To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion.
Posts tagged Jesus
Elect Exiles Part 1
01 Peter is wrote to the elect exiles a the churches in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. While one could easily find those geographic locations on a map the real mystery is what Peter meant by elect exiles is much more complicated. There is a lot of controversy surrounding election and predestination. Many argue that God does not predestine those who are to be saved, that we have an element of free will to choose our eternal destiny. Others would argue that we are not free by any means, and that the will of God crushes us into conformity with him. This article will explore the idea of election, the implications of election, and who the elect exiles really are.
Elect
One of the best things about the bible is that it includes several very intimate stories about conversion. Men who were not running toward God are abruptly turned around. The question of election can be answered in part through looking at the details of these conversions. The first conversion that we will look at can be found in Genesis 12.
Abram was a man of Ur. We don’t know much about Abram’s life in Ur. We know that he had possessions and some family, and that he lived in Ur. However we do not know much else about him. Abram heard God’s call on his life and packed up and left his first life behind to chase the glory of God in the wilderness. It was in the wilderness that the Lord continued to bless Abram. We have no indication of how Abram came to hear of God. We also have no indication that Abram believed in God before he was called. Much of Abram’s life suggests that he did not know the laws of God well. However in Genesis 12 God calls to Abram.
In Luke 5, Jesus Christ called his first disciples. He did not give them a convincing gospel message. He didn’t present apologetics. God performed a miracle and they followed him. Now these men were not the smartest, most handsome, or richest men. They were the lowest of the low in many respects. They did not take a lot of time to calculate a response or consider what they should do, they simply jumped out of the boats and followed his call.
In Acts 9 we read of a man named Saul who was trying to destroy the church until he encountered a man named Jesus. This Jesus did not walk along side him but appeared to him with such a light that it blinded him for several days. Jesus called to Paul and told him to end his persecution of the church and instead turn to faith in him. Saul, who knew the Old Testament backwards and forwards required a visit of Christ, quite literally.
Exiles
Salvation is not stagnant. Salvation is gloriously invigorating. In each of these three cases the salvation of the Lord made something happen to these men that caused them to move about. Abram became Abraham and he traveled from Sumer to Egypt and eventually to Palestine. His family would spend many hundreds of years traveling from Palestine to Egypt and then back again. There they would become the nation of Israel. They were God’s people.
Those first few disciples ultimately grew to a group of twelve and traveled all over Israel ministering with Christ. Then Christ died and they scattered, only to be gathered again when Christ rose from the dead. After that they congregated in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came and they were each given different languages to speak. From their some stayed in Jerusalem, but some would go as far as India to preach Christ.
New From the Dispersion
0Hey guys,
So we have released an e-book! If you remember our Weeding series from last year then you will want to pick up this e-book. We have released all the articles combined together on the Kindle. This makes for a quick read and it is only a dollar on the Kindle store. The Kindle store is available in app form on the Ipod, Ipad, and desktop computers. All proceeds go back to the Dispersion, helping us run the website and expand into future projects.
Thank you for your support.
Peace in Christ,
Jack
Love and Church
0As I was reading through a blog by Grace to You Ministries internet minister I began to think about some of the conventions of ministry. Having been close to many different churches I can tell you that no two churches work the same. If you went into the strictest of ritualistic congregations you would see subtle differences in how they “do church” from the language spoken to the edition of the hymnals. Many religions have a strict ritualistic approach to worship, but what we find in the New Testament is a collaboration of different parts of what most of us would call church into what the church actually is. There is a pretty good list in 1 Corinthians 13. Paul speaks about speaking in tongues, prophesying, understanding, encouragement, and singing songs as a part of the practice of the church. Elsewhere Paul will speak about defending and contending for the gospel, but this is a pretty exhaustive list. Theologians like Martin Luther would add administering the sacraments, like communion or baptism, as a part of what the church does. However the back bone of the church, the center of the church, is love. Paul compares one of the greatest obligations of the church, to suffer for Christ, unworthy in comparison to love. “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:3
With love at the backbone of church things get complicated. Love is not formulaic. Love for Christ is a supernatural thing. It is beyond us to completely understand the love that Christ has for us, but it is that love that we are called to emulate. That is at the very core of church. This creates a host of problems in and of itself, but Paul in 1 Corinthians when Paul defines what love is. It is an incredible list of impossible standards, however these standards are vital. What Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 13:4-13 is that things like patience, rejoicing in truth, and enduring all things are not on the same level as preaching truth, prophesying or speaking in tongues. He is saying that they are much more important.
There will probably be many hours spent in 2012 with pastors wondering how they should “do church” and most of them will approach it like they approach a machine. They will try to work out inefficiencies or design systems that make the whole thing require less energy to run. However God puts systems, structures, and obligations aside for love. Love is the greatest thing to have at a church service. Pastors who worry about the effectiveness of their preaching should pray for Christ’s love to be reflected in their sermons. Children’s workers should pray for Christ’s patience. Those who minister to those in hospitals should pray for Christ’s endurance. All of these things are a reflection of his love.
