NT75 Day 52: 1 Timothy 1-3

Leadership is about character first and foremost.

Last night was interesting to watch unfold on TV.  For those of you asleep under a rock, the first Tuesday of November is election day in America and yesterday produced a much-debated result.  The Republican party took back the US House of Representatives while the Democratic party held on to their control in the US Senate.  Whatever any of this means for today or next week or 2012 was the subject of last night's debate on television.  My wife and I flipped between ABC News, MSNBC, CNN, and FoxNews and the differences were astounding.

The one thing everyone missed that I just wanted one person to say:  leadership is about character.

This is Paul's theme in 1 Timothy 3.  He doesn't address a single policy:  how church should be set up, whether or not we should support hymns and choruses or just one or the other, whether we should take donations online or via credit card, how many committees should be in place, how often the church building should be used and its fees, or any other church leadership issue.  I'm pretty sure I know why.

Leadership is primarily about character.

Yes, there are issues to be decided.  Those who lead know there are.  My professor and friend Bill Treadwell defined leadership as getting people from the ought to the done.  Character first determines what the "ought" is.  Then it determines how to get to "done" while valuing the people it's leading there.

So here's to prayers for Republicans and Democrats, moderates and extremists, incumbents and challengers who are taking their seats in January.  My prayer is not for their agenda to advance.  My prayer is for them to be men and women of character.

But that's just me thinking thoughts...

NT75 Day 51: 2-3 John, Jude, Philemon

Go ahead.  Seriously, go ahead.  You can bring it up in conversation today if you'd like, especially if you're at lunch and people are bragging about their spiritual life.  Just jump in:  "Well, in my time with God this morning, I read 4 books of the Bible."

On a more serious note, it's Testament Tuesday and I have a very cool story to share that aligns with something in 3 John.  John writes to Gaius and encourages him to continue being hospitable to those who are missionaries, taking the Gospel to places that Gaius will never go through his support of those who go. That's an old principle in missions:  those who hold the rope are as important as those who climb.  Amen.

Yesterday, I finished crunching the numbers for our Haiti mission trip.  For those who may not have known, we sent a team to Haiti in October to build a duplex for two families displaced by the earthquake, partnering with a group called YWAM.  They have a very cool strategy and plan for transforming communities, part of which includes these duplexes.  They cost $6000 each to build and we got to build the first one in this New Beginnings development outside of St. Marc.

My wife had this incredible idea to take pictures (a hobby of hers, found here) and proceeds would go to the funding of that building.  Several of you jumped on board.  Others heard about it and gave money just because they thought it was a great thing to do.  A friend from Oklahoma (who went on the trip with us) passed the plate in his Sunday School class and collected quite a bit too.  Another friend from Louisiana came along, brought a friend, and also collected money to help.  This is what John encouraged Gaius to do and to keep doing.  He was holding the rope.  Lots of people held the rope for Haiti.  $6000 to build a duplex?  Sure!  All in all, money came in and there was enough to build the duplex.

With $5486 left over.

Sounds like the makings of another duplex.  Only God...

NT75 Day 50: 1 John

The Gospel can be summed up in this phrase:  adoption through propitiation (props to J.I. Packer).

The New Testament gives us two ways to measure God's love for us.  In doing so, it talks about how great His love is and how He lavished it on us.  The first way is the cross.  The second way is sonship (or daughtership) through adoption.  In the reading today, we see both.

First, the cross is found in 1 John 4.10.  God loved us before we loved Him.  That's huge right there, because it shows just how not-in-the-middle-of-God's-story we really are.  We didn't wake up and decide to love Him, attracting His affection for us with our beauty and magnificence and splendor and faithfulness.  We were none of those things and God still chose to love us - in fact, in spite of who we were, God chose to love us.  And it wasn't some emotional belch as our culture knows love, but a demonstrative pursuit of the ones beloved.  Here, in the cross, God sacrificed His Son, Jesus the Christ, for us to demonstrate His love (cf. Romans 5.6-8).  John uses the word propitiation (in the ESV).  Propitiation is the sacrifice that expiates our sin, taking it away from us, and satiates God's wrath against that sin.  As a just and holy God, He had to punish our sin.  He did so, but did so in the person of Jesus Christ as our substitute, our propitiation.  That's a powerful demonstration of love.

