Take a look around on the Internet at the orders of worship and sermon topics of churches which post them, and you might get the impression that many ministers of the gospel have the idea that “You can only preach so much Jesus.”

Really?

Because you can preach “the plan” all you want to, and if you don’t preach “the man,” you’ll have converts to a system, not the Savior.

You can preach “the church” all you wish, and if you don’t talk about the Bridegroom who purchased her with His blood, you’ll be preaching narcissism.

You can preach against sin all year every year, and if you don’t proclaim the One who died to save us from it and lived again so that we could live, you’ll only be spreading guilt and despair and hoplessness – not the gospel.

You can preach about your experiences in life till the cows come home, but if you don’t share His, will your church end up knowing more about your life on the farm than the Son you live for?

You can preach about biblical history, eschatology, pneumatology, soteriology, theology, or any other -ology … but if you don’t tell people about Jesus of Nazareth and what He taught and how He lived and how He reigns, just exactly what are you doing in the pulpit of a church in the Christian faith?

Have you actually shared all there is to know about Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God, Son of Man, Savior, Redeemer, Rabbi, Teacher, Lord, Master, Friend, High Priest, Sacrifice, Good Shepherd, the Holy and Righteous One, Firstborn of the Dead, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace? The One to whom virtually all scripture points and praises – like John, His cousin – “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!”

Has your church plumbed the depths of its relationship with God through Christ?

Have you told them all there is to know about His love; how far He would go and what He gave up?

Or have you given up?

Paul didn’t give up, and Christ was all he resolved to preach (1 Corinthians 2:2).

Peter knew there was no other name that could save (Acts 4:12).

John knew that it is through Him that we have fellowship (1 John 1:5-7).

Not just a plan. Not just a church. Not just a history. Not just a theory of His return, His Spirit, His divinity, His salvation, or His relationship with His Father.

But HIM.

Have you actually worn out the Ancient of Days?

Have you truly out-taught the Teacher?

Have you really mastered the Master?

Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the Feast. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.” ~ John 12:20-21

“… Your sins are forgotten
They’re on the bottom
Of the ocean floor

“Your sins are erased
And they are no more
They’re out on the ocean floor.”
~ Ocean Floor as performed by Audio Adrenaline

“You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.” ~ Micah 7:19

Unless you can afford to send Dr. Robert Ballard down there after them, that sounds really remote; pretty much irretrievable.

So why bother?

Let ’em sink and die.

If you’re going to teach that, you’ll have to ignore or explain away:

“All of us have become like one who is unclean,
   and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
   we all shrivel up like a leaf,
   and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” ~ Isaiah 64:6

Our righteousness is worthless before God.

“‘These men who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
“But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” ~ Matthew 20:12-16

God is sovereign. He pays the denarius at the end of the day. It is His denarius.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. ~ Ephesians2:8-10

We are not saved by our works, but to do good works.

“Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged.’ ~ Hebrews 6:17-18

God doesn’t communicate His purpose or promise unclearly: it is our hope. He does not hide His instruction for us by His silence, nor does He obscure it in code requiring logical decryption from the awardees of Ph.D.s in biblical languages and deductive reasoning. His desire is for all to come to repentance, not just the smart people.

Those few are just a handful of verses you’ll have to ignore or explain away in scripture in order to teach that we earn our salvation through our obedience.

You see, Jesus earned it through His obedience (Romans 5:19). Our obedience comes from faith in Him (Romans 1:5). And faith itself is God’s gift to us (Ephesians 2:8).

There are a lot more verses like that.

But these few are enough.

Passing The Torch

My blogging friend John Dobbs just challenged me by a Facebook e-mail to participate in a blog/Facebook meme saluting a minister who has been influential in my life, and while there have been several, one name stands out.

I’ve only mentioned him, I believe, in one post before, and that is a slight of unforgivable proportions.

My childhood minister at Fountain Square Church of Christ in Indianapolis, Indiana was David H. Bobo.

I cannot think of any incident that better illustrates his character than the one related by Leroy Garrett in this (undated) article in his Restoration Review:

David H. Bobo, Fountain Square Church of Christ in Indianapolis, wrote in his church bulletin of the death of a fellow minister in the Church of Christ in the same city, W. L. Totty, a man who had vigorously opposed him for many years. Bobo explains that he and Totty were both trained in the “old school” of the Church of Christ, but that he was soon compelled to move in a different direction, especially in reference to Christian ethics and Biblical teaching. Now that his old antagonist is gone, Bobo writes: “In spite of the fact that my reputation among people who do not know me suffered greatly from his attacks, I am glad I knew Brother Totty and I hold no ill feelings about him. I can say with all the sincerity of my heart, ‘God rest his soul.’” Upon reading this I passed it along to Ouida. “How tragic,” I said to her, “it is enough to cause one to weep.” Jesus came to make us brothers and to cause us to treat each other as brothers. And yet even preaching brethren spend a lifetime together in the same city as enemies, all in the name of sound doctrine. While we appreciate David Bobo’s forgiving spirit, let us hope that stories like this among us are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. It is high time for us to realize who the real enemy is. As for David Bobo, it should be more widely known that he is one of our best educated ministers and ablest scholars, as well as a devoted Christian. He is presently teaching both Hebrew and Greek at Indiana Christian U., along with his ministry at Fountain Square. That school recently honored him with a D.D. degree, as if he needed another degree! I regret to add that all these years he has been one of the most maligned men among Churches of Christ.

