Good Friday

Our Good Friday service tells the story of Jesus' last night to his crucifixion.  A large part of this is a Tenebrae service based on John 18-19.  A Service of Tenebrae, or "Darkness," is based on a twelfth-century late night/early morning service and is an extended meditation on the passion of
Christ.  As the readings move forward in the service candles are extinguished and we  move toward darkness and silence.  This is a powerful way to remember the death of Christ and his sacrifice for us.     Because of the mood of the service it will end with silence and a quiet leaving.

The service will also include a celebration of the Lord's supper with Tom preaching on 1 Corinthians 11.23-26.

Come and join this night of remembering and preparing for Easter.  The service begins at 7:00 p.m.

Evil and God and the Flood Revised

As I was working on this Sunday's message from Colossians I found what I believe is an important add on to this post of a week ago.  You can check out what I added by looking at the part in italics
I was doing some research and came across this interesting response to a well-known argument concerning evil.

1. A good God would destroy evil.

2. An all powerful God could destroy evil. 

3. Evil is not destroyed.

4.Therefore, there cannot possibly 
be a good and powerful God.

This is the classic argument. But if we look at the world through the eyes of Noah and the flood we know the truth--God can destroy evil. But such a destruction grieves the heart of God--deeply. (Gustave Dore captures the pain of such destruction in his woodcut "Deluge" that you can see to the right.)  So much so that God makes a covenant with Noah and all coming after him that he will not destroy the earth again in a flood (notice in the covenant signified by a rainbow that God hangs up his "bow" [See Genesis 8.20-9.17]). In light of this a counter argument:

1. God is good and is able destroy all evil. 


The idea that God is able to destroy all evil gets a bit of a different angle in Colossians 1.17 where we are told that Christ is before all things and in him all things hold together.  The Greek word for "hold together" is "synistemi" and it gives the idea that all things have their existence in Christ.   It is not merely that God is able to destroy evil, it is that if Christ stopped upholding the universe all would cease to exist.   In this picture Christ does not stand apart from  creation and creation rolls along until he intervenes, no, creation and all creatures depend on him for existence.   In light of this we see all the more that God is in control and that he holds off with judgment out of love and desire to reconcile us and all things back to himself.
2. But in doing so, he would destroy humanity, which is precious to Him.

3. Evil is not destroyed.

4. God is infinitely good and powerful, but out of mercy, chooses to wait to judge. In response to sin, he sent his Son as an atonement for all who would receive him.

I think there are some holes in this counter argument, but it makes for a good response and makes us think differently about God and how he deals with evil.

Unexpected

In my Old Testament reading I'm in the midst of Exodus.  As I've been reading through the 10 plagues I noticed something:  God gives no warning to Pharaoh and the people of Egypt that the 10th plague is coming.  The most terrible of all of the plagues--no warning.   The result of the plague is that there is huge weeping and mourning in Egypt, but the people of God get set free.  All of this brought to mind a theme that I think keeps running through the Bible:  we need to be ready for God's return because he's not planning on giving any more warnings.   In the book of Matthew Jesus teaches his last days discourse and in part of it he tells of a servant: "48But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, 'My master is staying away a long time,' 49and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. 50The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. 51He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Matthew 24   The unexpected return and the gnashing of teeth have the feel of that 10th plague in Egypt.   In the book of Revelation Jesus is sending a message to the church of Sardis.   "2Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. 3Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you." Revelation 3  What is disconcerting about this passage is that not only does Jesus come like a thief in the night, but he comes to judge.   Often we like to disconnect Jesus from any of the harsh realities of judgment, making him out only to be a guy who loves us and would never hurt a flea, but in reality he upholds the justice and righteousness of his Father.  

During this holy week when many in Israel were missing the reality that God had come to them in Jesus Christ (a most unexpected package this Jesus, he did not look like the Messiah they were supposed to get)  and so were willing not only to ignore his teaching, but also crucify him it seems to me that we do well to keep ourselves ready for God's unexpected return.  When we are ready for that return there is celebration, when we are not ready there is weeping.   Along with our being ready is our call to others to see the reality that God is returning reminding them in ways that can infiltrate this time and place that those who are ready get to join God in a new heavens and a new earth where every tear is dried away, but those who refuse all of God's invitations to turn (as Pharaoh did) end up forever outside.  Or as C.S. Lewis put it in The Weight of Glory, "finally and unspeakably ignored".