The question for many churches, when it really boils down to it, is not about logistics, but about love. You will always run out of buildings, or have one that is breaking down. That’s just the way the world works. Do you have love? Do you have the love of Christ? Do you consider love before you consider the other parts of your service? At the core of the church should be the love of Christ. At the core of our understanding and service to the church should be the love of Christ.
Simplicity and Complexity
0Football players watch tape and preachers read the bible. The “game tape” of a teacher comes from studying great theological resources and studying the glory of God in the bible. Perhaps the hardest thing about Christianity is that God has called Christians to preach and teach to each other. Preachers and teachers are called to teach others who are called to teach others who are called to teach others. God calls some to be over tens, and some over tens of thousands. Wherever you are called you are called to preach and teach well. This puts an incredible amount of pressure on teachers to know and study the word so that when they teach they are not allowing bad teaching to trickle down.
We live in a culture of over-production. Our texts are short, our tweets are short, and our attention spans are short. Teachers of Christianity may sometime react to this wave of inattentiveness by modifying the message of Christianity into something much simpler than it is. The thinking is that we should mold the message of Christ into something that is easy to be heard by the person we are talking to. We develop messages that speak to parishioners but do not preach the harder things of the faith. (more…)
When We Find We Don’t Agree
0What kind of books to do you look at when you go to the bookstore or are surfing the web? Are they by the same author or come from the same publisher? Do they reflect the same theological perspective? A great book, that is full of great theological understanding, is a great resource to have. However what happens when a book isn’t as full of good theology or doesn’t line up with all of our views? Reading a book that is bad can be very beneficial for seeking great understanding and perspective on what God is calling us to as Christians. Below is a list of ideas on why and how to read a bad book.
Famous Authors
While a lot of people decry the end of Christendom, there is a powerful Christian culture that still exists. Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life is the second best selling book in history, only to be outdone by the Bible. Books by men like Joel Osteen, Rob Bell, and Bill Hybels have sold very well through mostly Christian veins. Rob Bell’s books ask a lot of questions about classic Christianity and his ideas are very prevelant. So what if a brother or sister in Christ, who is not necessarily as solid in the word as you are, asks about Rob Bell’s ideas? Would you be able to respond following the scripture? Reading books that are by authors that we are not used to reading can help us respond to their ideas and contend and defend the gospel from bad teaching. (more…)
Why Are We Christians?
01 Peter was written to a church in turmoil over persecution. People were coming to Christ and facing extreme pressure because of that decision. This happens today in places like the Middle East where converts to Christianity can be stoned to death if they don’t renounce their faith and turn back to Islam. Imagine the church that you go to loosing members weekly not to sin or to moving, but to arrest and execution. I imagine that in many of the congregations we attend that would not go over well and probably lead to violence on behalf of the congregation. However what if you didn’t have the hope of attack, voting, or protesting? What if you simply had no hope but to wait. Where is your hope? Well of course your hope would be in Jesus Christ, and that is where Peter starts.
Elect Exiles
I am sure that when people came to Christ they didn’t start out thinking, “Well my family will hate me, my boss will fire me, my spouse will leave me, my boss will fire me, and I might get arrested or beat up in the streets.” While they might have had an inclination of the understanding of the persecution they faced, those kinds of realities are always hard to understand unless you are in the middle of them. In 1 Peter 1:1-2 Peter looks at why they are suffering and what it means to be a Christian. The first place that Peter goes is the faithfulness of salvation that God gives to the church and the spreading of the church through the world. God has called all believers to be believers, and it is his plan to spread us out, through persecution at times.
Foreknowledge of God the Father
Believe it or not when you were saved you did not surprise God. God knew that you were going to be saved. Not only did God know that you were going to be saved, but he orchestrated events so that you would be saved by grace. This is helpful to remember because even in the hardest times in our lives we know that God has ordained all these things to help us grow closer to him.
In the Sanctification of the Spirit
Not only did God save us and know that he was going to, he is still with us. Sanctification is the idea that God is with us, refining us to be more like him. The Spirit of God is with us in hope and truth. The Spirit guides us as we grow in faith. The Spirit is also with us when we experience persecution and pain because we are in Christ.
For the obedience of Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood
We are saved according the foreknowledge of God and we walk with the Spirit in hope and truth, growing in holiness, which is obedience to Christ. The blood of Christ is sprinkled upon us, giving us righteousness. Of course this is not a literal sprinkling of blood. It is the sprinkling of the sacrifice of Christ. In Matthew 26:26-29 Jesus tells his disciples that the wine they were drinking was representative of his blood which is poured out for them. The way that we are saved according to the foreknowledge of God, the sanctification of the Spirit, to the obedience of Christ through the sacrifice of Christ.
