The Gospel of Newness; The Word 

I know the list in the previous article was long but it emphasizes the complete difference between novelty and newness.  Spiritual newness happens every next moment because every next moment is new.  The Word of God always has something new for us.  The Bible is the channel for newness because it has a way of working into your daily routine.  Even your worldly routine finds new meaning when the Word precedes its activities.

 The Lord has made…

The Gospel of John, the Gospel of Newness

 “Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed, His compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.  I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore, I will wait for Him (Lam.3:22-23).”

 That passage is a great introduction to the Gospel of John which is a Gospel of newness.  Last time we stuck a pin in the balloon of novelty.  Novelty is fake newness, a balloon that needs puncturing. …

Novelty and Newness, There is a Difference

 “Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed, His compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.  I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore, I will wait for Him (Lam.3:22-23).”

 There are two kinds of newness, novelty and spiritual newness.  Heed the above quote from Lamentations.  The Lord’s love and His compassions “are new every morning.”  What…

Baptism, the New Identity

The question of Baptism, “Is it necessary for salvation?” begs an answer.  The Reformation is what has sparked that question repeatedly from one generation to the next.  The long-term denominations from Romanism, Orthodox, the reformed catholic emphases of Anglican and Lutheran systems, have traditionally maintained the need for Baptism from infancy on.  There are really three questions here.  The first has to do with necessity.  The second with salvation and…

Revisiting the Lord’ Supper Part 11 Giving/Sharing 

Taking, thanking, breaking and now we come to giving, the fourth of the action words.   Taking, thanking and breaking are centered in the individual.  It takes those first three to build the kind of unafraid, uncompromising character that can step out and give, share and distribute the blessings we have been given.  

No one said it’s easy.  

It takes work to build a character with faith.  When Paul tells…

Revisiting the Lord’s Supper Part 13  Conclusion  Part 1 

Conclusion?   This is very simple.  You are the conclusion and so am I.  Where each of us needs to grow in our hearts with God is where the Lord’s Supper is the table He set for our nourishment.  It is the feeding ground where what the Word instills in the mind, the Holy Spirit carries to the heart. 

If we really consider it, the Lord’s Supper is a meal for the heart.  The heart is the most tender part of our spiritual…

Revisiting the Lord’s Supper  Part 12  Giving (cont.) 

We want to make very clear that salvation is not something you earn by being good.  It was earned for us.  All the work of salvation was done by Jesus on the Cross.  He earned salvation for us by being a perfect sacrifice for sin. 

 Does the word salvation sound too religious?  Sometimes we need to take long standing words like that and make sure we understand what they mean, salvation being one of…

Revisiting the Lord’ Supper Part 11 Giving/Sharing 

Taking, thanking, breaking and now we come to giving, the fourth of the action words.   Taking, thanking and breaking are centered in the individual.  It takes those first three to build the kind of unafraid, uncompromising character that can step out and give, share and distribute the blessings we have been given.  

No one said it’s easy. 

It takes work to build a character with faith.  When Paul tells us…

Revisiting the Lord’s Supper Part 10 Breaking (cont.) 

We’re revisiting the revisiting, the breaking occurring when Jesus broke the bread and said it was His body being broken.  His breaking contains eternal consequences that cover the breaking that must take place in our lives, our being a living sacrifice.  It is the breaking on our part that needs to be seen now.  The part that is a continual breaking experience leading to our growth as believers…

Revisiting the Lord’s Supper  Part 9 Breaking 

Taking, Thanking and now, Breaking.  The Lord took bread as a sign of His body and broke it.  He was giving us an ultimate parable, bread/body, broken bread/broken body, His physical body/His spiritual life, visible body/invisible person, life/death.  Is it the physical we see that lasts forever?  No.  But what about the invisible person within the physical body?  Therein lies every person’s ultimate question.  When death breaks down the…

Revisiting the Lord’s Supper  Part 8 Thanking

 Thanking, that’s our next re-running thought.  We want to expand what that means for us while we are on the way.  Anytime we celebrate the Lord’s Supper there is a lot of thanking to be done prior, during and after.  Every breath we take is a gift from the Lord.  Starting there we jump to the family and friends for whom we are thankful.  We move to our church and the larger spiritual family in which we have brothers and sisters in the…

