Looking Back on 3.5 Years of Blogging

Okay, so the title is a little misleading.  I’ve actually been blogging for about 5 years, but only consistently for 3.5.  Five years ago, as I was serving as a youth pastor in a Portland suburb, I took the lead from my senior pastor and set-up my own blog on Google’s Blogger (blasphemy, I know, on WordPress).  At the time I had no idea what blogging was, how to use it, what to talk about…I was completely clueless.  Originally I had a habit of talking bad about people in the church and airing all my dirty laundry.  It was one of several things that ultimately resulted in my resignation from that church.

But then, after a short break, I tried again.  I was still on Blogger at that time and I called the thing “Menial Ramblings of a Sanctified Sinner.”  I still didn’t have much of an idea what to do with a blog, but I started it on a much more tame note.  My first post was actually a humorous story from Lark News about the 2006 “Pastor’s Draft.”  I started off slow, but eventually, writing became easier and more frequent.   After a while I switched websites and moved “Menial Ramblings” to WordPress, and with it came a new name: “Under Construction”.  The last transformation took place this past June when I changed the name to “The Follower.”  Over the years I have posted random thoughts, devotional material, sermons, papers, articles, rants…just about whatever has come to mind.  The two years I’ve spent on WordPress has brought over 16,000 visitors to my blog – not by any means a number that places me anywhere near the top of the popular blogs list, but encouraging to me nonetheless (I would love to be a heavy traffic blog with 16,000 per month).

Something I’d like to do – and something the few readers I have may be interested in – is start putting together a list every 6 months of the top viewed post and my personal favorites.  But for this edition, what you’ll find below is just a list of my personal top-15 list of all time (it’s just too much work for me to figure out how to get stats of the most read).  Then in June, 2010, be looking for an updated list of posts from the previous 6 months.  Hope you find this enjoyable.  Happy reading!

My Top-15 Posts

1. Intellectualism vs. Practicality
2. Unity for the Sake of the Gospel
3. A Good Quote
4. The Profit-Making Gospel
5. Out of the Overflow of the Heart
6. Reflections on Exodus 33:12-23
7. Christianity and Homosexuality (related to this is A Painful Lesson)
8. Laniece & Other God Moments
9. Musing on Biblical Love
10. Wealth = Blessing
11. Discipleship
12. The Purpose of Worship
13. Love God
14. Love Others
15. Follower of Jesus

Filed under: Apologetics, Bible Study, Christian Living, Christianity, Church, Church Planting, Culture, Discipleship, Evangelism, Faith, Leadership, Ministry, Original Languages, Philosophy, Prayer, Preaching, Random, Sermon, Theology, Worship

Preliminary Thoughts on Matthew 4:1-11

I’ve spent the past few days picking through Matthew’s account of the temptation of Jesus.  I’ll be preaching on this text in January in Seattle at a church who’s pastor will be retiring the week just before I preach.  That presents a number of unique challenges as most congregations feel “shell-shocked” after losing a pastor, AND this text is an extremely familiar passage that most people have heard several sermons on.  In preaching Matthew, I’ve been intentional about not trying to reconcile Matthew’s gospel with similar stories in the other gospels.  My reasoning is that I believe Matthew to be bringing a unique message that the church will do well to consider in it’s own right.  Therefore, I striving to keep my research and study confined to Matthew without allowing the other accounts of Jesus temptation to influence the way I read Matthew’s.

I’ve mentioned this before, but worth repeating is Matthew’s three-fold purpose in writing his gospel: 1) prove Jesus’ messiahship to a Jewish audience, 2) motivate his readers to a life of discipleship, and 3) show that missions is the primary action of the life of a disciple.  With that framework, I’m striving to understand how Matthew 4:1-11 fits into the gospel.  This is proving to be far more difficult than originally anticipated.

In any case, here are a few of my initial observations regarding this passage (with more to come in a later post):

1. Chapter 3 ends with Jesus’ baptism and the Father’s voice coming out of heaven saying, “This is my son, whom I love…”  Chapter 4 then begins with the Greek word Τότε (tote; then, at that time).  There’s a sense of immediacy here.  In the original manuscripts, the narrative is clearly continuing on from the previous story (baptism) without the break that our English editions show.  Chapter and verse divisions are arbitrary and do not exist in the originals – they were added later for organization and clarification purposes.  These two sections (Jesus’ baptism and temptation) are further linked together by the repetition of the “Son of God” theme.  Jesus is declared the Son of God in 3:17 and then “the devil” arrives saying, “If you are the Son of God…” (4:3).  The theory I’m toying with is that Matthew has included Jesus’ temptation as proof of his messiahship and/or divinity.
2. Jesus is tempted three times.  Each time he refutes the devil’s challenge by quoting Scripture.  Interestingly, the verses he chooses to quote all come from Deuteronomy 6-8.  Since Matthew’s original readers were Jewish, these references to Deuteronomy would have stuck out like a pink elephant.  Moses was the original orator of these words, which in a way forces us to ask what Moses has to do with this scene.  This isn’t the first time Matthew has compared Jesus to Moses; he did so rather blatantly in 2:13-23.  This comparison/equation is a strong argument in favor of Jesus really being the messiah, which falls in line with the three-fold purpose.