My dad, an elder at Fountain Square until his death in 1993, attended that funeral and I remember hearing him tell my mom that David Bobo’s eulogy was completely gracious. That was for a man who unrelentingly and regularly attacked him (and many other local ministers of churches of Christ) in his church bulletin. I learned many years later that several of them were asked to conduct the funeral, and only Br. Bobo was willing.

David Bobo preached grace alongside of law, and gave me – gave my home church – a glimpse at the great span of God’s true nature, and he did so at a time when such views were obviously not just unpopular, but considered heresy by some.

Now, as charged by John Dobbs, I pass on the challenge of the meme to you: “Post a tribute to the minister that has blessed [you] the most.”

A couple of nights ago, I dreamed I was telling a joke to some people around a table at a place that was kind of like the UALR student center, and that was the punch line: “Pray without sneezing.”

In the dream, everyone seemed to think it was pretty funny. I wish I could remember what the joke was.

I can tell you that the punch line has its origin in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 (“pray continually”; “pray without ceasing,” KJV), which is Paul’s practice two chapters earlier (“Night and day we pray …” ~ 1 Thessalonians 3:10 as well as in his other letter to them: “…we constantly pray …” ~ 2 Thessalonians 1:11).

But I think there’s a worthy principle in the idea of praying without sneezing, and it’s no joke.

When we sneeze and we’re around people, we almost expect someone to say, “Bless you!”

Maybe – even if just for Lent – we should pray without expecting to be blessed, or even asking for it. Perhaps instead of praying for ourselves, we should pray for others for a season.

And let the blessings fall where they may.

“Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day …”

That’s where we usually stop, and our brains turn off. And there’s good stuff to ponder, digest and teach there.

But it’s important to consider, chew on and proclaim the rest of the verse, too:

“to see if what Paul said was true.”

Bereans were noble not just because they studied, but because they studied to see if what Paul taught was true. They were noble because they sought truth. They were noble because they accepted scripture as the final word on truth. They were nobler than Thessalonians because they hadn’t already decided what truth was and that Paul was lying because his truth disagreed with theirs; they were open to new truth and more truth and God’s truth.

Because you can study all you want to, and if it’s only to prove what you already believe – rather than to discover what God wants you to hear, know and put your faith in – you’re studying for ignoble reasons.

And you might just as well start a riot and run the truth out of town on a rail.

Check out Acts 17:11 – the whole verse; the whole context.

See if what I said isn’t true.

I said this in my Bible class Sunday morning (we’ve been discussing the opening two books of the Bible, Genesis and Exodus):

“The older I get, the less problem I have with the idea of God creating and doing everything in pretty much exactly the way the Bible describes. The reason I think He might well have done it that way is because it makes such a great STORY. His whole plan was for man to take His Name and His Story and His love to every corner of the earth. We remember stories. We like to tell stories. So it makes every kind of sense to me for God to have done things exactly the way scripture describes it, so we can get the Story right.”

I know it’s not scientific. I know the Story doesn’t always fit the quantifiable facts as we understand them.

But, hey, we’re talking about the God who created science and quantifiable fact out of the deep nothingness of nonexistence.

Is the Lord’s arm too short? Is anything impossible for God?

I have said before – and still unwaveringly believe – that the Story of scripture points forward to, directly at, and back toward Jesus Christ. (And, I might add, then it points forward to Him again.) He is the Word, the Story.

Jesus is the One through Whom, by Whom, for Whom all things were made.

Is it any wonder that scripture tells the Story of God and man in a way that culminates in their reconciliation through One Who is both God and man; son of God and son of Man?

So, like Job, I have had to learn to stop denying or even questioning the testimony of scripture when it seems to disagree with what my finite, limited and ultimately microscopic brain has observed as science or verifiable fact.

Scripture is the way God wishes to tell the Story.

It is impossible for Him to lie.

So it is quite possible for it to be divinely accurate as well as poetically perfect.

Because we’re talking about God.

If the writers, anonymous though some might be to us, had wanted to tell it in a different way than God wanted, He could have easily flooded them away, sent fire from heaven to consume them, sent them grazing in the field like a woolly beast or simply dried up their inkwell each time they tried to write fiction.

