The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

Why Should You Read The (Jewish Bible) Old Testament?
Here is some familiar ground that we covered previously. The Jewish Bible (Old Testament) provides the foundation for understanding the New Testament. It is often neglected or only read in part. Because of the prominence of the Law in the Jewish Bible, the idea of the grace of God is almost lost to its modern readers. It is often pointed out by readers of the Jewish Bible that God appears to be a God of wrath and judgment. However, some Old Testament characters present God as a God of love and justice. (Moses: Deut. 4-6; Jeremiah: Jer. 9.23-24).

The Jewish Bible (OT) provides the historical background which allows us to understand the message of the New Testament. The authors of the New Testament echo the Jewish Bible over 600 times. Jesus constantly appealed to its teachings as did Paul and other New Testament authors.

The history of the Old Testament is primarily found in the first seventeen books (Genesis-Esther). We must remember when reading this history that it is theological history. It was history told with a purpose. The history that is told is selected history to demonstrate the purpose of God to bring salvation to his creation. The whole Bible is often called salvation history because the God of the Bible is a missionary God.

What does it mean that God is a missionary God? Dallas Willard in his book Divine Conspiracy speaks about a “barcode faith.” Like barcodes on store purchases it doesn’t matter what is inside the package, the scanner just responds to the external barcode. Todd Hunter, has been known to say something like; “Christianity has become a mental assent to a set of beliefs around one theory of the atonement. You get a barcode and that assures you that you can go to heaven.” In short, nothing on the inside of a person has to change.

Marcus Borg in his book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time closes his book by talking about the familiar Christian phrase — believing in Jesus.

For those of us who grew up in the church, believing in Jesus was important. For me, what the phrase used to mean, in my childhood and into my early adulthood, was “believing things about Jesus.” To believe in Jesus meant to believe what the gospels and the church said about Jesus. That was easy when I was a child, and became more and more difficult as I grew older.

But I now see that believing in Jesus can (and does) mean something very different from that. The change is pointed to by the root meaning of the word believe. Believe did not originally mean believing a set of doctrines or teachings; in both Greek and Latin its roots mean “to give one’s heart to.” The “heart” is the self at its deepest level. “Believing, therefore, does not consist of giving one’s mental assent to something, but involves a much deeper level of one’s self. Believing in Jesus does not mean believing doctrines about him. Rather, it means to give one’s heart, one’s self at its deepest level, to the post-Easter Jesus who is the living Lord, the side of God turned toward us, the face of God, the Lord who is also the Spirit.

Believing in Jesus in the sense of giving one’s heart to Jesus is the movement from secondhand religion to firsthand religion, from having heard about Jesus with the hearing of the ear to being in relationship with the Spirit of Christ. ¹

God is not merely interested in our believing him, but that through our believing that we become the “salt” and “light” to his creation. He is about saving his world, putting it to rights. We learn best how to become a part of this “mission” by reading, understanding, and then living into HisStory.

Reflections

• What is your definition of the Bible?
• Where did you learn your definition?
• If the purpose of Scripture is to share God’s missionary activity in redeeming his creation, then why do you think that we spend so much time reading it for other purposes?
• What do you think about Dallas Williard’s “barcode faith” theory?

The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

The Purpose Of The Scripture
When we come to the Bible, we come to God’s word, written to communicate God’s truth to us. One might define the Bible as God’s word written in the words of men. It tells a story and affirms that God has acted on behalf of man for his salvation and restoration. God certainly could have chosen any way he desired to communicate to us, but the fact remains that he chose a certain method to communicate his truth.

The result of that choice by God is the Bible, which we may hold in our hands, the contents of which we may hide in our hearts, and live out in our lives.

Scripture tells us that God has spoken to us, but what has he said? For one to be in a better position for the Holy Spirit to communicate effectively to him/her the truths of God, one must at least know the purpose of the Bible. If you are to begin to have a proper grasp of the meaning of Scripture, you must decide what its purpose is. To know the purpose of any object helps you define its use. Let’s use a hammer as an illustration. The primary purpose of a hammer is to drive nails. If it is used for that purpose, the intended results will be accomplished. If, however, it is used for other than its purpose, the result could be disastrous. Suppose for a moment that a child was given a hammer without being instructed concerning its use. You may find a hole in the wall instead of nails in the studs. The same is certainly true about Scripture. If you are to discern its meaning, you must know its purpose. If not, Scripture usually gets used in all kinds of ways that it was not intended to be used and holey walls become abundant. That brings us to its purpose.

The purpose of Scripture is to share the redemptive history of God. It is meant to convey a knowledge of God, who is known chiefly by what he has done and in the person in whom he was incarnate. The religious interest of the authors of Scripture control their selection of events and the importance attached to them. They often write for other ends than to simply impart knowledge. They may, on occasion, desire to move their readers to adopt a certain attitude toward life, i.e., religious, social, or political. On the other hand, they may wish to encourage them or calm their troubled minds. The characters of Scripture really lived life and had all the emotions with which we all contend.

Paul, writing to Timothy (2 Tim. 3.16-17), gives us the purpose of Scripture in a simple and precise manner. Paul tells us “…All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for…

• Teaching: which provides instruction for us
• Rebuking: which shows us our sin and summons us to repentance
• Correcting: which restores us to an upright position
• Training in Righteousness: which directs us to walk in the right paths as opposed to wrong paths.

The end result, … so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (v. 17). The word “equipped” is the same word that we find in Mark 1.19, there translated “mending” (RSV, in the NIV it is translated “preparing”), and in Ephesians 4.12 where it is translated “to equip.” In each of the contexts it means “to be put together.” In the vernacular, it means that God’s Word taught to us helps us “get our act together.” As we look at Scripture, we should realize that its purpose is to “mend” us and make us conformed to the image of Jesus (Rom. 8.29). If one uses Scripture with this purpose in mind, there will be much less chance of misusing it. The purpose of Scripture then is to help us understand the following:

• How God has acted on behalf of his children.
• How God relates to his creation, i.e., humankind.
• How man should relate to him as God.
• How man should relate to man.

The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

Some Objections To Reading Scripture
Many believers have a silent objection to reading the overall story of Scripture, or even reading some of the smaller stories completely in favor of reading a few unattached verses. They will seldom vocalize this because they do not wish to bring disapproval on themselves. If they do vocalize an opinion, it usually falls into one of the following objections:

Objection #1: The Bible Is Too Big. Where Do I Begin?
They are right! The Bible is a big book. In my personal copy of The New International Version: Textbook Edition (2011), there are about 1250 pages of text to read—and small type at that. But this objection can be overcome. There is an ancient proverb which says, “The longest journey begins with a single step.” I have provided a guide for reading the whole story in God’s EPIC Adventure ¹ and a reading plan called “Reading the Bible Without Additives in 100 Days” to help overcome this objection. ² So, when you read the entire First Five Books of the Bible (Pentateuch), you may know how the story of God’s call and covenant with his people fits together.

Objection #2: The Bible Is A Dull And Boring Book!
I wrote a little booklet entitled: “It’s not the book that’s dull!” This tongue and cheek sense of humor was to get people to focus on some of the real reasons why they had the feeling that the Bible was dull and boring. Here are two reasons:

• The translation that most readers are reading may be difficult to read. So, when reading the Bible, secure a Bible translation which is up-to-date. If the translation you read is full of archaic language or nonsensical sentences, your tendency will be to see Scripture as just a dusty-old-history book written to a previous generation, and never read very much of it. My recommendation are the New International Version of the Bible (2011 Edition), or The Books of the Bible (a version of NIV without chapters and verses) or The Good News Bible. They are both good translations and easy to read.
• Another reason a person may find the book dull and uninteresting is because it is often read like a newspaper which has no value beyond the day of its reading. The Bible has had more influence on the world than any other book. One secular author has said that a person who has not read the Bible is an illiterate person. A strong saying! Think about it.

There are other objections, I am sure. These are the two which I encounter most often. My opinion is: if you learn to personally use materials like you are reading, with your family or your church community, and you read Scripture in an up-to-date translation, you will find that the Bible is not too big to conquer or too dull or boring to read. It will become alive and active in your life. Your job is to be impregnated with the sacred text so that you can imagine how you should respond to life situations and the improvise how to do respond. Remember: wholeness (as in reading the whole Story of Scripture) heals while fragmentation injuries!

