Tag: Following Jesus

Digging in Deeper: John 15:12-13

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“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)

One of the long-running debates about the action/spy-thriller genre of movies is which super spy is the greatest. Realistically speaking, there are only two possible entries in the debate: James Bond and Ethan Hunt. Everyone else falls a distant second to them. Bond has the advantage of a whole series of books and 27 films. Hunt has 9 seasons’ worth of a television series totaling 206 episodes as well as 7 movies with an eighth to be released next summer. Both are cool, suave, and always collected. They always get the job done. And in getting the job done, they’ve saved the world more times than is worth counting. So then, which spy is the better spy? Having recently watched or rewatched all of the previous six Mission Impossible movies, I would like to stir the debate once again by making an argument in favor of Hunt. Let’s talk about why.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 12:14-15, 19-20

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“This day is to be a memorial for you, and you must celebrate it as a festival to the Lord. You are to celebrate it throughout your generations as a permanent statute. You must eat unleavened bread for seven days. On the first day you must remove yeast from your houses. Whoever eats what is leavened from the first day through the seventh day must be cut off from Israel. . . .Yeast must not be found in your houses for seven days. If anyone eats something leavened, that person, whether a resident alien or native of the land, must be cut off from the community of Israel. Do not eat anything leavened; eat unleavened bread in all your homes.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Every nation has a rhythm. There are things that come around every year that everyone celebrates together. These festivals and ceremonies help to give that nation its own identity. Observing them each year is important to the health and longevity of the people. If they lose sight of these, they will gradually begin to forget who they are. At that point, they begin to enter the dangerous territory of losing themselves. God wasn’t simply leading the people of Israel out of Egypt in the Exodus. He was building them into something they had never been before: a nation. As a part of this process, they needed to begin to develop an identity. In the event of the Passover, God was not simply bringing judgment to Egypt, nor simply helping Israel punch their ticket out of there. He was laying the foundation for a ritual that would define who they were as a people. Let’s talk about what is going on here.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 11:9-10

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“The Lord said to Moses, ‘Pharaoh will not listen to you, so that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.’ Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh, but the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of his land.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Let me give you a bit of a peek behind the curtain this morning. I often write the introductions for these posts several weeks before I write the rest of them. These introductions serve as placeholders so that when I come back to actually write the full post I have a bit of a reminder of what I was thinking when I was first studying through a particular passage. As a result, I’m often studying one part of the text while writing about another a few chapters back. On occasion this lets me see connections between two different parts that I might otherwise miss. Way back at the beginning of chapter 7, just before God set Moses loose on Pharaoh, He told him (again) what was going to happen. The words He used then were remarkably similar to these words right here. Let’s come back to them again and touch yet again on this theme of Pharaoh’s hard heart. From that, we’ll spend a moment reflecting on why all of the repetition we find in this story is so important.

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A Simple Matter

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This week we are wrapping up our series, The Story of Us. This final part won’t take us to the end of Luke’s narrative of the early church in Acts, but rather to the halfway point. From here his focus shifts from the church itself to Paul and his missionary journeys. This halfway point marks what is perhaps the most significant moment in the story. The question on the table was frightfully important: just how complex a thing was following Jesus going to be? The debate was fierce, but in the end, they decided to follow Jesus in making it a very simple matter. Let’s see together how this all unfolded and what exactly it means for us. Thanks for reading and sharing.

A Simple Matter

Have you noticed that things tend to get more complicated over time? If you haven’t, perhaps some examples would help. Let’s start with the tax code. The original 1913 income tax law was 23 pages long and took about 400 pages to explain. Today, the tax code comes in at about 70,000 pages of text. No wonder politicians from both sides of the aisle regularly promise to reform and simplify things! Or consider a business. Apple started with two computer nerds in a garage. Today it is the most valuable company in the world, employing thousands of people, and is vastly more complex than it was in 1976. Or perhaps consider…churches. Most churches begin very simply. They have a vision and a message. Then over time they add programs and committees and policies and by-laws and buildings and furniture pieces and ministries all of which become enshrined both in structure and in placement such that the message and vision become a mere sideshow to the main event of tradition. And tradition is a complex thing. 

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Morning Musing: Exodus 10:7-11

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“Pharaoh’s officials asked him, ‘How long must this man be a snare to us? Let the men go, so that they may worship the Lord their God. Don’t you realize yet that Egypt is devastated?’ So Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh. ‘Go, worship the Lord your God,’ Pharaoh said. ‘But exactly who will be going?’ Moses replied, ‘We will go with our young and with our old; we will go with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds because we must hold the Lord’s festival.’ He said to them, ‘The Lord would have to be with you if I would ever let you and your families go! No, go – just able-bodied men – worship the Lord, since that’s what you want.’ And they were driven from Pharaoh’s presence.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

As a dad of three boys, one of the things I most enjoyed when my boys were little was wrestling around with them. As they’e gotten older (and bigger), it’s not quite as much fun as it used to be as they are big enough to gang up on me…and occasionally beat me. Especially the oldest who just nearly looks me in the eye now. Still, as I’ve gotten older, my stamina isn’t quite what it used to be. When I’m ready to be done, I’ll stop holding back so much to the point they know they’ve lost. I’ll ask if they’re done. And while they’re mostly done, they want to get one last shot in. So, while they’ve yielded almost completely, they’re not quite ready to give up entirely. As a result, I’ll keep piling on. Pharaoh wanted the plagues to stop. But he wasn’t willing yet to yield completely. Let’s talk about Pharaoh’s folly and our willingness to do what God says.

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