Instead, I believe God breathed the Story into their hearts. He inspired it. He Spirited it into them, and it refreshed them and gave life to them and excited them, and they respired it as accurately as possible and to every person who would listen.

So to bloody blue blazes with the teachings of men.

To blazes with man’s logic, man’s perception, man’s interpretation, man’s conclusions, man’s doctrine, man’s tests of fellowship, man’s uninspired and breathless and lifeless brain-crap.

It’s all nonsense. Balderdash. Poppycock.

If it doesn’t square with what God says, it’s bunk.

If God says to do something, He knows it’s for our good, and we should do it.

If God says to not do something, He knows it will hurt or kill us and/or others, and we ought to run from it like the gates of hell itself.

If God expresses no opinion, we should ruddy well stop making out like He’s said something approving or condemning by His silence.

If God tells His Story, we should shut up and listen.

It’s His Story. His God-ness and our humanity. His perfection and our fallibility.

His Son.

And our only hope.

Holy frijoles.

Every time I look at that little counter at the bottom right-hand column of my blog and see its disproportionately large number of unique visitors since January 7, 2005, I shudder a little.

I know I’ve fallen off the bottom of Matt Dabbs’ top 25-most-visited bloggers, and that’s okay. I know the views and comments have dropped off since I tried (and failed, thanks to illness) to blog daily through the Bible … and that’s okay, too. I know I have only a fraction of the followers that many even less-visited sites have … yup, okay with me.

And I’m even convinced that the content of this blog probably isn’t as exciting or fresh or topical or current or even as well-written as it used to be. Sorry about that, but you know, you can only say the same things emphatically a certain number of times before you sound like Johnny One-Note.

I don’t mind trying things and failing. It’s how I learn.

What I’m really looking for is a way to express Christ on this blog.

I tried a cooperative blog once – What Would Jesus Do Next? – and it was fun for a while, but it languished.

For several months, I attempted to write fifty-two communion meditations from all over scripture, each pointing to Jesus. Until I got to the gospels and the reality of the task; the complexity of the character of Christ just became too daunting to tackle.

So I’m asking.

All 75,000 of you. (Or whoever’s left!)

What do you suggest?

What resonates with you?

What did you feel blessed by reading?

What did you automatically skip?

What would you like to see through this Eye?

Traveling six states in 3 days last weekend, attending an all-Monday meeting, trying to catch up Tuesday, spending yesterday in a hospital ER and at home today because of a six- millimeter kidney stone has not been conducive to keeping up with daily blogging through The Story.

Yet I find that I have blessings that money can’t buy tonight … in Haiti or on Wall Street.

Give me a few days to recover, and I will try to get back on track.

“Do not go beyond what is written.” It’s the good advice of Paul to Corinth. (1 Corinthians 4:6) It’s also a pretty good principle of hermeneutics.

Let me pose a few questions.

Is it going beyond what is written to insist on a doctrine that is not explicitly expressed in scripture? When we say “thou shalt not” yet the scriptures say nothing about it? When we say “you’ll go to hell if you do” when the Bible is silent?

Is it going beyond what is written to support such a doctrine with the opinions of people who have not, as we generally canonize it, written any scripture?

Is it going beyond what is written to require biblical authority not only for any given act of worship, but also how, when, by whom, and where it may be performed … but ignore, minimize or explain away scripture which seems to contradict those doctrines of people? (for example: Acts 2:42-47; 18:26; 21:8-9; 1 Corinthians 11:4-5)

Is it going beyond what is written to forbid someone to confess Christ before others when scripture instructs us not to quench His Spirit? (1 Thessalonians 5:19)

Is it going beyond what is written to make law out of silence? presume authority to make that law when all authority has been given to Christ? to cause division rather than maintaining unity? to declare indisputable what others dispute? to not keep what one believes about such matters between one’s self and God? (Romans 14:19-23)

Is it going beyond what is written to make law for all churches, for all believers, for all time … out of instruction given to a church at a given time in a certain set of circumstances? (Colossians 3:22; Ephesians 6:5-9; Titus 2:9; 1 Peter 2:18)

Is it going beyond scripture to correct others by attempting to publicly humiliate them by name, at a distance … before discussing the matter with them in private first? (Matthew 18:15-20)

Is it going beyond what is written to judge others when Jesus says don’t? (Luke 6:37)

As a rather exclusive members-only fellowship of the church He died to save, we have generally prided ourselves on not going beyond what is written. It’s one of our Restoration Movement mottoes (“We speak where the Bible speaks; we are silent where the Bible is silent”) – and we call it a motto because we say we have no creeds.

If we are, in fact, doing a really good job of not going beyond what is written … then why aren’t we widely known as Christians by our love?

“By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” ~ John 13:35