The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

The Importance Of Knowing
It has been my experience as a pastor and college instructor to note that many Christians do not read the Bible as a story. Therein lies the problem! They read their favorite stories or verses. They sometimes read in Psalms or Proverbs for devotions. While this style of reading is better than no reading, it still falls short of being helpful in understanding what God is saying and doing in the Jewish Bible. Each year many Christians make a New Year’s resolve to read the Bible through. They jet through Genesis, take an excursion through Exodus and have their last gasp in Leviticus. Leviticus has been the burial place of many New Year’s resolutions.

The Old Testament remains the book you always wanted to read and understand, but never did.

In his book Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology, (0226327345) Will Herberg notes the following:

In the five years from 1948 to 1953, the distribution of Scripture in the United States increased 140 percent reaching an all time high of 9,726,391 volumes a year. People were apparently buying and distributing the Bible at an unprecedented rate. Furthermore, over four-fifths of adult Americans said they believed ‘the Bible to be the revealed word of God’ rather than ‘a great piece of literature’. Yet when these same Americans were asked to give the ‘names of the first four books of the New Testament of the Bible, that is the first four gospels’, 53 percent could not name one. (35 percent could name all four; 4 percent could name three; 4 percent could name two; 1 percent could name one.) The Bible can hardly be said to have entered the thought of Americans quite as much as their views on its divine inspiration and their eagerness to buy and distribute it might suggest.” ¹

I would suggest that Mr. Herberg’s analysis has not changed, even in the past fifty years. I have noted the same lack of knowledge of the Bible among thousands of believers. People who choose to read and study Scripture really want to know how Scripture fits together. They want some basic grid through which they can read it. As we previously suggested, readers certainly know some of the more familiar stories, i.e., Noah, Moses, David, etc. Sunday schools have done a good job of teaching these great stories. What they do not understand is how the Story of Scripture fits together. ²

In the December 1979 issue of Christianity Today the CT-Gallup Poll is overviewed. ³

Their findings are not unlike the findings some twenty years before. This poll was conducted with those 18 years old and over ⁴.

Of those polled in the general public, the following results were noted:

• Only eleven percent read the Bible every day compared to ten percent who read it weekly and seven percent monthly. Thirty-seven million adults never read the Bible.
• Fewer than three in ten correctly identified, “Ye must be born again,” as the words of Jesus to Nicodemus.
• Fewer than half (forty-two percent) could name at least five of the Ten Commandments ⁵).
• The findings among those who call themselves Evangelicals were not sufficiently different.
• Only six in ten could correctly identify, “Ye must be born again,” as the words of Jesus to Nicodemus.
• Only half could name five of the Ten Commandments ⁶.

In 1999-2000 American Bible Society distributed 4,494,991 Bibles, 11,713, 519 New Testaments, and 85,945,643 Bible portions and selections. ABS is one of the largest Bible distributors in the world. The International Bible Society, which is the owner of the New International Version, (now called Biblica) distributed 2,581,602 Bibles, and 11,371,473 Bible portions in 2001. These are only two distributors. This does not count all the publishing companies in the U.S. The point is there is a continual increase in the availability of Bibles, while at the same time there appears to be no increase in Bible literacy.

In the Fall of 2010 American Bible Society as for prayer for the United States in relationship to this issue:

Please pray for the Bible crisis here in our own country. Studies show that people may have a Bible on the shelf but are not reading it. This is contributing to a general lack of knowledge of God’s Word and a decline in moral values. ⁷

George Barna’s report “Six Megathemes Emerge from Barna Group Research in 2010” demonstrates the same conclusion:

The Christian Church is becoming less theologically literate.
What used to be basic, universally-known truths about Christianity are now unknown mysteries to a large and growing share of Americans–especially young adults. For instance, Barna Group studies in 2010 showed that while most people regard Easter as a religious holiday, only a minority of adults associate Easter with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Other examples include the finding that few adults believe that their faith is meant to be the focal point of their life or to be integrated into every aspect of their existence. Further, a growing majority believe the Holy Spirit is a symbol of God’s presence or power, but not a living entity. As the two younger generations (Busters and Mosaics) ascend to numerical and positional supremacy in churches across the nation, the data suggest that biblical literacy is likely to decline significantly. The theological free-for-all that is encroaching in Protestant churches nationwide suggests the coming decade will be a time of unparalleled theological diversity and inconsistency. ⁸

Thus, the problem that needs to be addressed is to help you and others as readers of Scripture to fit the pieces of Scripture, in this case the Pentateuch, together in order to have a reliable grid through which you can read the Pentateuch completely delighting in what God has done and continues to do.

The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

Two Ways To Read Scripture
There are at least two ways the Bible can be read by you as a reader. You can read Scripture as a book of past events, or you may read it looking for a present communication from God for your life.

If you should choose to read Scripture as past events, you will see the centuries from which the inheritance of the Western religious world came. You will encounter the enthralling stories of the ancient world, which bordered the Mediterranean Sea. You will have a glimpse of the rise and fall of many empires. All these events are told in action-packed narratives. You may observe, as you plunder through the pages, the roots of one nation emerging into world dominance, called by her God, and covenanted to her God to provide for humankind a redeemer. You might investigate some notes of comparison: Israel leaves Egypt for religious freedom—Englishmen left England for religious freedom; The Canaanites and the invading Hebrews—the Indians and the invading New Americans. You may hear the voice of the prophets calling Israel to honor the covenant or reap the consequences, as you hear the modern preachers calling for repentance. But, alas, it remains ancient and jumbled. Our modern mind notes how dislocated the material appears. The ordering of the books both Old and New Testament are not conducive to reading the storyline. The addition of chapters and verses cause us to pause at the wrong time in a story and slows down our reading to a snail’s pace. Our eye gladly stops reading these reflections and the book is put down, often picked again in the next day or so, but the same frustrations result. Those that have grown to read the fragments have developed a habit of reading that it’s hard for them to get their head around the idea that their just may be a better way of reading.

If, on the other hand, you read it looking for a present communication from God, you may miss the richness and importance of how God has dealt with his children from the beginning of time, thus knowing how he might deal with your community of faith or you in a present life situation. If you just dip in and out of the sacred text hoping that something will inspire you for the day, and while that may happen, there really is a better way of consuming Scripture. Reading whole stories at one sitting is surely better than reading a disconnected set of verses. Well, in my opinion, it is.

It should be said, however, that the first way noted above is much more apt to get you closer to hearing the real God of Scripture than the last way. This is not to say that one should abandon the latter way of engaging Scripture, but rather minimize it in favor of hearing and knowing what God originally said to the first hearers/readers, while wondering and asking what the author might have intended for his/her readers to understand. Why? Because whatever God said through the authors then, he is still saying today. The message does not change, it’s just often allusive when we read in a fragmented way.

The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

Why Should You Read The Jewish Bible (Old Testament)?
The following series of posts cover the First Five Books of the Bible, often called the Pentateuch or the Torah. It will introduce the readers to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

The World’s Best Seller
The Bible is heralded as the world’s all time best-seller. Most likely the most printed book but may be the least read book, at least the Old Testament portion. Readers tend to read their favorite parts but not the whole unless it is read as part of a reading program which chops it up into daily fragments that often doesn’t help the reader get the sense of the whole narrative. It has been translated into over a thousand different languages. Over ninety-five percent of the world’s population has some portion of Scripture, which is available to them to read. It is a collection of books whose message has changed lives over the centuries. It is important to read it, but it is also difficult to read because it comes from a different time and different culture. To help us understand the Jewish Bible (Old Testament), we must have some basic information to assist us.

The Jewish Bible (Old Testament) provides the foundation for understanding the New Testament. As suggested above, it is often neglected or only read in part. Because of the prominence of the Law in the Jewish Bible (Old Testament), the idea of the grace of God in the Jewish Bible is almost, if not completely, lost to its modern readers. It is often pointed out by readers of the Jewish Bible that God appears to be a God of wrath and judgment. However, some Jewish Bible characters present God as a God of love and justice. (Moses: Deut. 4.1-6.25; Jeremiah: Jer. 9.23-24). And after all, God is the main character of all of Scripture including the Jewish Bible.

