Theological Fragments

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Have you ever read Ruth and wondered, "Why did Ruth get her own book?" Why was it so important to tell the story of this one woman, of all the women on Earth, all the women in Biblical history? Deborah was the only woman to ever lead Israel, and she didn't get a book. Mary gave birth to the Messiah, and she didn't get a book. Why Ruth? She didn't preach a famous sermon, perform a miracle, win a battle, or save a people. She wasn't even an Israelite. She was a Midianite widow who got married and had a baby. Hardly the stuff of legend. And yet, at some point the Spirit of God inspired someone to write a book about this one, average woman, and the people of God preserved it and retold it for thousands of years. What did she do? In one common view of the Gospel, she did nothing very special--she just happened to be the great grandmother of David. If the Gospel is only about evangelism, if the only point of being a believer is making more believers while you

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I introduced the Vocational Gospel through a four-part series that went through Scripture cover-to-cover--literally, from the first chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation. Now, I want to expand on that introduction by showing individual instances in the Bible where we see the Vocational Gospel explicitly preached or displayed. I'm calling it "The Gospel According To..." Today I want to start with John the Baptist. John was a man of two worlds: he was the last prophet of Israel, and he was the first preacher of the Gospel, before even Jesus. In Matthew 3:2 John begins to preach, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand"--which is, word-for-word, exactly how Matthew summarizes Jesus' message in 4:17. John's preaching is our first glimpse of the Good News that accompanies the arrival of the messiah, Jesus. So what does he preach? Well, as we just saw, he preaches repentance. In Luke's account, John's call to repentance is p

Now we finally arrive at the place where this journey all started for me: the "Kingdom of Heaven." This whole journey began when I first really asked myself the question,  ​W hat is the Kingdom of Heaven?  You see, I was taught in Sunday School, VBS and youth group that the Gospel was all about getting my sins forgiven so that I could get into Heaven when I died. "Fire Insurance," we called it. And so when I was confronted with this phrase, the "Kingdom of Heaven"--a phrase that Jesus uses constantly to describe his message--I just assumed that he meant, "Heaven." So when Jesus said, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near," I thought he meant that the  way  to Heaven was near. When he talked about "entering the Kingdom of Heaven," I thought he was talking about getting into Heaven when you die. But that interpretation caused me a whole different problem. Have you ever noticed that Jesus seems to spend so little tim

The word "Gospel" comes from an Old English word that means "Good News"--which, of course, is the meaning of the Greek word that "gospel" replaces. When Jesus came to preach his message, it was described as "Good News." So what exactly was that good news? I have preached/taught on this topic many times, and whenever I ask the audience to summarize the Gospel in one verse, they always pick the same one. You know which verse I'm talking about: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. ​(John 3:16, ESV) In the Western Church, John 3:16 is considered the most important verse in the Bible. It is so central to the message of the Bible that it has become shorthand for the entire Gospel--hence why people write it on signs and in their greasepaint at sporting events. The idea seems to be that if a person got curious enough to look that verse up, they would fin

"We beasts remember, even if dwarfs forget, that  Narnia was never right except when a Son of Adam was King."   (Trufflehunter,  Prince Caspian ) Last time, I talked about why God created the human race--to rule over the world on his behalf. This, of course, is a radical shift in how most of us were taught to think about the Christian life. We were taught that being a Christian means waiting for Heaven, not taking stewardship of the Earth. This shift in focus begs a question: what exactly is our relationship with creation in Scripture? Last time we looked at Genesis 1:26-28, where God declares that he has created humanity to rule the Earth. There we find God establishing an ecosystem between Heaven and Earth. God created the world, with its plants and animals, and he called it good. God loves his creation--you can see that in God's responses to Job, beginning in Job 38. He creates human beings--physical creatures with spiritual awareness, with the capacity t

The chief End for which Man had his being, was that he might bear the Image of his Creator, to govern this World and to live in Obedience to his Creator (St. Paul's Catechism , by Thomas Grantham, 1687) I want to start at the broadest place possible: why are we here? Why did God create human beings? What purpose do we serve? I asked this question on my Facebook page, and I heard back from a lot of different people--pastors, seminary professors, and laypeople alike. The majority of them answered in one (or both) of two ways: Human beings exist to bring glory to God, and/or Human beings exist to "live in community with," or love, God and each other. These answers are not surprising. After all, most Christians have been taught this view of the purpose of humanity. It comes from the Reformed Tradition, specifically the Westminster Catechisms: Q. 1. What is the chief end of man? A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.  (The Wes

Over the past few years, I've been on a journey deeper into the Gospels. This journey has had many parts to it: becoming disillusioned with the Reformed Tradition, reading N.T. Wright, and joining the Restorationist Movement, to name a few. Recently this journey has been culminating in a calling of sorts: I'm discovering the message that I believe God has called me to preach. I call it the Vocational Gospel. This Lent I will be posting a series of four posts that explains the basics of this perspective, which hope will turn into a much longer series. I will also be posting these entries on my website , which hosts my sermons and curricula as well. Hope you enjoy!

Today, as I prepared for my youth bible study tomorrow morning, I was reading Mark chapter two and I came across one of those passages. You know, the ones that never quite make sense? You hear them over and over again, but you never sit down and just try to make sense of it? Well, today I came across one of those and I realized that, if I’m going to teach this passage tomorrow, I had better sit down with a couple of commentaries and figure it out. Here’s the passage I’m talking about: 18  Now   John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him,   “Why do John's disciples and   the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?”   19  And Jesus said to them,   “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.   20  The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and   then they will fast in that day.   21  No one sews a piece of unshr

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