Feast and Follow with Knollwood

Grab the Gavel Slowly

We hear it all the time, "Jesus said, 'Don't judge!'" but is that what Jesus actually meant? Did Jesus really tell us that we cannot call things good or bad? Find out as we examine Matthew 7:1! 

Strength for the Hardest Challenge

Do you want a promise from God that you will be able to do anything that you set your mind to? Wouldn’t it be a great thing, even a humbling thing, to hear that Christ will promise to be the one to give you strength to parent, preach, fix that leaky faucet, or win that championship football game? This would take the focus off of ourselves and onto Jesus as He gets the credit for every good thing accomplished and every victory won! Enter Philippians 4:13. Many have claimed this verse as they set out to do something, and I have particularly seen this in the athletic community. One NBA star would write this verse on his shoes, and in my youth ministry, would see things like that all the time. 

 

Like most of the verses that we have studied so far, the popular interpretation isn’t too far off the truth. Indeed, the only way that we are able to do anything is because God preserves us. I am not the one keeping my heart beating. I’m not the one who keeps my body going. Anything that I do is because God preserves me. David recognizes this in Psalm 139. In another Psalm, specifically 104:14, we see that God’s control of the Earth extends even to the growing of grass. I’m currently reading through a 700 page book going through all the Bible verses that talk about God’s sovereignty over all things. It is true that draining the game winning basket, catching that touchdown pass, preaching a good sermon, or training up good kids is all credit due to God. 

 

But that is not typically how we use the verse. Because it is also true that when we miss that critical basket, the sermon doesn’t land, or the kids don’t turn out the way we expect, God is overseeing that, too. If we use this verse simply to say, “God is going to empower me to win here based on this verse,” when we don’t win, we can end up disappointed, or at worst, disillusioned with God (Eric J. Bargerhuff,The Most Misused Verses in the Bible,109-110). 

What if I told you that the promise God is actually making here is better than victory? What if the promise that is made here will still empower you, even, in fact especially, in defeat? It turns out that Paul has a secret about how to do that, and a lot of us, me included, often miss what that is. 

The Best that God Can Give

Different people want different things in a disaster. There is one type of person who wants a plan. No matter how bad things are around me, nothing makes them feel better than a solid step 1, step 2 plan to get them where they want to go whether that is budgets or home repair. Some things, of course, are beyond one’s personal ability to fix, like, say the state of a nation. I know many have felt that way about America, particularly so in the last ten years. It gets really hard to watch the news because there is very little that any particular individual can do about the culture of a country. We all know that if there is going to be any sort of real, lasting change, God is going to have to be the one to make it happen. That’s where we find this verse in 2 Chronicles 7:14 that seems to give us the ultimate step 1, step 2 scenario! The planning people are satisfied! 

But there is another group of people who would rather have a powerful promise that someone will take care of their problem. These types of folks see the road in front of them, and honestly, a plan is a little overwhelming! They’re not so much into step 1, step 2, because they know that they are not powerful enough or confident enough to implement those things. They would rather have someone that they can lean against to do it for them, thus ensuring that it is going to be done correctly. For folks like this, Jeremiah 29:11 seems like the perfect place to land on, and indeed, many have made this verse a theme for their lives, claiming it on everything from business to highschool graduation cards. 

Both of these passages are absolutely perfect for an “Oh, so close” kind of interpretation. People are tantalizingly close to correct in what these passages mean, but those promises were made to different people, and the way we tend to claim them puts our focus in the wrong place. It is true that God will work things out for our ultimate good, and in the end, the glory that awaits us will make all of our problems seem small (Romans 8), but if we think that Jeremiah 29:11 means that we will never go through any long-term struggle, we are simply wrong. And while it is true that prayers and repentance do bring blessing even to a whole nation, 2 Chronicles 7 isn’t a blueprint or formula to course correct a nation. There is actually a greater Kingdom coming that should be our greatest focus (Bargerhuff, Eric The Most Misused Verses in the Bible, 76).  

