Mark Byron

Edifier du jour: Mark 2:15-17(NIV)

¹⁵ While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. ¹⁶ When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

¹⁷ On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Nobody's perfect. Some are less perfect than others, but all are imperfect.

Some of the neediest folks are "sinners" in the cultural sense, where bad habits and bad choices have put them into tough spots. However, it's those folks that need Jesus the most.

The modern-day analogues of the Pharisees will strive to live holy lives and not to appear to be a part of "the world." That can have them turning down opportunities for ministry that might have them looking a little bit worldly. Shooting some pool at the local watering hole might be a good way to minister to a co-worker, getting some spiritual conversation started in a more comfortable place for an average joe than a Sunday School class, but that would be a double no-no for the legalist. A ..... bar.... and .... pool... (Cue Ya Got Trouble from The Music Man); the next thing you know, the backslider might go dancing.

That might not be a good suggestion for someone with drinking issues, for it might drag them down rather than lift the workmate up, but since the sinners aren't all that likely to wander into a church, we need to go where they are. Easier said than done, since we still need to steer clear of things that are sinful rather than things that are merely associated with sin.

Who Wrote the Book of Love? Part I- A God of Boundries

Interesting theological discussions coming out of Jason's Collins' coming out. One discussion flowing from a Facebook post on this Chris Stevens essay in the Midland Daily News had the house liberal of our "Overbidders Anonymous" bridge circle chimed in with

Did Confucius say "he who lives in glass house should not throw stones"? Well one who uses the Bible to condemn others is doing that - The religion becomes a glass house, because the Bible is not meant to be used to throw stones. It is a book of love.

That rings true; "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." is right out of Jesus' mouth. However, He added shortly thereafter-"Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more."

God is love, but a loving God does guide His flock away from danger. A good parent won't let their toddler fall down the stairs or get into the cleaning fluids under the sink. The rug-rat might not like it, shaking the baby gate to be see what's being hidden down the stairs, but those boundaries are for their own good.

We don't always like those boundaries, but they are for our own good. The problem with that is "it's for your own good" is what the parent says after the teen has slammed the bedroom door after hollering "You don't love me" after not getting their way on a questionable activity.

Edifier du Jour: Galatians 3:5-6(NIV)

⁵ So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? ⁶ So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

I'm reminded of the phrase "gifts of the Spirit"; note that that isn't rewards of the Spirit that you get after 10,000 prayer miles. Other than a basic faith, there is no divine quid pro quo, as Paul was lectering the Galatians here.

Edifier du Jour:Galatians 2:19-21(NIV)

19 “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

Our self-centered nature wants to pay back gifts; that goes for salvation as well. Many folks and churches wind up with some sort of grace-plus package, but this is too big a gift to ever repay. All we can do is say "Thank you" and try our best to expand His kingdom and be good ambassadors for him.

Here's a little theme music for the passage via Phillips Craig and Dean

Edifier du Jour:Galatians 2:15-16(NIV)

¹⁵ “We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles ¹⁶ know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.

Sisyphus comes to mind here; the cursed guy of Greek legend who kept rolling a big stone uphill, only to have it roll back down every time.

The pre-incarnation Jews were in a comparable boat, rolling the law and its sacrifices uphill towards justification with God, only to have it repeat the processes over and over and over ad nauseum.

Come AD... Paul and his completed comrades ditched the boulder for the Rock of Ages. The Law never quite got the job done, but Jesus manages to take the boulder and plunks it down to stay on Golgotha.

Edifier du Jour:Galatians 2:11-13 (NIV)

¹¹ When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. ¹² For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. ¹³ The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

We learn racism; we don't start with it. Kids will play with other kids regardless of skin tone or ethnicity until they're taught to distance themselves.

After having a vision of getting presented a feast of unclean critters, Peter (a.k.a. Cephas) did a 180 and ministered to the Gentiles that a good Jew avoided. However, send a few Jewish believers up his way, and he starts cliquing with them and turning his back on the local Antioch believers.

