The First Question of Christian Apologetics: "Is It True?"

NOTE: This is the second part of a series on the three big questions of Christian apologetics: (1) Is Christianity true? (2) Is Christianity good? and (3) Is Christianity meaningful? You can find the introduction to this series here.

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I think that contact, single-conversation evangelism is where we often see the supernatural happen. God can move in a heart and take a person all the way from resistance to rescue in the space of one conversation. When that happens, it's a sight to behold! I pray for those moments regularly. However, I don't think that people regularly move from skepticism to faith in one conversation. Trying to make that happen could be one reason why so much Christian evangelism is ineffective. Many people have complicated, tangled webs of resistance and doubt and alternate ways of seeing things, and for that reason, often the best way to use evidence of the Christian faith is to simply help people move a little closer to Christianity than they were before. What follows is my attempt to create a road map to which evidences might help someone most where they are at. I hope this helps you as you either carry out your own personal journey or work to help someone else get closer to Jesus.

STEP ONE: FROM ATHEIST TO DEIST

If you are speaking to someone who is an atheist, your first goal is probably not going to be to convince them that the Bible teaches that Jesus is God and that he has died for our sins and will return bodily to judge the living and the dead. The reason for this is that before we can talk about how someone can know that Jesus is God, that person has to be willing to entertain the idea that God exists. An atheist might know that Christians believe in Jesus, and the truth of the Bible, and lots of other things, but they are hung up on the question of how we can know that there is a God in the first place. With that goal in mind, I think I could open an ATHEIST up to the idea that if the history of the universe goes backward eternally (I usually do this by asking, "what do you think came before the Big Bang?") then there might be something that always existed. And if this thing moves on its own without being moved by something before it, then it has a will of its own. And if it brought the whole universe into being, then it's all-powerful or so close as to make no difference--and pretty soon we are talking about God. Arguments for intelligent design or the fine-tuning of the universe point out that if the universe operates by mathematical principles then that suggests a high level of order and engineering which suggests a Designer. These arguments serve to ask a person who says there is no God whether they're being totally reasonable in discounting God. Once someone acknowledges the existence of God, it's entirely reasonable to explore whether God would want something to do with us, and that question takes us to the next step.

STEP TWO: FROM DEIST TO THEIST

If someone does allow for God to exist, but they are a DEIST who says God is not personally involved in our lives, I think I could continue to try to open them up from there. (Or if you're reading this and that's you, I'd like to suggest a couple of things to think about.) For example, the existence of morality and consciousness shows that we all have a divinely-impressed law on our hearts that goes way beyond self-preservation, or the betterment of our own group. Although some have tried to argue to the contrary, I don't think that self-sacrificial morality is an evolutionary feature because it doesn't lead to us improving our chances of passing on our genes. It often leads us to make choices for the good of others that prevent us from passing on genes, especially when the person whose good we are concerned with is outside of our own community. This powerful moral consciousness is something that suggests that God not only exists, but that he is personally concerned with our lives and has given us a moral code to help us live our lives in accordance with his will. And I don't think that applies just to this life. Arguments for the existence of the soul such as the study of Near Death Experiences, which have been included in some prestigious medical journals, and which even non-religious researchers describe as "evidence of something... more", could also demonstrate that not only has God made us, but that he has made us with the ability to enjoy relationship with him beyond death. Accounts of miracles and attempts to scientifically measure their veracity have also gained interest, in ways that still invite outlets like The New York Times to wonder. Evidence for the existence of miracles, if it bears the weight of investigation, obviously opens us up to the possibility that not only does God exist, but he is actively interested and involved in the lives of human beings. Once someone acknowledges that God exists and that it seems like he wants to have a relationship with us, then it's reasonable to push a little further and look at whether there's any evidence that he's revealed himself to humans before.

STEP THREE: FROM THEIST TO ABRAHAMIC

Of course, there are plenty of people who are theists who believe in the existence of a real, personal God who is interested in their lives. They just don't happen to be convinced of the truth of the Bible. Maybe they have heard that it has been discounted, or that there are too many problems or contradictions in it for it to be true. But maybe a THEIST (a person who believes in a God who is personally involved in our lives, but is not necessarily a Christian) would be surprised and interested to hear that there is quite a bit of corroborating evidence for the Bible in the field of archaeology. They might also be surprised, and interested, to hear that there are many good reasons for acknowledging the antiquity of the documents that make up the Bible relative to the events that they describe, both from the New Testament and from the Old Testament. The findings of source criticism can also help to show that as old as these documents are, they can clearly be shown to build on still-earlier sources that are even closer to (or contemporaneous with) the events recorded. There are other arguments for the Bible's trustworthiness too, among which we can include historical fulfillment of prophecy (for example, Daniel's prediction of the rise of successive empires, once the antiquity of Daniel's writing is established) and the self-authentication of Scripture where it is shown to be well ahead of the times in which it was written, in various aspects. If the Bible can be shown to be a uniquely trustworthy source of revelation from God, then it's worthwhile to explore what it has to say about Jesus.

STEP FOUR: FROM ABRAHAMIC TO CHRISTIAN

Someone who is a member of one of the Abrahamic faiths believes that God has truthfully revealed himself through Scripture (at least through the Old Testament, but also often the New Testament). Christianity is commonly considered part of this grouping, but in this case I'm using the term to distinguish the other groups under this umbrella from Christianity. This ABRAHAMIC group includes Jewish and Muslim people, but also includes those who are Rastafarian, Baha'i, Mormon, Jehovah's Witnesses, and so on. Often a central claim made by these groups is that mainstream Christianity arises from some mistaken divergence from either the Old Testament or from Jesus' true original message. To someone of this belief, I might first appeal to arguments for the antiquity and reliability of the documents that we have, to show that Scripture has not been added to or tampered with, and that we indeed have what was originally written. Then, I would appeal to Messianic prophecy in the Old Testament. Much of my preaching as a pastor actually focuses on showing how the Old Testament consistently points to Jesus in unmistakable ways. In particular, the work of Christian Old Testament scholars like Michael Rydelnik and Ian Vaillancourt go a long way towards showing that Jesus is the true point of the Old Testament Scriptures. Once I showed Jesus from the Old Testament, I would also borrow from historical Jesus research to show that the Gospels can be used as good sources about the life of Jesus, even by those who don't fully trust in their inerrancy or inspiration. There is a great deal of biblical and non-biblical information about the historical Jesus of Nazareth, and the work of scholars is very helpful here. The results of this research also tend to cut against attempts to radically re-cast Jesus' identity by fringe groups (i.e. that he preached Islam, or that he is really the Apostle Paul, or that he married Mary Magdalene and escaped to France, all of which are actual claims that people have made). Another helpful tool for demonstrating the reliability of the Gospels as containing eyewitness testimony about Jesus is the argument from undesigned coincidences. This argument recognizes that in many places throughout the Gospels, there is evidence of independent accounts of shared events which happen to overlap in detail in seemingly unintentional ways, fitting together like puzzle pieces. This matches up with how the incidental details of two people's story of their trip to a restaurant might lock together with many incidental details overlapping or explaining one another. I would also reference the various historical arguments for the resurrection. If the historical Jesus research demonstrates his existence, and the Gospels faithfully preserve the claims and the actions of Jesus, then the evidence for the resurrection acts as a divine stamp of authenticity on all that Jesus ever did and all that he ever claimed about himself. And finally, I would appeal to the argument from the early church witnesses. Some of the earliest church fathers outside of the New Testament, like Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna, are so early that they seem to have known the apostles personally. They can confirm what was widely held to be true about Jesus by the apostles and by the church in the very first century, long before the time of Constantine when many argue that Christianity was co-opted or altered from its original form. If Jesus lived like the Gospels say he did, and he claimed what they say he claimed, and he was resurrected from death to prove those claims, and the whole early church believed in him beginning at the time soon after his crucifixion, then it makes it incredibly likely that the Christian message about Jesus is how God has revealed himself to us.

WHAT'S NEXT?

So far, that's been quite a journey! At each stage, depending where people are at, this post provides a sort of map that details at which point one of the evidences for Christianity might prove most helpful for people who are seeking to know more about Jesus. But what about all of the other religious options that are out there? And how can we know anything at all? That's for the next post.

Cheers,

-Pastor Sean

More Than Facts: Is Christianity True, Good, and Meaningful?

