God’s Authority over Evil Explained
God’s authority over evil explained is covered in Revelation 4:1 – 8:6. This lesson was presented to the North Penn Church of Christ in March, 2024. Click on the link below to download the PDF.
Treasure and Pearls
Treasure and Pearls
Consider John and Mary, owners of land out in the Sierra Nevada range of California. For years, they had noticed what I would have called a piece of trash in the shape of a metal can barely breaking the surface of the earth out in a section of their property. They thought it may have been placed there to hold flowers on a grave and had simply been buried with the passage of time. Curiosity finally got to them when they considered it might actually be some kind of marker. So, they decided to dig it up. What they found were eight cans containing gold coins minted between 1847 to 1894 with an estimated value of ten million dollars.
Are any of us truly immune to that kind of story? It fires the imagination even from a young age. Growing up, I was always told that the woods around me surely had to have some arrow heads hiding just below the surface from bygone Lenni-Lenape settlements. I dug around several promising sites in the woods around our house to no avail while friends a couple of miles away even found a stone tomahawk. A few years ago, there was a big story about a guy walking in the mountains of California and finding a six-pound gold nugget on public lands. These are the kinds of stories that drive our imaginations wild – in fact, I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to get your attention back – but hopefully, Jesus can.
Because He tells a similar story in Matthew 13:44-46. A man discovers a treasure hidden in a field. Not an unusual thing before the advent of federally insured banks, and certainly not unusual in ancient times. Somebody put it there like someone did out on that property in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The only problem is, well, the guy who found it? He didn’t own the property. No matter, he’s going to buy it because he is all about that treasure. He knows the value and so he sold absolutely everything he had faster than a fire-sale. And then he bought that field.
Now. If we knew for a fact everything we owned paled in comparative value to the treasure on the property we were going to buy (that there were eight cans of gold coins buried on it, for example), we’d do it too. But we’d have to know for sure it was worth it. The guy sold everything. Let that sink in… because our most valued possessions are usually not the most expensive. They are the heirlooms. The pocketknife from my grandpa. The quilt my grandma made specifically for me. What have you got? What would it take for you to give it up? It would need to be a treasure indeed.
So, this is where the gears of our minds start grinding. He sold everything but he’ll be richer than he has ever been and can replace or maybe even buy back the things he sold to begin with. Win/win. But the next parable puts a wrench in that. You see, we get the impression the guy bought the field from someone who didn’t know the part about the treasure. But the guy selling pearls? I’ll guess the seller knows a thing or two about quality when it comes to pearls. Same buyer situation though, our merchant wants that pearl and sells everything to get it. He pays market value. He now possesses the best pearl he’s ever laid his eyes on and he’s… not… letting… go…. He’s pearl-rich and cash poor and now out of business.
“No, no, no, you must have that wrong – this pearl is just a pearly steppingstone to greater things! He’ll make a profit and move on to the bigger and better!”
Where does Jesus say that? He never tells us this treasure or this pearl is leverage. It’s not. The treasure is the point. The pearl is the point. And if we’re of the sort who are willing to hear, something Jesus has said is statistically unlikely, we’ll realize the Kingdom is the point. We don’t get the Kingdom to move on to something else. We get the Kingdom because there is nothing else.
That’s what we are supposed to hear.
Are we ready to give up everything for this Kingdom? That pocket-knife, that quilt? How about rich family traditions running counter to the Kingdom? How about our reputations? How about a hobby or career standing in the way of true discipleship? How about our pride in our own understanding? If the answer is “no,” then we don’t have ears to hear and really don’t understand the true value of the Kingdom….
The Seven Churches of Asia
The Seven Churches of Asia from Revelation chapters 2 and 3, the church in imperfection. This lesson was presented at the North Penn Church of Christ on February 11, 2024. Click on the link below to access the PDF.
Revelation Chapter One – Prologue
Below is the link to the PDF outline to the lesson on Revelation chapter one, the prologue, presented to the North Penn Church of Christ on January 28, 2024.