There was still an open debate of whether you had to be Jewish in order to be Christian, making converts follow Jewish law, including the unkindest cut of all. So, just as modern believers distance themselves from folks who don't fully agree with their theological fine points, Peter fell into the trap of shunning the lesser-believers.

A good hunk of Paul's writings were focused on trying to head off such ethnocentrism and factionalism. Sadly, that's nothing new and won't go away on its own.

Edifier du Jour:Galatians 2:9:10(NIV)

⁹ James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised. ¹⁰ All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.

Two things jump out here; one is the division of labor. Paul, a Pharisee's Pharisee, winds up ministering to the outsiders while some fishermen-preachers stay at home to minister to the Jewish population. That mix doesn't quite work in the modern church, but there is a mission field to the unchurched/underchurched majority in most nominally Christian countries. Folks who answer "Do weddings count?" when they're asked the last time they were in church are often a tougher and more needy field than a remote village in Unga-Bunga; they'd be the modern day "circumcised", likely baptized as a kid but with little or no faith life.

The other part was looking after the poor. James majored in the needy-"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress." Paul wasn't that far behind, helping move money to the needy as far back as Acts. Churches often forget that; more than one church spends more on Sunday school materials than they spend on ministry to the poor.

Edifier du Jour:Galatians 1:11-12(NIV)

¹¹ I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. ¹² I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

In modern days, we'll lock someone up in the loony bin when they say God's talking to them directly, or at least point them in the direction of the exit. Well, unless you're at a charismatic church, where they'll hang on every word.

Could that be partly why many folks on the left don't like Paul? The gospels were a quartet of biographies of Jesus in the flesh, while Paul merely claimed to have been visited by Jesus. The fact that Paul's writings aren't PC don't hurt, but a lot of churches will give triple weight to the Gospels while all but ignoring the rest of the canon.

God does speak to people; that's how we got the Bible in the first place and a lot of the acts that are recorded in it. It would be strange to have God shut the lines of communication down cold about 100AD.

Note that some of the folks mentioned in my first paragraph aren't working off of a wild imagination or last night's burrito; however, others are getting legit words from God and we dismiss them entirely at our peril. They do need to mesh with Scripture and be taken with multiple grains of salt, but they might just be right.

Edifier du Jour:Galatians 1:6-9(NIV)

⁶ I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— ⁷ which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. ⁸ But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! ⁹ As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!

Here's one that requires discernment; what counts as a "different gospel?" Does the difference between doing communion every service or just once a month count? To a sacramental church, it would; for Catholics, the Eucharist is the center-piece of the service, while for most evangelicals, the sermon is the focal point.

Churches has schismed over using pianos and organs in services or cast doubt on the authentic nature of a church if it uses the wrong translation. Yet those churches on their theological high horses will likely be doing things somewhat differently that what Paul did in the first century.

If we talk "the gospel" too tightly, you might get God all to yourself in Heaven-"be quite; they think they're the only ones here." However, there are boundaries that aren't open to debate and distancing the Church from folks going over those boundaries is still called fo.

 

Edifier du Jour:Galatians 1:3-5(NIV)

³ Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, ⁴ who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, ⁵ to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

I didn't even get past Paul's greeting when starting into Galatians just now. With the Boston Bammer on the lam, the "present evil age" takes on deeper meaning. However, we're not getting rescued in a physical sense; there are likely believers starting rehab for their amputated limbs in Massachusetts as we speak.

We're rescued in a spiritual sense, that we don't have to fall into the zeitgeist, either by railing against the American system or counter-railing against the enemies of the system. In the big picture, God doesn't have a dog in the background-check fight or how taxes are structured, nor is there anything particularly special in being American of particularly wrong in not being American.

"In the world, but not of the world" is the paraphrase of John 17 that makes the rounds of the churchy. I have to fight getting too sucked into praising folks who don't really deserve that much praise and demonizing folks who don't deserve that much bile.

For instance, Chechen-bashing is likely to be the order of the day after the news out of MA this morning, but such bile doesn't expand the Kingdom of God; remembering to love our immigrants and love our enemies isn't easy in times like these, but it's called for.