NOTE: This is the introduction to a series on the three big questions of Christian apologetics: (1) Is Christianity true? (2) Is Christianity good? and (3) Is Christianity meaningful?

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How do you make a good argument for Christianity? I am wired for apologetics. I love digging into the meat of a matter, sorting out fact from fiction, and discovering the place where two competing points of view, using the same set of facts, diverge from each other--and then determining which philosophical fork in the road is the most reasonable path to take given the fact-finding journey that led up to it. However, as a former championship-level debater, I also know that there is a limit to what arguments and fact-sorting can accomplish. The line of someone's argumentation can get lost, and sometimes the most convincing person can simply be whoever was the last to speak because theirs is the most recent impression made. As an apologetically-minded pastor who has seen some pretty discerning thinkers come to faith in my own ministry, I think that contrasting worldviews and showing the reasonableness of the Christian faith is incredibly important.  But I think that when we talk about the Christian faith, we should start with how most people make their decisions -based on impressions- and work from there to make the case that Christianity is not only true, but also good and meaningful.

ESTABLISHING CREDIBILITY: IS CHRISTIANITY TRUE?

For the most part, it's true that most people won't be argued into the Kingdom of Heaven. Some especially discerning or logic-oriented people might; after all, that's the story of some famous apologists like Lee Strobel, whose own faith journey began with an exploration of the evidence for the resurrection. But facts and arguments still have a role to play in establishing credibility. My goal in arguing for the truth of Christianity isn't necessarily to convince someone that Christianity is true; it's to show that a reasonable person could believe that Christianity is true. It's to demonstrate credibility. This shows that Christianity is at least worth consideration.

I won't lay out a case for the trustworthiness of Christianity here. That will come next week (I'll come back and link to it here once it is written). But people are not going to give the Christian faith a second thought if they don't even see how it could be true. There are a lot of hard-hearted skeptics out there, but my experience is that most people are open to seeing things a different way if they don't feel that they're being pushed into an immediate response. For those people, I often find that they are interested and surprised to hear that there is archaeological evidence for events depicted in the Bible. I've also never had a bad response to asking someone what they think came before the Big Bang, and before that, etc. which opens up all kinds of discussion about whether there is a God and what he must be like. The more confident that someone is about some statement of their disbelief, the more constructive I find it is to "put a rock in their shoe" by throwing in something that might disturb their confident unbelief: for example, when someone confidently states that Jesus never existed, I like to mention Bart Ehrman's book Did Jesus Exist? as an example of a non-Christian scholar who confidently writes about Jesus' existence and all the ways the Gospels can be good sources about his life (even though Ehrman doesn't believe in the truths of Christianity or the inspiration of the Bible). My goal here isn't to push them into Christianity--it's to make them question their own unbelief.

ESTABLISHING BENEFIT TO HUMANITY: IS CHRISTIANITY GOOD?

It's not enough to show someone that Christianity is credible, though. This is where I think that a lot of apologetics falls short. Most Christian apologetics seeks to show that Christianity is true, but not that it is good. We live in a world where people come from having grown up or been exposed to really bad church experiences. People are aware of historical atrocities committed in Christ's name. Recent revelations in Canada regarding First Nations Residential Schools have left a bad taste in many people's mouths. The perceived anti-scientific views of many Christians, or anti-progress attitudes, may convince many that they don't want Christianity to be true because it is not good and its continuing role in society is holding everyone else back. This is where a modern apologetic for Christianity's societal goodness needs a bigger role. Even if you are not a Christian, we might say, you should want Christianity to have a role in the public sphere. A lot of interesting work has been done here in recent years. For example the historian Tom Holland has shown that Christianity has created the basis for modern concepts of justice, equality, and fairness in his book on the subject. The role of Christianity in establishing the foundation for modern healthcare, education, charities, orphanages, and care for the impoverished has been described by normally anti-Christian thinkers as a Christian innovation. Even in the case of missionaries, often seen as a colonialist enterprise, some of the best research available demonstrates the incredible social and physical benefits that have come to the countries that have received the most Christian missionaries. The role of churches in North America has also been shown to have a sort of "halo effect" in providing goods and services for North American communities more effectively and at lower cost than what can be provided by publicly-funded care. Where harm has been done in Christ's name, it can be reliably shown that those actions were not in line with the teachings of Christ. However, the basis for calling out that harm as evil is itself Christian: As Tom Holland writes in his book Dominion, “[It is true that] Many [Christians], over the course of time, have themselves become agents of terror. They have put the weak in their shadow; they have brought suffering, and persecution, and slavery in their wake. Yet the standards by which they stand condemned for this are themselves Christian.” We need to make a bigger case that Christianity has something meaningful, or even foundational, to bring into the public sphere. We should leave people saying, not only that Christianity is credible, but that even non-Christians would want for there to be more Christians and more Christianity in the world for all the good that it does.

ESTABLISHING DESIRABILITY: IS CHRISTIANITY MEANINGFUL?

All of this won't be enough to make people want to become Christians themselves, though. There are a lot of people who find themselves persuaded of the truth of Christianity, but they view it as something like the general principles of accounting: true perhaps, and good in terms of keeping everything in order, but not something that they want to be personally involved with unless they have to. One more famous, recent example of this is Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams who is battling cancer. He recently announced that he will convert to Christianity: "I still have time. My understanding is you're never too late." Many people approach Christianity this way. Believing that it is true or reasonable, and that it is good for people to believe it, they still find themselves personally pushing the decision to convert off until they are certain they are near death, because they're convinced that Christianity isn't very fulfilling or meaningful. This is something we can spend a little more time on making a case for. For example, Christianity gives us an incredible foundation for our relationship with ourselves. The exemplary life of Jesus gives us some standard for what "normal" human behavior looks like, cutting against both the idea that health looks like unemotional, detached stoicism, or that it looks like a constant boundary-less response to the demands of the moment. Christian teachings on sex and its purpose are an incredibly freeing answer to both sexual repression and our modern cultural hypersexuality. Assumptions that reflect Christian teachings have been adopted by organizations that have achieved significantly higher-than-normal improvements in finding freedom from alcohol and drug addiction. And these are only the beginnings of the personal benefits of a life that is firmly rooted in our identity in Jesus.

Christianity also gives us an incredible foundation for our relationships with others. The teachings of Christianity both support the family structure, while establishing a clear boundary where one may "leave their mother and father, and cleave to [their spouse]" (Gen. 2:24). This is an important guideline which helps both with the harmony of existing families and the successful creation of new ones. Christian teachings about marriage support the respectful treatment of a husband by his wife, but it is also unique (especially for its time) in insisting on a standard of treatment and care that a husband owes to his wife. And the church, far from being a burden to those considering the truths of Christianity, has been shown to be a gift (even with the messiness that is involved any time that human beings gather together). The Harvard School of Public Health has even studied, and listed the many personal benefits, of those who regularly attend church services. In our relationship with the wider world around us. Christianity gives us a unique respect for the world as a gift of God which leads to a belief that it should be cared for and conservated. Politically, many of the beliefs of Christianity cut across or "diagonalize" across positions that are often held to be either Left or Right. But most importantly, Christianity gives us a foundation for a daily, ongoing and meaningful relationship with God. When the news cycle shows us the latest war or invasion or protest or pandemic, it is incredibly reassuring to know that we can rely on God who has a plan to take the evil that human beings commit or create, and that he will use it ultimately for good. When we feel stuck in the constant churn of waking up, going to work, dealing with bills, taking care of laundry and cooking and unending responsibilities, falling asleep, and repeating the same thing over again--worship draws us up into an experience of being part of something more enduring and wonderful and meaningful. And prayer is an incredibly helpful part of all of this: God absolutely does answer prayer. Prayer is not a magical ritual whereby we can move the hand of God to do our will and not his own, but in praying we are often transformed or given greater awareness or assurance, and besides all that, significant evidence does exist to support the effectiveness of prayer (though I'll write more about this in a couple of weeks). There are all kinds of reasons why we would not want to put that off until the moment of death. The reality is, Christianity gives a foundation for a much better life here and now than anything else.

So, this serves as an introduction to the next few weeks of writing where I'll dive into more detail on each of these topics. While I don't think that arguments can bring most people into a personal, saving belief in Jesus, I think that they do play an important role. But the argument needs to do more than just establish credibility: it needs to help someone understand why they would want other people to be Christians; and why they personally would want to receive that hope for themselves.

Cheers,

-Pastor Sean

The Story of a Name: "YHWH" or "LORD" in Christian Worship?

