Palm Sunday is when the church has traditionally remembered the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy Week.
What a difference a few days can make. On the Sunday before being crucified Jesus entered Jerusalem a hero, the great hope of the people, and on Friday he would leave the city condemned, rejected and despised. He had entered Jerusalem being carried on the back of a young donkey, but he would exit the city just a few days later under His own power and …
There is a revealing moment at the center point of Paul’s letter to Philemon. It comes in verse 9, “…yet for love’s sake I prefer to appeal to you—I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus— I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus…”
Right in the middle of the letter, and right at the moment when Paul will launch into his big ask on behalf of Onesimus, Paul tells Philemon something very revealing about himself. He says that he is an “old man” and “a prisoner a…
I think one of the most eye-catching and thought-provoking things that God ever says to anyone in His word is found in Numbers 27:16-17, when He tells Moses, “Appoint a man over the congregation, who shall lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord may not be as sheep that have no shepherd.” No shepherd? What a mysterious thing for God to say! How could the congregation of the Lord be like sheep without a shepherd as long as God is on the throne? Isn’t he enoug…
A number of years ago, my brother, Joel, who pastors a church in Vermont wrote a piece entitled “In Praise of a Strange Tribe,” in which he reminisced about the church he and I grew up in outside Washington D.C. He wrote, “There was the homeless cab driver who worshiped with manic intensity. The bachelor patent officer in his sixties who lived alone with his mother and who sometimes raised his hand during the sermon. The foreign man who looked and sounded funny because he’d been in a …
I think it was Vance Havner who used to tell the story of two men who were going up a steep hill on a bike built for two. It was hard work, and when they got to the top they had to stop and catch their breath. The guy at the front turned to his buddy behind him and said, “Man! That was a steep hill! My legs are burning!” and the guy at the back of the bike replied, “Boy, you can say that again! It was so steep, if I hadn’t been using the brakes, we probably would have rolled down th…
There are few moments in the Bible that crackle with electric tension as much as when two estranged people come together again. I’m thinking of when Joseph revealed himself to his brothers, or when Jacob and Esau met on the plain, or when David called out to Saul from the cave. The Bible is full of these moments. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when Onesimus darkened the door of Philemon’s house again. What was the look on their faces? Did their voices crack with emotion when…
The African slave trade that was practiced in the early part of America’s history has cast a long shadow over our national psyche, and the scar of that evil practice has never really healed among the American people. The legacy of slavery in our own country also potentially makes the reading of Philemon uncomfortable because the existence, and apparent acceptance, of both slaves and masters within the early church is a central fact of this short letter. Paul’s counsel to his friend and …
At the heart of the Gospel is the idea that fallen human beings need God to do for them what they cannot do for themselves. A Gospel-shaped heart and mind is one that looks to God in trust to provide what is needed. This spirit of dependence on God is often expressed in a believer’s prayers. Believing that something can be done without prayer is the same as believing it can be done without God.
On the other hand some folks approach prayer as though God had an emergency-room-style t…
This message is the first in a series through the New Testament book of Philemon. The main, overarching thread that will link this series together is the way that Philemon demonstrates how the Gospel should be lived out amidst the messy reality of our lives. Other letters written by Paul make the Gospel (both what it is and what it isn’t) the main object of his teaching. However, this book is different. Paul’s letter to his friend, Philemon, isn’t about the Gospel exactly, but it is more of a pr…
Psalm 63, which was penned by David when he was in the wilderness of Judah, begins with these words, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; My flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”
The extraordinary thing being described in this opening verse of Psalm 63 is not the depths of David’s thirst. All human beings thirst deeply for one thing or another, and in verse 1 we could easily swap out the word “God” for “good…
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