Edifier du Jour:Genesis 8:20-21(NIV)

²⁰ Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. ²¹ The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

Our current weather conditions in mid-Michigan beg a Noah reading for today, but doing it after the flood is key, since that was a one-time flood. Ain't....happenin'....again. Read God's lips.

I joked that the special-ed students flooded out of their Northwood U site (that's not a slam on the "Woodies"; the special-ed folks at MCESA have a program for adult students on campus along with the good business college) could use The Arc instead, but we won't need another ark... ever.

We may deserve that treatment as a fallen bunch of critters, but God got that bit of anger out of His system for good; Golgotha cinched that by giving Him a punching bag for our sins, if I might make a bit of a stretched metaphor.

Edifier du Jour: Isaiah 40:9-11(NIV)

⁹ You who bring good news to Zion,
    go up on a high mountain.
You who bring good news to Jerusalem,^[c]
    lift up your voice with a shout,
lift it up, do not be afraid;
    say to the towns of Judah,
    “Here is your God!”
¹⁰ See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power,
    and he rules with a mighty arm.
See, his reward is with him,
    and his recompense accompanies him.
¹¹ He tends his flock like a shepherd:
    He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
    he gently leads those that have young.

Eileen's Tuesday afternoon Bible study has been in Isaiah (I have to work at spelling that right after Isiah Thomas made a "wrong" spelling the norm for Michiganders of a certian age; his modern namesake spells it like the prophet, since his Bible-literate mom wanted it spelled right.) and this passage was in the mix recently.

This answers the question "how are you talking about Jesus when you're in Isaiah?" Well, we don't call the ancient Zeke a prophet for nothing, as he had a vision of the Messiah, of a God-with-us Emanuel.

The benefits ("recompense" is a bit of a five dollar word, even for a generally user-friendly NIV) the Messiah is fixin' to bring here is of care and leadership rather than BMWs and starter castles. That's where the Sanhedrin's blowing off of Judas' grief in yesterday's Edifier shows as a stark contrast to how the Messiah deals with his flock.

We have both strength and tenderness here. On one hand, he's a strong leader with arms that the folks at the Nautilus machine envy, but approaches his flock with tenderness rather than knocking them into the next county with those ripped arms to "correct" their mistakes.

It might sound like something out of the Mark Driscoll playbook, but I'm getting the vision of Jesus as an 6'5" 260 outside linebacker (with skin a few notches darker than the standard Aryan look for Mediterranean realism) reading to kids in one of those public service NFL ads. Strong and tender at the same time, a package that the Church doesn't do well. Either we overdo the macho prophetic or overdo the Jesus-is-my-homedawg tenderness.

He's both at the same time, which Isaiah gets but the Church struggles to.

Edifier du Jour: Matthew 27:3-5(NIV)

³ When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. ⁴ “I have sinned,” he said, “for I have betrayed innocent blood.”

“What is that to us?” they replied. “That’s your responsibility.”

⁵ So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.

After seeing our church bury a young suicide victim, the Bible's most famous one came to mind; apples and oranges, since our youngster was fighting off some mental issues rather than selling his Lord up the river. Judas is seen as the heavy here, and rightly so, but the heavier heavies are the Sanhedrin, who don't give a rodent's rump about Judas' remorse.

These are supposed to be the spiritual leaders of their people, and they're got hearts that make the Grinch's look huge; you can fit that heart in a flea's navel and still have room for [a few other minute things of folks you'd like to insult; that's left as an exercise for the reader].

Shall we compare high priests? Jesus, from the order of Melchizedek, who dies for your sins, versus the Aaronic high priest, who can't give their snitch the time of day after his usefulness has passed.

Edifier du Jour: Luke 24:36-43(NIV)

³⁶ While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

³⁷ They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. ³⁸ He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? ³⁹ Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”

⁴⁰ When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. ⁴¹ And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” ⁴² They gave him a piece of broiled fish, ⁴³ and he took it and ate it in their presence.

I recall the old joke about the skeleton who went the bar and asked for a beer and a mop; he really can't hold his liquor. That joke didn't apply to Jesus here, He's a real person who has substance and can eat without it falling to the floor.

