I’m hopefully planning to write a review of the latest Marvel series, Visionquest, next week. This week has been all over the place for me. So, I’m going to share another blast from the past today. This is the first of a four-part series I preached several years ago looking at the story of the Scriptures from 30,000 feet. We often dive deeply into the nitty-gritty details of the Scriptures in sermon and Bible studies, but in doing that, we sometimes forget that the Scriptures really are all one cohesive story that points to Jesus. This series was all about making sure we have that in mind whenever we go to them to receive what God’s Spirit has to share. Enjoy!
We are continuing today in our series, The Beauty of Forgiveness. So far along the way we have talked about the fact that we have forgiveness available to us in Jesus and that forgiveness comes naturally to God. Today we are reflecting for a bit on just what it means that forgiveness comes so naturally to God. And we are doing this through the lens of a passage that isn’t one we might normally turn to for help with…well…anything. Yet every word of the Scriptures is useful for making us over in God’s image, including this one. So, let’s dive in and see just what God plans for when given the chance.
The Picture of Forgiveness
Do you remember the Disney movie, Meet the Robinsons? It was one of the few Disney animated films that came out after they started working with Pixar. It’s about a boy named Lewis who gets caught up in a time-traveling adventure to stop a dastardly villain from rewriting history. The villain in the film—at least the human villain; the main villain turns out to be an evil AI program that wants to turn humanity into its slaves— turns out to be Lewis’ roommate from their orphanage, Goob. At the pivotal moment of the story, Lewis stays up all night working on a big science fair project. His late hours keep Goob from getting any sleep the night before a big baseball game. Because of his exhaustion, he falls asleep in the outfield and misses a critical fly ball that would have sealed the win for his team. Missing it made sure they lost, consigning him forever to a life of shame. Rather than moving on, though, Goob just stews in his anger and resentment toward Lewis until they form a deep-seated hatred and bitterness. This basically stunts his emotional and relational development. Years later, he happens upon an opportunity to go back and get revenge, which is basically how the whole story gets set into motion in the first place. To put all that in other words: Goob planned for vengeance.
Well, given that I’ve posted the previous two parts over the past couple of Fridays, I thought I would complete the set today. We’ve been taking a fresh look at a series on marriage I preached several years ago called Marriage Myths. In each part of the series we unpacked a different myth that our culture often tells us about marriage. Along the way we discovered why the truth is so much better than even the grandest fiction our culture can devise. In this final myth, we’re actually covering ground I covered more recently in the marriage series I preached just a few weeks ago. Marriage isn’t about happiness. Not primarily anyway. Let’s talk about what it’s really about instead, and why that’s better.
This week we are continuing our teaching series, The Beauty of Forgiveness. Last time we talked about the fact that when we sin, we can go to Jesus to receive forgiveness. This week, with the help of another psalm of David, we are going to explore why exactly that is the case. What is it about Jesus that makes Him the best place to go for forgiveness when we have fallen into sin. The answer has everything to do with who He is. Let’s take a look!
The Source of Forgiveness
In the opening of the second chapter of his international bestseller, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins offered up a description of God that was intended to be provocative. I wonder some if his position hasn’t softened a bit in the years since given some of the public comments he has made recently—including describing himself as a cultural Christian just last year—but at the time, he gave word to something that a whole lot of folks were feeling. Many still do.
I’ve got another blast from the past for you today. This one is the next part of the marriage series we pulled back out of the mothballs last week. We live in a culture that highly values equality and fairness. That commitment plays itself out in just about every area of our lives including our marriages. Marriages are supposed to be equal relationships of equal partners, right? Well, it depends on what you mean by equal. In this message we are going to do a deep dive into equality, talk about the kind of equality that does and doesn’t exist in marriage, and set our sights on something entirely higher than that (and far more consistent with the teachings of the apostles) as the goal we should be striving for together. Let’s take a look.
