My wife, June, is a huge fan both of sunsets and full moons. “Moon” was her first word, we’re told. We put Wednesday night’s Super (Blue) Moon on our calendar: for us, 8p. It was the largest full moon of the year, plus, occurring on August 30, it was the second full moon in August – a “blue moon.” Very special. We took our usual sunset walk around 7p, and set up for moon rise at 8p. Both events were spectacular!
Watch any group of pastors gather, listen in on their conversation, and you will most likely hear talk about numbers, particularly Sunday morning attendance. What’s the size of the auditorium (or sanctuary), how many weekend services, etc. Counting attendance is easy, along with the annual budget and size of the physical plant: bodies, buildings, budgets.
There’s not a lot of emphasis on counting things in the Bible, but as we finished John and transition back to the Pentateuch we find ourselves in…Numbers, so called because it opens with counting. Chapter 1 gives us 12 paragraphs that look exactly like this:
Now the sons of Reuben, Israel’s firstborn, their genealogical registration by their families, by their fathers’ households, according to the number of names, head by head, every male from twenty years old and upward, whoever was able to go out to war, their numbered men of the tribe of Reuben were 46,500. (Numbers 1.20 – 21, LSB)
The only thing that changes in these paragraphs is the name of the tribe, and the number. Everything else is the same. Did you see what they counted?
“Every male from 20 years old and upward, whoever was able to go out to war.” They counted warriors! Soon they would be going into the Promised Land (it turned out “soon” turned into 40 years, but that’s a story for another day), and in the Promised Land, they would have to fight.
We’re in a battle too:
Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea. (Revelation 12.17, ESV)
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. (Ephesians 6.10 – 13, ESV)
Since we’re in a battle, wouldn’t make sense for us to count “warriors”? Those “able to go to war”? Trained disciples? As one pastor said,
We’re pretty good at counting those who come. I wish we could figure out how to count those who go.
If we could figure out how to count those who go, maybe we would structure our ministries for training and sending instead of just seeing how many we can gather on Sundays.
As I wrote yesterday, June and I were in Estes Park recently, and one of the highlights is always the wildlife.
Elk, ducks, turkeys, prairie dogs…and June saw a baby bear when I wasn’t with her. Not a good thing since she didn’t know where the bear’s mama was. (If you’re not seeing the pictures, click here to see them on the website.) We stayed VERY clear of the bull elk because, as I wrote a few years ago, elk ignore you until they don’t.
All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful: The Lord God made them all. – Cecil Alexander, 1848
God made all sorts of wild animals, livestock, and small animals, each able to produce offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1.25, NLT)
[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…—all things were created through him and for him. (Colossians 1.15, 16, ESV)
Yesterday I wrote a depressing piece about how more often than not a church service is more show than anything else. Today I’m pleased to report that it doesn’t have to be that way.
On Sunday, August 20, June and I attended the Sunday morning service at Hyde Chapel at the YMCA of the Rockies just outside Estes Park, Colorado. The theme of the service was “Lessons from Bible Point.” Bible Point is a small mountain on the grounds, where a young man who loved Jesus and loved the YMCA of the Rockies is buried. The Ewellogy’s September 7, 2022, 54th wedding anniversary blog includes a picture made there.
There’s a mailbox near the grave, and people have left all kinds of letters. The chaplain, Greg Bunton, gathers these letters and keeps them. He brought a few(!) for us to see, and they built the service around snippets of some of these letters.
So what made the service “not a show”? A service that June and I both were moved by? Here are some random observations:
The service opened with the local Gideon telling stories about lives changed by people reading Bibles placed by the Gideons. Simple but inspiring.
Then the volunteers who comprise the Chapel staff took turns reading from the letters left on Bible Point.
They would read three or four letters on a topic:
Praise for Creation
Thanksgiving
Pain, sorrow and grief
Confession, forgiveness, healing and guidance
Then we sang a hymn related to what the letters were about
Hymns. Remember those?
Hymns to which we all had the words and music from a … wait for it … hymnal!
Hymns accompanied by one person playing the piano. (June and I grew up playing piano for church services. We met over the piano at a Christian summer camp when we were 12.) It’s not just nostalgia for the old days. It’s that people gathered, and we all sang. There was no need for a praise band to rehearse hours for just the right sound either when we were growing up or at the Hyde Chapel service. I have written on this issuebefore.
Without trying, I noticed the words to the hymns. Remember when people actually wrote hymns with depth and meaning? (There are a few such hymns today. For example, “In Christ Alone,” often sung at Easter, composed in 2001, is a fantastic hymn. And there were plenty of bad hymns in the old days.) HOWEVER, song for song, I believe there was more substance in the older hymns. For example, here’s one we sang that Sunday:
We shared Communion walking by the messy pile of letters, having been reminded that life is messy, but Jesus came into that mess, taking the mess upon himself on the cross.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2.24, ESV)
I’m not sure this blog captures the elegance, simplicity, and authenticity of the service. We hadn’t even planned on going…I think it was a God thing, and, as I say, I left more hopeful that Sunday morning doesn’t have to be a show. It can be a meaningful gathering.
