Disciples of Grace Today

At Joppa there was a certain disciple named Tabitha, which is translated Dorcas. This woman was full of good works and charitable deeds which she did. But it happened in those days that she became sick and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. - Acts 9:36-37  When was the last time you heard a message about Tabitha, aka Dorcas? I'll wait. I'm going to venture that most of us have read right over her. Her story is in the same chapter as Paul's conversion and subsequent escape from the Jewish mob that sought to kill him. That's way more exciting than Dorcas. I suppose the only time we truly hear about her is in conjunction with Peter raising her from the dead, and healing people, but even then the focus is on Peter. Part of me thinks that Dorcas is okay with that.  There's a contentment in the life of Dorcas that I think we're missing in our age of chasing greatness. Today, churches are full of sermons on starting a business or allowing G...

 Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven - Matthew 5:10 Persecution. Certainly not something we would categorize as a blessing or associate with happiness, but Jesus does and he does so with intent. As he continues his teaching he doesn't let up, he actually doubles down on this truth in the verses that follow and his delivery only gets stronger as he moves on through this 3 chapter sermon (Matthew 5-7) letting us know that God fully expects us to live this way and knowing that we can't. This sermon is designed, like the Law of Moses, to get us to cry out for help. He also lets us know that as we proclaim Truth persecution will follow. As one Pastor has noted, "If you stay silent, you stay safe. If you proclaim The Gospel and live out your faith, persecution will come, because persecution will always accompany proclamation.". This truth is seen throughout scripture from Genesis to Revelation but Hebrews giv...

  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God - Matthew 5:9 Expressions such as “Like father like son” and “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” are common and we know what’s being communicated when people use them whether in a flattering context or a resentful one. Jesus is still shifting our gaze upward. He is laying bare the heart of the Law of God and intentionally making us feel the weight of our unworthiness and inability all the while calling us to Himself to receive the relief our souls desperately need. He began this tiny shift in verse 7 where He commands us to be merciful considering the mercy we have received and then in verse 8 where He commands us to live out of a pure heart renewed by The Spirit. Here He is calling us to be present day peace makers, but what is that exactly? To answer that question, we must look to our example, Christ Jesus – The Son of God. What is the peace that Christ came to bring? Well, certainly there is the coming da...

  Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God - Matthew 5:8 This one statement packs such a punch! Everything that was lost in Genesis 3 Jesus makes a reality for those who will come to Him. From the dawn of creation, we see man walking with God and enjoying fellowship with Him and then the unthinkable happens, man sides with evil and commits treason against the High King of Heaven. God casts man out of His presence and sin separates man from his Creator, but God who is rich in mercy makes a promise in Genesis 3:15. He promises that a Seed is coming and that Seed will crush the head of the Serpent, thus begins God’s unfolding plan of redemption, settled before the foundations of creation were laid. First God chooses a man Abraham, through whose line the Seed would come, from that man comes a people, Israel, who would represent Him among the nations and then there is a deliverer, Moses, who would lead His people out of the bondage of slavery and then there would be the king...

  Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy - Matthew 5:7 Jesus has an uncanny way of staying focused even as He shifts gears just a bit. Thinking back to the 10 commandments we see the same. The first 4 deal with our relationship with God and the last 6 deal with our relationships with each other. Our love and treatment of one another flows from our fear and obedience to God. Jesus Himself gives an excellent example of this in His parable on The Unforgiving Servant in Matthew 18:21-35. Parables are stories with earthly settings to speak of a spiritual truth. In short in this parable a man owed a king a large sum of money, which he could not pay. He begged the king to have mercy on him and the king being merciful forgave the man his debt, but this same man went out and found his brother who owed him a few dollars. The brother could not pay the debt and begged for mercy, but the man would have none of it! He threw him into prison until the debt was paid. This naturally ...

  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied - Matthew 5:6 Someone wrote a song about not being able to be satisfied no matter how hard he tried. That seems to be the anthem of life sometimes doesn’t it? We fill ourselves with so much and we are still empty. We chase the rainbows of our dreams only to find there is neither a pot of gold nor a pudgy leprechaun waiting for us. We climb ladders that promise success only to find there’s no one up there and we’ve burned people, not bridges, to get here. Just like happiness, we all want a satisfying and fulfilling life and that’s exactly what Christ is promising us here in this statement. Now, before all my Reformed Theology friends think I’ve lost my mind and gone all prosperity-preacher remember what Jesus is doing here. He has climbed this mountain and is giving the people the heart of The Law. The Law was given to show the way we were to live and flourish and worship God. The law was to...

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth - Matthew 5:5 My Grandfather would often say, “Just because you can do something doesn’t always mean that you should.” At the time I had no idea what he was saying to me but as I’ve grown, and particularly as I’ve grown in Christian Faith, what he said makes perfect sense, especially in regard to being meek. Meekness is not weakness. Meekness is strength under control. But how is it that those who are poor in spirit and mourning over sin have strength? How does the eternal worldview play out in the area of meekness and inheriting the earth? This statement is extremely nuanced because it carries with it a humble submission that defers to another. Remember this entire sermon is a description of how people of God are to live in relation to God, each other and those around us. Our meekness towards others stems from our submission to God. The first act of meekness is to lay our rebellion down. We have all sinned against a Just and Ho...

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted –  Matthew 5:4 As we continue our walk through the first blessings and promises of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, we want to make sure that we keep the entire sermon in mind. This sermon spans 3 chapters in the Gospel of Matthew (5-7) and even though chapters and verses make it easier for us to find things, it may also contribute to our picking out parts and parcels and forgetting that Christ is conveying a central idea in this sermon, and that overall idea is the heart of the law and the prophets. He summarizes this in Matthew 22:37-40, where He says the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. In these two commands hang all the law and the prophets. Here, he is spelling out what that love looks like and He starts with God. We started this by defining blessing as being happy, content, satisfied and prosperous; with that in mind how is...

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. – Matthew 5:3 This is the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on The Mount. It is so simple that a child can grasp its points and so profound that it has perplexed theologians and scholars for centuries. My aim here is not to enter the fray of the theological and scholarly debates, though I commend them to you, but rather to encourage you if I may, with that perplexing child-like understanding that produces an absolute dependency upon The Holy Spirit to speak to us individually and as One Body in Christ. Everyone wants to be happy. We seek it out and sacrifice for it in a myriad of ways, and contrary to popular preaching, God wants us to be happy, but that happiness is not to be found in our 21 st century Western Worldview, for that is ever changing and those things which promise it perish with the using. God intends for us to find our joy in Him. He wants us to be eternally happy and that’s the whole point of the first 12 ...