to port in response to evade this impending impact. If you would be so kind as holding onto something I would be much obliged. Also, those on the engineering deck may want to consider evacuating or putting on a space suit. Thank you for your time.” Such a dialogue might be more suitable for more classical english literature.
Or say an airplane is flying in dense fog and all of a sudden the pilot sees a mountain in front. The captain does not take the time to turn on the fasten-seatbelt sign. “Attention passengers, this is the captain speaking. Please forgive me for interrupting the inflight entertainment which I am sure you are enjoying as much as myself. I am turning on the…” BOOM! Of course he wouldn’t give a long monologue. He turns the plane as fast as he can to avoid the danger. The passengers, and especially the crew, will get tossed around, but the alternative is death. No mention of returning the tray tables to their uprtight position.
Sometimes large and drastic course corrections are necessary for safety. This will naturally be disruptive to a fair number of the crew and passengers. If we are navigating a particularly large storm, the bumpiness will last a while, but the pilot/captain is relying on more than his own wisdom to navigating the storm in the best possible course to produce the least amount of distress. The pilot is not out for a joy ride or putting the plane through its paces.
Ever notice how grumpy some passengers can get when there is a little turbulence, let alone a major storm? Maybe we need more Mark V photon torpedos for life perspective. Make it so.
This past Sunday I was honored to be able to present God’s word to CCPC Metro in Arlington, VA. Looking at the crowd’s reaction to Stephen in Acts 6, I examined how God uses change in our lives. You can get the audio here. CCPC Metro is the satellite service for Christ Central Presbyterian Church which has just moved to Centreville, VA. Drop me a comment if you have thoughts or questions.
A hearty thank you to all our prayer and financial supporters as we went to Cherokee, NC at the beginning of July to minister on the reservation of the Eastern Band of Cherokee. Feel free to grab our Cherokee STM 2010 Followup pdf to catch up on what happened.
Well, upgraded to wordpress 3 and been mucking around. Had to switch around a couple of the plugins as older ones had not been made compatible yet. Also toying around with using WP as the basis for a new church website. An upgrade is really needed. WP is powerful enough to be a basic CMS, and with some plugins like Connections it is fairly well suited for other tasks.
Quote of the night: “Embarrassment is the gateway drug for theological accommodation and denial.” -Al Mohler
Yes, they did video tape it too.
On August 30, 2009 I had the privilege of giving the weekly sermon for CCPC. I used the book of Galatians, chapter 1 for my text to get across the point that, just like the believers in Galatia, we try to “augment” or “upgrade” the Gospel by inserting our own righteousness. Our friends, kids, and the the watching world see this and rightly want little part of it. Here is a link to the mp3 if you want to listen. I could not get everything in that I wanted, but I trust that God will use it for His glory. Drop me a comment if you have thoughts or questions.
An overarching theme in the Bible is the four-fold Creation, Fall, Redemption, Consummation. Though we often acknowledge this when we hear it, I wonder how often we consider it in our daily lives. It seems to me that three of the pieces are usually neglected: Creation, Fall, and Consummation. I do not present a full argument here, but just some snippets to get you thinking.
In the past who knows how many years, the notion of a God creating the entire universe has been thoroughly mocked and ridiculed from several angles, most notably from the scientific establishment. As a result, I believe a lot of pastors, and their parishioners, shy away from discussion on creation. While I do not advocate that Christians become hard core Intelligent Design proponents, they do need to understand that if God did not in fact create the universe, then the rest of their faith is worthless. If God did not create it all, then we should worship whoever/whatever did (similar to how many atheists worship at the altar of evolution).
The fall of mankind is also a foreign concept to a lot of Christians, theologically and practically. Theologically the general consensus is that people are good and that society (and/or something else like religion) makes them go bad. This is quite contrary to the clear teaching of scripture. But even if we intellectually assent to the depravity of mankind, our actions tend to say otherwise. We attribute bad things to God, chance, or others. We attribute good things to ourselves like somehow we actually deserve them because we are such good people. We often subtly infer that our holiness achieves merit before God, forgetting that even our best works are like filthy rags.
Some think the fall only affected pieces of us as opposed to the whole. Just the body (evidenced by disease) and the soul (because we need a savior right?), but not the mind (because we all know that we each have Vulcan logic and are always right).
But one of the main issues that people do not like preaching about our fallenness is that it makes people unhappy thinking that they are so bad and nasty. The goal of Christianity is to be happy, right? Wrong.
We do not often discuss consummation in the redemptive plan because it involves several topics that our modern minds do not want to deal with.
Kingdom: The consummation is of God’s eternal Kingdom. As such, there is a call for us to be servants in that Kingdom. We associate this servanthood with slavery, totally neglecting the fact that Christ came as s servant to us and told us to do likewise. This involves sacrificing our desires for those of the King. This is not something we want to do, as we spend the majority of our lives trying to build our own kingdoms.
Heaven: Christians have a misconception of what heaven is based on plenty of movies, media, books, and other venues other than scripture itself, not to mention the widespread heritical belief in some sort of Christian reincarnation. Plenty of Health/Wealth teachers out there certainly teach that you can have your best life now, and society (with its glitz, glamour, and toys) does not want us to think or yearn for heaven. Once you talk about heaven, you need to talk about…
Hell: A very uncomforatble subject especially when you are subtlely mocked with the question “Do you really mean that (their personally significant person) is going to hell?” Actually, yes, I do mean that and I wish it was some other way. The Bible speaks of a literal, conscious, eternal torment called hell. Of course, if you skip the Fall, then you don’t need a hell, but then you don’t need the item talked about the most:
Redemption gets a lot of press, and rightfully so because of the unfathomable grace of God shown towards believers in Christ. But if there was no fall, we would not need a redeemer. If there was a fall and we could save ourselves, then we would have personal redemption. If we are redeemed then left on our own, then there may not be a need for a consummation. We often neglect what we are truly being saved from, and what we are being saved to.
Well, those are some thoughts.
The sermon series right now at CCPC is on the Armor of God. I had the opportunity to not only give the sermon on the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit and how it relates to our union with Christ (listen: mp3) , but I also go to give a little children’s sermon (not recorded). I hope you are blessed and challenged by it.