In Luke 5:27-32 we find Jesus and his followers at a feast.   The feast is being held by His newest disciple, Levi (or Matthew), who was a tax collector.  It’s important for us to understand a bit about tax collectors. These were considered to be terrible traitors by the Jews.  They were collecting money from their own people to hand over to their oppressors!  Worse than that, many skimmed off the top, so they weren’t just traitors, but thieves as well!

Jesus meets Levi at his work and says, ‘Follow me.’  Levi drops everything and follows. (More on this next time.)  They go back to his place and Levi throws a big party.  Who does he invite?  the people he knows; other tax collectors and people that will be willing to hang out with tax collectors.  The Pharisees refer to these people as ’sinners’.  Let’s not get this twisted, the Pharisees are not denying their own sin with this title.  This was a common, catch-all name for any Jews who were not making an effort to follow God.  ‘Sinners’ were people who didn’t go to the festivals, didn’t follow Torah, and didn’t bring offerings to the Temple.  Matthew’s own account of this event reveals that there were also prostitutes there.

So these are the people Jesus spent at least some of His time with.  Why would He do this?  Because the good news is for those who haven’t heard it!  In Jesus’ words, ‘I have not come for the righteous, but to call sinners to repentance.’

Again, let’s not twist this message.  Jesus is not condoning sin; in fact He is calling people to repent!  These is quite conscious of the fact that these people He is feasting with are diseased.  But He IS GOING TO these people!
I have a bad habit of telling the good news to people who already know it.  I make these occasional speeches that we call sermons, but typically more than 90% of the listeners already believe.  Do you know that there is no record in the NT of a sermon delivered to a group of believers?  Yet we do it every week!

Again, don’t get me wrong, we are to exhort and encourage each other in the church.  Sermons can be a useful and meaningful way to do this.  But let’s not kid ourselves into thinking we are ’spreading the gospel’ when we just go to our church buildings and give a talk once a week! Imagine if your local hospital canceled its ambulance service. They just issued a couple of ads in the paper saying, ‘Anyone that wants help needs to find their own way to the hospital!’ We wouldn’t be too happy with that. But are we any different when we sit in our ‘hospital’ waiting for people to come for healing?

Jesus makes a fundamental point here that I think many of us, definitely self included, often miss.  To share the gospel, you have to FIRST go to the people that need to hear it.  It doesn’t count to just sit in our clubhouse and talk about how cool Jesus is, as fun as that may be.  We’ve got to be willing to get our hands a little dirty some times.  Essentially, Jesus is challenging the Pharisees and scribes to consider that ’sinners’ might not be that way if someone gave them a chance!  The good news of Christ’s kingdom is that it is for everyone!

Jesus demonstrates to us that it is possible to share our lives with unbelievers and not participate in sin.  Perhaps I need to be more intentional about not spending all of my time doing ‘church stuff’. The kingdom of Christ should be proclaimed in the world, which means we all have to be out there doing a bit of proclaiming!!  But how do we do that?  What will it look like?  Let’s continue to look into Luke for clues…

Yeah, so anyway, my thoughts are a bit jumbled and I probably should wait, but I feel like if I don’t write now, I probably won’t or a couple of weeks.

What is the good news?  I mean, as Christians, we have been charged by Christ to share the message of ‘the gospel’, but what exactly is that?  I’ve been teaching some on this lately, and I’m coming to realize that we typically narrow the message to fit what we are comfortable with.  I reckon that might be a bit unhealthy.  So I thought that maybe we could spend some time together exploring what the Bible has to say about the gospel.  I’m coming to see the gospel as a diamond, with many facets.  We should be striving to appreciate all of them, live all of them, and teach all of them.  Sadly, I think we stare into the ones that allow us to live the way we want, and pretend the others aren’t there.

So I ask again, What is the good news?  I think we will be well served by spending some time in the book of Luke.  Luke 4:43 records Jesus saying that He was sent to ‘speak the good news of the kingdom of God’.  I think this is essentially Luke’s thesis statement.  In the rest of the book, Luke is going to share things about who Jesus was and what he taught, and these things are going to reveal to the reader what the kingdom is, and what kingdom dwellers look like.

