Sermon Video: God's Chosen People: Bound together in love - Colossians 3:11-14

Having already told the people of the church at Colossae of the need to "put to death" their earthly nature with all of its vices, now Paul advocates for the virtues that the people of God must embrace as they disavow vice: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.  As a precursor to this list, Paul reminds the church that "here", that is, in Christ, all of the distinctions and categories by which people divide themselves into subgroups no longer apply, for "Christ is all, and is in all."
In addition to the need to develop and employ the virtues listed by Paul, a significant challenge, but one God's people can achieve through the Spirit, we are also told of the need to pursue these virtues while at the same time forgiving each other when we fail.  Lastly, and most importantly, is the need to "put on" love over all of these efforts, binding them together and leading to harmony.

*As a bonus, this sermon begins with an illustration about brotherly love drawn from the experience of the 9 members of the Fellowship in Tolkien's LOTR.*

To watch the video, click on the link below:

If you have a problem with Christians who don't look like you...

"Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised,barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all." - Colossians 3:11

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." - Galatians 3:28

During her television program on Wednesday night, Fox News host Laura Ingraham said the following: "The America we know and love doesn't exist anymore,massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don't like."  Ingraham said "this is related to both illegal and legal immigration."

Putting the politics of legal and illegal immigration aside, the comments by Laura Ingraham are said to be resonating with many Americans who self-identify as Christians, but they shouldn't be.  The vast majority of those coming to America from Latin or South America are in fact Christians, many of them more devout and committed to their faith than those living prosperously in America.  In that case, they are brothers and sisters in Christ of those who claim to be his followers.  It should not matter, at all, to a Christian what race or ethnicity a fellow Christian belongs to, what language he/she speaks, or what nation he/she was born in, for the shared bond of brotherhood is a spiritual one and a mutual experience of forgiveness of sins through the grace of God.  

In the end, those who claim to follow Christ, and yet look upon fellow Christians, who happen to look different than we do, as an "other" who are a "plague" of "vermin" threatening to "infest" America (and yes, such language is far to commonplace, and becoming more mainstream), have a far bigger problem than their politics.  For those who judge others based upon their outside appearance are rejecting the explicit teaching of the Gospel, rejecting the Lordship of Jesus Christ over the whole earth (and not just one nation or ethnic group), and allowing hatred to have a place in their hearts.  In other words, they are in rebellion against God.  Racism among Christians, or those claiming to be Christians, is a cancer, and a deadly one at that.  There is no need to sugarcoat this, it is a sin for any Christian to reject a fellow Christian because they don't look like them (or talk like them).  I have no idea if Laura Ingraham is a true follower of Jesus Christ (not my place to sit in judgment on that question), but I do know that those who applaud her fear of Christians (many of them asylum seekers or refugees) who don't look like "us", relegating these human being created in the image of God and for whom Christ died upon the cross, to the category of "them" and styling "them" as a threat, will answer to God one day for rejecting the teaching of the Word of God, "Christ is all, and is in all."

Sermon Video: Put to death your earthly nature - Colossians 3:5-10

Having told the people of the church at Colossae that following Jesus Christ necessitates setting their hearts and minds on "things above", Paul then proceeds in strong terms to emphasize the need to "put to death" the earthly nature that Christians retain (despite their salvation and the receiving of the Holy Spirit).  After listing some manifestations of our "earthly nature" (sexual immorality, lust, evil desires, greed, anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language); all of which must be eradicated, not simply controlled, Paul then adds one further warning to those who follow Christ, we must not lie to each other.  In the end, in Christ we have put on the new self, we have been transformed by the Holy Spirit, and we therefore must abandon the attitudes and actions of our former fallen nature.

To watch the video, click on the link below:

Sermon Video: Set your hearts on things above - Colossians 3:1-4

Having refuted legalism and asceticism as being illegitimate paths to piety for disciples of Jesus Christ, Paul turns his focus upon the appropriate direction for God's people, that is, their need to set their hearts and minds on "things above".  Instead of spelling individual things out, Paul focuses upon the direction and focus of the passions and thought processes of those who know that they will one day appear, with Christ, when he returns in glory.

