Sunday Morning Greek Blog

January 2, 2022

2021 Reflection and Summary

Filed under: 1 Corinthians,Biblical Studies,Courage,Diagrams,Greek,Hebrew,Hebrews,Mark Gospel of,Matthew Gospel of,New Testament,Prophet,Soteriology,Textual Criticism,Tongues — Scott Stocking @ 6:37 am
Tags: 2

I wanted to take a moment and thank the readers of Sunday Morning Greek Blog (SMGB) for tripling the number of views from 2019 to 2021! I went from 2,856 views in 2019 to 9,130 views (across 130 countries) in 2021. The theme of my blog has always been “Dig deeper, read smarter, draw closer.” I hope that whichever one of those goals brought you to my site will continue to be something I am able to meet for you. And, if you ever have a request or a question about a biblical topic, I would be happy to research it for you. I’m always excited to dig deeper into God’s Word to help others understand it better.

Having said that, the blog was also a blessing to me as well this year. As 2021 kicked off and more churches started to resume in-person services, I was called to preach at a couple smaller churches that lost pastors during the pandemic through attrition (thankfully not to COVID). One is the (now) inner-city church I grew up in and which some of my family still attend, and the other is a rural country church in Iowa. For me, the blog turned out to be (way-in-advance) sermon prep! This blog was helpful in that I still have been working my full-time day job, so it was nice not to have to a lot of new research for sermons. What sermons I did write this past year wound up as new blog posts.

Looking Forward

For 2022, I anticipate preaching about once every month, so I’ll continue to post sermon texts to the blog. I’d also like to break into the podcast sphere and start posting some videos or audios that can generate some ad revenue for me. I’m not really set up for that yet, and I’ll have to seek out some technical help most likely, but I’m pretty sure that won’t be a difficult learning curve.

I also have a blog called “Sustainable America,” which is my outlet for the intersection of politics, ethics, and faith in my life. That has never really taken off, although it has seen some modest growth. I’ve had just over 100 views the last two years, and 2020’s views (106) were a little more than double 2019’s views. Although it hasn’t really had many views, I do find it personally therapeutic as an outlet for what I’m thinking and feeling on such subjects. The founding fathers didn’t put “separation of Church and State” in the Constitution because they understood instinctively people’s politics derive from their religious and moral convictions (or lack thereof). The purpose of Sustainable America, however, is to analyze cultural and political issues and apply Scripture to them, while SMGB is all about analyzing the biblical text and discerning how it should affect and inform our lives all around, not just in the political or cultural spheres.

My most-viewed post on Sustainable America was “Why I’d Rather Not Work from Home Full Time.” After having spent much of my early career either working from home or working in a ministry setting where I was the only staff member, I found it quite enjoyable to transition to working in an office setting with lots of interesting people around. When the pandemic hit, all of that was defenestrated. I do miss working around other people. Somewhere along the way, I lost my introversion.

As such, one final goal for me for 2022 is to get back into the adjunct professor space, or full-time college instruction nearby, if someone wants to take a chance on my M.Div. degree with OT & NT concentrations. I found it ironic that, in 2020, the third-party supplier through whom I had been teaching Biblical Studies courses at St. Louis Christian College was bought out, and the acquiring company dropped the online adjunct service at a time when everything was moving online. Teaching Biblical Studies is really my first love, but it’s been tough landing positions without a Ph.D.

I wish you, my readers and blog followers, a happy and prosperous new year. Thank you for continuing to read, interact with, and spread the word about Sunday Morning Greek Blog!

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

My opinions are my own.

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November 24, 2021

The Intersection of Biblical Faith With Political Action: Thoughts on How to Make a Religious Exemption Request

Filed under: 1 Peter,Government,Greek,Matthew Gospel of,Spiritual Warfare — Scott Stocking @ 6:17 am
Tags: biblical freedom, COVID, intersection of faith with constitution, my body my choice

Abstract: My Christian faith will not allow me to bend the knee to an unjust mandate that violates the dignity of human beings by denying them free will when it comes to their own persons and classifies those who refuse the vaccine specifically or the mandate generally because it effectively declares such people as “disabled” according to the law of the land.

NOTE: I am not a lawyer, I don’t play one on TV, and I didn’t sleep at a Holiday Inn last night. I consider myself a well-educated person with experience in theology and regulatory analysis. The following is an attempt to bring those two worlds together to demonstrate the complexity surrounding opposing the government overreach of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. I’m using the plain language of the Constitution, fully realizing that the Bill of Rights has been watered down significantly in its 230-year history (btw, 12/15/2021 is the 230th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights). I think it’s time we start reclaiming the plain language of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution as intended by our founding fathers.

This article is copublished on my http://sustainableamericablog.wordpress.com under the title “Some Thoughts on How to Oppose the Vaccine Mandate.”

THE BIBLICAL ARGUMENT FOR FREEDOM OF CHOICE OVER ONE’S BODY

One of the key verses on human freedom in the Scriptures is 1 Corinthians 7:21–24:

²¹ Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you—although if you can gain your freedom, do so. ²² For the one who was a slave when called to faith in the Lord is the Lord’s freed person; similarly, the one who was free when called is Christ’s slave. ²³ You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of human beings. ²⁴ Brothers and sisters, each person, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation they were in when God called them.