The Proverb’s Principle

Have you ever noticed how many guarantees there are offered to you? People promise guaranteed satisfaction on so many sorts of products and services because people want to know that the money they spend or the effort they expend will be worth it. No one wants to pay a bunch of money only to have buyer’s remorse or work super hard on something that turns out to be a waste of time. Now if there is anything that parents want is a guarantee on, it is that their children are going to do all right in life. Parents put more effort, more of themselves, into their children than anything else in their lives (if they are doing it properly!), so they, of all people, want to know that what they are doing is the right thing. We’ve all heard the horror stories of parents who seemingly did everything right and yet the kids did not turn out the way their parents hoped. This puts us on the hunt for some sort of technique, some sort of verse, some sort of something that will help us sleep at night knowing that no matter how anything else turns out in life, at least the kids are going to be ok. 

Many believe that they have found their answer in this verse. All you have to do is train up your kid! This means that any kid that wasn’t trained, or at least wasn’t trained properly, will turn out poorly. Now, I think we all know that life isn’t that simple, but we still have this verse here. We can’t just say, “Well, that is not how my life has turned out, so the Bible must be wrong.” That is a very dangerous way to do Bible interpretation. We can’t interpret the Bible through our own life experience, so what are we supposed to do with it? What is this verse really promising us, if anything? Well in order to understand this verse, we need to understand a little bit about how the Bible works, and specifically how Proverbs work.

Oh, So Close!

We are going to be starting a new sermon series for the month of July that I’m calling “Oh, So Close!” There are a lot of verses that are misquoted, misapplied, and misunderstood today in our wider culture, so I thought that we would take a few weeks between Bible books to look at a few of them. The point of this series is not to condemn people who have misunderstood or misapplied the verses we will cover. This is part of the reason why I have titled the series the way that I have. Sometimes, these misapplications are very close, but not close enough. Some mistakes are worse than others. If you have misapplied the verse in Matthew 18 that says, “where two or three are gathered together, there I am in the midst of them” to a prayer meeting of a few people, you can still be saved. You are not applying that verse correctly, but you can still go to heaven. Other times, the misapplication of verses can set you up for a real problem in the Christian life. People can take Jeremiah 29:11 and think that based on that verse God only intends to bring good things into their lives as defined by them. When troubles come into their lives, they can think that God has abandoned them. 

The real point of this series is I want to give you a helpful set of tools in your own interpretation of the Scriptures. If you can apply the things that we will see in the next few weeks, you will have a greater chance of interpreting the Bible for yourself with precision. It is not enough to be correct that a certain topic is taught in the Bible; you need to be precise as to what that verse specifically is saying about a given topic. To use the Matthew 18 passage again, it is true that God is with us, even when our numbers are small, but that is not the precise meaning of that passage. As we will explore when we get to that one, the truth that God gives to us in that verse is more profound and comforting than just a general blanket statement of God’s presence with us.

Prayers to the End

We live in a fast-paced world where unless you are constantly moving, it feels like you are falling behind. This world has trained us to think this way even about our Christian lives. “Fast-paced” isn’t typically what should come to our mind when we think about prayer. Prayer feels slow, dare we say it, unproductive. But it is prayer that Paul emphasizes so much here at the end of this letter. 

 

As Paul makes the final turn in his letter to the Epehesians, he suddenly drops the military imagery and instead exhorts the Ephesians church (and us) on the importance of prayer. He spends quite a bit of time on this here, highlighting its importance to the spiritual fight. He also breaks out the word “all” four times in this brief section before finally requesting that this gift of prayer be applied to him and his calling.

A Legacy of Wisdom

As fathers, we all want to make sure that our families are well provided for and protected, but we can easily miss the most important thing to pass onto them: wisdom. Obviously, in order to pass it on, we need to get a hold of it ourselves! How? Listen to find out! 

The Sword of the Lord

If you are going to be in a battle, you are going to need more than defense. You will need a weapon! God has given to us just such a resource in His Word. Will you learn how to use it? 

A Hiding Place

What is faith? We throw this word around a lot as Christians, but we tend to not define it carefully. It is easy when we talk about the shield of faith to think that it is about the power of belief itself rather than the object of that faith. Find out how Paul means to define faith in this episode of Feast and Follow!  

Secure Footing

As we being our series on the Armor of God, we look at the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, and the shoes of the gospel of peace. God has made us well-equipped for the spiritual war that is coming for each of us! Learn how to use each piece!