An often overlooked point is that the Jewish Bible provides the historical background that allows us to understand the message of the New Testament. The authors of the New Testament echoes the Jewish Bible over 600 times. Jesus constantly appealed to its teachings, as did Paul and other New Testament authors. Without understand its storyline, the New Testament is out of the grasp of the biblical reader.

The history of the Jewish Bible is primarily found in the first seventeen books (Genesis-Esther). We must remember when reading this history that it is theological history with a missional point. It was history told with a purpose. The history that is told is selected history to demonstrate the purpose of God to bring salvation for his creation. The whole Bible is often called salvation history because the God of the Bible is a missionary. God’s overall purpose is to restore his original creation which the story arch of the Old Testament and New Testament: from creation to new creation.

The early church had only one Bible, although not in the form of a book as we have today. The Jewish Bible (Old Testament) was the Bible of Jesus and the Apostles as well as the church of Paul’s day. This indicates to me that it is needful, if not essential, that the church today knows something more than it already does about the Jewish Bible. The roots of Christianity are to be found in the Jewish Bible. It has been and continues to be my experience that the church does not understand very much about the message of the Jewish Bible.

The Story Before the Story is a straight forward presentation, which provides the reader of Scripture a simple but compelling introduction to reading Scripture as a story. This book interacts with four important concepts: foundationalism, fragmentation, story, and kingdom. Reading with a foundationalism concept without knowing it leads to a reduction of the text into principles, which produces patchwork followers of Jesus. The author believes that reading fragmentively produces fragmented lives in the followers of Jesus. Reading Scripture as a story is the antidote to foundationalism and fragmentation. Kingdom theology is the glue for the reader that holds the story together. This book is an invitation to read Scripture with both eyes open.

Sunday, as I sat through a service at the local community of faith that my family attends, I had the following thoughts.

We are so impregnated with individualism and consumerism. But, unlike a pregnant woman, we don’t realize it. Individualism and consumerism affects the olders and the youngers. It is not a respecter of persons. But, it still surprises me.

In Sunday’s service, the speaker was ill and it was a struggle for him to communicate. What I was struck by was his individualism and consumerism. He first read Psalm 130. With the lens of individualism and the need to consume, it looks like this Psalm is a personal cry for personal help. But, a more thorough reading might suggest that this was not about the Psalmist crying out for his own personal relief, but for the relief of the nation of Israel, the community of God, (church) in the Old Testament because of their sins. Our speaker personalized the sacred text and in doing so made it appear for his listeners that it was about his own and their own personal needs. Is it wrong to cry out to God when in need? No! But, it might be wrongheaded to use this text to support such a cry.

Next, we then moved with no segue to the story of Bartimaeus. The essence of the presentation was centered around the request of Bartimaeus to be healed. Reading with individualistic, consumerism eyes, we often put ourselves in the place of Bartimaeus as he asked for healing. But, what might Jesus be doing in this story and what might Mark mean as he tells this story? Jews, with impediments like blindness, being deaf and dumb, hemorrhaging, being crippled, were excluded from full membership of the community. When Jesus healed them, it was not about meeting a need to be consumed by the individual. It was about being fully restored to the people of God. Tom Wright suggests: “The effect of these cures, therefore, was not merely to bring physical healing; not merely to give humans, within a far less individualistic society than our modern western one, a renewed sense of community membership, but to reconstitute those healed as members of the people of Israel’s god. (Jesus and the Victory of God. 192).

In the sharing time, I was struck by one comment that suggested that Bartimaeus got his identity by being blind as he was called “blind Bartimaeus,” in the KJV of the text, but that translation has not been held over in more current versions where he is referred to as “a blind beggar.” Surely, one may choose to see what one wants to see in a text, rightly or wrongly, but are we then free to submit our findings to a community already infected with individualism and consumerism without first, at least, identifying what Jesus may have been doing or Mark may have been teaching?

So, I wrote my friend a short message inquiring about the following:

What part of what you did yesterday fed consumerism among those gathered?

What did God get out of our time together? It’s really about him and not about us.

What if the way we go about receiving from God is backwards?

What if the purpose of our gatherings is not about what we desire to receive but about God desiring us?

Remember, he was already there when we arrived and remained after we left. What was he looking forward to as we gathered? Another time of sitting around asking that he meet our needs, or a time in which we simply worshiped him without any expectation of receiving anything, but the pure pleasure of worshiping him.

googling God’s Will: Why Keep Searching For It When It’s Not Lost?
Winn Griffin
Harmon Press (January 7, 2011)

Years ago when I was first told that God loved me and had a wonderful plan for my life I believed it. I still do. But in recent years I have come to the conclusion that His plan for my life is not as elusive as I once thought. Dr. Winn Griffin, in his succinct little book, Googling God’s Will, agrees. While acknowledging an overabundance of books and websites devoted to the subject of seeking God’s will, he feels the need to offer his own insightful view using contemporary metaphors like Google, GPS systems, and power steering in an attempt to remove what he considers unnecessary barriers that muddy the water and prevent us from resting in God’s will.

Although I would have never phrased it this way, I used to suspect that God was playing some sort of cosmic hide-and-seek game with me. It was like he had this perfect will for my life but wasn’t about to tell me what it was, preferring to hide it from me, forcing me to search for it by trial-but-mostly-error fashion. Some days I would think I was warm but mostly I felt cold. I would wonder why it was so hard to know what God expected from me. These days that seems like a silly notion, and the way I have just phrased it to you it probably sounds silly to you, too. So, if it is silly, why do so many of us practice “seeking” God’s will in that way?

A particular insight Dr. Griffin helped with is that the worldview of the Bible (Middle Eastern) and ours (Western Enlightenment) are markedly different. If we are to understand the Bible’s intended message, we need to understand the context in which it was written. For example, one of the marks of “Enlightened” thinking is its emphasis on individualism, a concept that would have seemed strange to the Middle Eastern mind that thought more in terms of community than individuality, and pronouns we often read as personal are, in fact, collective. So, when we read “you” in the Bible it often, if not usually, means “you all.” Griffin writes, “When it comes to God’s will, we are often looking for answers in all the wrong places. We [Westerners] want to know what God’s will is for our individual life. What we often get as an answer by our teachers is a bandage, but the sore never heals, because we have never treated the root cause of our problem. God appears to act and guide from a community base than an individual base.… God’s will can be as simple as understanding our need for belonging … It may be said that God’s will for us is to be intimate with him … for the sake of others.”

Dr. Griffin’s book, though concise (just 100 pages), is one of those books that takes a while to read. It’s like a nutrient rich meal, a little goes a long way—it takes time to digest. But for me that is the mark of a really good book.

Winn loves spending time with his family, collecting baseball cards, watching movies, eating banana sandwiches (now with Splenda), traveling, reading mystery stories, and watching sports. He has received Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts and two Doctor of Ministry degrees: the first was in Biblical Studies; the second at George Fox University, Portland, OR, in Leadership in the Emerging Culture. He serves as an adjunct professor at Bakke Graduate University, Seattle, WA, and he is the author of God’s EPIC Adventure: Changing the Culture by the Story We Live and Tell (Harmon Press: 2007).

Happy 1-1-11

While not the first English Bible to appear, the KJV was the most successful and long lasting, still dominating some church groups today. We have entered into the 400th year of its publication (1611-2011).

While I have not read this concept anywhere , but surely it is out there somewhere, the NIV plans its release of its newest translation in March 2011, yep, just 400 years after the KJV. Surely, there is some comparison to be made there.

Some will like the new NIV, some will not. What else is new? It seems that we get married to a specific translation and the translation becomes sacred, not the concepts it tries to express. It is helpful to always remember that a translation is an interpretation, yes, even the King James Version.

In this New Year, why not be a reader of the world’s greatest story in celebration of 400 years of being the story in a language of the common folk which, incidentally, opened the doors for the story to be translated into every language of the world, which has not yet been accomplished, but groups like Wycliffe have a mission to do so.

