Paul told the Corinthians (I mentioned them yesterday – Paul had apparently taught the Corinthians A LOT about the Old Testament):
For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples for us,
that we might not desire evil as they did.
Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.”
We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day.
We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents,
nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer.
Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. (1 Corinthians 10.1 – 11, ESV, emphasis mine, bulleted for clarity – and all those events are in our Exodus – Numbers readings for this year!)
Enough for today. I have one more, very important, reason coming tomorrow – see you then!
Two years ago, when we were reading the New Testament at the leisurely pace of five chapters/week, June suggested we develop similar reading plans for the rest of the Bible. This year, we’re going through the Pentateuch, Genesis – Deuteronomy, with room for three of the gospels. We opened with the foundational section of Genesis 1 – Exodus 20 before taking a break to read Matthew. Now we’re back into Exodus, and as I wrote Sunday, it was an abrupt transition!
When June started reading Exodus 21, she asked me, “Why should we read this?” It’s an honest question, that may take a few days to answer. But first, a reminder. There’s no question that some parts of the Bible appear more exciting and relevant than others. If you’re reading devotionally, you can read as little as a sentence or two of one of the epistles and find something applicable. In the Gospels, we can hear Jesus’ teaching or watch what he’s doing and, again, find something inspiring or applicable. But the Old Testament is different. We might have to read an entire chapter that tells a story before we can draw out some principles. In parts of Exodus and Leviticus there are laws that just aren’t applicable today. On those days, I’ve suggested reading a story in the Gospel of Mark (they’re short) or a Psalm.
But why try to read it at all? Here are a few reasons:
“All scripture” is inspired and profitable according to 2 Timothy 3.16. And when Paul wrote that to Timothy, the Old Testament was all they had.
Paul told the Ephesian elders that he had taught them “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20.27).
Some of the New Testament doesn’t make sense without it. Try this one:
The next day [John the Baptist] saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1.29, ESV)
If you hadn’t read, or been taught, the sacrificial system we’re getting ready to read about in Exodus and Leviticus, this verse would make no sense, nor would Jesus’ death on the cross:
For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. (1 Corinthians 5.7, ESV)
And Paul wrote that to the church in Corinth, to people who had come from a pagan background. Apparently, Paul had included the Old Testament in his teaching – not just the resurrection, even though that’s certainly where he started.
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15.3 – 4, ESV)
Note that even when he reminded them that he started by telling them about the death and resurrection of Jesus, it was “according to the Scriptures” – the Old Testament!
I would be remiss not to mention the passing of Tim Keller, Friday, May 19. A pastor and author, I especially liked his book Prodigal God about the two sons of Luke 15. Tim’s emphasis was rightly on the problems of the older brother and the Father’s reaching out to both of them. (“Prodigal” actually means “wasteful or extravagant,” and Tim points out that God is extravagant with his grace.) If you haven’t read that book, I highly recommend.
There are many tributes to Tim online from a variety of places. Here’s how an article from The Atlantic starts:
Tim became one of the 21st century’s most influential and revered church leaders—a pastor and theologian; an author who sold an estimated 25 million copies of his books; the co-founder and driving force behind Redeemer City to City, a nonprofit that promotes church planting and gospel movements in the great cities of the world; a mentor to many and a counselor and friend to many more. It has been a gift to count myself among them…
One of the things that made Tim distinct was his ability to bring an ancient faith into the modern city, into the lives of busy young professionals who might otherwise have dismissed it, and to do so with quiet confidence and not hostile defensiveness. He made the discussion of faith seem relevant, and exciting. – Peter Wehner, The Atlantic, May 20, 2023
By “modern city,” Peter meant New York City where Redeemer Church was located.
My friend Rowland Smith posted this Tim Keller quote on FaceBook:
Jesus’s teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. – Tim Keller, The Prodigal God
No further comment is necessary. Thanks for your work, Tim, and for your life. Enter into the joy of your Lord.
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. (2 Timothy 4.7, 8, ESV)
Remember the story of the golden calf in Exodus 32?
