Transforming Sermons

Note on email

If you want to send me email to my transformingsermons account, please indicate in the subject line that you're sending a personal message to me and that your note is not spam. Otherwise, because of the volume of mail I'm getting, I may delete your message by mistake.

I don't know if I'll shutter this blog or not, but as I work through a one-year residency in clinical pastoral education, along with my regular preaching duties, I'm not finding much time either for this website or the email account associated with it.

Thanks again for visiting.

Value of the Greek NT

BibleX has posted a good little quote on the value of the Greek NT in preaching.

Blind spot

I haven't missed the irony, after resolving to focus on the cross, of posting a video from Everclear. I'm in the process of figuring out what to do with this weblog. If I'm never going to get back to regular blogging, then I want to shut it down--not be like the aging athlete who stays in the game a couple of seasons too long. What's holding me back are the words of an old friend who, in effect, recommended that I give myself a year and a half to mourn my dad's death before making any big decisions. That gives me a few more months before I decide either to pick up the pace or to close shop.

In the mean time I've been spending less time online flitting through hundreds of blog posts and more time relaxing and processing my thoughts. That's been a very helpful and therapeutic process, and I wonder if I shouldn't have been doing more of it all along. We'll see. In the mean time, thanks for visiting.

Sublimely Wonderful

This is, I think, the first video I've embedded in nearly 4000 posts. I'm not all that crazy about the video itself, but the music and lyrics are, well, wonderful.

Telling the truth about deceit

I've been wanting to post something here, but nothing has jumped out at me--till today. Jeff Weddle is blogging about deceit, and as he's wont to do, he's been hitting the ball hard lately. Consider, for example, this lead-off shot in Jeff's post on Deceit and Pride:

The main reason we are susceptible to deceit is because we are proud. Pride resists reality because reality is not very flattering.

God gives grace to the humble. This is true even though we believe the deceptive doctrine that there is nothing we do to get God’s grace. Humility is required to be saved because God’s message is humbling to humanity.

The conclusion of his post on The Main Point of Satan's Deceit is another frozen rope:

Many charge me with legalism and works righteousness when I point out these verses, “We’re saved by faith, not works!” Agreed, and faith hears and does what God says. Faith is first, action follows. If the action never follows there is no basis to claim faith.

This is simple, straightforward Bible teaching. Yet we live in an age where the traditions of men and deceptive visions rule our teaching rather than the eternally solid rock of God’s Word. No one knows the Bible. No one reads it.

If we did, we’d see how clear it was. Be not deceived, those who don’t hear God’s Word do not have faith. Oh, read the word, read the word, read the word.

Amen! Preach it, brother.

Back to the cross

Well, I don't have much to say today other than to note that I don't want to leave a politically oriented post at the top of the page any longer. Through the years I've avoided blogging about politics. Except for taking part in the Terry Schiavo blogburst and linking to the occasional theological take on current events, I've tried to avoid issues that unnecessarily divide the church. I make a point of not posting anything just to be posting. But when I do, it expect it to be about the gospel. Thanks as always for visiting.

Unto Caesar and unto God

Trite phrasing notwithstanding, Timothy Dalrymple frames the situation of U.S. government spending in a deeply Christian way: Whom would Jesus indebt?

It is immoral to ignore the needs of the least of these. But it’s also immoral to ’serve’ the poor in ways that only make more people poor, and trap them in poverty longer. And it’s immoral to amass a mountain of debt that we will pass on to later generations. I even believe it’s immoral to feed the government’s spending addiction. Since our political elites have demonstrated such remarkably poor stewardship over our common resources, it would be foolish and wrong to give them more resources to waste. What we need [are] political leaders committed to prudence and thrift, to wise and far-sighted stewardship, and to spurring a free and thriving economy that will encourage the poor and all Americans to seize their human dignity as creatures made in the image of God, to be fruitful and take initiative and express their talents and creativity.

