Tag: The Church

Digging in Deeper: John 8:10-11

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“When Jesus stood up, he said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ ‘No one, Lord,’ she answered. ‘Neither do I condemn you,’ said Jesus. ‘Go, and from now on do not sin anymore.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The apostle John probably did not write those words. You would be hard-pressed to find a translation that doesn’t include them in at least a footnote in his Gospel, but they were probably written sometime after he died by someone else. Still, this particular story from Jesus’ life probably really did happen. The conclusion of the story here is powerful, and in one moment captures both sides of a tension that our church culture struggles to balance. Some folks fall pretty firmly on one side and Jesus’ refusal to condemn to death this sinful woman; some on the other, when Jesus commanded her not to sin anymore. In the last couple of weeks, our culture has been treated to a bit of a high level debate mostly between two of the highest profile Christian leaders in the country, Albert Mohler and Andy Stanley. I’ve had a chance to read or listen to their reactions and responses to a conference Andy’s church recently hosted that aimed to give support to Christian parents of kids who have come out as somewhere along the LGBTQ spectrum. To say it created a bit of a stir in the Christian world would be a bit of an understatement. As someone who has a fair bit of respect for both men, here are a few of my thoughts.

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Policing the Ranks

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This is a tough sermon. I knew it would be when I planned out this series several weeks ago. I knew it would be when I wrote over the course of the last week. I knew it would be when I preached it yesterday morning. This is one of those hard truths from the Scriptures that we would rather ignore than heed, all things considered. But if we want to get being the church right, we can’t. This is not something many churches practice, and when they do, they often don’t practice it well. But if we will commit ourselves to getting it right with all humility and love, it will make the church a much, much stronger people than we will be without it. Let’s talk today about church discipline.

Policing the Ranks

Do you remember your parents’ punishing you for various things when you were a kid? What was that? You were being held accountable for the house rules. You may not have liked or agreed with those rules, but as a kid, you probably didn’t get much of a vote. As I told one of my boys the other day: “You are living in a totalitarian dictatorship and I’m the dictator.” That kind of accountability likely didn’t feel very good either. But if they got it right—and not all parents get it right—you are probably grateful now for the boundaries you hated then. Discipline is often like that. In fact, it’s almost always like that. And this is not something new. Almost 2,000 years ago, one of Jesus’ followers who wrote a letter that today we simply call “Hebrews” made this observation that is just as true today as it was back then: “No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” 

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Well Led

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For all of the nuts and bolts of getting being the church right we’ve talked about so far, many of them are dependent on what we are talking about this time. We can have all the big dreams and plans for the church in the world, but if there is not solid leadership in place, we aren’t going to be able to move smoothly or easily toward any of them. This week we are talking about church leadership. Let’s see what the Scriptures have to say and what one important implication of this is for our lives.

Well Led

Have you ever had the pleasure of strolling through a really well-tended garden? When I think about that, something like the Biltmore Estate immediately comes to mind for me. Those gardens are absolutely exquisite. There’s beauty everywhere you look. It is a place of peace and tranquility—even in the winter—and a nice escape from the world. The whole estate is like that, but the gardens up near the mansion are a particularly good place for it. Imagine, though, that you were walking through a forest and came upon a garden like that. Your first thought would not be anywhere in the universe of, “Wow! What a beautiful garden that grew up here like this out in the middle of nowhere all by itself.” No, you’re thinking something along the lines of, “Someone did beautiful work making this garden look like it does.” You might also be thinking, “Uh-oh! Whose land have I accidentally trespassed on? I hope they don’t have a big, vicious dog guarding it.” 

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Growing Together

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This week we are talking about another of the fundamental nuts and bolts of getting the church right. Like we did a couple of weeks ago, though, this week we talked less and showed more. Today we’re talking about the importance of discipleship in the church. From there – which you can watch in the embedded YouTube video of our service – we experienced together what discipleship in action can look like as we heard and celebrated the stories of our Guatemala mission trip team. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Growing Together

I am not generally well-known for my physique. Unless you happen to be going for scrawny, in which case I am your man. It may not come as much of a surprise to you to learn that over the course of my nearly 41 years of life, I haven’t spent all that much time in a gym. Or it may surprise you…but then we probably need to have a conversation about what muscle looks like, but we can do that another time. Yes, because I haven’t spent more than a few hours in a gym exercising and lifting weights…ever…big, bulging muscles aren’t really my thing. Indeed, if you want to build muscle, you have to work out. Simply wishing yourself strong isn’t going to work. If you want to enjoy the payoff, you have to put in the effort. Well, kind of like we talked about last week, what’s true of the human body is also true of the church. 

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Morning Musings: Exodus 12:43, 48-49

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“The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, ‘This is the statute of the Passover: no foreigner may eat it. . .If an alien resides among you and wants to observe the Lord’s Passover, every male in his household must be circumcised, and then he may participate; he will become like a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person may eat it. The same law will apply to both the native and the alien who resides among you.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the criticisms often leveled against Christianity today is that it is very exclusive. In a world in which being inclusive is one of our highest virtues (unless you are deemed insufficiently inclusive, in which case you are excluded with prejudice), this charge carries a lot of weight with some folks. It can be an apologetically difficult question to answer. Well, as we are going to see in the next part of our story here, this charge is not completely without merit. The people of God is an exclusive group. But it is exclusive in the most inclusive way possible. Let’s talk about it through the lens of God’s instructions about who could and could not participate in the Passover festival.

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