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 This month at PRV we are going to kicking off a study of the life of Jesus as seen through the eyes of St. Luke, a physician and Gentile (i.e. non-Jew) who traveled with St. Paul. However before we do that, I’ve been asked to talk about the Bible:
- How did we get the 66 books included in it?
- Can we trust it?
- How does it differ from other ‘holy’ books?
- Why do we have all these translations of the Bible?
These are all big questions that need to be answered before we go on.
The Unique of the Bible
The Bible is a unique book – in fact, it is a collection of 66 ‘books’ written by over 40 authors across 5,000 years. These authors, who include kings, peasants, philosophers, fishermen, poets, statesmen, scholars, etc., wrote different:
- Historical works
- Legal documents
- Poetry
- Biography
- Prophecy
- Personal correspondence
The words of the Bible were written in three different languages:
- Hebrew: The language of the Old Testament and the Jewish people
- Aramaic: The “common language” of the Near East until the time of Alexander the Great (6th century BC – 4th century BC)
- Greek: New Testament language; also the international language at the time of Christ
Furthermore these 66 books were written at different times (peace, war, happiness, sadness); different locations across three continents (Africa, Asia, and Europe); and different places (in the wilderness, prison, dungeon, hillside, palace, on the road while traveling, military campaign, etc.
Continue reading The Reliability of the Bible
 Yesterday marked the last of a four part series (part 1, 2, and 3 that looked at the theology of worship and why we do what we do. I don’t know what God did with you guys in cyberspace or those at PRV, but for me, I defiantly feel like this has been a powerful series. In fact, it was a hard series as there were things that I didn’t want to hear let alone share with you all…but God’s hand guided us through it all:
- The definition of worship – to bow down before God in total submission (part 1)
- Trusting God, the One we worship (part 1)
- The intimacy of being in His presence (part 2)
- Singing to God versus simply about Him (part 2)
- How worship differs from culture to culture (part 3, guest speaker Shelton Taguma)
- Worshiping Jesus through our actions – living sacrifices (below)
My prayer now is that we don’t forget the lessons we have learned. I pray that we will take what we have learned and go with God, transforming our minds so that we can work out God’s will in our lives, our community…
Worship, Part 4
Good morning. God has been so good to us this week…
I was driving home Wednesday evening after work when I saw the most wonderful rainbow ever! It was a full double rainbow declaring God’s peace for He has hung His war bow on the wall. He has made a covenant with the earth, humanity and the animals never to destroy the earth with water again. What a powerful promise! =)
As I stared in wonder at this rainbow, I couldn’t help but worship the Lord for all that He has done. He created the heaven and the earth – He has given us everything we have and are – He died for us so that we may be set free from sin and death. He gave us eyes to see and ears to hear – feet to walk and hands to work.
He is good! Amen and amen!!
Doxology
This reminds me of end of Romans 11 and the beginning of chapter 12:
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
“Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”
“Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay them?”
For from him and through him and for him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen. –Romans 11:33-36
What a powerful doxology or statement of the faith! How unsearchable is his judgment and His paths? That we might all follow the Wild Goose of the Holy Spirit into the unknown places of the world to share the Love of God to all!
And to Him be the gory forever! Amen.
Today I wanted to post the second part of my short sermon series on worship (part one can be found here). The full audio version can be found on the PRV website along with the audio file of part three presented by Shelton Taguma from Zimbabwe.
Core Values
I was re-reading our core values this past week when I ran across a beautifully written statement about this:
“God is eager to be known and experienced by all. We believe that God is searching for lost humanity in order to draw us into intimate relationship with Himself. In response to God’s initiative, we value the life-changing power of the experience of His presence.
The primary place where that relationship is nurtured and developed is in the act of worship – both private and corporate. So, experience-based worship is the central activity of all that we do in the Vineyard. It is worship that causes all else that we do to become an act of worship. We experience God’s presence as a palpable reality when we worship. As we worship we become increasingly sensitive and response to the Spirit’s presence so that we can do as Jesus did: “See what the Father is doing,” (John 5:19) and support His work with our lives.”
We are a people of the presence of God. We seek His presence as a child seeks their parents – as a calf is drawn to its mother, so we are to be drawn to the presence of the Lord.
