Category Archives: Theology

Jesus Would Not Burn a Koran

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Last Wednesday I asked the question “Would Jesus burn a Koran?”  I was responding to recent events in the news regarding Terry Jones and his Gainesville, FL church.  Jones and company will be hosting Burn a Koran Day on September 11th, marking the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001.

That post was somewhat stream of conscience as I worked through the issues and hoped we would all arrive at the same conclusion.  I have worked those ideas into a sermon, with more focus on exactly what Jesus would do and why.  The major points are:

  1. In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus teaches us to live counter-culturally.  He speaks on anger, retaliation, going the extra mile, turning the other cheek, and the golden rule. Continue reading →

Would Jesus Burn a Koran?

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Terry Jones, pastor of Dove World Outreach Centre in Gainesville, FL, has declared 9/11 “Burn a Koran Day.”  Publicizing the event has earned Jones multiple death threats, and many have threatened to burn down his church as well.  Jones is also the author of “Islam is of the Devil,” and his church has a large sign out front that reads the same.  You can read more on the event here.  Many Christian groups have tried to convince the church to cancel the event, still scheduled to take place next month. Continue reading →

Religion is Bad News

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If you type “religion, gospel” into the Google search bar, you get 3.6 million results in about 0.22 seconds.  Search on WordPress and the results are even more along the lines of “Religion vs. the Gospel” and such like.  Lots of people are aware of the shortcomings of religion compared to the Good News of Jesus Christ.  But even for the believer, and certainly for everyone else, the temptation is still there to not fully trust in the concept of grace.

In Mark’s Gospel (Mk. 5:1-20) Jesus and the disciples land on the coast of the Gerasenes.   They encounter Legion, a mad man filled with demons.  After Jesus casts the demons into a herd of pigs, the locals are amazed to see the man formerly known as Legion clothed and in his right mind.  Rather than allow him to follow, Jesus commands him to go back to his home town and tell them what God has done.  In this case, the man does so.  Ergo: You don’t have to fix all your problems before coming to Jesus.  How many people plan to come to church as soon as they quit drinking, stop smoking, get back with their ex-wife, find a job, etc. etc.  We cannot fix our own problems, and if we could then we wouldn’t need Jesus in the first place.  Remember what Jesus told the Pharisees; it is the sick who need a physician, not the well.

The rich young man (Mk. 10:17-22) come to Jesus with one simple question; What must I do to be saved.  Religion is about what we do.  We could substitute Law if we were comparing the Law to the Gospel.  Keeping the Law, very religious.  This man claims to have keep each of the commandments since his youth.  Unlikely.  David was a man after God’s own heart, and he failed all kinds of ways to keep the Law.  We simply cannot do what is right, just like we cannot in and of ourselves fix what is wrong.  Religion is what we do; grace is what God has already done.

We can’t.  That’s the story of fallen man.  We can’t keep the Law.  We can’t be right.  We can’t fix what’s wrong.  Religion is our attempt to either be right or fix the wrong, and we the human people are epic failures at both.  Religion is bad news; the Gospel is Good News. Tell the world.

For God and Country

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The 4th of July falls on Sunday this year.  The comparisons between our liberty and freedom as Americans and the freedom found in Christ are easy to make, but we need to be careful.  I wish to present a sermon that is both patriotic and scriptural, but also fair and truthful.  The Declaration of Independence was written in 1776 – the Bible was not. Continue reading →

Instead of a Mother’s Day Sermon…

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Last year I read a rant from a woman that refused to listen to one more preacher read Proverbs 31 and tell her how to be a godly woman.  Right or wrong, she made a couple of good points.  1) She has a good teaching pastor that opened the Bible each week, delivered a solid scripture-based sermon and shared the Gospel.  Mother’s Day each year turns into a one hour Hallmark card.  2) There are those in the church who may have lost a parent, or a child, or perhaps are disappointed they cannot become parents.  Honoring mothers can be especially painful for those that have tried and failed.  And we personally know what that’s like. So, here is the sermon I preached on Mother’s Day, May 9, 2010.

God is relational.  He seeks a relationship with his people, who in a general sense are all his children.  Let’s begin with the relationship of marriage. Continue reading →

The Law of Love

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Paul has a lot to say in his letters about the Law. Throughout the Book of Romans, the paragraphs have subject headers like “Judgement and the Law,” “Released from the Law,” “Sin and Law” and so on.  As a Pharisee, Paul had studied the Law well and enforced it.  As a Christian sharing the Gospel, he realized that the Law and the Prophets had been fulfilled in Jesus Christ.  His opinion of the Law remained very high.  Paul says the Law is like a tutor, or school master.  It teaches us about the attributes of God.  Living under the Law though would mean we are still subject to God’s judgement.  Living under grace is far superior to meeting the requirements of the Law.  Keeping the Law is a burden we cannot bear.

Paul also has a thing or two to say about love.  I was struck during my last read of Romans at how Paul relates love and the Law together.  Note this passage from Romans 13:

Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.  For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.  -Rom 13:8-10

Wow.  Love is the fulfilling of the Law; very similar to Jesus’s answer about the greatest commandment in Mark 12.  In that case, Jesus says the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, mind and strength and the second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself.  There is no way to violate any one of the 10 commandments if this love is our guiding principle.  Which is exactly what Paul explains here.  In John 15, Jesus said things like “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love,” and even “I give you this commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”  I’m still amazed at the way Paul expresses love as the fulfillment of the Law.

The New Thing in Sermons

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In the Old Testament, the prophet was a person who did the speaking for God.  Not necessarily predicting future events, the prophet acted as the spoken voice of God on earth.  During Jesus’s earthly ministry, he was found daily in the temple or synagogue reading and teaching.  While his sermon on the mount may have turned the Pharisees’ world upside down, he was regarded as a rabbi in most Jewish circles.  In Acts chapter 2, on the Day of Pentecost, Peter preaches something entirely new. Continue reading →

The “Triumphal” Entry

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Several well known statements are found in Psalm 118:1-25: “His steadfast love endures forever,” “this is the day the LORD hath made,” “the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and even others still.  Verse 25 reads “Save us, we pray, O LORD” in the ESV; “O LORD. we beseech thee, save us now!” in the King James.  The Hebrew word rendered in English as save now is hosanna.

All four Gospels tell the story of Jesus’s triumphal entry.  Palm Sunday is our celebration of Jesus entering Jerusalem for the last time to observe Passover with his disciples. Continue reading →

Who Framed Jesus?

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I can tell that Easter is near.  Every year about this time, several television specials and news magazines focus on the fact that Christians still believe in Jesus even though they should not.  In about a week, expect Time Magazine (or its equivalent) to run a cover story on how/why the resurrection could not have possibly taken place.  Predictably, they will claim Jesus either 1) did not die  2) stayed dead, or 3) was never alive in the first place.  Each year, several media outlets predict an end to Christian faith, despite the fact that each year there are still billions of Christians around the world. Continue reading →

Jesus Greater Than Moses: Heb 3

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Hebrews is easy to preach because its form is much more like a sermon than an epistle (letter).  At the heart of its message is an impassioned plea not to leave the Christian faith for another, and so in order to be convincing the author of Hebrews makes many comparisons between Christ and all the things of the Old Testament he is superior to.  We have already seen that Christ is superior to the angels, and that through suffering he becomes the perfect founder of our faith.  Chapter 3 begins this way:

Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession,  who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God’s house. For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses—as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself.  (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.)  Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later,  but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son. And we are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.  Hebrews 3:1-6

Continue reading →