The idea here is that Christianity in its early days understood that slavery was part of the human condition, but that it was not the ideal situation for humanity. Christianity has a long tradition of fighting against slavery and promoting free will (e.g., Augustine’s On Grace and Free Will), so when people began to migrate from Europe, often from places where they did not have religious freedom, the founding fathers incorporated freedom of religious expression into the constitution. Christians eventually led the effort to overturn slavery in the United States by siding with the North and offering refuge for slaves that escaped from the South.

So the founding principle of freedom directly derives from the biblical and theological concept of free will. We see these embodied in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as well, which I will address shortly.

The ministry of Jesus Christ is founded in part on the words of the prophet Isaiah in 61:1–2a (which Luke records Jesus reciting in his gospel, 4:18-19):

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
Because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good new to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
To proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,

To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

As Christians, we carry on the ministry of Jesus to “proclaim freedom for the captives.” The “captives,” in this case, are those who are unjustly being denied work because for whatever reason, they do not want to heed a government mandate. I will demonstrate later that, based on the definitions in the U.S. Code, every vaccine mandate (Federal Employee, Federal Contractor, and OSHA) creates a new class of disability that includes the unvaccinated and those who refuse to heed the unconstitutional demand for their protected, private health papers. In other words, the mandate attacks the dignity of those who want to work but are prohibited from doing so. (On the dignity of work, see such passages as Ecclesiastes 2:24–26, 1 Thessalonians 5:14, and 2 Thessalonians 3:6–13.)

Galatians 5:1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Freedom is not just a spiritual concept in the Christian faith. In the 1 Corinthians passage above, we are encouraged not only to obtain our freedom, but to maintain it and not go back into slavery. Christ’s ministry helps his followers do that through the example of his compassion to the lost and his confrontation of corrupt leadership. In this Galatians passage, we’re told to “stand firm,” which coincides with Paul’s exhortation in the final chapter of Ephesians, where he tells Christ-followers to “stand firm” against everyone and everything that would try to destroy our freedom and faith in Christ and draw us back into slavery again.

Peter emphasizes the intersectionality of faith and politics:

1 Peter 2:16–17: Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.

It is important to recognize that the supreme power of the day was the emperor. He had no one to answer to, and he ruled absolutely; the emperor was the highest law in the land. In the American system, absolute power does not reside with the president, either branch of congress, the courts, or any executive departments, but in the Constitution. The U.S. Constitution is the highest law in the land and the standard against which all other laws are judged.

The other aspect of Peter’s statement here is that he says believers should live as God’s slaves. This means, for our own bodies, that we live for God, and we belong to God. We do NOT belong to the State. God created mankind; the State did not. God breathed life into the human body; the State did not. God sustains his creation; the State does not. We are responsible for our eternal fate before God; the State has no legitimate power to affect or effect our relationship with God. So this is just one reason why a Christ follower should not be subject to a mandate regarding our own bodies: we have personal autonomy that the State should not and has no right to violate (“The right of the people to be secure in their persons…shall not be violated”; U.S. Constitution, 4^th Amendment).

This must be kept in mind when we come to Paul’s discussion of the intersection of faith and politics in Romans 13:1–7. In his day, all authorities were human beings. In our day, as I said above, the ultimate “governing authority” is the U.S. Constitution.

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.

This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

At first one may think that opposing a mandate would be akin to not submitting to government authorities, but a problem arises when government dictates contradict established law or the Constitutional authority that supports the law. It is at that point that a person of faith is put in a position of which law to obey. As I’ve stated above, the U.S. Constitution is the highest governing authority in the land, so as both a Christian and American, my highest political allegiance is to the U.S. Constitution; not to a person or political leader, but to the principles embodied in the Constitution and its Bill of Rights and other amendments. I should add that I believe the Constitution was written by men who had a profound understanding of the relationship between the free expression of religion (one of the reasons the original pilgrims came to the North American continent) and political freedom. I believe that the Constitution had its origin, in part at least, in mind of God as revealed to the founding fathers.

So when I look at political actors, I must always turn to the Constitution to judge the actions of those who claim and have taken an oath to protect, defend, and enforce it. If I see that such actors are rebelling against the authority of the Constitution, they are rebelling against what God has instituted, according to the Romans passage above, and I owe them no allegiance to the extent they are demanding behaviors and policies that violate the plain language of the Constitution.

