Episodes
5 days ago
5 days ago
At first I wrote Bring children to me in order to more directly represent Jesus' words. Then I realized that Jesus was addressing a larger principle: The childlikeness required to receive the principles of God's kingdom. There are several huge implications involved.
7 days ago
Command #57 - Learn Of Me
7 days ago
7 days ago
We continually find that the familiarity of certain of Jesus' words often obscures their astonishing meaning. Here, for example, many images of what it means to take upon oneself the Lord's "yoke" spring to mind, along with his oft-quoted words of comfort, You shall find rest for your souls.
Thursday Mar 07, 2024
Command #56 - Do Not Justify or Worry How To Defend Yourself
Thursday Mar 07, 2024
Thursday Mar 07, 2024
Self-defense is one of the most automatic of human responses. When challenged, threatened, contradicted, or accused, we blurt out a defense before the voice of criticism has even died away. Often we do not wait so long as that to defend ourselves, but interrupt to counter the word against us before it is even finished.
Tuesday Mar 05, 2024
Command #55 - Be Born Again
Tuesday Mar 05, 2024
Tuesday Mar 05, 2024
With so much emphasis in Christendom through the centuries on salvation, it is remarkable that Jesus did not spell out in more detail exactly what salvation is. In his conversation with Nicodemus, in which he said that one must be "born again" to see the kingdom of God, in the single most well-known verse of the Bible, he connects being born again with "belief"; For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
Thursday Feb 29, 2024
Command #54 - Seek No Spiritual Signs
Thursday Feb 29, 2024
Thursday Feb 29, 2024
One of the curious anomalies to arise out of the Evangelical and Pentecostal renewal of the late 20th century has been an inordinate obsession with spiritual "signs and wonders" as validating the work of the Holy Spirit. Entire churches, ministries, evangelistic movements, and schools have devoted themselves to the miraculous, and the encouragement of its manifestations to the exclusion of many other aspects of a rounded Christian life of obedience.
Tuesday Feb 27, 2024
Command #53 - If Someone Takes From You, Do Not Demand Back What You Have Given
Tuesday Feb 27, 2024
Tuesday Feb 27, 2024
There are a variety of Commands that all point in the same direction: Give and expect nothing in return. Some emphasize giving more than has been requested: Go two miles instead of one, when asked for your coat give your cloak as well. The Command before us from Luke 6 contains three messages.
Thursday Feb 22, 2024
Command #52 - Let Your Light Shine Before Men
Thursday Feb 22, 2024
Thursday Feb 22, 2024
We continue to encounter the strange dichotomy in the Lord's words between public and private righteousness. How do we balance, Beware of practicing your piety before men, with, Let your light so shine before men? The two commands appear less than a chapter apart in the Sermon on the Mount, yet seem to instruct us in completely opposite directions.
Tuesday Feb 20, 2024
Command #51 - Guard Against Hypocrisy
Tuesday Feb 20, 2024
Tuesday Feb 20, 2024
Note that Jesus does not directly command Don't be a hypocrite. Is the reason perhaps because, in truth, to a degree we cannot help being hypocrites. We are all sinners, and thus hypocrites, together. It is part of the human condition.
Thursday Feb 15, 2024
Command #50 - Honor Your Father and Mother
Thursday Feb 15, 2024
Thursday Feb 15, 2024
None of the Ten Commandments has been so diminished of its power by our modern culture more than honor to one's parents. Independence is the god of our age. The cancer that has infected our time is not merely anti-family, as serious as that threat is. It goes far deeper.
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
Command #49 - Do Not Exalt Yourself
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
After passing through Galilee and returning home to Capernaum, Jesus posed a very pointed question to the disciples: "What were you discussing on the way?" Their response was that of a group of children caught red-handed with their hands in the cookie jar. Mark merely says, "They were silent; for on the way they had discussed with one another who was the greatest." Jesus had nailed them, and they knew it.