 

*NOTE: This post was originally written in Fall of 2024. It is a "first pass" at the topic from my viewpoint as a teaching pastor, and is open to revision in the future as time (and interest) allows.

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There seems to be a trend lately to try and reclaim the Old Testament’s covenant name for God in Christian worship. Vineyard worship triumphantly declares “He is Yahweh” in their 2008 song of the same name. More recently, Elevation worship’s 2016 release Yahweh also includes the lyrics: “Holy, holy is the Lord; Worthy to be praised—Yahweh.” This is even reflected in many recent Bible translations, as the Lexham English Bible, World English Bible, and Legacy Standard Bible all use the rendering “Yahweh” instead of the more traditional rendering “the LORD.” In the last case, the official website for the Legacy Standard Bible -a revision of the NASB- claims that “Exodus 3:14-15 shows that God Himself considered it important for His people to know His name. The effect of revealing God’s name is His distinction from other gods and His expression of intimacy with the nation of Israel.” This justification for their translation choice gives the impression that other translations are obscuring or doing an injustice by hiding away the covenant name of God, which that translation is then claiming to correct.

Is it really the case, though, that rendering God’s covenant name as “LORD” is just a bit of traditionalism that obscures God’s name and that needs to be done away with? Could it be that there are good reasons to prefer the traditional rendering instead? The best way to explore the answer might be to look at the story of the name of God, and what that story tells us about how we can approach him.

EARLY DAYS: THE FREQUENT USE OF GOD’S NAME

From its first use in Genesis 2:4, to its definitive use in Exodus 3:14-15, down throughout the rest of the Old Testament, we see a regular use of God’s covenant name all the way from the Exodus to the Persian period of Israel's history (Nehemiah 10:35). Other contemporary sources outside of the Old Testament, such as the Lachish Ostraca (approx. 587 BC), the Al-Yahudu Tablets (approx. 587-477 BC), and the Elephantine Papyri (approx. 419-402 BC) all demonstrate a fairly free approach to the use of God’s name. It appears that God’s name was frequently used, without embarrassment, both by biblical writers and by other Judeans outside of the Bible up into the Persian period.

INTERTESTAMENTAL TIMES: THE UNPRONOUNCEABLE NAME

At some point between the Persian period and the time of Christ, however, the pronunciation of God’s name seems to have fallen out of regular use. The Jewish Encyclopedia, using the term “Tetragrammaton” for the four-letter spelling of God’s name in Hebrew (יהוה or YHWH), claims that “it may well be that such a reluctance [to pronounce God’s name] first arose in a foreign, and hence in an ‘unclean’ land, very possibly, therefore, in Babylonia… the Rabbis forbade the utterance of the Tetragrammaton, to guard against desecration of the Sacred Name; but such an ordinance could not have been effectual unless it had met with popular approval… the Divine Name was not pronounced lest it should be desecrated by the heathen.” There actually was some abuse of the divine name, which we know, historically, extended even to its use in magic spells and rituals (where it is often rendered as ιαω or Iao - another possible vocalization of the Tetragrammaton, though the form ιαωουηε or Iaoouee also exists, which may be pronounced more like the familiar rendering Yahweh).

By the time of Jesus, we see the increasing use of the word “Lord” in place of God’s name in Biblical manuscripts in Greek. Greg Lanier writes, “Perhaps surprisingly, some Jewish manuscripts found at Qumran dating from before the birth of Jesus translated YHWH using the Greek term kyrios [Lord]... the Jewish philosopher Philo (20 BC - 50 AD) also used kyrios for YHWH, even though he died likely before the bulk of the NT was written.” It should be pointed out that our oldest physical copies of Greek Old Testament manuscripts do have God’s name written as יהוה written in Hebrew letters, but University of Toronto professor Albert Pietersma -who is also one of the editors of the New English Translation of the Septuagint- has convincingly shown that these manuscripts are Hebraizing corrections of still-earlier Greek manuscripts, and not the original form of the Old Testament in Greek. Thus, the original Greek copies of the Old Testament likely translated God’s name with the Greek word for “Lord,” as did later Greek manuscripts. Even in the case of Greek manuscripts that use Hebrew letters for the name of God, it should be pointed out that this is still an effort to avoid the actual pronunciation of God’s name—it isn’t an equivalent transliteration of God’s name using Greek consonants and vowels, which would have rendered the name pronounceable, but instead it obscures God’s name by continuing to represent it in Hebrew or even Paleo-Hebrew letters.

Later translations of the Old Testament into Greek also inserted יהוה in original Hebrew letters, but this practice was eventually dropped because of an unfortunate mispronunciation of God’s name that resulted. Jerome writes in his 25th letter to Marcella, written at Rome in 384 AD, that “The ninth [name of God] is a tetragrammaton, which they [the Jews] considered anekphoneton, that is, unspeakable, which is written with these letters, Iod, He, Vau, He. Which certain ignorant ones, because of the similarity of the characters [to the Greek letters PIPI], when they would find them in Greek books, were accustomed to pronounce ‘Pipi.’”

It seems, then, that providentially, leading up to the time of Jesus, and then in the centuries that followed, the use of God’s covenant name fell out of use. This came to the point that the name’s true pronunciation was eventually lost, and is still today a matter of debate. But it is worthwhile to ask: why would God allow his name to fall into disuse?

THE TIME OF CHRIST: THE NEW NAME OF GOD

The New Testament repeatedly shows, in its quotations from the Old Testament, that the earliest Christians knew and accepted a Greek translation which substituted “Lord” for יהוה. And Jesus, arriving at a time in history when God’s name was beginning to fall into disuse, did nothing to correct that trend. Instead he taught his disciples to pray “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” in Matthew 6:9. Jesus also says in a prayer to God the Father, “Holy Father, keep them [the disciples] in your name… While I was with them, I kept them in your name… I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known” (John 17:26). This is interesting, because nowhere do we actually see Jesus use the Old Testament covenant name for God. All of the New Testament manuscripts that we have, many of which are quite early, uniformly show the same thing. So how exactly did Jesus make the name of God known? The answer seems to be that in the person of Jesus, the identity of God is more fully revealed: יהיה represented God’s irreducible identity as simply “the one who is.” But the name Father represents the first member of the Trinity in relation to God the Son, and his relationship to us through Jesus. And Lord becomes a shared title of God in the Old Testament, and of Jesus in the New Testament (Matthew 7:22, 23:39). This disuse of God’s covenant name both in the New Testament and historically outside of it, combined with Jesus’ revelation of himself as the one through whom a relationship with God is possible, makes it possible for the Apostle Peter to make a fascinating declaration in Acts 4:11-12. He says in front of the high-priestly family of that time, “This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

OUR TIME: IMPLICATIONS FOR TODAY

So, in our worship and Bible readings, should we use the names Yahweh or Jehovah? Or, possibly, Iao, though I haven’t seen that one pop up in any translations or worship songs? Should we do what some before and after Jesus did, and bring the covenant name of God back, but using Hebrew letters? If we did, it might cause an unfortunate mispronunciation of God’s name by English-speaking worshippers as was the case in Jerome’s day among Greek-speakers, where some might start to pronounce God’s name יהוה as “Nini.” Or should we stick with the Jewish tradition, which was accepted and used by Jesus, to declare his own identity, of rendering the divine name as “LORD”?

Personally, I don’t see any problem with the use of “Yahweh” in Christian worship, as long as those who use it are aware that may not be the actual pronunciation, and as long as they do not feel that this is evidence of some kind of higher spiritual awareness or knowledge on their part. We do not need more reasons to be divided, and I think that the temptation to use God’s name to mark a division between Christians or sense of superiority over other “less-informed” Christians in their worship songs, preferred translations, and liturgy would amount to a certain kind of dark irony. For me, though, I believe that the providential fall into disuse of God’s name leading up to the time of Jesus, as well as Jesus’ own practice, and his own use of the term “Lord” to refer to himself, as well as the New Testament’s focus on “the name” of Jesus, all amount to a certain happy acceptance of the idea that God is now known by different names -Lord, Father- which are understood most fully through the revelation of Jesus Christ. He is not simply “the one who exists” anymore; but he is the one whose name “Lord” is also used of Jesus, and the one whose identity as Father is revealed to us by the Son.

Grace and Peace,

-Pastor Sean

Week 52 | In the End, We Win

LOOK | WHAT DOES IT SAY?

