Story of the Church - Marriage Today, part 2: God Makes One out of Two

Near the end of His teaching ministry, Jesus was challenged by the religious leaders of the day on the question of divorce.  Jesus used that opportunity to challenge the chauvinistic divorce culture of this time and to teach how the kingdom of God restores marriage to its original design.  Jesus' answer speaks directly to the marriage questions of our current culture and teaches us how God meets our deepest needs by making one out of two.

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Easter Message: What Is Jesus All About?

Do a Google image search for Jesus, and you will find a broad range of what people imagine when they picture Jesus.  And there are as many ideas about who Jesus really is/was and what he's all about as there are different pictures.

Some people use Jesus as a political tool.  Others think of Him as a source of religious rules and guilt.  Still others consider Him an object of fairy tales and wishful thinking.

This Easter, we looked at a Bible story where people questioned Jesus.  Their question, ultimately, was the same as ours:  What is Jesus all about?

Questions for Jesus: What Shall I Do, Lord?

When Paul saw Jesus on the road to Damascus, he was confronted with the reality that the current purpose of his life was in direct opposition to the truth.  It's a terrifying thing to know that you're talking to the Lord and still have to ask, "Who are you?"  Paul's next question was "What shall I do?"  Jesus' answer and Paul's obedience shows us how to start and finish the calling God puts on our lives.

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Easter Sunday: The Sign of Jonah

We had a great day at church this morning. The Easter message is posted below: Are you waiting to be totally convinced about Jesus before you trust him with anything? Jesus has a warning for skeptics and "religious" (yet disobedient) people alike: God has nothing more to prove to you. When Jesus rose from the dead, it was the sign that proved for all people for all time that everything He claimed and said about Himself is true.

Jesus is alive and He is Lord. Believe it!

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Questions for Jesus: Why This Waste?

Is worship simply doing things for God or is it something else?  In a story from the last week of Jesus' life before his crucifixion, a woman spent the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars for a few moments' worship.  Everyone said it was a waste (why not give to the poor?!), but Jesus called it beautiful.  It seems to be a role reversal: people defending the poor and Jesus commending extravagance.  Why?  It has to do with what worship really is.  Listen and study this story with us:

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Questions for Jesus: Don't You Care?

Life can be overwhelming-- whether it is the pressures from the world or all the good things we are trying to do for our family and for God, we often feel like we're sinking. How do we know Jesus is with us, that He cares, and that He will come through? That's the question for this week as we look at two stories of when someone cried out to Jesus "Don't you care?"
 
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Questions for Jesus: Where Can You Get This 'Living Water'?

Unlike Matthew and Luke, which are rich with Jesus' sermons and parables, the Gospel of John focuses on Jesus teaching in the context of conversations.  On Sunday mornings, we have looked at his conversations with crowds in chapters 6 and 8, and one Wednesday night we looked at Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus in chapter 3.  Today's question comes from chapter 4, when Jesus has a somewhat unlikely encounter with a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well in Samaria.

In Luke 19:44, Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, because they have brought judgment on themselves "because [they] did not recognize the time of God's coming to [them]."

The woman begins by seeing and interacting with Jesus as any other Jewish man, but as Jesus reveals his true identity to her in a way that she can grasp, her eyes are open to who is really visiting with her there at the well.

Questions for Jesus: Who Is My Neighbor?

The greatest command is the command to love God and people. God loves every person. We are commanded to love, as well, but our love is limited. What does God expect in our love for others, and what can we do to open our heart to love people as God loves?

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Questions for Jesus: Why Break Tradition? (Mark 7:1-23)

Religious traditions are our ways of living out and passing on our faith, but over time, many religious traditions lose their original usefulness and become burdensome and even hinder our obedience to God's commands.  Jesus taight his disciples not to concern themselves with some religious traditions of their day.  It was appalling to the religious leaders at the time, and we might ask the same questions: Why not keep doing things the way we've always done them?  Why break tradition?

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Questions for Jesus: Who Are You? (John 8:12-59)

Last week we talked about the work of belief -- how it takes effort and diligence to turn our eyes away from the temporary things of this world to truly realize and embrace the truth of Christ.  Through the question brought to Jesus in this week's story ("Who are you?"), we encounter the challenge of belief: When Jesus confronts us with who he really is, how will we respond?

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Questions for Jesus: Is It Right to Pay Taxes or Not?

There's no Wednesday night Bible study this week, because our Bible Drill team is having their local drill in the sanctuary today in order to qualify for regionals, and all our Bible Study folks (including me) are judges.