It’s been busy the last couple of weeks. I have had two cataract surgeries. The second one was a bit tougher than the first one. I can see colors that I had lost from my vision. I can see clearly now at a distance.

I am writing also writing two chapters for an upcoming book from the Vineyard with a working title: Women in Leadership in the Church: A Kingdom of God Perspective. I am writing “Chapter Three: Why Interpretation is Necessary” and “Chapter Eleven: 1 Corinthians 11:2-16.”

In his book Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation James K. A. Smith (I just love double middle initials because I am blessed with two middle initials, can middle really be two?), discusses the benefits of gutty learning verses heady learning as we experience being kingdom people. Dr. Smith will be the keynote speaker at the Second Annual Society of Vineyard Scholars (SVS) meeting “The Renewal Of Your Mind: Imagining, Describing, and Enacting the Kingdom of God” to be help in Seattle, February 3-5, 2011. You can discover more information here about the SVS meeting.

For those of you not familiar with the idea of gutty learning, you can get a preview by watching the video below. If that whets your appetite, you can purchase his book here. Listen up! It’s not too soon to mark your calendars, tell your social networks like Facebook and Twitter about this upcoming conference and start planning to attend. Let your gut help you make your decision!

These presentations were delivered at Baylor in February 2010.

Give the session you choose a small bit of time to begin.

Prophetic Preaching 1

Click here to view the embedded video.

Prophetic Preaching 2

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Prophetic Preaching 3

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Prophetic Preaching 4

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Here is a set of Podcasts by Walter Brueggemann on Prophetic Preaching that he delivered at Baylor University in February 2010.

There a bit of delay for buffeting at the beginning, be patient.

Prophetic Preaching 1

Prophetic Preaching 2

Prophetic Preaching 3

Prophetic Preaching 4

Different but Equal: Going Beyond the Complementarian/Egalitarian Debate
Derek Morphew
Vineyard International Publishing (December 29, 2008)

In the introduction to his latest book Different But Equal: Going Beyond the Complementarian-Egalitarian Debate, Derek Morphew points out that in recent years some sweeping theological changes have taken place in his thinking regarding the place of women in Christian ministry and leadership. Not changed so much, he writes, “but I would rather say that it has evolved, as I have tried to keep pace with literature on the subject.” With that I can relate. Growing things change—even growing beliefs. To never vary one’s point of view and hold the same position one did a decade or more ago is no virtue; it just means that a person has stopped learning, stopped growing. There’s nothing admirable about an adult still sucking the same decades-old pacifier. At least that’s what I have told myself and after reading Morphew, I felt vindicated. Evolving Evangelical—I think that’s a label I can live with.

Morphew’s developing outlook especially regarded the role of women in official leadership within the church, an issue that has been a perennial hot topic in religious circles for centuries. Conservative groups holding to a strict literal interpretation of scripture often exclude women from ecclesiastical leadership on what they consider “biblical grounds.” In this view women are to “keep silent in the church,” and not exert authority over, but always be in “subjection” to, men, holding that only men lead in the church because they are, well, males. In this view, only men are pastors, teachers, and theologians and women, um, their contribution is appreciated—they can cook the meals at church banquets and clean up the mess—but by and large they are expected to dutifully follow … silently. Women, who are qualified in every respect except gender, are repeatedly passed over in favor of often less qualified men. Early-on I wondered how a person’s sex could possibly make an unqualified male more qualified than a qualified female based solely on gender. I wondered what the wisdom was in subjugating half the population of God’s kingdom? But over time, with the rise of feminism (both secular and evangelical) and the blistering debate about women’s place in the church heated up, I, like Morphew, decided to take a closer and hopefully more objective look at scripture and come to some independent conclusions.

In Different but Equal, Morphew articulates some of the changes that took place in his thinking as he weaved his way through the minefield, re-read more dispassionately those hotly debated gender-specific biblical passages, and considered Jewish customs, Christian theology, and church history to offer this timely view that lies somewhere between excessive “complementarian” (men and women have complementary but different roles and responsibilities in society and religion) and extreme “egalitarian” (in God’s sight all people regardless of sex are equal in every respect) viewpoints. Morphew’s is a position that allows for differing interpetations while preserving unity. He writes: “The arguments between these two positions are too nuanced for the differences to become the basis for a breach in fellowship.”

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Artist Bio
Derek Morphew, Ph.D., University of Cape Town, South Africa is a theologian, pastor, and teacher who has been involved in pastoring and church planting for the past 30 years. He serves on the national leadership team of the Association of Vineyard Churches in South Africa, is the international director of Vineyard Bible Institute, and is a highly respected author and speaker at conferences, churches, and universities.

With the new year often comes a New Year Resolution. These resolutions come in all kinds of forms. We all made them and most of them have been broken. It seems to be an endless cycle. One of the resolutions that followers of Jesus often make is a resolution to read the Bible through during the next year. That too, often falls by the wayside. One of the reasons is the call to move from hardly any consistent reading to a commitment to read for the next 365 days and not only that but read it, the text of Scripture, in a chopped up and very fragmented way. Read Genesis 1-2, then Read Matthew 1 or some other routine that tears at the very core of the storyline of the Bible.

So, here’s an alternative, Read the Bible Without Additives in 100 Days (or 200 or 300). What’s the difference you say? Read it as a story using a text of Scripture that has removed all the chapters and verses. Read it in a more chronological fashion. Set the number of days you want to read. Don’t start on January 1, don’t make it a New Years Resolution, pick another day, be intentional, but start soon.

How do you do this? I have prepared a reading guide using The Books of the BibleTM that you can receive every week that provides a suggestion of reading beginning with Genesis and working your way through Revelation on your own time schedule.

Where can you find this information? Just click on the following link and read the information and signup. It’s free!

Reading the Bible Without Additives in 100 Days

It’s a great story, you should read it. Read it again for the first time.

There are three parts to think about here.

First, there is a video to watch, then there is a new article to read, then there is a final question to think about.

First then, the following presentation about metaphors was delivered by James Geary in July 2009.

Next, read the following article “A journey into my colon — and yours” from the Miami Herald from February 12, 2009 by Dave Barry and watch for the metaphors. BTW: I’ve been there and done that!

Finally, ask yourself how you read the Bible, literally or metaphorically? and Why?

NKJV Greatest Stories of the Bible
Thomas Nelson Publishers (December 1, 2009)

Maybe at this point, a week from Christmas, you have run out of gift ideas. I have a suggestion for that reader on your list: you might want to drop by your local bookstore and see if you can locate a copy of the NKJV Greatest Stories of the Bible, an heirloom-bound anthology of 250 of the most remarkable stories ever told, straight from the Bible.

About this time every year people begin making their lists of New Year’s resolutions. Some have resolved that the time has come for them to finally read the Bible through, cover-to-cover, during 2010. But if life proves anything, most of these resolves will enthusiastically begin on New Year’s morning, breeze through all the electrifying stories in Genesis only to get midway through Exodus and bog down at those often-strange and antiquated laws and ordinances of ancient Israel that stretch for the next 3½ books. By the time they get to the Book of Numbers and all those “begats,” they will, as thousands before them have, renege on their resolution and their Bible will likely end up unopened on their end table for the rest of the year. Thomas Nelson Publishers may have found a solution to this perennial and collective attention deficit disorder in their newly released “Greatest Stories” in which they have compiled the more extraordinary narratives straight from the holy writ (i.e., the New King James Version).

I think we often miss the point that the Bible was originally written for the purpose of being read aloud in congregational settings. As such, one of the major strengths of “Greatest Stories” is its dedication to the Bible’s narrative literary style that makes it worth reading on a regular basis and just as enthralling today as it was to ancient audiences. The book contains action stories like Joshua at Jericho, Gideon’s battle with the Midianites, and David’s duel with Goliath; love stories such as Ruth and Boaz and Mary and Joseph; mysteries like Abraham and Isaac and the theft of the Ark of the Covenant; symbolic fantasy literature as found in the Book of Daniel and Revelation; plus a few of the more salacious stories, including David’s disastrous affair with Bathsheba and Samson’s fatal flirtation with Delilah.

