From 1 Corinthians
I am a fool. A weak fool. I am not of noble birth nor influential. I have not much about which to boast – save Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians reminds me that at have no cause for pride. I have done nothing to earn the assurance I own. It is easy to forget that outside of Jesus we are worthless, that we deserve death and hell.
“Of First Importance”
A response to someone’s question: “Is it necessary for the Christian to believe Jesus was actually raised form the dead?
Paul reminds his readers in no uncertain terms that the actual, physical, historically accurate resurrection of Jesus from the grave following his crucifixion is of first importance. The resurrection is Christianity, and without it there is none. Paul removes any doubt of his opinion in 1 Corinthians 15:14 when he writes, “And if Christ has not been raised from the dead, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” Without a resurrected Christ all of Christendom is moot.
From The Acts of The Apostles
Reading the Book of Acts a clear contrast surfaces between the early church and the American church of today. There is an exception that proves every rule, they say, so this opinion of mine is not meant to include every single church in the land, but I do believe it true of the lion’s share. The early church, as it existed before committees and business meetings, cantatas and 5th Sundays, steeples and Robert’s Rules of Order was motivated by two things: the discipleship of current believers and the evangelism of those who were not. The same holds true of today’s church (universal), on paper at least.
From the Gospel of Luke
Reading the Gospel According to Luke, my attention was captured by Jesus’ words in chapter 6. I will focus on those verses 27-36 and 37-42 here.
Jesus Paid It All
It is critical to understand that Jesus’ death on the cross was a voluntary surrender to redeem you and I. The willful self-sacrifice of Jesus is representative of how we must come to accept that salvation. That does not make it easy, mind you. Jesus knew why he had come, to do the will of his Father who sent him. Jesus alluded to his death, burial, and resurrection repeatedly during his ministry, but as the hour drew close he prayed that God would, if it were His will, take that cup from him. We do the same, you know. Only we are not facing our own execution for crimes of which we are innocent. We say, “God, please this.” and “God, I can’t do that. Something else, please!” Or worse, “God, I refuse.” I do not believe it wrong to ask God for another way, place, or time. Jesus did. We cannot ignore the remaining fact, however. Jesus asked if there might be another way, and then displayed plainly his motive when he prayed, “Not my will but yours be done.” Jesus told his Father that if there was another way he would be glad to hear it, but also stood resolute that whatever God’s will was, that is what he would do. When God again affirmed that the sacrifice of the cross was the only means to save mankind, Jesus willingly accepted. To understand that is to understand the salvation available to you and I. We must WILLINGLY accept what Jesus offers through his WILLING sacrifice. Jesus knew God’s will, but could have chosen to ignore it. (Aren’t I glad he did not…) We can know the facts of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, but if we chose to ignore it we have not salvation. We must willingly respond by, in light of his choice to redeem us with his own life accepting Jesus’ gift of salvation by making him Lord of our lives.
From the Gospel of Mark
The Gospel According to Mark, finding itself among the Synoptic Gospels is predictably similar to the Gospel of Matthew. Reading the Gospel of Mark this week I found my attention captured by chapter 5. Here Jesus and his lot have landed a boat only to find a demon-possessed man. This man had been tormented for a long time. The townspeople knew him well, and if verse 4 is any indication they were troubled by this individual. He was someone who frightened them, someone they shielded their children from. The people had tried chains and irons to control the man to no avail.
1 + 1 =?
Thought I would share a brief response I wrote to the question, “Why is it important that Jesus was actually fully God and fully man?”
It is critical to understand that Jesus is fully God and fully man. Does 100% + 100% add up? No, with the exception of Jesus. Jesus came to earth as a man. He hungered and thirsted. He was certainly tempted, in fact far greater was his temptation than yours or mine. I don’t know about you, but I have yet to be led into the wilderness by Satan for forty days…
If Jesus were not fully man he could not have died at human hands. He knew physical pain. When he knew the hour was near Jesus prayed that God might find another way. Yet only his sacrifice was worthy to redeem mankind, because he was also fully God. Jesus did not inherit the sinful nature that plagues each of us as he was born in a unique way, a miraculous way, of a virgin. If Jesus was not also fully God his sacrifice was meaningless, and we have no hope. Christ proved his humanity in death, and his divinity by raising again from the dead. Were this not true, our faith would be futile. Paul speaks to this in 1 Corinthians 15:19 when he says “If for only this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people to be most pitied.”