May grace and peace be multiplied to you
Because we have been saved according to the foreknowledge of God, and are being sanctified by the Spirit, to the obedience of Christ through the sacrifice of Christ, we can cling to grace and peace in any circumstance.
1 Peter Intro
0Chances are that if you are in church for any amount of time then you will have hard news to give to a fellow church member. Whether that is revelation of their sin, your sin, or some awful event that has happened in your life or in the life of someone who is close to their life. If you are a ministry leader then you are on the front lines of dealing with these kinds of issues. Marriage counselors minister to struggling couples, teaching pastors deal with the sin of the larger community, and children’s workers deal with the sins of the smallest parts of the church. This world is filled with hurt and pain, so we as the church must deal with the hardest things to hear during the hardest parts of people’s lives. No matter how tragic the circumstance, hurtful the sin, or revealing the insight, we must as Christians be united in grace as we work through the hardest parts of our lives.
That said, I cannot imagine what was going on in the heart of Peter as he set out to write 1 Peter. 1 Peter was written into one of the worst situations for a church leader imaginable. Peter wrote to churches that were experiencing persecution. Christians were being arrested, tortured, and killed. Families were torn apart, children were taken from parents, and Christian communities were under the attack of the Roman authorities.
For Peter this had to have been personal. Peter was one of the original 12 disciples. He had walked with Christ and he had been charged to build the church by Christ through the power of the Spirit. The Spirit had done good work and the church was growing, thanks impart to a renewed Jewish leader named Paul, but under the direction of these original disciples the mission had grown. The Romans had tolerated this growing movement called Christianity, but as they grew in size there was more and more contention between Romans and Christians. The Christians were also attacked by the Jews, which can be seen throughout Acts. The Jews found the Christians repulsive. They did not believe in Christ and thought that it was blasphemy to call Christ God, especially the same God as the God who had been with the Jews from the beginning.
What do you say to someone who has become a Christian and is facing intense persecution? This is the question that the Spirit answers through 1 Peter. Through this study we will look at the context of suffering. We will look at what it means to live for Jesus and die for Jesus. We will look at what it means to live for Christ, to serve Christ, and to love Christ.
If you are going through a hard time in your faith because of the world, 1 Peter was written for you. In his glorious vision the Father saw it right to send the Spirit to empower Peter by the sacrifice of the son, so that you would be able to read this book, apply these principles, and serve Christ well in suffering.
Eat Good Food, Drink Good Drink, Enjoy Good People
04 months ago
by Jack
in Joyography
Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite books in the bible. I like the gritty realism. The refrain, “All is vanity” that is consistent throughout the book really resonates with me. As someone who is not particularly rich, handsome, famous, or powerful the fact that one day all these things will come to end gives me great peace. Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon, a man who was so wise that he was second only to Jesus in wisdom. It is towards the end of the “wisdom” literature which comes between the chronology of the kingdom of Israel and the books of the prophets. We can assume that Ecclesiastes was written towards the end of Solomon’s life, when he was writing about his life as a whole. The main theme throughout the book is that all is vanity, and that we need to rely on God or we will not be satisfied. While you might think that this might now be a great place to find verses on joy there are several times where Solomon focuses on fellowship as being a source of great strength. Eating, drinking, and being merry with good Christian friends is truly a gift from the Lord.
Fellowship is hanging out with people who edify you. These people encourage you in your faith. They can share their insights in their quiet times in the Lord if you need encouragement. Some of them may be in your season of life, or just ahead or just behind. They can give you guidance, and you can give them guidance. In these things your “fellows” have fun together. I want to be careful that fellowship does not sound like some sort of bland church activity, where people sit in uncomfortable chairs postulating about God. While this can be part of fellowship, depending on who you are, this is not all that fellowship is. Eat good food while watching a football game. Play video games together. Talk about your kids and tell stories. Barbeque, drink wine, and play Frisbee or a pickup game of baseball. Thank God together, pray together, do life together. Go on service projects, have bible studies, go to birthday parties, have baby showers, and enjoy life with one another.
A joy that we have in Christianity is each other. The church is a family and while we may have to labor with some of our family members, the goal is that we would find joy in one another. The best way to do that is to have someone over for dinner and discussion. If you feel disconnected at a church, passionately pursue fellowship. Many churches have small groups. Find a group that you would like to get involved with and plug in. If you don’t like that group chances are the church has others. Pursue them. Be willing to labor in finding a good place to connect. Out of that labor will come joy.
It is important to know the biblical concerns regarding fellowship. Fellowship should be about pursuing Jesus with other people. A great way to gauge how true this is in your social circle is this, are we as a group becoming more like Jesus or more like the world? Does your group often fragment into veins of gossip? Does your group challenge its members to rid themselves of sin and turn to Christ? I know this is clichéd, but if Jesus came in and sat around in your group would he be content with how your group went about their fellowship?