Stretching across both the Old and New Testaments, “Greatest Stories of the Bible” provides readers with the most exciting events in the Bible in a concise, easy-to-navigate, storybook format, taken directly from the New King James Version of the Bible. From Creation to Jesus’ promise to return to Earth again, this attractive book chronicles the failures and triumphs of the most memorable people of the Bible and the events that have captivated the world for centuries.

I can see a variety of purposes this volume can meet: as a gift item for family and personal devotions, a book for the coffee table, an addition to doctor’s (and other) waiting rooms, church libraries, a resource for church classrooms, and much more.

Artist Bio
God. (No photo available)

Is Biblical knowledge declining? Is it important to know the information in the Bible? Here is Dr. Ward Gasque’s take on this topic. W. Ward Gasque, a founding member of the faculty of Regent College, is English Ministries Pastor of Richmond Chinese Alliance Church in British Columbia, Canada.

Virtually everyone who lives in Canada today has access to a Bible in his or her mother tongue. In fact, the Bible has been translated into the languages spoken by 95% of the world’s population. The complete Bible has been translated into 392 languages. The New Testament, into 1,012 languages. 883 additional languages have at least a book or selections from the Bible. That’s a total of 2,287 languages into which at least a portion of the Bible has been translated. And you can go on-line and find out how to obtain the majority of these.

There are countries in the world where it is difficult, but not impossible, to find a copy of the Bible in your mother tongue (for example, in the Muslim world or China). But today the Bible is actually available for sale in nearly every country, with the exception of Saudi Arabia and North Korea. If you are a Christian rather than a Muslim, you can probably get a Bible in Saudi Arabia, too.

92% of households in the USA own at least one copy of the Bible. Of those households that own a Bible, the average number of Bibles is three. The stats are probably similar for Canada. There are more than 200 different translations of the Bible into English, and there are several new translations published every year. I am supposed to be an expert on such things, and yet I walked into a bookshop at the Guildford Cathedral when I was in England this past summer and saw two new translations that I had never seen before.

It seems that every publisher wants to have his own translation of the Bible, and if not a translation at least one or more special interest editions. When I was a teenager, there were a handful of contemporary English translations readily available and a couple of study Bibles. Today we have the choice of literally hundreds of annotated study Bibles – special editions for children, boys, girls, teens, women, men, the military, single adults, students, brides, those recovering from a variety of addictions, etc. There is a Marketplace Bible, The Serendipity Bible, The Twelve Step Bible, One Year Bible, The NIV Study Bible, several NRSV Study Bibles, The TNIV Study Bible in an extremely wide variety of colors and styles, Biblezines, Extreme Teen Bible, The Duct Tape Bible, God’s Little Princess Devotional Bible, and Immerse: A Water Resistant Bible (presumably for Baptists or Scuba Divers), The Maxwell Leadership Bible, The Woman Thou Art Loosed Edition of the NKJV, The Life Application Study Bible, The Archaeological Study Bible, Zondervan’s NIV Recovery Bible and Tyndale’s The Life Recovery Bible, The Learning Bible, a variety of audio and dramatized Bibles, The Access Bible, and so on.

The same surveys that tell us that the average North American home has 3 Bibles suggest that the people who own these Bibles do not read them. About a third of those who own Bibles say that they have read the Bible once in the past week, and the knowledge of the content of the Bible seems to decline year by year. In a Gallup Poll taken in 2000, less than half of the adults interviewed could name one of the Gospels! 37% could name the four Gospels. 42% could name 5 of the Ten Commandments.

I have spent my life teaching Biblical studies at a post-graduate level. In recent years, I have taught primarily non-traditional students, that is, fully employed adults who are pursuing graduate studies without quitting their jobs. I always do a test in and a test out. Out of a class of, say, 20, I normally have only a couple of students who seem to have a good knowledge of the English Bible before taking my course on Paul or the Gospels or whatever I happen to be teaching. The surprising thing is that some of these biblical illiterates are pastors who have been ‘in the ministry’ for years. Thus, ignorance of the Bible is by no means limited to the non-church go-er.

How can it be that we have all these different translations and editions of the Bible to choose from and yet knowledge of the contents of the Bible seems to be in decline, even in churches that regard themselves to be Bible-based? I have not done extensive research on the subject, but I have a few ideas based on a rather wide observation of church life over the past fifty years.

The dominant reason for the decline is probably due to the influence of TV. The average adult watches 4 to 5 hours of TV each week, which does not leave a lot of free time for reading the Bible or any other books. A good place to start would be to turn off the TV (or perhaps cancel cablevision)!

A second influence has been the decline of expository preaching in favor of relational preaching. It is rare to hear of pastors who systematically preach through the key books of the Old and New Testaments these days. Nor is it the custom to read aloud large portions of Scripture as a part of the worship service. As a result people who attend church regularly are exposed to 52 short paragraphs of the Bible at most.

Thirdly, there is the decline of both the Sunday evening service and adult Bible classes. In my youth, most evangelical Christians attended two services and a Bible class on Sunday, and there was a mid-week meeting for prayer and Bible study to boot. Today, the one Sunday service, with its emphasis on ‘worship’ (praise music) and inspirational preaching, has become the general pattern.

Fourthly, even in small groups ‘Bible study’ frequently degenerates into a sharing of feelings about the particular text under discussion, with very little interest in what the text actually says (hence, very little ‘study’).

A fifth influence could be the deluge of contemporary translations and editions. Not only has there been the loss of a common Bible in English – as in the case of the Authorized Version that shaped the English language and literature for three centuries – but people are inclined to think that because they own several Bibles they are better informed than their ancestors, when the opposite is true.

I challenge church leaders to do a critical analysis of their congregation and to devise a plan to reverse the downward spiral of Biblical knowledge among their people. There may be no simple solution, but a recovery of the gift of ‘teacher’ would be a good place to begin.

Well, not all of the church and not really 90 seconds.

Today, I read a blog entry by Diana Butler Bass from Monday July 20, 2009. Entitled “The Real Decline of Churches.” Here’s what she had to say about the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Southern Baptist Convention–the largest and most conservative Protestant denomination in the USA–records a continued decline in baptisms and an increasingly aging membership. The oft-reported number of 18 million members has declined in the last decade to just over 16 million. And, according to journalist Christine Wicker (see her book, The Fall of the Evangelical Nation), the internal number of active members may well be around 5 million people.

Here is a selection of what waits in store for folks in the Montgomery, AL area on their next Sunday visit in the Baptist arena. Of course, not all these churches are not Southern Baptist but they are Baptist in the South. There are others churches listed as well. These entries are as they were sent in to The Paper of Montgomery County.

East Side Baptist Church

• Here I Am and Here I Go

First Baptist Church

• Speaking the Truth in Love Ephesians 4:15

Friendship Baptist Church

• When We Leave Our First Love from Jeremiah 2:1-13

Freedom Baptist Church

• Sick of Home, Homesick and Home” from Luke 15-11-24

Other Churches
Wabash Avenue Presbyterian Church

• You Smell

Browns Valley Christian Church

• Life’s Difficulties Acts 21:17-32

and BTW: The Merry Mates Sunday School class will be having a class party after church.

Whitesville Christian Church

• Hero’s of the Bible

First United Methodist Church

• Second Chances 2nd Cor 5:17 & James 4:14

First Church of the Nazarene

• Wonder (Full) Bread from John 6:35-5

Possible Conclusion: No wonder the church is in decline. With a diet like this, they are most likely suffering spiritual malnutrition.

Download PDF: The Heaven on Earth Light Show

Pentecost is one of the three annual pilgrim festivals in Judaism. The other two being Passover and Tabernacles. Pentecost was when every male Jew was required to proceed on foot to the Temple in Jerusalem. It is also called the Feast of Weeks, because it was held after the counting of seven complete weeks after “the morrow of the Sabbath” when the barley sheaves were offered as recorded in Lev 23:15-20. The festival is then held on the 50th day, i.e. Pentecost. All the pilgrim festivals possessed agricultural significance. So, Pentecost marked the end of the barley and the beginning of the wheat harvest. That is significant to remember. Pentecost as the end of one season and the beginning of another.

