Eschatology | Sunday Morning Greek Blog

October 20, 2026

Presence and Participation (Exodus 33:12–23; Matthew 22:15–22)

Filed under: Ecclesiology,Eschatology,Evangelism,Exodus,Faith, Faithfulness,Government,Matthew Gospel of,Moses,Righteousness,Ten Commandments (Decalogue) — Scott Stocking @ 10:31 pm
Tags: Exodus 3:5-11, jesus, faith, bible, god, Christian political obligation,, voting as stewardship, Jesus and Rome, government and faith, Moses

I repurposed my message from three years ago on Proper 24 passages and added an encouragement to vote. I said that voting was a way to “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” I also believe voting in a representative republic is a stewardship of our freedom. I preached this message October 18, 2026, at Mount View Presbyterian Church, Omaha, Nebraska. It is different enough from my previous message to warrant a separate post.

No one in the OT, not even Abraham, had quite the experience of the manifest presence of God that Moses did. Moses had spent the first 40 years of his life exposed to the best that Egypt had to offer, but he also was touched by the suffering of the Hebrew slaves. When he’d had enough, he killed an Egyptian and fled into the wilderness, where he, like Brother Lawrence, had the opportunity to reconnect with God.

Moses, however, could not completely put his past behind him and focus on the power and presence of God once called. Listen the exchange God has with Moses at the Burning Bush:

⁵ “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” ⁶ Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

⁷ The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. ⁸ So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. ⁹ And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. ¹⁰ So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

And Moses responded: “Great Lord! Let’s get started! When do we leave?”

Umm, no. Even though God had just told Moses in person, out loud, he would do all the heavy lifting, and all Moses would have to do is stand before Pharaoh, Moses just couldn’t take the focus off himself when he responded:

¹¹ But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”^[1]

How many of us have said at least once in our lives, “I just wish I knew what God wanted me to do”? Even though God had given him all these assurances, Moses just couldn’t comprehend that the presence of God before him and his people would be infinitely more powerful than whatever he might face standing in presence of Pharaoh. Maybe he was still afraid of Egypt. Maybe his experience in city planning in Egypt made him feel like relocating about 2 million slaves might be an impossible task. Whatever the reason, Moses was focused more on the potential troubles of what he saw around him and had a difficult time receiving God’s grace and appointment.

Fast forward through the awesome power of God displayed in the ten plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, and a solo trip to the top of Mt. Sinai to get the Ten Commandments, and by then, Moses seems to be getting a handle on the concept of the Presence of God, but he still doesn’t seem convinced by the time we get to the passage we read earlier from Exodus 33:12–23.

Let’s look a little closer at this passage and glean some important truths about living in the presence of God. First, when we walk in the presence of God, we can be leaders in our own way. Some of us may lead in small ways; others may have more prominent roles. Whether we’re leading one person into a deeper relationship with Christ or a community full of people to the same goal, we have the promise of God’s presence, but we need that reminder from God as Moses did here.

At first glance here, it may seem like Moses still hasn’t learned his lesson about what it means to be called by God. In Exodus 3, we saw that Moses was so focused on his own weakness that he couldn’t see that God would provide everything he needed to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. But at least here in chapter 33, Moses doesn’t completely reject the idea of continuing to lead, but he still wants someone to go with him. What he doesn’t realize, and what God affirms in vs. 14, is that God’s Presence (capital P) will go with him. Not only that, God’s presence will keep them from harm as they journey through the wilderness. The “rest” God will give them is not only the security of the Promised Land if they’re faithful to what he’s calling them to do, but rest as two million souls moving across the wilderness is no small logistical challenge!

Moses’s response to God has a twofold meaning: He acknowledges that he can’t lead two million people without God, and he seems grateful for that. But Moses also needs a visible sign from God not only for himself, but for the people as well. After all, it’s easy to establish your authority over two million people if you’ve got a cloud by day leading you and a pillar of fire by night as your rear guard. Moses was one of the fortunate few who got to witness God’s glory up close and personal in the cleft of the rock. That was the boost of self-confidence he needed to continue leading God’s people.

The second thing we see in this passage is that God knows Moses by name and that Moses knows God has favored him for this task. The word for “favor” in Hebrew was translated by the Greek speakers in Jesus’s day to the word for “grace.” In other words, God gave Moses the task of leadership not necessarily because he was the best and brightest, but because he chose to gift and empower him with that task. He did nothing to earn it. This is important, because even in those few times we read of Moses missing the mark during the wilderness wanderings, God still affirms his leadership through what would become a 40-year journey for the Israelites. There was no “vote of confidence” among the Israelites if they didn’t like the way things were going. God was leading, and Moses was his earthly representative. Case closed.

The third thing we see in this passage is that Moses, like Solomon a few hundred years later, desired to be taught God’s ways so he could continue to lead and continue to find favor with God. He began to realize the importance of his role and influence in leading two million people on a journey to their new homeland. This was perhaps the largest migration of any people group at any time in history. Even today, some scientists claim they can still see evidence of such a migration in satellite imagery of the Sinai Peninsula. Moses had grasped the significance of what they were about to embark on after receiving the Ten Commandments and the instructions for the Tabernacle and its accoutrements. He asks God to “Remember that this nation is your people.” Then again, after hearing myself say that out loud, there might be a tinge of sarcasm in Moses’s voice. How many of you who raised boys ever said to your husband, “He’s your son!”

I imagine that Moses already had an idea of what he was in for after the year or two it took them to get from Egypt to Mount Sinai. His father-in-law Jethro had advised him to appoint a hierarchy of “judges” who could rule on the inevitable conflicts and issues that arise in such a large population. Aaron hadn’t helped with the whole “golden calf” incident just before this story takes place either. It seemed that even though the people had left Egypt, Egypt hadn’t left some of the Israelites. They grew impatient waiting on Moses to come down from the mountain and used some of the gold they had plundered from the Egyptians and fashioned it into an idol of gold. They had so quickly forgotten what God had done for them because they took their eyes off God and what he was establishing for his people.

In Moses’s late years, he was leading the Israelites through a sparsely populated wilderness. Yet even in that wilderness, God’s people found reasons to be distracted, usually about the quality of their diet. In Jesus’s day, the distractions were more about politics, but they had to concern themselves about it from a couple angles. On the one hand, they were concerned about keeping the legalistic Pharisees and Sadducees happy. On the other hand, they had to tolerate Rome’s presence to keep order among the masses. Not a few times, we see the Pharisees trying to get a little political themselves to detract from their own shortcomings.

The Pharisees try to put Jesus between a rock and a hard place by trapping him with a question about paying taxes to Rome. Jesus tells the Pharisees that if the coin has Caesar’s image on it, give it back to Caesar. But if you bear the image of God, give yourself to God.

In this election season, I’ve been thinking a lot about what that first bit about giving to Caesar means. I don’t think Jesus is just talking about taxes when he says that. When you think about, Jesus never openly criticizes the Roman government or military. In fact, he’s almost downright friendly and compassionate to them. He heals the family members of a couple soldiers; he teaches his disciples to go the extra mile when a Roman soldier legally demands you carry their gear. Nor is he contentious with Pilate or Herod when he stands before them. It’s as if Jesus knew what Paul would say about what our relationship with government authorities should look like, and of course he did. Jesus gave the rulers of the day the respect they were due.

First-century Judea wasn’t a democracy like some of their earlier Greek Nation-State predecessors, so Jesus and his disciples didn’t have any way to change such governments. For the sake of staying alive and out of a Roman prison, they would go along to get along.

You and I live under a completely different concept of governance. We live in a representative republic according to our Constitution. This was a unique, radical, and wise way to form a government by a group of men who had studied ancient Greek and Roman government styles. But the writings of our Founding Fathers reveal that they thought the type of government they were forming would only work or work best with a group of people that share a common moral and ethical background, namely Christianity.

As such, the Founding Fathers wrote about the responsibilities of citizenship from the perspective that our participation was a divine duty. Voting is an exercise of stewardship of your freedom in America. It’s not my place to tell you how to vote; but I do want to encourage you to faithful exercise that duty of “giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s” by voting and participating in the democratic process, at least at the local level.

