Overheard countless times in the last two months: “I am concerned about the poor performance of my investments and savings.”
Not heard even one time in the last two decades: “I am concerned about my poor performance in laying up treasure in heaven.”
[From Dan Edelen at Cerulean Sanctum]
A few weeks ago I did an assembly for our local First Schools (ages 4-8/9) on the Prodigal Son. The method was:
1. Read the story
2. Explain the basic point
3. Re-read the story with the children making actions / sounds when they hear key words.
My main aim was that the children learn the story, as so many people these days have no knowledge whatsoever of the Bible. Having the children listen for key words means they are paying close attention to the reading. I used the Good News Bible (I think) but adapted it so that the key words were more frequent. For example, at the end the father says “… your brother lived with pigs but now he’s home. He was lost but now he’s been found.” Okay, it’s a bit dodgy to change the Bible - but I reckoned the children would enjoy another opportunity to oink!
The text (and a few suggested actions / sounds) can be found here. If you use it for real, I suggest you ask the children to come up with sounds / actions but don’t hesitate to bring your own ideas in.
And for Glen’s comments on this parable: go here.
I’m preaching on 1 Corinthians 12:12-26 on Sunday and wrote this parable / story as part of the sermon. It’s no Booker-prize winner but it might be a helpful way of understanding what Paul is saying. I admit the body illustration is pretty straightforward, but sometimes it helps having two metaphors for the same idea. I was especially trying to make sense of why Paul refers to baptism in verse 13.
I heard this quote from Miroslav Volf (a theologian who is also a pacifist) from a Tim Keller sermon a while ago, but thanks to Michael Jensen I now have a reference for it.
Some liberal theologians hate the idea of God’s vengeance. Volf argues that the only way we can avoid resorting to violence is if we believe that vengeance is the LORD’s:
My thesis that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many Christians, especially theologians in the West. To the person who is inclined to dismiss it, I suggest imagining that you are delivering a lecture in a war zone…Among your listeners are people whose cities and villages have been first plundered, then burned and leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit. The topic of the lecture: a Christian attitude toward violence. The thesis: we should not retaliate since God is perfect noncoercive love. Soon you would discover that it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God’s refusal to judge. In a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die. And as one watches it die, one will do well to reflect about many other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind…
Exclusion and Embrace, p. 204
“When they hurled their insults at Jesus, he did not retaliate; when he suffered he made no threats. Instead he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.” (1 Peter 2:23)
A few weeks ago I was preaching on James 5:13-20. In these verses James seems to be drawing some sort of connection between sin that needs forgiveness, and physical healing. It is not a direct connection - verse 15 (”if he has sinned…”) makes that clear. But verse 16 encourages us all to be confessing sins to each other and pray for each other “so that you may be healed.”
There was an illustration I wanted to use - one John Piper used in connection with the value of small groups. Only problem: I couldn’t remember where on the web I’d found it, and in the end had to give up searching.
But now I’ve found it. It’s from a John Piper sermon reproduced here on the Resurgence website. The illustration is as follows:
A visiting pastor in Auckland, New Zealand was asked by the pastor of a church to come to a small group to help it understand its function. He came early for dinner and the husband was not there. The wife was embarrassed and explained that the husband owned a construction company and worked late.
The group arrived after dinner and the visiting pastor taught for a while on how to use spiritual gifts to build each other up. Then he asked them to get alone for a few minutes to seek God for how each one might channel God’s grace to the others for their upbuilding.
When they came back together he assumed they knew each other’s needs because they had been together for several years. The husband came home, showered and joined them in a few minutes. When the opportunity was given to speak or to pray for each other there was an awkward silence. They had never done anything like this before—seeking the Lord for how he might want them to minister to each other in that moment to build each other up.
The visiting pastor felt a fiasco was on his hands and turned the meeting back to the pastor to close. The pastor asked if anyone had a special problem they would like prayer for. The hostess said yes and showed the group the rash all over her arms. She said that the doctors had prescribed medicine but it hadn’t helped. They invited her to put her chair in the middle for prayer. And as they prayed, Christ, the head of the church, did his ministry. The pastor said, “I sense in my heart the Lord is telling me your problem is the result of great anger.”
She was silent for a moment then began to cry softly. Then she confessed, “I am so angry at my husband. He promises to be home for dinner , but night after night we eat without him. . . . He’s broken his promises to me over and over, and I feel I am a widow as I raise our children.”
There was an awareness that something had just been revealed that two years of small group meetings had not revealed. And the husband was blushing with embarrassment.
To make the story shorter, several of the men began to speak about how they had wrestled with the same problem in their homes and had almost ruined their marriages. One in particular spoke of a deep meeting with God in such a crisis and how God had made everything new.
By the grace of God the husband knelt down in front of his wife and wept into her lap, as the group prayed for them more earnestly than they had ever prayed. The visiting pastor commented later, “The Lord had invaded His Body, and the gateway into the supernatural world had been crossed by us all.”
The following Sunday the visiting pastor was to preach and saw the small group gathered on the parking lot outside the church. When they found him inside the woman pulled up her sleeves and said, “Look, no rash anywhere!” The husband approached and said, “I’ve cut back my workday to eight hours. I took the kids to the zoo yesterday. We have a new home.” (Ralph Neighbor, Where Do We Go From Here? p. 161-64)
Browsing the De Regno Christi site I came across a wonderful answer to the classic question “When you die, if God asks ‘Why should I let you into heaven?’ what would you say?” Anthony Crowley writes:
I like better the answer which my old pastor, Ken Smith, gave to [this question]:
When I die, if God asks, “Why should I let you into my heaven?” I’ll bow and be silent. Then I’ll hear a voice,
“Father, he’s mine.”
I was preaching yesterday on John 10:1-15 (which is 2/3 of the Good Shepherd passage). Naturally, Ezekiel 34 was the OT reading. In both there is criticism of false shepherds who abuse and harm the sheep; in Ezekiel the particular charge is that the bad shepherds “eat the curds, clothe [themselves] with the wool and slaughter the choice animals” without care for the sheep.
Later I was reading the Sunday Telegraph and found this article about some of Iran’s clerics. The summary says it all:
“The Ayatollah Khomenei brought millions on to the streets of Iran to overthrow the decadence of the Shah. Now the late leader’s grandsons and other Iranian clerics face a backlash over their families’ fondness for fast cars, big houses and hot tubs.”
(NB the sermon is here)
First new post in a long time, and here’s a great clip from a recent episode of ER in which a dying man gets frustrated with a liberal chaplain.
“I need a real chaplain who believes in a real God and a real help. … I need someone who will look me in the eye and tell me how to get forgiveness because I am running out of time.”
(HT: A Rambling Guy)