It’s a famous quote by Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan, going way back to 1964:
The medium is the message. – Marshall McLuhan
Nowhere was the truth of this observation more evident than in a 27-second segment of a sermon by J.D. Greear of Summit Church in North Carolina. J.D. came to the church in 2001 when it had about 300 members. Now they are a multi-campus operation with over 10,000 folks in attendance weekly. It’s a powerful ministry. But even gifted and blessed pastors can say silly things such as what happened a couple of weeks ago.
J.D. got onto his folks a little for “arriving late” and “leaving early.” (By the way, at every contemporary worship service I have attended anywhere in the country, a sizable number of folks come in late.) Anyway, J.D. went on to say, “You treat church like a religious show.” After which the camera pans back to show a man on a large stage in a large meeting room. The top two pictures are from the 27-second post. The bottom picture is from the church’s website.
Uh…looks like a show to me. David Platt is lead pastor of McLean Bible Church in Virginia. Another good guy leading an apparently effective ministry. David has written, and I’m sure he actively fights against, this description of most churches:
Church is a performance at a place with programs run by professionals. – David Platt
And it’s not just J.D. and his mega-church or other mega-churches. In most churches of any size, folks file in, listen to some music where some may or may not join in singing, then they listen to one person talk for 15 – 45 minutes or more, and file out. If the medium is the message, what’s the message? The message could be that church is a place where I come to watch someone else do ministry, not a place where I am equipped to do ministry in my sphere of influence.
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,… (Ephesians 4.11 – 13, ESV, emphasis mine)
I recently read John 21, one of my favorite chapters, about which I’ve written before in a blog entitled Last Lessons. It’s worth reading the blog if only to see the beautiful way an artist captured the main points. This time I saw remarkable parallels between the fishing story in John 21 and the one recorded in Luke 5.
Here’s how they start:
On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” (Luke 5.1 – 5, ESV)
After this Jesus revealed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, and he revealed himself in this way. Simon Peter, Thomas (called the Twin), Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples were together. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. (John 21.1 – 3, ESV)
Same lake (Gennesaret is on the west side of the Sea of Tiberias (or Sea of Galilee)
Some of the same men, including Peter, James, and John
Fished all night and caught nothing
At Jesus’ word, they almost had more fish than they could bring in
Peter sees himself as “a sinful man” in Luke 5 and is guilt-ridden (by inference) over his denial of Jesus in John 21
Peter is called: to fish for people in Luke 5 and to “feed my sheep” in John 21
Both stories end with “follow me” (comparing Luke 5 with Matthew 4.19, 20).
Two separate events, one at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and the other at the end. Peter is twice called to leave an unsuccessful fishing adventure turned monumentally successful. “Do you see this miracle? Follow me.” Repetition. Confirmation. My job is to hear and respond to Jesus’ call no matter how many times he has to repeat it and no matter what his will is for someone else.
Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them, the one who also had leaned back against him during the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?” When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?” Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” (John 21.20 – 22, ESV)
Amidst the tragic fires that destroyed the historic town of Lahaina, Maui, there is a story too good to pass up: the banyan tree survived!
Surrounded by near total devastation the tree lives. Having not been to Lahaina (I’ve only sailed into and out of Honolulu as a small boy), I had not heard of the tree. Here is the official description:
Dominating the courthouse square in downtown Lahaina is one of the most remarkable aboreal specimens. One-quarter of a mile in circumference, its octopus-like limbs stretch outward, spreading a vast network of branches, leaves and aerial roots towards the streets and buildings surrounding it. Extraordinary, almost surreal, it seems more like a fantastic prop from a Tim Burton film than an organism in real life. How did this giant come to lay its roots in this tiny port of Lahaina? Here’s the story:
On April 24, 1873, to honor the 50th anniversary of the first Protestant mission in Lahaina, which was started at the request of Queen Keōpūolani, the sacred wife and widow of King Kamehameha the Great, Sheriff William Owen Smith planted the exotic Indian Banyan. At the time it was only eight feet tall.
After settling in, the tree slowly sent branches outward from its trunk. From the branches, a series of aerial roots descended towards the earth. Some of them touched the ground and dug in, growing larger until eventually turning into trunks themselves. Over the years, Lahaina residents lovingly encouraged the symmetrical growth of the tree by hanging large glass jars filled with water on the aerial roots that they wanted to grow into a trunk. In time, what was once a small sapling matured into a monumental behemoth.
It now stands over 60 feet high, has 46 major trunks in addition to the massive original and shades nearly two-thirds of an acre. Maui County Arborist Committee carefully maintains the health and shape of this majestic tree. It is the largest banyan tree in the entire United States. In recent times, the courthouse square was renamed “Banyan Tree Park” in its honor. Lahaina Restoration Foundation takes care of the park grounds. – https://lahainarestoration.org/lahaina-banyan-tree/
I think it’s noteworthy that the tree was planted in honor of Protestant missionaries who first came to Hawaii. I don’t know how big a banyan tree seed is, but this tree was only 8 feet tall when planted. A sapling. But growth occurs over time. In this case extraordinary growth. I’m reminded of Jesus’ story of the mustard seed:
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches. (Matthew 13.31, 32, NIV)
Trees are important in the Bible’s storyline:
Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear fruit, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.” (Ezekiel 47.12, NIV)
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. (Revelation 22.1, 2, NIV)
And those who follow God are compared to resilient trees – like the banyan!
Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers. (Psalm 1.1 – 3, NIV)
Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit. (Jeremiah 17.7, 8, ESV)
We were meditating yesterday on “So Send I You,” often called “the greatest missionary hymn of the 20th century.” I grew up with it. Today, the rest of the story: here’s what author Margaret Clarkson said about it:
In 1935 teaching jobs were so scarce that I had to take my first job as a teacher in a lumber camp some 1400 miles from home, out in the Rainy River District of northwestern Ontario. From there I moved to the gold mining camp of Kirkland Lake, 450 miles north of Toronto. In all, I spent seven years in the north. I experienced loneliness of every kind; mental, cultural, but particularly spiritual, for in all of those seven yeaars I never found real Christian fellowship – churches were modern [not Bible-believing] and born-again Christians almost non-existent.
I was studying the Word one night and meditating on the loneliness of my situation and came in my reading to John 20, and the words ‘So send I you’. Because of a physical disability I knew that I could never go to the mission field, but God seemed to tell me that night that this was my mission field, and this was where He had sent me. I was then twenty-hree, in my third year of teaching. – Margaret Clarkson
“This was my mission field, and this was where He had sent me.” Where? To a mining camp in the middle of nowhere Canada. Doing what? Teaching school! The greatest missionary hymn of the 20th century was written by a schoolteacher. The hymn certainly applies to out-in-the-bush missionaries like Elisabeth Elliot, but it applies to the rest of us too. Wherever we are, working at whatever we’re doing, God wants us to feel “on mission” and Join the Adventure!
Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9.37-38)
I’m a sucker for alliterative outlines, and it’s hard to miss this one from John 20 after the resurrection:
19 On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 20 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” (John 20.19 – 23, ESV)
Peace (19, 21) “Peace be with you.”
Proof (20) “He showed them his hands and his side.”
Process (21) “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”
Power (22) “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
Pardon (23) “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven.” (Compare Luke 24.45 – 48)
Let’s focus today and tomorrow on “So send I you.” How did the Father send Jesus? Into the world…to invest in people. There’s a song about that, called by many “The greatest missionary hymn of the 20th century.” If you’re unfamiliar with it, you can hear it sung here. Speaking of alliteration, the lyrics are filled with it – it’s a beautiful hymn, written by Edith Margaret Clarkson in 1938.
So send I you to labor unrewarded To serve unpaid, unloved, unsought, unknown To bear rebuke, to suffer scorn and scoffing So send I you to toil for Me alone
So send I you to bind the bruised and broken Over wandering souls to work, to weep, to wake To bear the burdens of a world a-weary So send I you to suffer for My sake
So send I you to loneliness and longing With heart a-hungering for the loved and known Forsaking kin and kindred, friend and dear one So send I you to know My love alone
So send I you to leave your life’s ambition To die to dear desire, self-will resign To labor long, and love where men revile you So send I you to lose you life in Mine
So send I you to hearts made hard by hatred To eyes made blind because they will not see To spend, though it be blood to spend and spare not So send I you to taste of Calvary
A great “missionary” hymn, yes? But wait! There’s more…stay tuned.
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” (John 20.21, ESV)
It’s a bit technical, but I don’t want us to miss the significance of what Jesus said when he was arrested in the garden:
When Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, for Jesus often met there with his disciples. So Judas, having procured a band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, went there with lanterns and torches and weapons. Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and said to them, “Whom do you seek?” They answered him, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus said to them, “I am he.” Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. When Jesus said to them, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground. (John 18.1 – 6, ESV)
Why did all those people (a band of soldiers along with officers from the chief priests) fall down when Jesus said, “I am he.”? The reason is that “I am he” isn’t what he said. If you look closely at those translations which italicize words not in the original (e.g., NKJV, NAS, LSB), you’ll see that “he” isn’t there. So what Jesus said was, “I AM.”
It’s the same construction that appears in John 8 and answers the question, why did they pick up stones to throw at him?
So the Jews said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple. (John 8.57 – 59, LSB, emphasis mine)
The Passion Translation makes it clear in the text and the footnote:
Jesus said to them, “I give you this eternal truth: I have existed long before Abraham was born, for I AM!” (John 8.58, TPT)
Proper English grammar would be, “Before Abraham was born, I Was.” However, Jesus identified himself with the “I AM that I AM” of Exodus 3.14, when Yahweh appeared to Moses in the flames of the sacred shrub. – The Passion Translation note on John 8.58
At the very beginning of the crucifixion narrative, Jesus reveals his identity and his power, then lays them aside.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2.5 – 8, ESV)