Introduction to Revelation II
This is the second lesson continuing the introduction to the book of Revelation as presented to the North Penn Church of Christ on 1/21/24.
Intro to Revelation II Jan 21 2024
New Under the Sun
Ecclesiastes 1:9 states, “There is nothing new under the sun.” I’ve often heard that in church discussions concerning the state of the world, sin, troubles, and temptations. It’s often meant to encourage us to understand we can withstand anything Satan throws at us. The logic is simple; people have endured the same things for centuries, we can too. I’ve no doubt about the enduring part – but with the Spirit living within us, it goes way beyond enduring – we thrive when we put ourselves firmly in God’s camp.
It’s the “nothing new under the sun” part I take issue with. You see, this is Solomon speaking, and while Ecclesiastes is God-breathed scripture, God Himself often overturns the understanding of His own authors in the inspiration to bring them to a greater understanding of who He is. Job’s friends made seemingly astute observations in the book of Job, for example, but that doesn’t mean they were right.
Solomon is right in this – human nature remains the same. We all have the capacity for really messing things up for ourselves and others. True wickedness exists, and it is exhausting to think about and experience in the myriad forms of oppression, injustice, and unholiness we have around us. “Wearisome” is the word Solomon uses. Point taken.
But there are other points. How many times do I sing Jeremiah’s words in Lamentations 3:23? “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, His mercies never come to an end… they are new every morning!” Okay. So, where Solomon finds the sun’s rising and setting wearisome, Jeremiah recognizes new grace in every new day!
Consider this – if human nature is what it is, then the cure is the same for all – namely, Jesus, who broke into this world in an entirely new way to bring salvation! “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law…” okay, you see that “but now” don’t you? Then was then. This is now. New! Something that was not and now is! And yet it reaches back into all time to answer the very question Solomon was asking centuries before.
But I also need to explore the darker side of this “nothing new” question – because while I believe Solomon is right in terms of our sinfulness, I believe there is something very new under the sun in terms of how our enemy attacks. It is a full court press, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, designed to keep the bulk of God’s children on injured reserve and those outside of His grace so distracted they don’t even know there is another team.
What do I mean? Just this – Solomon was wearied by the rising and setting of a tiresome sun under which he saw people act unjustly every day. Now? We are inundated with injustices from around the world at a pace and volume that’s debilitating. So, while it is totally legitimate for me to be very concerned about those dying in wars halfway around the world, Satan would fill me with such despair from what I see going on there that I don’t even know that my neighbor is fighting for her life against cancer. He would have me be the cave-dwelling Gideon before God got ahold of him and made him see it didn’t matter he was the least in his family in the smallest clan of his tribe. He would have me bewildered and impotent. Satan’s new tool is pace and overload.
There is a solution to this spiritual ADHD, and it has everything to do with focus. Peter sank when he took his eyes off Jesus; the point is to keep them on Him. Our Hebrews author confirms this need in chapter 12, while Peter, perhaps recalling his Galilean swim, speaks of the need to add goodness to faith, knowledge to goodness, self-control to knowledge, etc., with the benefit of becoming effective and productive. What does he contrast this with? Nearsightedness and blindness. Simply put, we can improve our spiritual vision. How?
First, get in the word. Get really in the word. Read your Bible and chew on it every day. If research is correct, for all the bad news we fill ourselves with, we should counteract with three times the amount of good news. Last time I checked, “gospel” means good news. Spend more time there than anywhere else. Ask questions of what you are reading and let the last question be, “What am I supposed to do about this?”
Second, pray continually as Paul encourages in I Thessalonians 5:17. Realize you are in the presence of God Almighty in every moment of your day and know He wants to hear from you. Include Him in your family conversations when you are at the dinner table laughing over something and thank Him for the laughter. Cry with Him, drive with Him, run with Him, change the oil in the car with Him, you get the picture.
Third, open your eyes and see more of Jesus in everything around you. Tell yourself every day that in Him we live, move, and have our very being. Look at a sunrise or your children and see the beauty God has placed in all His creation and be thankful.
