Teaching The Book of Numbers

The Amazon delivery man came by the church today. This always brightens your day when your community’s leading bookseller is....Walmart. Today he brought me three new commentaries.

Numbers: God's Presence in the Wilderness (Preaching the Word)
Iain M. Duguid (Author), R. Kent Hughes (Series Editor)

The Book of Numbers (New International Commentary on the Old Testament) Timothy R. Ashley (Author)

Numbers (The Tyndale Old Testament Commentary Series) Gordon J. Wenham (Author)

As some of the blogosphere’s sharpest minds you have likely deduced that I will soon be teaching on the book of Numbers (midweek Bible study).

Numbers has some wonderful narrative and really speaks to life between “where we have been” and “where we are going”. I preached through the book about twelve years ago and I enjoyed looking over my old notes earlier this week. (Does anyone else read their old sermon notes and think… “why can’t I preach that anymore”?)

Not that anyone is asking me, but if I ever write a commentary on Numbers myself I am going to try to come up with a better opening paragraph than this one from Iain Duguid --

"Before I began work on this volume, I had little exposure to the book of Numbers. I had never preached on a text from Numbers, nor, as far as I know, had I ever even heard a sermon on the book of Numbers."

Not the most confidence inspiring introduction I have ever read.

If you have preached from Numbers recently I would love to hear some of your approach. What resources did you find useful?

Tim

Someone to cheer for this Summer

Looking for someone to cheer for in this Olympics may I suggest marathoner Ryan Hall. Watch this video and be impressed with the athlete, but more so with the young man.

http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=5c60b9016f85cc43196f&page=1&viewtype=&category=

It is nearly impossible to find a clip on the internet of Ryan Hall where he is not talking about his faith!

Ryan sent us some cool stuff for our church's 5 Loaves 2 Fish 5K last year and we will be watching when he runs for His Glory this summer.

Not a Closet Prophet

As the summer of '08 winds down (our local schools start tomorrow) there is no question what was the season's most significant movement in our church. In the course of several weeks, traveling separate paths, three of our young people surrendered to ministry. Each came forward with confidence and deep conviction.

This week I invited the three of them to lunch to check in on how they are doing, wondering if the initial excitement of responding to their call had worn off any. It had not! (I think they were somewhat surprised and offended that I would even ask.) The three happen to each be ninth graders and they head into their first year of highschool with seminary in their minds. (When I entered ninth grade I think I had lunch on my mind.) I would invite you to pray for Cameron, Erica and Adam as you read this.

I must admit that one of the great graces of all this is that one of the three is my son. At lunch, I challenged the trio to study some of the "call" passages in the Bible for the next time we got together. That evening, my son was so excited to share with me that he had learned from Samuel's call. He was impressed by 1 Samuel 3:20 -- "All Israel, from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of the LORD."

My son said, "Samuel was no closet prophet....I want to be that guy!"

This week, I mark fifteen years of ordained pastoral ministry. Son, I want to be that guy too.

Two Guys You Should Read

I must confess that despite being a thirty-something minister with some degree of professional curiosity, and I assume at least average intelligence, I have struggled to develop a working understanding of the Emergent/Emerging church trend. If you find yourself in a similar predicament you might want to pick up Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be).

Pastor Kevin DeYoung and moderately hip sportswriter Ted Kluck team up to write a compelling and engaging discussion of “the what” and “what’s wrong” of the movement. The book certainly helped me to consolidate the lose pieces of emergent understanding that I had gathered over the years. In my mind, the two strongest chapters were a reconsideration of the alleged evils of modernism (Kevin, chapter 7) and reflection on what new community really looks like (Ted, chapter 10).

It may be that the most useful critique of the movement was the call to replace “versus” with “and”.

“They pit information versus transformation, believing versus belonging, and propositions about Christ versus the person of Christ. The emerging church will be a helpful corrective against real, and sometimes perceived, abuses in evangelicalism when they discover the genius of the “and,” and stop forcing us to accept half-truths.” (page 75)

Overall, the tone of the book remained friendly. In fact, while the book confirmed that I remained more immersed than emerged, I am challenged to be certain that our church does not feed any of the more legitimate concerns that inspired the emergent movement (“emergment” anyone?) to grow.