The preceding line of reasoning leads to the most salient point of all when it comes to the COVID vaccine mandate: I belong to God, not to the State, and the State has no power to compel me to any action that is not specifically outlined in the Constitution. The Bible supports paying taxes to the government, regardless of what we think of their politics, and I willingly do so. We have a Constitutional amendment that allows for that taxation as well, so I have no conflict with my Christian faith in that regard. In fact, it is in the context of people asking Jesus about paying taxes to Caesar that he makes the following statement, which is the most concise statement anyone could make for a religious exemption, as it perfectly resolves the tension between being a political subject and a subject in the kingdom of God:

Matthew 22:21b: “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

The U.S. government prints money and puts their seal on it, therefore that money is “Caesar’s.” But as I said above, I belong to God, not to Caesar, not to the State, not to Joe Biden, not to Donald Trump, certainly not to Anthony Fauci, and not to any political leader. Nor do I belong to the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution is made for We the People; We the People were not made for the Constitution. I am God’s. The State doesn’t own me, so the State can’t impose a mandate on my body.

THE INTERSECTION OF MY FAITH WITH THE CONSTITUTION

The State has no legitimate power over my person. Here is where the intersection of my faith jibes with the 4^th Amendment in the Bill of Rights:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Almost every part of this amendment is violated by the vaccine mandate. Asking for protected, private health information is akin to an unreasonable search of my physical body.

The plain meaning of “probable cause” is that someone suspects a crime has been committed, and failing to be vaccinated, or failing to document your vaccination, is not a crime, but a condition of employment. Because no crimes have been committed, the searches for and seizures of protected, private health information are unreasonable.
My COVID vaccination card is a “paper” again not subject to an unreasonable search or seizure.
The statement “rights…shall not be violated” is absolute, save the qualification of “Warrants.”
Any “warrant” issued to try to seize one’s protected, private health information, especially in the form of a paper card or electronic image of such, must “particularly describ[e] the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” In other words, the government is not allowed to issue a general “warrant” that applies to all working citizens in the United States without “particular description.” Instead, to comply with the plain language of the Constitution, the government must issue separate warrants for each individual with the particular language of each person’s name, address, and information sought. That’s a lot of warrants! The purpose of such “particular” warrants would be to allow individuals to protest the terms of the search and seizure if they so desire.

Not only does my faith intersect with the 4^th Amendment, but it also intersects with the 5^th Amendment as well:

No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

My protected, private health information is my property, and I am allowed the right to keep that property in the absence of any due process. The government has the burden of proof to deprive me of such, and I have an individual right to challenge such attempted deprivation. Additionally, since the government claims that they need my protected, private health information as a matter of public health, they are taking my private property for public use and not compensating me justly.

And if violating two amendments of the Bill of Rights isn’t enough, my faith intersects with the 8^th Amendment as well, as I desire to protect the free citizens of the United States from the oppression of “excessive fines imposed” and “cruel and unusual punishment” for failure to heed the mandate. The proposed $14,000 per infraction fine is excessive. And it is cruel and unusual punishment to fire workers based on a medical condition. If it is illegal for an insurance company to deny someone health insurance coverage based on a preexisting condition, then it is illegal to deny someone a job based on their health or vaccination status. This is nothing short of tyranny.

Somebody must stand up to this abuse of power by the government. People are getting tired of it. Not only is the mandate unconstitutional, but it is overreach as well, because the 10^th Amendment says:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

HOW THE VACCINE MANDATE TRASHES THE DIGNITY OF HUMANITY

The Americans With Disabilities Act (42 USC 12102) defines disability in this way:

(1) Disability

The term “disability” means, with respect to an individual-

a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities of such individual;
a record of such an impairment; or
being regarded as having such an impairment (as described in paragraph (3)).

(2) Major life activities

In general

For purposes of paragraph (1), major life activities include, but are not limited to, caring for oneself, performing manual tasks, seeing, hearing, eating, sleeping, walking, standing, lifting, bending, speaking, breathing, learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, communicating, and working.

Vaccine hesitancy is a documented mental health issue and has been since the advent of vaccines. The Diagnostic & Statistics Manual, 5^th Edition (DSM-V) lists blood-injection-injury on its specific phobia scale.[1] The etiology of vaccine hesitancy is highly complex and not always based on irrationality. Many have thoughtfully considered whether they should subject themselves or their children to some or all vaccines. Here is how one article from 2013 describes the decision-making process on vaccines:

Many interventions are designed with the assumption that resistance to vaccination can be countered by supplying probabilistic information about vaccine risks and benefits. From this perspective, individuals who have concerns or doubts regarding vaccination are often assumed to be irrational, emotional, ill-informed, or to be manipulated by anti-vaccination groups….individual decision-making about vaccination is influenced by many different factors, including the fact that some of those who have doubts and concerns about vaccine safety use an entirely different decision-making model or subscribe to a different set of beliefs about health and illness. Supplying additional probabilistic information may not adequately address individual concerns.[2]

In the face of such a complex decision-making process, especially in a society that, at least on parchment, supports freedom of speech and thought along with personal liberty, it is nothing short of an insult to limit the vaccine hesitant to simplistic, single-track paths toward seeking exemptions. Exemption requests are allowed for two basic reasons: Medical or Ethical/Religious. Why is there not an exemption path for well-informed people, especially for those who work in the field of pharmaceuticals and the regulations surrounding them, to proffer their own reasoned arguments against submitting to a mandate for experimental vaccines that have not yet completed their full clinical trials and for which we have little public data or reporting (perhaps by design?) on any adverse effects. There have been enough media reports about potential vaccine-related health issues and even fatalities to raise significant concerns in the minds of some.