Revolution

The first draft of our revolution handout is loaded on the egm website. It lays out the message series as well as explaining a couple other parts of Revolution. Take a look.

Palm Sunday

As we enter into holy week we are taking a close look at the crowd in Luke's telling of the Palm Sunday story.   It's  a crowd that a lot of people would probably like to be a part of and I think a rather surprising group of people.  Our text is Luke 19.28-40  As you read the text see if you can figure out why the people we see in Luke are surprising.

(The photo above is of the modern day descent down the Mount of Olives that Jesus went down 2000 years ago.)

We start out the worship service with a bit of fun from the drama "Fish Eyes" that always gives a rather interesting insight into the disciples.  We will then hear the story of Palm Sunday.   Like the crowds on that first Palm Sunday we will celebrate.   Songs will be at the heart of the first part of celebration.  Appropriately on this day the opening song is "Sing to the King"

Sing to the King Who is coming to reign
Glory to Jesus, the Lamb that was slain
Life and salvation His empire shall bring
And joy to the nations when Jesus is King

Come, let us sing a song
A song declaring that we belong to Jesus
He is all we need
Lift up a heart of praise
Sing now with voices raised to Jesus
Sing to the King

For His returning we watch and we pray
We will be ready the dawn of that day
We'll join in singing with all the redeemed
'Cause Satan is vanquished and my Jesus is King

The  next part of our celebration is the giving of our financial gifts to God.  After a time of prayer we will take a look at someone doing a bit with Facebook.   The message is next.  Finally we close with another song of praise which calls us to let our praises rise to God.

Let the glory of the Lord rise among us
Let the glory of the Lord rise among us
Let the praises of the King rise among us
Let it rise

Let the songs of the Lord rise among us
Let the songs of the Lord rise among us
Let the joy of the King rise among us
Let it rise

Look forward to seeing you on Sunday.

An Unexpected Hope

Barbara Brown Taylor in her book , Speaking of Sin, writes, “…sin is our only hope, because the recognition that something is wrong is the first step toward setting it right again. There is no help for those who admit no need of help. There is no repair for those who insist nothing is broken, and there is no hope of transformation for a world whose inhabitants accept that it is sadly but irreversibly wrecked.”

Donkeys

It can be great fun to follow the story of animals through a passage in the Bible.  One group of animals we can follow and have a bit of a smile with is donkeys.  In the story of Joseph and his brothers coming to Egypt we are let in on some donkey stuff.   First donkey story, Genesis 43.18 Now [Joseph's brothers] were frightened when they were taken to his house. They thought, "We were brought here because of the silver that was put back into our sacks the first time. He wants to attack us and overpower us and seize us as slaves and take our donkeys."  Here's a group of guys who talk about becoming slaves and then are afraid that their donkey's are going to be taken away.  It just makes me chuckle, that these guys are afraid their donkey's are going to be ripped off by one of the richest guys (Joseph) in all of Egypt, as if he is petty warlord who would even notice 10 donkeys.  Second part of the donkey story:  Joseph's brothers are sent on their way back to Canaan and guess what--they get sent on their way with their donkeys, Genesis 44.3 "As morning dawned, the men were sent on their way with their donkeys."  Guess they didn't have to worry so much about donkey loss. For me it's another smile--the author makes sure we see they still have their donkeys. Final part of the donkey story that shows just how silly these brothers are. Joseph has shown himself to his brothers and he sends a gift to his father. What does he send? Donkeys. Genesis 45.23 "And this is what he sent to his father: ten donkeys loaded with the best things of Egypt, and ten female donkeys loaded with grain and bread and other provisions for his journey." Joseph sends as a gift twice as many donkeys as his brothers had with them.

This donkey story reminds me of something. Joseph is seen as a type of Christ, one who rescues, brings life (he saves many from dying from starvation). When his brothers come face-to-face with him they are worried about what they will lose, what he might take from them. In a very similar way we are also worried about what giving ourselves over to Christ will mean, what will he take from us. But us Joseph's brothers discover what Joseph has to offer so outstrips what they have, that their concerns about what they would lose is truly silly. Here's how John brings the idea to our attention in John 12. 23Jesus replied, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me."

Who is that masked man?

