Be With Me: 7 Minutes of Biblical Wonder

This is a MARVELOUS Podcast. Or it ISN'T. John 7:17 (Episode #197) This is a MARVEL-OUS Podcast.  Or it isn't.  How might we know? What is its' SOURCE? Is is WORTHY of MARVELING at? What are the DISCERNMENT criteria that make it worth listening to or not? On whose AUTHORITY is it given? Whose GLORY does it seek? All these are great questions that those at the Feast of Booths were be...

With hats off today to C.S. Lewis, we conclude that Jesus is NOT a GOOD MAN.  Even some of the participants in today's account get that message.  A good man does not say He is LORD. If you say you are Lord, there are three logical conclusions.  One of them is NOT "Jesus is a Good Man".  We are past that already. You are a LUNATIC  (you are NOT the Lord, and you THINK you are).   thi...

Why might someone HATE JESUS?  Psalm 25:19 prophesies that Jesus will be HATED WITHOUT cause, but let me here make an argument why it does make a certain amount of sense. If Jesus comes and tells me that my works are evil, and that "I am NOT OK", I have two choices: 1.  Bow down.  Agree.  Repent.  Reconsider. Reassess. 2.  Disagree.  Here is what that might look like:  I LOVE my pride, m...

Walk with me in prayer today as we: Identify the wrongs done to me by men and women on earth and my desire to pursue, choke, seize, demand, refuse to have mercy, and imprison Assess my tolerance for stepping on the toes of God and others in carelessness, anger, sexual wrongness, decisions, misusing liberties, taking liberties when there are none, entertainment choices, taking what is not mine, wor...

What if God is 833,000x HOLIER than I think He is? Matthew 18:33 (episode #193) ACTIONS of the Heart towards PEOPLE, regarding their "indebtedness" to me is based on My UNDERSTANDING of the holiness of God and my incalculable inbebtedness to Him Our semi-knucklehead in the story of the unforgiving servant gets one thing RIGHT and two things WRONG. What he gets RIGHT is that we sin agains...

Math here helps illustrate spiritual truth. Here is how I figure this about an ungrateful servant. he owes his King $10 BILLION debt he doesn't realize the extent of his debt and thinks it is in the realm of repaying the first servant also has a servant that owes him $12,000 (not an insignificant amount) the first servant's debt to the King is 833,000X bigger than the debt the second ser...

Peter inquires about how much FORGIVING a Christian has to do.   Jesus' answer is A LOT.  Darn, we still have to live amongst a bunch of knuckleheads who will wrong us.  Darn, a response from me is going to be required and I could do this wrong. To help with understanding, Jesus tells the story of a King and a Servant who meet to "settle accounts".  The problem here is the servant o...

100% Participation in Church Discernment/Discipline Matthew 18:20 (episode #190) What are we then Loosing? We are loosing our hold on his sin if he repents. We are loosing our hold on HIM if he does not repent. We are binding him to the consequences of his sin. We are binding him to his decisions. We are binding him to life OUTSIDE the protections of the Body of Christ. We are binding him to the P...

WHAT do "2 or 3 GATHER and AGREE" ABOUT? Matthew 18:19 (Episode #189) You have heard this passage before.  That is always a danger.  A fun rule of Bible study is to " whatever you do, DON'T READ AHEAD " and let YOUR surprise of the account parallel the surprise of the person IN the account.  Its' corollary today: " Whatever you do DO READ BEHIND ."  ie:  wha...

In heaven, all authority will be given to its rightful source and owner. In the meantime, He allows us to participate in this godly responsibility and duty.  Think of the "offices" of this world:  Parent, Husband, Wife, Captain of the football team, Policeman, Pastor, Elder, CEO, Foreman, or even "line-leader" of the second graders on their way to the cafeteria. Who is the Boss...

An individual soul is VALUABLE.  So valuable that the full resources of the Church can and should be brought to bear when that individual soul is in peril. When the church gathers and says to the individual and his sin, "I am coming at you" in a special way, that sinner would do best to listen.  As we all know, they often don't.  So then, we get to DEFCON 4.  Here the decisions of t...

The VALUE of GAINING a BROTHER back into fellowship is so great that extraordinary effort is made to go get him.  Today we ratchet up the effort beyond going individually (DEFCON 1), and discretely to him. Because SIN HAS POROUS borders, others are (probably easily) recruited to bring evidence and testimony to the charges.  I suppose many people know you have a sin problem in an area before you do...

