Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
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In Acts 6, the first Christian martyr, Stephen, is described as a man full of grace. For your future Bible trivia conquests, note that there are only two people described as “full of grace.” The other one besides Stephen is the Lord Jesus. What does it mean to be full of grace? There’s an old Seinfeld bit about having or not having grace, but that’s talking about something different. We want to know what the Bible means by grace. The original Greek word that gets translated as “grace” in our English Bibles starts us moving in the right direc...
In Acts chapter 5, we have the second confrontation between the church and the centralized government of the day, the Sanhedrin council. The first clash came (in chapter 3) in the wake of a miraculous healing, which set the whole temple campus buzzing. Now, here we are again, with the leaders of the upstart religion multiplying the miracles, and disobeying the authorities by persistently preaching Jesus. The rulers were jealous of the crowds. As we read through chapter 5, and digest the story of the arrest of the preachers, followed by their...
“Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.” — Acts 4:32 Thus does our author, Luke the Troublemaker, begin a section of his story that makes modern Christians man the ramparts and get ready to fight. By this time in the book of Acts, the Christian church has grown to number in the thousands. It has become a society within the larger society, an alternate community. This passage gives us a glimpse into how t...
Issues of power and authority are inescapably religious. Why do you get to boss me around? What if I don’t comply? How far does your authority extend? What if you command something immoral? How does the example set by Jesus Christ change the power dynamic that is routinely accepted as “normal?” We’re coming out of a time in which new claims of authority were being made pretty regularly. During the darkest days of the pandemic, even previous laws like privacy restrictions were mowed down in service to a new, over-arching ethic. That ethic,...
In Christian circles, we have a tendency to develop “jargon,” a technical short-hand way of speaking. We use words, and we just assume everybody knows what we mean. They don’t, however, and the irony is that we ourselves forget. The jargon substitutes for actually thinking about what we’re saying. We do this with words like “faith,” “saved,” “born again” and “holiness.” A friend suggested that we’ve done this with the word, “trust.” What’s the word actually mean? We throw it around a lot. Do you trust in God? Trust Jesus! Trust the promises...
In the Bible book of Ephesians, the apostle famously (or infamously, depending on your outlook) tells wives to submit to their husbands (5:22-24). That instruction would not have shocked any resident of the first century Middle East. But what Paul says next would have, or should have. He goes on to explain how a husband should love his wife, which, on the surface, is not terribly shocking. But he paints a word picture to illustrate his instruction, and if we read it right, we’ll see that it’s a picture of – brace yourself – submission. Of cour...
In King David’s famous prayer of repentance, Psalm 51, he includes this odd sentiment in speaking to God: “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” It’s an odd sentiment because, on first blush, it is manifestly untrue. If you know the story, David slept with the wife of one of his soldiers. Uriah was a member of David’s 30 “mighty men,” basically Israel’s “special forces.” He was away at the time, with the rest of the army, fighting David’s enemies. When Uriah’s wife turned up pregnant, the king went...
Just preach the Gospel, they tell me. “Who’s they?” you ask. You know: they, the ones who get either nervous or angry about any attempt to apply the teachings of the Bible outside the church building. They say I’m too political, because, instead of spouting little, harmless platitudes of the sort found lingering at the bottom of cat posters (nice things about hanging in there, or remaining hopeful) I insist that all people, including kings and rulers and all who are in authority should bow the knee to the King of kings, and keep his command...
Lots of us remember where we were when the planes hit the towers on 9/11. Do you remember where you were the next Sunday? If you’re like a lot of Americans, you were in church. I was preaching at the make-shift truck stop chapel at the old Shell Truck Terminal out west of Tucumcari. We normally got between two and four drivers in there to join us. That Sunday morning at 7 o’clock we had close to 20. I received a report that churches around America experienced, on average, about a 400 percent increase in Sunday morning attendance that weekend. M...
The ancient pagans had a circular view of history, where patterns and cycles repeat endlessly. One side-effect of this view is that there is no room for any lasting progress or change. Whatever you might build today will be demolished tomorrow, because that’s how the cycle works. We can’t make real change, because the cycle is coming back around and we’ll be starting over soon. You can see how they got this. Seasons come and go, predictably. Sunrise leads to sunset, and midnight, and then sunrise again. Harvest follows planting, and then plant...
“OK, men. Today’s the last game of the season, and we’re about to take the field against the Canaan Giants. Now, these guys are huge. They’re faster, stronger and tougher than we are, and it’s not even close. We’ll try hard, but let’s be honest. We’re about to go get our lunches handed to us. We simply haven’t been given what it would take for us to win this. We’re not even supposed to win. But take heart: There’s a state-of-the-art ambulance waiting to rush you to the emergency room when you get injured. (And you will get injured.) Our vic...
The topics of prison and police reform are hot items, nationally. Lots of people are giving their opinions, whether solicited or not; but, no one is asking if the Bible gives us any guidance about these things. For the record, it does. As a bit of background, remember that the Mosaic law regarding the kings in Israel (found in Deuteronomy 17) kept the ruler on a tight leash. He was not allowed to veer from the commandments, to the left or the right. He couldn’t make it up as he went. If God did not tell him to do a thing, then it wasn’t all...
I avoid big words. They draw attention to themselves, like politicians. However, like politicians, they are a necessary evil. Today’s needed big word is “epistemology.” It means the study of knowledge itself. How do we know what we know? At the beginning of the COVID-19 event, I told my congregation that this was going to test our epistemology. Months later, that’s been confirmed. To a large extent, what you believe about the coronavirus is a function of your own estimation about where truth comes from. Are the experts telling you the truth? Ar...
Years ago, there was a popular bumper sticker that you were likely to see on pickup trucks driven by young men. It simply said, “No Fear!” One pastor responded with this: “Stick around, kid. We can teach you.” The world God made has a marvelous power to instruct us in the ways of fear. In fact, learning to fear the right stuff is part of learning to live successfully. The man who truly has no fear is most likely a psychopath, who is headed for a more abrupt end than he imagines. I have a friend who was recently diagnosed with stage four ca...
Easter is upon us. Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. Since he walked out of the tomb, you can walk in newness of life. There’s more to that story. In the lingo of the old Westerns, “There’s a new sheriff in town.” Christ was raised; and now everything must change. Your first parents lived with God in a literal paradise. They rebelled against him on the first day of their existence and it’s been downhill since. As dogs give birth to puppies, and cats to kittens, so these two rebels brought forth a race of rebels, collectively shaking a...
Here’s a single-question Bible quiz for all the scholars. What is the biblical penalty for theft? If you guessed chopping off a hand, you’re thinking of the wrong religion. So what is it? Prison? Exile? Death? Something else? The answer is “something else.” The penalty for theft according to biblical law is restitution. The texts that teach this are too long to reproduce here, but look at Exodus 22 and Leviticus 6 for starters. This concept means if you stole or damaged your neighbor’s property, you should make it good by repaying his loss....