So, what are the other takeaways for us this morning?

First, know that God loves us and wants to lead us into his glory, so that we can share his love with those we encounter and point them and lead them to his glory as well. His presence goes with us. Today, we’ll likely not have a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night leading us. But we have something much more personal: God’s Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit in our lives is the confirmation of God’s presence with us. The Holy Spirit knows the heart of God and knows the love that God the Father has for his son, Jesus, and reveals to us God’s heart as we faithfully follow him and rely on him for strength and salvation.

Second, God knows each of us by name. Romans 8 says that as Spirit-led children of God, we are in fact heirs: “Heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ” because we share in his suffering that we might also share in his glory. What a marvelous thing to know the Creator of all the Earth knows each of us by name, and not only that, but knows our hearts and our hurts, and his Holy Spirit helps us get in touch and stay in touch with God even in our times of weakness. When we can’t find the words to pray, the Spirit prays for us. When we fail and fall short, the unfailing God is there to restore us. When we can’t find the words to express our joy, God puts a new song in our hearts. When we are broken, he brings healing. When we hurt someone or are hurt by others, the one who bore our hurts and pain brings healing.

Finally, stay focused on the Word of God. Moses and Solomon both asked God to teach them his ways and give them wisdom to lead. That is an attitude we all can model. God’s word never fails; it never returns void. It always accomplishes the purpose for which it is intended when spoken out loud and claimed for a promise. We may not see or understand that purpose at the time, or it may not be what we intended, but it will be effective nonetheless. Stay in community with the body of Christ as well as much as you can, especially as the days continue to become increasingly evil. Only the members of the body of Christ can support the body of Christ. The world will continue to hate us, just as Jesus predicted, but stand strong in the word of God and in the fellowship of the saints around us.

Jesus is coming. If not today, then tomorrow. If not before we die, then after. We don’t know when, but Jesus does tell us to pay attention to the signs of the times. Pray for peace. Pray for safety. Pray for the triumph of Good over Evil. Pray for the lives of the innocent and oppressed as well as for the souls of the wicked and the oppressors. Take heart in knowing that God will win the victory, and that we who believe will someday be gathered to him in glory.

Amen.

My thoughts are my own.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

^[1] Exodus 3:5–11. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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October 10, 2026

“If Paul Were Here We’d Be Getting a Letter”: An AI Experiment

Filed under: Ecclesiology,Eschatology,Evangelism,Faith, Faithfulness,Government,Romans,Spiritual Warfare — Scott Stocking @ 5:01 pm
Tags: American church,, Apostle Paul, bible, Christian Ethics, Christian Nationalism, christianity, Christianity and politics, Church and State, Church Unity, Civic Responsibility, Cultural Engagement, faith, Faith and Politics, god, jesus, Political Division, Voting

Most of my regular readers, I think, know where I stand politically. That’s no big secret. But I do grieve about the stark divide in this country, not just about politics, but about moral foundations, cultural issues, and our divergent views on the sanctity of life. I borrowed the title of the blog from a T-shirt or sticker I saw online and thought to myself, Hmm, that sounds like a good exercise for developing an AI prompt. (I’m learning about AI prompts because there are lots of good-paying jobs for someone with my skill set and want to promote my abilities.)

I won’t get into too many details about how AI can work, but it’s more than just a simple search tool that focuses on key words. It interprets instructions using a “large language model” (LLM) that can discern the meaning and intent of someone’s request to perform any task, whether simple or complex. To get a really good response on a complex task, you have to provide sources that the AI engine can reference to process a request. So in putting Paul in 21st century America, I needed to arm him with some primary source material he would not have had access to in his day, namely some of our founding documents and seminal writings (i.e., The Federalist Papers) so he could have an understanding of what the founding fathers intended for America. I also identified relevant scriptures and life-events for Paul that may have shaped his thinking about the Roman government in his day as sort of a “foil” against which he can assess the American republic and its citizens.

Admittedly, the output seems a little bit contrived at times, contextualizing and reframing 1st-century verses for a 21st-century context. But overall, I was pleased with the tone and content of the letter. As a disclaimer, I don’t claim that the entire piece represents my own viewpoint 100%; there are a couple things I’d probably restate or “correct” that are artifacts of where I could have been clearer in my prompt (e.g., I should have specified a specific Bible translation; Paul speaks of himself in the third person at some point). But I’m not afraid to put this forward as is without editing to see what you think. I’m not afraid of AI. In fact, I see it as an opportunity to add my own Christ-centered hermeneutical thinking into the LLM to ensure that the LLM is not completely without Christian influence or a broader religious perspective.

Without further ado, then, here is the prompt I fed into Copilot, followed by Copilot’s unedited response.

The Prompt

Good evening. I saw a T-shirt the other day that said, “If Paul were here, we’d be getting a letter,” referring to the apostle Paul. It got me thinking: “What would Paul say to Christians on both sides of the aisle about the stark divisions that seem to exist between political parties these days?”

Paul was no stranger to the politics of the Roman empire. He wrote about how the Romans (and believers generally) should submit to their political leaders as servants of God, even though they were pagan and probably worshipped the pagan Roman pantheon. He also had encounters with local authorities, notably in Acts 13, 18, and perhaps even 19 with the mention of “proconsuls.” Then, of course, he was arrested, used his Roman citizenship to get out of a flogging, and subsequently appealed to Caesar. That led to a series of encounters with Roman rulers and royalty where he never failed to present his own conversion story and the gospel. It occurred to me that this appeal to Caesar and taking advantage of the Roman judicial system was perhaps an attempt to identify with Christ’s own experiences of appearing before Pilate and Herod prior to his crucifixion.

Use the following as sources:

The Gospels, especially where Jesus interacted with or spoke about Roman soldiers or rulers (e.g., “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is God’s”).

The Book of Acts in the New Testament, especially chapters 13, 18, 19, and Paul’s arrest and subsequent appeal to Caesar and how he used those appeals to present the gospel. Also use Ephesians 6 and other instances where the NT writers use the language of powers and principalities.

For the Old Testament, use passages like 1 Samuel 8–12 (Israel chooses a King); 2 Chronicles 7 (esp. the broader principle represented by verse 14); and Daniel in his interactions with the rulers of kingdom he served (addressing some of the spiritual warfare implications is a plus).

The U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, and subsequent Amendments.

The Declaration of Independence, especially with respect to the signers’ mentions or allusions to the Judeo-Christian God.

The Federalist Papers

For the “voice” of the article, make it sound like me trying to sound like Paul (in English, not Greek!); refer to my blog (https://sundaymorninggreekblog.com), especially Christianity and Nationalism: A Brief Survey of Biblical Passages | Sunday Morning Greek Blog, Don’t Worry; Be Faithful (Matthew 6:25–34; Acts 22:23–29) | Sunday Morning Greek Blog.

Assume a conservative view of the Bible and its transmission history: Jesus really lived, died on a cross and was resurrected; the events of the gospels and Acts are true; Luke actually wrote all of Acts (I like the theory that Acts is a legal brief for Paul’s defense before Roman rulers, but you don’t necessarily have to assume that); Paul actually wrote the letters attributed to him; etc. Assume Paul would have compassion for the poor but from the perspective that it’s more the church’s responsibility than the government’s.

Questions to answer:

What would Paul say to a church divided both along political lines and on social/moral issues typically represented as “liberal” vs. “conservative” or “fundamentalist” churches (I think Catholic vs. Protestant vs. Evangelical might be a bit too broad, but it’s perhaps an easier distinction). I also fully recognize that no two churches, even within the same denomination or faith tradition, are exactly alike in praxis and belief, but I need some broader categories for contrast.

How would Paul address the concept of voting and the responsibilities of living in a free society?

