Thoughts on God and life from a Christian perspective
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Click for Map of the World’s Religions.
Poor Garfield! Personally, I don’t think Mondays are all that bad!
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Yesterday’s message in the Life of Samuel series was called God Can Take Care of Himself, taken from 1 Samuel 5:1-12. Here is a brief outline of the message:
1) God is Lord of all the earth.
- God is not surprised by circumstances
- God is not limited by geography
- God is not threatened by competition
2) God is not served by human hands.
- God does not need us to watch over him
- God does not need us to protect him
- God does not need us to defend him
3) God will judge the world with justice.
- God will judge the false idols of the world
- God will judge those who stand against him
- All will eventually acknowledge him as Lord
The Ultimate Proof: The resurrection of Christ from the dead!
Note: Click on the Sermons tab at the top of the blog for this and other messages.
Josh Etter quotes William Temple on salvation. “All is of God; the only thing of my very own which I contribute to my redemption is the sin from which I need to be redeemed.”
Tullian Tchividjian quotes Nicholas Berdyaev on beauty in the world. “All beauty in the world is either a memory of Paradise or a prophecy of the transfigured world.”
Jon Bloom looks at the miracle of Jesus feeding the five thousand. “When Jesus performed this wonder, he was giving Philip, the disciples, the boy, the crowd, and us a crucial lesson in kingdom supply-side economics. Namely, that God will supply every need of ours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:19). If we really believe this, our worries are over.”
Jeana shares ten things that don’t make sense to her. Here are the first few on her list. “1. How having four children quadrupled the love I have for my kids instead of dividing it into four. 2. How focusing on meeting my husband’s needs results in my needs getting met. 3. Why having a lot of ‘me’ time tends to make me more self-centered, not less. 4. Why serving other people makes me more content, not less.”
Justin Childers challenges you to figure out one intentional way to serve your church today. Here are a couple of his suggestions. “1. Call a member of your church that was not at church on Sunday (for whatever reason). Tell them you missed seeing them and summarize your pastor’s sermon for them. 2. Call or e-mail a family in your church with young children and offer to babysit for a few hours 3. Call an older member of your church and offer to bring lunch over to their house tomorrow.”
Michael Patton at Theological Word of the Day provides a helpful definition for theism. “Worldview that believes that an eternal God freely created all of existence (time, space, matter, celestial realms and bodies) out of nothing (ex nihilo) and that he continues to act within the creation in varying degrees. This is to be contrasted with atheism (the belief that there is no God), pantheism (the belief that all is God), polytheism (the belief in many gods), and deism (the belief that God does not interact with creation).”
Joe Carter reflects on celestial teapots, flying spaghetti monsters, and other silly atheist arguments. “Why exactly we are to prefer an unintelligent designer to an intelligent one is one of the questions that remains unanswered. Obviously, not all atheists believe that arguments must be intelligently designed; but that does not mean that arguments for intelligent design are without merit. Perhaps if they used their noodles for something other than creating spaghetti creatures they’d see that obvious point for themselves.”
Ken Keathley relates the interesting story concerning Jesse James and church discipline. “Jesse was a member in good standing when he led the first daylight bank robbery in Liberty, Missouri, a town about ten miles away. The church minutes record that deliberations to discipline Jesse were complicated by the concern that he might burn down the building … Two deacons were selected to go to confront him according to the guidelines of Matthew 18. The minutes of the next business meeting report that, for one reason or another, the deacons never could find the time to visit the notorious bandit. Then the minutes report that Jesse himself arrived at the meeting, and wishing to cause no embarrassment to the congregation, requested his name be removed from the roll. The church obliged.”
I don’t usually begin my sermons with a joke, but last Sunday I did. Here it is in case you missed it.
There were two brothers, ages 8 and 10, who were getting into a lot of trouble. Their mother brought them to see the pastor to see if he could help straighten them out. The pastor talked with the younger brother first. He looked at the young boy and asked him, “Where is God?” The boy’s eyes opened wide, but he didn’t answer, so the pastor asked again, more forcefully this time, “Young man, where is God?” The boy began to squirm in his seat, so the pastor asked yet another time in a very loud voice, “Young man, answer me, where is God?” At that, the boy leaped out of his seat and ran out the door right past his brother who was waiting to go in next. The older brother chased him down and asked him, “What’s the matter?” To which the younger brother replied, “We’re in big trouble this time. God is missing, and they think WE did it!”