Let’s use the metaphor of a computer program to get at the story of the church and the significance of Ascension and Pentecost. In the computer generation, we are constantly offered newer and more featured software solutions, usually designated with version numbers. We are accustomed to installing a new version of software, which often calls for the uninstalling of the older version that we have been successfully using. And sometimes if we buy an upgrade, we have to have the older version around before the newer version will install.

So let’s think of Pentecost, as a newer version of the Church, which came into effect after God added features to his Church program and then rebooted for the new features to take effect. To reboot there is a momentary loss of power in order to regain a new surge of power to run the new features of the program. It is no different at Pentecost where Church Version 4 came into the world. By my calculations we have had:

• Church Version 1: The church in the garden story
• Church Version 2: The church in the Abraham story
• Church Version 3: The church in the Jesus story
• Church Version 4: The church in the Acts story

We are also familiar with the fact that new versions of software disable some former features or present them in a different way. This was certainly the case between Word 2003 and Word in Vista which is the old Word presented in a new metaphor. This same concept is true for Pentecost. To understand the concept of Pentecost in Acts 2, we must first look at Acts 1.

There are many movies that begin with a dramatic sequence of events that sets the plot in motion and sets up the key characters, conflicts, and themes that will drive the rest of the story. Ascension and Pentecost serve that function in Acts as a telling and tantalizing beginning that makes us realize that for all the drama of the resurrection, there are more extraordinary events still to come. However, most modern Christians have not paid close attention to the dramatic structure of Acts. Ever watched a James Bond movie?— the sequenced sets up at the beginning of the films, which often look like they have nothing to do with the actual film, were setups for the audience, promising even more action as the movie moves along.

The first section of Acts provides the main shape and themes of the whole book that is to come. Luke’s Acts could be entitled “the heaven on earth light show.” Acts is about what it looks like when the light of heaven comes to earth, (heaven meaning the place where God dwells now, not the place where we in the West think we go when we die). Acts portrays what it looks like when the rule of God comes to earth. Acts demonstrates what it is like when heaven and earth come together as one, a foretaste of the end of time when heaven and earth are married for all eternity.

Luke writes:

In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

So when they met together, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

In the first few sentences of Acts, Luke sketches many of themes that will flow out in the full telling of the story of Acts. We must constantly remember that the story of Acts is all about Jesus. While the first name ascribed to it was “the Acts of the Holy Spirit,” it was such because of Jesus. Yes, it is true Jesus had done all that he is going to do while in his earthly form living in Israel for some 38 or 39 years. The Gospel of Luke, as well as the other Gospels, tells the story of the ministry of Jesus doing and teaching the Kingdom of God, and now the Acts is a continuation of the story of Jesus doing and teaching the Kingdom of God through his disciples empowered by the same Spirit that empowered Jesus all along.

In much of USAmerican church theology, the Kingdom of God is seen as the place out there in time and space where God lives, a place where, if we become followers of Jesus, we get to go when we die. The word heaven, that place where we go when we die, has become the synonym for the Kingdom of God. Or, as Augustine brought to the fore, the Kingdom is another way of saying Church. And in good Western fashion of being colonial, we then take on the job of extending or building the Kingdom which is simply referring to the building of the church. This is pure and simple wrongheaded theology.

The whole book of Acts is about the Kingdom of God. From the first page to the last page:

• For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit (Acts 1.5).
• For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. 31 He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and without hindrance! (28.31)

So the Kingdom of God frames the book of Acts.

In our Western telling and living of the story of God, we have forgotten the Israel dimension (Church: Version 2) within the story of God. We are often given to tell the story of God as:

• God created humankind
• humankind sinned
• God sent Jesus to rescue humankind

By telling the story this way, we have excluded a large part of the story which is found in the Old Testament. We must remember that God called Abraham and Sarah and their family as the means to rescue the world so that God could come into his creation as Israel’s solo representative in order to secure that rescue. The identity of Jesus is formed as the focal point of the whole story of the Old Testament. What Jesus did was what God called Abraham and Sarah and their family to do in the first place. The tension in the story of Israel in the Old Testament is that she knows that she is the bearer of the story of the Creator God, but seemingly cannot, as she stands, actually accomplish those promises to their fullest extent, although on occasion she comes close. That version of Church did not have all the features necessary in place to perform its ultimate mission, the blessing of all the nations. The tension was to be resolved by a newer version of Church with Jesus and his disciples and continue to be resolved by the Pentecost version of the church.

In Acts 1.6, the disciples inquired of Jesus, “Is this the time that you are going to restore the Kingdom to Israel?” The answer is yes, but it is not like you thought it was going to be. It would not be in a political sense as Israel thought it would be, when the world would bow at her feet. But, it would be different because of the newer features of the Church, all the world would bow at the feet of King Jesus and confess that he is Lord.

This surely raised the question then: “What will the Kingdom be like?” In the new version of the Church, everyone will have the opportunity to be empowered by the Spirit to be witnesses of the Kingdom Rule of God in this present age. What kind of witness? one might inquire. Not a witness about a personal relationship that one has encountered and everyone else should encounter it also, but a witness that the King of the world has been enthroned and we are to express what that King’s world is like. It’s a subversive story, meant to change the cultures that we live in.

The next part of the story that Luke shares is about the Ascension. What is the Ascension all about? Part of the difficulty about talking about the Ascension is due to the mental furniture that we have about heaven and earth. We believe that earth is here and heaven is out there somewhere, usually a long way away. This is the result of our Greek thinking, rather than the Bible’s way of thinking, which was and is Hebraic. Our imagination is stuck in our Western worldview about heaven and earth and we try to talk about the Ascension within that framework. So, we think Jesus went up away from the disciples to heaven. The story of the Ascension, as every good first century Jew would know, was a way of thinking about heaven and earth that we Westerners think and reflect from a different worldview. The story of God presents a different worldview about heaven and earth. Heaven and earth overarch and interlock with each other. Heaven and earth were always made to be joined to one another. At his Ascension, Jesus did not go away to some sphere not available to humankind, because heaven and earth really do interlock and overlap. The Creator, the Savior, and the Empowerer are all right here and now. When we minister, heaven crosses that thin vale and what is there in heaven is now present on earth. When we pray for a sick person and healing occurs, heaven has been revealed on earth. When we feed a poor person or better yet when we work on the systemic evil of poorness, heaven has revealed itself on earth.

It is true that heaven is God’s space, earth is our space. However, they are not so separated as the Westerner has come to believe. The Jew believed that there was a place where heaven and earth became one. It was the Temple in Jerusalem. For them, the Temple was where the sphere of heaven, the dwelling of God, and sphere of earth, the dwelling place of humankind, came together. So when a Jew was in the Temple, he or she was still on earth, but at the same time he or she was in the place where the sphere of God actually intersected with earth and at that moment in time that Jewish person was believed to be in the presence of God.

The Temple was not a place where one ran to find safety from the pressures of the world. The Temple was the symbol of what God was going to do for the whole world in his newer versions of the Church.

Heaven and earth are joined together in Jesus and demonstrated as such on the day of Pentecost. The new creation embodied in the risen Jesus, empowered by the Spirit, is now available in the new version of the Church via Pentecost.

Acts is about Jesus and the Church as the true Temple. Paul picks this line of thinking up in the book of Corinthians where he tells the Corinthians that they are the Temple of God. Jesus is surely the place where heaven and earth came together in perfect harmony. And in his Ascension we have a piece of the new earth now in heaven. And in Pentecost we have the power of heaven now on earth. The Ascension and Pentecost join heaven and earth. This joining is the means by which God’s glory will eventually fill the whole earth. The good news here is that we get to play a part in this ongoing story. Luke then tells us in Acts what it will look like when the glory of the Lord begins to fill the earth.

We must gain a new imagination about heaven and earth. We must think about heaven as the control room for earth. We must stop thinking about heaven as a detached-from-earth place to which we go, so we don’t have to have anything to do with the earth.

