Thoughts on Theology (Page 2)
Let’s Mourn
Let’s be honest. No one likes mourning. Mourning that is, not morning (many don’t like that too). None of us looks forward to something that gives us a reason to mourn. Just hearing the word makes us feel sick. To mourn assumes one is already experiencing some kind of a deep grief, and he or she is expressing that deep grief outwardly. Genesis 23:2 Sarah died in Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan; and Abraham went in…
Let’s Be Poor!
In Matthew 5:3, Jesus introduced us to something called being poor in spirit. In this introduction, he added that those who were poor in spirit were blessed. Matthew 5:3“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” What does that even mean? Over in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus said it even simpler. He didn’t even say poor in spirit. He said, “Blessed are you who are poor.” How can being poor in spirit be a…
Peace in Making Decisions (Part II)
If it is true God’s choice for us is as simple as the choice that offers us the least pain and the most comfort, then we should find God’s people all over the Bible making choices that are the least painful or the most comfortable. But we don’t find that. We find the opposite. Consider the apostle Paul. In Acts 20, he told the Ephesians he was traveling to Jerusalem and he did not know what would happen to him…
Peace in Making Decisions (Part I)
In this life, we make decisions of all kinds. We make smaller decisions regularly on a daily basis. We call them smaller decisions because if we happen to make the wrong choices on these smaller decisions, it is not the end of the world. But from time to time, we are asked to make bigger life decisions. Making bigger decisions is quite different. If we happen to make the wrong choices on bigger decisions, it can lead to catastrophes. How…
The Moment We’ve Been Waiting For
At the beginning of my message series on Ecclesiastes, I said that the Book of Ecclesiastes was a hard book. Along with Proverbs, Job and Song of Solomon, we know that the Book of Ecclesiastes is one of the Wisdom Books in our Bibles, but God sure didn’t make it easy for us to extract wisdom out of Ecclesiastes. Much of the book is complex and enigmatic to me. It takes a lot of work for me just to understand…
Wisdom About Wisdom
How can you tell if a person is a wise person? All things being equal, how can you tell a wise person from an unwise person? If you asked some people what are some of the things they look for when they set out to find a wise person, most people would probably say it has something to do with the ability to ask good questions, gain knowledge, analyze complex situations, apply common sense, recall past experiences, consider sensible options,…
It’s Not Fair!
One day when I was a teenager, my father bought a book from a local bookstore, handed it to me, and asked me to read it. Back in those days, I didn’t particularly like to read. I still don’t really like to read today. But the title of the book intrigued me: When Bad Things Happen to Good People. I remember I was excited to read and see what the author had to say about the topic. By the time children…
An Appointed Time
For those of you who are a little older (than the rest of us), do you remember as a young boy or girl, your parents woke you up in the middle of the night because they thought it was important for you to watch a nationally televised broadcast of a NASA rocket launch? Either you were glad and your eyes were glued to the television screen, or you were cranky because someone had just rudely interrupted your sleep. But have…
Introducing Ecclesiastes
You did it! We did it! For this past year, we learned together what are the four walls of Christ’s church and the critical importance of building our church with those four walls in balance. And now we are off to take the final exam Billy gave us, pass it (or for you high achievers, ace it), and the whole summer is ours. Good luck! But just because the LifeWay academic year unofficially ended last Sunday, and the school bell…
My Thoughts on Baptism
Every Sunday at LifeWay is a special time because we come together and fellowship with God and with each other. But this Sunday is extra special because four individuals (two very young brothers and two very young sisters) will be baptized. Hallelujah! What an exciting time in their lives! God is to be praised because their parents have made it a priority to teach their children about God and the Christian faith while they are still very young. God is…
Why There Must Be Resurrection
Have you ever heard someone say, “Jesus died for our sins”? Perhaps you were that someone who said those words when you were a little boy or girl in children’s Sunday school. Maybe you still say it today as an adult. Was it wrong to say, “Jesus died for our sins”? Is it wrong to say that? Absolutely not. How do I know? 1 Corinthians 15:3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that…
Why Did God Choose Israel?