But let’s take a step backwards from 4:43 to Luke 4:16fl. Jesus goes to the synagogue and is asked to read.  Now you have to remember that up til now, Jesus was nothing more than a young teacher as far as anyone else knew.  He stands up and reads from Isaiah 61.  Read below what He read. (emphasis is mine)

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
 to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

After reading, Jesus sits down, looks at everyone, and says, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’  He, of course, gets some shocked looks, so he goes on to relate two familiar stories to them from the OT.  Familiar, but told in a way to draw attention to something that, I’m guessing, none of them had ever considered.

First Jesus talked about Elijah.  There was a great famine in the land; a famine caused by Elijah’s prayers to God.  We can assume that there were many in Israel suffering because of the famine, but God didn’t send Elijah to any of them.  Instead He sent him to Sidon; a foreign country, to stay with a widow there and  help her.  Jesus then talked about the prophet Elisha.  Again, we can assume there were many in Israel who suffered from leprosy, but Elisha didn’t heal them.  Instead he healed a general in the enemy’s army!!

Now why would Jesus tell these two stories?  I believe that He was pointing out that often God does not work the way that we expect Him to!  In the first century, there was great expectation about the Messiah.  He would be a great warrior king, who would throw off the shackles of the Romans, so that Israel could be ascendant again! They read into the passage in Isaiah, that God was talking about them and how he would lift up the nation.

But Jesus says, it’s happening right now and you don’t see it!  You won’t recognize it, because it doesn’t fit what you’ve already decided the good news will be!  Jesus walked out the door of the synagogue, and He fulfilled this prophecy. He started healing people, spending time with the poor, encouraging the outcasts from society.

Even John the Baptist was confused.  In Luke 7:18fl, John sends messengers to ask, ‘Are you the Messiah? or should we be looking for someone else?’  John knows that Jesus is supposed to be the one!  But Jesus isn’t acting the way he’s supposed to, and John wants him to get on with it!

Listen to Jesus’ answer:

“Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear,  the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. ²³And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

He’s doing it!  He’s bringing the good news of the kingdom, but it’s not what people expected.  Jesus tells John, ‘I’m doing what I was sent to do, don’t be offended that it doesn’t fit what you had in mind!’

Are we any different today?  We have our set ideas about what message we are supposed to be sharing with the world.  But does our message match up with Jesus’ message?  Over the next few posts, I want to examine what Jesus said and did, to see what the gospel is all about.  Maybe that can help us sort out what we are supposed to be sharing with the world.

One last thing…  In my minds eye I see some stodgy, traditionalist reading this and saying, ‘Hrumph!  Where does he get off!?  I KNOW the gospel!’  Well, I pray you will bear with me and really listen to Jesus’ words and actions.  On the other hand, I see a young revolutionary saying, ‘Right on, Ed!  Give it to ‘em!  Tell the traditionalists that their time is over, we have no room for them in the ‘post-modern church’! Please, slow down and listen to Jesus’ teachings as well.  As I said at the beginning, we so badly want Jesus to say what we want him to.  Let’s try to just look and see what he actually said and did.

love to you all!

In my past, as I said last time, I have had some pretty painful things happen to me.  I am not unique in this respect.  To live is to experience pain.  Last week we thought about growing through pain, which was nice, but might not have been that practical.  I’d like for us to get more practical today.

So how can we best deal with negative thoughts and depression?  We are NOT talking about thinking through a problem and coming up with solutions. We are NOT talking about chemical imbalances that cannot be wished away with positive thinking.  We ARE talking about harmful negativity and painful self talk that is not productive.  When you treat yourself this way, you are only making things worse.