Thanks to Instapundit for the link.

Nadab & Abihu

You’ve probably heard the story from Leviticus 10 of Nadab and Abihu. They were two sons of Aaron killed by God for offering “strange fire” before the Lord. As the story is traditionally taught in Churches of Christ, Aaron’s sons fail to follow the pattern of worship given by the Lord, so Bam! God sends down his own fire and fries them in their place. And so it goes, we’re taught, for anyone who goes beyond what’s written.

Only problem is, we see in the very same chapter of Leviticus that God doesn’t always zap those who fail to follow the pattern. Aaron’s two remaining sons, along with their father, refuse to eat the offerings commanded by God. Aaron explains their reasons, and Moses, at least, is satisfied.

God must want us to consider, meditate on, and even speculate on the Scriptures. Otherwise he wouldn’t give us the kind of ambiguity we find in Leviticus 10. But problems flare up, of course, when we go beyond what’s written and teach our speculations as facts.

Copyright 2007, 2011, A. Milton Stanley

Commentary resource: TfD

The name was enough to catch my attention: Torah from Dixie, a website offering commentary on weekly Torah readings from the Jewish community of Atlanta. As a goy, I've learned something from reading devout, non-Christian interpretations of the books of Moses. If you're interested in reading "scholarly comments with a properly deep-fried flavor," you can easily access articles through the site's archives.

581 million miles without him

One year ago today my wife and I got up in the morning to find my father dead in his bed. He had lived a good, long life--almost 89 trips around the sun, most of them with his wife and boys nearby. For the past few years he had lived with my wife and boys as Alzheimer's tore through his mind and body. We were blessed that he never forgot who we were--even after he, quite literally, forgot how to swallow. One of the few blessings of that awful disease is that in his final months he forgot some of the pain of losing my mother, who died in 1999 after 57 trips around the sun as his wife.

In the past year the earth has traveled 581 million miles around the sun. That's 939 million kilometers. It's a distance I've traveled many times before, but never without my daddy.

Assurances that'll I'll see him in heaven one day, or reminders that our Heavenly Father is still going strong, simply don't do much for the pain. But praise God, indeed, that this world of rising and falling, of finding and losing, of learning and forgetting, and spinning around and around and around and around, is very surely not the whole story.

More goodies for preaching, teaching, and study

Here's another site that's new to me: Working Preacher, featuring commentary on lectionary texts, primarily by OT and NT scholars. The site is maintained by Luther Seminary, and commentary tends to be from a mainline Protestant perspective.

If you do lectionary preaching, you'll want to check out their home page or lectionary calendar page. If you're looking for brief, often insightful commentary on particular biblical passages, you'll want to use the site's Bible Reference Index.

Enjoy.

Online treasure chest

Since beginning in 2005, this weblog has been devoted to sharing links to the best online sources for preaching and Bible study. Yesterday I came across one that's jaw-droppingly rich: Ministry Matters, an online resource of United Methodist Publishing House in Nashville.

The site's library section contains a treasure chest of online commentaries including The Interpreter's Bible, New Interpreter's Bible, Abingdon OT & NT commentaries, Believer's Church Bible Commentary (one of my favorites), and Storyteller's Companion to the Bible.

If there's a catch, I haven't found it yet. I highly recommend the site.

You've heard it before . . .

. . . but it's worth repeating: What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?

John 3:5 - Born of water & wind

"Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." - John 3:5 (KJV)

If you've been studying the Bible for a while, you're probably familiar with the ambiguity of "water" in this verse (Does it mean amniotic fluid, baptism, spiritual cleansing, the Word of God, or some combination?). That's confusing enough, but there's at least as much ambiguity regarding what, in translation, seems very straightforward: "the Spirit."

