Having Two Legs

Archives For Bible

Made to Hunt Treasure

May 4, 2013 — 1 Comment

The Bible teaches that God made man for this world. God created this world for man. He invented this place for people. God made all things and called them good. Then He created man and woman, and He called it all very good. But God didn’t create the world finished. He didn’t create the world like a piece of art meant only to hang in a gallery somewhere. He created the world as a work in progress. He created the world good and very good, and He rested from His work on the seventh day, the first Sabbath. But in the work of creation, God established a pattern, a picture, an example and told Adam to follow it. Which is to say that God created the world good but not finished. He completed His work and rested, but God made Adam for work also. God made Adam for real work. God made Adam to be fruitful, to create, to invent, to discover, to rule creation with wisdom. And God created the woman to work with him, alongside him, to help him.

When God planted the Garden of Eden and placed Adam and Eve in it, He explained to them that the river flowing out through the middle of the garden actually split into four different river heads. God said, down the first river Pishon, you will find the land of Havilah which is full of gold. It’s good gold and there is bdellium and onyx stones there as well. Adam didn’t even know what gold was. He didn’t know where Havilah was. He didn’t know what bdellium and onyx stones were either. But God gave him these descriptions and pointed into the distance and said, You’re gonna want to go that way. What God did was give Adam the very first treasure map.

But God wasn’t done. He pointed to the other rivers: Gihon goes down to Ethiopia. Hiddekel goes toward Assyria. And the fourth river is called Euphrates, and I’m not even telling you where that one goes. This is glorious. God created the universe and the first man and the first woman, and He set them down in this lovely garden and immediately points out the world to them. But He doesn’t tell them everything. He just points and gives clues. But the point is clear. This world is loaded with glory. It’s loaded with goodness, and it was made for us. And God wants us to find it.

Solomon says that it’s the glory of God to conceal a matter, and it’s the glory of kings to search it out (Pr. 25:2). That’s what this world is for. That’s what people are for. They are for hard work. They are for late nights and early mornings. They are for digging in the dirt: inventing and discovering and uncovering and planting and building and birthing. They are for trial and error. They are for learning. They are for uncovering the glory of God in this world. Continue Reading…

In Bible, Bible - Genesis, Bible - Proverbs, Creation, Family, Manalive, Marriage Bed, Wedding Exhortation, Wisdom

What is a Christian?

April 17, 2013 — Leave a comment

A Christian is someone who believes that the answer to all the brokenness, pain, and evil in this world is the death of a man named Jesus two thousand years ago.

How could the death of one man be the answer to terrorism, abuse, betrayal, cancer, or crime?

The answer is that this man Jesus was not like any other man who has ever lived or ever will live. This man was actually the One who made this world.

Despite the horror, despite the pain, despite the senseless evil that has filled this world, this world is still filled with unexplainable, astounding glory and beauty. From sunsets to galaxies, from laughter to love, from music to dance to ice cream — this world is gut-wrenchingly good.

Christians believe that God made this world and loaded it with glory. He invented this place. He imagined this place. And He filled it with treasures and wonders and pleasure and beauty. But men and women have not listened to His voice. We wanted to go our own way. We wanted to be our own bosses, our own gods. Instead of listening to the words of the Inventor of the universe, we decided to listen to other words, to make up our own words.

This rejection of the Good God who made this good world is called sin. And since God invented life, and His word is what gives life to all things, to turn away from His word, to turn away from His life, is ultimately to embrace death. The wages of sin is death. Sin is asking for death. Therefore sin deserves death. Of course people don’t think that they are begging for death when they sin, when they disobey the voice of God, but still we sin and still death comes again and again and again. Continue Reading…

In Bible, Creation, Evangelism, Grace, Justice & Mercy, Preaching, Theology - Christology, TRC

Calling Latin Peeps

February 25, 2013 — 6 Comments

A friend of mine has an old (1663) KJV Bible with the following Latin quote (ascribed to Luther) hand inscribed in one of the front pages:

“Pactum feci Domino Deo meo, ne mihi mittat vel visiones, vel somnia, vel etiam angelos. Contentus enim sum Hoc Dono, quod habeo Scripturam sanctum, qua abunde docet, ac suppeditat omnia qua necessaria, tum ad hanc vitam tum ad futuram.”

My rough translation on the fly:

“I have made a covenant with the Lord my God, that He give me neither visions nor dreams nor even angels. For I am content with This Gift which I have: Holy Scripture which teaches abundantly, and supplies everything necessary, both for this life and for the future.”

So how’d I do? Any suggestions or corrections?

Thanks and cheers in advance.