Speaking of Mr. Skeleton, you do know the reason he didn't cross the road? No guts. Again, not like Jesus, who had the chutzpah to take the sin of the world upon Himself and come back to tell the tale, to be the Is to all the other dead religion leader's were's.

God's nom-de-guerre is I AM, lest we forget, and Jesus is a subset of that great I AM, who is rather that was.

Edifier du Jour: Romans 10:9-10(NIV)

⁹ If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰ For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.

We had a middle-schooler from our church die this week at his own hand; that echoes the story of Rick Warren's son who left us recently under similar circumstances. While I don't know the details of the youngster's problems, Matthew Warren was fighting depression most of his life.

Pastor Kessler noted this passage in his sermon today and stressed that it doesn't have any fine print. The youngster knew the Lord according to the pastor, and a bad reaction to medication doesn't change that. This passage of the sermon struck home-seizures can't shake our salvation loose, nor can medication wash our salvation away.

There are some traditions that deem suicide unforgivable, but you'd be hard pressed to find that in scripture.

That's refreshing, since we're in a Free Methodist church that might question that once-saved-always-saved thought from an Arminian vantage-point, but Kessler thankfully ignored that; that's one where I'll side with the Reformed camp on and give a hearty amen to this passage.

Edifier du Jour: Luke 24:25-32(NIV)

Here, Jesus is schooling His secondary followers on the road to Emmaus who just gave a Reader's Digest version of Holy Week-

²⁵ He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! ²⁶ Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” ²⁷ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

²⁸ As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. ²⁹ But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.

³⁰ When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. ³¹ Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. ³² They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

Even with an extra block of Scripture testifying to Jesus, folks are slow to the get message these days. The Holy Spirit does lend a hand, applying something like the burning hearts that we see in verse 32 to the modern seeker.

However, lots of stuff gets in the way of finding that faith, including a culture that belittles faith and belittles righteous behavior. It takes some effort to go against that flow; thankfully, we've got a good tugboat helping out.

 

Edifier du Jour: John 20:30-31(NIV)

I was looking at Acts 1 to get into a post-Easter swing of things, but I forgot that the Gospels do have some post-Easter material. Doubting Thomas in John 20 is the poster-boy for that window, with the folks on the road to Emmaus coming a close second.

However, this passage at the end of John 20 is worth keeping in mind, especially when it can be taken as a throw-away between the post-Resurrection vignettes.

³⁰ Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. ³¹ But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

That's an interesting counter to folks who pull a "Jesus never said anything about [fill in pet topic]." There's a finite amount of verbiage in the Gospels, and some things didn't make the cut. Some subjects might have been either so clearly wrong at the time (or so clearly right to not need reinforcing) that His opinion wasn't noted.

What we do have down does paint a picture of a hands-on, caring God, such that trying to cast Him as distant and aloof rings hollow when compared to when He came and dwelt in the flesh with US.

Edifier du Jour: Acts 1:6-8(NIV)

Trying to get into a post-Easter frame of mind, I was reading Acts 1. This passage struck me, especially given the political time we're in-

⁶ Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

 

⁷ He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. ⁸ But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Figuring out when Jesus is coming back is a fool's errand. In the meantime, we're supposed to be His witnesses.

Note that you don't have to be off in some exotic locale to be a witness; the "ends of the earth" are in the mix, but only a third of the equation. We've got hometown, country, and world as the troika here, if I can turn that into a generic form. Given the fallen nature of modern culture, your neighborhood is more of a mission field that Africa or South America; those countries often have more evangelicals per capita than a lot of big US cities, even more if you tack on devout Catholics that have their spiritual acts together.

Who's the Patron Saint of the Underemployed?

I've been in a no-mans land for three years, having too many problems with anxiety issues to be in the classroom but unable to get a job doing anything else; no one wants to hire a 51-year-old PhD in Finance without any experience that fits a niche. Thus, tutoring online about 10 hours a week is my lot in life, which helps cover medical bills and other incidentals while Eileen and I live with my folks. 