How would Paul address the continuing rise of Islamic philosophy, especially the radical philosophy like that seen in Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah that is hostile to America broadly or Christians and Jews more specifically (I’m firm on this point; I know there are peaceful Muslims among us, but they’re typically ones that aren’t a serious threat, like the 18-year old just arrested in Minnesota for an alleged planned terror attack on the Mall of America).

I definitely don’t want this being a “can’t-we-all-just-get-along” treatise or a “pray—read your Bible—go to church” kind of response. I would expect Paul to say hard things to all sides and in the end focus on reconciling with God first and then our fellow man.

I think I’ve covered all the bases. If you need additional input, I’m here to help. I don’t need a formatted document. I can copy and paste and format the document myself.

The Modern Epistle

A Modern Letter to the American Church

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who is Himself our peace, breaking down the dividing wall of hostility. I write not as one who has attained perfection, but as one who has seen the fractures among you and fears that your divisions have become deeper than your devotion.

To the Church in America, scattered across states and parties, yet called to one hope:

I have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and I rejoice. Yet I also hear of your quarrels, your factions, your boasting in men, your contempt for one another, and your willingness to divide Christ’s body along the lines of earthly rulers. Some say, “I am of the conservatives,” others, “I am of the progressives,” still others, “I am of the independents,” and a few, “I am above politics altogether.” Is Christ divided? Was the Lord crucified for your party? Or were you baptized into the name of your ideology?

You have allowed the rulers of this age — the powers and principalities Paul warned you about — to shape your loyalties more than the cross. You speak of Caesar more than Christ, of rights more than righteousness, of freedoms more than faithfulness. You have forgotten that the kingdoms of this world rise and fall, but the kingdom of God endures forever.

I. On Political Division in the Church

I do not tell you to abandon your civic duties, for you are citizens of a free republic, and your Constitution grants you both liberty and responsibility. Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s — your vote, your taxes, your participation — but render to God what is God’s: your conscience, your worship, your allegiance, your love for one another.

Some of you have made politics your gospel. Others have made apathy your refuge. Both are errors.

To the conservatives I say: You speak of truth, yet often without grace. You defend moral clarity, yet sometimes forget compassion. You fear the erosion of righteousness, yet neglect the poor among you, assuming the government alone must bear the burden. Remember the words of the prophets: true justice begins in the house of God.

To the progressives I say: You speak of compassion, yet often without truth. You defend the marginalized, yet sometimes neglect holiness. You fear oppression, yet forget that sin itself is the greatest oppressor. Remember the words of Jesus: mercy and obedience are not enemies.

To the fundamentalists I say: You guard doctrine fiercely, yet sometimes forget the gentleness of Christ. You fear compromise, yet occasionally confuse tradition with truth. Remember that the Pharisees were doctrinally precise and spiritually blind.

To all I say: If your political identity is stronger than your identity in Christ, you have already surrendered to the rulers of this age.

II. On Voting and Civic Responsibility

You live in a nation where your voice matters. This is a stewardship, not an idol. Vote as those who will give an account to God, not as those who seek the praise of men. Do not vote merely for your own interests, but for the good of your neighbor. Do not vote in anger, but in sober judgment. Do not vote as though the fate of the kingdom of God rests on the outcome, for Christ is not elected by men.

Paul appealed to Caesar not because Caesar was righteous, but because the law provided a path for justice and a platform for witness. So also you may use the rights granted to you — speech, assembly, petition — not merely to preserve your comforts, but to advance righteousness and truth.

III. On Social and Moral Division

You quarrel over matters of sexuality, marriage, immigration, economics, race, and national identity. Some of these matters are clear in Scripture; others require wisdom. But in all things, remember this: the church is not called to mirror the world’s divisions but to display the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Do not confuse unity with uniformity. Do not confuse compromise with charity. Do not confuse silence with faithfulness. Speak truth, but speak it in love. Show compassion, but show it without abandoning holiness.

IV. On the Rise of Hostile Ideologies

Concerning the rise of radical Islamic philosophies — those that exalt violence, suppress freedom, and seek the destruction of Jews and Christians — do not be ignorant. Daniel served pagan kings without bowing to their idols. He prayed for the peace of the city even as he refused its false gods. You must do likewise.

Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Yet do not be naïve about the threats that exist. Pray for your enemies, but do not pretend they are friends. Love the Muslim neighbor who seeks peace, but do not ignore the ideology that seeks your destruction. The watchman who sees danger and remains silent is guilty of the blood of the city.

V. On Powers, Principalities, and Spiritual Warfare

Your battle is not against flesh and blood — not against Democrats or Republicans, not against progressives or conservatives, not against immigrants or natives, not against Muslims or secularists — but against the spiritual forces that delight when the church devours itself.

Put on the whole armor of God. Not the armor of cable news. Not the armor of social media. Not the armor of outrage. The belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit — these are your weapons.

VI. On Reconciliation

You seek reconciliation with one another without first seeking reconciliation with God. This is folly. The cross reconciles you vertically before it reconciles you horizontally. If you are not right with God, you cannot be right with your brother.

Confess your sins — not merely your opponent’s sins. Humble yourselves — not merely demand humility from others. Seek the unity of the Spirit — not the uniformity of opinion.

VII. Final Exhortation

Therefore, beloved, stand firm. Do not let the world’s divisions define Christ’s body. Do not let political fervor eclipse gospel truth. Do not let fear of earthly powers overshadow the sovereignty of God. Do not let hatred of enemies replace love of neighbor.

You are citizens of a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Live as those who belong to Christ first, America second, and no party at all.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

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August 1, 2026

Podcast Episode: Spiritual Warfare in Ephesians

Filed under: Ecclesiology,Ephesians,Eschatology,Greek,Pneumatology,Spiritual Warfare — Scott Stocking @ 6:46 pm
Tags: Armor of God, bible, christianity, faith, god, in the heavenly realms, jesus, Powers in the NT, Walter Wink

Pip: Sunday Morning Greek Blog — where the armor of God comes with footnotes, a chiastic structure, and Walter Wink citations. Scott Stocking has been thinking hard about Ephesians, and the result is not a quiet devotional.

Mara: That’s right. Today we’re digging into Ephesians — its architecture, its theology of power, and what spiritual warfare actually looks like when you take the text seriously. Let’s start with what Paul was building.

Spiritual Warfare in Ephesians

Pip: Ephesians has a reputation as Paul’s most polished letter, but the post here argues it’s also one of his most structurally deliberate — a chiastic architecture with spiritual warfare running through it as a subtheme, not a footnote.

Mara: The phrase that anchors it all is “in the heavenly realms” — used five times in Ephesians. And chapter 6 makes the stakes plain: “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Pip: So the heavenly realms aren’t simply heaven. They span good and evil — which raises the obvious question of who exactly is living there.

Mara: That’s where Walter Wink comes in. His framework, drawn from his Powers trilogy and condensed in The Powers That Be, describes these entities as created by God to steward human institutions — families, corporations, governments — but subject to corruption by the people inside them.

Pip: Created good, fallen, and in need of redemption. Which is, frankly, a description that fits most institutions I’ve encountered.

Mara: The post works through concrete examples — Enron as a case of institutional corruption feeding on itself, Tylenol’s 1980s recall as a case of a corporation doing the right thing and sending a message that reverberated through the corporate world.

Pip: And then it turns personal. Westboro Baptist gets named as a case study in what spiritual warfare is not — protests that fuel the violence of the powers rather than redeeming them.

Mara: The alternative the post argues for is love as the primary instrument. Not tolerance of wrongdoing, but direct relational engagement — and prayer underneath all of it. Wink is quoted again: “Prayer is never a private inner act disconnected from day-to-day realities. It is, rather, the interior battlefield where the decisive victory is won before any engagement in the outer world is even possible.”

Pip: So action without prayer is self-justifying good works. Prayer without action is incomplete. The post holds both together — and lands on love, not protest, as the mode.

Mara: Exactly. And that framing — what we do in visible institutions reflects and shapes invisible powers — is what makes the Ephesians structure matter beyond the outline.

Pip: The architecture of the letter and the theology of the powers turn out to be the same argument.

