Pastor’s Blog

Adult Sunday School

“It is No Longer I That Lives, But Christ Lives in Me”

Part 8 of our Galatians lesson series ...

Galatians 2:19-21

(19) For I, through the Law, died to the Law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ. (20) It is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the son of God who loved me and gave himself over for me. (21) I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for nothing.
In a previous lesson, I suggested that “the things that I destroyed” from verse 18 refers to not to the works of the Law, as is virtually unanimously understood, but to the works of the flesh, i.e., to sin. In this post I want to quickly examine how this understanding of Galatians 2:17-18 affects our reading of the final three verses in the chapter. (more…)

By Kerry Lee, ago
Adult Sunday School

Ask of Me and I Will Give You the Nations

(An augmented transcript from the Adult Sunday School class, 10/23/2016)

Psalm 2

(1) Why do the nations make trouble and the countries plot in vain? (2) The kings of the earth take their stand, and potentates collude together against Yahweh and against his Messiah. (3) Let us tear off their bonds, and let us throw their ropes from ourselves. (4) He who sits enthroned in the heavens laughs, the Lord ridicules them. (5) Then he speaks to them in his anger, and in his wrath he terrifies them. (6) “I am the one who has anointed my king upon Zion, my holy mountain.” (7) I will recount the decree of Yahweh. He said to me, “You are my son. Today I have become your father. (8) Ask of me and I will give the nations as your inheritance, and as your possession the ends of the earth. (9) You will break them with a rod of iron, like the vessels of a potter you will shatter them.” (10) So now, you kings, be wise, and allow yourselves to be chastened, you rulers of the earth. (11) Serve Yahweh in fear, tremble in terror. (12) Pay pure homage, lest he become angry and you perish in your ways, for his anger is kindled quickly. Blessed are all who seek refuge in him.

An Idealized Portrait of Israel’s King

Psalm 2 proclaims that the LORD rules the heavens and the earth, and those who deny this or struggle against it do so in vain. The nations of the world would be wise to acknowledge the rulership of God’s chosen one. Those who do not do so are cruisin’ for a bruisin’. But what does it mean to struggle against God’s rulership? What does it mean to throw off his bonds and cords? What does it mean for the Messiah to receive the nations as his inheritance? Who is the Messiah in this psalm? These are questions we have to think about if this psalm is to have a contemporary relevance. And I think Psalm 2 does have profound relevance for us, perhaps more for us today even than for the psalm’s original audience, whoever and whenever that might have been. (more…)

By Kerry Lee, ago
Adult Sunday School

When a Good Church Becomes a Great Church

(From the Adult Sunday School Class, 10/16/2016)

(1) Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, and Timothy, my brother, (2) to the holy and faithful brethren in Christ that are in Colosse, grace to you and peace from God our father. (3) We always give thanks to God the father of our Lord Jesus Christ when we pray for you, (4) hearing of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints (5) because of the hope laid up for you in the heavens, about which you heard beforehand in the word of truth of the gospel (6) which has been present in you bearing fruit and increasing – just as it is in all the world – from the day you heard it and comprehended the grace of God in truth; (7) just as you learned from Epaphras our beloved fellow slave, who is a faithful minister of Christ for you all, (8) and the one telling us of your love in the Spirit. (9) Because of this also we, from the day we heard it, have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you might be full of the comprehension of his will in all spiritual wisdom and discernment, (10) so as to walk worthily of the Lord with every effort to be pleasing to him in every good work bearing fruit and increasing in the comprehension of God, (11) being empowered with all power according to the might of his glory for endurance and patience in every situation, with joy (12) giving thanks to the Father, the one equipping you for your part in the inheritance of the saints in the light.
I feel that our congregation has Spiritual momentum. And I don’t think I’m alone in this feeling. Perhaps you all have sensed it as well. Over the last who-knows-how-long God has been shaping our little congregation in all sorts of imperceptible ways in a manner that only God can do. I know that God loves this congregation just as it is. We don’t have to be a big megachurch for God to adore us and to be pleased with us. Over the last several months, my prayers before service have been largely ones of invitation: Holy Spirit, come dwell among us and within us. Fill us and empower us. Heavenly Father, visit us today and enjoy yourself. Be pleased with our meager gift of worship. Let our praise be a refreshment to you. Let this house be a place of rest and joy for your heart. Really, I just want us to make him happy. And I believe that is exactly how God feels about us. I think he has been greatly pleased with our worship, by which I mean everything we do: singing praising, praying for one another, teaching and learning, and fellowshipping. I think this little congregation has a special place in God’s heart, and when he visits us on Sunday morning he gets a special joy from being among us. So I don’t think we have to do a thing to be pleasing to God or to be more acceptable to God. He is pleased, and he accepts us. (more…)

By Kerry Lee, ago
Adult Sunday School

Being God’s Diligent Employee

(From the Adult Sunday School class, 10/9/16)

Proverbs 10:26 - "As vinegar to the teeth and as smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to the one sending him."

