The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

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Category: Story of God (Page 1 of 7)

Proclaiming in Community

December 15, 2022 / / 0 Comments

The New Testament shows us the Holy Spirit of God creating a brand new community of people – all people, all languages, all nations – brought to perfect unity under the lordship of the risen Jesus. On the Day of Pentecost, those filled with the Holy Spirit quote from the prophet Joel to explain what’s happening: “I will pour  out my Spirit on all people and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

“Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off – for all whom the Lord our God will call.” ~Acts 2:38-39

The Holy Spirit breaks down barriers between people, he destroys the walls between all people, and brings us together in Christ. In Ephesians 2, it’s mainly about the hard feelings and the differences that keep Jews and Gentiles separate and divided. But those hard feelings and differences have all been demolished by God in Christ.

“In Christ Jesus, you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. He himself is our peace… [He] has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility… His purpose was to create peace… to reconcile all of us to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we all have access to the Father by one Spirit.” ~Ephesians 2:13-18

The Berlin Wall was erected by the Soviets to separate East and West Berlin. In Bethlehem, there’s a 27-foot high wall that divides the Palestinians from the Israelis. There’s a wall on the Texas border intended to keep Mexicans and Central Americans out of the United States. We know all about walls. Not all of them are physical. There are social walls and racial walls. There are gender barriers and economic barriers. We’re divided by politics and language, we’re segregated by ethnicity and education. But the blood of Jesus brings all of us together and the Spirit of God holds us together so that our unity in all the diversity becomes an undeniable proclamation of the power of the Prince of Peace.

“You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” ~Galatians 3:26-28

We have to practice this tearing down of walls, we must be dedicated to demolishing the things that separate us. We must do the very, very hard work of reconciliation because it’s such a vital component of the Church’s proclamation. 2 Corinthians 5 says God has given us the ministry of reconciliation. Peter slipped up one time in Antioch, remember? He was under some social pressures there and he stopped eating with the Gentile Christians. He wouldn’t associate with Gentiles in public. And Paul called him on it. He told him he wasn’t acting “in line with the truth of the Gospel.” He wasn’t living the Story.

If the biggest and most imposing barriers in history have all been eliminated by Jesus – national / ethnic, social / class, gender – then what other barriers can be justified? If all the walls have been abolished at the cross, who are we to erect new ones? Or to maintain the ones others have erected? If all people are created in the image of God, if God’s purpose is reconciliation and unity, if we are to love even our enemies, if Jesus took all  the world’s hostility into himself to destroy it, on what grounds can we justify any walls at all?

Peace,

Allan

Proclaiming with Power

December 14, 2022 / / 0 Comments

The Church’s Kingdom of God proclamation can only happen by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is so important for us to grasp. The mission is urgent, yes. The Good News must be proclaimed, of course. But Jesus would not let his apostles start until after they had all received the Spirit. They were prepared, they had been taught, they were witnesses to the whole thing, they were ready to go – but not without the Spirit. They had to wait for the Holy Spirit.

It won’t work without the Spirit.

And when they do receive the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, they can’t be stopped.

You find the account in Acts 2. One hundred and twenty disciples of Jesus, both men and women, the Bible says, sons and daughters, all receive God’s Holy Spirit and they boldly proclaim the Gospel of the lordship of Jesus Christ. They declare the Good News that Jesus is the new King and 3,000 people are baptized that day.

In Acts 4, Peter and John are filled with the Holy Spirit when they proclaim the Good News to the Sanhedrin. When they were released from jail – when you declare publicly that there’s a new king, it usually lands you in jail – the church prayed.

“After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the Word of God boldly.” ~Acts 4:31

Stephen is facing opposition to the Gospel in Acts 6. Members of the synagogue begin to argue with him – when Jesus says you can only serve one king and you repeat him out loud in church, it gets you in trouble.

“But they could not stand up against his wisdom or the Spirit by whom he spoke.” ~Acts 6:10

Through the rest of the whole New Testament, the Holy Spirit fills the followers of Jesus with power to meet the proclamation challenges. He gives boldness and courage. He provides the right words to say and he provides the power. You can’t proclaim the Good News without Holy Spirit power.