Mara: What stays with me is that “in the heavenly realms” doing so much work — from blessing in chapter one to spiritual combat in chapter six.

Pip: Same letter, same phrase, completely different register. That’s worth sitting with until next time.

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July 28, 2026

One-Eyed Kings

Filed under: Eschatology,Government — Scott Stocking @ 9:12 pm
Tags: media bias

I have a two-week break from preaching, so I’m trying to clean up some files that are starting to overcrowd my now limited hard-drive space. I came across a “Writings” folder I haven’t used in forever that has old homework assignments, church newsletter articles I had written, and copies of old blog posts from HarvestNet, where I had an ongoing debate with a guy named “SpeaksinTongues” about that particular spiritual gift. The following is an article I had evidently written for the church newsletter, although I never remember that church publishing a regular newsletter. It’s still as relevant today as it was in 2007, so I offer it here.

As I was editing a book recently, I serendipitously encountered a profound proverb in Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary: au pays des aveugles les borgnes sont rois. I could barely pronounce this French saying, but fortunately the meaning was not lost in the English translation that accompanied it: “in the country of the blind the one-eyed men are kings.”

Immediately I recalled Frank Peretti’s second book on spiritual warfare, Piercing the Darkness. Early in that story, a television news crew is covering a story about a controversy at a Christian school; Peretti’s narrative is astounding: “The cameraman set the camera on his shoulder and started watching the news with one eye.”

I could jump up on my soapbox and complain about how most network news is biased against Christian principles and morality, but most of us already know that. Less than seven percent of television, motion picture, and news media elite attend church on a weekly basis according to a 1990’s survey by The Center for the Study of Social and Political Change at Smith College, so it is easy to see why they have a bias. The one-eyed media monster has set itself up as the judge of right and wrong in our society. Many times their judgments are contrary to Scripture, because most do not know what the Scriptures really say.

But I am more concerned about the first part of the French proverb cited above. Have Christians, myself included, turned a blind eye and deaf ear to the cultural decay around us? Do the problems that plague our society overwhelm us to the point that we do not think we can make a difference? I for one have grown tired of hearing of the almost daily assault on Christian values and principles. Tyrannical judges (and the media who praise them) say, for example, that constitutional amendments affirming the Christian view of marriage, approved by the majority of voters in a state (e.g., Nebraska, 2005), are unconstitutional. How can this be?

I hope that Christians will, like Ezekiel’s watchman, keep both eyes open to counter the influence of the media Cyclopes [plural of Cyclops], in order to reclaim and proclaim God’s truth to a world that is seeking a moral compass.

My opinions are my own

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

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March 25, 2026

Lectionary Help for Palm Sunday

Filed under: Acts,Biblical Animals,Christology,Eschatology,Faith, Faithfulness,Lent,Luke Gospel of,Matthew Gospel of,Passion,Resurrection,Soteriology,Thanatology (Death) — Scott Stocking @ 5:54 am
Tags: Donkey, Easter, Holy Week, Luke 22:54-62, Matthew 27:28-31, Matthew 27:5-10, onomatopoeia in the Bible, Palm Sunday

It’s been a busy week with family stuff, so I apologize for the lateness of this week’s Lectionary Help. I’ll offer a few quick helps here since Palm Sunday and Holy Week offer so much material for us to preach on.

In Rigged Trial; Real Redemption (Luke 22:54–62) | Sunday Morning Greek Blog, I cover the injustices of the way the Jews used their own “legal” system to condemn Jesus. Everything about the trial before the Sanhedrin was contrary to their own laws and customs. It’s an early example of what we’ve come to call “lawfare” today.

In The Day of the Donkey: Holy Week Events From the Perspective of the Prophesied Donkey | Sunday Morning Greek Blog, I tell the story of Holy Week from the perspective of the donkey who bore Jesus into Jerusalem. I had some fun with that one!

Matthew indicates that Judas threw his blood money back in the temple and hanged himself after betraying Jesus. The pharisees bought the field where Judas hanged himself with that money (Matthew 27:5–10), which is why in Acts 1:18, Peter can say Judas bought the field. It was by proxy through the Pharisees, because they didn’t want their name associated with the title to the land because it was purchased with blood money.

Most scholars believe the description in Acts about Judas’s body bursting open is not a contradiction to Matthew’s “hanging” account. The Acts account comes from Peter to a small group of believers who were already familiar with the full story. It’s likely that Judas’s body started to bloat after he died on the tree and either the rope or the branch it was hanging from broke and caused the gruesome scene.

I also came across the following note on Matthew 27:28–31 in my files:

“The Greek text here has several words with the /pt/ sound or /p/ followed by an unstressed vowel sound. I have to think this is intentional on Matthew’s part to emphasize the mocking (ἐνέπαιξαν, from ἐμπαίζω) aspect of the scene. This passage is a chiasm as well, centering around the mocking (but true) statement, ‘Hail, king of the Jews!’”

One final note: Golgotha is likely the exact location (give or take a few hundred feet) where Abraham had taken Isaac to sacrifice him. The Hebrew text where Abraham says “God himself will provide the lamb” can be repointed (i.e., have a different vowel arrangement below the consonants; vowels weren’t added to the Hebrew text until about AD 1000) to say “God will provide himself as the lamb.” Consider the significance of that for a hot minute.

Peace to you as you approach Holy Week and the Easter season.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

My thoughts are my own.

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March 22, 2026

Resurrection in the Valley of the Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37)

Filed under: 2 Kings,Elijah,Eschatology,Ezekiel,Lent,Matthew Gospel of,Miracles,Resurrection,Thanatology (Death) — Scott Stocking @ 4:37 pm
Tags: 1 Kings 17, 2 Kings 13:20–21, Acts 20, Acts 9, COVID as exile, Eutychus raised, Exile, Matthew 27:50–54, Tabitha raised

I preached this message at Mount View Presbyterian Church, Omaha, NE, on March 22, 2026. I had already preached my best message on Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead a couple times here, which was the gospel passage for the fifth Sunday of Lent, so I preached on the OT reading for this Sunday. I give a brief summary of all the “raised from the dead” passages in the Bible before tackling Ezekiel 37 and its context.

Do you know how many stories of dead people coming back to life are in the Bible? When I typed the question into Google to confirm if my own recollection was correct, I confirmed there are in fact ten, count ‘em, ten stories of people rising from the dead. Three of the stories are in the Old Testament, five in the gospels, and two in the book of Acts. Ezekiel 37, which I’ll read here in a bit, is another story of dead bones receiving new flesh and new breath, but it seems to end there. It reads more like a parable rather than an actual historic event, but it does seem to prefigure the story in Matthew 27:50–54 (which is included in the count) about the dead coming out of their tombs and graves the moment Jesus died on the cross.

Allow me to quickly recap the 10 miracles here so we can place the stories in their historical contexts.

Elijah raised the son of a widow in Zarephath during the drought in 1 Kings 17. Not to be outdone, Elisha did the same for a Shunammite woman’s son in Shunem. Nain, where Jesus raised the son of a widow in Luke 7, is located about halfway between Shunem and Zarephath.

Backtracking for a moment, there’s a little-known story in 2 Kings 13:20-21 where Elisha raises another man from the dead, even though Elisha had been dead for a few days! Here’s the account in 2 Kings 13:20–21:

²⁰ Elisha died and was buried.

Now Moabite raiders used to enter the country every spring. ²¹ Once while some Israelites were burying a man, suddenly they saw a band of raiders; so they threw the man’s body into Elisha’s tomb. When the body touched Elisha’s bones, the man came to life and stood up on his feet.^{^[1]}

Getting back to the New Testament, in the next chapter after the boy from Nain is raised, Jesus raises the dead daughter of Jairus, a synagogue ruler. Of course, we also have Lazarus from our gospel passage this morning.