As such then, a mandate is violation of the freedom and personal autonomy I have defended and explained earlier in this essay. A general, universal mandate with little concern for people’s hesitancy to comply (whether it be with the imposition of the mandate apart from any hesitancy or taking the vaccine itself) degrades the individual freedoms we as Americans should be able to enjoy. It is a blow to our dignity and our freedom. At some point, and I think we are getting very near that point in America based on what is going on in Europe, the attacks on our freedom will awaken the sleeping giant of freedom fighters everywhere. Add to that an extremely low case-fatality rate for COVID-19, much lower than smoking-related deaths, and it should be easy to see why some suspect the government of hypocrisy or selective targeting with these mandates.

To get back to the Americans With Disabilities Act, then, vaccine hesitancy, regardless of whether it is fueled by irrational or rational thought, should be considered an “impairment” for purposes of the law in that a failure to be vaccinated (or rather the reluctance to turn over private health information to document vaccination) severely limits the major life activity of working. It should NOT be a basis for discrimination in the workplace at any level, whether a Federal or State employee, Federal or State contractor, or most of the rest of the working population subject to the overreaching OSHA rule. The mandate effectively creates a new class of disability, which strikes at the dignity of those who have this impairment, something the Americans With Disabilities Act was designed to counter.

It is also clear to me that the COVID-19 vaccines are proving to be ineffective. We have had more COVID-19 deaths in 2021 since the vaccine was approved (and with a significant portion of the public having both initial shots) than in 2020 before the vaccine. None of this is helped by such things as Dr. Fauci’s cacophany of conflicting comments for the past two years, the broken promise of the current president who at first said there would be no mandate, and the other failures in his administration that have driven his approval rating and American’s confidence in him into the toilet—it’s no wonder people don’t trust the mandate.

The mandate in the current climate has the appearance of an authoritarian move by a desperate man to try to salvage some semblance of control amidst the utter chaos of his administration. The mandate shows ZERO respect for the liberties and freedoms we as Americans should be enjoying. As a Christian, I feel it is my duty to speak up for these freedoms and liberties as I described above and protect the dignity of my fellow man. I respectfully submit my request to be exempted from the mandate to turn over my protected, private health information to the government.

I will make this offer, however: I am not opposed to the vaccine, only to the mandate. I am willing to sign an affidavit under penalty of termination that I have received two shots of the Pfizer vaccine, but I am not willing to turn over any official records of my health history to or for a government that has shown no respect for my personal freedom and has trampled on the dignity of the free and the brave.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

My opinions are my own.

[1] Freeman D et al (2021). Injection fears and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Psychological Medicine 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291721002609 Accessed 11/23/21

[2] Dubé, E., Laberge, C., Guay, M., Bramadat, P., Roy, R., & Bettinger, J. (2013). Vaccine hesitancy: an overview. Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics, 9(8), 1763–1773. https://doi.org/10.4161/hv.24657 Accessed 11/23/21

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November 9, 2021

I Will Build My Church (Matthew 16:13-20)

Filed under: Ecclesiology,Greek — Scott Stocking @ 5:38 pm
Tags: 1 Corinthians 1:2, 1 Corinthians 3:9, 1 Corinthians 8:1, Acts 20:32, Acts 2:42, Acts 9:31, Build, Early Church, Matthew, Romans 15:20

Note: Preached at Mt. View Presbyterian Church, Omaha, NE, on 11/7/21; also planned for Wheeler Grove Church, Carson, IA, 11/14/21. The passage came up in the lectionary for 8/27/23, so I preached it again, swapping out Mt. Rushmore & the Golden Gate Bridge for the St. Louis Arch & the Eiffel Tower. I forgot to turn the voice recorder on at the beginning, but did turn it on after the two monument stories and captured the meat of the message.

I’ve got a little trivia challenge for you this morning. I’m going to give you the names of a couple people who built or created famous things in the last 100 years that are still with us today, but whose names have been long forgotten by most.

The first may be familiar to some: Gutzon Borglum was born in Idaho and lived in Fremont, Nebraska, when he was 7 years old. He eventually became a famous artist, achieving early fame for painting a portrait of General John C. Fremont for the general’s wife. He later sculpted a colossal head of Abraham Lincoln, which is still on display today in the Capitol Rotunda. This inspired his most famous work, however, which perhaps now you’ve guessed: the four super colossal heads of American presidents carved into Mount Rushmore.

Joseph Baermann Strauss answered the call to build an impressive structure that, interestingly enough, also had a connection to General Fremont. Strauss’s task was to connect the two shores on either side of a strait in a region General Fremont had named “Chrysopylae.” Politicians of the day thought the structure would have a price tag of nearly $100,000,000 in his day, but Strauss was able to build it for the modest price of about $30,000,000. Oh for politicians who could create such infrastructure savings in our day! Chrysopylae is Greek for “Golden Gate,” and thus was origin of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

So we come to our passage today where someone whose name we haven’t forgotten, and I hope we haven’t forgotten “who” he is, wants to build something greater and more enduring than either of these creations.