2 Timothy; 2 Peter; 1-3 John; Jude; Revelation

THINK | WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Hope At the End of Peter and Paul's Lives (2 Peter and 2 Timothy). These two letters clearly reflect Peter and Paul -the central figures of the book of Acts- at what they know to be the ends of their lives. Reliable church tradition as early as the 100's AD suggests that both were executed in Rome under the Emperor Nero, and that setting is reflected in both of these letters as they both appear to write from prison. And yet, there is real hope in both letters. In 2 Timothy 4:18, Paul writes: "The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever." In 2 Peter 1:10-14, Peter writes: "There will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ... think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon." When our hope is found where no tyrant on earth could touch it, then our strength and our joy will be firmly founded on something that no one can ever take away.

Hope in the Ministry Challenges of John and Jude (1-3 John and Jude). The Apostle John and the brother of Jesus named Jude both faced significant ministry challenges. In Jude, there is a movement within the church to divert them from the Gospel, and he opposes it in the strongest terms. In 3 John, John has to deal with a man named Diotrephes who has decided that he is a better authority on following Jesus Christ than the apostles themselves. 1 John reflects a number of false teachings that were working their way into the church. Those who work in church ministry and want to see the church shaped by the Gospel never have any shortage of challenges within or without. But there is hope here too. Some of the most amazing passages about Christ's love can be found in, for example 1 John 3-4. Or Jude 1:24-25. How can we be without hope? Through Jesus, we win in the end.

Hope Because in the End, Jesus Wins (Revelation). There are many different understandings of the book of Revelation, which I will mostly not get into here. Other than to say that I think this is truly a book about what will happen in the future, in the same vein as the visions of Daniel 2, 7-12, for which we already have historical fulfillments. With that understanding, there are many things here that are hard to interpret. It looks like there will be difficult days ahead. But also many wonderful opportunities to make Jesus known. And in the end, Revelation 20-22 give us this message: in the end, Jesus wins. He is coming back. All tyrants will be deposed. All sickness will be cured. Every tear will be wiped away. All the proud will be brought low, and all the lowly and humble shall be raised up. When Jesus descends from the clouds to sit on his throne, the saints will rise up to bow down before it. Death will be swallowed up in life, and the nations will rejoice, and every knee will bow down and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. He wins! That's not a prediction: it's a spoiler. We who have trusted in Christ are on the winning team. We know where our home is. And we're just recruiting so that we can bring people there with us, to enjoy it together.

DO | HOW DO WE RESPOND?

How can we respond in our worship, attitude, and actions? I won't lay out exact responses in this space because the possibilities are often endless. But it is worth it to think about application in the categories of worship, attitude, and actions. Does this reading direct me to God in worship and thanksgiving and praise, or does it direct me towards a change that I need to make here and now? If it's about a change that I need to make, is this something inward in my attitude, or outward in my actions? This helps to rescue application from just being a series of how-to tips, or one-size-fits-all instructions that go beyond what the Bible actually states. Sometimes, the most helpful application we can make is to get a different perspective on what's the most important thing, or about how we should respond inwardly to the things going on around us.

PRAY | HOW DOES THIS BRING US TO GOD?

Whether in response to anything pointed out here, or to something else in your Bible reading time, take a few moments before you close up your Bible to pray in response to God. If you need a format for prayer, both the ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication), CALL (Confess, Ask, Love, Listen), and PRAY (Praise, Repent, Ask, Yield) methods are helpful ways to stay consistent.

-Sean

Week #51 | A New and Better Hope

LOOK | WHAT DOES IT SAY?

Hebrews; Titus; 1 Timothy; 1 Peter

THINK | WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Jesus Is Greater (Hebrews). Although I find it odd for Steinmann's chronological plan to place the letter to the Hebrews before the end of Paul's life, I am still happy to read through Hebrews any chance I get. The entire theme of the book is that Jesus is Greater. Jesus is greater than the angels (Hebrews 1-2). He is greater than Moses (Hebrews 3) and Joshua (Hebrews 4). He is a greater High Priest (Hebrews 5-7). He brings us a greater covenant (Hebrews 8). He is greater than all of the Temple worship of the Old Covenant (Hebrews 9). He is a greater sacrifice (Hebrews 10). He is the greater, perfect foundation for our ultimate example (Hebrews 11-12). And he is the great unchanging Lord in whom we find our rest, and to whom we direct our sincere worship (Hebrews 13).

Letter to a Church Revitalizer (Titus and 1 Timothy). Paul's letter to Titus was not to a church planter--the congregation at Crete had already been in existence for some time. But the church was in need of revitalization. So Paul sent Titus there to raise up leaders, to equip the church to be a witness to the surrounding community, to instruct the believers there, and to help bring it into cooperation with the wider mission of the surrounding churches. Timothy, though he got a tough time from his congregation for his youth, also received a similar charge in the letter of 1 Timothy. Each of these letters is surprisingly rich and worthy of careful reading, not just by those who are interested in church leadership but by all Christians. These letters together might constitute what we would call God's Blueprint for a Healthy Church. These are the first letters that we go to when we try to understand: what is the church supposed to do? How should it be organized? What is God's intention for us as a community that bears his name?

The Gospel-Driven Life (1 Peter). The thing I love about Peter's first letter is that everything flows out of the truth of the Gospel. No sooner is Peter done marveling at what Jesus has done for us, than he immediately reflects on how this should be reflected in our lives. When he's done reflecting on the practical applications, he moves back to how the applications move us right back to the heart of the Gospel. Then back to transformation. Then to the Gospel. Over and over. What Jesus has done is transformational. And we are transformed because of what Jesus has done. The Gospel does not leave us the same; it invites us into The Gospel-Driven Life.

DO | HOW DO WE RESPOND?

How can we respond in our worship, attitude, and actions? I won't lay out exact responses in this space because the possibilities are often endless. But it is worth it to think about application in the categories of worship, attitude, and actions. Does this reading direct me to God in worship and thanksgiving and praise, or does it direct me towards a change that I need to make here and now? If it's about a change that I need to make, is this something inward in my attitude, or outward in my actions? This helps to rescue application from just being a series of how-to tips, or one-size-fits-all instructions that go beyond what the Bible actually states. Sometimes, the most helpful application we can make is to get a different perspective on what's the most important thing, or about how we should respond inwardly to the things going on around us.

PRAY | HOW DOES THIS BRING US TO GOD?

Whether in response to anything pointed out here, or to something else in your Bible reading time, take a few moments before you close up your Bible to pray in response to God. If you need a format for prayer, both the ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication), CALL (Confess, Ask, Love, Listen), and PRAY (Praise, Repent, Ask, Yield) methods are helpful ways to stay consistent.

-Sean

Week #50 | Short Handbooks for the Christian Faith

LOOK | WHAT DOES IT SAY?

Acts 20-28; Ephesians; Philippians; Colossians; Philemon; James

THINK | WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

God is the Gospel (Acts 20-28). The life of Paul illustrates that the ultimate reward of following God is: we get God. The man who began his life as a persecutor of the church did not get wealth, or power, or fame, or comfort from his new life as a follower of Jesus--but he got Jesus. That was more than enough. And much like the narrative in the Gospels slows down for Jesus' journey to Jerusalem and the final week of his life, the book of Acts slows down for Paul's final journey to Rome. Paul ends his role in the telling of the book of Acts by mirroring the journey of his savior. (However, Paul would actually be released and serve for one more missionary journey as the letters to the Philippians and Philemon anticipate, and 1-2 Timothy and Titus attest, before finally being executed upon returning to Rome.) I don't think Paul would have asked for anything different. God himself is the reward of the Gospel. The Good News is that the Creator of the universe has given us communion with himself.

A Handbook on the Christian Faith (Ephesians 1-6). From his imprisonment in Rome, Paul continued to write letters to encourage the churches that he had founded. Remembering his long stay in Ephesus in Asia, he wrote them a handbook on the implications of the Gospel. He also wrote to the church of the nearby city of Colossae, also in Asia, which he sent out together with his letter to Philemon. Remembering his time in Macedonia, he wrote to Philippi. The letter to the Ephesians is a short and punchy handbook to the Christian faith. It contains a tightly-packed instruction in the Christian faith in chapters 1-3, and then details the practical life applications of that message in chapter 4-6. A short but detailed letter like this would have been, and still is, an incredibly useful discipleship tool for the local Elders to use to educate the new Christians in that area as they accepted the Gospel and began to grow in their understanding of it. It is worth reading through slowly and reflectively, drawing out the riches of the wisdom that God gave to Paul.