The most prominent one, though, is Jesus at the end of each of the gospels. He cites the first line of Psalm 22 to remind us that this was all prophesied a long time before his crucifixion. Psalm 22 has many details that were fulfilled in the crucifixion stories of the gospels. In Matthew 27, as I alluded to above, several people came out of their graves. Most scholars who consider that a real event assume that those people were reunited with their families, at least for a short time. It would seem odd for God to bring them back to life only to send them right back to their graves, so some scholars have suggested that they may have gone into glory when Jesus rose from the grave that first Easter morning!

Toward the end of Acts chapter 9, a young disciple named Tabitha who served the poor faithfully became sick and died. This happened in Joppa while Peter was ministering in nearby Lydda. The disciples called for Peter to come. Peter did not hesitate, and after he prayed for the young woman, he looked at her and commanded her to get up! Of course, she obliged and was restored to her community of believers.

Later, in Acts 20, Paul is giving a marathon sermon that went long into the night, and a young man named Eutychus was sitting in a third-story window listening to his message. He fell asleep, fell out of the window, and died. Paul went down and in true Elijah/Elisha fashion, stretched himself out over the young man, and God restored life to him.

These are all the stories in the Bible about people miraculously restored to life after being declared dead. In every instance, with the exception of Jesus, others were around to witness these events. The women who went to Jesus’s tomb arrived shortly after Jesus had risen, because he warned them not to touch him. And given how Jesus was treated on the cross, there was absolutely no doubt that he had died as well.

But there’s one “event” that I referred to earlier that seems to have been a vision for Ezekiel in chapter 37 and not an actual event, although the description seems real enough. The context and historical setting of this chapter is important. Ezekiel is part of the second wave of exiles being transported to Babylon. He had wanted to be a priest, but the exile happened before he could attain that position. Instead, God called him to be a prophet to the exiles and, in the latter chapters especially, to be an encouragement to them in their captivity, assuring them that one day they would be restored to the Promised Land.

Ezekiel proclaims that his role is a Watchman (ch. 33) and a messenger of the Lord, Israel’s Shepherd (ch. 34). He gives Israel and Judah the promise that they will once again be one nation after the exile. In chapter 36, he speaks of hope for the mountains of Israel and the assurance of the restoration of Israel as a nation, the chosen people of God. Ezekiel gives specific enough dates in these chapters that we can know he’s writing around 585 B.C., about 20 years after the first wave of exiles (that included Daniel) was transported.

Hear the words of Ezekiel 37:1–14:

The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. ² He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. ³ He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”

⁴ Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! ⁵ This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. ⁶ I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’ ”

⁷ So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. ⁸ I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

⁹ Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’ ” ¹⁰ So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.

¹¹ Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ ¹² Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. ¹³ Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. ¹⁴ I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’ ”^{^[2]}

The imagery is fairly simple to understand. The dry bones represent Israel in exile. They had finally withered up and dried out as a nation because they refused to follow the Lord. They had spent some 500 years in the land and never once did they give the land its rest every seven years. So now they faced 70 years of exile, one year for each of the years the land never received its rest.

God commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones to reanimate them. Ezekiel does so, and the bones begin to rattle like a china cabinet in an earthquake. Before Ezekiel’s eyes, he sees tendons and muscles and veins and organs form on these bones and finally a skin covering, and I would even speculate there was hair on their heads and the rest of their bodies. I don’t believe they all looked alike, like a bunch of clones. But there they were. Instead of just bones lying around, Ezekiel saw bodies lying around waiting for the breath of life. We’re not sure how many, but Ezekiel describes it as a vast army.

God then tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the “breath” so that these bodies can be filled with the breath of life again to live. And again, it worked! All these bodies began to breathe and rise to their feet. God closes out this scene by reassuring Ezekiel that God will indeed restore Israel to their homeland. The part about opening the graves and bringing them out again sounds very much like what happened in Matthew 27, when the dead came out of their graves after Jesus’s resurrection. Yet neither of my study Bibles make that connection between these two passages. I did, however, find a couple commentaries that make this connection.[3]^{, [4]}It’s hard not to think of Matthew 27:50–54 as a fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy.

What is interesting here is that the word for “breath” is the exact same word in Hebrew that is translated “spirit” (as in Holy Spirit) in many other places. This is where I think we can make the connection to our own context today. COVID was a type of exile for churches everywhere. We were all but coerced to abandon meeting together in our familiar church settings and dwell in the foreign territory of “virtual church.” Some churches were connected enough and had enough resources and dedication of membership to persevere through that time. Many smaller congregations, however, did not survive or are still struggling mightily to get back to where they were.

Even before Charlie Kirk’s assassination, we were beginning to see revival take place, especially among young people. God was bringing life to the “dead bones” of those who had previously seen no hope in the church. The younger generation began to see what they had missed after willingly (or was it addictively?) spending hours per day on electronic devices only to have such a lifestyle imposed on them unwillingly by COVID and the powers that be. They didn’t like that imposition and started rebelling against it. Revival is happening because new and long-time believers stopped taking their freedoms for granted after they had them stripped for a season.

God is always moving through his Holy Spirit to bring redemption and revival for those he’s called and who call upon him. As believers, Christ-followers, we’re called to “Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.”^[5] If we are faithful to our respective ministries and to seeking the Lord with all our hearts, our faith will not return void. We will reap a harvest we may not have anticipated. I heard this the other day from an unlikely source, but it makes a lot of sense: While we are waiting on God, we should do what waiters do: serve.

May God continue to bless your ministry efforts here at Mount View. Amen.

^[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[3] Green, Michael. 2001. The Message of Matthew: The Kingdom of Heaven. “Matthew 27:32–56.” The Bible Speaks Today. Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

[4] Mangum, Douglas, ed. 2020. Lexham Context Commentary: New Testament. “Matthew 27:52–53.” Lexham Context Commentary. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

^[5] 1 Timothy 4:2. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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March 16, 2026

Lectionary Help (Fifth Sunday in Lent): Raising Lazarus (John 11)

Filed under: "I Am" Statements,Ecclesiology,Eschatology,Hebrews,John Gospel of,Lent,Passion,Resurrection,Trial of Jesus — Scott Stocking @ 10:44 pm
Tags: I am the Resurrection, Jesus wept, John 11, Lazarus, Lazarus raised from the dead, Mary & Martha

Welcome to Lectionary Help for March 22, 2026.

Wow, things are moving quickly this season. We’re already at the fifth Sunday in Lent for 2026.

Here are the passages for this week:

Old Testament Ezekiel 37:1–14

Psalm Psalm 130

New Testament Romans 8:6–11

Gospel John 11:1–45^[1]

The gospel passage this week is Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It is the only one of the seven miracles of Jesus recorded that coincides one of his seven “I am” statements he makes in John’s gospel in the same chapter.\

This passage shows the full range of Jesus’s human and divine natures, especially the human emotions that Jesus expressed. It’s important to emphasize Jesus’s humanity as evidence that he was a high priest able “to empathize with our human weaknesses—yet he did not sin.” (Hebrews 4:15),

Martha is the one trying to hold it all together. It seems as if she’s not even started the grieving process yet. She and Mary are both upset that Jesus didn’t get there in time. But Martha is sure of the resurrection, something many of the disciples, I think, were still trying to wrap their heads around.

Jesus’s response just before he himself weeps is worth noting here. When John says Jesus was “deeply moved…and troubled” (NIV), some commentators have suggested Jesus may have groaned in agony or even anger at death itself. He was doing all he could to control his emotions when he asked, “Where have you laid him?” I’m not so sure he asked that politely. More like, “Let’s get this over with.”

Jesus seems to be in take-charge mode at this point. In vs. 38 we see he is “deeply moved” again, to the “Take away the stone!” command may have sounded like a very frustrated outburst.

We must be careful not to generalize from Jesus’s actions and attitudes in this event any sort of pattern for how you and I respond to the death of a loved one. Each one of us handles grief in our own unique way, but the one generalization we can make is that Jesus was fully relying on God in this moment of earthly existence. The one who came to bring us life had to confront the very thing he came to defeat.

I do hope this will give you some good ideas on how to make this story “come to life” (so to speak) for your congregation. I’ve included a couple links below, one with an audio file of my sermon, and the other that highlights the connections between Jesus’s miracles and his “I am” statements in John.