From the sermon: Losing God in Religion - 1 Samuel 4:1-22 (The ark’s capture)
Mistrial. An Australian drug trial lasting more than three months and costing taxpayers nearly $1 million was derailed after a number of jurors were caught playing Sudoku during testimony. Sudoku is a puzzle where you complete a grid of numbers in the correct sequence. The judge was alerted after some of the jurors were observed writing their notes vertically, rather than horizontally.
Easy credit. Six-year old Bennett Christiansen received a credit card in the mail. Bennett had filled out an application truthfully stating his age as six and his income as $0. He indicated that he was neither a homeowner or a renter. He signed the application in his own six-year old handwriting. In return, Bank of America sent him a valid card card of his own (with a $600 limit).
Under-age driver. A 7-year-old Indiana boy drove his grandmother’s car more than a mile to a shopping mall before another motorist blocked the car and took the keys. Several motorists called police around 9 a.m. Tuesday to report a small child driving toward Muncie Mall on the city’s north side. The boy was so small that some motorists could not see anyone behind the wheel.
Ben Witherington points out that the word “reader” in Bible times had a different meaning than it does today.
Both in Mk. 13.14 and in Rev. 1.3 the operative Greek word is ho anaginÅskÅn a clear reference to a single and singular reader, who in that latter text is distinguished from the audience who are dubbed the hearers (plural!) of John’s rhetoric.
As Mark Wilson recently suggested in a public lecture at Ephesus, this surely is likely to mean that the singular reader is in fact a lector of sorts, someone who will be reading John’s apocalypse out loud to various hearers. We know for a fact that John is addressing various churches in Asia Minor (see Rev. 2-3), so it is quite impossible to argue that the reference to ‘the reader’ singular in Rev. 1.3 refers to the audience. It must refer to the rhetor or lector who will orally deliver this discourse to the audience of hearers.
I would suggest that we must draw the same conclusion about the parenthetical remark in Mk. 13.14, which in turn means that not even Mark’s Gospel should be viewed as a text, meant for private reading, much less the first real modern ‘text’ or ‘book.’ Rather Mark is reminding the lector, who will be orally delivering the Gospel in some or several venues near to the time when this ‘abomination’ would be or was already arising that they needed to help the audience understand the nature of what was happening when the temple in Jerusalem was being destroyed.
Here are some more Bible Wordles for your viewing pleasure. (Click on a picture for a larger image.) First, here is the New Testament in a Wordle:
Most prominent words in the New Testament:
“Lord God Jesus Christ”
Here is a Wordle for the Psalms:
Most prominent words in the Psalms:
“Lord God shall; steadfast love forever”
And here is a Wordle for the whole Bible:
Most prominent words in the Bible:
“Lord God said”
Greg Gilbert at Church Matters analyzed the Wordles for different books of the Bible and came up with the following prominent words. They make for pretty good summaries of each book I would say!
Related post: My Sunday Sermon Wordle
Jesus in China - Tonight at 9 p.m. ET on PBS:
A massive wave of Christianity has been sweeping across China in recent years, and the Chinese ruling party, officially atheist, is now struggling to figure out how to control it. In “Jesus in China,” a joint project of FRONTLINE/World and the Chicago Tribune, reporter Evan Osnos investigates one of the fastest growing Christian populations in the world, and how it could potentially transform China at this explosive moment in the country’s development.
You can read the accompanying Chicago Tribune article here: Jesus in China: Christianity’s rapid rise
See related post: Praying for China with Randy Stonehill
Here is a Wordle of my sermon from Sunday. You can click on the words in the Wordle to view a larger image.
Wordle is a program that generates “word clouds” from any text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to those words that appear more frequently in the source text.
This seems like a useful tool for providing a quick overview of the main concepts addressed in a text. For example, with one look at the sermon Wordle above you can see that the message was primarily about God, but also about religion and relationship, Israel and the Philistines, and the ark. Which is precisely correct. What do you think of Wordles?
See related post: Bible Wordles
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