Gospel Joy vs. Morality

via Zach Nielsen

Where is this?

I stumbled on this photo on the net….somewhere. As I recall, it had a photographer’s name, but no description. My apologies to the forgotten photographer.

My question for you is: Where is this? I love this photo and would like to go there sometime.

Please leave your guess in the comments.

Thanks!

Miss me yet?

Posted via web from Lacunae

You are cool because you are “missional”

D’oh!  Just when I was feeling really cool and smart….

You are cool because you are “missional”. It’s true. Face it.

Forget the “mega”churches, the “seeker-sensitive” people, and those darn “prosperity” guys. They are all wrong.

First of all, they are not at all “organic” and cannot hang with our beards, pipes, and brews. They obviously didn’t read “Total Church” or “Tangible Kingdom”, know nothing of church plants or gospel rhythms, and they most certainly are not “in the city for the city”. Nope. We are.

In celebration of our collective coolness I propose we play a game called “Put your hand in the air, and if any of the statements below are true of you, put it down”.

Let’s do this !

1 You have used the word “missional” and you have no idea what it means, none whatsoever. Hand down.

2 You have a “heart for the nations” but have never left your homestate for anything other than a trip to Disneyland. Hand down.

Read the rest (please!) here.

More on the Missional Church

Ed Stetzer again on what it means to be Church in the world.

What does it mean to be “missional?”

Is it really this simple? (via Allen Kleine Deters)

From the wilderness to the promised land: The recovery of Dependence and Desire « The New Exodus

The late psychiatrist and spiritual writer, Gerald May, talks about how our substitute lovers our addictions suck the energy of desire. He writes:“

Psychologically, addiction uses up desire. It is like a psychic malignancy sucking our life energy into specific obsessions and compulsions, leaving less and less energy available for other people and other pursuits.”

When we renounce a life lived out of Desire for a life of manageable security-strategies, we actually find the energy we have for love of God and others used up, expended, and ultimately wasted. May continues, however, arguing that our psychological strategies lead to spiritual catastrophe:

“Spiritually, addiction is a deep-seated form of idolatry. The objects of our addictions become our false gods. These are what we worship, what we attend to, where we give our time and energy, instead of love. Addiction, then, displaces and supplants God’s love as the source and object of our deepest true desire. It is, as one modern spiritual writer has called it, a ‘counterfeit of religious presence.’”

via From the wilderness to the promised land: The recovery of Dependence and Desire « The New Exodus.

Killer Community Tips

Johnny and Chachi tell us how to do it right!

A Tiny Contribution to Biblical Studies

One of my very first English sermons was for Good Friday.  My text was in Luke 24.  I discovered that there was an apparent parallel between the temptations the devil throws at Jesus in Luke 4 and the verbal assaults our Lord experienced on the cross.  “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down…” and “Let him save himself…if he is the Christ of God, the chosen One,” and so on. As I recall Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s monograph “Temptation” may have hinted in this direction.  The link between Luke 4 and 24 is suggested by “When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time” (4:13).  One of those “opportune” times was, of course, when Jesus was most vulnerable and weakest–on the cross.

Tomorrow I am preaching from Luke 4:14-30, the inaugural message and subsequent rejection of Jesus at the synagogue in Nazareth.  Commentators have noted that the bold departure of Jesus through the furious crowd, thus avoiding being thrown to his death from the brow of the hill on which the town was built, parallels the escape from death promised in Psalm 91 which the devil tries to use to get Jesus to put God to the test.

But I think there is more here.  It seems to me that the two halves of Luke 4:1-30 are very nearly perfectly parallel.  The theological significance being that Luke demonstrates that the ministry of Jesus is throughout in complete obedience to the Father and thus, in complete contradiction and refutation of the temptations of the evil one.

1st Temptation
The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread” (4:3).

Response of Jesus
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone” (4:4).

Parallel(s)
A. Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit… (4:1)
A’.  Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit (4:14)

B. The preaching and teaching of Jesus throughout Galilee and in the synagogue in Nazareth (4:14-21).  Jesus is a prophet, the bringer and “be-er” of the Word of God.

2nd Temptation
If Jesus will worship the devil, the devil will give him “authority and splendor” of “the kingdoms of the world” (4:5-7).

Response of Jesus
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only’” (4:8).

Parallel
By telling the stories about Elijah and Elisha, Jesus demonstrates that he will gain dominion over the “kingdoms of the world” (i.e. the Gentiles) through sacrificial love and service rather than by a bargain with the devil.

3rd Temptation
The devil tempts Jesus to put God to the test by expecting (even demanding) is protection while leaping from the highest point of the temple. As Bonhoeffer notes, this is the temptation to doubt the goodness of God by testing God to see if he as good as he as promised.  It is the actually the prototypical temptation of the garden revisited.

Response of Jesus
Jesus answered, “It says: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’” (4:12).

Parallel(s)
Luke demonstrates that God does take care of Jesus as he obeys his will and faithfully confronts the folks in Nazareth regarding their idolatry.

Also, as many have noted, this passage foreshadows the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Conclusion

Is this just a coincidence or bit of literary trivia?  I don’t believe so.  Jesus overcomes the tempter in the wilderness.  But no less powerfully and effectively, Jesus begins and completes his mission in defiance of the temptations and snares that befall him.

That’s the kind of Savior he is!  And it’s to this kind of life he calls us.

Christmas in Galatia

Download now or preview on posterous

Christmas 2008 Galatians 4v4-5.doc (69 KB)

A Christmas gift for my fellow preachers.  Remember, don’t plagiarize, but maybe this will give you some ideas for your Christmas sermon.

I am thinking about doing “Christmas in Philippi” this year.

A Blessed Advent and Christmas to you all.

Dave H.