A Reason for Joy (Philippians 1-4). The book of Philippians was written to a church that had experienced significant difficulties. So Paul wrote to them from prison as one who could empathize with their struggling, to encourage them to find joy in the Lord. Several times over every chapter of the letter, he tells the Philippian Christians to "rejoice!" (Philippians 1:18; 2:17-18; 2:28; 3:1; 4:4). Paul writes to them -and through Paul's letter to them, God says to us- that is is possible to rejoice in the midst of suffering (Philippians 1), to rejoice in humility (Philippians 2), to rejoice in the mission before us (Philippians 3), and rejoice in the community of faith (Philippians 4).

An Encouragement to Gospel Simplicity (Colossians 1-4 and Philemon). So often, we try to add things to the simple message of the Gospel in order to seem more spiritual than others. The irony is that these things make us less spiritual. Paul wrote to the church at Colossae to counter a sort of anti-body asceticism that had creeped in (Colossians 2:16-23). He points out that the type of false piety that focuses overly on who can deny themselves the most is, in the end, not less focused on material things but more focused on material things. Asceticism takes the message of Christ, sent from heaven, and instead focuses your mind on extensive rules and regulations here on earth. Ultimately the real transformation that we seek comes from drawing near to Christ.

The Kind of Faith That Saves (James). The letter of James sometimes gets unfairly passed over in the church. It contains a message that denies that we are saved by faith alone (James 2:24). And yet, James is talking about the problem of only holding to an intellectual faith--not the heartfelt trust in God which Paul writes about, but instead a merely mental assent to the truth that God exists. We need the message that James presents us with: that kind of faith won't save us. Instead, it is the kind of faith -heartfelt trust- that results in works which saves us (James 2:18-22). Many of us have been given a faith which is more the result of simple slogans, sappy moralism, and loud shouting than any real or honest interaction with the details of the New Testament. So, sadly, very few Christians today have honestly spent any time wrestling with the letter of James. But we should. Because this letter is vital for showing us the kind of faith that really, truly draws us into relationship with Jesus Christ.

DO | HOW DO WE RESPOND?

How can we respond in our worship, attitude, and actions? I won't lay out exact responses in this space because the possibilities are often endless. But it is worth it to think about application in the categories of worship, attitude, and actions. Does this reading direct me to God in worship and thanksgiving and praise, or does it direct me towards a change that I need to make here and now? If it's about a change that I need to make, is this something inward in my attitude, or outward in my actions? This helps to rescue application from just being a series of how-to tips, or one-size-fits-all instructions that go beyond what the Bible actually states. Sometimes, the most helpful application we can make is to get a different perspective on what's the most important thing, or about how we should respond inwardly to the things going on around us.

PRAY | HOW DOES THIS BRING US TO GOD?

Whether in response to anything pointed out here, or to something else in your Bible reading time, take a few moments before you close up your Bible to pray in response to God. If you need a format for prayer, both the ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication), CALL (Confess, Ask, Love, Listen), and PRAY (Praise, Repent, Ask, Yield) methods are helpful ways to stay consistent.

-Sean

Week #49 | The Ministry of Mutual Encouragement

LOOK | WHAT DOES IT SAY?

Acts 20:1-6; 2 Corinthians 1-13; Romans 1-16

THINK | WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Spending Time With Good Friends (Acts 20:1-6). In our shortest reading from Week #49, Paul travels back to Corinth ("Greece," in Acts 20:2) and then back through Philippi (Acts 20:5-6), and also meets with representatives from the Gospel-centered work that was still occurring in the previously reached regions of Galatia and Asia (Acts 20:4). As Paul pointed out in his letter to the Romans, he desired these types of gatherings so that he and those with him "may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith" (Romans 1:12). If the greatest missionary in the history of the Christian faith needed to spend time with other believers so that he might be encouraged by their company, so do we. It might be worthwhile to call up some Christian friends from previous seasons of your life so that you and they might be mutually encouraged by each other.

Gospel-Driven Ministry (2 Corinthians). In the letter of 2 Corinthians, written from Macedonia (around Acts 20:1), Paul continued to write to and guide the church in Corinth. This is pretty incredible if you think about it. Here is Paul, having gone out to further regions, still having a concern for the churches that he has served in the past, and still pastoring them from afar through his network of co-laborers and the communication tools available to him in that day. In fact, this letter is written in preparation of a visit that he intends to make to them. In the letter of 2 Corinthians he defends his Gospel (2 Corinthians 1-6) and his ministry (2 Corinthians 7-13). Everything he does is based on the message that he proclaims. Which should lead us to ask: if we had to write a letter proving to a hostile group that everything we have done is based on the Gospel that we proclaim, could we write that letter convincingly? What would we have to change in our lives in order to be able to write such a letter?

A Defense of the Gospel (Romans). Internal evidence strongly suggests that this letter was written from Corinth, and reflected Paul's desire to travel to the largest city in the country to make the biggest impact for the sake of the Gospel. This is impressive if you think about it, and it's a window into what made Paul such an effective evangelist: here Paul was dealing with a significant issue in the church of Corinth which was worthy of significant amounts of his time, attention, and which demanded his physical presence. He made sure that it received all those things. And yet while he was there, he was already setting his sights on the next frontier and sending a letter ahead of him! We need more forward thinkers in the church like this today. Romans reads like a detailed argument for the Gospel to which Paul holds (Romans 1-11) and to the practical implications of that Gospel in the lives of believers (Romans 12-16). It is worth reading carefully, and slowly, and prayerfully. For its thoroughness and clarity about the message of the greatest missionary who ever lived, it has often been called The Greatest Letter Ever Written.

DO | HOW DO WE RESPOND?

How can we respond in our worship, attitude, and actions? I won't lay out exact responses in this space because the possibilities are often endless. But it is worth it to think about application in the categories of worship, attitude, and actions. Does this reading direct me to God in worship and thanksgiving and praise, or does it direct me towards a change that I need to make here and now? If it's about a change that I need to make, is this something inward in my attitude, or outward in my actions? This helps to rescue application from just being a series of how-to tips, or one-size-fits-all instructions that go beyond what the Bible actually states. Sometimes, the most helpful application we can make is to get a different perspective on what's the most important thing, or about how we should respond inwardly to the things going on around us.

PRAY | HOW DOES THIS BRING US TO GOD?

Whether in response to anything pointed out here, or to something else in your Bible reading time, take a few moments before you close up your Bible to pray in response to God. If you need a format for prayer, both the ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication), CALL (Confess, Ask, Love, Listen), and PRAY (Praise, Repent, Ask, Yield) methods are helpful ways to stay consistent.

-Sean

Week #48 | A Wide-Scale Blueprint for Reaching the Lost

LOOK | WHAT DOES IT SAY?

Acts 13-19; Galatians 1-6; 1 Thessalonians 1-5; 2 Thessalonians 1-3; 1 Corinthians 1-16

THINK | WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Mission to Galatia and the Battle for the Gospel (Acts 13:1-15:5 and Galatians). The first sponsored, funded missions trip in history was led by a former persecutor of the church, and it resulted in a major council to sort out what God was doing in the Gentile frontier.  The church had first heard about the opening for the Gospel among non-Jews back in Acts 10-11, but here in Acts 13 the church in Syrian Antioch becomes the sending base for an official, wider mission to the Gentiles. First they went into the region of Galatia, reaching Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe (Acts 13-14). There are some missions and church planting principles evident in these chapters which are worth going back to look at. They experienced encouraging success, but also violent opposition from the Jewish community who followed and opposed them (13:50; 14:2; 14:19). Still, they made a return trip before they finished up, circling back through the places that they had reached and strengthening the fledgling communities there. The process for these early missions seems to have been to preach the Gospel in as broad a region as possible, then circle back to strengthen any groups that actually took hold, and then send back more organized support and instructions afterwards. Upon coming back to their sending church at Syrian Antioch, another group of Christians came from Judea and accused Paul and Barnabas of having preached the wrong Gospel. They insisted that these Gentiles should have had to accept the marks of Judaism to be saved (15:1-2). So they went down to Jerusalem to sort out the matter. This was a high-stakes meeting: the church was being called on to define the Gospel right as it had just started being proclaimed among the nations. Some time after initial discussions with the leaders in Jerusalem, but before an official decision was reached at the Jerusalem Council, Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians, sending it back to the churches he had just founded to defend the Gospel that he had preached to them. Soon afterwards the Jerusalem Council decided in his favor.