In today’s world, we are faced with a false antithesis of Deism and Theocracy. The Deism of the Enlightenment Project or as some may call it, Epicureanism, which was a philosophy advanced by Epicurus that considered happiness, or the avoidance of pain and emotional disturbance, to be the highest good and that advocated the pursuit of pleasures that can be enjoyed in moderation.

Deism/ Epicureanism believes and acts out from its mindset that God is upstairs. He’s a long way away from us. It believes and practices that religion is about how we in private get in touch with a far-away-distant God to relate to him, but religion has nothing to do with the real world in which we live because that world is about being happy by avoiding pain and emotional disturbances thus becoming happy in our pursuit of pleasures. This is the story that USAmerica is built on and the story that many in the church think is the Christian story.

Or, Theocracy, which is a government ruled by or subject to religious authority, which believes and acts out, like the fundamentalist of all religious parties, that we are going to force you into submitting to our way of thinking and believing about God. You are an infidel because you don’t believe like we believe. Islamic fundamentalism, with this mindset, simply wants to kill you if you don’t believe about God in the way that they believe about God. Or, in Christian fundamentalism, you simply get to go to hell if you don’t believe in God the way in which they do.

The world, who the Church is supposed to reach with the good news of the Gospel, on the other hand, looks at those two stories and says, No! to theocracy! If that is what it looks like for God to run the show, we would rather have our Deism. Incidentally, the belief in Deism is one of the reasons why there is a constant move to keep God out of public life because he is a private God.

However, theocracy changes according to which theos you believe in. If you believe the wrong theos, in a big bad God who is ready to kill you for non belief or to send you to hell because you are evil and sinful, then you need to change your theos! What if we came to believe in a theocracy that is centered around the person Jesus? How would that change the way in which we live and move and have our being? The Kingdom of God is about theocracy. It’s about saying to the world—this is what it looks like when God is running the public show and is not scurried off into some private chamber where folks practice private rituals.

What would it really look like if God was running the show? Showing how God runs the show was and is the ministry of Jesus. Here’s a leper, I will heal him. Here’s a prostitute, she can travel with me. Here are those without food, I will feed them. Here are the rich, I will show them how to use their financial gains. The book of Acts demonstrates what it is really like when the Creator God is running the show through those empowered by the Spirit and are running the newer version of Church.

The Ascension of Jesus into heaven allows him to empower and send his people with a new version of the Church into the world to demonstrate what it’s like to live in a theocracy where the true God is ruling.

For a moment, let’s move to the end of the story and say a word about the second coming, which is the final act in which heaven and earth will come together for eternity and replace this fallen heaven and earth. Jesus is not coming back to take us home, as so many in the church believe, but he is coming back to establish his rule and reign by transforming the old heaven and earth into a new heaven and earth. The point then of the second coming is not to take people away from the earth, but to restore the earth to its garden shape. That is the focused goal of the story of God.

Ascension and Pentecost set up the movement of the book of Acts as the continued preaching of the Kingdom unhindered and set in motion a series of developments that culminate in a crisis. The entire audience at Pentecost is Jewish; they are from every nation under the sun, so to speak. That is a hint of the magnitude of what will happen as the story unfolds. The Jews, who had taken God for themselves, will now be asked to take their God to the Greeks and the tension was for the Greeks to Judaize themselves to receive the gospel. Peter’s vision at the house of Simon the tanner, an occupation considered to be unclean by Jews of the day, suggested that God was up to something. Later in the story in Acts, after Paul’s first trip abroad, the powers that be in Jerusalem were concerned because their form of viewing God was being expanded beyond their ability to accept. Clean and unclean had been redefined by the great creative programmer in this newer version of the Church. Paul’s message was that everyone was welcome at the table to find and fellowship with the one Creator God. The only entry to that fellowship was Jesus, not, Jesus plus boundary markers created by the prevailing culture.

You should come to Acts 2 with the theological construct of Acts 1, i.e., that is how heaven and earth are brought together. Then, the Acts story of Pentecost becomes a counter-Temple statement. What was only possible to experience in the previous version of the Church, God and earth intersect in the Temple, is now going to be different. In the Temple you experienced the presence of God here on earth. In the new Temple, the new version of the Church, the community of faith is equipped and empowered to carry the glory of God into the world. When the church goes out into the world empowered by the Spirit, she is a sign, a foretaste, if you will, of the flooding of God’s glory into all the world. The church has to catch the vision, that in her, Jesus is truly the hope of glory.

Pentecost is a thoughtful reminder that empowers us to cultivate the garden, to rebuild the ruins of our world by creating a new culture of life, not just condemning the present one we are living in. Our job is not to be only a critic of culture, not only to copy or consume culture. Our job is to be creators of culture, i.e., make something of the world in light of the story that may have taken us by surprise. This is not an either/or way of life. We do not create out of nothing, we must take these gestures, i.e., critiquing, copying, and consuming as creative tools to bring cultural activity into our story. Poking holes in every cultural happening produces in us the inability to be able to see the good and redeem it. Remember, God created and saw his creation as “very good.” And even after sin entered into the picture, he never changed his mind. Pentecost restores us to creativity. In addition, Pentecost was a way of suggesting that every present human language and cultural form is capable of bearing the good news of the kingdom.

Pentecost can be understood as the reversal of Babel. God’s response to Babel was to reboot humankind once again and select one group of people to be his people. Their job was to bless the world. Over the years they took the message of the kingdom, i.e., to demonstrate, among all the nations, what the God of the universe was really like, But alas, they turned the message inward and not outward. They made the windows of their lighthouse into mirrors. God’s gift on Pentecost expanded the people of God to demonstrate that his work would no longer be contained within one cultural group. It was the gift to the world. We in USAmerica often make the mistake of thinking that the culture we have created in which the church was central and the chaplain of society, should simply send that cultural manifestation of Christianity abroad and let the world copy what we have, regardless of their own culture. We may have repeated the sin of Israel and turned our own windows into mirrors. Pentecost makes the good news of the kingdom available to every group, to create a way of being Christian while creating within their culture a new culture of being truly human.

So what? Good question. God had added some new features to his program of the church. The church had been rebooted at Pentecost and the newer functions are now available to everyone. We need to think of Pentecost within the structure of where it was presented within the larger story of God. Together with the Ascension, Pentecost provided a bit of heaven come to earth as the church was and is empowered to take the message to the streets of the world. That Pentecost power encounter is still being offered today. Read the story again for the first time and discover how your community of faith and your participation within it can play a part in the greatest story ever told. Go ahead, join the heaven and earth light show. It’s an adventure beyond belief.

The following is an interview of N.T. Wright by Dr. Tod Bolsinger on a variety of topics. Dr Tod Bolsinger is Senior Pastor at the San Clemente Presbyterian Church and Tom Wright is Bishop of Durham for the Church of England.

Enjoy!

N.T. Wright on Heaven

N.T. Wright on the Postmodern Movement

N.T. Wright on Satan and Evil

N.T. Wright on Debate about Homosexuality

N.T. Wright on Women in Ministry

N.T. Wright on Filming the End Times

N.T. Wright on the Authority of the Bible

N.T. Wright on Darwin

N.T. Wright Responds to John Piper

A bit of the Beatles wrapped up in a bit of Chick-fil-a Americana and other tunes by Tim Hawkins.

Then, there is Hawkins on Corporate Worship Songs.

Finally, Hawkins on Bible Verses. Versitius can get you into trouble. There is a wonderful Southern lady about half way in who is listening who doesn’t think this is funny. Could have been my mom!

In USAmerica, today is voting day. Regardless of who wins, we are again presented with living in an USAmerican cultural story that will either be led one way or another by the upcoming government. Many USAmerican followers of Jesus simply follow and live in that story without asking if there is another story that they should be living into. Many simply believe that the USAmerican story is the Christian story. The hybrid story is so well mixed one can’t tell where the Christian story is and where the USAmerican story is.

It seems to me a good time to review what story we are choosing to live into. So in the few words below, in the tradition of Reader’s Digest and the art of Modernity’s reductionism, here is a synopsis from my book God’s EPIC Adventure (318-319) of the proposed story of God from Scripture.

