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Lost Boys
My father left me three watches as part of my inheritance. The first, and oldest, was the one his parents had given him as a graduation present from high school in 1932. The second was a watch he bought when he left his corporate career and went into business for himself as a consultant. The third was a Rolex he bought and wore for almost 40 years. While I never asked him directly, I think that last watch signified something important to him as a child of the Depression. It was not pride but a marker of having made something of himself. It is also the watch I remember the…
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1 Peter 3:13-22
1. The early Christians saw themselves as living in the days of Noah. The culture was coarse, corrupt and full of violence. “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain…The earth was corrupt and full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.” The same could be said about our culture. We live in a coarse and corrosive culture…
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Jacob Wrestles With God
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Imprisoned by the Past
The most memorable line President Obama spoke about his recent meeting with Raul Castro was, “The United States will not be imprisoned by the past.” I have thought a lot about that over the last few months, not only as an American, but what that means as a Christian. How can we know when we are imprisoned? And how can we change without losing our moorings and commitments to those permanent values that define us? Change comes in all sizes. Sometimes the transitions are almost unnoticed and we just wake up one day finding that things we once believed have been replaced by new beliefs. Things we once held dear…
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1 Peter 3:1-12
1. In the final chapter of John, Jesus tells Peter how he is to die – upside down. In a sense he also lived upside down from what he had been as a young man. The Apostle writing these letters is not the impulsive and proud person we meet in the Gospels. Instead, we see a man seasoned by age, circumstances and the Holy Spirit. Time and again, including the passage this morning, he talks about the virtue of submission and the power of endurance in the face of persecution. 2. My mental picture of Peter giving advice to women about beauty just confirms his living upside down. This is…
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Jacob Wrestles With God
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Silence
“By then day had broken everywhere, but here it was still night – no, more than night.” Pliny the Younger Years ago, while serving as a counselor at youth crusades, we were trained to hand each person making a decision for Christ a pocket version of the Gospel of John. Why? Because our leaders thought it captured the love of God better than any of the other Gospels. The stories of the Samaritan woman at the well, Nicodemus, the blind beggar healed, the feeding of the five thousand, and the raising of Lazarus – as well as what may be the most famous verse in the Bible – were all…
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1 Peter 2:13-17
This morning we are going to look at the passage from the perspective of Paul in Romans 13 as well as Peter. It’s important to realize that the earliest Church fathers were in agreement about the relationship between the church and the government. The early church was not a revolutionary movement. It was not a conservative movement. It was a fellowship of foreigners and exiles living temporarily in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. If you look at the several passages in 1 Timothy, 1 Peter and Titus there is a consistent theme. “Pray and be grateful for those in authority that we may live peaceful and quiet…
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Jacob Wrestles With God
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Finishing My Father’s Journey
Steve Martin is known most widely for his early work in absurd comedy but he has also evolved into a serious art collector playwright and fine writer. In his memoir, “Born Standing Up” he recounts the death of his father. Growing up in Waco, Texas, Steve remembers his feelings toward his father as “mostly ones of hatred” as his father was cold and stern. He was critical of Steve’s career. and their relationship was awkward at best: “In his early 80s my father’s health declined further and he became bedridden. There must be an instinct about when the end is near as we all found ourselves gathered at my parents’home…
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1 Peter 2:1-12
In 2 Chronicles we read the stories of two kings: Josiah and Jehoiakim. They are father and son but they could not be more different in every way. Josiah became king at eight years old. When he was sixteen he “began to seek the God of his father David” and at twenty he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of high places, carved idols and cast images. When he was twenty-six he began to repair the Temple and it was in that process that a great discovery was made: the Book of the Law that the Lord had given to Moses. At the news, Josiah tore his robes and said,…
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Jacob Wrestles With God
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Here Are Your Gods
The final commentary on the lives of many of the kings of Israel is, “He did evil and walked in the ways of Jeroboam.” But even when they did good things, the Old Testament always offers an addendum – a last line in their obituary and funeral eulogy, “Yet he walked in the ways of Jeroboam.” This has been the final word on the kings of Israel for hundreds of years. What is this defining sin, the standard by which all the kings came to be judged? What is the sin of the house of Jeroboam and does it have any relevance for us today? Jeroboam understood the nature of…
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1 Peter 1:13-25
This morning we are looking at the second half of the first chapter and I want to mention five or six things here. First, Peter is encouraging the early and scattered church to prepare their minds for action. Literally, he is saying stand “on the balls of your feet” and be ready to move. Don’t be flat-footed in the faith. It’s not enough to know more if we have lost the ability to do something with what we know. It’s not enough to be reflective if we have become exclusively reflective and thoughtful and full of interesting questions that we have lost the desire to accomplish something. We need prepared…
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Jacob Wrestles With God
