Morning Musing: Matthew 2:5

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“They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet.”‬‬ (ESV – Read the chapter)

What does it look like to live like the Scriptures are true? In the church today there is much talk about the authority and reliability of the Bible. That’s been the case for much of the last century. There is a whole industry of folks who are committed to defending the Bible as absolutely true. That’s not necessarily a bad thing by any means, but defending the truthfulness of the Scriptures and living our lives as if they really were true are two different things. 

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Connecting Like Jesus

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This week we kicked off a brand new series taking a fresh look at who God has designed us to be as a church. The message is focused on our church, but the ideas apply to every church and every follower of Jesus. Who did God make you to be and how can you become more that person? It starts with connecting with people. Jesus was a master at that. Learn more here about how He did it and how we can join Him in it.

Connecting like Jesus – John 4:1-26

Our culture is a maze of contradictions.  Think about it: We have never been more connected in terms of technology and social media than we are right now and the webs are getting tighter and tighter all the time.  Movies like Enemy of the State with Will Smith and Gene Hackman that envisioned a slightly futuristic reality in which the government can track every single movement we make is now not only completely true in terms of what they can do, it’s actually even more true now than it was then.  Social media and other tech giants are working on algorithms that not only know where you’ve been, but attempt to predict where you’ll go next in order to allow advertisers to even more closely and personally target their efforts. 

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Morning Musing: Luke 6:22-23

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“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.”
– ‭‭Luke‬ ‭6:22-23‬‬ (ESV – Read the chapter) 

In this world there are two opposing forces. They are not even remotely equal, but opposite, as popular literature and several different religions hold them to be, but they are opposing all the same. There is the world and there is God. If we are received by and accept the reception of one, we will reject the other. As Jesus Himself made plain, we cannot have both. More specifically, if we receive God, the world isn’t going to like us anymore. 

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Digging in Deeper: Luke 2:7

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“And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”‬‬ (ESV – Read the chapter) 

Have you ever had anything not go the way you were expecting? Perhaps the better question is whether or not you’ve had that happen yet today. We regularly make plans only to have to throw those plans in the trash when they bump up against the walls of reality. The real question we need to face here is not whether or not we’ve faced this disruption of intent, but what we did about it when it happened. 

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Morning Musing: Matthew 2:16

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“Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.”‬‬ (ESV – Read the chapter) 

This is the hardest part of the story. This episode reveals Herod—known to history as Herod the Great—as one of the single greatest monsters ever to walk the face of the earth. It puts him in the ranks of Hitler and Stalin and Mao. He may not have killed nearly as many (though he had many thousands more than this put to death in his time, including family members), but anyone who would order the wholesale slaughter of babies jumps to the head of that deadly class. The bottom line right now, though, is this: What on earth are we supposed to do with this? 

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