When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” (Exodus 32.1 – 4, ESV)
I saw something shocking this week from Exodus 24. What is the last thing Aaron did before he made the golden calf? Note how the story starts in Exodus 32: “Moses delayed to come down from the mountain…” What mountain? Who else had been on the mountain with Moses?
Then he said to Moses, “Come up to the LORD, you and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar…Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank. (Exodus 24.1, 9 – 11, ESV, emphasis mine)
The last thing that Aaron did before making the golden calf as recorded in Exodus 32 was have dinner with God, recorded in Exodus 24! Chapters 25 – 31 of Exodus record instructions that Moses was receiving from God on the mountain. The last thing Moses did before going up to receive those instructions was to leave Aaron in charge:
So Moses rose with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God. And he said to the elders, “Wait here for us until we return to you. And behold, Aaron and Hur are with you. Whoever has a dispute, let him go to them.” (Exodus 24.13 – 14, ESV)
Just let that sink in…
What are the ramifications? Two things come to mind:
Aaron let himself be dominated by fear of men rather than fear of God (whom he had seen!). Moses diagnosed it:
And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them?” And Aaron said, “Let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. For they said to me, ‘Make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ So I said to them, ‘Let any who have gold take it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.” (Exodus 32.21 – 24, ESV, emphasis mine)
Finally, mountaintop experiences just aren’t all they’re cracked up to be! This had to be one of the best, literal, mountaintop experiences ever. Dinner with God! And the first crisis Aaron faces, he caves. If you’re a church leader, you would do well to have less emphasis on big events and more on teaching people to walk with God by faith on a daily basis.
And he said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. (1 Kings 19.11, 12, ESV) By the way, this conversation happened just after Elijah experienced profound discouragement after…a big event!
Out of the clear blue the other day I heard from my friend and former Air Force colleague Tom Newman. Recognize anyone in this picture?
Bob Ewell (left) and Tom Newman at an International Officer School party, Maxwell Air Force Base, circa 1983. We were singing They’re Rioting in Africa, popularized by The Kingston Trio. When I saw the picture, I wrote back and said, “We were soldiers once…and young.”
Tom and I are about the same age, we both retired from the Air Force, and we’re both strong believers. But that’s where the similarity ends. Tom is a war hero, enlisting in the Air Force at age 18 and becoming a pararescue specialist (guys who jump out of airplanes or helicopters to rescue downed pilots in wartime).
Tom received the extraordinarily high honor, the Air Force Cross, for a daring rescue during the Vietnam war. The citation reads:
…for extraordinary heroism in military operations against an opposing armed force as an HH-3E Helicopter Pararescue Specialist in Southeast Asia, on 30 May 1968. On that date, Sergeant Newman voluntarily descended into a hostile jungle environment to rescue a downed Air Force pilot. With complete disregard for his own life, and hampered by darkness and concentrated automatic weapons fire, he requested the rescue helicopter above him to enter a nearby orbit, both for the safety of the crewmembers, and to prevent the hovering aircraft from establishing the survivor’s location for the unfriendly ground forces. When the rescue helicopter returned, he secured the injured airman to the forest penetrator and protected him with his own body as they ascended to the helicopter. Through his extraordinary heroism, superb airmanship, and aggressiveness, Sergeant Newman reflected the highest credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.
He later earned a college degree and re-entered the Air Force. I’m proud to have served with him on his first assignment as an officer. Even though we had a teaching job that required minimal physical activity, Tom kept up his fitness. His idea of a daily workout was to go out at noon and run 6 miles, the first at 8 minutes with each subsequent mile 30 seconds faster. Makes me tired to think about it!
Tom retired from the Air Force in 1994 and served in a variety of positions until 2006 when he found himself at Lackland Air Force Base serving as a pararescue and combat recovery officer indoctrination instructor. Here are some excerpts from a news article written in 2009. Tom was 62 years old in this picture!
A fit and trim man who looks ready for a return to active duty, Mr. Newman came back to Lackland three and a half years ago to instruct Airmen after serving in the private sector following his retirement from the Air Force.
“It’s where my heart is,” he said about returning to pararescue, albeit as a government employee. “I say I’ve come full circle, my wife says I’m regressing.”