Peace to all of you.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

My views are my own.

Jesus Wept 2.0 (John 11:32–44) | Sunday Morning Greek Blog

The “I Am” Statements of Jesus | Sunday Morning Greek Blog

“I Am the Resurrection and the Life” (John 11:25) | Sunday Morning Greek Blog

^[1] Consultation on Common Texts. 2011. Revised Common Lectionary Daily Readings. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife.

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February 15, 2026

Transfigured and Transformed (Matthew 17:1–9)

This Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent, a time when Christians worldwide anticipate the remembrance of Christ’s death on the cross and the celebration of his resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday. I can’t help but think there must be a small bit of irony that we celebrate the birth of Jesus and his resurrection, the beginning and ending of his life on earth, only about three or four months apart. Jesus is that special to us that we choose to recognize both those events as holidays in our culture and in Christendom more broadly. Most people who have holidays today only get them for their birthdays, like President’s Day tomorrow, or Martin Luther King Day last month.

We don’t have a holiday that I’m aware of where recognize the death of an individual. We do have Memorial Day, Veterans’ Day, and Pearl Harbor Day to recognize the sacrifices of our loved ones and heroes who’ve served and in many cases given their all for this country for our freedom. Of course, as the old hymn goes, “Jesus gave it all” for each of us as well, but for our spiritual freedom and eternal life with him in Heaven.

Jesus knows what his end goal is: the cross. But he also doesn’t want his disciples to be taken by surprise by that event either. In Matthew 16, Jesus begins to warn his disciples that he must be handed over by the Jewish leaders who hated his disruption of their power over the people to the Romans for the death penalty. The first time Jesus says this, Peter is indignant: Most English translations have Peter saying something like “Never!” or “God Forbid!” The one word that Peter utters is the word for “Mercy!”

It was a dire prediction after all, and I’m sure the disciples weren’t ready for that just yet. That’s when Jesus responds to Peter, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” Keep in mind that just a few verses earlier Jesus said he was going to build his church on Peter, or at least on the truth of his confession that Jesus is the Christ.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. In all three gospel accounts of this first prediction, Jesus goes on to say something about each of them having to take up their own cross to follow Jesus. In other words, they need to “die” too. But for those who would come to Christ later, that experience of “dying,” that is, “taking up the cross,” will look very different. That has got to be pretty earth shaking for a young group of disciples who thought that Jesus was going to lead them in breaking away from Roman rule. This background is important to emphasize here for what is about to happen.

About six days later, according to Matthew’s account, it’s at this point that the story from our gospel reading this morning kicks in. Jesus chooses what is apparently his “inner circle”—Peter, James, and John—to go up onto a high mountain, and he wastes no time getting to the reason he came: He transfigures himself before them to reveal his heavenly glory. Matthew says Jesus’s face “shone like the sun” and his clothes were “bright white.” Luke is much less dramatic: he just says Jesus’s appearance was “different.” In fact, Luke doesn’t even use the word for “transfiguration” in his account. That word is one that should be familiar to you: it’s the Greek word from which we get the English word “metamorphosis” (μεταμορφόομαι metamorphoomai, μεταμορφόω metamorphoō).

Mark is the only other gospel writer to use that word in his account. It simply means to change form. I don’t think anything “physical” happened to Jesus in this event. I think the divine nature of Jesus overpowers the physical nature and manifests its form on top of Jesus’s human form. For added excitement, Moses and Elijah show up in their heavenly forms to chat with Jesus.

But why Moses and Elijah? Luke tells us this: “They spoke about his departure, ^q which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.”^[1] Elijah is not the first prophet in the Old Testament, but he is the most famous, and he never died. Maybe Elijah is sharing his experience of having his human form whisked off to heaven and what Jesus should expect at his resurrection. Elijah also represents John the Baptist, the last of the prophets under the old covenant, as Jesus would go on to explain in Matthew 17:12.

Moses’s presence is easy to explain. Moses was the one who was initially given the Law by God that he passed on to the Israelites, so it makes sense that he would be present to see the one in whom all that law is fulfilled. What did Jesus say in the Sermon on the Mount? “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”^[2] The apostle Paul would say some 25 years later, “Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”^[3] Both Moses and Elijah together represent the full experience of how God revealed himself in the Old Testament, and both of them get to see the fulfillment of their respective roles in that revelation firsthand.

The transfiguration event doesn’t seem to take very long, maybe a few minutes at the most, but then again, the disciples seem to be in a bit of daze at the whole event. It’s not long after they come down from that mountain-top experience that Jesus again repeats his prediction of dying. This puts a closing bracket on the transfiguration story and provides a final clue as to what we can take away from that story.

Jesus reveals his divine nature to his inner circle in the transfiguration event so that they can have assurance that Jesus’s death will not be the end of the story. The disciples see that Moses and Elijah are still alive, so there is proof of life after death. For the disciples to both see the glory of God in Jesus and hear his voice also puts them in the same unique class as Moses and Elijah, men who have seen the glory of God, have heard his voice, and have lived to tell about it.

There are at least three takeaways for us in this story, then.

Heaven is real and the patriarchs are alive and well in that realm;
Jesus himself will be resurrected when the time comes; and
Jesus has the fulness of divinity in him, i.e., he’s the Son of God.[4]

It’s possible this event may also be a sort of looking forward to what will happen on the Day of Pentecost. The tongues of fire I’m sure looked a bit different than what Peter saw in the transfiguration, but there would have been no doubt in his mind that this was God at work. In fact, Peter mentions this event in his second letter:

¹⁶For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. ¹⁷He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” ⁱ ¹⁸We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.^[5]

Now I’ve been calling this event the “Transfiguration” because that’s the fancy, $20 religious term that’s in the Lectionary and that has been used for hundreds of years in English translations. I do believe it deserves that special designation, because it’s not something you see every day. But in everyday usage, this word simply means “transform,” and we find it in two other passages that have significance in our own faith walk. In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul is writing about the “greater glory of the new covenant” (NIV heading) and how we are being “transformed” into the image of Christ as we follow him and live in him:

“And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”^[6]

In other words, our transformation, our heavenly visage when we finally meet our Savior in glory, will be glorious in and of itself. We really will have a “glow” to us, so it seems. I’m looking forward to that day, and I pray you are too.

The other passage where we find this word is Romans 12:1–2:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. ²Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.^[7]

The “therefore” in this passage is important, because it follows on the heels of Paul’s 11-chapter treatise on righteousness and faithfulness. At the center of that argument is the event that triggers our transformation from being world-focused to being God-focused: baptism. Paul says that those “who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.”^[8]

This is what it means to be the “living sacrifice” Paul speaks of in Romans 12. Not only are we “buried with Christ,” but we’re raised up to live a new life. When we’re in Christ, he can begin and continue the work of transforming us into his image through the working of Holy Spirit. This is how much Christ loved us and continues to love us. He will never leave us nor forsake. Even if we blow it sometimes, he’s still faithful to continue loving and guiding us into his way.

As we transition from Epiphany to Lent this week, let us consider how we can improve our focus on Christ and living for him in service of others. May God bless you and yours this week. Amen.

^[1] Luke 9:31. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[3] Romans 10:4. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[4] Colossians 1:18–19; Matthew 17:5.

^[5] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[6] 2 Corinthians 3:18. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[7] Romans 12:1–2. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[8] Romans 6:3b. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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December 14, 2025

Advent Joy: Jesus Breaks the Power of Sin and Suffering (Matthew 11:2–11; Isaiah 35:4–6)

Filed under: Advent,Adviento,Biblical Studies,Christology,Christology,Eschatology,Evangelism,forgiveness,Isaiah,Joy,Liturgical Calendar,Matthew Gospel of — Scott Stocking @ 5:21 pm
Tags: Advent Joy, Bible Study, Corruption of Pharisees, Isaiah 35:4-6, Jesus and John the Baptist, Jesus and John the Baptizer, John the Baptizer, Matthew 11:2-11, New Testament Prophet, NT Prophet

Good morning! The Lord be with you!

