TILL HE COMES Blog

Every once in a while I read a book that puts into words what I have been thinking, but couldn’t quite express. These are not so much “Aha!” moments as “Yes! Someone who understands!” moments. This last month, I happened to read two such books. Both put into words what I have been thinking and feeling for two-three years now.

Previously, I wrote about how the average reader can only read about 4000 books in a lifetime. These are two books I am glad are on my list. Both books might have made it into my Top Ten List. Definitely my top twenty.

The first book, Church Without Walls by Jim Petersen, is a book I’ve owned for about ten years, but never got around to reading. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t read it ten years ago, because it wouldn’t have meant much to me back then. Ten years ago, I thought I had church all figured out. I even wrote a book about it (I thank God it never got published…). Jim Petersen bases his book off of some church planting work he did in Brazil in the 1960s. He found that to really reach people who wouldn’t step foot in the typical church, he had to radically change the way the church looked and functioned. In the rest of the book, he summarizes the historical, theological, and biblical insights he came to as he struggled with how to allow this new church of Brazilian Christians be the church in their culture. (I recently learned that this this story is further developed in a new release, Will this Rock in Rio? by Ken Lottis.)

Jim Petersen then takes the lessons he learned in Brazil and applies them to our own time and culture. His basic conclusion is that various traditions have locked us into doing church a certain way, and have ceased to be helpful for many of the people we are trying to reach with the gospel (cf. p. 208). By abandoning some of these traditions, we actually liberate the church to live the gospel in our culture and communities. I’m looking forward to reading this book again.

The second book which got my heart racing is Repenting of Religion by Greg Boyd. Most Christians love to say they have a “relationship” not a “religion.” But the truth is that most of us just have another religion. I see this first hand every day at my job where I get to interact with people of seventeen different religions. Whatever differences they all may have, one thread runs through them all (Christianity included) — judgment and condemnation.

As Christians, we judge gays, lesbians, the rich, the homeless, people of other religions, atheists, heretics, criminals, drunks, drug addicts, prostitutes, pimps, politicians, and anybody else we can think of to point our finger at. Greg Boyd points out that Scripturally, these are not really the sins that God is most concerned about.  God is more concerned with other sins, which happen to be found in the lives of most Christians, especially those of us here in the United States.

But even this not Boyd’s point. He doesn’t just want us to shift our finger pointing from one target to another. He wants us to stop the pointing altogether. Finger pointing – judgmentalism – is a symptom of religion. “But wait!” you say, “Jesus judged. Paul judged. We are even told to judge each other! What about those texts?” Boyd is not ignorant of these texts and deals with all of them. His basic conclusion is that the only judging Jesus and Paul do is to judge the self-righteous, hypocritical, legalistic religious people for committing the sin of judging others.

As with everything Boyd writes, this book challenges your thinking and causes you to see certain Scriptures in a new light. If you want to learn to live out the love of Jesus within this world, you must read this book.

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I overheard a Christian praying over his meal this morning…out loud…in a public setting.

He was holding his plate up in the air, somewhat as on offering toward God I suppose, with his face raised to the heavens. How pious he looked! And people were watching.

But it was his prayer that got me the most. He said, “Almighty Father in Heaven, thank you for this daily bread, the fruit of your loins. Bless it to my body. Amen.”

…the fruit of your loins????…I have to believe he had no idea what he was saying, and I hope nobody else did either.

If you don’t know what “loins” are, the Oxford English Dictionary coyly defines it as “The part of the body that should be covered by clothing.”

Here are the rules for praying in public:
1. Know what you’re saying.
2. Don’t make a show of it.

You don’t even have to bow your head, close your eyes, and fold your hands. That is not the magical posture which makes prayer rise faster to the ears of God. And as long as we’re talking about God’s ears (which, along with loins, He doesn’t have), please note that God is not deaf. You do not have to shout or scream your prayers.

What an odd post this turned out to be…

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About six months ago, I sat down and wrote out my “Master Plan” for the next six months of my life. 

My wife and I were facing some tough decisions, and we didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know which route to choose. I needed to get it all out in black and white to see what our options were, so I wrote it down. It was a beautiful, detailed plan arranged in an outlineed flowchart. I thought of all the possible things that could happen, and the best way to respond in each situation, and fit it all on one typed page. It was genius. I had gained, to the best of my human ability, foreknowledge of the next six months of my life.

Then I forgot about it.

This week, as my wife was shuffling through some papers, she found it. As she read through it, I asked, “How are we doing? Are we following the plan?”

She burst out laughing. At the very bottom of the page, after all my plans, I had written, “If XYZ happens, I don’t know what we’ll do. I guess we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.” (I didn’t write XYZ, of course. It was an actual event that I knew was possible, but I won’t write it here on a blog.)

And guess what? The XYZ event happened this past Tuesday. Soooo, after all my planning, thinking, and preparing, we are still right back at not knowing what to do. I guess I just have to trust that Proverbs 16:9 is true: “The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.”

A friend of Wendy’s told her today: “The only thing you can do is do the next thing.” And she’s right. Very frequently, we don’t know ten steps ahead, or even two. All we can do is take the next step. God seems to give only enough light to take one step at a time. And we have to take it, not knowing exactly where it will lead, but trusting all the same.

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In a previous post I wrote about how the parables of Jesus were intended to hide truth rather than reveal it. We looked at some reasons why Jesus taught this way.

But a follow-up question remains. If Jesus told parables, and parables were cryptic, can we say that the primary teaching method of Jesus was to confuse people rather than teach them? No, we cannot say that. Though disguising truth was why He told parables, parables were not the primary teaching method of Jesus. He spoke in parables to certain people, for certain occasions, to accomplish certain purposes, when teaching about certain truths.