I had an appointment with our Community Mental Health office this morning; while our income is low enough to qualify for help, my anxiety issues aren't bad enough to pass their triage screen. It's good to know there are people worse than I who are getting help, but frustrating that I'm not quite functioning properly but functioning too well to get help. Not quite a Catch-22, but a cousin of sorts.

I've been light on my writing in the last few years, partly due to the fact that my emotions are a bit raw and that I don't quite fit in anywhere theses days. In politics, I'm definitely not a Democrat, but modern Republicans leave me cold. Low taxes will help me little, but big government isn't quite big enough to help, nor does my situation lend itself to a stock job-creation/job-training scenario.

Likewise, I'm a theological tweener; I have little love for the cold-hearted God of Reformed theory who dooms a whole class of humans to Hell the day they are born, nor does the Surfer Dude God of Arminian thought who just scatters some prevalent seed of grace and hope folks respond have much appeal. Neither seem to resemble the God portrayed in Scripture or in the hearts of His servants.

The answer to the title question might be St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. If you don't like going too Catholic, might I cue up Phillips, Craig and Dean's He Believes in Lost Causes.

 

When I was coming back from Tennessee on Saturday, we passed a church in Joel Osteen's sphere of influence; the billboard on I-75 in central Ohio had "There's always hope!" on the right side.

I wasn't in a good mood at the time, and my first response was to tell that Osteen-loving pastor (the billboard had Osteen with the husband-wife pastor team-"Visit my friends") to shove that Prosperity Gospel up [where the sun doesn't shine].

However, there is hope, even when things seem hopeless; ignoring that as we distance ourselves from therapeutic deism or word-of-faith excesses is a mistake.The billboard is right, even if I'm not a great fan of the messenger. I don't think the pastor there heard my rant (Eileen sure did; we had to pull off shortly thereafter to get me to cool down), but he has an apology coming.

Also, even if things seem hopeless from a worldly perspective, they're often far from hopeless from God's perspective. Even the unemployed and underemployed have value and worth. They might not fit into the typical church culture well, but they still have things to offer beyond a big tithe check.

There's a big chunk of our country on the outside looking in. We don't minister to them well. I'm going to try to do my part to be a voice for them, trying to give some comfort that things can get better and that everyone has value even if society sees them as negative NPV projects.

Maundy Morning QB

This is Last Supper day in Holy Week; however, I went outside of the foot-washing and the prototype Communion service and looked at Jesus closing address to His disciples.

John 16 was spot-on, given the politics of this week.

⁷ But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. ⁸ When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: ⁹ about sin, because people do not believe in me; ¹⁰ about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; ¹¹ and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.

Ironically, one of the bigger gay publications is the Advocate. Not quite what the Holy Spirit had in mind, as they try to stick a pair of cleats into the Paraclete.

Would Jesus Pack Heat?

I've seen the "What would Jesus do?" question asked in relation to gun control. I'm not sure if that is a fair question to ask.

No, I'm not stepping away one bit from having Him as our ultimate role model (as well as Lord and Savior), but Jesus, lest we forget, was and is God and has the ability to mold reality to His liking. Were someone to come after Him with an AK-47 or Luger, He could turn to the shooter and say "that's not a good idea" and the shooter would stand down since Jesus could freeze him in his tracks.

We don't have quite that power over a determined shooter, although we had one case earlier this month where a teacher talked a shooter down.

Noting that such rhetorical power isn't a universal panacea, is self-defense allowed at all, given the turn-the-other-cheek command of Jesus? Luke 3:14 is one tangential way of looking at that issue-

Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”

He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.”

Jesus' command wasn't "get your stinkin' butt out of the Army and apply for conscientious objector status." It was just to be honest and not to abuse their authority. Were violence a total no-no, He'd be railing against the state use of power.

Thus, violence in a greater cause might well be justified, especially when we saw Israel take things by force when called upon in the OT; Jesus as part of God implicitly signed off on that violence as well, or at least his minority opinion after being overruled by his Dad and the Holy Spirit wasn't noted in the Trinitarian Record.

That makes state violence called for on occasion. Is personal self-defense called for?