Revisiting the Lord’s Supper  Part 7  Taking 

Many churches celebrate the Lord’s Supper as their main service.  Others stay strictly in the Word.  But in one form or the other the Lord’s Supper is presented somewhere in their worship schedule.  For those who have it more frequently it is meant to be the way we live Jesus, a lifestyle launching pad into our waking, walking, working week.  It’s a spiritual launching.  Practically speaking, it’s how we have come to view Sunday. (As an…

Revisiting the Lord’s Supper  Part 6 

In my earliest years as an Episcopalian, when I was about thirteen, I became an acolyte and helped serve at Sunday morning worship.  It was in an elegant New York City Episcopal Church.  The ushers were dutifully dressed in suits, men wore ties and women wore dresses and gloves plus a hat.  No one was allowed inside the Communion rail except the clergyman and his assistants, all of whom were vested.  The altar guild, a women-only group, were the…

Revisiting the Lord’s Supper  Part 5 

We’ve been through the contexts in which Jesus lived and they are the same as those in which we live.  We have a physical location that is limited by our bodies in a time, a place and relationships.  That’s why we need spiritual feeding.  That feeding is the Word and in that Word is the Lord’s Supper vividly proclaimed in the four Gospels and staunchly reverenced and considered essential by Paul (1Cor.11:17-34).  It is one of the four pillars…

Revisiting the Lord’s Supper  Part 4  Lifestyle 

We have been looking at context, the physical and historical context, in which Jesus lived.  Now that they know their spiritual heritage and their physical location, He calls them to be conscious of the lifestyle they are to live.  Just as every day for Jesus was lived in the shadow of a coming Cross, so the disciples will be called to live a new way, the Cross way.  The Lord’s Supper bears the impress of the Cross which is the…

Revisiting the Lord’s Supper Part 3 History

In all the Gospels, it is made clear that the Last Supper is Jesus’ fulfillment of the Passover meal.  He is bringing a new dimension to a historic religious observance.  That meal was a remembrance of the Hebrew people’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt.  When the Lord God had sent dire warnings of doom for Egypt that if they didn’t release the Jews it would result in the death of all the firstborn Egyptian children including Pharaoh’s…

Revisiting the Lord’s Supper 2 

We’ve looked at the three purposes of the Lord’s Supper, spiritual, personal and relational.  Now we want to go into the contexts in which Jesus operated, the physical (where He was), the historic (what He was fulfilling) and His lifestyle (how He fulfilled it). 

 First, we want to keep in mind the overall picture of His mission.  He came to bring God face to face with each human being by offering Himself as a relational tie to His Father through…

Revisiting the Lord’s Supper  Part 1

There is more to the Lord’s Supper than meets the eye.  When you see Jesus’ words in the Gospels and then read Paul’s teaching in Corinthians you can’t help but be struck by its considerable depth.  The ‘more’ idea, I believe, is quite intentional.  There’s always more.  More to understand, more to feel and more to do.  (Scriptural references to engage your thinking: Mt.26:17-35, Mk.14:12-31, Lk.22:7-38, Jn.13-17, 1Cor.11:17-34) Hint: think His…

For the “I-know-that-I-know” Folks

A Look at Psalm 139

This is a special Psalm for those who have trouble or feel some inadequacy explaining their experience of God.  You know, the I-know-that-I-know-that-I-know folks.  Their hearts are into the Lord.  They know He is into them.  They live their faith.  It’s not about answering all the hard questions or thinking profoundly or even having a thought-out testimony.  What you see is what you get with them.  And that’s just…

The Origin of Strongholds

One of the great gifts coming from the Hebrew Scriptures we call the Old Testament is its physical presentation loaded with spiritual meaning.  Scripture was opened to new understanding when Jesus sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  Instead of just the localized history of a small tribal group in the Mideast who believed in a single god, their Scripture turned out to cover everyone’s personal history from Creation to as long as people live, in the context of…