Focal Passage: Daniel 2:13-23, 27-28a 

Your sentence is death. You’ve just learned that you are to be executed for a crime you didn’t commit. How would you respond? 

I’ll speak for both of us … we would rant and rave about the injustice. We’d post about the insane official who is threatening our lives, we would call our congressman, we’d start a GoFundMe for attorney’s fees as we gear up for a legal battle. 

At least that’s what some of us would do, and we would be justified in doing so. Putting ourselves in Daniel’s situation helps us to fully appreciate his response.  [Read more…]

Focal Passage: Daniel 1:3-13, 17-19 

I love quoting Charles Spurgeon when I preach. He had a way of taking deep theological truths and communicating them with profound simplicity. 

Let me provide his perspective on circumstances and I think you’ll agree. He said, “Had any other condition been better for you than the one in which you are, divine love would have put you there.” By this statement we learn that Spurgeon believed that an individual’s circumstances are ordained by a sovereign and loving God.

In contrary circumstances we tend to disconnect God’s love from His sovereignty. When we do this we will find it difficult to keep our convictions. How we view God’s involvement in our circumstances will deeply impact how our convictions develop. Daniel displays this truth well. [Read more…]

Focal Passage: 1 Samuel 25:14-17, 23-28, 32-35 

What is wisdom? I’ve heard it said like this, “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.” Spurgeon elaborates on the relationship between knowledge and wisdom in a more spiritual and serious way, “To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is wisdom.” 

Wisdom is the proper application of knowledge. Abigail is a wonderful example of living out godly knowledge. We can learn a great deal from her interaction with David in I Samuel 25. 

One of the most excruciating parts of seminary was having your sermons evaluated. The professor would give an assessment tool to the class which would be used to grade an individual’s exposition. It was a tough 40 minutes watching yourself preach and hearing your peers scratching away on the assessment document, seemingly emptying their pens of ink.  [Read more…]

Focal Passage: Philippians 3:12-21 

Have you ever had a teacher say something like “if you remember one thing from my class period remember this …”? It seems as if Paul is doing something similar for us in Philippians 3:13. 

He writes in the last part of the text, “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.” When Paul, the greatest missionary and church planter who ever lived, mentions the one thing he is the most committed to we should listen! This singularly significant action includes faithfully dealing with one of the most difficult areas of our lives, our past.

What exactly is Paul saying here? Should we try to bury our past in the nether regions of our subconscious? Are we to pretend like events in our past didn’t occur? Understanding a bit of the Greek will be helpful. The word “forgetting” in the original language of the New Testament is ἐπιάνοµαι (ep-ee-lan-than’-om-ahee).  [Read more…]

Focal Passage: II John 1-9 

“Goblin mode.” I bet you are as confused as I was when I first read that phrase. Every year the Oxford dictionary picks one word that reflects the “ethos, mood or preoccupations of that particular year.” And yes, 2023’s word is goblin mode. I’ll leave it to you to look up what it means. 

The word of the year for 2016 is a bit less weird and much more significant of a cultural commentary. In 2016 the word that captured the spirit of our society well enough to be the word of the year was “post truth.”

Oxford defined post truth as, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”  [Read more…]