Peace,

Allan

Starting with Confession

November 19, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Tomorrow at GCR Church, we consider together Act Two of the Story of God. Act Two is the major conflict, the thing in the drama that goes horribly wrong and must be fixed. Sin happens. Rebellion against God. And it wrecks everything.

We’re all guilty. We’ve all lived this part of the Story. We’ve all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory and his creation intentions for us as his people. We’ve all taken huge bites out of that apple.

Almost all Christian churches for almost all of Christian history have started almost all their Christian worship assemblies with a prayer of confession and repentance. Confession is an ancient Christian practice we’ve never really embraced in the Churches of Christ. But Holy Scripture and centuries of Church tradition and practice compel us to give it a good honest try. Confession is one of those places where our God meets us and transforms us. In confession, we acknowledge our sin before God and pledge to live more holy lives by his grace.

Tomorrow morning we will pray a prayer of confession and repentance together to begin our assembly at GCR. I’m hoping you’ll join us. If not in person, then in spirit.

“Almighty and merciful Father, we have sinned.
We have followed too much the desires of our own hearts.
We have offended against your holy will.
We have done the things we should not have done; and we have not done the things we should have done.
There is no health in us. O Lord, have mercy on us.
Spare us, O God, who confess our sins.
Restore us who are repentant, according to your promises declared to all men and women in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And grant, most merciful Father, that we may live godly, righteous, and holy lives.
Amen.”

Accurate Interpretation

November 13, 2022 / / 0 Comments

I need to offer a disclaimer as we make this shift from viewing the Bible primarily as a collection of God’s commands to reading and understanding the Bible more as the Story of God. This narrative lens is not going to suddenly give us easy answers to all the issues. We’ll actually find there are fewer rules, the lines are not as black and white, and it leads to more questions and more wrestling and more reflection. It’s not a system. It’s not an owners manual. It’s much more art than science. It can be messy. But I believe understanding the Scriptures as a broad, sweeping, epic story of who God is and what he is doing will help us better connect the dots in the Bible, make us better able to see ourselves in the drama so we can play our parts and say our lines, and enable us to more accurately interpret God’s will.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the child of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” ~2 Timothy 3:16-17

A lot of us have taken passages like the above and developed a theology about the Bible, but not a biblical theology.

We’ll read Jonah and spend four weeks researching whether a human can live inside a fish for three days and never once think about God. The story is about God and what he is doing, not about the whale and what he or she can or cannot do.

We’ll argue about Paul’s words concerning divorce and remarriage and look for legal loopholes instead of dwelling on the covenant loyalty of our God who intends our marriages to reflect and witness to his perfect love and faithfulness.

Esther is not about “you need to be more courageous.” If that’s the point of Esther, it may as well be “you need to be prettier,” too. The point of Esther is that our God is at work to redeem everything and he uses every opportunity – even our darkest moments in exile when we feel weak and powerless and trapped in circumstances beyond our control – to save us and redeem us. We are not forgotten. We are never out of God’s reach or too far away from his salvation. That’s the story.

For a long time, we have read and studied the Bible looking for commands, examples, and necessary inferences. We no longer assume that this method works consistently, if at all, or if it’s even healthy. Does anybody really believe that in the grand, sweeping narrative of Scripture, the strange fire of Nadab and Abihu belongs in a central and controlling place? Reading the Bible as a book of laws to be obeyed or as a constitution to be defended is what led to some Christians affirming that slavery must be okay because the Bible doesn’t explicitly prohibit it.

Reading the Bible as a system of laws, people take every single verse that mentions slavery and notice that none of the verses condemns slavery as sinful or prohibitive. God didn’t say it’s a sin, so it must be alright as long as you don’t violate your conscience. Yes, Christians have done this in the past, and some Christians still do. Yes.

Reading the Bible as the story of who God is and what he’s  doing in Jesus Christ makes it obviously clear that all women and men are created equal in the image of God and that all people belong to each other as complete equals. Slavery is a result of the Fall; it’s sin. Jesus destroyed all the barriers between people at the cross. In Christ, there is no slave or free, male or female, Jew or Greek – we are one and slavery is a reprehensible evil.