This desire to be in the presence of God affects how we worship as a community for it must be:
- Regular
- Real
- Non-religious
- Relevant
- Contemporary
- Simple
- Love-song-oriented
- Honest
- Free
- Warm
- Open
- Personal
- Tender
- Non-manipulative
- Non-hyped
- Sincere
- Intimate
- Music
(the above list was drawn from Alexander Venter‘s book about the Vineyard called “Doing Church”)
There is just something powerful about music as it has a way of uniting our mental, emotional, and spiritual parts into one. It connects with us in a way that is deeper than our mind – we remember songs more so than sermons (which is why we need to be careful about the songs we sing and/or listen too)….
Continue reading Worship: The Heart of Worship
 We are in between two major studies – the Story of God, which we just finished, and the life of Jesus, which we will be starting in March.
This month, however, we are going to be looking at worship:
• What is worship?
• Why do we worship?
• What does worship mean?
The general outline we will be using these next few weeks in answering these questions is as follows:
- Trusting God - We have to really trust God before we are willing to surrender everything to Him in worship. For example if you don’t trust God then you are less likely to really let go and enjoy Him during musical worship. Instead you are going to try to maintain a certain demeanor while sings the lyrics.
- The Heart of Worship – Is there a difference between praise and worship? How do you worship God amidst distractions? Why do we signing songs for half an hour?
- How Worship Changes Us – Shelton Taguma will be teaching us from a Zimbabwe perspective. When I originally asked him to speak a month ago, all I knew was that he was a lover of worship – I didn’t know that he recently finished teaching a series on worship in Zimbabwe before he came to the States with this wife to have their second child. God really set us up… =/
- Non-Musical Worship – Worship God goes beyond the musical song service into everyday life. True worship is an ongoing daily relationship with Jesus that is real and personal.
I must warn you though… as I’ve been studying this topic, I have to say that it may sting some of you… worship can be a touchy subject full of emotions, so I just pray that you all while open your hearts and minds to Jesus as I’m sure I won’t be able to have all the right words or phrases… But I know that His Spirit will guide us all – individually and corporately as that is what Jesus told us in John 16:13-14:
13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. 14 He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.
Amen?
This past Sunday was the last week of our eight month journey through the Bible tracing the metanarrative or grand story of God. Being the last sermon in the series, this sermon served two purposes: 1) a recap of the entire eight months and 2) an arrow pointing forward to our part in The Story.
Five Act Shakespeare Play
Along this journey we used N.T. Wright’s outline of a lost Shakespeare play with the final act missing. This ‘newly discovered’ lay is wonderful, full of drama, passion and amazing insight into the human soul – this play is destined to be a classic on par with Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. The only one problem is that missing last act….
So what do you do? Well, you pull together the best Shakespearean actors and actress on the planet – the ones that know all of Shakespeare’s other plays – you give them all the acts that you have – the first four acts – you have them study them, to enter into the story – to learn and know the characters in the play – then you put on the play with the actors living out the last act within the theme and direction of the first four acts.
This is us – we are in the fifth act of God’s story.
We have the first four acts recorded in the Bible – shoot, we even have the first and last pages of Act 5! We just don’t have the pages in the middle… so what are we going to do? I pray that we learn the first four acts with all our hearts, mind, soul, and spirit – let us enter into the God’s story with all that we are so that we can live out our part in the story in line with those who have gone before us – the cloud of witnesses as the author of the book of Hebrews says.
 This last Sunday service was a a tad different as we looked at the church history between Acts chapter 28 and today (Act 5 Scene 2 in the Grand Story of God).
While history may not be in the Bible, this is a very, very important topic as God did not stop working after St. Luke penned the final words of Acts. He is very much active today and He has always been active within history.
There is a reason that the majority of the Scripture is written as history – Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings, 1-2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Jonah, Matthew, Luke, Mark, John, and Acts. They are all history books detailing the work of God among humanity… and if God deemed it important enough to include the history of the Jewish people in His Sacred Text, than I feel it is important to know the history of the Church, birthed with Jesus and infused with the Holy Spirit.