Three MOST DIFFICULT things in the world: 1. To be WRONG 2.  To have a good enough FRIEND to tell us the truth 3.  To be RESTORED to that person Forgiveness is hard enough.  But there is a guy in today's passage who makes it even MORE DIFFICULT by refusing to listen; refusing to be wrong.   I'm glad I don't know anyone like that.  Just kidding.  We are all like that.  Here we have t...

IF my brother sins against me? You must mean WHEN my brother sins against me. For this is a normal, regular, expected part of the Christian walk. Wouldn't it be great if God gave us a mechanism, a pathway to FIX this problem when it occurs.  And so He does.   We have all heard situations where this mechanism was NOT used:  " I was HURT in the Body of Christ...I was wounded when...That pe...

If you are a believer, then today's wonder is about how good God has been to you and is a story about what He did for you. If you are a not-yet-believer, then today's wonder is about how good God is being to you and is a story about what He is doing for you now. God is doing some heavy lifting here.  He is DRAWING, He is CONVICTING, He is GOING AFTER, and He is going after UNTIL FOUND. ...

Because of the  Passion & Pleasure & Purpose of God  believers receive the  Protection & Preservation & PURSUIT of God.   We talked about the Powerfully enabled Angels doing some of the protecting yesterday. Today, we are going to major on the relentless, until satisfied pursuit of the wayward believer.  The tracker in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid movie comes to mind. Today w...

Angels go to a location that you cannot go enjoy a frequency with God you cannot enjoy have an access that you are not allowed and are granted a face-to-face intimacy you cannot have AND YET they are assigned, tasked, charged with enacting the Lords CARE for the BELIEVER.  At least one of the things they do is to serve the believer. Other passages tell us they encamp around, and deliver those who...

Crossfit proclaims, "World's Fittest Man" and "World's Fittest Woman" after some brutal criteria. Well, so does Jesus. He proclaims the "World's Fittest Christian".  The World's best follower of Him is .... Like a Child.  One who turns to be like a child.  One of humility.  One who protects the child and the childlike. We want greatness.  The Disci...

Salt is always associated with Sacrifice.  (There's that OT shedding light on the NT again).  The Lord says Salt is good.  Don't be Unsalty. I think He is saying in the context of this passage about self assessment and radical self surgery that this is normal .  We are supposed to be regularly assessing, regularly repenting, and regularly resolving to walk the hard road of sanctification...

Today we will follow the Mighty Mississippi all the way back to the headwaters; the source.   We will find ourselves at the spiritual Itaska State Park in northern Minnesota.  There you can hop over the "mighty" Mississippi and deal with it.  We are looking at what might CAUSE US TO SIN.  The scripture asks us to do so.  Unpleasant yes, but ultimately for our benefit. "My __________...

Today's passage is very clear.  It is also terrifying. We find out almost everything we need to know about h-e-l-l.  Its' comparisons. Its' control. Its' permanence. Its' unpleasantness. Its' presence. The good news is that there is a way to avoid it.   There is a path to assessing ourselves and doing some self-surgery:  excision, tearing out and amputating.  That is...

Belonging to Christ = Belonging to His People Mark 9:38 (Episode #176) Like many good passages, this one starts with a COMPLAINT:  Hey! these guys don't belong to US! Which of course isn't the point.  The big point is whether they belong to JESUS.  They are tribal, short-sighted and petty. At the end, Jesus says that eventually, you may actually NEED these guys.  The Christian walk is go...

We've stumbled upon an important concept with the "RANSOM tax" of Exodus 30.  We are going to sit there for a minute (7 actually) and wonder about what are we: Ransomed FOR Ransomed FROM Ransomed WHEN Ransomed HOW Ransomed from BEING RANSOMED (permanence) Ransomed TO  and finally we'll glimpse into heaven and hear that right now they are doing Ransomed REMEMBERED Sounds importa...

The Jews called it a "Temple Tax" that everybody paid, every year.  Nice and tidy.  However, this is a bit of a misnomer because Exodus 30: 11-16 tells us that it is an ATONEMENT tax, a JUDGMENT tax, an anti-PLAGUE tax, a LIFE tax or my favorite: a RANSOM tax.  With that weight, I guess we'll just call it a 'temple tax'.  Without the RANSOM though, there would be no people...

Ransom Your Life but only for a YEAR Matt 17:24 What is a life worth?  What is a YEAR of life worth?  How can I stand before a Holy God?  What will I do about my sin for a year?  What might happen if I don't do something about my sin? All these questions are addressed with the so called, "TEMPLE TAX."  Get this, it is a tax that has been around and collected for 1300+ YEARS!!!!!! Wh...