I’m happy to report good news on several fronts. A couple of weeks ago, Dallas Jenkins, creator, writer, and director of The Chosen, sent out an email informing us that the strike by Hollywood writers and actors had shut them down. Dallas asked us to pray for this “Red Sea moment” as they appealed to the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists for an exemption because The Chosen is made by an independent studio.

The main good news is that the exemption was approved, and The Chosen resumed filming on July 24. Praise the Lord.

The second piece of good news is how The Chosen requested the exemption. In a day of outrage and demands, people of all kinds pushing for their “rights,” including Christians, Dallas wrote to the labor union:

We’re the good guys; we’ve treated your actors well. Please take the few minutes to approve our application so your actors can get back to work getting paid for the last two weeks of a season they want to finish.

I’m encouraged by several aspects of this request:

• The Chosen has already been taking care of the actors. They haven’t been asking them to work for less because it’s a Christian series.
• The request is written from the viewpoint of the labor union: “We’ve treated your actors well.” Please approve the application “so your actors can get back to work getting paid…”
• The request is built around what the actors want: “…getting paid for the last two weeks of a season they want to finish.”

The request does NOT mention any trauma to the organization. No mention of “We’re losing money here!” That’s not something the labor union cares anything about.

So I’m glad the exemption was approved, and they can finish filming Season 4, and I’m very pleased they handled themselves well.

Walk in wisdom toward outsiders…Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. (Colossians 4.5, 6, ESV)

I’ve written before about solving the Friday crossword puzzles in the Wall Street Journal. The one for July 14 asked for:

The answer to this week’s contest crossword is the entry that’s a hidden sixth theme answer.

It wasn’t too hard: each starred theme entry contained the name of a state spelled backwards. For example, STEAK SALAD contains ALASKA reading right to left. Therefore the clear (I thought) instructions challenged me to find a sixth entry that contained a state spelled backwards. It turned out to be CHAT UP which contains UTAH. So I sent in CHAT UP as the solution.

It turns out a number of readers didn’t find it to be that simple. One person wrote on Monday after the solution was revealed:

My minor gripe was the not totally clear (at least to me) wording of the contest question. Are you looking for UTAH, the sixth theme answer, OR, are you looking for the full answer that contains UTAH (CHATUP)? After reading the Contest Question several times, I went with UTAH.

If this were a math class, and a student asked me that, I can hear myself saying, “What does the question say?”

Jesus experienced the same frustration I would have had trying to explain what seems obvious:

Now they had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And he cautioned them, saying, “Watch out; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. And Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” They said to him, “Twelve.” “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” And they said to him, “Seven.” And he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?” (Mark 8.14 – 21, ESV)

These guys sometimes appear not to be very bright. Jesus communicates in metaphor, and they can’t make sense of it. AND they think Jesus is upset that they don’t have any bread. Jesus rebukes them for lack of faith – they don’t trust his power to provide for them should he need to. And he rebukes their inability to grasp the metaphor. Matthew’s gospel adds:

Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. (Matthew 16.12, ESV)

Ding, ding, ding! Jesus didn’t give up on the twelve, and he won’t give up on us, but he does expect us to grow in our ability to understand and apply increasingly difficult concepts and attributes.

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1.5 – 8, ESV)

P.S. The Wall Street Journal contest editor said they would have accepted either CHAT UP or UTAH. (They draw from the hundreds or thousands of entries to select one winner of a coffee cup.)

Our Pentateuch Bible Reading Schedule begins John. (There aren’t enough chapters in Genesis – Deuteronomy to fill 52 5-day weeks!) In contrast to reading a chapter/day in the Pentateuch as reading less material than usual, reading a whole chapter of John per day is a lot! So I’m not committing to blogging on all of John, just a few highlights.

And I saw something from chapter 1 I hadn’t seen before:

There was a man having been sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the Light, so that all might believe through him. (John 1.6, 7, LSB)

A witness “so that all might believe through him.” If that was John’s mission, he failed! Jesus certainly didn’t experience universal belief because of John’s ministry of preparation.

But the text says that a few sentences later:

There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens everyone. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to what was His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. (John 1.9 – 11, LSB)

“His own did not receive him.” But some did…

But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1.12, 13, LSB)

It was the case in Jesus’ ministry and in the rest of the New Testament: some believe, some don’t. There are no sure-fire methods.

When [the Jews in Rome] had appointed a day for him, they came to him at his lodging in greater numbers. From morning till evening he expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus both from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets. And some were convinced by what he said, but others disbelieved. (Acts 28.23, 24, ESV)

Our job is to stay with it:

And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking [in Corinth] and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.” And he stayed a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. (Acts 18.9 – 11, ESV)

We ended yesterday’s blog with the pastor’s observation that

Stewardship decisions are not made in church; they’re made in the real estate office and on the showroom floor.