The prophet Jeremiah speaks to this in the sixth chapter:
16 This is what the LORD says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
-Jeremiah 6:16
The “ancient paths” => we are not alone on this journey. There have been many followers of Jesus who has walked this path before us. Hebrews 12:1 says that we are “surrounded” by a “great cloud of witnesses” who are cheering us on – encouraging us to finish the race set before us by “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”
Continue reading Church History (Act 5 Scene 2)
Have you ever watched one of those confusing movies where after a minute or two of video the film flashes back to a few years previously? Just when I started to get the hang of that, the person who I thought was the main character dies. Now I’m REALLY confused. What is the point of the film? Who is the good guy? Is there a good guy? And what the heck is going on?!
For many years I felt the same way about the Bible. Being an avid reader, I picked up the Bible and started at the front. There was this deal about a guy named Adam and his girl, Eve. But they didn’t hang around very long – just long enough to screw up everything.
Trying to keep an open mind, I continued to read – only to get more and more confused as first one character and then another comes on the scene only to die a few chapters later. I was beginning to think that while God was a good at creating planets and the like, He was terrible at writing a book!
After what seemed like eternity, someone let me in on the secret: start with part about Jesus of Nazareth. Flipping past three-quarters of the book, I found the part about Jesus and started reading. Boy did things start making sense – I had found the main character and He was pretty cool!
However, there was one thing in story about Jesus that I did not understand. He kept talking about and referring to the “kingdom of God” or the “kingdom of heaven” . What in the world is the “kingdom of God”? I knew about the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – and I believe there was a movie called the “Kingdom of Heaven”, which I don’t think Jesus was talking about.
The Message of Jesus of Nazareth
Most of you would agree – or I hope, would agree – that Jesus of Nazareth is the main character in the drama of history. Paul tells us in Ephesians (2:20) that Jesus was the “chief cornerstone” on which the apostles and the prophets were built. In Galatians (3:19), Paul goes one step further and says that the first five books of the Bible (the Mosaic Law) points toward the person of Jesus. Shoot, Jesus said as much about himself to the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 23:27)!
If all of history points towards Jesus, then I think the message that he shared is of great importance. Luckily for us, we have two eye witness accounts (Matthew and John) and two investigative reports (Luke and Mark) of Jesus’ First Century ministry. In them we see that primary phrase used to describe Jesus’ message is the “kingdom of God” or the “kingdom of heaven”, which is just a Jewish way of saying the “kingdom of God” since the Jews did not like to mention the name of God.
Continue reading A New Age Begins (Act 4 Scene 2)
 "Adoration of the Shepherds" by Gerard van Honthorst, 1622 Over the past few months we have been walking through the Bible – Genesis to Revelations – looking at the grand story of God and how our lives fit into His story.
Today marks a radical shift in this story for as we celebrate the birth for Jesus – the invasion of God into Present Evil Age. Life – human history – would never be the same after that first Christmas. The story of God had reached its climax…
But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Before we can fully understand the significance of Christmas we must look at how the birth of Jesus fits within the grand story of God.
Lost Shakespeare Play
The story of God is best told as a five part act – all pointing forwarding and connected with each other. It is like a discovering a lost Shakespeare play– it is wonderful, full of drama, passion and amazing insight into the human soul – this play is destined to be a classic on par with Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. There is only one problem… the last act is missing…
So what do you do? You pull together the best Shakespearean actors and actress on the planet – the ones that know all of Shakespeare’s other plays – you give them all the acts that you have – the first four acts – you have them study them, to enter into the story – to learn and know the characters in the play – then you put on the play with the actors living out the last act within the theme and direction of the first four acts.
This is us – we are in the fifth act of God’s story.
Review the Grand Story
Act 1: God is King
o Scene 1a: Creation (Genesis 1)
- Who created the heavens and the earth?
- Was it formed by multiple gods? Or by accident?
- Science cannot answer the question of WHO. It only seeks to answer the question of HOW.
- Two different questions….
- If we are to enter into the Story of God, we need to enter into the WHO – join with Him, the one who made everything by simply speaking. Science does not need to scare us or frighten us as we know the One who started everything and created the laws of nature that science studies.
Continue reading The Invasion of God – Birth of Jesus (Act 4 Scene 1)
We have covered a lot of ground since May 15th when we started on this journey through the Bible. We looked at how stories govern our lives and influence the choices that we make.