The Ill Effects of Laziness

Having had the opportunity to hire people and manage them at Family Christian, as well as having been in other sorts of leadership positions over the years, I can say with authority that one of the most soul-destroyingly irritating things is the lazy underling. I give them a task, and they leave it unfinished for no good reason. And even what they do manage to accomplish is done so poorly that it has to be redone. And if I do not give them a list of tasks, I come back to find them just standing around rather than looking for something productive to do. Why am I paying you, again? I want to be not simply just but Christ-like: kind, full of grace, understanding of an employee’s age or workload or personal life. But these kinds of employees are like performance enhancing drugs for my fleshly desires for confrontation and eye-for-an-eye justice. What I want to do is jump up on my desk like Mr. Spacely and say, “Jetson! Yooooooou’re fired!” (more…)

By Kerry Lee, ago
Adult Sunday School

A Gospel of Reconciliation, Not Merely Justification

Part 7 of our Galatians lesson series, or really an augmentation of that part of the series ...

Galatians 2:17-18

(17) But if we who seek to be justified in Christ are ourselves also found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Absolutely not! (18) For those things that I destroyed, if I build them up again I prove myself to be a transgressor.
In the last paragraph of Galatians 2, Paul again seems to be responding (at least in part) to the Judaizer’s attacks against him. Based on passages both in Romans as well as Galatians, it seems that the Judaizers had a two part attack against Paul and his gospel. First, they said, “Paul is not preaching to you the whole gospel, but only its easy and attractive first part. He is doing this because he wants to be highly esteemed among men.” Second they said, “Paul is telling you that all you have to do to be righteous is believe, meaning that you can continue to act however you want afterwards. In fact, Paul says that God is glorified by your sin.” But this is a willful misunderstanding and distortion of what Paul actually says. In this post, we are just going to focus on verses 17-18, because they are pivotal, extremely difficult to understand, and subjects of intense debate among scholars. (more…)

By Kerry Lee, ago
Adult Sunday School

The Wicked Are No More, But the Righteous Endure

(From the Adult Sunday School class, 10/2/16)

Proverbs 10:25 - "When the storm wind has passed, a wicked man is no more; but a righteous man is an everlasting foundation."
A recurring theme not only in Proverbs but throughout the Bible is the endurance of the righteous and transience of the wicked. Psalm 1, for example, likens the righteous to a tree planted by a flowing river which always bears fruit and never withers, whereas the wicked are chaff driven by the wind. The primary contrast is duration, but there is also a contrast of usefulness: the righteous man who is like a tree not only endures in a single spot and continues to live, but he produces good fruit – he has an enduring positive effect on those around him. The wicked man, however, is likened to the waste product of the grain harvest. Not only does it blow away in the wind and cease to have substance, but it is the part of the plant that really did not have any use, anyway. (more…)

By Kerry Lee, ago
Adult Sunday School

The Fear of the Wicked, the Hope of the Righteous

(From the Adult Sunday School class, 9/25/16)

Proverbs 10:24 - “It is the fear of a wicked person that will come upon him, but the desire of the righteous will be granted.”
This proverb tells us that wicked people and righteous people will not share the same fate. Because of their wickedness, wicked people are destined for something fearful. On the other hand, righteous people can expect good things. This is not simply about karma, or some impersonal mechanic that is built into the cosmos. This is not saying, “What comes around goes around.” Proverbs has some points in contact with the Hindu and Buddhist doctrine of karma, mainly that our actions are meaningful in determining our destiny. But for the Hebrews and for Christians, destiny is not something that structures our lives impersonally, like in a Greek tragedy. Nor is destiny something that we have the power to shape by our skill or virtue or work ethic. What did Proverbs 10:22 say? “It is the blessing of the LORD that makes one rich, and hard labor adds nothing to it.” Proverbs 16:9 likewise says, “A man’s heart plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.” For the Hebrew and the Christian, destiny is something shaped above all by God. (more…)

By Kerry Lee, ago
Adult Sunday School

“By the Works of the Law No Flesh Will Be Justified”

Part 6 of our Galatians series ...

Galatians 2:11-16

(11) When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was condemning himself. (12) For before some from James had come, he had been eating with the Gentiles. When they came, however, he drew back and separated himself, fearing those of the circumcision. (13) And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. (14) But when I saw that they were not walking correctly in view of the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of all of them, “If you, being a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?” (15) We who are Jews by nature and not Gentile “sinners” (16) know that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faithfulness of Jesus Christ, and we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faithfulness of Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no flesh will be justified.

Paul Confronts Peter

In the first half of Galatians 2, Paul tells us that the gospel message that he had come to by the guidance of the Holy Spirit was essentially no different from that proclaimed by Jesus’ original disciples. In fact, not only did the pillars of the Jerusalem Church not have anything to add to Paul, but Paul himself had even one time been in a position where he had had to correct one of those pillars, Peter, when Peter had begun compromising in precisely the way that Paul had refused to with the “pseudo-brethren” in Jerusalem. Not only does this vignette put the final nail in the coffin of the false accusation that Paul is only interested in pleasing people with his man-made and too-easy gospel, but it also leads into the substance of Paul’s counter-argument against the Judaizers, and thus the real substance of Galatians. (more…)

By Kerry Lee, ago
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