So here is a short* thought on one of the most famous questions that Jesus answered...

Mark 12:13-17

¹³ Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. ¹⁴ They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? ¹⁵ Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”

But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” ¹⁶ They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

¹⁷ Then Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
And they were amazed at him.

"Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?  Should we pay or shouldn't we?"

I think this question has added relevance in modern times when many Bible-believing Christians also identify strongly with conservative "Tea-Party" politics, but I will get to that later...

Questions for Jesus: What Is the Work God Requires?

Jesus told the people that the "work" God requries is to believe. That sounds easy enough, right? Then why did this teaching end with almost everyone walking away? This Sunday we talked about how belief is work, why it takes work to believe, and why many people would rather just walk away.

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Questions for Jesus: What Must I Do?

Have you ever been to something -- or even looked at your life --and thought, "Really?  Is this it?"  Today we looked at the story of a young man who had everything -- he was rich, powerful, moral, respected, and probably well-liked, but he couldn't help but realize that something was not quite complete in his life.  The story of the rich young man that Jesus told to sell all his possessions is one of the more controversial stories in the Bible for several reasons, many of which come from our discomfort with the command that Jesus gave this young man to guide him to eternal life.  Do we really have the courage, when faced with this "holy discontent" with our lives, to fall on our knees before Jesus and ask, "What must I do?"... and then obey?

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Questions for Jesus: "Why Does Jesus Eat with Sinners?", part 2

This is a continuation of the previous entry, taken from Matthew 9:9-13

Answer #2: "Go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'"

Jesus was quoting Scripture here, from the Old Testament prophet Hosea. Hosea was warning God's people that their sacrifices were useless, because their "love" (worship) of God does not last. They offer sacrifices, but then leave the temple to exploit the poor.

So what does this have to do with the Pharisees' question? I think Jesus was telling them that they are missing the point of worship (sacrifice) and what it means to be holy.

Believers have always struggled with two aspects of the calling of God that can be in tension with one another: holiness and mission. Holiness calls us to distinguish ourselves from the world and mission calls us to love the world.

Some withdraw from the world in the name of holiness. A Fundamentalist newspaper that comes to our church likes to quote the Scripture "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" as a reason to never cooperate with anyone who does not line up doctrinally, top to bottom. They see it as obedience to the call from Revelation 18:4: "Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues."

But total separation from the world -- and certainly not condemning and abandoning the world -- is not what holiness is. Jesus was absolutely holy, and yet we find him here among "sinners." So holiness must mean something other than removing oneself from the world.

Questions for Jesus: "Why Does Jesus Eat with Sinners?", part 1

Since most people are busy Wednesday nights in the children's ministry, I decided to transfer the Wednesday night Bible study into a blog, particularly during this "Questions for Jesus" series.

Today's question appears in all three "Synoptic" Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), and, except for one sentence, the accounts are nearly identical.  The extra sentence appears in Matthew, so that's the account we'll be studying today.

Matthew 9:9-13

Matthew was a tax collector, which meant that he was considered a traitor and a crook by his fellow Jews.  With that perception for all tax collectors, there was not much incentive to be the "odd" honest tax collector, so most lived up to the reputation, getting rich by extorting more taxes out of people than they actually owed.

So when Jesus called Matthew to be his disciple, it was a radical change for him to leave a life of dishonest riches behind to follow Christ.  But before he left this life behind to travel with Jesus, he wanted to introduce his friends to Jesus.  So he had a banquet, inviting his old friends to meet his new friend, Jesus.

How Can We Get Enough?

The church is called to a great task... impossible, really. Whether in ministry, personal problems, or in everyday life, we are often paralyzed by the huge tasks that lie in front of us. They intimidate us into inaction. The disciples fe...lt that way when confronted with thousands of hungry people and a command from Jesus: "You give them something to eat." From that command comes our second question we are considering in our series that Jesus answered: "How can we get enough?" Jesus answered in three ways...

 

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Questions for Jesus: What Is the Kingdom of God Like?

Jesus started his ministry telling people to "Repent, for the kingdom of God is near." What he meant was that God's new life was invading this world enslaved to death, and we have a chance to turn aside, abandon our deadly ways, and receive God's abundant, benevolent provision.

That's a little hard to understand.

So the question came, "What is the Kingdom of God like?" Jesus gave his answer in various parables. Today we begin our "Questions for Jesus" series with this fundamental question of Christian life: "How does it work?" "What is it like?"

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