Tag: Digging in Deeper

Digging in Deeper: Acts 10:36

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“He sent the message to the Israelites, proclaiming the good news of peace through Jesus Christ – he is Lord of all.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

While I have ours down pretty well, I don’t really understand the governing system of any other nation very well. From what little I do understand, though, in nations like England, while they have regular elections, they can also have snap elections. This is where the Prime Minister declares that it’s time to have an election. This could be for his own position or the various positions of Parliament. When this happens, the whole “election season” lasts for only about six weeks. Then everything goes back to normal. There are times something like that sounds pretty nice, especially when we have been slowly lumbering toward a presidential election season this coming November for months and it’s still only January. There are ten more months of campaigning ahead of us during which time things are probably only going to get uglier and uglier with national tensions rising more and more along the way. And, in the end, if things stay on the course they have been riding this whole time, we are going to wind up with an essentially binary choice between two options that at least by survey, most of the country doesn’t want either of. What fun. With the first round of primary voting officially behind us this week, I thought we would reflect together for a few minutes today on this whole scene and how we should be thinking about it. Let’s talk some politics.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 18:19-23

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“Now listen to me; I will give you some advice, and God be with you. You be the one to represent the people before God and bring their cases to him. Instruct them about the statutes and laws, and teach them the way to live and what they must do. But you should select from all the people able men, God-fearing, trustworthy, and hating dishonest profit. Place them over the people as commanders of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. They should judge the people at all times. Then they can bring you every major case but judge every minor case themselves. In this way you will lighten your load, and they will bear it with you. If you do this, and God so directs you, you will be able to endure, and also all these people will be able to go home satisfied.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The commands of the Old Testament aren’t for us who follow Jesus today. I’ve been making that point nearly every chance I get for a couple of years now. The idea isn’t original to me by any stretch, but it is one I’ve been confirmed in thinking a number of times, most notably from the author of Hebrews. One prominent pastor makes the same point using the now infamous argument that we need to “unhitch” our faith from the Old Testament. He’s pretty widely and wildly misunderstood in this, causing him, I suspect, no small amount of grief, but the point is nonetheless valid. Yet while the Old Testament doesn’t offer direct application for our lives, it does offer plenty of wisdom worth heeding. What we see here is one of those times. Let’s talk about the advice Moses got when he was wearing himself out trying to lead Israel all on his own, and what it might mean for us.

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Digging in Deeper: Galatians 3:27-29

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“For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ. There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. If you are a student or work for a state or federal employer, or a bank, or any one of a number of other places, I hope you get to enjoy your day off. Other than one of our Founding Fathers or Abraham Lincoln, it is hard to imagine another American from our entire history who is more celebrated than King. He’s the only person in our history who has a day named after him. Washington and Lincoln used to have their own days, but those got rolled into President’s Day more generally which is really too bad because all of our Presidents are not equally worth celebrating, but that’s for another time. That all being said, King is rightly given his own day because of the absolutely invaluable contribution he made to our nation. We would not be who we are without his tireless labor to advance the cause of Civil Rights for all people, but especially black people in a day when racism ruled in the hearts of far too many people. Let’s reflect for just a minute on King’s vision, what gave it substance, and how we’re doing with achieving it today.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 18:13-18

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“The next day Moses sat down to judge the people, and they stood around Moses from morning until evening. When Moses’ father-in-law saw everything he was doing for them he asked, ‘What is this you’re doing for the people? Why are you alone sitting as judge, while all the people stand around you from morning until evening?’ Moses replied to his father-in-law, ‘Because the people come to me to inquire of God. Whenever they have a dispute, it comes to me, and I make a decision between one man and another. I teach them God’s statutes and laws.’ ‘What you’re doing is not good,’ Moses’s father-in-law said to him. ‘You will certainly wear out both yourself and these people who are with you, because the task is too heavy for you. You can’t do it alone.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever had someone tell you that you were wrong? Let me be more specific. Have you ever had someone tell you that you were wrong who was in such a position in your life that you were willing to trust their counsel, listen to their perspective, and genuinely consider making changes in light of their observations? One of those life truths that we know is true, but don’t care all that much to think about its being true, and which we certainly don’t want to hear from someone else that it is true is that we don’t do everything right all the time. Because of this, we need people in our lives willing to tell us. Let’s talk today about Moses’ experience with this and how it went.

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Digging in Deeper: Romans 7:15

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“For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

October 7 changed this nation. It rocked the nation of Israel to its core, of course, but it made a change in this nation whose impact will ripple out for a long time. This is because it revealed a fundamental brokenness in our culture that many folks didn’t understand or believe was there. It seems appropriate, then, that not long after this, a movie was released, based on a book, both of which (although the book did a better job of it) explored this tension between the good we know we should do and the evil we actually do. Let’s spend a few minutes today wrestling with this ugly tension through the lens of the latest Hunger Games saga installment, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

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