In week four of LifeSign’s “Jesus vs. the Pharisees” series, we look at a key moral distinction between Jesus and the Pharisees. The Pharisees understood morality in terms of moral cleanliness, basically avoiding things and people who were unclean for the sake of honoring God. Jesus understood morality in terms of spiritual purity, having a heart purified of idols so that we can live simply to love God and other people. Please subscribe to the podcast! … Read more
Let’s say you’re a rabbi in 1st century Palestine, and you’ve heard of this really hip new rabbi named Jesus that everybody’s talking about, so you invite him to your house for a dinner party in his honor. Because you’re a generous person, you invite everybody in town to come and have some food, but then this trouble-making sinful woman comes in and she gets really intimate with Jesus in a completely inappropriate way, kissing his feet and rubbing them... Read more
Our LifeSign “Jesus vs. the Pharisees” sermon series continued last weekend with their debate about the Sabbath. The Pharisees were going about policing their fellow Jews for violation of the Sabbath on the basis of defending God’s honor. Jesus tells the Pharisees that “the Sabbath was made for humanity not humanity for the Sabbath.” The Sabbath is very important, but it’s been turned into poison when we make it a duty instead of an invitation. If you haven’t done so... Read more
I’ve decided to keep the sermon podcast going for Lent. We are doing a sermon series at our LifeSign contemporary service called “Jesus vs. the Pharisees: A Debate on Holiness.” For the first week, we’re looking at Matthew 9:9-13, where Jesus calls Matthew and goes to a party at his house. When the Pharisees criticize this, he tells them, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy not sacrifice.'” But were the Pharisees really wrong to criticize Jesus? Matthew... Read more
One of the most important and often neglected threads of the gospel stories of Jesus is the ongoing debate that he has with the Pharisees about the nature of holiness. It’s very important for us to recognize that the Pharisees represent the very best that we could do without Jesus. They were genuinely trying with all their hearts to follow God, but God wanted better for his people which is why Jesus had to come. The forty days of Lent... Read more
This was the final sermon of our Wrestling series a couple of weekends ago. We went through a whole lot of scripture to try to understand where the Bible is coming from about sex. Paul provides us with three excellent principles for sexual ethics in 1 Corinthians 7: 1) “free[dom] from anxieties” (love of self), 2) “promot[ing] good order” (love of neighbor), 3) “unhindered devotion to the Lord” (love of God). So we looked at how these principles applied in... Read more
There’s a movement within United Methodism called “Biblical Obedience” whose name itself is offensive to many Methodists because it advocates full inclusivity for LGBT people. I’ve already written about my understanding of what the Bible actually teaches on this issue, but what I really want to contemplate today is the question of obedience itself, setting aside the LGBT issue for a moment. The most radical example of Biblical obedience I can think of (other than Jesus’ journey to the cross)... Read more
I think that the reason many Christians can’t understand each other, particularly with regard to how we read the Bible, may end up boiling down to different personality types. I am an INFP, according to the Myers-Briggs system. I would tend to call it the personality type of a poet, or an English major, or perhaps a romantic. According to the Internet, people like me “do not like to deal with hard facts and logic” and we “don’t understand or... Read more
At this Wednesday night’s Ecclesia National Gathering plenary session, Mandy Smith used a great metaphor that captures what irks me about the attitude toward Bible study I have seen at times in conservative evangelicalism. She was preaching from Hebrews 4:12-13, which says, “Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before... Read more
I’ve been enjoying the stimulating conversation at the Ecclesia National Gathering in DC. Scot McKnight started things off with a polemic against the “skinny-jeans evangelicals” (like me, sometimes) who tend to define the kingdom of God as happening “when good people do good in the public sector for the common good.” I think his polemic is legitimate. There is a furious backlash among evangelicals of my generation against the culture wars, which can turn us into generic “social justice” activists... Read more
Mercy Not Sacrifice
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