Stewardship decisions are also made in the everyday decisions to buy or not buy whatever category of goods that tends to suck you in. For Jason Gay, the brilliant, humorous sports columnist for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), it’s sports gear. In the kind of article you don’t usually see in the WSJ, Jason explains How I Stopped Buying Silly Sports Stuff I Didn’t Need. He opens:

There was a period of my life, not long ago, when I could waste an easy hour and a half looking at cycling shoes on the Internet. Maybe more than an hour and a half. I would consider cheap cycling shoes and expensive shoes, white ones and black ones, blue ones and hi-visibility pinkalicious ones, custom shoes and shoes I could specifically contour to my foot by baking them briefly in the oven.

At the time I believed that every one of these pairs of shoes would make me better at riding my bike, or at least make me look cooler while riding my bike. Every once in a while, I would pull the trigger and buy a pair of new shoes…which, of course, did the exact same thing as the pair of perfectly fine cycling shoes I already had at home.

This is a condition known as sports gearaholism, and I will come right out and admit I am a slowly recovering sports gearaholic. I have been an addict for cycling paraphernalia, for golf stuff, tennis nonsense, fishing tackle, fitness equipment…

Sports gearaholics buy new sports gear because they think it’s going to make them better. I bought a new driver and three other specialty clubs a couple of years ago to improve my golf game. Guess what? They didn’t. And Jason explains why:

We’re deft online, clicking page after page of golf clubs, golf balls, golf gloves, each whispering a promise to raise performance and golf happiness. All of this is a lie. The only thing standing between us and golf happiness is golf itself, a cruel game created for the purpose of making contented people miserable.

It took me years to realize that I was the technology that mattered, and my tech is flawed. I’m an aging, deskbound non-athlete who, if I really want to elevate my performance, should lay off the peanut butter pretzels. (Emphasis mine. In the comments section after the article, readers pointed out that no one owns just one guitar. They buy new ones to sound like their guitarist hero, but, again, the limiting factor is the player, not the instrument.)

It’s the same advertising lie that Mike Metzger wrote about. Such lies may suck in the rest of the culture, but they shouldn’t suck us in. To apply Jesus’ words to this situation:

Don’t let people do that to you! (Matthew 23.8, MSG)

Paul was clear:

But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. (Ephesians 5.3, ESV, emphasis mine)

Let’s encourage each other in this battle:

You must warn each other every day, while it is still “today,” so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God. (Hebrews 3.13, NLT)

I was talking with a friend the other day whose mother had passed, and he spent a month cleaning out her house. So I asked the inevitable question: “Does that motivate you to clean out your house?” Answer, “Yes, but I haven’t started yet!” Same with me, we have all this stuff, and we owe it to our kids to get rid of as much as possible before they have to.

Unfortunately, we don’t always live as if we believe Jesus when he says, “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Luke 12.15)

Mike Metzger wrote about this phenomenon a few weeks ago in “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” It’s a short article worth the read in its entirety. The main idea is that we live in an age of discontent. He quotes C.S. Lewis as saying,

[We live as if] the attainment of goods we have never yet had, rather than the conservation of those we have already, is the cardinal business of life.

We miss Paul’s clear teaching to the church at Philippi and to Timothy:

I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. (Philippians 4.11, ESV)

But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. (1 Timothy 6.6 – 8, ESV)

And there’s a cost to the discontent that compels us to buy what we don’t need. Mike explains:

Contentment means to be satisfied or pleased with what we have already. That’s rare today. Advertisers define “a living” as making as much as we can so that we spend as much as we can on new stuff that we feel will make us content. It fosters cravings for what we don’t have, driving us to buy what we feel will be satisfying, but leaving little leftover for giving.

Doubt it? In 2022, Americans gave just 1.7 percent of their disposable income to charity, the lowest share since 1995, according to a new Giving USA report. The reasons vary: economic uncertainty, inflation, and so on. But the underlying driver could well be the discontent that causes people to spend too much. As one pastor used to say, “Stewardship decisions are not made in church; they’re made in the real estate office and on the showroom floor.”

I would add, there are even more places to spend money. Stay tuned.

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6.19 – 21, NKJV)

Here’s an event from the life of Jesus that’s hard to understand unless one remembers that there is almost always a “second audience.” What do you think?

Now Jesus stood up and went away from there to the region of Tyre.

And when He had entered a house, He was wanting no one to know of it; yet He could not escape notice. But after hearing of Him, a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately came and fell at His feet. Now the woman was a Greek, of Syrophoenician descent. And she kept asking Him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And He was saying to her, “Let the children be satisfied first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered and said to Him, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table feed on the children’s crumbs.” And He said to her, “Because of this answer go; the demon has gone out of your daughter.” And going back to her home, she found the child lying on the bed, the demon having left.

And again He went out from the region of Tyre, and came through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, within the region of the Decapolis. (Mark 7.24 – 31, LSB)

Second audience? “Now Jesus stood up and went away…” Stood up from what? A conversation with the disciples (Mark 7.17 – 24). When Jesus goes to “the region of Tyre” to have this conversation with a Gentile woman, the disciples are with him. Point #1.

Point #2: It’s a good 25 miles one way from where he was to Tyre. They walk the 25 miles (8 hours?), have a conversation with the woman and heal her daughter, maybe spend the night – it doesn’t say – and walk 25 miles back. What do you think they talked about on the way back?