That’s the difference. What’s the story?

The beatitudes are not telling us to be better peacemakers or to grow in humility. It’s not that you have to develop these virtues in order to receive the blessings. Why do we try to make mourning/weeping sound good or desirable? Well, it’s mourning over sin, right? I don’t know, the text doesn’t say that. The point of the beatitudes is to express how radically present the Kingdom of God is, even and especially among those who are grieving. People in their brokenness and grief often feel like they’re left out of God’s blessings. But Jesus is telling us, “No! God’s Kingdom is bigger and better than we ever dreamed. And it’s here right now!”

What God is doing is a story. It’s a narrative. When we see the pattern of God’s Kingdom in Creation and how it went wrong, when we understand how everything God is doing through Jesus Christ is to restore our righteous relationships with him, with one another, and with all of nature, we can much more easily, consistently, and accurately interpret his will and purposes for us.

Peace,

Allan

Identity

November 11, 2022 / / 0 Comments

According to the Bible, knowledge means knowing who God is and what he is doing through Jesus Christ. That knowledge, according to the Bible, leads to relationship, transformation, and mission. But most of the time, we’re primarily reading the Bible for information. We study words and the original languages behind them, we consult sources and resources for understanding the historical context, we dive deep into a fragment of a sentence and don’t come up for air until we’ve discerned the color of ink Luke used when he wrote Acts. And we don’t consider relationship, transformation, or mission.

Understanding the Bible as the Story of God will help us better connect the dots in Scripture, as observed in our last post. And it’ll  help us more easily identify with and see ourselves in the narrative.

Seeing the Scriptures as one grand, sweeping, epic story makes it easier to see ourselves in the narrative. We’re better able to place ourselves in the plot and play our parts and say our lines. We get this from inside the Bible itself, from the rich heritage of God’s people who lived and wrote and faithfully passed on the holy Scriptures.

Twelve generations after the crossing of the Red Sea, God’s people are saying, “Lord, you brought us out of Egypt!” Well, no, your grandparents and great-grandparents weren’t even alive when that happened. You never crossed the Red Sea. Oh, yes, we did; we did cross the Red Sea. We’re in this story.

In Daniel 9, the prophet is confessing sins that his ancestors committed decades before he was born. “We have sinned and done wrong; we have been wicked and rebelled!” No, Daniel, that wasn’t you. You don’t need to confess sins for which you are not personally responsible. Wrong answer. It is me. I did commit these sins. I’m in this story.

This is what the Bible does. It invites you to see yourself. It puts you in the Story.

“We thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through the Gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” ~2 Thessalonians 2:13-14

The way you see other people and the way you understand the world and respond to what’s happening around you depends on the story you’re living.

You can go to a high school football game and sit by five people on the same bleacher and hear five different views of the same game depending on the role they play in the story they’re living. A scout looking at next week’s opponent says, “We’ve got to play zone against these guys; they’re fast.” A member of the board that owns the stadium thinks, “Four thousand people here, ten dollars per ticket, nachos are six bucks and Cokes are three dollars – we’ve got to figure out how to host a couple of playoff games when the season’s over.” The running back’s mom groans, “Don’t give him the ball; I don’t want him to get hurt.” The running back’s dad says, “Give him the ball! He needs more carries or he’s going to wind up at Texas A&M Commerce!” The running back’s English teacher marvels, “How can that kid memorize an 85-page playbook, yet forget to turn in his essay?”

Knowing the Story and understanding who you are in the Story informs and shapes how you see the game, how you respond to what’s happening on the field, and how you might act or speak to move the plot along and accomplish the purpose of the drama. Your identity is forged by the Story you live and the part you see yourself playing. God’s great Story is our Story.

Jesus says, “You didn’t choose me; I chose you.” The Bible says, “You are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens of God’s people and members of God’s household.”

“You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness and into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people; but now you are the people of God!” ~1 Peter 2:9-10

Understanding the Story of God helps us bring more purpose and order to our lives and experiences. What is God doing in the world? Where is all this headed? And where are we – where am I – in this Story? Well, you are the light of the world. You bear the holy image of the Lord. You are ambassadors for Christ.