About his Air Force Cross award, Tom said:
When you’re there every day, you show up for work and you’re ready to do whatever is necessary when called upon because you don’t know what you’re going to get called into…When you’re going after someone else whose life is in danger, whose life is at stake of possibly being captured and made a prisoner, the effort is worth it…You’re willing to take your chances to accomplish that…I was doing what I was trained to do, what I was supposed to do. It’s an honor, of course, and I feel honored.
About how he saw his job in 2009:
I’m a line instructor just like everyone else; I’m not in some little alcove…As long as I feel … I’m not slowing things down, that I still have something to bring to the table that’s valuable, I’ll still do it.
The article concludes:
That means future students can continue to draw knowledge from a man who, by his actions, has indeed exemplified the pararescue motto, “That others may live.” – Mike Joseph, May 29, 2009 (Mike’s article is worth the read in its entirety. You may have to go to Print Preview mode to read it.)
In 2016, Tom had a stroke. I was shocked, especially since he was the second of my friends to experience a stroke in 2016 and both were among the fittest people I know. When I asked Tom what caused it he replied:
And to what do I attribute it? Life. 🙂 The reasoning I hear from many who know me runs pretty much along the same lines as your note. There seems to be a presumption that because I do all those “right things”, this shouldn’t happen (to me). But that isn’t how it works. No one’s bulletproof, and no one gets out of the world alive. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!
I don’t compete anymore, but Heb 12.1 – 2 jumps to mind when I look for related Scriptures.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
I don’t think I’ll read that text again without thinking about my friend, former colleague, and war hero Tom Newman: a man of faith and discipline.
In our Pentateuch reading program, we took a break after Exodus 20 to read the Gospel of Matthew. Now we’re back to Exodus, and it’s an abrupt transition, right into rules about slavery. Not that uplifting on the face of it, and it causes some to question their faith.
Let me share my meditations from that reading…as well as my “alternate” reading, going through the Gospel of Mark. Remember, I suggested that you might read through Mark’s Gospel, one story at a time, when your Pentateuch reading doesn’t lend itself to meditation. (Others have suggested reading a Psalm – whatever works for you!)
So what do we learn from Exodus 21.1 – 32? My takeaway was that slaves have rights. There were limits on what slaveowners could do. In addition, shockingly, female slaves had rights to the point that they had to be set free if those rights were violated.
If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money. (Exodus 21.9 – 11, ESV)
The slavery guidelines are harsh by today’s standards, no doubt, but they were way ahead of their time.
Another thing to remember, in any event, as Andy Stanley says, you wouldn’t want to have to figure out how to apply many Old Testament commands! Different time. Different rules. We are in a new time and have new rules: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “A new commandment I give you that you love one another.”
From Exodus 21, I went to Mark 1.14 – 28. It opens this way:
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel. (Mark 1.15, LSB)
The time is fulfilled
The kingdom of God is at hand
Repent
Believe
Jesus has a ministry of preaching, teaching, and healing (see Matthew 4.23), but he has an equally important ministry of training followers to do the same:
As He was going along by the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net in the sea; for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” And immediately they left their nets and followed Him. And going on a little farther, He saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who were also in the boat mending the nets. And immediately He called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and went away to follow Him. (Mark 1.16 – 20, LSB)
And “the same” included calling and training men! “Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.”
And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others. (2 Timothy 2.2, NIV)
I wrote the other day about how easy it is to generate outrage. I posted a fun picture of my small dog encountering a large deer. A lady accused me of not being careful. Then others took her to task for the way she implied that people who enjoy the picture “must not be from Colorado,” etc., etc.
I discovered a few days later one reason that things escalate so quickly: people are not careful about how they say what they say.
A lady from the nearby (small, old) town of Palmer Lake posted her extreme dislike for a new sign the city had put up. It was large, ugly, didn’t fit with the town,… How did it get there? Who approved it? (By the way, the sign was erected in November 2021!)
Someone explained that it was approved by the town council after a long and public process back in 2020. That he was on the council and had voted for it. Others said they liked the sign. Still others said that there would be adjustments and they would love to have the lady’s input “if she could get over being bitter.”