Fourth, talk about your walk with God with your brothers and sisters in Christ. Make it a focus to be an encouragement to others to live this life of faith. Ask them how they are doing and seek advice how to be more Christlike and less world-like. And yes, the place where God intended for you to do this is in that collection of believers called the church. It’s also a great place to learn how to get along with people!
Finally, when the Spirit says, “Right there in front of you I have a way for you to be the hands and feet of Jesus,” don’t hesitate – be His hands and feet. Look after the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner living in your midst. Be the Samaritan and love your neighbor.
In the end, we might find there is one more new thing under the sun – ourselves….
Introduction to Revelation I
This is the initial introduction to the book of Revelation as presented to the North Penn Church of Christ on 1/14/24
Bible Reading Plans
Bible Reading Plans
One of the things I don’t get to do much of is spend time with others who are involved in ministry. However, I do work in keeping up with some folks, and Mark Finn of Collingswood, NJ is one of them. He and his wife put together two Bible reading plans that I can highly recommend. The New Testament reading plan breaks things up between the four gospels, the letters, Acts, and Revelation, so you are not in any one genre for too long. The Old Testament plan is not a plan for the entire Old Testament. It leaves out sections of Leviticus (and other books), for example, which is honestly pretty difficult slog for most people. Anyway, the plans are linked below in PDF, Mark gave me permission to publish them. Why not make it a resolution to spend some time working through the Bible using one or both of these plans this year?
A New Sword
A New Sword
For Christmas, my wife got me a Bible. Not just any Bible, but a leather-bound NIV 1978 edition. It’s the edition I grew up with, the one I preach and teach from, the one I read from. It’s in perfect shape with no cracking on the leather, no wear on the gilding, no writing inside anywhere. My Bible of 43 years is showing its age. I’m not concerned about the years of page handling showing on the margins nor the gilding that is wearing off. But the leather on the spine is finally cracking through in places and that worries me. I can’t retire it – it’s been too good of a friend. But its travelling days may be over.
Many people ask me, “What version of the Bible should I get?” I obviously have opinions, but not of the kind you may think. You see, I could get a 1984 NIV edition, or a 2011, but they are different from the 1978. That’s my main problem. In my head, I’ve got 1978. When I read from the 1984 or the 2011, I trip up. Think of it this way – the word of God is sharper than any double-edged sword, something we are to take up and use. I’m simply going to use one I’m used to more effectively than one I’m not used to. Now. I “train” with other swords that have also honed me – NLT, ESV, KJV, etc., but that’s not my point. The Bible you should get is the Bible you’re going to use. It’s the one that trains you, the faithful friend you can grow old with and draws you closer to the author. It’s the one you breath with.
Which brings me back to this “new” NIV; it’s never been read. I’ve thought a lot about that since receiving it and I see two possibilities – either someone had no interest in what God has to say and ignored it or they had another sword they couldn’t put down because it was just too good of a friend. I’m hoping the latter.
I’d love to hear about what you are using and why. As for me, I’m breathing in every word of my “new” 1978….
A World Gone Crazy
A World Gone Crazy
The world’s gone crazy. Really, this is my recurring thought over the past couple of weeks. We as Christians should naturally (or, more properly, supernaturally as the Spirit moves within us) understand we live in a fallen world where a lot of life will not make sense. We understand the father of lies weaves chaos into his warped plans while giving them a whitewash of logic that disintegrates in the light of God’s word. But this is only clear to God’s children or those honestly looking for truth.
What do we see in scripture? Common people along with even the tax collectors who come to see God’s way as right in Luke 7:29. Peter confessing Jesus as the Christ in Mark 8:29. Thomas, in John 20:28, after so much doubt, placing his fingers in Jesus’ wounds and declaring, “My Lord and my God!” More compelling, however, are those who have experienced the indiscriminate chaos of Satan’s ways more closely and come to Jesus. The man born blind in John 9, who, through his argumentation with the most educated of society, moves from belief to worship. The bleeding woman who touches the hem of Jesus’ garment and is healed is drawn into a deeper faith as she meets Jesus in Luke 8:43-48. And we cannot forget those Jesus came to rescue from their own personal hells of demon possession, such as the one from whom the legions are driven from and into the herd of pigs (Luke 8:26-39).