"Turn the other cheek" leans us towards walking away from a fight where possible. A slap from a disgruntled person might be the extent of violence, and responding by starting a brawl might not be the best response, since it may solve little other than to create bruises and broken bones.

However, it is a bit of a stretch to see where armed folks raping and pillaging through a neighborhood has only diplomacy to stop them. Diplomacy is the first response when possible, but self-defense would be called for at some point if the offending party is not responding to reasoned dialog.

They didn't have guns in Biblical days, but they did have swords. Luke 22:38 showed up when I did a search on "Sword"

The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.”

“That is enough,” he replied.

Jesus didn't tell them to leave swords behind or turn them into plowshares, but that two swords was enough for what they were doing.

[Update 445PM-The old Junkyard Blogger, Bryan Preston, noted that I missed the verse before-"if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one." Big oops. Not only do we have swords allowed, but a must-carry rule was in force.]

If the disciples were allowed to pack steel back then, packing heat today seems OK if called for. That would be something left to the modern disciple to figure out, if the situation called for having it around.

Jesus didn't pack heat, but He had the disciples packing the first-century equivilent.

 

Just the Father Left

I just found out one of my Midland friends lost his dad; he had lost his mom earlier, so he's now in his family's terminal generation, where he's now the elder of the family.

I'm a bit younger than him and both my folks are still alive and kicking in their mid 70s. However, it is sobering to see my friends in their 40s and 50s seeing their parents retire, get enfeebled and eventually dying off.

We don't talk about a guy who's AARP-eligable being an orphan when he loses his parents, but he has just his heavenly Father left to lean on. However, even when we have our folks with us in the flesh, our primary hope is in God. God doesn't retire or move to Arizona or get Alzheimers and forget about us; He's the constant in it all.

This part of Matthew 7 fits where I'm at-

⁹ “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰ Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? ¹¹ If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

God's not a Secret Santa handing out C-notes in Joisey, but He does have our back and supplies our needs. Not always our wants, though.

Edifier du Jour-Acts 13:8-12(NIV)

⁸ But Elymas the sorcerer (for that is what his name means) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul from the faith. ⁹ Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas and said, ¹⁰ “You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? ¹¹ Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind, and for a time you will be unable to see the light of the sun.”

Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he groped about, seeking someone to lead him by the hand. ¹² When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord.

Given the pacifist rhetoric flying during the current unpleasantries in Gaza, I was thumbing through Acts to see how Paul reacted to his foes.

I don't recall this story in Acts before; God was known to smite folks who "needed killin' ", but here, Paul calls the shot, sending doom towards the false prophet.

Is this turn-the-other-cheek pacifism? Not quite. Paul didn't make a polite comment on Elymas' First Amendment right to his opinion; he called down the power of God to blind the foe of the Gospel.

The hermeneutic here isn't to call down cataracts on modern secularists. However, it does give the believer some backup for being forceful in his rhetoric from time to time and even to call down some sort of damage to your foes. No, Paul didn't punch Elymas out or send a missile to take out his lair, so this isn't the best passage to counter a pacifist take, since it was God who did the blinding, not Paul.

However, this wasn't a MLK type of vibe; Paul was in "God'll get you for that" mode, verbally hostile if not physically so. Food for thought.

Edifier du Jour-James 1:27(NIV)

²⁷ Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

The modern Church seems to do one or the other, but not both. Your stereotypical evangelical church is big on denouncing the sinfulness of modern culture but spends more money on Sunday school literature than on helping the needy. The stereotypical mainline church is big on "social justice" but has essentially melded into a polluted culture; trying to meet those old standards of purity just gets in their way of ministering to folks.

We're supposed to do both; an anti-social Gospel doesn't work well.

God is For You

That was the message on the Midland Free Methodist sign this morning. What's hit me is that it could be taken two different ways.

God is for you-The Great I Am isn't against you.

God is for you-No, He's not just the Flying Spaghetti Monster or some crutch for the weak; He's worth your pursuit.

However, as I reflect further, I see a third way to read it.

God is for you-That plays into a lot of triumphal stuff, like "If God is for us, who can be against us?" Quite a few people, as it turns out, but having God on your side is helpful.

