May 28 – Thoughts on 2 Chron. 4-6 & John 10:24-42

The major difference between moving cows and moving sheep is that you drive cows from behind but you lead sheep from in front.

Jesus has proclaimed Himself “the Good Shepherd” and the metaphor is apt.  As our Good Shepherd, Jesus leads us from in front.  He goes before us and only then calls us to follow His lead.  But all too often we forget this, thinking we are blazing a trail, attempting a task nobody has tried before.  But we are never called anywhere that Jesus has not gone before.

So how do we follow our Good Shepherd?  By following His voice.  If we are Jesus’ sheep, we will recognize His voice when we hear it or read it.  We will know which messages come from Him and which come from us or the world around us.  And when we hear His voice, all we need to do is follow where it leads.  When we do, we will truly prove ourselves to be His sheep.

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May 27 – Thoughts on 2 Chron. 1-3 & John 10:1-23

As Jesus celebrates the next Jewish feast, in this case Hannukah or the Feast of Dedication, we get another “I am…” statement: “I Am the Good Shepherd.”  This is not only a beautiful metaphor of Jesus’ ministry, but also a public accusation of the temple leadership.

While the Feast of Dedication was a celebration of the anniversary of the dedication of the temple, it also became a feast of remembrance of the Maccabean Revolt.  In the time between the testaments, a time not recorded in scripture (except for the Apocrypha, a collection of writings inducted into the Catholic bible but not the Protestant one), a group of Jewish rebels called the Maccabees rose up against the Romans in a successful, if temporary, revolt.  Hannukah was a celebration of this revolt.

During this festival, the temple priests read aloud from the book of Zechariah the prophecy of God’s judgement on the bad shepherds of Israel at the time, namely the priests and rulers.  It was likely during the reading about God’s judgement on the Bad Shepherds that Jesus stood publicly and proclaimed Himself the Good Shepherd.  While the lower class people would love this creative way of calling out their current leadership and likening them to the bad shepherds of Zechariah, it also placed Jesus in a role reserved for God alone, that of Shepherd of His People.

It was yet another way that Jesus identified Himself, through the Jewish feasts, as both God in the flesh and the true leader of God’s people.

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May 26 – Thoughts on 1 Chron. 28-29 & John 9:24-41

Each time we have a sermon on financial stewardship, the basic message is “we need to give more”.  Whether out of need (like a building campaign or to meet a budget to fund a mission project), or out of thanksgiving (God has given us so much that we really should give some back to Him), or out of discipleship (we need to let go of our addiction to money by giving it away), the message is always basically the same: we need to give more.  This is not a bad message.  It is true to the gospel.  It maps out a Godly use for our money.  But there is another message we could share.

This text (1 Chron. 29) is seldom used for a lesson on financial stewardship, and yet it may be just what we need.  David begins this prayer with a beautiful ode to God, and then comes something new.  “Who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this?”  The Israelites have just caught David’s vision for a temple to God and have given a ridiculous amount to see it happen.  And in thanksgiving for their generosity, David prays this prayer.

It is not a prayer of thanksgiving to the people for giving, but to God for blessing them to such an extent that they have so much to give.  This prayer is humble, heart-felt, and bursting with gratitude.  It is the very prayer we should be praying today.

God, we have given so much to Your work, yet all we have given came from You in the first place.  Why me, God?  Why have you determined that we should be so blessed with abundance that we can give so much, and even that comes from our excess most of the time.  If we could pray this prayer, we might remember (1) that all we have comes from God and is still His to do with as He pleases, (2) we have infinitely more wealth than most of the world, and therefore a duty to use it righteously, and (3) it is a privilege, not a right, to have so much that we can give it away to God and others.

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“In the Spirit” June/July Newsletter

Our June/July newsletter is now available.  To download it, click here.

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May 25 – Thoughts on 1 Chronicles 25-27 & John 9:1-23

“Light” and “Darkness”, “Blind” and “Seeing”… John uses these metaphors regularly throughout his gospel, and they are good ones for us to ponder today.  As we look at Jesus healing a man who was born blind, this question of Who is Really Blind? comes home to the Pharisees.

Jesus and His disciples approach a man who is blind from birth and the disciples ask the typical question for a first century Jew (and a 21st century American): “Why?”  Why was this man born blind?  Why do bad things happen to the innocent?  How can a loving and all powerful God allow evil like blindness to happen if He could stop it?  For the disciples, the assumption that God is all powerful is a given, so there is no question of God causing the blindness.  The question is why.  Was it his parents’ sin?  Was it his?

Jesus gives us the only answer we get to such a difficult and ever-present question:  Neither.  This blindness is not a punishment for sin but is a means of revealing God’s glory.  And through Jesus’ miraculous healing, God’s glory was indeed revealed.  Sadly, this is not the answer we want for our sicknesses, grief, or pain.  That God might inflict unhappiness on His people just so He can reveal His glory seems wrong at best, sadistic at worst.  But this reveals once again what I consider the biggest idolatry in our world today: ego.  Of all the idols we can list, our own self-focus and self-interest is our biggest idol.

To believe as we do that reality, life, and even God’s responsibility begins with us and our happiness is idolatry.  To begin every philosophy and even theology with me denies the Kingship of God in my life.  And it is this that leads us to the epidemic of godlessness we are seeing from the top to the bottom of our culture.  “It’s ultimately all about me” is the motto of the world Jesus came to save from itself.

Why was this man born blind?  Why would God do something that made someone unhappy for His own purposes (without checking in with us about it first!)?  Because He’s God!

And this may be our biggest blindness of all.  May God heal us of it that we might follow Him in truth.

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