How can we break the cycle of negativity in our lives?  Here are a few things that have helped me:

1. You are not alone.  If this is a serious problem, I encourage you to seek help.  Talk to a wise person that you trust; an elder or church worker might be an excellent place to start.  If you want, you can email me and I’ll do what I can.  Sometimes just saying things out loud to another person can be a big help.  Hopefully, your confidant will encourage you and give you some helpful advice.  Also, they can tell you if they feel you need some professional help.  There is no shame in this.  I have had professional counseling in the past and it was extremely helpful to me.

2. Take control of your mind.  God calls us to control ourselves.  That certainly goes for our own thoughts.  When you have negative thoughts and feelings, stop thinking about them!  That sounds ridiculous, but if you do it, it works.  Psychologists call this ‘Cognitive therapy’.  If it helps you feel like you are doing something fancy, then call it that.  This is basically as simple as it sounds.  Every time you find yourself dwelling on something negative, train your mind to think about something else.  Sing a favorite hymn.  Recite a favorite passage of scripture that you have memorized.  Say a quick prayer thanking God for three specific blessings.  This will work for the moment, but the negative thoughts will return.  You didn’t get like this overnight, and it won’t go away in a day.  So each time the negative thoughts return, turn your mind towards whatever good thing you are using.  Over time you will find that your mind stays focused on what you want it to dwell on, and the feelings of negativity will ease. I committed several passages to memory over the years by doing this!

Does this sound idea sound familiar?  God seems to think it’s a good idea….

3. Take control of your actions.  Psychologists call this ‘Behavior therapy’.  Many of us do destructive things when we are feeling bad.  Now you might not punch a wall or scream at people, but maybe you go out and spend money needlessly when you are down.  Or maybe you eat sweets, or smoke cigarettes when you feel bad.  Like above, it’s all about awareness.  When you recognize destructive things that you are doing to yourself or others, stop doing them!  Replace them with a more positive response.  Whenever you feel down about something that consistently bothers you, write two cards to people you know who are having a tough time, pray to God to help you in that moment, read Revelation 5 (that always makes me feel good!).  Doesn’t matter what you do, finish the dishes, play Bejeweled on your iPhone, whatever you need to do to stop hurting yourself.

Again, this will take time, and you will fail.  But the more aware you become of how you work, the more you can do to break the cycle.

4. Remember God loves you.  I am constantly amazed at how many people hate themselves.  Many of us wallow in negativity, because we believe that is what we deserve.  So many terrible things come out of this behavior.  We become depressed and lethargic about dealing with our life.  We become cynical and hateful towards others.  This will only grow worse over time, and every failure and every hurt feeling just reinforces what I’ve been telling myself over and over for years.  This not healthy, and it is NOT what God wants for His children!

Yes, this life is hard, and other people can be cruel.  Yes, you have been treated unfairly at times.  But don’t compound all of that by tearing yourself down.  God wants to give you LIFE!  An eternal life that begins now and never ends!  He offers joy and purpose to combat the pain and meaninglessness of this broken world.

Jesus said, ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our home with him.’  We serve a God who comes to us!!  How amazing is that!?  Not only that, not only does He run to us like a father does a straying child, but He stays with us!  God lives with you.  Never forget that.

Now unless you are my mother, I think we can all agree that I need to improve….ah, who am I kidding?  Even my mom would say that I could use some improving!!

But before we go down that path, I’ve been looking backwards some as well, and I’d like to share something I was meditating on recently.  My life has had it’s share of pain.  Now you are thinking, ‘Get in line, Ed!’, and that’s fair enough.  We all have our personal struggles.  I’d like to think about something that has come out of my pain.

You see I’ve grown alot through pain.  Something terrible happens, either something I’ve done or something that happened to me, and I begin to react.  Hopefully, I grow and develop new ______ . (you can fill in the blank with any number of things; humility, coping skills, empathy, awareness, faith…the list is endless)  We don’t always grow through pain, sometimes we let the pain consume us.  Sometimes we try to bury the pain and pretend it’s not there.  But I was pleased to realize that much of the pain in my life has spurred growth that was badly needed.  That got me thinking about oysters….