Second, sonship is found in 1 John 3.1.  I appreciate the texture of the Message:  "What marvelous love the Father has extended to us!  Just look at it - we're called children of God!  That's who we really are."  We are objects of lavish love.  It's extravagant, embarrassing even.  We, the deceived rebels of the universe, are adopted into God's family as His children.  That is astonishing.  And it's so astonishing, John repeats it for assurance:  that is what we are.  It's not enough that God took away our sin and the wrath that accompanied it - He made us His kids.  Wow.

I hope you lived stunned.  I'm going to be thinking about this all day...

Sermon Notes from Sunday 10.31.10

Here are the sermon notes from today's sermon on Mark 10.1-16.  I tried to take a really vision-painting tack on this text about marriage and divorce.  As always, you can find the notes in PDF and the sermon audio at sermons.heritagepark.org.

Family Matters to Jesus

Mark 10.1-16

Jesus is much more concerned with what God says is right than what man can get away with. 

Covenant

• Throughout the Bible, God relates to His people in covenant.
• This relational covenant has seasons and its ups and downs.
• Covenant is designed to be unbreakable (v.6, 9-11).
• In marriage, my covenant is not only with my spouse, but also with God.

Commitment (v.7)

• This commitment is not like other earthly commitments that tend to be bound by time and resources.
• It is necessary to break of parental bonds to form a new family unit.
• You must make a practice of cleaving first, foremost, finally to your spouse.
• Remember that this is a commitment to God and spouse.

Why Commitment?

• Heaven is a real place.
• God uses trials for our spiritual growth.
• You can’t fix it all.
• You don’t know what the future holds.

Context (v.8) 

• It is in this covenant that intimacy flourishes.
• Apart from this security, intimacy tends to wither.
• Intimacy is not less than the physical union, but it is more.

Children (v.13-16)

• You have a covenant with your children that was established by God when He gave them to you.
• Kids come into this home and are blessed.
• Our part:  lead them to Jesus in example, teaching, shepherding, and blessing.

NT75 Day 48: 2 Peter

We're 2/3 of the way home!  Keep reading.  If you fall behind, use Sunday to catch up.  You can do it!  Don't be discouraged.  Pick up the Scriptures which are God's testimony of Himself through men who were "carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1.21).  It's worth it!

Ryan Bingham:  "I don't spend a dollar that doesn't benefit my frequent flyer account."

That quote, from the movie Up in the Air, comes from the character played by George Clooney.  It shows his emptiness, his loneliness, and his captivity to hitting the magical 10-million mile mark.  As a side note:  can you imagine 10,000,000 frequent flyer miles?  Sheesh.  And what's so magical about it?

I haven't even seen the movie, just a couple of trailers.  But that's who immediately popped to mind when I ran across 2 Peter 2.19:  for whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.  When a life's organizing principle is centered around frequent flyer miles, physical pleasure, looking right in front of people, knowing the right people, learning and knowing the right things, being able physically or financially to do "the ultimate thing" (however it's defined), or any other such pursuit, that life is no life at all.  It's slavery.

Freedom only comes through Christ.  It doesn't come through the false teachers and their false doctrine.  And that's not just Peter's context, but ours too.  We have false teachers in movies, television, books, peer groups, and more.  Where are you receiving input?  And does that input square with the Scriptures?

The only person to whom we can enslave ourselves and find freedom is Jesus Christ.  Everyone else offers freedom but it's actually bondage.  

But that's just me thinking thoughts...

NT75 Day 47: 1 Peter

Just because you suffer doesn't mean you're out of favor with God.

Suffering is no fun.  No one wakes up thinking about how much they're looking forward to the suffering that the day holds.  And suffering comes in multiple forms, like a mutating virus that figures out ways to get around the best of our antibodies.  We save our pennies, see the doctor, take our vitamins, go on dates with our spouses, try to invest in our kids, read our Bibles, pray, attend Sunday School, and even sing along with the songs we don't like in church.

But that doesn't insulate us.  Preachers on TV will have you believe that you do the right thing and it will never go bad for you.  It's called the Gospel of Health, Wealth, and Prosperity.  And the only problem with it is that it's not biblical - it's even anti-biblical.  Peter drops that little atomic-like bomb into the Prosperity Gospel when he says in chapter 4 that suffering, at times, happens according to the will of God.  God even uses it to make us into who He wants us to be (see James 1.2-4, Romans 5.3-5).

So, please save your pennies and see the doctor and go to Sunday School.  But when suffering does come, remember that it doesn't mean your out of favor with God.  In fact, you could be smack in the middle of His will.

But that's just me thinking thoughts...