Read Matthew 16:13–20

This passage is at the heart of Matthew’s gospel and reveals that “Aha!” moment for the disciples when they finally realize who Jesus is and what his mission is on Earth. To put it in context, it comes after the stories where Jesus feeds both the 5,000 and 4,000, with his walking on water in between. Immediately after this Caesarean confession, we have the story of the Transfiguration, where he proves beyond a shadow of doubt who Peter says he is.

In light of the events leading up to the passage, Jesus gives his disciples a little quiz, as it were. “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” They of course give a variety of wild guesses, I mean, answers from the broad extent of Jewish history: Elijah? Jeremiah or one of the prophets? John the Baptist? For whatever reason, the disciples can’t seem to bring themselves to admit what they’ve begun suspecting all along. Notice, though, how Jesus makes a subtle shift in his second quiz question. He doesn’t ask the disciples who they say the Son of Man is: He asks them, “Who do you say I am?”

Simon Peter answers, perhaps hoping he won’t stick his foot in his mouth as he’s prone to do. Now there were actually two Simons among the disciples: Simon the Zealot and Simon Peter. Matthew doesn’t call him “Simon” much in his gospel, only a couple times early on to show there were two Simons among the disciples and one more time in chapter 17. Here in vs. 16, this is the first and only time Matthew uses both names side by side in introducing Jesus’s statement where he officially renames Simon to Peter.

Peter does NOT stick his foot in his mouth on this occasion (but does in the very next section!), and Jesus makes a word play out of his name. Peter’s name in Greek (Πέτρος, petros), if it were just a regular noun, would mean something akin to “boulder,” while the word for “rock” (πέτρα, petra) upon which Jesus says he’ll build his church most likely refers to the concept of “bedrock,” the hard granite that you see, for example, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon that the Colorado River has cut through.

At this point in the passage, we have at least two major questions to answer: What exactly is the “rock” that Jesus refers to here, and what does it mean that Jesus will “build” (οἰκοδομεω, oikodomeō) his “church” (ἐκκλησία, ekklēsia)?

What (or Who) Is the “Rock”?

Believers through the ages who may or may not have engaged in theological studies have debated just what the “rock” symbolizes here. Since they’re in Caesarea Philippi at this point, it’s generally agreed that it’s not referring to any kind of physical location nearby, although there was a cave in that region that had been dubbed “the Gate of Hades” by some.

Some have seen here a direct connection to Peter, citing Peter’s sermon in Acts 2, where we see the first mass conversion of people from all over to being Jesus followers. The Catholics take this a step farther and list Peter as the first Pope. And Jesus even tells Simon Peter that he’ll give him the keys to the kingdom. But since Jesus says, “I will build my church,” it seems unlikely that he would impart that responsibility to one man.

Ephesians 2:20 broadens this concept a bit and says that the church is built “on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.” This has merit on a couple levels for understanding what “rock” means. First, assigning responsibility for the church to a group of contemporary apostles creates a system of accountability so that no one person is initially responsible for establishing “the church.” Second, this passage is the only time in the gospels where we see the word “church” used, and in the context of the story, the NT church hadn’t even started yet! However, in the Greek version of the OT, the word translated “church” here was often used of the “congregation” of Israel. That would make the connection to the prophets. Third, since Paul describes Christ as the “chief cornerstone,” Christ is the one that sets the standard by which the rest of the “church” is measured and built.

Still others suggest that this “rock” is the truth of Peter’s confession, or more broadly, the teachings of Jesus which feature prominently in Matthew’s gospel. In the church I attend, we ask a new convert if they believe that “Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” This would also fit with Romans 10:9-10: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.”

Now just as God never wanted Israel to have an earthly king, so also do I think that Jesus never wanted one man (other than himself) to have authority over all believers. I think a combination of the last two views I mentioned is probably the best understanding of “rock” here: the church would have a solid foundation, and those who would become “bricks” in its construction have means of doing so by acknowledging the cornerstone.

What Does Jesus Mean by “Build”?

This brings us to the second question: what does Jesus mean when he says, “I will build my church.” Just as this larger passage is the crux of Matthew’s gospel, so is this statement a crux between the ministry of Jesus on earth and the ministry of his church after his death. Now I’ve already mentioned that this passage is the only place in the gospels where the word church is used. Of course, the gospels were written after the church was formed, so it’s not too surprising to find it here. After all, as I said earlier, it may be reasonable to assume Jesus was referring to the congregation of Israel.

But what you may not know is that the word “build” or “building” in the gospels always refers to a physical building. So it’s worth asking, at least for the moment, if perhaps Jesus himself was referring to some kind of building, like a temple or a synagogue, when he made this statement. As you might guess, though, it’s pretty clear that Jesus isn’t referring to a building at all, but to his followers, a “congregation,” if you will.