The drama begins in Act 1 of his play in the Genesis account of creation, “there was a time when God spoke all things into existence.” He created humankind and gave them free run of the most beautiful garden, which was his created world. But, in Act 2, as the crown of the Creator’s creation, humankind made a decision to worship what God had created rather than worshiping the Creator. What God had created perfect, humankind had flawed and the true humanity of the Garden became distorted and their view of God became dimly lit. The missionary God sought his created beings out and banned them from his Garden.

Act 3 continues the story, which is the content of the rest of the Old Testament, by God’s creation of a people whose vocation would be to become the “light of the world” so the pagan societies in which she lived could see what God was really like. Israel’s creation came with four great acts of God. He first delivered/redeemed them from their bondage in Egypt in the great act of the Exodus. He took a group of slaves from the slave market of the day and freed them. The next great act of God for his people was the giving of a national charter, a Covenant, so that they would know what it was like to live out their vocation as the people of God. Next, he made them into a kingdom where there vocation moved from nation to individual, which looked forward to a day in which a new kingdom with a truly human being would inaugurate God’s Kingdom here on earth. In the last scenes of Act 3, we find Israel in Exile and a short return from Exile. She had all but lost her vocation of being God’s “light to the world.” In the physical return from Exile, spiritual return did not occur. The Temple rebuilt did not return to its former glory which produced a conception of life that they were continually living in exile waiting for the one promised by the prophets who would bring them their freedom.

Act 4 tells the story of Jesus who stepped into human history, in the fullness of time. In his ministry, he came proclaiming that the Kingdom of God was present in this Present Evil Age. A truly human being, as humans were intended to be, had arrived as God honored his promises to this people. Four different writers tell us four different stories about the events of the life of Jesus. His message: “Repent and Believe!” The first hearers heard him say in this message that they should stop living in their present stories of military means, quietism, or their compromising ways with the present powers and begin living in a different story. He demonstrated for his followers, then and now, in his words what an authentic disciple should be like and demonstrated in his works of healing the sick, casting out demons, and raising the dead what actions his authentic disciples should follow.

Moving into the final act of God’s EPIC Adventure (Act 5, Scene 1-6), we find the creation of the church by the Spirit as God’s new humanity. Like Israel before her, this new community of the Spirit was and is to be the light to the world by the releasing of gracelets given by the Spirit to help followers of Christ accomplish his mission.

We, as Christ-followers, now live in the scene between the sixth scene of the early church and the final scene yet to be written. Out mission is to discover our part in God’s EPIC Adventure and imagine and improvise how we live our part out for his sake, our sake, and the sake of the world. There are some clues about how this grand narrative is going to end, but they are only clues. We are truly God’s new humanity, living as followers of Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit to be effective agents of the Kingdom in this Present Evil Age.

One of the goals of worship is intimacy, which means: belong to or revealing one’s deepest nature to another. Below are some thoughts about a possible Sunday Worship Journey using the Old Testament Tabernacle as a visual.

The Tabernacle
The Tabernacle was a picture for Old Testament Israel of the centrality of God. God was their God, not one who was “out there” somewhere. He was centrally located. Each Jewish person having access to him. The church has often allegorized this picture giving each part, each color, even each thread some meaning which departed from the text. Understanding that Israel thought in pictures, we are left to interpret what these pictures meant to the worship of Israel.

Outside: The Call to Worship
People tend to come to a corporate worship service with lots on their minds. As an example, if they are new parents, they have had to hassle with getting the kid or kids ready to come to church. If they are older, they may have a marriage relationship problem, or a kid problem, or a health problem, or a financial problem. You name it they may have it. They are effectively “not there.” They are “outside.” As a worship team it is important to recognize this and call them to worship. This is an invitation given directed toward the people of God as they have gathered. Acknowledging that we have all come from different places physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially, and socially may alert the church that we are all here in the “same boat” as it were. Songs like “Come, let us worship and bow down…” or “Don’t you know it’s time to praise the Lord…,” or many others, are calls made to the people of God to begin the process of corporate worship. Scripture readings and the selection of songs for this part of the service is extremely important. This “call” sets the tone for the whole corporate gathering.

Outer Court: Engagement (drawing near)
The worship leader (team) now begins the process of connecting the people who have been called to worship with God. Songs which express love, adoration, praise, jubilation, intercession, or prayer are often conducive for this part of the musical worship. It is important for us to journey toward God in worship. It is not useful to parachute directly into his presence. We need the process so we are prepared to have an audience with the creator of all the universe. It was in the outer court that folks gathered and celebrated the forgiveness of sins.

Holy Place. Expression (physical and emotional)
Here we praise God for who he is. We begin to use more intimate language. We may even become animated or quiet and still. Inside the Holy Place there were three items:

The Showbread. Among the Jews was generally made of wheat (Ex. 29.2). The showbread consisted of twelve loaves of unleavened bread prepared and presented hot on the golden table every Sabbath. They were square or oblong, and represented the twelve tribes of Israel. The old loaves were removed every Sabbath, and were to be eaten only by the priests in the court of the sanctuary (Ex. 25:30; Lev. 24:8; 1 Sam. 21:1-6; Matt. 12:4).

The Lampstand. The tabernacle was a tent without windows, and thus artificial light was needed. This was supplied by the candlestick.

The Incense. Incense is seen by other authors of Scripture as prayer as in the beginning of Psalm 141.1-2, Revealtion 5.8; 8.3-4.

O LORD, I call to you;
     come quickly to me. Hear my voice when I call to you.
May my prayer be set before you like incense;
     may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice
(Psalm 141.1-2).

And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints (Rev. 5.8).

Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar before the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel’s hand (Rev. 8.3-4).

It seems to me that these items may had suggested for Israel the part playing that is involved between God and his worshipers. Showbread and light demonstrate what God is for his people. Incense may have been understood, because of the simple act of breath, as the breathing in of God’s presence.

Holy of Holies: Visitation (Giving time for God to visit)
The Holy of Holies (only entered once a year by the High Priest) was the arena which housed the Ark of the Covenant. It was a perfect cube. It was the place of God’s residence on earth as Israel understood it. There was a veil which separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies. In the New Testament this was torn from top to bottom as referenced in Mark 15.38. This implies that all (because we are all priest) have the right to access the presence of God. It is the part of worship that brings us into the very presence of God. When we arrive, we need go no further. The worship (leader) team should be especially sensitive of when this point has been arrived at and stop (even though there may be other songs in the music set). To finish a set may be a high priority for the worship leader or team but the music is only a vehicle to bring us to the presence of God, when we arrive, it may not be needed any longer. We may wait while God communicates to us. We are not waiting for God to make us his mind to visit us. This is often implied by the suggestion that “…now we should wait on the Lord.” I believe that we should train the worshipers that this is a time when God will move in their lives. He may want to speak to us corporately. He may want to speak to us individually. He may want to bring salvation. He may want to heal. He may want to deliver. He may want to…

Response
There is a phase of worship which is produced by being in the presence of God. It is response. We have received, we respond by giving (money, love, hospitality, information, etc.). It may be very appropriate to continue the worship by “receiving” the offering. It occurs to me that it may not be appropriate to bring people to a place of intimacy with God in which he is visiting and then immediately take a break. This would be like making love with a spouse and building to a chanchedo of intimacy and one says to the other, “let’s stop and get a cup of coffee.”

We must create a way for the people of God to come to intimacy, receive, and then give before we break the moment with fellowship, announcements, etc. A finishing song of celebration often allows the worshipper to explode with expression and produces a more productive time to break, if breaks are necessary at all.

Heightened Reception
The journey can continue with the teaching of the word. The spirit of the worshipper is now refreshed by the presence of God. Now we can listen, learn, and interact with his life changing word.

All Is Well That Ends Well
The end of the corporate service is as important as the beginning. Ministry time may be appropriate. Whatever the case, we must summarize and send the people of God on their way with some exhortation. In a traditional church one might sing “Onward Christian Soldiers” rather than “Holy, Holy, Holy” at this point. If we just close with no instruction about what has occurred or what may be expected, with no exhortation for life situations, it leaves a somewhat tainted taste in the mouths of the worshipper who may not be so anxious to return at the next appointed corporate worship time.