A system of laws and commands compels us to obey and comply. A Story invites us into relationship and mission. Reading the Bible primarily as lists and rules doesn’t foster the intent of God’s revelation in Scripture: to draw us into loving community and partnership with him. Viewing the Bible as God’s Story invites us to join.

Peace,

Allan

Connecting the Dots

November 9, 2022 / / 2 Comments

We’re making a significant shift at the GCR Church in our hermeneutic, the lens through which we read and interpret the Scriptures. We’re intentionally moving away from viewing the Bible primarily as a collection of commands and laws and toward seeing the Bible as the grand, sweeping, epic narrative of who God is and what he is doing in the world. We’re introducing it to the church over these seven weeks in what we’re calling The Story of God.

The Bible is a story. God reveals himself to us in history, through incarnation, Gospel, mighty acts, relationship, and promise. He could have given us a systematic theology or a constitution if he wanted to. He very easily could have prepared the checklists and the bullet points of what he wants out of his people. But he didn’t reveal the truth of himself or his mission that way. Instead, he chose to give us a story. He gives us poetry and prose, songs and parables – all of it in a narrative form. It’s a story.

The Story of God has a beginning and an end. It has a catastrophe that threatens the story and a plan and a mission to set everything right. It has a main stage and a main character. And from start to finish, it’s beautiful and inspirational. Eternal.

Act One – Creation: The Pattern of the Kingdom (Genesis 1-2)
Act Two – Crash: The Perished Kingdom (Genesis 3-11)
Act Three – Covenant: The Promised Kingdom (Genesis 12-Malachi 4)
Act Four – Christ: The Present Kingdom (Matthew 1-John 21)
Act Five – Church: The Proclaimed Kingdom (Acts 1-Revelation 20)
Act Six – New Creation: The Perfected Kingdom (Revelation 21-22)

We believe reading and understanding the Scriptures as one holy narrative will help us better connect the dots in the Bible, better identify with the story and find our own place in the mission of God, and more accurately interpret God’s purposes and will.

Let’s take that first one today. Connecting the dots.

We connect with one another through our stories. In a room of strangers, we tell stories about our hometown or our first job, trying to find some common ground around which to begin a relationship. You’re from Clovis? I have an aunt who lives in Clovis! Do you know Pam Lewis? That’s how we do it. And that’s how our Lord does it.

Jesus connects all the dots in the story. That’s what he told the religious leaders in John 5: “The Scriptures all point to me; the story is about me.”

In Exodus 24, Moses and the priests, representing all of God’s people, are eating and drinking with God on Mt. Sinai because they have been washed in blood. Moses says “the blood of the covenant.” At the last supper with his disciples, Jesus quotes Moses from Exodus 24 and says, “This is my blood of the covenant.”

The Hebrews sacrifice a Passover lamb on the night of God’s great deliverance. The Gospels say Jesus is the Lamb of God and he was sacrificed on Passover.

The Gospel of John takes the beautiful language of Creation from Genesis 1 and the spectacular imagery of New Creation from Revelation 21 and ties it all together in Jesus. He was with God “in the beginning.” He is the light shining in the darkness.

The story tells us that when you pass through the waters, everything changes. When you walk through the waters of the Red Sea, God is moving you from slavery to freedom. When you cross the waters of the Jordan River, God is moving you from wandering in the wilderness to settling in the land of promise. When you go through the waters of baptism, you pass from death to eternal life.

The Story of God connects all the dots in the Bible and gives us a common language and common touch points and experiences to connect us to the Lord and to one another.

All of life is a story. Everybody is living their story and finding their identity and basing their actions on the story they’re in. Everyone’s looking for the big story, the one Great Story that’s above the others and helps us make sense of all the others. The Story of God is that story. It’s large enough to be bigger than you, it calls you to something and someone beyond yourself. But it’s also intimate enough to involve you personally. God so loved the whole world that he gave his one and only Son. And that Son who came for the whole world also came for you. He knows you by name. Outside the garden tomb: Mary. Inside your fishing boat: Peter, Son of Jonah.

Peace,

Allan

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