1 Corinthians 1:2

Overlapping structure of the verse

A To the “called” (“church”) ekklēsia

B of God

C sanctified (i.e., “made holy”)

B′ in Christ Jesus

A′ “called”

C′ holy (=sanctified)

A″ those who “call upon”

B″ the name of our Lord Jesus Christ

Above, you’ll see a small chart on 1 Corinthians 1:2. I believe Paul here is drawing on the root meaning of ekklēsia, which is the word we translate “church” in the NT. It literally means “those called out from.” Paul uses a rhetorical device of his day to define who the church is, a sort of reverse parallel structure that suggests he put some thought into this. You can see it in the chart with the parallel elements identified by the capital letters: “To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours.” The church is made up of those who are called to be holy, and who call upon the name of Jesus.

Now I do want to offer a bit of a caveat here: just because “church” refers to people doesn’t mean the concept of a church building should be tossed out the window. Even in Paul’s day, the believers met in their respective homes or early on, even in the synagogues, so those who gathered had a place they could identify as their spiritual home and could use as a central place to carry out ministry to their respective communities. I’ve heard a lot of people say they don’t need to belong to a church to be a Christian, but it sure makes it easier to live the Christian life if you have a place you can call home and where you know that you’ll be welcome good times or bad.

This idea of “church” being people or a congregation is borne out when we look at the words “build” and “building” in Paul’s letters. With just a few exceptions in some OT references, these words NEVER refer to a physical building, but to the people who make up the “church” or to the concepts that support the truth of the Christian message. And several times, the words are used with the word for “church.” Let’s look at some of these passages. In these contexts, often these words are translated as “edify,” “edification,” “strengthen,” or some other synonym.

Let’s look first at how this concept of “building” or “edifying” relates to the church.

In Acts 9:31, shortly after Paul’s Damascus Road conversion, Luke mentions that “the church…enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened.”

In Paul’s farewell address to the Ephesian believers in Acts 20:32, he concludes, “Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.”

In 1 Corinthians 3:9, Paul tells the Corinthian believers: “For we are coworkers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.”

Later in chapter 14, Paul exhorts the Corinthians on the matter of tongues and prophecy in their gatherings, capturing the concept of “edification” several times, including vs. 26: “When you come together….everything must be done so that the church may be built up.”

I’ve already mentioned Ephesians 2, but later in chapter 4, Paul says this: “From him [Jesus] the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work.”

Acts 2:42 shows us how the church functioned in the early days after Peter’s Pentecost sermon. “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship of the breaking of the bread, and to the prayers.” These “prayers” were probably the daily prayers in the Temple. That was probably the only place big enough to accommodate 3,000 new converts! Acts 2 goes on to say how they met together in homes and had everything in common, taking turns sharing meals in their homes.

In other verses, we see the “how” of edification. In Romans 15:20, Paul speaks of his desire to preach where no one else has so he’s not building on someone else’s foundation. In 1 Corinthians 8:1, he says “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” Twice in 2 Corinthians, Paul mentions his authority to “build up” believers through preaching and exhortation that may have been difficult for that church to accept, preaching that stepped on their toes, if you will. In Galatians 2:18, Paul is “building” an argument for justification by faith as opposed to the Law. And in Ephesians 4:29, Paul says our speech should be wholesome, “Helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”

We see the many ways that we can be the church and that Christ builds his church through us, not just amongst ourselves, but out in the mission field of our immediate circle of influence. To borrow a phrase from my wife’s profession, these are the “activities of daily living” for the Christian: sharing the good news with those who’ve never heard it; showing love, care, and compassion; having the difficult conversations with those who need strong encouragement; defending the truth of God’s word; and taming our tongues.

Now there’s one more concept in this passage we need to address. After Jesus says he will build his church, he adds the promise that “the Gates of Hades will not overcome it.” It’s important that we understand just what this means. When Jesus says “will not overcome it,” he’s not talking about hell advancing on the church, trying to destroy it. He’s really talking about the church advancing on the gates of Hades, which do not have the strength to withstand the advance of God’s people, God’s army. Ephesians says God has given “incomparably great power for us who believe,” so we should never think that Satan will win. We look forward to the kingdom of heaven with its pearl gates that open to streets of gold (see what I did there?).

Joseph Strauss wrote a couple poems about the Golden Gate Bridge upon its completion. One stanza from The Mighty Task Is Done struck me as being particularly relevant for the Church because it can allude to the battles we face each day, and I’ll close with this:

An Honored cause and nobly fought

And that which they so bravely wrought,

Now glorifies their deed,

No selfish urge shall stain its life,

Nor envy, greed, intrigue, nor strife,

Nor false, ignoble creed.

Peace to all of you, and thank you for allowing me to share with you again.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

My opinions are my own.

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October 16, 2021

Excursus: My Testimony at Mount View Presbyterian Church

Filed under: Greek — Scott Stocking @ 5:23 pm
Tags: Testimony

Author’s note: Last week I had the distinct honor of returning to the church I grew up in, Mount View Presbyterian Church, to fill the pulpit for a Sunday morning. I had stopped attending there when I moved away to college and eventually on to seminary, but there were still a few people there who remembered me, including my mom and her sister, and her sister’s husband. As such, I felt it appropriate to bracket my message with a brief testimony of what Mount View meant to me and where my spiritual journey took me from there. I’m republishing that here.