We looked at the differences between God’s Story and the American Dream, the Dream of Novelty and entertainment, the “White Picket Fence” story, the “John Wayne” self-sufficient-me-against-the-world story, the “Retirement Story”…
We have seen the passion of God to draw all people to Himself. We have seen how the theme of Leviticus 26:11-12 has guided the mission of God from the very beginning:
I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. -Leviticus 26:11-12
As part of this mission, God invited humanity to join Him – to join their story into His; to change their story to one that impacts the entire world. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Elijah, and so forth all decided to join with God versus trying to do it on their own.
Yes, they messed up at times…but they got back up and kept on walking with God. Just like we are to do today – we also have, are, being invited to join with God in His mission right here in the Payette River drainage. There may be days, minutes or week when we are slightly off…but this doesn’t mean that we are ‘out’… NO! We are to get back up and keep on walking!!
Learning about the Story…
 As we learned about God’s Story we have seen how He created a nation out of a family of slaves. How He joined this family with other slaves and outcasts in the area to start one of the best nations in the history of humanity.
Sadly this nation did not continue to walk with God.
They allowed the pressures of the world – the fame, the wealth, the habits and stories of the people around them to derail them from following God. There were some times when they tried to get back up – some kings of Judah who tried to get back to their first love….but somehow, someway their efforts failed and the nation was plugged back into darkness.
Yet God was not left without a witness; no matter how dark the land got or how much injustices there was in the land, God always had a remnant of men and women who stayed faithful to Him. They followed the King of Kings regardless of what was going on around them.
Finally God had enough. No longer was He going to keep blessing and protecting a rebellious people – a people who, while claiming to be His children, were not living according to the love, mercy, and justice that embodies God Himself.
So after numerous warnings, the Lord uses the nation of Assyria to conquer the northern 10 tribes (i.e. the nation of Israel). You would think that this action would wake up the southern nation of Judah…but it did not… so God sent the Babylonian Empire to destroy both the nation and the temple in Jerusalem.
Continue reading The Exile (Act 3 Scene 8a)
 Seven Devils Wilderness, July 2011 This year there were two events that marked the Thanksgiving Holiday:
1) Thanksgiving eve service
Having never gone to a Thanksgiving eve service I wasn’t sure what to expect… I wasn’t sure if there was going to be a turkey pageant or if the candle light service was going to include marshmallows!
As it turned out, the service at my in-laws church was beautiful. We stood around the sanctuary in the dark holding un-lite candles (well, electric candles with the switches turned off). One by one we voiced our thanks into a traveling microphone and turned on our candles. Seeing the lights come on one by one sure was special…
One of the interesting things about the evening was the thanks voiced by everyone. The majority of the participants said that they were thankful for their family – their spouse, their children, their parents, their sisters and brothers, etc….
2) Seeing the “Courageous” movie Friday evening
The second event was a movie night Friday evening. A few of us went to Emmett to watch the “Courageous” movie. The theme of this film is fatherhood – moving from being an ‘ok’ or ‘good enough father’ to being a father that calls out their children to be women and men of God – to be people who hear the voice of God and choose to follow Him.
It was film calling our society to task for teaching us that it is ok for a father to ignore their family in lieu of a good career or to pass off the job of raising the kids to their wives – or, as the case may be, to simply mail child support checks each month without really caring what was happing with the children…
These two events….two sides of a coin – one side shows how much we really do care about our families while the other side reflects the reality that we don’t really live it.
One is talk while the other is action.
Which one means more? Which one reflects the ‘truth’ in our hearts?
Continue reading Interlude: Thanksgiving
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Who Writes This Mess? My name is Joshua Hopping and I am a Son of the Most High journeying through a foreign land following the Wild Goose (i.e. the Holy Spirit) one step at a time.
As I journey along the Way, I have the privilege of serving as the bi-vocational pastor of the Payette River Vineyard Christian Fellowship. I am also a voracious reader who loves studying church history, theology, and world missions.
This blog, "Requisite Danger", is a record of what God is teaching and showing me as I try to follow Him wherever He leads as well as occasional random thoughts. I pray that you will join me in this journey through online/offline interaction as this life is lived in community.
May His grace and peace be upon you.
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