In Bible, History - Reformation, Misc, Sola Scriptura

Looking for Jesus: Part 7

January 15, 2013 — Leave a comment

[Note: the first part of this sermon was The Gospel According to Water.]

How This Fits with Epiphany
Epiphany means “manifestation,” it means a sudden bolt of inspiration, understanding: “Aha!” One of the supreme places the Bible and the church fathers have pointed for one of these great manifestations is the baptism of Jesus. There the God who made the waters came down into the waters. The one who led Israel through the sea came down to be led through the sea. The One who cleansed and purified Israel, the One who was always clean and holy came to be washed clean for the forgiveness of Israel, to fulfill all righteousness. Then, right on schedule, as Jesus was coming up out of the water, the Spirit descended upon him and the Father spoke from heaven identifying for the whole world, His beloved Son. This beloved Son, filled with Spirit, became the Rock that was struck so that living water might flow out to the ends of the earth (Jn. 19:34). And when we read and hear this story of the rivers, the story of the waters, and we see Jesus standing in the midst of the waters, how can we not glorify Him? How can that not hit us? How can that not open our eyes? Jesus is our living water, our Spirit-filled water.

What Should Studying the Bible Be Like?
This why when you read the Bible rightly, when you are studying it prayerfully, it should be like drinking water, like cool fresh water on your face on a hot day, like a happy, gurgling stream in a mountain meadow, like riding in a fierce, raucous squall. It should be at turns refreshing, sweet, comforting, peaceful, unnerving, terrifying, and overwhelming. Because Jesus meets us in His Word. Continue Reading…

In Bible, Culture, Epiphany, Evangelism, Grace, Justice & Mercy, Politics, Sermon Outlines, Sola Scriptura, TRC, Wisdom

The Gospel According to Water

January 15, 2013 — 2 Comments

The story of the Bible is the story of a river. It’s the story of the Spirit hovering over the waters, causing it to flow, making it surge, making it splash, making it live.

Adam and Eve were supposed to build boats and ride the river down the mountain. They would have had great adventures. Which river would they have gone down first? The Pishon? Looking for the gold in Havilah? Or try the Gihon going down to Ethiopia, or the Euphrates perhaps? Four rivers going out to the ends of the earth, the ends of the compass. The whole world was theirs because the whole world was their Father’s and they were safe in His love. But instead they plodded down that eastern hill in sadness, dust clouds licking their feet.

Grace was when they walked in the garden, when springs of water came up from the face of the ground to water the flowers and plants. Grace was the river that ran out of the garden, out of the presence of God, and down the mountain to the ends of the earth. Grace was drinking that living water, splashing in those streams, riding them, walking in them with the God of the Universe. Continue Reading…

In Bible, Creation, Culture, Epiphany, Grace, Misc, Sermon Outlines, Sola Scriptura, TRC, Wisdom

Looking for Jesus: Part 6

January 7, 2013 — 1 Comment

[Note the first part of this sermon was The Gospel According to the Rocks.]

What does the Bible say about the world?

1. When we consider all these themes (trees, lights, rocks, etc.), the Bible is telling us that there is a deep goodness embedded in the world (Gen. 1:31). All of creation has experienced the curse of sin and death and now groans, waiting for the redemption of the sons of men (Gen. 3:17-19, Rom. 8:19-22), but the world is also constantly talking about the glory of God (Ps. 19:1-4, 97:6). The world makes it manifestly clear that it was created, that we were created by an all-powerful, glorious, orderly, good God (Acts 17:24-29, Rom. 1:19-21). But even more explicitly, after we have read and studied the Bible, the World is constantly talking about Jesus, about God’s love for His people, His mission to share that glory with the world. The world proclaims the majesty of the Triune God and all men are without excuse, but the astounding claim of the New Testament is that it was created by and has the fingerprints of Jesus all over it (Jn. 1:3, Col. 1:16, Heb. 1:2-3). Creation, flood, Exodus, miracles, resurrection, trees, rocks, stars – all proclaim the obedience of creation to its Good Lord. In other words, the world proclaims that Jesus is Lord.