Yeah….I know….I don’t understand how my mind works either…

An oyster has to open it’s shell to feed.  It’s shell is the only thing that protects it from the wider world of the ocean floor.  Lots of things can happen to the tender flesh of the oyster when it’s exposed, but one thing that happens every so often is that some parasite or perhaps a piece of grit drifts in.  It responds by encasing the intruder in calcium carbonate, which is the same stuff that it’s shell is made of.  It’s funny bc oyster shells are ugly and not collected for anything.  Yet after layer upon layer of calcium carbonate on that source of pain, the oyster makes a beautiful, glossy pearl that people value greatly.  I’ll leave you to connect the dots on why that is.

Now back to each of us and our pain.  I believe as we grow and develop through our pain, it’s like layers on that pearl.  One day we look back on the terrible things that have happened and realize that something beautiful has formed out of the pain!

Jesus referred to the pearl of great price in one of his shortest parables.  He said that when a person finds one, they would give all that they have to get it.  It’s interesting, bc if you did that, you would be no better off for having it, bc it cost you everything.  The idea is that it is so beautiful, and so important to you, that it is priceless.

If we grow through our pains, we create of lifetime of pearls.  Pearls made beautiful by Christ working through us and in us.  Pearls that are worth everything we are!  Life is pain.  Love is pain.  Don’t run from it, bury it, or wallow in it.  Grow through it.

One of my favorite current players will be featured this year for Argentina; Lionel Messi.  No more than 5′4″ tall, this goal scoring  tornado is well nigh unstoppable with his head over the ball.  Go search his name on Youtube and watch one of his highligt reels….he is electrifying.  He looks like a little boy flipping a game of keep-away on it’s head with a field full of adults!

I admire Lionel Messi.

By that I mean, I follow his career closely.  I watch him work whenever I get the chance.  Even as a 38yo man, I sometimes kick the ball around and imagine that I am Messi driving for the goal.  I occasionally practice some of the moves I’ve seen him do.

I am not a disciple of Lionel Messi

I don’t try to live my life according to his.  I definitely will not be playing in the World Cup and trying to play like him.

Are you a disciple of Christ? or just an admirer?

I think alot of us study about him, know alot about him, sometimes ‘practice’ being like him.  But do we LIVE Christ?  Is He the controlling force of my life?  Has his life of self-sacrifice and humble service, his life of determined and focused care for others, become the focus of my life?  So much the focus that it informs all that I am on the inside and all that I do on the outside?

I have to ask myself these questions.  I don’t always like my answers.  Being a disciple is about more than study and practice work.  It’s about getting out on the field and doing it…

or in Jesus’ words.

I believe these are important questions that it seems are rarely asked by Christians.  Maybe we asked these questions when we first came to Christ, but sometimes it’s good to look back on the simple things.

To put it in the simplest of terms; Jesus was made King because He could do something that none of the rest of us could do.

Now let’s not get ahead of ourselves here!  I know what you’re thinking….maybe.  You might be thinking, ‘Oh, I get it. Ed’s going to talk about how Jesus came back to life.’  Yeah, well, maybe eventually, but not yet.

Can you think of what Jesus could do that we can’t?  I’ll give you hint…it’s got nothing to do with carpentry!  Although, I am a totally useless carpenter….

I want us to go back to the Cross in our minds.  I’ve often been encouraged to put myself in the place of many figures surrounding the cross; Barrabas, Simon of Cyrene, Mary, John, the centurion, one of the thieves…

I want you to put yourself in Jesus place.  You are laid down with your shoulders on the crosspiece.  Your arms are held out over the wood while iron spikes are driven through your hands near the wrist.  Your legs are crossed and nailed to the pole. The pole is lifted up until it slides into the prepared hole with a jarring thud.  You hang there as people jeer at you and spit at you.  You hang there until you can’t breathe anymore.

All of us would find that extremely hard, but there is something about Jesus that makes it worse.  Jesus didn’t have to do it.  He had a choice.  All he had to do was say, ‘no’, and it all stops; the pain, the teasing, the fear of separation from the Father.