 

Edifier du Jour: James 1:9-11(NIV)

⁹ Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. ¹⁰ But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. ¹¹ For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.

A lot of folks will want to declare this a turkey in the Epistle of Straw, for it runs counter to a lot of American thought. While the glorification of riches shows up most prominently in charismatic circles these days, it can trace its roots to the frozen-chosen, notably a Reformation meme that the wealthy churchmen were being blessed by God and that their wealth was a sign of their chosen nature.

James takes issue with that. Jesus noted that the last on earth will be first in God's kingdom, while the folks that are in charge of the building fund will be in Heaven's nosebleed section rather than in the box seats. That helps cushion the blow that came in the next passage that I riffed on yesterday where the doubters will not get much from God; here, the people who don't have much are blessed.

Edifier du Jour: James 1:5-8(NIV)

⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. ⁶ But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. ⁷ That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

I'm not quite getting my mind around this passage. In verse 5, God is gracious and not finding fault, yet He turns around and gives the back of the hand to someone who has some lingering doubts.

What if your lack of wisdom flows from a lack of faith? The foolish thinks God doesn't exist, but the fool doubts and has no outlet to get that foolishness given this construct. The wise person believes in God, thus doesn't need the help.

There are times where I feel like the fool at the end of this passage, not getting much tangible from the Lord and emotionally shaky; taking that passage at face value seems to be depressing when doubt in God's willingness to deliver is chronic.

There is a way through that catch-22, but it doesn't seem to be evident in this passage. Everything is possible through Christ, who will dispatch the Holy Spirit to help lean us into faith.

Edifier du Jour: James 1:13-15(NIV)

¹³ When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; ¹⁴ but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. ¹⁵ Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

I recall the old bumper sticker-"Lead me not into temptation; I can find it myself." We don't need that much prodding to fall astray, and God isn't the one doing any entrapping. That's not to say that Ol' Sloughfoot might not be doing it, but we shouldn't do our Geraldine imitation too often, since we're more likely to rush headlong into temptation without help.

Jesus in the wilderness was temped in that Satan offered up scenarios that Jesus could abuse His powers, but Jesus didn't bite, even as Satan backed up his pitches with proof-texting. You could say that Satan temped Jesus, but it's a tricky question to say that Jesus was tempted, since a sinless person wouldn't even mull over the prospect of sinful behavior.

However, even the best of us will occasionally mull over a tempting prospect. We might momentarily ponder clicking though the "Hot pictures of [insert starlet]" link at the bottom of an unrelated article before moving on and avoiding the offer. God doesn't nudge us along; we find enough temptation as is, and do well to move quickly past it without giving in.

 

Anybody Home?

We had an interesting sermon yesterday on hearing from God that was almost Pentecostal; however, it was seated in a more grounded framework of an unchanging God not shutting His trap two millennia ago.

Before you get all worried about Scripture getting trumped, an unchanging God won't be changing the truth, either. If what you hear from the Holy Spirit is something that goes counter to scripture, then it might be last night's burrito platter rather than the Spirit.

If God is speaking to our spirit, are we listening? Better yet, do we want to listen? If He is saying things that are uncomfortable, we might opt to become a cessationist-by-convience and discount the idea of God talking to folks in the present age.

Edifier du Jour-1 Thessalonians 1:4-7(NIV)

⁴ For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, ⁵ because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake. ⁶ You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. ⁷ And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.

The Bible doesn't exist in a vacuum. For it to make sense, people need to see the Gospel lived out. That creates two problems for the modern evangelical.

The first is that it backs away some from the Solo Scriptura theme. It takes a church to raise a disciple, not just a good book.

It also means that churches need to need more than get the person to say the Sinner's Prayer and make a trip to the dunk tank; there is the unsexy job of disciping folks beyond a bullet-point faith declaration. 

We've had a couple of baby dedications at church this month, and one of the elements of that ceremony is the church pledging to help the child grow in faith. That requires modeling, and not the type that happens on runways. It puts some pressure on folks to walk the walk and not just show up on Sunday morning if and when something else isn't on the schedule.