Do you know in which country was the technology developed for the original cellular phone? Where was voicemail technology invented? How about the first ingestible video camera? Which country has the highest annual production of scientific papers per capita? Which country has the world’s highest rate of university degrees per capita? The answer: Israel. Surprised? In addition, 13 Israeli minds have won the Nobel Prize in the fields of chemistry, economics, literature and peace. That’s more per capita than our…
The Commission Wall
What we are called to and where we go This coming Sunday morning, March 13, I will launch us into the 4th and final wall of our diagram of understanding how to Build His Church in this world. We are calling this wall the Commission Wall. Here are some basic instructions on how to prepare yourself for this study. Let’s review: 1st wall: the Kingdom (“Basalea”) Wall This first wall reminded us that we are now citizens of, and buying…
Theology of War
Following tensions that began all the way back in 2014, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Like many of you, I couldn’t believe that it would come to this, and like all of you, I am devastated. The invasion is already the largest military attack on a sovereign country in Europe since World War II. At the time of this writing, there are more than 400 casualties and at least 700 injured. The actual toll is…
The Resurrection Gospel
Resurrection. Gospel. We hear these terms a lot in gospel churches, and rightfully so. But do you really understand the full impact of both of those words—resurrection and gospel? One is an event that happened at Easter, and the other is a message we have. We are coming to the end of our third Wall (the Ekklesia—the set-apart and called-out ones) of theological understanding on how we are BUILDING HIS CHURCH. Let’s remind ourselves again: what is the Church? The…
Do You Know How To Love Your…Enemies? (Part 2)
Okay. So Jesus commanded the Jews to love their enemies, and to pray for those who persecute them. In an exact same way, you and I are to love our enemies, and to pray for those who are out to make life very hard for us. But if we are honest, there is something in here that feels absolutely strange to us. We are to make life easier for our enemies, yet something inside of us is fighting just that.…
Do You Know How to Love Your…Enemies? (Part 1)
Have you thought which verse in the Bible is the most difficult to you? I don’t mean to say which verse is the most difficult to understand, but which verse is the most difficult for you to obey and do. You will say to me there are so many of them in the Bible, and I will agree with you. For me, I don’t know if I can definitively say I have one verse that is the most difficult to…
Cornerstone
Can you explain what is a cornerstone? Has anyone ever shown you one before? If you happen to be someone who has a background in construction, you may know much more about it. As for me, I am thinking that the cornerstone represents the stone that is set down on the foundation of a structure before any other stone. In addition, it is set down at what would be the corner of the structure, and thus the name, “cornerstone”. Perhaps?…
We Shall Be Holy
On Sunday, Billy introduced us to the third wall of the church, the ekklesia. In the most general form, the word means, “gathering”. But when the word is used in the Bible, it almost always refers to a “called out” gathering, a “holy” gathering, or a gathering that is “set apart”. The Bible has much to say about being holy. In the middle of 1 Peter, the Apostle Peter wrote that we must be holy in all our behavior. 1…
Ambassadors Are We
I am nowhere near a news junkie, as Billy would sometimes call himself. But from time to time, I like to keep up with the news and get informed about what is going on in our world. This week I learned that our president nominated Caroline Kennedy and Michelle Kwan to be U.S. ambassadors to Australia and Belize, respectively. The Kennedy nomination caught my eye because she formerly served as U.S. ambassador from 2013 to 2017 to Japan, a country…
The Image of God
In my devotional time with my 12-year-old son this past week, we talked about what it meant for God to say that we were created in his image. Genesis 1:26 says, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’” After our sovereign God created the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the cattle and every living thing that creeps on the earth, he created the man and woman in his image. What…
Devoted to the Word of God
Acts 2:42They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship (Koinonia), to the breaking of bread and to prayer. As we taught last Sunday morning, this verse is a snapshot of what was taking place in the early Church that we see in the book of Acts. The amazing events at Pentecost had just occurred; thousands came to faith there in the city of Jerusalem, and the Church (the Koinonia church) was coming together. And what did they do? What was…
To Whom Shall We Pray?
In your daily quiet moments with God, to whom do you pray? What I meant to ask is do you pray to God the Father? Or do you pray to God the Son? Or neither? Or simply, God? Somewhere, sometime, I must have learned to pray to God the Father whenever I prayed. Ever since I was a little boy, I have mainly prayed to God the Father. I say mainly because sometimes I prayed to God the Son. And if I…
Thanksgiving in the Bible
Some of you may know this, but I didn’t grow up in America. In Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan where I grew up, as in America, people celebrate holidays. But there were no holidays I can remember where families and friends came together purposefully to give thanks in those countries. This is why it is most interesting to me there is Thanksgiving in America. The most important holiday in both Taiwan and Hong Kong is the Chinese New Year. The…
The Doctrine of Prayer, Lost
Recently, Billy and I attended the Puget Sound Baptist Association Leadership Conference and Annual Meeting. There were the usual things to cover at a meeting like this. The Executive Director gave a report. Ministry teams also gave reports. New leaders for the coming year were announced, and the new budget was decided. But in the middle of the order of events, a representative from the International Mission Board came up to encourage us and remind us the importance of prayer.…