It was a hard lesson for good Jewish boys. Peter was still having trouble with it after the resurrection:

And [Peter] said to them [a room full of Gentiles], “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.” (Acts 10.28, ESV)

I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. (Genesis 9.13, ESV)

I just learned that some people are choosing to recognize July 20 as National Moon Day in honor of the first moon landing, July 20, 1969. I remember it well, and I was privileged to meet several of the astronauts, including Buzz Aldrin about whom I wrote two blogs. Please check them out:

• Magnificent Desolation
• Humility

Buzz Aldrin preparing to salute the flag after the first moon landing

The moon landing was a magnificent achievement by tens of thousands of people over a remarkably short period of time: it was less than seven years from President John Kennedy’s “We Choose to Go to the Moon” speech until the first manned landing.

We choose to go to the moon. We chose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we’re willing to accept. One we are unwilling to postpone. And therefore, as we set sail, we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure that man has ever gone. – John Kennedy, September 12, 1962

“That goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.” There’s power in attempting something hard…together, something God recognized way back at the building of the tower of Babel:

And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.” (Genesis 11.6, ESV)

Are there worthy goals to attempt today? Either as a community of nations, the United States, or even the Church? It would require unity…which we’re not good at today at any level.

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4.1 – 6, ESV)

I promise this is the last blog (for a while) on the importance of the local church taking seriously its mission to make disciples. Yesterday’s blog pointed out that Hyundai knew what it was trying to do when it invested three years and $1.1 billion to build a factory in Montgomery, Alabama.

My friend Ron Bennett makes the same point satirically in his excellent book Intentional Disciplemaking. I offer this portion of Chapter Two with minimal comment:

Imagine a businessperson coming to a town to establish a new venture. He buys land and builds offices, warehouses, and production facilities. He impresses the townspeople with his industry, and they become curious.

After months of preparation, when the facilities near completion, a long-awaited “help wanted” ad appears in the local newspaper. Word spreads quickly that this business offers excellent pay and benefits, and needs all skills. The already low unemployment rate plunges to zero as anyone who applies gets hired. You even quit your job to hire on.

When the business opens its doors, all the employees eagerly show up for work. At first, they stand in awe of the wealth of resources amassed in this facility. The warehouse is full of the latest machinery and technology as well as plenty of building materials. Eventually, however, a question begins to sweep over the huge crowd of idle workers. It begins as a whisper and gets louder: “What are we supposed to produce?” No one knows. They forgot to ask, and upper management never announced it.

Finally, you volunteer to approach the owner. A polite, well-dressed secretary ushers you into the owner’s downtown office, and you find him sitting calmly at his glossy wood-paneled desk. “How are things going over at the plant?” the owner nonchalantly asks, glancing over the top of his bifocals while leafing through a stack of papers.

Fine,” you reply with your hat in hand. “We are all impressed with what you have built. We can’t believe the high-tech equipment that you set up, and we are eager to get to work. But we do have one question… What are we supposed to produce?”

“Produce?” responds the CEO incredulously. “Produce? Why, what difference does it make? Just get busy and produce something!”

Jesus wasn’t like Ron’s mythical CEO…

Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28.18 – 20, ESV)

I made the point yesterday, quoting Dennis Allen in The Disciple Dilemma that car companies don’t build cars. They build plants and equip team members so that they can build cars. I was living in Montgomery, Alabama, when the Hyundai Plant in Montgomery was built over several years and dedicated in May 2005. I watched the dedication on live television. At the time, I thought:

• The governor of Alabama was very excited about the presence of Hyundai. The economic impact today is $4.8 billion. But Hyundai’s purpose is not to improve the economics of the state of Alabama.
• Hyundai employs over 3,000 workers who make a good living at $67,000 – $100,000/year, but Hyundai’s purpose is not to provide a living for workers.
• The workers at Hyundai love their jobs and make friends among their co-workers, but Hyundai’s purpose is not to provide community.
• Make no mistake: Hyundai’s only purpose is to make cars. I toured the plant, and for someone who sits at a computer and pushes pixels around, it was very exciting to watch the process. A square piece was cut off of a giant roll of steel, a press came down, and bam! we have the hood of a car. And away the process went. During my tour, a car came off the line every two minutes. Today it’s more like every 45 seconds. In December 2006, after I moved to Colorado, I bought a 2007 Hyundai Sonata made in that plant. I’m still proudly driving that car.

Of course, while Hyundai is making money making cars, the economy of the state of Alabama improves and the workers make a good living and enjoy community. Focusing on the primary objective brings the secondary benefits along. Forget the primary objective, and the secondary benefits don’t happen.

Jesus said, “Make disciples.” Churches are ostensibly started to that end, but if we’re not careful, we start focusing on “building community,” and providing ministries to serve members, and disciple-making is either assumed or forgotten.

Sorry to repeat from yesterday (actually, not sorry!):

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up… (Ephesians 4.11, 12, NIV)

Jesus said, “You make disciples (Matthew 28.18 – 20), I’ll build the church (Matthew 16.18).