Now put yourself in his place.

I couldn’t do it.  I can tell you now, I would be off of that cross so fast!  I don’t think there’s anything that could keep me on there.  It wouldn’t matter if I had an angel whispering to me that this is for everyone; everyone who has ever lived, is living, and ever will live!  I can save them if I just stay on the cross.  I know I couldn’t do it.

But Jesus could.

That’s why He gets to be King.  That’s why He received power from the Father to take His life back.  That’s why all those who follow Him will live forever.

Jesus of Nazareth, in the big moments and in the small, always chose to sacrifice himself, and obey the Father.  He perfectly fulfilled the role of man, and was the express image of God.

So what does that mean to us?

Alot of things.  Everything.

We’ll start looking at the implications of the life of the King next time.

I was asking myself the following question the other day; why did the Romans kill Jesus?  It had little to do with religion.  The Romans were actually quite tolerant of other religions.  Consider the Jewish religion, even with it’s overtly nationalistic tones, the Romans allowed them to continue to worship and gather.  The charge laid against him, and later nailed above his head on the cross was, ‘King of the Jews’.   They charged him with claiming authority.  You could argue that Pilate neither believed nor cared that Jesus wanted to be a king; that he was just doing this to pacify the Jewish leaders.  Fair enough.  So why did the leaders of the Jews want him crucified?  bc he sat on a mountaintop in Judea and said, ‘Love everybody and be nice.’?  I don’t think so.

They were as frightened of him as I often am today!  Jesus was killed, in the body 2000 years ago, and in our hearts quite often, because he represents an entirely different way of doing things.  That ‘way’ threatened the foundations of power in Palestine so many years ago, and it threatens the foundations of my life today.

He didn’t come with a moral code.  He didn’t come with clever insights or handy proverbs.  He didn’t come to be another in a long line of  power hungry rulers.

He did come with love, but a love so different, we shoulda made up a new word for it.  He came with paradoxes and parables to show people that an entirely different of living and seeing was possible.  Most people didn’t/don’t get it.  Of those that do, very few of them like it. Some want to kill him for it.

We finished the last post….so many months ago, by asking how we are going to accomplish our task as image bearers.  The task that Christ perfectly fulfilled.  The task with which he charged his disciples, including us.

It has to begin and end with Christ the King.  Six months ago, when I began this little series, I lamented that I proclaim Jesus ‘King of Sunday’, and I run to Caesar for the rest of my time.  It’s been a winding road from there, but now we have come back to it.  After the Cross, what was there?  Not a dead revolutionary. Not just another wannabe Messiah.  There was a King.  There was a King who would never die.

Why was he made King?  What is so special about him?  I guess that’s where we are headed next.

In the blink of an eye, they abandon that vocation to pursue self-rule.  Did you ever notice the first few verses of Genesis 5?  God made man in His image, but then after the fall, Adam fathered Seth ‘in his own likeness, after his image‘.  God’s image bearers are now bearing their own image.  At Babel, man sought to lift himself up and make a name for himself, and failed completely.  Immediately after that, God calls Abram, and begins His own project to lift man up.

God calls on Israel to bear His name and so recapture the image bearing vocation that He desired for all mankind.  For thousands of years, the Patriarchs, Moses, and the entire nation struggle to uphold this ideal, and be God’s people.  They have the Law, and the Land, and the Temple, but they still can’t do it.  The OT ends in utter frustration and despair.  God keeps hinting that someone is going to come along and fix all of this, but we just can’t see how things could ever go back to the way that He intended.  We close on Malachi 4, as God foretells the coming of One who will turn their hearts back from destruction, and we’re not sure if we really even want to keep reading.