Great App: Bible Audio Pronunciations
I was waiting to board a flight out of DFW recently when I (as I entertained myself with my iPad) found an app that instantly caught my eye. “Wow.” I thought. Why didn’t I think of that?
The app is called Bible Audio Pronunciations by a company of the same name. The purpose is to help those of us who are not necessarily Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic scholars accurately pronounce difficult biblical names and terms. I quickly reached out to the apps creators and asked to feature them on this site. Here is their story:
My wife and I are the parents of 5 wonderful children. I am a professional musician – a saxophonist in the U.S. Army Band in Washington D.C. My wife, also a musician, is a stay at home mom. We are active in our church and in our community.For many years, we have talked about making an iPhone app – one that could be helpful to others, if even in a small way.In 2011, we determined to make it happen. Neither of us know anything about writing code; however, we found that it was possible to outsource the project via elance.com. We simply had to come up with the concept of the app and flesh it out on paper.After several brainstorming sessions, we came up with many “brilliant” ideas, only to find that these ideas were already converted into apps. Except for one.I said to my wife, “What if there was an app that pronounced all of those challenging words in the Bible? Surely we are not the only ones that struggle with this.”We did a search on the iTunes store for “Bible Pronunciation” in all its various forms, and each search came back with 0 results!Immediately, we purchased as many Bible Pronunciation Guides as we could find and began doing our homework. We settled on a list of 1000 Bible names and began recording them. For better or for worse, it is my voice on the app. 🙂Our target audience for this app was the lay member – families reading the Bible together, members of Bible study groups, and so forth. However, our most enthusiastic customers have been theological students and pastors! (It never occurred to my wife and I that THEY struggled with these words as well. I guess we thought it was covered in seminary!)After version 1.0 was released, we immediately recognized that the app would have to be expanded to include every proper noun in the Bible. There are now over 4100 words included in the app – and counting.We have also had many requests to expand the app to the Android platform. We anticipate that it will be released by the fall of 2012.What challenges have we faced in creating the app?1. The incredible amount of time and energy that goes into recording and editing all of the names. I recorded each word 4-10 times. We would then go back and choose the best one. This has taken thousands of hours! It’s a slow process with a two person team doing this on the side.2. The inherent challenges of compiling a Bible pronunciation guide. As noted in the preface of the HarperCollins Bible Pronunciation Guide, many of the biblical terms that appear in English “are the results of passage through several languages [e.g., Greek and Latin] with their own distinctive patterns of pronunciation. Thus it is impossible to say what is ‘correct’ pronunciation of many biblical terms, especially of names from the Old Testament.”Our goal in creating this app is to provide quick, easy, and accurate access to correct pronunciations of challenging Biblical terms. However, in doing so, I offer the same disclaimer found in the HarperCollins preface: “The editors would not claim that the pronunciations given are, in every case, the only or even necessarily the best pronunciations; they do believe, however, that each pronunciation given is an acceptable and defensible one.”3. Getting the word out! As mentioned before, there is no other app in the Appstore that provides this particular service. This is both good news and bad news. The good news- there is no competition. The bad news- Most people aren’t looking for it because they don’t know it exists.The feedback we have received has been extremely positive. We have been featured on a dozen Christian Radio shows, a TV segment, and numerous newspaper and online articles and blogs. We have been ranked as high as #6 in the Reference Category of the iTunes store in the U.S. We also using Twitter and Facebook, and are still looking for other ways to get the word out.
Website: http://www.biblepronunciations.comTwitter: http://twitter.com/BibleSpeakiTunes link, both the Lite (free) version and full ($2.99): http://itunes.com/apps/pronunciationappsReviews:
delighted to share. 