Here’s the kicker: the original poster replied, “I’m not bitter.”
Well, I’m just an innocent bystander with no skin in the game, and let me tell you, she sounded bitter to me. Or angry. Or belligerent. I don’t know what word I would have used to describe her post except it wouldn’t be “pleasant.”
Is how we write part of the problem? I know that some people who post are “outraged” or angry, but some aren’t…at first. But the way they post leads people to believe that they are angry, and then others respond in kind, and it escalates.
If we’re going to post, let’s use our words carefully. I’m pleased that when I tried to tone down the rhetoric in my NextDoor string about the dog and the deer, someone posted, “I appreciate your attempted peacemaking.”
Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. 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)
If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. (Romans 12.18, ESV)
This falls under the category of too good not to share. Kansas City Chiefs field goal kicker Harrison Butker delivered the commencement address at his alma mater, Georgia Tech, on May 6.
Here are some of his remarks as reported by the Kansas City Star, relayed by Yahoo!Life.
I am someone not much older than all of you, yet I’ve been asked to speak, not because I am a great orator or because I have a number of impressive accolades, well, I guess I do have two Super Bowl rings. I just happen to be blessed by God to be really good at kicking a funny-shaped ball between two yellow posts. So as someone who is not paid to speak for a living, I’m about to pop off some hard truths.
I don’t care if you have a successful career. I don’t care if you have a big bank account or you fly private. Many of you in this crowd will achieve these things. Some of you maybe already have, but in the end, no matter how much money you attain, none of it will matter if you are alone and devoid of purpose.
It is important to use today as an opportunity to take stock of your mission. Our culture is suffering. We all see it. It doesn’t matter which political persuasion you sit on, or whether you are a person of deep faith or not. Anyone with eyes can see that something is off.
Studies have shown one of the many negative effects of the pandemic is that a lot of young adults feel a sense of loneliness, anxiety, and depression despite technology that has connected us more than ever before. It would seem the more connected people are to one another, the more they feel alone. I’m not sure the root of this, but at least I can offer one controversial antidote that I believe will have a lasting impact for generations to come. Get married and start a family.
…And yet all of this happiness [at winning the Super Bowl] is temporary. And the truth is none of these accomplishments mean anything compared to the happiness I have found in my marriage and in starting a family. My confidence as a husband and father, and yes, even as a football player is rooted in my marriage with my wife, as we leave our mark on future generations by the children we bring into the world. How much greater of a legacy can anyone leave than that? (emphasis mine)
It’s sad that advising graduates to “get married and start a family” can be considered a “controversial antidote.” Bravo to Harrison Butker. May his tribe increase.
Pass it on.
3 Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. 4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. 5 Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. (Psalm 127.3 – 5, ESV)
3 Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. 4 Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the LORD. (Psalm 28.3, 4, ESV)
If you’re following our Pentateuch in a year reading plan, you will have just finished Matthew and are heading back into some potentially tedious parts of Exodus and Leviticus. Remember, if you don’t have an applicable takeaway, you can continue through Mark’s gospel one story at a time, or you can read a Psalm.
I didn’t write about nearly all that I saw reading Matthew, and that’s OK. I do want to close out with a last look at Jesus’ chief antagonists: tax collectors and sinners? Nope: “The common people heard him gladly.” (Mark 12.37, NKJV) The Romans? Again, no. A Roman centurion was praised for his great faith in Matthew 8. Pilate was weak and caved to the crowd. What crowd? The crowd of religious leaders! Those were Jesus’ chief antagonists.
We saw how he told parables against them in Matthew 21 and 22. Then in chapter 23, he lights into them directly. Here’s a condensed list of Jesus’ condemnations (see Matthew 23.13 – 36).
Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You…
Shut off the Kingdom from people
Devour widows’ houses
For pretense make long prayers
Travel to make a convert and then “make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves”
Have silly rules on when oaths count and when they don’t
Tithe the little things while ignoring “the important provisions of the Law: justice and mercy and faithfulness”
Look good on the outside but not on the inside
E.g., cups and dishes
E.g., whitewashed tombs
Build the tombs of the prophets…revealing yourselves as sons of those who murdered the prophets.
