Digging in Deeper – Page 84

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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Digging in Deeper: Mark 10:1

April 27, 2021April 27, 2021Leave a comment

“He set out from there and went to the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Then crowds converged on him again, and as was his custom he taught them again.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever been interrupted? Of course you have. Life is, in some ways, a long string of interruptions from what we’d rather be doing. Some of the interruptions we invite into our lives, but others just happen. Learning to successfully manage interruptions is a critical skill to develop if we want to get along well in life. If we are going to learn how to manage interruptions better than we already do, one of the first things we need to learn is how to discern what kind of interruption we are facing. Is it an interruption over which we have some measure of control, or one that is completely out of our hands? Those are the two main options for what kind of interpolation our schedule is going to have to manage. But there is a third kind and a third way of looking at things here. We catch a glimpse of this here in Jesus’ life. Let’s look closely to see what it is and what it means for us.

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Digging in Deeper: John 15:12-13

April 23, 20211 Comment

“This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Our world is broken. There is darkness everywhere we turn. It manifests itself in many different forms, sometimes masquerading as light, but it is always darkness. As the prophet Jeremiah wrote about 2600 years ago, “The heart is more deceitful than anything else, and incurable – who can understand it?” No human culture has ever been exempt from this. If all people were saints there would be no need for laws. But we aren’t. So there is. That’s not the end of the story, though. Having laws in place is meaningless unless people follow them. But we aren’t saints. Thus we are not going to follow laws meant to restrain our behavior unless we are motivated to do so by the threat of a consequence that is more inconvenient to us than our desire to have whatever the law has forbidden. Even these consequences, though, are meaningless unless there are people who are committed to upholding the law and enforcing the consequences for violating it. In other words, we need law enforcement officers. That is, we need police officers. Let’s talk today about what a blessing they are.

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