In Genesis 37 we find that Joseph has been sent to check up on this brothers.  He's wandering around a field and low and behold a man finds him wandering there and tells him exactly where his brothers have gone--so just what are the chances of that happening?  Here's the text 15 And a man found him wandering in the fields. And the man asked him, “What are you seeking?” 16 “I am seeking my brothers,” he said. “Tell me, please, where they are pasturing the flock.” 17 And the man said, “They have gone away, for I heard them say, ‘Let us go to Dothan.’” So who is this masked man? How is it that he just "happens" to be wandering in this field. The Hebrew word for man here is just the typical word "ish", but you can't help wondering: Does Joseph look back on this moment as one of those moves of God that he speaks of in Genesis 50.19 But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? 20 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today."  

So just who is this masked man?  A person who God providentially puts there?  An angel?  Whoever it is, God is at work.

No more tears

Reading in Genesis I found something that struck me as odd/interesting.  In Genesis 35.8 it says, "And Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died, and she was buried under an oak below Bethel. So he called its name Allon-bacuth."  The name means "oak of weeping".  The picture is that there were tears of sorrow at the death of Rebekah's long time nurse.  A very understandable thing.

Shortly after this Rebekah dies in childbirth.  Guess what--no mention of any tears.  A monument is put up by Jacob/Israel but there are not tear.   When it comes to the death of Leah--well, we are never even told the circumstances, we simply find out later on that she was buried in the cave of Machpelah with Abraham et.al. and again, no tears.   Finally, there is no mention at all of the deaths of the two concubines of Jacob.  

Why does a nurse get tears and others get none?  Why does the death of nurse get a mention and a tree named after her, but two concubines get no mention at all--even though from them come some of the tribes of Israel.  Why is it that the woman that Jacob fell head over heals in love with so that 7 years of service felt like a moment gets a monument but no tears?  

What we need to realize is that Biblical writers both put things in and leave things out for a purpose.  Sometimes we have to do some guessing as to why they do what they do.  Here's my guess:  the stresses and strains of this family with all of its infighting had killed love.  Therefore, while death was painful tears were hard to come by because of all the pain that had happened over the years.  The author wants us to see in a quiet way what damage is done by a family that doesn't love each other and pursue God's mission together.

Assessment Center

For the rest of this week I'll be participating in an Assessment Center.  This is a time when people who are looking at being church planters have the opportunity to discover if they are gifted for that type of ministry.  I'll be one of the assessors.   I'm not going a long way off for this one (in the past they've been in places like New York and Las Vegas), it's in Holland.  

Keep checking the blog even though I'm out and about I will be putting up a few things this week.  

Right now I'm especially caught up in a few more things from Genesis that I want to pass on to you.  Hopefully tonight I can find a bit of time and talk about weeping--or the lack of it.

Holiness

Sunday we looked at real holiness verses pretend holiness. Real holiness is a holiness that breaks Satan’s hold on life. You can download the message at egm's website. I didn’t have time to give a lot of insight into the ways we can pursue that real holiness so here’s a bit more:

Real holiness honors authority (see Hebrews 13.17): Satan is forever attempting to take authority that is not his and refuses to follow the authority of God. We break Satan’s hold when we honor godly authority that God has put in place. To understand how such honoring can take some deep and good thought since we are told in Romans 13 to honor those who rule and at the same time we see in Revelation that certain governments are seen as evil. So also in the church, we honor and follow godly authority, but we need to know when those in leadership have left God’s path. Our trouble in both of these areas, however, is that we have been so trained to both question authority and be sure that we are right that we are often too quick to assume those who rule are wrong and we are right.
Real holiness builds up the church. Revelation 12 shows Satan attempting to destroy the church. We break Satan’s hold when we do all we can to build up the church. Here we find that again our individualism can be a hinderance since we often look at the church as something that is there to serve me and to meet my needs rather than the bride of Christ which I am a part of and which I am to use my gifts in to make her a radiant bride.
Real holiness brings health and healing as Jesus did when he healed the woman on the Sabbath.
Real holiness is about breaking through lies and telling the truth (Satan is the father of lies). Here telling the truth involves telling doctrinal truth (Ephesians 4), telling the truth to fellow believers when they get off track in their walk with Christ (Ephesians 4), but also telling the truth about our own failings that are keeping us from a faithful walk with Christ (James 5).
Real holiness is about worshipping God and him alone. We break Satan’s hold when we worship God and reject all others. Satan is forever trying to get us to worship something other than God (he even tries to get Jesus to worship him).