Posts by Pastor Matt (Page 3)

A winter ice storm caused our worship services to be cancelled this past Sunday. Unbelievable, right? It’s mid-April! Anyway, since I didn’t have a chance to preach this message, I thought I might post an overview of what I was going to say on Sunday. Any careful reader of the Gospels will notice that Jesus was always talking about the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven Mark, the earliest of the Gospel writers, and probably a primary source…

We’re made for worship as well as work, and the two don’t have to be at odds. Work is a form of worship; in fact, the same Hebrew word (avodah) is used in the OT to mean both “work” and “worship.” Read Psalm 148. How do the sun and moon and stars and all kinds of animals on the earth worship God? By singing on Sunday morning in church? Nope. They simply do what they’re created to do every day.…

Make a list of what you do on a typical day (if there were such a thing!). You can be as specific as you’d like, just give yourself an idea of how the hours in your day are spent. Got it? How much of your day was spent in Christian piety? That is, how much time did you spend doing “spiritual” things like reading your Bible reading, prayer, personal reflection and worship? For the sake of argument, let’s aim high…

What comes to your mind when you hear the phrase “kingdom of God” or “kingdom of heaven”? If you’re like many Christians, you might be thinking about an abstract, non-physical, and largely mysterious reality set in the distant future at an unknown location in outer space. I fear that so many of us overlook the kingdom of heaven as a very critical element to the biblical storyline and of God’s progressive revelation in Scripture. To start, the kingdom of God…

I just finished the book by Sinclair Ferguson, “The Whole Christ” (Crossway, 2016). Ferguson does a great job of defining and explaining the relationship between legalism, antinomianism, and God’s loving grace. Don’t let these fancy terms bother you. Legalism is simply a term that describes a response toward God that leads to strict, dutiful obedience to God’s commands without a proper understanding of God’s love and grace. Antinomianism, from the Greek anti (“against/no”) nomos (“law”), is also a term that…

In his book, “The King Jesus Gospel,” Scot McKnight challenges us to broaden our understanding of the gospel. Think about this question: What is good news about the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, the descendant of David? Or what about this question: Why do we need the OT anyway? My fear is that one reason why so many Christians don’t know the OT is because their “gospel” doesn’t need it. The word “gospel” is almost entirely about personal salvation.…

What I Read in 2017: Matthew Bates, “Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King.” Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017 (215 pages). Reading level: Intermediate New content: Medium Level of agreement: Mixed   Boyd, Greg, “Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross.” Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017 (628 pages). Reading level: Difficult New content: High Level of agreement: Mixed   Kevin DeYoung, “The Hole…

As we celebrate Christmas over the next several days, I’m reminded of the prophet Isaiah and his poetry about the coming new creation. “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.  And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. And his delight shall be in…

In his book Living Jesus,  Luke Timothy Johnson reminds me how important ministry to children is. He says, “The saints are those who serve the needs of the world’s poor and outcast, the little ones who have no power of their own. The child in Mark 9:36-37 represents all the world’s little ones, not merely because of stature, but because the child signifies everything that a world based on the denial of God wishes to exclude” (p. 51). Unfortunately, we often desire…

The basic claim of Inhabiting the Cruciform God by Michael Gorman is that “Paul’s soteriology is best described as theosis, or transformation into the image of the kenotic, cruciform God revealed in the faithful and loving cross of Christ, and that Spirit-enabled theosis (transformation into Godlikeness) is the substance of both justification and holiness. Justification is participatory and transformative, accomplished by co-crucifixion with Christ and embodied as holiness” (p. 161). Chapter 1 Chapter one focuses on Phil. 2:6-11 as the foundation of…