But those truly seeking seem like such a small minority. My wife and I were talking the other night about how out of place we feel most of the time. I found myself thinking of Madeleine L’Engle. In her book, A Wrinkle in Time, Meg needs to travel through time and space to save her father. She is led by cherubic creatures who make the mistake of almost taking Meg to a two-dimensional world. It almost kills her as her breath is squeezed out of her and her heart and brain fail to function properly. In a spiritual sense, I think this is a good metaphor for all of us in Christ. Never mind that God has set eternity into the hearts of all – we simply don’t fit in this world anymore because we are not of it (John 17:16). To be totally clear, it is not because the world is too big or great to comprehend. Rather, it’s because it’s too small for us. We are infused with the eternal, which is not a “something” but rather a someone, Jesus Christ, in whom all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form and in whom we have been given fullness (Colossians 2:9-10). He is infinitely larger and greater than the world we live in; we simply can’t fit anymore.
As the world groans as in the pains of childbirth (Romans 8:22), some things become crystal clear to us as we see the principalities and powers rage (futilely) against the Lord’s anointed. We then are the children Jesus praises the Father for in Matthew 11:25 after excoriating those in power, stating that to us are revealed God’s ways.
And so, when we see a former president set up a social network called “Truth,” using it as a forum to spout off the most outrageous lies, we recognize it as blasphemous; only Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. (I don’t intend to tie Trump specifically to the beast in Revelation 13:5 – I think many throughout history have played that part… but if the shoe fits…).
When we hear of wars and rumors of war as Jesus warned us we would in Matthew 24:6-8 and then see the megalomaniac of Moscow overrun a sovereign Ukraine, kidnapping the children and farming them out to willing Russian accomplices while purposefully bombing innocent cities… or when Hamas breaches the border of Israel, indiscriminately killing women, children, and the elderly, and then retreats to hide behind their own children, knowing all along they are signing the death warrant of thousands of their own people – of their own future… it is appalling but not surprising.
When we see the ego of the few shut down an entire country through their desire for the praise of men (or maybe just one) and their own self-aggrandizement….
Well… we understand all of these as the death throes of a power that is willing to take anything and everything down with it. But we are commissioned to do more than just understand. Jesus didn’t just understand. He moved….
“The people living in darkness have seen a great light!” (Matthew 4:16). This is Jesus as he moves among the people preaching repentance and salvation. He moved…. Stick with me….
Isaiah 59 is fascinating as it holds out the truth that sin and its consequences are real (explaining just about all of what we see in so much of today’s world), repentance is necessary, and God is the one who saves – He moves…. But the 17th verse of Isaiah 59 kicks me square into Ephesians 6 and my responsibility as I myself am charged to put on the whole armor of God. In the jolt that comes from the living and active word of God, we are commissioned and animated as vigorous participants who, in the power of God, blast the whitewash right off Satan’s lies. Isaiah, in powerfully speaking the word of God, is that kind of participant. All the prophets were. They called the world out for what it was. That is part of the calling. We must not hesitate, worrying if we will offend (we will, even as we strive to be as gentle as doves, speaking the truth in love – Matthew 10:16, Ephesians 4:15) or that some or most may not listen (they won’t – Matthew 7:14). Many will because many know something is not right, resonating deep in their hearts. Again, part of the calling – because that only takes folks so far and it’s not far enough into the direction God moves. The other part is to do that other thing God does – call people to salvation – be Christ’s ambassadors – to shine like stars in this crooked and depraved generation, to let people see the light of the world Jesus is, in contrast to the great darkness the world is steeped in. And God saves, one soul at a time, from a world gone crazy.