Morning Musing: 2 Timothy 4:1-5

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“I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and because of his appearing and his kingdom: Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and teaching. For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear. They will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths. But as for you, exercise self-control in everything, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We had our regular business meeting this past Wednesday night at church. We Baptists love our business meetings. Fun fact for you: When the Southern Baptist Convention meets for their annual meeting each June, that is the largest business meeting in the world. My guess is that if you have heard of the Baptist church, you’ve probably heard about Baptist business meetings. My further guess is that what you heard wasn’t very flattering of them. They are boring at best, and at worst they are prime examples of every negative stereotype about the church that you can think of. Well, ours aren’t like that. Instead, we get together and celebrate everything God is doing in and through our little body. This past week’s business meeting was particularly encouraging. In fact, we gave so much attention to celebrating what God has been and is doing in our midst that we ran out of time for me to offer a little concluding devotion. Here’s what I was going to say.

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Morning Musing: Romans 4:17-21

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“As it is written: ‘I have made you the father of many nations’ – in the presence of the God in whom he believed, the one who gives life to the dead and calls things into existence that do not exist. He believed, hoping against hope, so that he became the father of many nations according to what had been spoken: So will your descendants be. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body to be already dead (since he was about a hundred years old) and also the deadness of Sarah’s womb. He did not waver in unbelief at God’s promise but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, because he was fully convinced that what God had promised, he was also able to do.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the more incredible things about the Scriptures is, other than Jesus, it doesn’t make any of the characters into heroes. Yes, some of them are praised highly for one character trait or another, but they are all broken in some way. They all have a fatal flaw or twelve that prevents them from achieving God’s righteousness and experiencing the full goodness of His plans on their own. Abraham is most definitely included in this less-than-perfect club. But he still got some things right. Let’s talk about what Abraham got wrong, what he got right, and the example he sets for us.

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Morning Musing: Romans 4:16

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“This is why the promise is by faith, so that it may be according to grace, to guarantee it to all the descendants—not only to the one who is of the law but also to the one who is of Abraham’s faith. He is the father of us all.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We are tribal by nature. We naturally and quickly form ourselves into groups based on pretty much any category imaginable, and then set our group apart from any other group. More than that, we fairly easily set our group against any other group. We see the world very much in terms of us and them. Because of that, when God had created a people through whom He wanted to introduce Himself to the world, they started treating their relationship with Him as something that set them apart from everyone else rather than sharing it as was always His intention. That is, they started to guard it as their own and only their own. But God always intended a relationship with Him to be for everybody. This universal intent lies at the heart of the Gospel. It is also where Paul goes next.

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Morning Musing: Romans 4:13-15

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“For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would inherit the world  was not through the law, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. If those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made empty and the promise nullified, because the law produces wrath. And where there is no law, there is no transgression.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Faith is one of the essential ingredients for getting through life and enjoying most of the ride. Assuming on a fairly generic understanding of faith as simple belief in what we cannot see, we definitely don’t go a day and rarely go more than a few moments without it. Sometimes we fool ourselves into buying into the notion that we don’t need faith, but this is little more than playing a game of philosophical Opposite Day where we just stake out whatever is the opposite position the people around us hold. It’s silliness masquerading as seriousness. I wonder if part of the reason faith is such a central aspect to our lives isn’t because God designed salvation to operate on faith. Let’s talk about one reason faith is so essential.

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Seeing Through the Fog

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Today we are continuing our new teaching series, All Signs Point to Jesus. Like we talked about last week, Jesus reveals His glory so we can see who He is. He does great and wonderful things in our lives and in the world around us in order to help us wrap our minds around the fact that He exists and what He is like. But if we’re not careful, we can focus our attention so much on the things that He does, that we can stop actually seeing Him. In the next sign John relates to us in his Gospel, Jesus invites a man to see through what He can do to who He really is. Through this story He makes the same invitation to us. Let’s look at this together.

Seeing Through the Fog

Do you remember the first time you realized your teachers were real people too? When you are young, teachers feel like these strange creatures who exist and inhabit the world of school, but don’t ever leave. After all, they’re there every time you are. They leave the world of their classroom behind every now and then, but only to accompany you to somewhere else in the maze that is the school building. Or maybe outside to recess. And if you’re young enough, your teacher is always old. She could be barely into her 20s, but she seems old all the same. But then it happens. You see your teacher somewhere other than school doing normal-people things rather than teacher-people things. And it completely blows your mind. It’s like your entire worldview framework gets shattered into a million pieces that will never be put back together again. 

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