Digging in Deeper – Page 86

Digging in Deeper: Mark 10:31

May 19, 2021May 20, 20211 Comment

“But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Play to win. That’s the mantra – spoken or unspoken – of pretty much every sports team ever. If you’re going to play, you might as well put forth the effort to win. Otherwise, why bother? But just what exactly does it mean to win? Well, it means you beat everyone else. When all of your opponents are defeated and you are the only ones left standing, you have won. My Kansas City Chiefs played to win all last season until they got to the Super Bowl. Then they played to…whatever else it was they were doing…and got absolutely decimated by Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Always Tom Brady… In any event, we did not win. This is just how life works. Well, that’s not quite true. It’s just how life works here, but not in the kingdom of God. There winning takes on an entirely different look.

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Digging in Deeper: Mark 10:28-30

May 18, 2021Leave a comment

“Peter began to tell him, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you.’ ‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus said, ‘there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, who will not receive a hundred times more, now at this time – houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions – and eternal life in the age to come.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

There is a plague in our nation. It passes easily from person to person. It is no respecter of politics or religion. It cares not about skin color or socioeconomic status. It goes after both the very young and the very old. We don’t have any natural protections against it and can only keep ourselves safe by monumental feats of effort. This is made easier when we are surrounded by people who are similarly committed to evading its effects, but even that doesn’t offer perfect coverage. What am I talking about? Well, it’s not COVID. I’m talking about the disease of “whataboutism.” When Jesus told the disciples how hard it was for rich people to follow Him, they all got hit with a bout of whataboutism. Let’s talk about this together.

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Digging in Deeper: 2 Timothy 1:7

May 14, 20212 Comments

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and sound judgment.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

For most of the history of this nation, the Christian church sat in the seat of power. Modern skeptics don’t like to admit this, but the United States was formed on the basis of ideas that were rooted in the Christian worldview. Yes, they were heavily influenced by several pre-Christian Greek philosophers, but the basic ideas of liberty for all and a limited government were directly influenced by thinkers who studied the Scriptures and sought to apply the principles they gleaned on the scale of nations. Times change, though. So do cultures and dominant worldviews. We are no longer in the place of cultural or political power we once held. Some note this fact with glee, others with weeping and gnashing of teeth. The question for we who are still in the church to answer, though, is this: What are we going to do now? Paul offers some advice to Timothy here that is worth heeding.

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Digging in Deeper: Mark 10:23-25

May 12, 20212 Comments

Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” The disciples were astonished at his words. Again Jesus said to them, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

In February of 1848, a pair of German philosophers published a pamphlet in England at the behest of the Communist League. The pamphlet made a small splash at the time it was published, but it would go on to become one of the most consequential literary works of the last two hundred years. This was not because of its literary eloquence or artistry, but because it introduced some powerful ideas which were eventually bought into by some powerful people who attempted to put them into practice on a national scale. The world has never really recovered. The pamphlet, of course, was the Communist Manifesto, and the philosophers were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Now, neither man cared a bit about the Christian faith, but they have had many ideological followers who do claim such a banner, and have tried again and again to reconcile the ideas of Marx and Engels with the ideas of Jesus. This passage is one of the most important of such efforts. Let’s see if we can’t get our hearts and minds around what Jesus was saying here this morning.

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Digging in Deeper: Mark 10:10-12

April 29, 2021April 29, 2021Leave a comment

“When they were in the house again, the disciples questioned him about this matter. He said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. Also, if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery against him.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Sometimes truth is hard. That’s something our culture today doesn’t much like to acknowledge. We want truth to be whatever we make of it. That’s certainly a more convenient approach. If we run up against a particular wall of reality that doesn’t fit with the narrative we are currently crafting for our lives, we simply turn in another direction, declaring that “our truth” means we can ignore that wall and keep doing what we want. Yet truth simply is. When Jesus was asked about marriage by some Pharisees looking for a bit of wiggle room to keep living how they pleased, He responded with truth. When the disciples later asked Him about it again, He stuck to His guns. What He had to say wasn’t comfortable; in fact, it was hard. Let’s talk about it just a bit more this morning.

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