Jesus’ language was stronger than you’d expect:
Blind fools!
Blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!
You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?
It’s not just the Pharisees in Jesus’ day. In our Bible teaching traditions, we “tithe the mint and dill and cumin” by insisting on certain interpretations of very technical issues. People argue about the nature of the atonement, for example. I don’t even understand the options. While they argue these nits, they often do it in an uncharitable way. “Justice, mercy, faithfulness” are the big things.
He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6.8, ESV)
We see the religious leaders and their hypocrisy right through the end of Matthew. In Matthew 26.14 – 16, we see them giving Judas 30 pieces of silver to betray Jesus. Then when Judas gives it back, their piety pops up:
But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is blood money.” (Matthew 27.6, ESV)
Really? It’s OK to take money out of the treasury for something unlawful, but you don’t want to violate the law by putting it back in? Then, after the resurrection, they take more money out of the treasury for illicit purposes:
…behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, “Tell people, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” (Matthew 28.11 – 14, ESV)
Bribing soldiers to lie. You can’t make this stuff up!
And the opposition from religious people continues right on into the Book of Acts:
So [the religious leaders] called [Peter and John] and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” And when they had further threatened them, they let them go… (Acts 4.18 – 21, ESV)
And the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region. But the Jews incited the devout women of high standing and the leading men of the city, stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and drove them out of their district. (Acts 13.49 – 50, ESV)
I mentioned at the close of yesterday’s blog that maybe one reason we don’t know about Loyalty Day is that “telling is not teaching.” The law might be on the books, but if no one is paying attention…
I was forcibly reminded a few days ago that telling is not teaching when I sat in on a web-based “training” from Mathematica, a high-end, very powerful mathematics program. I bought it several years ago, thinking it might help me in some of my data analysis projects, and I’ve used it “a little,” but not enough to take advantage of its power. So I thought the online seminar “Quick Start to Wolfram Tech” might help.
I was wrong. The lecturer (I use that word deliberately: it was a lecture, not a “training”) had sent us some Mathematica notebooks in advance, and he just stepped through them. Rapid fire. We hardly had time to even see what he had done before he was on to the next thing. And when he finally got to the third notebook, the one that might have had some useful tools in it, the one he had sent us was not the one he was using! Someone tried to tell him that, but he didn’t understand and kept right on going.
It would have been way more effective if he had covered (I use the word loosely) 1/3 or 1/4 of what he had raced through and spent more time on each part.
We in the church are often guilty of the same thing. A pastor friend of mine told me confidently that most of his people were having daily time with God: “I preach about it at least once a year.” Telling is not teaching.
Way back in the 1920s, Bishop Roland Allen of the Anglican Church wrote a provocative book Missionary Methods, St Paul’s or Ours? One of the methods he decried was his tradition’s around-the-calendar schedule for teaching major concepts over a 3-year period. The problem, as he saw it, was that a concept would be introduced, and a couple of weeks later, the church would be on to something else with no regard as to whether the people understood anything. Bishop Allen said something like, “You wouldn’t experience that too many times before you conclude that if church leadership had wanted us to understand that concept, they would have spent more time on it. Since they don’t, people conclude that they’re not supposed to understand.” Telling is not teaching.
Listening is not learning. A couple of years ago, I was working through applications of five sessions I had taught to the high school and college staff of Spring Canyon. When we got to the one on generational disciple-making, I realized that when I said “disciple-making” they heard “evangelism.” For kids that have grown up in conservative churches, this is understandable. They’ve been encouraged to “do evangelism,” but many have never seen relational disciple-making modeled, so despite what I thought were clear explanations, they weren’t making the distinction. Listening is not learning.
Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it. (Matthew 7.24 – 27, ESV)
But the word of the LORD was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little. (Isaiah 28.13, KJV)
Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue. (1 Corinthians 14.19, ESV)
Or, as an old Air Force master sergeant from the hills of Kentucky used to say, “Write to express, not to impress.” I came away from the Mathematica seminar impressed…but untrained.