2. The Bible tells us that because of sin, the world has a certain kind of gravity to folly, a logic to evil, and therefore there are clearly established patterns to sin and evil. Sin tends to grow up in a particular direction (Rom. 6:19). Paul says that ingratitude gives way to hollowness that descends to folly that finally becomes darkness (Rom. 1:21). In layman’s terms, a little bitterness gives birth to a biting sarcasm that grows into full blown lies that grows up into men trying to have sex with other men. In Ps. 19, David confesses that sin is mysterious and therefore prays that God would cleanse him from secret faults (Ps. 19:12), followed by a prayer against presumptuous sins – that they would not have dominion over him (Ps. 19:13). Then David says he will be “upright” and “innocent from the great transgressions.” Psalm 1 describes a similar logical progression: walking, standing, sitting with ungodly, sinners, and scornful (Ps. 1:1). He who walks with the wise will become wise, but he who is a companion of fools will be destroyed – whether actual flesh and blood people, books, music, movies, heroes we look up to (Pr. 13:20). Apart from the miraculous and gracious intervention of God’s grace (e.g. Lk. 15:17), this progression always happens (Ps. 6:16, Pr. 26:27, Gal. 6:7) and fools never learn (Pr. 26:11, 2 Pet. 2:22). Molehills of sin always tend to grow up into mountains of evil. Continue Reading…

In Bible, Church Calendar, Creation, Epiphany, Sermon Outlines, Sola Scriptura, TRC

The Gospel According to the Rocks

January 7, 2013 — Leave a comment

People are instinctively drawn to rocks, stones, and metals. Chances are many of the women in this room are wearing a small decorative rock on one or more of their fingers, perhaps on an ear, or hung on a chain around their neck.

We pave roads and sidewalks and pathways with rocks and stones. We dig into the ground to find beautiful rocks. And some rocks simply demand our reverence by their sheer size. Mt. McKinley in Alaska is over 20,000 feet of pluton rock, what scientists call intrusive igneous rock, believed to have been shoved up from beneath the earth’s surface, where it cooled and crystalized. McKinley is the tallest mountain on land in the world considered just from base to summit. But over a hundred other mountains many in the Himalayas are actually far higher in altitude. But they get running starts. For example, Mt. Everest, the highest point on planet earth is actually riding piggyback on top of 15,000 feet of other rocks.

The world is full of rocks. We throw rocks into lakes, we skip them across ponds, we pile them up and build houses and buildings. We decorate, adorn, glorify with rocks. Some gigantic rocks are full of lava, rumbling, stewing, steaming, exploding.

I remember shortly after moving to Alaska when I was nine years old, Mt. Redoubt, a rock of about 10,000 feet at the very top of the Aleutian island chain, began exploding. Scientists say that beginning on December 14, 1989 until around April 1990, the mountain exploded around 23 times, spitting lava and shooting ash for thousands of miles. On the day of the first explosion, a Boeing 747 enroute from Amsterdam flew right into the ash plume and had a complete engine failure. The crew was able to successfully restart the engines and make an emergency landing in Anchorage. Ash disrupted airspace as far away as Texas during those months. I vividly remember seeing the ash falling on cars and parking lots, thin layers of gray dust everywhere. It was common to see people walking around with facemasks.

Volcanoes are living rocks, alive with fire and smoke, and when they burp, they disrupt our world. Smoke is rock breath. Continue Reading…

In Bible, Creation, Epiphany, Sermon Outlines, Wisdom

Looking for Jesus: Part 5 & the Gospel According to the Child

December 31, 2012 — 1 Comment

This week in our series, Looking for Jesus: Learning to Read the Bible and the World Through New Eyes, we’re answering the question: What does the Bible do? And our theme is children. These two things actually go together so well, that I’m just going to combine them for today’s sermon rather than taking them sequentially.

The Bible is a Fairy Tale that Creates Children
The Bible opens like a fairy tale, and it closes like a fairy tale. It opens in a perfect, beautiful garden, and it closes in a glorious, towering garden city coming down out of the clouds of heaven. And it’s filled with childish stories. There are talking snakes and talking donkeys. There are old women giving birth to babies. There are old men with sticks that command the forces of nature in the name of the God. Sometimes people walk on water, and sometimes the waters part making a path through the water. Bread comes down out of heaven, water gushes out of rocks, cities fall down when the people march around them shouting and blowing trumpets, men walk in a fiery furnace unharmed. There are giants and dragons and (depending on your translation) unicorns and satyrs. Burning bushes, rainbows, evil spirits, miraculous battles, sometimes the sun stands still, sometimes men pray and it stops raining for three years, and they pray again and the rain comes. One man apparently vanished into thin air because he walked with God, another man was taken up in a fiery chariot, and another man appeared and disappeared and reappeared in various places by the power of the Spirit. Many talked with heavenly beings whose appearance made you want to die with fear. Many people have spoken with angels, seen glimpses of God, and visions of the glories of heaven and the angelic armies. Bread and fish multiply, the dead are raised, men speak in unknown tongues, the lame walk, the blind see, arrogant kings judged, slain, eaten by worms, and the hero is a child born of a virgin, betrayed, rejected, and murdered like a worthless criminal.