NT75 Day 46: Mark 14-16

The beautiful things done to and for Christ will outlast those who do them.

The story in Mark 14 makes me uncomfortable, frankly.  I'm not sure it didn't make others uncomfortable too.  There's Jesus and a woman with perfume.  Yikes.  It's extravagant and lavish and gaudy and unashamed and aromatic.  I wonder how often those words describe my relationship to Christ.

And then the objections roll in.  Jesus isn't worried about any of them.  In fact, He contradicts them.  You'll have the poor always.  The extravagant is not a waste when spent on Christ (not church buildings or programs, but on Him).

The predictive promise rings loud too:  wherever the Gospel is preached, this story of worship will be recounted too.  The beautiful thing lasts and lasts.

But that's just me thinking thoughts...

NT75 Day 45: Mark 9-13

It doesn't matter how much you bring to Jesus, what matters is that you bring what you have.

Jesus has an encounter with some rich people who came by with their offerings (Luke 12.41-44).  The text tells us that many rich people came bringing large sums.  We don't know their motivation, only their action.  And this comment from Jesus:  they gave out of their abundance.

In the midst of their giving, up comes a woman who contributes two small copper coins.  Again, we don't have a motivation, only a comment.  Jesus says the widow gave more than everyone else because she gave from her poverty everything she had to live on.

As a pastor, I know people give different levels.  I don't know who gives what, but I know people have different jobs and can (and do) give different amounts and do so for different reasons.  But I also know the claim Jesus lays on our lives:

He doesn't want the appropriate portion or percentage, He wants it all.

Because He's Lord, He's not laying claim to and putting His flag in the ground on a portion or percentage of our financial, emotional, sexual, spiritual, physical, or relational lives.  He's the King.  He wants and deserves it all.

You getting that?  Then you're getting His plan.  And a final warning:  He'll settle for nothing less.

But that's just me thinking thoughts...

NT75 Day 44: Mark 5-8

Jesus is the friend of the outsider.

Throughout today's reading, I kept being assaulted by that fact.  A demon-possessed man.  A woman with severe gynecological issues.  A Gentile woman from the wrong side of the tracks.  A deaf and mute man.  A blind man at Bethsaida.  And they got Him.  They understood Him.  They received Him.

But not so much for the insiders.  His hometown folks missed it.  The religious leaders of the day, the Pharisees, certainly missed it (and he had some choice words for them about that).  The disciples missed it. Peter really missed it - it never goes well for you when the Son of God equates you with Satan.

And so I have two reflections.  First, being in the profession I am as a pastor, I know a lot of insiders.  I probably even am one.  Doctrine matters.  Leadership models are discussion fodder.  Books are read.  Blogs are written.  And I know insiders who miss Him, being caught up in control rather than the Creator.  Heck, I might even be that guy from time to time.

Second, it compels me to look for the outsider.  That compulsion is two-fold.  On the one hand, Jesus is at work among them and is actively seeking Him out.  Joining Him in ministry demands I find myself there sometimes.  On the other hand, because they more often get Him than the insiders, I might just learn something from them about Him.

But that's just me thinking thoughts...

NT75 Day 43: Mark 1-4

Following Jesus in obedience means a strain on personal relationships is inevitable.

That's not a popular statement, admittedly.  But it's nevertheless true.  It was even true in Jesus' life.  In today's reading in chapter three, Jesus own family thought He was crazy and tried to extricate Him from embarrassing (to them) social situations.  They had no idea who He really was and no idea what He was truly doing.  Strain.

Sometimes the strain comes from us not following Jesus or choosing between two options that are both good.  That's not the strain we see in Mark 3.  This strain comes from Jesus doing exactly what the Father desires Him to do exactly how the Father desires Him to do it, saying exactly what the Father wants Him to say.  Strain.

I had a stunning conversation one time with a lady named Joyce.  She is a missionary in southeast Asia, though she was in Africa at the time.  Sitting at our dinner table, we were talking through life and kids and family and following Jesus.  We asked about her kids and how she, as a mom, managed to wrestle through the argument and slog through the decision of putting her kids in a Muslim country for their formative years.  For me, it's one thing to suffer personally (which she did).  It's another to ask my spouse to suffer together with me (which they did).  It's a whole other level for me to ask my kids to suffer, to be on the receiving end of my strain in following Jesus.

Her reply still gets to me:  "I think the most important thing that my kids can see is a mom and dad who are willing to follow Jesus."

And I'll close with this song from the prophetic Keith Green.  It's worth your 4 minutes, I promise.