I find it fascinating how much power David had over his people. I’m reading 2 Samuel right now and there are many parts where it becomes apparent how valuable David is to his people. One such instance is in 2 Samuel 18: 2-3: “And the king said to his men ‘I myself will also go out with you.’ But the men said, ‘You shall not go out. For if we flee, they will not care about us. But you are worth ten thousand of us. Therefore it is better that you send us help from the city.’”
This type of loyalty is amazing to me and it got me thinking about what people are willing to do for someone who they perceive to be more valuable than themselves. How do we go about assigning values to people’s lives. We can see this type of loyalty (and sometimes fear) on a smaller scale in the case of Prince Harry going to war against great opposition from the British government. He is thought of as being more important than the other soldiers which made him more of a target to the enemy. These are the same types of thoughts going the the heads of David’s people in 2 Samuel. This got me thinking, if David is worth that much, how much more worth did Jesus’ life hold? It says in Romans 5:7 that “one will scarcely die for a righteous person–though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die.”
Even with cases of loyalty like David’s, it is impossible to compare that to Jesus and his loyalty to us. Although Jesus didn’t have a worldwide following in the billions while he was alive, he took on the sins of every man and died so that they might live. The only thing that we can say is that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection are worth everything. That is so hard to comprehend and I have trouble thinking about that sometimes; His life is worth everything that has ever been and ever will be.
For that, we should give him all the glory. Or in the words of my friend Dave Werner, “it’s like…whoooooaaa.”
June 26 2008 | Bible and God | No Comments »
I found this Mark Driscoll quote on my friend Sam Haist’s blog. Driscoll is the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA. His theology is sold and he is very biblical so I tend to agree with most of what he has to say.
Karen’s chapter raises the important question of what exactly is the level of authority that Scripture holds in the church. Karen’s chapter uses only three Scripture references, an old worship song, an indie rock band, a postmodern philosopher, a church blog, a movie, an obscure theologian, and Hindu Ghandi as her authorities. And while quoting various cultural references is not inherently bad, since Paul was also known to quote law codes and mainstream poets, it is concerning when the final authority of Scripture is questioned. She quotes the poet Rilke, saying, ‘God speaks to us [...] out of our own lives, no less so than God speaks to us in the canon of Holy Scripture.’ at the risk of stating the obvious, before we drop the authority of Scripture, we need a better reason than a poem from a non-Christian whose mother wanted a girl so badly that she called him Sophia and made him wear girls’ clothes until the age of five.
That speaks volumes for me. I find that this Karen he talks about is similar to most of the pastor’s down at the University of Illinois and increasingly around the United States from what I can tell. A pastor of one of the churches I went to down at school seemed to just hold the Bible for effect or “because that’s what he was supposed to do.” When he started his message he put it down and did not pick it back up again. That disturbed me. The Bible is the inspired Word of God yet even given that, we fail to recognize its authority on a consistent basis. While I understand that some of the churches down at school are attempting to water down the message in order to bring in unchurched college students, I am not sure that that is what they need to do.
While there may be some validity to making a message more accessible to college students, removing the Bible from it is about the worst thing that pastors could do. If we don’t use the Bible to bring along new Christians, their theology will be thrown off and it will give them an excuse to continue in their sin. They may not continue in it on purpose; it might just be that they do not know which choices are right and wrong. There just is no way to remove Scripture’s authority from the church and still be immitator’s of Christ.
June 18 2007 | Bible | No Comments »