But every other time Jesus taught, He used what some might call an “expository method.” Jesus taught through books of the Bible. The gospels reveal that nearly every week of His ministry, on the Sabbath, Jesus could be found in the synagogue, teaching the Bible to those who had gathered to hear it. We often don’t realize Jesus did this. We tend to think He just wandered about from place to place, healing people, and telling stories on mountain tops.

But the reality is that those are a few isolated incidents. His miracles and parables in the countryside get recorded and get the most attention because they were what made His ministry memorable. But nevertheless, every week, Jesus was in the synagogue, teaching the Word of God.

And how did He teach in the synagogue? Well, we know from the Bible and from many other sources that the teacher would pick a section of Scripture, would stand and read it, then sit and explain it. Jesus does this in Luke 4:16ff, Luke 6:6ff, Luke 13:10ff and many other places.

And the typical method of synagogue teaching was book by book, verse by verse. Typically, when Jewish Rabbis taught the Torah, they taught it straight through (cf. Neh 8:8), and this is probably how Jesus taught (cf. Luke 4:16-21; 4:31; 6:6; 13:10). Jesus “took the Old Testament Scriptures, read them, explained them, and caused the people to understand them” (Pentecost 1981:137). This practice was also used by the early church (Acts 2:42; 13:14-15; 14:1-3; 15:21; 18:4; 19:8-10; etc.). John Lightfoot records that the one who taught this way was often referred to as “an interpreter,” and the teaching as an “interpretation” (Lightfoot 1989:68; cf. 1 Cor 12:10; 14:26). This is partly because the readings were in Hebrew, while some of those in the synagogue may have only understood Greek or Aramaic. So the text was read in Hebrew, then if an interpreter was present, it would be interpreted into a language everyone could understand, and then explained and taught so it could be understood and applied. This is what Jesus did in the synagogues He visited.

Jesus taught the Scriptures every week. He read the text, explained the text, applied the text. There is no better way of understanding God and His Word.

This post is based on the Grace Commentary for Luke 4:14-15.

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Most preachers and pastors use up a large portion of their sermon with story telling and illustrations. They say that doing so makes the message more memorable and enjoyable. And besides, “Jesus told stories, and so should we.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to get annoyed at all the illustrations, stories, and witty jokes that pepper most sermons today. I want something solid to chew on and think over. If I want entertainment, I can watch a movie. And frankly, I can’t remember a single sermon story I’ve heard…let alone the sermons they went with. So for me, stories don’t make the sermon more enjoyable or memorable. But that’s just me. I understand that for lots of people, stories do help keep their attention and remember what is said. So I won’t argue with these reasons for using stories in sermons.

But I have to disagree with the idea that “Jesus told stories and so should we.”

Certainly, Jesus told stories. There’s not denying that. The Gospels are full of stories that Jesus told. We call them ‘parables.” But the Gospels also reveal that these parables were told, not to reveal truth, but to conceal it. He spoke in parables to keep people confused.

How do we know this is why Jesus told parables? Because He said so. His disciples didn’t understand most of what Jesus said either, and so one time they asked Him why He spoke in parables. His answer? “So that in seeing, they will not see, and in hearing, they will not understand” (Luke 8:10).

Why would Jesus do this? He goes on to explain to His disciples that He wants them to understand what He says, as well as anybody else who comes to Him for an explanation of His parables. In other words, Jesus wants to disciple people…especially those who realized they didn’t know it all. He provided a clear explanation of His parables to those who asked Him.

And just in case we get the idea that we should start preaching nonsense sermons, we must understand that most of the time, Jesus taught through books of the Bible. We’ll get into how we know this in the next post.

But for now, just realize that if you are ever confused about what you read in the Bible – especially with the teachings and parables of Jesus – you are in good company. In some ways, the Bible was meant to be confusing. This is so that it keeps us humble, and none of us can fully understand or grasp all of it. It keeps us coming back to God for insight, understanding, and wisdom. Not knowing it all keeps us coming back for more. It keeps us dependant upon God, coming daily to sit at His feet and learn.

Are you confused by a passage or concept in Scripture? Tell God. Ask Him to teach you. Come before Him in prayer and with an open Bible saying, “Teach me wonderful things from your Word.”

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When it comes to ministry, most churches don’t think past their parking lot.

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William Barclay, in his commentary on the Gospel of Luke (1975:42-44), records three temptations that pastors face which are parallel to the three temptations of Jesus. Pastors are tempted:

1. To bribe people with meeting their physical needs.
2. To compromise for pragmatism – the end justifies the means.
3. To give people sensations and shows.

I agree that all three are temptations in pastoral ministry, and many churches and pastors around the world have succumbed to such temptations.

I would however, slightly change the first. Jesus wasn’t tempted to make bread for others, but for Himself. It was a temptation to meet His own physical needs. Pastors face this temptation all the time. How many of us have heard this whispered in our ear: “Your private life doesn’t matter. Image is everything. Do what you want behind closed doors. Nobody is going to see.  What you do in private does not effect who you are in public.”

Or, we assert our personal rights: “I have a right to eat and take care of myself. I prove my manhood by my rights. As a leader, I have rights to certain privileges, a certain salary, a certain level of respect.” Such things are not wrong; but they are not rights either.  

So those are some of the temptations that pastors face. The way we combat them is by recognizing that as followers of Jesus, we have no rights. He surrendured His rights, and in following Him, we surrender ours as well.

This post was based on the Grace Commentary for Luke 4:1-13.

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