I will forever be grateful for my upbringing in the faith in my childhood at Mount View Presbyterian Church: I don’t remember my sprinkling as an infant, of course, but I know my parents and this congregation did that to place the seal of God on my life for the now and the not yet. I still remember Sadie Charron’s Kindergarten class and even some of the songs I learned. I can’t remember everyone who taught me, but Joanne Mutum sticks out, as well as Karen Englesman helping me with memorization for confirmation class. And Karen, it worked: I’ve had Ephesians memorized for about 25 years now. Mt. View Presbyterian laid a strong foundation for my faith, without which I would not be where I am today in God’s kingdom and in life. Thank you for your faithfulness as a congregation and your influence in my life. In some ways, you might even say I returned to my Presbyterian roots, at least in part, about 7.5 years ago when I married Jill, a lifelong member of Dundee Presbyterian Church.

…

So how are we born of God? Some of us may have been born into a strong Christian family and you’ve never really known a time when you weren’t a believer. But even those people will have some memory or some point in time when they realized they’d made their faith their own, and not that of their parents. I’ve already mentioned how influential Mount View was in my youthful and adolescent faith. Let me tell you briefly how I made my faith my own.

Beginning in my Junior year of high school, I began to get more serious about my faith. I especially became impressed with Paul’s discussion of baptism in Romans and the connection he makes between baptism and the death and resurrection of Christ. That made sense to me, and it seemed sensible to me to have a sensory experience of the fullness of that spiritual reality for myself as an adult that I could not have remembered as an infant. I got immersed, not to break with any of my prior upbringing, but to make my faith in God and faithfulness to his word more complete for my own understanding. It wasn’t just the end of the old self that didn’t completely understand how my own sin impacted those around me, but the beginning of the new self, recreated in the true image of Christ that began to see people through God’s eyes. That’s how I know I’m born of God.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

My opinions are my own

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September 26, 2021

Obedience of Faithfulness: A Walk On the Romans Road

Filed under: Greek — Scott Stocking @ 3:58 pm
Tags: Romans Study 2026

Context note: I delivered this message 9/19/2021 at Wheeler Grove Church in Carson, Iowa. I actually wound up extemporizing the testimony section. I expound on the phrase Obedience of Faithfulness in a separate post on this topic in the blog.

Well, this is my fourth time to share with you on a Sunday morning. Since we’re getting to know each other a little better, I thought I might share my story on how I came to make my faith in Christ my own, and along the way, share some insights from Paul’s letter to the Romans, more specifically the “Romans Road,” and how that has shaped me into the Christian man I am today.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking about my faith in the past month or so for a number of reasons, which is why I wanted to focus on my story. The first is that 40 years ago this week, I walked into a Bible study at the Agape House near the UNL campus hoping to get some answers to questions I had about my fledgling faith and to make sure I was well grounded in the faith during my college years. More about that later in the message.

The second reason that’s been on my mind is that the pastor of the church that sponsored the Agape House just passed away 10 days ago, and I remember how his preaching, in part, motivated me to go into ministry. That pastor’s son is the pastor of the church I attend in Omaha. I feel privileged to have been ministered to by the Chitwoods for a good chunk of my adult life. I even had the honor of filling the pulpit for the elder Chitwood a few years ago. He had been preaching at the Brownsville, NE, Christian Church right up to the end.

But let me go back to the beginning for a brief summary: I was born, christened, and raised in Mt. View Presbyterian Church in north Omaha. I don’t remember a time I wasn’t in Sunday school, and I remember my confirmation class where I became a bona fide Presbyterian in sixth grade. About the only thing I remember from confirmation is the name John Knox and that I was struggling with memorizing the Scriptures I needed to memorize (I overcame the memorization aversion).

After my sophomore year of high school, my mom started leaving little evangelistic cartoon tracts around the house. She had gotten in with a women’s Bible study group that renewed her faith in the Lord and wanted to make sure we kids got exposed to a fresh perspective on faith. I went to my aunt’s ranch in Wyoming that summer, and she had the same tracts in her house. There in the middle of nowhere northeastern Wyoming, I finally realized I needed to have a personal relationship with Jesus, and I pledged my life to him. That was the beginning of making my faith my own.

At least one of those tracts had what was known as the “Romans Road” in it. Anyone ever heard of that? The Romans Road is a series of verses from Paul’s letter to the Romans a Christ follower could use to show a friend or stranger how to become a Christ follower. Now real Roman roads were quite well constructed, and remnants of these roads survive to this day in places. But the Romans Road was quite twisty, primarily focused on Chapters 3, 5, and 10, with a couple of pit stops at the end of chapter 6 and beginning of chapter 8.