But then something amazing happens.  A man named Jesus begins to work and teach in Galilee.  He just seems like a regular guy.  Yet, He quickly begins to do things that belie His boring exterior!  John opens his gospel by equating Jesus with the Word; a light shining out of the darkness.  John the Baptist gives Jesus the curious nickname of ‘the Lamb of God’, apparently associating Him with the Passover; a feast commemorating the greatest day in Jewish history.  Jesus tells His fledgling disciples in John 1:51 that He is Jacob’s ladder.  A symbol that simultaneously called to mind the close connection of God and His people, and the promise God made in that vision to Jacob, that He would bring Jacob home and give him the Land.  At the next Passover, John tells us that Jesus went to the temple and drove out the merchants who preyed on the pilgrims.  When asked how He could do this, Jesus equated Himself with the Temple, and promised to rebuild what would be torn down.

Law.  Land.  Temple.

In case we don’t get that Jesus is THE image bearer of God, God tells us!  He says, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’  Finally!  At long last, someone has taken on the task of humanity.  In Jesus, God has a human who truly bears His image!  In so doing, Jesus is the most human of all of us; think about that when you have time.

So He says a lot of peculiar things, and shows off some really cool powers along the way.  We begin to learn from Him that this image bearing thing isn’t what we expected.  Some people around Him are confused that He isn’t seeking to take control and ‘act like a king’!  Others are disturbed by His teachings and His rejection of things they have taken so long to establish.  Just like so long ago, God is rejecting their mighty tower and instead going with a wandering pilgrim.

We begin to see the dark clouds forming around Jesus, and wonder what is going to happen?  When will He throw down His enemies that are even now conspiring and rule Israel?  How will this end?

And then the most unexpected thing of all!  Jesus is arrested and tried.  He doesn’t fight back; he doesn’t argue.  Evil men, totally consumed with their own power and status, execute Jesus for threatening their position.  To do this, they persuade a cold, uncaring empire that Jesus is a threat.  It doesn’t seem that Pilate is convinced, but what is one life anyway?  His followers gather at the cross in disbelief, perhaps hoping that this will be the moment where Jesus will say, ‘ENOUGH!’ and use His powers to fight.  Those that hate Him, taunt Him with a similar idea, perhaps partly nervous that He might do just that.

But He just hangs there.

He hangs there while people laugh and cry around Him.  He hangs there while His blood pours down on to the ground.  He hangs there and dies.

If that were the end of the story, I don’t think many people would read the Bible anymore.  It would have to rank right up there as one of the most depressing tales ever told.  Surely, those who believed in Him were shocked and depressed.

But there is a twist in the tail.  Jesus of Nazareth came back to life.  He came back and ate and drank, he opened hearts and minds, he built a fire and cooked, he made promises and gave His disciples their own vocation.

He is the Living Word for all time.  He rebuilt the Temple, and now all people can meet with God.  He prepares a new Land with a new Promise, that God will bring people to it to live forever.

In the end, He tells the disciples that they have a new job.  It’s their turn to be the image bearers!  It’s time for them to shine this light in the world.  How will they do this?  How will we?

This brings us to line drawing.  I think everyone would agree that when it comes to line drawing, there are God’s Lines, and there are ‘my lines’.  The problem is that none of us can agree where one ends and the other begins.

It is also clear that our past factors into the drawing of lines as well.  Think back to our last post about the modern assumption that we can solve everything.  This mentality continues to plague the church today.  The problem with this view is that it is short-sighted.  It is easy for us to see that people were short-sighted when they said that World War 1 would ‘end all wars’, or when politicians say that some program will ‘end poverty’.  Can we see the same thing when we naively believe that we can draw a line and say to ourselves,’That settles that, we’ll never have to think about that again!’  Again, we display our naivety and shortsightedness, when we claim to ‘hold to the old ways/paths’.  We typically say that to mean, ‘we hold to the way of the NT church.’; but what we are actually doing is holding to the way of our grandfathers.