Mission to Macedonia, Athens, and Achaia, and Letters to the Thessalonians (Acts 15:6-18:11 and 1-2 Thessalonians). After the Jerusalem council and some initial visits, the Spirit directed Paul into the unreached region of Macedonia (16:6-10). Among the cities that he and his team reach, two are notable for most Christians: the cities of Philippi (Acts 16) and Thessalonica (Acts 17), both of which have biblical letters addressed to them. Unfortunately, while there was good opportunity for the Gospel in those places, the opposition made it impossible for the team to stay there. So they moved on to Athens (Acts 17), and then went to Corinth (Acts 18), where an unusual openness to the Gospel made it possible for Paul to stay there for "a year and six months" (Acts 18:11). This made it possible for Paul to organize the work that had begun, and this is likely when he wrote his letters to the Thessalonians with the input of his helpers Silas and Timothy. It's interesting that although Paul experienced a specific call to Macedonia (Acts 16:6-10), both cities in the area were full of opposition. Just because God calls us to do something, and just because he opens the hearts of people to the Gospel, doesn't mean the work will be easy. Anyone looking for a balanced, stable, gradual, and safe advance of the Gospel is not going to find it. God calls us to hard places to do difficult things.

Ministry in Corinth and Ephesus, and First Letter to the Corinthians (Acts 18:12-19:10 and 1 Corinthians). The two cities of Corinth (in the province of Achaia) and Ephesus (in the province of Asia) were unusually stable and fruitful frontiers for Gospel ministry. However they both had their problems. In the affluent and diverse city of Corinth, Paul seems -as his letters show- to have had to battle nearly every conceivable niche take or distortion of the Gospel that one could imagine, and more. The people were used to the best speakers, the flashiest presentations, and the most well-put together parties. Paul apparently had none of these things. But as his letter shows, he went in as a simple man with a simple message, and the contrast of that approach combined with the power of the Gospel was enough to make people in Corinth pay attention. Afterwards he traveled to Ephesus, which opened up a whole new regional ministry all throughout the province of Asia (Acts 19:10). Through his co-labourers and his letters, though, he continued to battle the divisions that infected the Corinthian church. As the early non-biblical letter of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians shows, even decades later the church at Corinth was a difficult group. It is hard to take hold of the Gospel when you are still hanging on to worldly standards of wisdom, success, and stability, as the Corinthians were doing.

Riot in Ephesus and Departure to Macedonia (Philippi?) in Acts 19:11-20:1. If Paul would not have been willing to move beyond one particular local ministry and on to further regions, then you and I would still be bowing down today at the pagan altar of Odin or Jupiter or of some druidic deity. It is tempting for us to be very invested in our own thing, and to tend to what we already have going. There is safety and stability in that. But as long as there were new regions where Christ had not been named, Paul was ready to move on as long as he could still support the work that had begun through sending helpers, writing letters, and making return visits. Paul moved on from Philippi in Acts 16, but when the time was right he circled back. He moved on from Thessalonica in Acts 17, but he sent Timothy back and gave them direction through his letters. He moved on from Corinth but continued to provide guidance and support there through writing to them and through the ministry of Titus. Here, he moves on from Ephesus, but we will see later in Acts 20 that he continued to provide guidance to the Elders who he had raised up in that region. This is still relevant for us today. While we should still be concerned to faithfully reach our surrounding neighborhoods, we should also be asking how God might be opening up opportunities in other under-reached areas, and how we could help to reach them. In the last 20 years, Canada has gone from 19% down to only 6.5% Evangelical Christian. How might we see that number change in the next few years if we enabled visionary missions works, and adopted the expansionist, large-scale missionary methods of Paul in our own regions and beyond?

DO | HOW DO WE RESPOND?

How can we respond in our worship, attitude, and actions? I won't lay out exact responses in this space because the possibilities are often endless. But it is worth it to think about application in the categories of worship, attitude, and actions. Does this reading direct me to God in worship and thanksgiving and praise, or does it direct me towards a change that I need to make here and now? If it's about a change that I need to make, is this something inward in my attitude, or outward in my actions? This helps to rescue application from just being a series of how-to tips, or one-size-fits-all instructions that go beyond what the Bible actually states. Sometimes, the most helpful application we can make is to get a different perspective on what's the most important thing, or about how we should respond inwardly to the things going on around us.

PRAY | HOW DOES THIS BRING US TO GOD?

Whether in response to anything pointed out here, or to something else in your Bible reading time, take a few moments before you close up your Bible to pray in response to God. If you need a format for prayer, both the ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication), CALL (Confess, Ask, Love, Listen), and PRAY (Praise, Repent, Ask, Yield) methods are helpful ways to stay consistent.

-Sean

Week #47 | The Death That Leads to Life and Proclamation

LOOK | WHAT DOES IT SAY?

Matthew 27:1-28:20; Mark 15:1-16:8; Luke 22:66-24:53; John 18:28-20:25; Acts 1-12

THINK | WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Jesus (Unlike Barabbas) Conquers by His Death. There is a moment in Matthew, Mark, and Luke's Gospels that sticks out to me. It's the part where Pilate offers the crowd the choice to either free Jesus or Barabbas (Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23). Jesus looks like a loser. He looks physically beat up. He looks tired from having been run around from place to place all night. His closest followers are nowhere to be seen. Jesus hasn't done anything to solve the problem of Roman occupation since he arrived in Jerusalem. Momentum is not on his side. But Barabbas has a track record of getting things done. He's an insurrectionist who's killed for his country (Luke 23:19). He's shown his willingness to roll up his sleeves. He's committed to solving -the crowd believes- the real problems. Whatever the excitement over Jesus was during the Triumphal Entry, he hasn't done anything since getting to Jerusalem (or so the crowds believe). He's gotten everyone excited over nothing, and he's let people down. Jesus is weak. Barabbas is strong. The crowd chooses Barabbas. But Jesus is not weak. He's not ignoring the important issues. The people want instant results, and they think the problem is something external. They want a leader who will deal with the problem over there. But Jesus comes to deal with the problem inside of us. Jesus conquers, not by the death of others, but by his own death. Our problem is not some external thing outside of us. Our problem is within. Jesus came to take that away. He came not to give us a kingdom, but to welcome us into his kingdom. If we are willing to accept that, then not only will we be ready to follow Jesus, but our entire approach to life will be entirely and radically transfigured--we will be equipped to live in such a way that heaven touches earth.

The Reliable Witness of the Resurrection Appearances. It's important here to recap the appearances of Jesus--I just want to give you a picture of what it was like for those who first encountered him after his resurrection. FIRST, The Gospels of Matthew (28:10) and Mark (16:7) both record how Jesus sent word, through angels, to the women who came to his tomb on Sunday morning, to go to his disciples and tell them to meet with him in Galilee after his resurrection. But instead we find the disciples distracted with fear, and confusion, and disbelief. Luke 24:10-12 and John 20:1-10 actually tell us how the disciples did not believe the women who reported to them that Jesus had risen—Luke 24:11 says the disciples thought that the women’s words, quote, “seemed… like an idle tale, [so] they did not believe them.” Then we see that the disciples go and check out the tomb and find it empty, and they’re amazed, but they still don’t believe. (Though in his gospel, John says he believed—Jn. 20:8-9.) Then, SECOND, in John 20:11-18 Jesus appeared that day to one of the women who he had sent to his disciples, maybe to reassure her because at this point she’s starting to question herself. And at first she doesn’t recognize him, but then she does after he speaks to her. THIRD, later that same Easter Sunday, Luke 24:13-32 records that Jesus met and walked with two of the disciples on the road to a town called Emmaus, and they don’t recognize him, but then they invite him to dinner, and while he’s breaking the bread and blessing it at the dinner table they recognize him, and he instantly disappears. So FOURTH, now they’re starting to believe, and they’re freaking out, and they go to Jerusalem that night, still on Easter Sunday, to meet with the other disciples and tell them what they saw when, according to Luke 24:33-49 and John 20:19-23, “with the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jewish authorities'' (Jn.) Jesus appeared standing in the midst of them and said “Peace to you!” (Lk.) which sounds to me like Jesus is doing a jump scare. And there in that locked room in Jerusalem on Easter Sunday night, appearing to his disciples gathered together for the first time since the resurrection, Jesus tells them that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all the nations (Lk. 24:47-48) and tells them “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (Jn. 20:21). And then, FIFTH, Jesus appears one week later still in Jerusalem to the apostle Thomas who was missing from that last meeting and had refused to believe the other disciples (John 20:24-29). Jesus appears and convinces him and Thomas believes in Jesus and calls him “my Lord and my God” (Jn. 20:28). Why did I walk you through that? Well, partly to show you why the disciples came to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. And, partly, to show you that the accounts in the different Gospels all tell one story. And just like any story where there are multiple witnesses, details in each of the accounts help to make sense of details in the other accounts, so together, they start to tell one coherent story. That is one of the marks of a story that’s genuine. And so we can trust this story.