As you know, today is the third Sunday of Advent, where we focus on the Joy for what Christ brings to our lives. I’m sure most of you know that there’s a difference between joy and happiness. Happiness comes from the things that happen around us. The word comes to us through the Middle English word hap, which in that time meant luck, fortune, fate, or one’s lot in life. The word had either a positive sense (“good fortune”) or a negative sense (“hard times” or a “hard lot” in life) depending on context. In modern English, of course, it’s been entirely infused with the positive meaning “happy as a lark.” It may be more of a surface feeling as well. It’s a feeling that can come and go depending on life’s circumstances.

Joy, on the other hand, is happiness on steroids if you will, at least according to Merriam-Webster. Their dictionary defines it as “a feeling of great happiness or pleasure; delight”; “a state of great happiness”; and “a source or cause of delight.” It comes from a Latin word that means “rejoice.” No surprise there. It does imply something much deeper than happiness, as the definitions suggest, something intangible, something you can’t quite put your finger on.

I experienced this feeling of joy recently, and I’d like to share it with you. Jill’s daughter Rebecca moved in with us almost three years ago when she was struggling trying to find her way in the COVID mess. Within about a year, she managed to land a job working for the Hilton Hotel downtown scheduling reservations for large events at the hotel or downtown. As it turned out, she found her niche. This past year, one of her biggest projects was working with teams and large fan groups coming for the College World Series. She was feeling the success.

In the meantime, she also rekindled her love for singing and performing by auditioning for and joining the River City Mixed Chorus, the largest chorus of its kind in the Omaha area. Last Saturday they had their annual Christmas/Holiday concert at the Holland. After the concert I paid attention to how family and friends of the chorus were excited about the evening. That really touched me to witness that. The evening was extra special in that Rebecca found out just before the concert that her bid on a house was accepted. That was the icing on the cake for the evening.

As you might imagine, when Jill and I first got together 12 years ago, it was a bit of a rough go for me and for her two teenage girls at the time. But as a man of God, I was determined to prove my mettle and stay the course by showing them just how much I loved their mom and how willing I was to support her girls in their various pursuits. Today, I have a great relationship with her grown-up and fully employed daughters. I told Rebecca last Saturday night how proud I was of her success, and I got choked up trying to get the words out of my mouth. To me, that was true joy. I felt in my heart, and I could see it in Rebecca as well. For me, that was a real moment of joy.

In our gospel passage this morning, Jesus’s cousin John the Baptizer was looking for a “sign” or a reason to be joyful in the midst of his struggles in prison. He already knew Jesus was the Messiah but he still, apparently, didn’t understand what that would look like. He sent his own messengers to ask Jesus if he was the Messiah, and Jesus’s answer did not disappoint. John may have had the same expectation others had about the Messiah when he came, that he would overthrow Roman rule and restore the theocracy.

But when Jesus offers up the “evidence” that he wants John’s disciples to take back to John, none of it has to do with political power. It has to do with restoring joy and hope to oppressed people or those gravely impacted by life’s circumstances. Think about the emotional reaction of the people who benefited from Jesus’s ministry.

The blind receive their sight: Imagine not being able to see anything, then all of the sudden one day, Jesus shows up in your town and gives you back your sight. This would be more than just a “happy” moment: you would be filled with joy to discover all that you’ve been missing: the blue sky; the beauty of the human form; the colors of flowers and birds; and so forth. You would be leaping for joy! Our neighbor when we lived in Aksarben had a color-blind son. A company called Pilestone developed a series of lenses that allow color-blind people to better distinguish colors, and he happened to get the glasses. His mom posted a video of him experiencing the vividness of color for the first time wearing these glasses. That was truly a joyful moment for that young man and his family.

How about the lame walking? A few chapters earlier in Matthew, we see Jesus tell a lame man that his sins are forgiven, and to prove that he has the power to forgive sins, Jesus also heals the man and tells him to pick up his bed and walk away free of his disability. Not only was the man overjoyed, but the text in Matthew 9 indicates “the crowd was filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to man.” We see this early in the book of Acts as well, when the apostles effectuate God’s healing: Peter speaks healing to a lame beggar in Acts 3, and the man “jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God.”^[1]

Jesus had healed 10 people with leprosy at one point. The Bible commanded that people healed of leprosy show themselves to the priest to be declared clean. The 10 did that, but for whatever reason, only one was joyful enough to return to Jesus and give him thanks. This story is certainly relevant today: how many of us miss out on joy by failing to realize or acknowledge that God himself is the source of that joy. Even joy, though it tends to affect us deeper in our souls and lasts longer, can fade if we don’t recognize the everlasting joy we can have from our heavenly father.

The deaf hear. Just like the blind man; being able to experience any of your senses for the first time as an adult. Imagine being able to hear and understand words you’ve only experienced by sight on a page. Think about that for a minute: if you were completely deaf and suddenly could hear someone speaking for the first time, how would know what sounds go with each letter? If you can read lips, that might help you make the connection. That challenge would pale, I think, when compared next to the joy of hearing again.

The dead are raised. Lazarus wasn’t the only dead person Jesus brought back to life. He also raised Jairus’s daughter. I’ve come close to experiencing that several times in the past few years. My friend Jim contracted hepatitis at a family Thanksgiving meal a few years ago and his liver began to fail. He had gotten to the point where he was asking me to do his funeral. But something divine happened to him to change his mind about getting a liver transplant, and he’s still with us today. My sister Lindee recovered from her complicated liver issues after a liver transplant as well this year. She still has a couple challenges left to navigate, but she’s well on the road to full recovery. Another Jim who’s a good friend was at death’s door in the first year of COVID. His wife had talked to me about funeral arrangements. But he’s recovered now and still leads our men’s group study today. I and the families of these friends are glad to still have them around. Each in their own way represents what joy is all about.

The final thing Jesus mentions to John’s disciples is that the good news, the gospel, is preached to the poor. All these things are a direct reference to the Messianic prophecy in Isaiah 35:4–6:

³Strengthen the feeble hands,

steady the knees that give way;

⁴say to those with fearful hearts,

“Be strong, do not fear;

your God will come,

he will come with vengeance;

with divine retribution

he will come to save you.”

⁵Then will the eyes of the blind be opened

and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

⁶Then will the lame leap like a deer,

and the mute tongue shout for joy.

Water will gush forth in the wilderness

and streams in the desert. ^[2]

John the Baptist understood why Jesus responded the way he did. The passage from Isaiah is the precursor to the messianic sections of Isaiah that speak of a suffering servant. John was beginning to understand what Jesus certainly already did: Jesus would ultimately die for the sins of the whole human race. Jesus didn’t come to break the power of Rome. He came to break the power of a corrupted religion that enslaved people to a legalistic, punitive view of God. The power of religious leadership was in holding this threat of the judgment of God over the heads of the people.

But Jesus turned that on its head. John realized that Jesus came so people could have their sins forgiven, not to be judged for them. The “vengeance” Isaiah speaks of is not against all mankind generally, but against those who had corrupted the message of the Bible. God loves us. That was Jesus’s message as well. But not only that God loves us, but that God wants us to spend eternity with him in a glorified state. He wants us to experience true healing and true joy for all eternity.

In the last part of our gospel passage this morning, Jesus asks the crowd about John the Baptist: why did you come out to see him? What did you expect? The answer was straightforward. John the Baptist wasn’t a sharp-dressed man who gave pep talks. He was the one who preceded Jesus to prepare the way for him. He was the first prophet in 400 years, except instead of prophesying to and about the kings of Judah and Israel, he was prophesying about the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The people flocked to him because John had the courage to stand up to them and tell them what many Jews to that time had been harboring in their hearts: “Your ways, O Pharisees, sap our strength and rob us of hope. Someone is coming who has a much better way than yours.”