So, for example, I meet with a church, who meets in a building, sings four-part Acapella harmony, and meets twice on Sunday.   There is no evidence, nor reason to believe, that the NT church met in buildings, sung modern four-part harmony, or even that they met twice on Sunday.  Meeting in a building can be traced to the fourth/fifth century A.D., and the other two can be traced to about 100-150 years ago.  I thus conclude that these are not God’s lines, but men’s, and are thus, arbitrary.  Does this make them wrong or bad?

Now, here’s where you can determine whether your mindset is modernist or post-modernist! haha!  A modernist says, ‘My lines are NOT arbitrary, I can PROVE that they are right!’  A post-modernist says, ‘ALL lines are arbitrary, so we shouldn’t draw ANY lines at all!’  I believe both of these view points to be faulty.  The modernist is wrong to try to bind her views on those who see things differently, and the post-modernist is foolish when he says there are no lines.

Let’s focus in on Acapella vs. instrumental music.  I do not use musical instruments when I praise God.  Do I have good reasons for this?  Absolutely, I’d be happy to share them with you if you like.  Included in these reasons, is that I see no evidence of the NT church using instruments.  But, is my line arbitrary?  YES!  I don’t sing like they did in the NT.  I use some modern ‘helps’ to sing with my brothers and sisters.   Can we not do something in full conviction and clean conscious before God, without feeling we have to force everyone else to do it my way?

‘But Ed’, you protest, “We have to ’stand for the truth’!”  Of course we do.  But in the above example, were I to fight with someone about this, am I standing for truth, or standing for my line?  Again, I understand the need for lines and respect that, but let’s be realistic.

Is the goal to do things just like the NT church did?  I don’t see how that can possibly be the goal!  It doesn’t seem to me that God particularly cares that we try to do this.  If He did, wouldn’t he have at least bothered to record a detailed account of a worship service somewhere in the NT?  It seems, in the OT, when God had specific things that He wanted, He was quite capable of being REALLY specific about them.  Did you ever ask yourself why we don’t see this in Acts, or one of the letters to the churches?  There are many things in the NT that God clearly does feel are important, and He is quite clear about these!

Some groups deride others for codifying their beliefs and saying, ‘This is what we, as a group, believe, teach, and expect of our followers.’  But are we any different, when we dissect and pull apart the NT, so that we can come up with a code of conduct and belief that we then try to enforce on those around us?

In the end, all such wrangling does nothing more than distract us from our true goal as followers of the Christ.  Modernists squabble and debate over where the line goes and endlessly chase their own tail in the process.  Post-modernists, rightly, reject this, but wrongly, do nothing and seek escape in the nearest distraction.  Christians must follow Christ!

We seek to follow a Christ who rejected Pharisaical bickering that placed their interpretations on equal par with the word of God.  This same Christ rejected the philosophical Stoicism and Epicureanism of the Greco-Roman society that ignored the will of God. This Christ espoused a path of love and submission, not knowledge and power-grabbing.

Must we draw lines?  Yes, of course, we must.  I must decide in my heart what my conscious will allow, and what I can’t participate in.  I don’t decide this based on some ‘inward journey’ to find ‘what’s right for me’!  I decide this by looking at God’s will with a desire to know what He is saying, not a desire to get Him to back up what I’ve already decided.  So I look at God’s word, base my life on the teachings I find there, and draw some lines in the process.  But, I do this in humility, understanding that some of my lines are personal decisions.  I do this without despising the brother that God has accepted. I do this remembering the very strong condemnations that Jesus, Paul, and the rest of the NT reserve for those who bind what God hasn’t bound, and who live with a combative, divisive attitude.

And so, finally, we come to the Cross, wondering how all of this will play out.  How will God fulfill the mission of unity, freedom, and redemption in the Cross of Christ?  How will I and my fellow believers achieve these things here on earth through the path of our Savior?  I would like for us to continue to explore this together in future posts.

Again, I must say a word of thanks to you all for joining me on this journey.  I very much appreciate your words of encouragement, and your hard questions.  I make no claims to be absolutely right about all this, quite the contrary, I openly confess that I am struggling to work all of this out.  If you disagree, or have questions, I invite you to share them with me.

Love to you all!