What does it mean to have your heart or mind set upon things above? For the Christian, this means living here and now as a citizen of heaven.  Having the perspective of someone who knows the future and lives today in light of it.  It means having a spiritual perspective as well, one that sees beyond the material and one that invests in eternity (though self-sacrifice today).

To watch the video, click on the link below:

One way to redefine Biblical morality: theorize the original text meant the opposite

In an article recently published in the New York Times, The Secret History of Leviticus by Idan Dershowitz, the author claims that the text of Leviticus that is known to history (the earliest manuscripts, the LXX and DSS, as well as the rabbinical commentaries) is not the original text of Leviticus and that this hypothetical original text in two very culturally significant instances, that of Leviticus 18:22 ("Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable") and 20:13 ("If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable.  They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.") the original text's intention was in fact the opposite.  In other words, Dershowitz is theorizing that Leviticus was changed (sometime before our earliest extant evidence of the text) from his theoretical text which permitted sex between men to the text that is known which prohibits it.

Two paragraphs from the essay by Dershowitz will uncover his viewpoint:

Like many ancient texts, Leviticus was created gradually over a long period and includes the words of more than one writer. Many scholars believe that the section in which Leviticus 18 appears was added by a comparatively late editor, perhaps one who worked more than a century after the oldest material in the book was composed. An earlier edition of Leviticus, then, may have been silent on the matter of sex between men.

But I think a stronger claim is warranted. As I argue in an article published in the latest issue of the journal Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel, there is good evidence that an earlier version of the laws in Leviticus 18 permitted sex between men. In addition to having the prohibition against same-sex relations added to it, the earlier text, I believe, was revised in an attempt to obscure any implication that same-sex relations had once been permissible.

In the first paragraph, Dershowitz makes it clear that he does not hold to any version of the inspiration of Scripture, but rather like many modern critics views it as a collection of the ideas of various men that changed (in this case dramatically) over time.  That this theory is anti-supernatural goes without saying, but his utilization of redaction criticism (theorizing various stages of edits in the text, in this case without any manuscript evidence to support the claims) is built wholly upon what he believes an earlier text might have said.  In his essay (and the journal article it is based upon), Dershowitz does offer up some grammatical "evidence" to support his theory, but this falls far short of being convincing evidence that the text of the Bible used to mean the opposite of that which our earliest extant copies claim.  {For a more detailed refutation of the thesis of Dershowitz read the following article by Dr. Albert Mohler, the President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary: Leviticus in the New York Times: What's the real story here? }

In the end, the reason why I comment upon this opinion piece from the NYT is not to start a new round of debate about human sexuality, homosexuality, or any other related topic (so please don't respond by arguing about it), nor is it to bash the NYT for publishing the article (so don't waste your time venting at the messenger), instead my sole purpose is to bring attention to the ongoing  and far too prevalent practice of twisting the Word of God into a pretzel by both scholars and laymen in order to get it to say what the person doing the twisting wants it to say.  Such twisting happens with good intentions and bad intentions, by those trying to defend God and those looking to jettison belief in him.  Motives and intentions do matter, but it is unethical and dangerous when the Scriptures are treated as a means to an end, just another tool to advance a viewpoint.

We can, and should, have discussions (informed by scholarship and research) about the history of the text of Scripture, that is indeed a topic that interests me greatly.  We can, and will, disagree upon how to interpret and apply the text of Scripture once we've reached a consensus about what it said in its original Hebrew and Greek and thus how it ought to be translated into English, those discussions interest me a great deal as well.  But we cannot, in any meaningful way, utilize the Word of God as anything beyond a historical curiosity if those who disagree with the text that has been historically established, decide that they will simply rewrite the text to their liking out of whole cloth.

Let those who do not view the Bible as the Word of God say what they will about it, let them twist it and warp it into anything they like, for to them it has no authority, no power.  It is unrealistic of those who belief in the Scriptures, to expect those who do not, to treat it with the respect that it deserves.  The Church, however, must reject this path of tailoring the text to suit our own opinions, in all its forms, the Church must affirm and reaffirm its commitment to the Bible as the divinely inspired Word of God, as the foundation for both our salvation from our own sins, and our moral guide in this world.  A method used to redefine the text of Scripture today pertaining to one topic, will be used to redefine it another day for a different topic.  If you build your house upon the sand, don't expect it to stay standing when the rains comes.