This is no reasonable book. This is no book for serious, color inside the lines, paper-clip counters. This is the kind of book to make serious scholars mad. This is the kind of book to make certain kinds of scientists throw it down in disgust. This book is a fairy tale, and it is full of fairy tales. It’s a book of childish stories, beginning in a garden with two innocent, perfect children who break the rules and bring a spell of darkness on the earth. And the story climaxes after many twists and turns with the birth of another child who obeys the rules and breaks the spell that was cast over the earth, and brings light back into the world. The hero-child goes down into the cave of death, slays the dragon, rescues the harlot, making her his virgin bride, and finds the way out again alive. And the story closes imagining the whole world as a cosmic fairy tale, a Marvel Comics meets Beowulf, an apocalyptic vision of the reign of the Child King who is also a Lamb who is also a Lion who goes into battle, slaying the dragon and all his accomplices with the sword that comes out of His mouth while rescuing His Bride through the flames, through the sword, through great peril and bringing her at last to the great Wedding Day, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Continue Reading…

In Advent, Bible, Child Kingdom, Christmas, Sermon Outlines, Sola Scriptura, Theology - Christology, TRC

The Gospel According to Gifts

December 29, 2012 — Leave a comment

Once upon a time, in the beginning, God gave. God spoke the universe into existence, and God gave reality, God gave existence, God gave all things. Creation itself was the first birthday party, the first festival, the first baby shower, the first graduation party, first wedding reception. The world was created, the world was born, the world graduated from nothing into everything. God spoke His bride into being and decorated everything for the marriage feast. God gave in His love.

In other words, in the beginning it was Christmas. It was Christmas all day, every day with presents stacked to the moon because God made everything perfect for His people, because God is love. God is the original extravagant Giver. He spoke radiant light. He spoke tossing, foaming oceans. He gave tangy oranges and crisp watermelons and sweet corn on the cob. He gave Great White Sharks with mouthfuls of razor teeth and grey armored rhinoceroses, and bald eagles sweeping and diving. They were just a few of the party favors, dinner entertainment to keep the guests busy before the wedding party could be introduced. He hung lights for the party, flinging handfuls of sparkling dust into the night sky. He stretched clouds, puffy and streaked around the horizon, and He heaped up snow-capped peaks all around the room. He touched the tops of some of the mountains and made them smoke and blow fire; He gave some of the angels missions streaking lightening and rumble thunder to pop and crack and boom for the festival. He made everything ready for His wedding day, and He spread a great lavish feast with fruits and vegetables, juices and fresh water, bread and wine: all of it in love, all of it with joyful expectation.

And all of it for us, His Bride. It was all an enormous wedding gift. It was a festival, a party, a celebration of His love for us. And when everything was ready, He made man in His own image, male and female, the guests of honor. It was our birthday and our wedding day, and even the love we shared was meant to point to Him, our Maker, our Husband, to His love embedded in the universe. The whole world was a proposal, God on bended knee, smiling proudly, “I love you. Will you marry me?” Continue Reading…

In Advent, Bible, Christmas, Grace, Sermon Outlines, Sola Scriptura, TRC

Looking for Jesus: Part 4

December 29, 2012 — Leave a comment

[Note: I've broken my sermon from last Sunday into two parts for navigating convenience. This is the first part: What Should We Expect to Find in the Bible?, and I've linked to the second post which was the second half of the sermon: The Gospel According to Gifts.]

This Fourth Sunday in Advent we continue our series Looking for Jesus: Learning to Read the Bible and the World Through New Eyes. This week we consider the question: What should we expect to find in the Bible? And our theme for our case study this week is Gifts.

How does this fit with Advent?
There’s usually a lot of talk around this time of year about finding the true meaning of Christmas. From Charlie Brown to the evening news, this phrase gets batted around and frequently buried beneath a pile of vague, sappy feelings. But you can tell a lot about what’s really going on in the face of tragedy. And we’ve had an up close example in the recent shooting in Connecticut. Some reported that following the shooting people were taking decorations down, others understandably felt the tension of try to celebrate in the face of such heartache. Still others have sought to weave their suffering into the celebration. One report said 20 trees were decorated in one place remembering the 20 children who lost their lives.

In the face of loneliness, in the face of pain, in the face of uncertainty, in the face of failure, in the face of regret, the shallow meaning of Christmas – some kind of warm fuzzy sentiment of goodwill and brotherhood strikes hollow. And if that’s all it is, then by all means, we should take the decorations down. Continue Reading…

In Advent, Bible, Christmas, Sermon Outlines, Sola Scriptura, TRC