In the meantime, I’m gunna keep thinking about this.  I’ve got to figure out where I’m going with this text by Dec. 30.  What do you see happening here?  Any insight?  Am I crazy?  Have you heard anything along these lines before?

Filed under: Bible Study, Discipleship, Ministry, Original Languages, Preaching, Sermon, Theology

The Visit of the Magi (Sermon on Matthew 2:1-13)

It’s a joy to be back in Portland and able to worship here at Parklane again.  I graduated from Calvin Seminary in May, and Mishaela and I have been back in the area for about 3 months now.  Just so everyone’s up to date on what we’re doing here, we decided about a year and a half ago that would start walking through the door to church planting.  What’s more, we also began to feel a real burden to see more CRC congregations in Oregon and to minister to Portland.  And so, we moved back to Portland and we’ve been working to establish ourselves in the Sellwood neighborhood, with the hopes of starting a new faith gathering in that part of town.  I suppose it’s also worth pointing out that Mishaela and I are expecting our first child in February, which we are very excited about.

As a church planter I’ve been gravitating toward the gospel of Matthew – and for good reason.  A question I’m sure many of us have wondered about is “Why are there four gospels?” After all, if the goal is to present a biography of sorts of Jesus life, won’t one do the trick?

The reality that is often overlooked is that each gospel comes with its own particular slant on what happened.  Each gospel writer, when he set out to record the events of Jesus’ life and his teachings, did so with the intention of achieving something more than just recording the events of Jesus’ life.  It’s that particular slant that has resulted in the gospels occasionally telling a slightly different version of an event or even omitting or including stories that the other gospels haven’t.

Filed under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Christianity, Church, Discipleship, Faith, Ministry, Original Languages, Sermon, Theology

God the Prophet (Genesis 3)

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with Genesis 3.  In middle school I was taught that 3:15 provides us with the first promise of a savior in Scripture.  As such, followers of Jesus can accurately see Genesis 3 as perhaps the first piece of the gospel message: God promises to redeem fallen humanity via the offspring of the woman.

As great as that fact is, to focus solely on Genesis 3:15 as though that were the entirety of the point of the entire passage is to miss the complete picture.  The evangelical in me wants to keep coming back to that verse, but the follower who desires to understand Scripture to the best of my ability has t look beyond a single verse.

The prevailing view in evangelical Christianity is that prophecy is about foretelling what God will do in the future.  It’s fairly easy to see how this view was developed; when we read the prophets, the pattern is that they say something will happen, and then it happens.  And so we tend to automatically conclude that the purpose of Biblical prophecy is to foretell future events.

However, a closer study of prophecy and the role of a prophet reveals something slightly different.  Deuteronomy 18:14-22 lays out the purpose of prophecy and criteria for determining whether a prophet is a true prophet or not.  Especially Deuteronomy 18:18-19 are helpful:

I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their people, and I will put my words in his mouth.  He will tell them everything I command him.  I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name.

Filed under: Bible Study, Christianity, Original Languages, Theology

Magi From the East (Mt. 2:1-12)

Matthew is the only Gospel to record the coming of the Magi.  The story’s uniqueness by itself is enough to warrant giving it attention.  The difficulty, however, is in taking a story like this and trying to figure out how to apply it.  We have nothing in the Gospels to compare it to, and there seems to be more questions than answers.  Who were these men?  Where exactly did they come from?  What was the star?  When exactly did they come?  Why doesn’t Mark, Luke, or John talk about the men?

The story of the Magi visitation is an extremely important piece of Matthew’s telling of the life of Jesus and the message he wants to emphasize (Matthew places an emphasis on discipleship and mission).  For the period, the story is fairly unremarkable.  But at the same time, for a Jewish audience it would have been nearly inconceivable.  It’s unremarkable in the sense that three unnamed men from the East interpreted something in the sky as pointing to the birth of someone significant.  Such events were fairly common at the time.

However, the part of this story that is inconceivable – and sets up a recurring theme throughout Jesus’ life – is that the promised Jewish messiah is worshipped/honored by Gentiles.  Jews of the day had an extremely strong sense of national and religious pride, and they were very unwilling to compromise on any that.  Take a look again at what Matthew is putting them through up to this point:

1. 1:1-17: Jesus is the promised messiah, coming from the right family (family of David).
2. 1:18-25: Jesus is again defended as the Jewish messiah as Matthew shows his readers how the circumstances of his birth are consistent with what Isaiah wrote.
3. 2:1-12: The Jewish messiah was not just for Jews, but worshipped even by Gentiles.

Filed under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Discipleship, Original Languages