The Proclamation of the Early Church. Imagine what it must have been like, 50 days after the Passover, for those remaining in Jerusalem to have witnessed the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Imagine seeing the disciples of Jesus show up and proclaim the death and resurrection of Jesus in every language simultaneously, accompanied by signs and wonders. But here are some of the things that the early church needed to proclaim the message of the Gospel, which we also need today: (1) They needed the equipping of the Holy Spirit. This doesn't have to take the form of signs and wonders, as it did in Acts 2, but without the Holy Spirit transforming hearts and minds all of our ministry techniques are worthless. (2) They needed courage to proclaim the message. It must have been very difficult to preach in the same city, and in Acts 4 before the same council, that only a little earlier had condemned Jesus to death. As we see in Acts 7, some of them actually were put to death. The disciples had to seek God's kingdom rather than their own comfort. (3) They needed to raise up leaders and think about scale. The growth of the church forced them to organize in ways that caused them to raise up leaders and specialize certain leaders on certain activities. The apostles couldn't be involved in everything anymore or visiting everyone's home; they had to focus specifically on prayer, vision, and proclamation (Acts 6:1-4). Previously unknown people had to be recognized and moved into positions of influence (Acts 6:5-7). As we go into the second part of Acts after chapter 12, the focus of the book actually rests on the activity of an outsider, Paul, who had previously been a persecutor of the church. God used him more powerfully than he used any individual apostle who had actually been present with Jesus during his ministry. We don't get anywhere if we make it hard for new leaders to be raised up. (4) They needed to be forced to move outwards. At some point, the early church was almost a victim of their own success. Things started to seem like they were moving along smoothly (6:7-8). There wasn't any major push to move outwards; maybe the disciples thought they would, eventually, slowly, in a balanced way, move outwards when it made sense and they felt ready. The stoning of Stephen in Acts 7 was the event that took that sense of familiarity away. That event, more than any other since the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, set up the early church to move outwards and proclaim the Gospel with power and boldness. In Acts 8:4-8, it's the reason that the Gospel spread out to Samaria. In Acts 11:19-30, it's the reason that the Gospel spreads all the way out to Antioch and even begins to reach the Gentiles. If we will not move outwards on our own, God will make it uncomfortable for us to stay where we are. The Gospel will go out; but experiencing God's blessing on our obedience is better than having to be moved by his discipline.

DO | HOW DO WE RESPOND?

How can we respond in our worship, attitude, and actions? I won't lay out exact responses in this space because the possibilities are often endless. But it is worth it to think about application in the categories of worship, attitude, and actions. Does this reading direct me to God in worship and thanksgiving and praise, or does it direct me towards a change that I need to make here and now? If it's about a change that I need to make, is this something inward in my attitude, or outward in my actions? This helps to rescue application from just being a series of how-to tips, or one-size-fits-all instructions that go beyond what the Bible actually states. Sometimes, the most helpful application we can make is to get a different perspective on what's the most important thing, or about how we should respond inwardly to the things going on around us.

PRAY | HOW DOES THIS BRING US TO GOD?

Whether in response to anything pointed out here, or to something else in your Bible reading time, take a few moments before you close up your Bible to pray in response to God. If you need a format for prayer, both the ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication), CALL (Confess, Ask, Love, Listen), and PRAY (Praise, Repent, Ask, Yield) methods are helpful ways to stay consistent.

-Sean

Week #46 | The Last Teachings, Last Supper, and Capture of Jesus

 LOOK | WHAT DOES IT SAY?

(314) Matthew 23:37-24:31; Mark 12:41-13:27; Luke 21:1-27

(315) Matthew 24:32-25:46; Mark 13:28-27; Luke 21:28-38

(316) Matthew 26:1-16; Mark 14:1-11; Luke 22:1-6; John 12:2-8

(317) Matthew 26:17-25; Mark 14:12-21; Luke 22:7-30; John 13:1-30

(318) Matthew 26:26-35; Mark 14:22-31; Luke 22:17-38; John 13:31-16:4

(319) Matthew 26:36-56; Mark 14:32-52; Luke 22:39-53; John 16:5-18:12

(320) Matthew 26:57-75; Mark 14:53-72; Luke 22:54-65; John 18:13-27

THINK | WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Reading #314: When the Man Comes Around. The majority of this reading is the first section of Jesus' sermon on the future appearance of the Son of Man. It appears in all of the Gospels except for John--and some think that's because John had already written on Jesus' fuller revelation about this point (if Revelation was written before John).

Reading #315: The Olivet Discourse. Between reading #314 and #315, we see Jesus' teaching on future things. (There must have been even more that he taught on this, since 1 John 3 and 1 Thessalonians 5, among other passages, reflect additional teaching that must go back to Jesus). Interestingly this teaching doesn't center on figuring out the exact time of the end. It gives a little bit of that, but mostly it teaches on how to handle some of the deceptions ahead, as well as teaching the disciples how to live now with the end in mind. It won't matter what your social standing is on the day the Son returns; it will only matter if he says to you, "inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (Matthew 25:34).

Reading #316: Judas Decides to Betray Jesus. After having been in Jerusalem for a little while, the enthusiasm that was seen at the Triumphal Entry must have slowly died off. As the acknowledged Christ, the expectation of the people would have been that Jesus would rise up and drive out the Romans. Instead, Jesus had spent the better part of the week bumming around town and had just spoken about how he would do all of the things expected of the Christ on some day far off in the future. Judas -himself named after a famous revolutionary who had won independence for Israel from the Greeks- had enough. With his disappointment, and personal self-interest at stake, he agrees to betray Jesus. I wonder if in his place you or I would have done the same. How often have we turned away from what God was doing in the world because it didn't look the way that we expected it should?

Reading #317: Judas Goes Out of the Last Supper. There is something really haunting about this reading. Judas was one of the disciples. He had his feet washed by Jesus. He broke bread with him. He saw the miracles done by him. And yet, Judas could not see Jesus for who he truly was. He left the fellowship of the other disciples and was not present for the rest of the supper.

Reading #318: The Last Supper and the Last Teaching. In all of the Gospels, it strikes me that this is the section worth paying the most attention to. Jesus knew that he was about to be betrayed. He knew that this would be his last meal with his disciples before his crucifixion. He knew this was the last teaching that he would give them before his resurrection--whatever teaching he gave after he was raised, we are either mostly not told about or the Gospel writers have woven it into sections of his earlier teaching. So he invited them to partake of the life that is in him: "He broke the bread and gave it to the disciples, and said, 'Take, eat; this is my body.' And when he had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, 'Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins'" (Matthew 26:26-28). Then he taught them about how to navigate the days ahead and about why he must go to the Father (John 14:1-16:4).

Reading #319: Last Teachings and Prayers, and Betrayal. Pay special attention to the material in John here. Jesus continues his last teachings from the previous day, and he prepares his disciples for what is about to happen. For Jesus, his betrayal isn't a setback: instead he declares, "take heart, for I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). In his prayers recorded in the other Gospels he resolutely sets his face towards the cross. When he is faced with those who have come to ambush him, he declares himself to them. In the Kingdom of God, things that look like setbacks here are victories there.

Reading #320: Jesus Before the Sanhedrin. It's incredible what those who think that they are acting on God's behalf feel justified in doing. The establishment has tried to trick Jesus, then smear Jesus, then bribe someone from his close circle into betraying him, and now they are holding a secret trial by night where they are beating the subject and incentivizing false witnesses against him. They feel completely justified in doing all of this. The blindness on display here is why it is so important that when we feel we know what God's will is, we should be committed to doing God's will in God's way.