Jeremiah 15 -- A Recall

Ministry was not easy for Jeremiah. His call was to preach a hard word to a hard people at a hard time. For Jeremiah life rarely deviated from this experience.

And the truth is, it wore on the man. In fact, by Jeremiah 15 we see a prophet in retreat. While he does not curse the day he was born...he does regret it. His frustration stems from the fact that he has done everything God has asked (vv. 16-17) yet his “a pain is unceasing” (v. 18)

The result seems to be that Jeremiah has walked away from ministry (v. 19).

In grace, the LORD invites Jeremiah to return with the promise of restoration.

What intrigues me is that Jeremiah’s recall to ministry is nearly identical to his original call to ministry. He is to speak God’s words (“you shall be my mouth”). It will be difficult and his life will be endangered. But God will protect him and deliver him throughout. The need has not changed, the call has not changed and God has not changed.

I am convinced that every once in a while all ministers need to be recalled to the ministry. Not all have packed up boxes or written any letters, but they are in retreat all the same. We need to return our hearts, our minds and our bodies to the hard work of being the “mouth of God*” to our generation.

May God bless your ministry today and if you need it, may you be blessed with great recall today.

Tim

* Note Jeremiah could only serve as the “mouth of God” as he consumed His Words and spoke “what is precious not what is worthless”. This is a role of pure awe and humility.

A Good Word

About four years ago I had the privilege of baptizing Joe and Sonya (and their son). They were new Christians and to say they were excited about their new life in Christ would be an understatement. Their only regret seemed to stem from the fact that they suddenly felt a strong disconnect with their old circle of friends. It was nobody's fault, it was just that the center of Joe and Sonya’s life had moved and no one really knew what to do about it.

According to Joe and Sonya, the easiest solution to this problem would be for their friends to move their lives to Jesus as well. After talking about the problem, we decided to start a sort of discovery class for their friends. We would meet at a local restaurant, get to know each other and over the course of four to six weeks I would present the gospel. Let me tell you, anytime I can eat unlimited chips and salsa and call it ministry I am so there!

The turnout wasn’t as great as we had hoped, but three friends came each week. We had some really meaningful discussions about the most important things in life. While several times I thought we were a moment away from someone giving their life to Christ the class finished with no commitments. On occasion, one of them might come to church with Joe and Sonya, but not much seemed to have really taken root.

One of the friends moved out of state. Some time later Sonya excitedly reported that her friend was getting baptized. A few more years have passed. I have now moved out of state. Sonya emailed again, another friend had given her life to Christ and was getting baptized today.

What a good word! What a good reminder that the kingdom of God is not always instant. I do not know if our little discussions made a difference in these lives or not. I do know that Joe and Sonya’s consistent witness and prayer certainly did. I also know that no matter how much we cared about these souls …God cared immeasurably more!

So far two of the three have confidently said “yes” to Jesus….and I have confidence the Spirit is not finished yet!

Tim

Celebrating the Lord's Table

I spent some time this week thinking about how we celebrate the Lord's Supper. Over the years I have never seemed to find the right pattern when it comes to frequency of observation.

The autonomy of our church tradition gives each church complete freedom to establish its own practice. However without precedent to guide us the Table can be unintentionally neglected. I know, it has happend to to me and my church...more than once. (This is particularly true while the church is without a pastor. In nearly all the churches I have pastored, the church is so excited the first time we come to the Table together. They almost always say, "it has been so long....we can't even remember the last time we did this".)

When I was growing up, my church celebrated the Lord's Supper once a month. Later churches I was a part of celebrated communion quarterly. In theory I felt something between the two would probably be best. In practice I have rarely been able to find such consistency.

Other tensions remain unresolved. How do we keep the worship experience full of meaning without being gimmicky? Should we feature the Lord Supper during morning worship so the most number of people may participate or do we use another service that allows for more flexibility and focus on the table?

In my current setting the situation is complicated by the very large portion of our church and community that has deep Catholic roots. With that in mind, I am resolved to celebrate the Table more frequently, in settings that allow for the most instruction and reflection -- typically Sunday nights.

Here is the order of service we will use next Sunday morning:

Prelude
Congegational Music
Open the Eyes of My Heart
Forever
Let the River Flow
Give Us Clean Hands

Offertory
Video clip of Last Supper

Opening Words of message
Special Music and taking of the Elements
Concluding Words of message

Time of Response
Mighty to Save