Let me flip this question around and ask it in the context of our world today, December 14, 2025. Many people come to church at Christmas (and Easter) that don’t come to church regularly. What are they looking for when they come to church? Being with family may be part of that, but are they perhaps coming because they want to hear that message of hope and joy for themselves? Are they coming because they think Jesus as a baby and the whole manger scene is cute and not in the least bit threatening? Or are they coming because they want to experience awesome, transformative power of forgiveness from a risen Savior who has conquered death? Are they coming out of a sense of obligation, or are they coming because they want to experience a vibrant and encouraging fellowship with other Christ-followers? The Christmas season isn’t the only time of the year where we consider why and how Jesus came to dwell among us. Many Christians look for that weekly and practice that weekly year-round. Why? Because they find a continuous source of joy, help, hope, and strength in their church communities.

This Christmas season, reach out to those who need to know and experience the fellowship of the body of Christ. Let us go forth from here and be beacons of hope and light. May God richly bless you this Christmas season, and merry Christmas to all! Amen.

^[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

My views are my own.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

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November 23, 2025

The Reign of Christ the King (Luke 23:33–43; Colossians 1)

I preached this sermon at Mount View Presbyterian Church on November 23, 2025. It was the last Sunday of Year C of the Lectionary Calendar, commonly known as Reign of Christ the King Sunday. It was also the Sunday before Thanksgiving and the Sunday before the first Sunday in Advent. I had not checked the advanced copy of the church bulletin thinking they would have the Lectionary gospel reading for the day printed, but as it turned out, they had a Thanksgiving Service planned (more music), so I hadn’t prepared a message based on the reading. I went ahead preached the message I had prepared, which worked out find, because with more music, the service was a little longer than usual, and my message had been shorter than usual. I’ve also included some links to past Advent messages since the season is upon us.

We had a soup lunch afterwards and had a drawing to give away a few of the quilts our ladies had made. I won what I’m calling my Joseph Quilt. It is a nice sized quilt worked on by several of the ladies. My mom provided the stitching/decoration around the border.

Have you ever seen one of those movies where they start with some dramatic scene. In the cop shows, it’s usually a murder or finding someone badly injured in an unexpected place. In a Hallmark movie, it might be a wedding scene or a passionate kiss (we all know that’s coming in the Hallmark movie, so no need to put it off until the end!). But then in the next scene, the graphic pops up: “Six months earlier.” The opening scene has gone by so quickly that you didn’t even get a chance to figure out much about who the characters are, then you’re thrust back in time and have to figure it out all over again.

Today we come to the conclusion of the liturgical calendar: “Reign of Christ the King” Day. It’s hard to believe Advent (and the new liturgical year) starts next week. The Lectionary is kind of like those movies I mentioned earlier. Even though we read about the crucifixion of Jesus this morning, we’re not going to get back to that dramatic event of the Resurrection that kicked off the last eight months of the calendar until Easter next year.

This past year, we’ve journeyed through the gospel of Luke, which has the most material on the life of Jesus. Five months ago, we read in Luke 9:51 that Jesus “resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” The rest of Luke’s gospel from that point on is set in that context of Jesus knowing his life would be cut short. Yet he continued loving, healing, and teaching the masses about God’s true love for them. He also did not shy away from confronting the religious leaders of his day for their abuse of the spiritual authority God had entrusted to them. That violation of God’s trust brings us to where we are today in the gospel, the crucifixion.

Luke has details in this story that the other three gospel writers do not have. Luke is the only one who has Jesus saying “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” He wasn’t just talking about how the Roman soldiers were treating him either. Matthew and Mark tell us that the criminals who were crucified with Jesus were BOTH hurling insults at him, but Luke indicates that one of them must have had a change of heart after hearing Jesus say “Father forgive them” and asked Jesus for forgiveness in his last hour. Jesus, of course, granted it.

The religious leaders were jeering and sneering at him as well. “He saved others, or so he claims! Let him save himself if he’s the Messiah!” One might expect that kind of behavior from criminals, but from those who had presumably dedicated their lives to serving God at the Temple or in the local synagogues? You know you must be getting close to the corruption and hardness of heart when the people who should be on your side are rejecting you for your teachings.

Even though our gospel reading stops just short of the final moments of the crucifixion, we are all familiar enough with that story to finish it from memory. And we know that because Christ defeated death and rose again into his heavenly glory, he lives and reigns as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. While his kingdom is here on earth, it is not of this world. Paul says in Ephesians 1:3 that God has “blessed us [i.e., Christ followers] in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. It was evident from the moment of Pentecost that God had begun a new work in his people through the empowering of the Holy Spirit sent to us by our risen Savior.

As Christ followers, then, we are by default emissaries of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. In the rest of the New Testament we see Paul and the other apostles planting and shepherding churches that are growing by leaps and bounds in various places. In many cases, the word of God has already spread to places where Paul had yet to travel because other believers were doing that missionary work as well. In the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, we get a glimpse at Paul’s heart for them in the first chapter. Paul praises them for having a faith that is “bearing fruit and growing” in their hearts and around the world. Let’s pick up his praise for them in verse 9:

⁹For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, ^t ¹⁰so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, ¹²and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. ¹³For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, ¹⁴in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. ^[1]

Paul has incredible respect for the Colossians and wants to ensure they continue on the path of growing in righteousness and faithfulness. This is significant in that Colossae was an incredibly diverse town in south-central Asia Minor. He wants them to be filled “with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives.” Paul has a similar thought for the Ephesians in the opening of that letter: “¹⁸I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, ¹⁹and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”^[2]

In Colossians 1:6, Paul affirms that the gospel is “bearing fruit and growing through the whole world. He reassures the Colossians are doing their small part to contribute to that in vs. 10.

Being strengthened in all power means that they understand the working of the Holy Spirit in their lives. They do have some challenges, apparently, with some coming among them making “fine sounding arguments” against the gospel. But Paul has confidence that their knowledge will help them discern false teachings and stay the course of the true gospel with patient endurance.

They are also continually giving thanks because they’ve been rescued from darkness. They believed the gospel and have been living it out boldly because they know they’ve been forgiven and redeemed.

After praising them, Paul continues from verse 15 talking about the supremacy of Christ and why he reigns as King of Kings and Lord of Lords:

¹⁵The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. ¹⁹For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. ^[3]

The concept of Jesus being the “firstborn” here seems to have a dual meaning. In verse 15, Paul says Jesus is the firstborn over all creation. That seems to suggest what we learn from John, that Jesus, the light of the world, was the “light” that God created on Day One of creation. A few verses later, in verse 18, Paul calls Jesus “the beginning,” which would seem to confirm the Genesis theory, but the then also calls Jesus “firstborn from the dead.” John also uses the phrase “firstborn from the dead” of Jesus in the opening chapter of Revelation (1:5). This of course is a reference to his resurrection.

Even though there are a few others in the history of the Bible who were raised from the dead, they all came back to life in their original human bodies. Jesus is the first one whose body was raised from the dead AND transfigured into its heavenly version. That earns him the title of head of the church—King of Kings and Lord of Lords—having supremacy over everything. This supremacy is not only for this world, but in the heavenly realms as well as Paul indicates.

Harkening back to Ephesians 3:10, we see that we have a role in proclaiming the gospel not only here but also in the heavenly realms. “¹⁰His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.”^[4] The passage in Ephesians 6 on the armor of God reaffirms our role in fighting the good fight not only against flesh and blood, but against the powers in the heavenly realms. We have the divine protection and strength to stand firm in those battles because of Christ’s victory over death and the redemption he won for us. Not only does he reign as King of Kings and Lord of Lords in our lives, but he has also provided the means for us to walk faithfully in this world.

As we wrap up the liturgical year and look toward Advent and the Christmas season, we can take comfort and courage in having citizenship in the kingdom of Christ. A blessed Thanksgiving to all of you this week, and please join us for the meal after service. Amen.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

Here are some of my other Advent messages.

Advent Hope

Advent Love (Luke 1:39–55; 1 Samuel 2:1–10)

Advent Peace: John’s Message of Baptism and Repentance (Luke 3:1–12)

Waiting for the Messiah…Again (Matthew 24:36–44)

^[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[4] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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