DO | HOW DO WE RESPOND?

How can we respond in our worship, attitude, and actions? I won't lay out exact responses in this space because the possibilities are often endless. But it is worth it to think about application in the categories of worship, attitude, and actions. Does this reading direct me to God in worship and thanksgiving and praise, or does it direct me towards a change that I need to make here and now? If it's about a change that I need to make, is this something inward in my attitude, or outward in my actions? This helps to rescue application from just being a series of how-to tips, or one-size-fits-all instructions that go beyond what the Bible actually states. Sometimes, the most helpful application we can make is to get a different perspective on what's the most important thing, or about how we should respond inwardly to the things going on around us.

PRAY | HOW DOES THIS BRING US TO GOD?

Whether in response to anything pointed out here, or to something else in your Bible reading time, take a few moments before you close up your Bible to pray in response to God. If you need a format for prayer, both the ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication), CALL (Confess, Ask, Love, Listen), and PRAY (Praise, Repent, Ask, Yield) methods are helpful ways to stay consistent.

-Sean

Week #45 | A Great Entrance and a Long Week

 LOOK | WHAT DOES IT SAY?

(307) Luke 13:1-15:32

(308) Luke 16:1-17:37; John 11:1-57

(309) Matthew 19:1-30; Mark 10:1-31; Luke 18:1-30

(310) Matthew 20:1-34; Mark 10:32-52; Luke 18:31-19:28

(311) Matthew 21:1-22; Mark 11:1-25; Luke 19:29-48; John 12:1, 12:9-50

(312) Matthew 21:23-22:22; Mark 11:27-12:17; Luke 20:1-26

(313) Matthew 22:23-23:36; Mark 12:18-40; Luke 20:27-47

THINK | WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Reading #307: Jesus Did Not Come to Be Liked. As Jesus continues his journey towards Jerusalem, we see here in Luke's Gospel the different ways that the establishment tried to deal with Jesus. They tried to get close to him, but insincerely. They pretended to be concerned about his safety and warn him not to come to Jerusalem, but probably only so that they could brand Jesus a coward if he failed to show up. (As a side note: when those who are trying to trip you up start to suddenly be very nice and try to get close to you, and they are trying to get you to do or not do things, always go in the exact opposite direction of where they are trying to steer you. If they're worried about you talking to someone, or showing up somewhere, or making a decision, it's for a reason--so go ahead and do it.) When criticizing Jesus directly didn't work, they tried to connect him to the faults of those that he associated with. But Jesus did not come to be well-liked by the religious establishment. He came to call sinners to himself, and to die in their place.

Reading #308: Jesus Did Not Come Without the Testimony of the Spirit. All along the journey to Jerusalem, we see the wisdom with which Jesus taught and the miracles that he did. Imagine how inconvenient it was for the narrative that the establishment was trying to build when, shortly before the Passover, Jesus even raised Lazarus from the dead! There was no explaining that away.

Reading #309: Jesus Teaches on the Road. Jesus got all sorts of questions from all sorts of people. Some were trying to trap him in his words. Some wanted to follow him, but were still weighing it out. Some were genuinely seeking. Throughout, Jesus pointed them to a promise of a better world to come in the Kingdom of God. This is why Jesus didn't try to get the rich young ruler to give Jesus his money; instead he told him to give the poor his money, and to come and follow him. Jesus' words are not the words of a cult leader. A cult leader is always trying to gain money, or prestige, or followers, or satisfaction of personal desires--and a cult leader usually presents some kind of spiritual teaching about communal possessions or free love or political action which will gain him access to what he's really after. But Jesus is totally unlike this. He holds a strong stance on the permanence of marriage between one man and one woman. He rejects many would-be followers. He tells people to give money to other people, and not to him. He says that his Kingdom is not of this world and thus can't be gained through political action. He is completely who he says he is. The only way that he ever self-aggrandizes is through his testimony that he is God's presence on earth--a claim which, it turns out, is true.

Reading #310: Stop Trying to Get Ahead of Others. In this reading, Jesus teaches against the competitive desire to want to be more significant than others. In his parable, he says that the one who works for the landowner all day and the one who works for an hour get the same wage at the end because of the landowner's grace. The workers who had been there all day object, but the landowner insists that the wage is his to give. Jesus' followers are not supposed to try to figure out how they can consider themselves more important than others due to amount of time served, but to think of themselves as those who have received God's grace. A little while later, Jesus has to deal with a request from the mother of John and James to sit beside him in his kingdom as the most important followers of Jesus. They had, in fact, been among the earliest of Jesus' followers. But Jesus teaches again patiently that "getting ahead" is not what his kingdom is about.

Reading #311: The Triumphal Entry and Cleansing of the Temple. The Gospels all slow way down as Jesus begins to make his final trip to Jerusalem. Usually, about half of each Gospel is devoted to Jesus' final trip to Jerusalem and to the last week of Jesus' earthly life. But here we see the amazing entrance that awaited him when he arrived: between the 72 witnesses who had been sent out before Jesus according to Luke, and the famous raising of Lazarus according to John, the people who were at Jerusalem had been prepared and were ready to receive Jesus. This time Jesus causes a disturbance in the Temple again and claims it as his house (in every Gospel except John, who allows Jesus' appearance in the Temple on Hanukkah to be Jesus' definitive Temple appearance), but the establishment can do nothing because "the people were hanging upon his words" (Luke 19:48). Do you and I hang on the words of Jesus in this way? Would we follow him readily into situations that others around us might not understand?

Reading #312: Leading Questions by Hostile People. During this particular week in Jerusalem, it seems as if the establishment is on a full-time quest to undermine Jesus. (As it turns out, they will succeed, and in only a few days the crowd will call out for Jesus' crucifixion.) Here they question Jesus' authority and then try to trap him with a question that is designed to either make him unpopular with the crowds, or seen as a threat to the Romans. Jesus handles both, but the pressure is on. How would you handle that kind of pressure? Hebrews 12:2 says about Jesus that "for the joy set before him, he endured the cross." Is your trust in God such a part of your life that "for the joy set before you" you could also handle the pressure of whatever comes your way?

Reading #313: Jesus Puts An End to the Questioning, and Looks to the Cross. As the week pushes on, the various leaders from different groups keep trying to trap Jesus, or trip him up, or show him to be not as great of a teacher as people think he is. The Sadducees ask about the resurrection, and a teacher of the law asks Jesus about the greatest commandment. After answering both, Jesus finally asks them his own leading question. It's a question designed, as the establishment types realize, to either cause them to affirm Jesus or to make them unpopular with the crowds. Instead of having a clever answer like Jesus tends to have, they awkwardly decline. From this point they ask no further questions. But Jesus has exposed them now. He pronounces judgments against them. He takes the great weakness of very successful and self-assured people -their pride in their standing, and their anger at anything that might threaten that standing- and goads them into pursuing his crucifixion by publicly shaming them and pronouncing woes against them. He knows that their sinful pride will not let them do anything other than try to eliminate him as the social threat that they believe -must believe, for the sake of their standing- that he truly is. Which should make us wonder, do we have any attachment to our own standing at work, in our family, at church, or in the community that might feel protective over? How might we begin to practice letting go of that attachment in order to allow for what God might do in and through someone else? For the establishment leaders, they could not stand the idea of being overshadowed by some miracle working Galilean who spoke out of turn and didn't do things the proper way. They held onto their standing--and lost a much greater reward.

DO | HOW DO WE RESPOND?

How can we respond in our worship, attitude, and actions? I won't lay out exact responses in this space because the possibilities are often endless. But it is worth it to think about application in the categories of worship, attitude, and actions. Does this reading direct me to God in worship and thanksgiving and praise, or does it direct me towards a change that I need to make here and now? If it's about a change that I need to make, is this something inward in my attitude, or outward in my actions? This helps to rescue application from just being a series of how-to tips, or one-size-fits-all instructions that go beyond what the Bible actually states. Sometimes, the most helpful application we can make is to get a different perspective on what's the most important thing, or about how we should respond inwardly to the things going on around us.

PRAY | HOW DOES THIS BRING US TO GOD?

Whether in response to anything pointed out here, or to something else in your Bible reading time, take a few moments before you close up your Bible to pray in response to God. If you need a format for prayer, both the ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication), CALL (Confess, Ask, Love, Listen), and PRAY (Praise, Repent, Ask, Yield) methods are helpful ways to stay consistent.

-Sean