Also the bible tells us to consider others when we plan events. So for instance, if the group of fellowship that God has blessed you with has a member who has had struggles with alcoholism, that fellowship group should support that person in their recovery and drink some soda pop or lemonade. If a person in your group is struggling with a sexual addiction the group should probably avoid seeing racy movies and conversation that may talk about more technical sexual issues. Of course there are other considerations that may be wise apart from morality. If one of the members of your fellowship group is dieting, it would be kind to offer some options at the table that may accommodate them. If one of the members of your group is single and most of the members are married it would be kind to make sure that not all of the conversation revolves around children, marriage, and family life. These considerations are a reflection of a heart of grace that God has towards us. God does not cause us to stumble. We should reflect God’s grace by making accommodations so others do not stumble. (more…)
John’s Prophecies and Unworthiness
0In the beginning of Luke and Matthew’s gospel there are telling of one of the more famous stories in the history of humanity. The story of Christ’s birth has been broadcast on national television, sold millions in theaters, and has permeated the political realm with controversy. However Mark does not include the typical Christmas story, instead he begins with John the Baptist, acting like a prophet.
Verse Seven
John the Baptist speaks to the people about the Messiah, a great man of God who would be so much greater than John that John would not be able to undo his sandal straps. Here we need a little bit of cultural context. First off, sandals in Jesus’ day look much like those pictured on the right. They were not flip-flops, but sandals that required intricacy in tying and untying. Second, those of us who live today, especially in America, can take clean streets for granted. We live in a society dominated by automobiles, not donkeys, sheep, and goats. The roads in Jesus’ day was covered in fecal matter from a variety of animals. In Luke seven a woman is reprimanded for washing Jesus’ feet. Washing of feet was an important honor, because all of the dirt and poop that would get on one’s feet from walking around. Third, it was the duty of the host to provide a slave or hired hand to unstrap the sandals from a guest as they would walk in the door. In verse seven John is saying that not only is he not the Messiah, there is someone who makes John the Baptist look like an unworthy slave. Of course this man was Jesus Christ.
Verse Eight
It’s not surprising to me that people thought that John was the Messiah. The Israelites had not heard from the Lord in 400 years, and all of the sudden here is this new breed of preacher who is coming to preach repentance of sins. Rich and poor were coming to him, he was starting a social movement. We know that John was powerful enough to draw the ire of Herrod, who ultimately had him beheaded. However John knew that his mission was inadequate. He knew he couldn’t bring around the kind of awakening that Christ would. John’s power was confession and forgiveness, which was given to him by God, but he knew that Christ would “baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” John could only dunk people, Christ could and would send the Spirit to live with them. (more…)
John The Baptist, Up In Yo Grill
0I personally enjoy reading the English Standard Version of the bible because of the clarity of the language and sentence structure. One such verse is referenced at the beginning of Mark, when Mark writes about a prophecy given in the book of Malachi. Malachi wrote that God would send a messenger to the people of Israel to prepare the way of the Lord. According to the ESV as we see in verse two of Mark chapter one: “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way.” This messenger was John the Baptist.
John the Baptist was the cousin of Christ, born right around the same time as Jesus was. John’s ministry began before Christ’s. We know that John was the son of a priest, but was not a priest himself. John was not exactly cut out to be a proper preacher. John did wear the robes of the priest, he wore camels hair. John did not spend time in study, he scavenged for study. Yet, Jesus called John the greatest man yet to live, because John believed before he saw, and was eventually executed for his faith.
In Mark 1:5 we see the first part of John’s ministry had to do with the confession and forgiveness of sins. John baptized rulers, rich people, poor people, and craftsmen. He called the people to confess their sins and then be baptized to reflect the release from their sins. He was a traveling preacher who went all around Judea and Jerusalem telling people to confess their sins. This ministry of confession was nothing new, God had instituted a system in which sins were confessed onto sacrificial animals before they were slaughtered, but the other part of John’s ministry was forgiveness. John did not just stress the confession of sins, but the forgiveness of sins.
Today we can see that in society we have places where people can go to either confess sin certain sins or be forgiven. Take for example the show Dr. Phil, where Dr. Phil discusses “issues” that people have. Whether it is a small child that backtalks or an adult that is glutenus, Dr. Phil works towards confession of the sin with a plan of repentance, like respecting parents or not eating as much. However he cannot guarantee forgiveness. However there is a part of our society that deals with forgiveness. If you talk to unbelievers about karma many will say they are trying to get rid of their bad karma so the universe will deal them a fair hand. They are in essence asking for forgiveness, for atonement for their evil deeds. Of course both of these are distorted views. (more…)