First of all, in the original, Greek language of the New Testament, the word for spirit is pneuma. In addition to what we think of as "spirit," pneuma can also mean breath or a movement of air. The best example of this biblically less common use of pneuma occurs a mere three verses later, when Jesus says, "the wind [pneuma] bloweth where it listeth." The KJV is usually helpful in italicizing words added to the English translation but not present in the original manuscripts. That's what they did, for example, with of in John 3:5. Yet in this same verse, the KJV and most other English translations insert another word: the, right before "Spirit."

And why does any of this matter? It matters because most English translations (the NET Bible & LEB among the few exceptions) obscure the intense ambiguity in Jesus' use of pneuma in John 3:5. If pneuma can mean wind, and there was no "the" in front of it, then Jesus, in effect, told Nicodemus, "unless someone is born of water and wind, he can't enter the Kingdom of God." Now, that's confusing.

Thoughts?

Let everything praise the Lord

Psalm 148 calls on everything to praise the Lord. And it’s not just calling human beings to sing praise, but also angels, wild animals and cattle, birds and reptiles, sea monsters and trees. Even what people nowadays don’t consider alive—the psalmist calls them to sing hallelujah, too: sun, moon and stars; lighting, clouds, wind, and hail; mountains and hills. God created all of it, and it’s right that everything in heaven and earth praise him.

Of course, modern thinking explains why all these things aren’t really praising God: the psalmist was merely imitating songs of pagan nations; the hymn simply reminded ancient Israel to worship the creator rather than his creation; the psalm uses personification for poetic effect.

I’m not buying it. We may not understand the language of deer and hawk and carp, of dirt and wind and stars. But that doesn’t matter. When we lift up our voices to praise Jehovah, we’re never singing solo.

© Copyright 2007, A. Milton Stanley

Digging through the closet

In addition to new writings and links to helpful web sites, from time to time I'll be posting short essays from one or more of my other blogs. Next up is one of my own favorites from the now-defunct Milton's Daily Dose.

Loved ones and 2 Cor. 2:12-13

In The Four Loves C.S. Lewis tells of Augustine's warning about loving anyone or anything but God--anything, in short, guaranteed sooner or later to pass away.

I don't know how well I understand Augustine, but I can relate to the fear of growing too deeply into earthly attachments. I take great comfort in the company of my wife and children, but I worry sometimes about becoming too dependent in them, of relying so much on earthly kin that love drifts imperceptably into idolatry. According to Jesus, these kinships are the very kind that can separate us from God (Luke 14:26).

But 2 Cor. 2:12-13 shows the other side. When Paul came to Troas he was disappointed not to find Titus, who would have provided a rest for Paul's spirit. Eventually, Paul did meet up with Titus and found comfort in his presence (2 Cor. 7:6-7). Though Paul could be content in any circumstance (Phil. 4:11), he took special comfort in a beloved son (Titus 1:4). The point? Faithfulness isn't stoicism.

Paul wasn't alone in such a view. Jesus, after all, sent out his ambassadors in pairs, and in his own night of anguish Jesus himself sought the company of his three closest friends.

The OT makes clear that God created human beings to share life in community with one another, and that as long as the Lord builds the house, loving human relationships are very good. That should already be clear enough to a Christian. But sometimes it's good to be reminded that taking joy in our loved ones is even better than OK.

Another solid Bible commentary site

I'm always on the lookout for web sites offering good-quality Bible commentary for use in preparing sermons or Bible studies. My best discovery this week is The Voice, web presence of the Christian Resource Institute (not to be confused with the Christian Research Institute). The site includes surprisingly in-depth studies, primarily by Dennis Bratcher (Ph.D. in biblical studies, Union Theological Seminary, Virginia) and Roger Hahn, Ph.D., professor of NT, Nazarene Theological Seminary, Kansas City.

Commentaries on specific texts can be accessed easily from the site's Index of Biblical Passages. As web-page indexes go, this one is exceptionally useful.

I've been trying to find studies and commentaries from a wide range of theological territories, and The Voice is by far one of the best I've found from an Arminian perspective.