In case you’re not familiar with it, I’ll give you the Cliff’s Notes version here: No one is righteous, and all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The wages of sin are death, but God gives the gift of eternal life. We have access to this eternal life because Christ died for us, and we must in turn confess that Jesus is Lord and believe in his resurrection. That act of calling on the Lord is what saves you, you’re declared “not guilty,” and you’re free from any condemnation.

Now between the tracts, the Romans Road, and the testimonies of my mom and aunt, that was enough to get me to the place where I felt like I was beginning to own my faith. Like many who are new in the faith or are renewing their faith, I still had many questions. I began to make friends with other Christian students and experienced the full range of expressions of the Christian faith, from legalism and traditionalism to more open and charismatic styles. That only served to raise more questions in my mind, but I was determined like the Bereans in Acts to search the Scriptures and try to figure it all out.

In those last two years of high school, I began to dive into God’s Word, and I had two main things on my mind. The first was the second coming of Christ and the book of Revelation. There seemed to be general agreement on the millennial perspective among my diverse Christian friends, but I’d never really heard about that growing up, at least, not in any significant way that it sank in.

The second concern on my mind was what the Bible said about baptism. I had been sprinkled as an infant, but of course that wasn’t MY decision. Still, I cannot sell short that act, for it is commendable to dedicate a child to be part of the kingdom of God and for the parents and congregation to commit themselves to raising you in the faith. But as I began to talk about with my Christian friends, I realized not only were there differing opinions about baptism, but that some of those opinions seemed to be polar opposites.

On the one hand, one group said it was just a work of the flesh and really not necessary, and that the real thing that mattered was confessing Jesus like Romans 10:9–10 says. On the other hand, my charismatic friends were telling me stories of people being immersed and coming out of the water speaking in tongues! Surely both viewpoints couldn’t be true! And to be honest, at that stage of my life, speaking in tongues after coming out of the water sounded a lot more exciting to me than just ignoring the topic altogether!

As I continued to pursue my study of that, reading Romans and other Bible passages that discussed baptism, I began to realize that the Romans Road had completely bypassed the topic of baptism. There had to be a middle ground among the extremes I’d been exposed to. The more I looked into the topic, the more I became convinced that I needed to be baptized, not to be saved, but to have a sort of physical and emotional point of reference for my faith.

I didn’t completely understand that at the time, but I had faith that if I did what the Scriptures seemed to be telling me I should do, it would all become clear soon enough.

So that was a bit of a long way to go to get to the heart of my message today: an overview of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Now when most people read the Bible, myself included, I suspect we are looking for a verse here or there that means something to us, a verse that gives us or a friend hope, or a confirmation of what we believe. There’s nothing wrong with that approach, as God’s word never returns void when it’s spoken into our lives.

But we also need to remember that Bible tells a story as well, and in between our favorite verses, and specifically in our case today, in the overall terrain through which the Romans Road winds, the author often reveals a greater purpose that we miss by focusing on individual verses. What I want to do this morning is give you a sense of that overall purpose by highlighting a couple recurring themes.

Obedience of Faithfulness

One of the first themes that presents itself in Romans may escape the casual reader. Romans 1:5 is a purpose statement: “Through [Jesus] we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience of faithfulness for his name’s sake.” The phrase “obedience of faithfulness” is, I believe, the primary recurring theme throughout Romans. It’s an unusual phrase, because we typically link the concept of “obedience” to the Law. But it may in part be borrowed from Israel’s prophecy about Judah in Genesis 49:10: “The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he to whom it belongs [that is, Jesus] shall come and the obedience of the nations shall be his.”

So what does this phrase mean? In Paul’s language, the phrase is only two words, and the simplest, most direct translation is how I presented it: “the obedience of faithfulness” or, as three modern translations (RSV, NASB, and ESV) render it, “the obedience of faith.” The New King James Version translates it “obedience to the faith.” The NIV translates it “the obedience that comes from faith.”

“Faith” is typically the go-to translation of the word in the original text. But lately contemporary scholars are increasingly considering whether “faithfulness” would be appropriate in several contexts, especially Romans. The Greek word πίστις (pistis) can either mean “belief” (“faith”) or “the action that accompanies the belief” (“faithfulness”). Faithfulness is a demonstrated meaning of the word, as we see in Romans 3:3: “What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God’s faithfulness? Not at all!”

This is where the broader terrain of the passage comes into play: Paul spends the first five chapters of Romans contrasting the role of the Law with respect to obedience and faith. These concepts fill his discussion. He closes out the discussion at the end of Chapter 5 with the following statement: “For just as through the disobedience of the one man [Adam] the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man [Jesus] the many will be made righteous.” This is the “obedience of faithfulness,” not just believing in Jesus, but believing that Jesus’s faithfulness not just to the Law but to death on the cross is what makes salvation possible for us.

Chapter 5 itself has several references to the faithful life and death of Jesus. This isn’t intended to be easy believism: Paul is calling us to believe something that the pagan world in his day thought was foolishness, fake news, a conspiracy theory. That was a hard choice then, just as it is in today’s world that seems increasingly apathetic or even hostile toward the Christian worldview.

Baptism (Immersion)

Now it is this emphasis on the death of Christ that caused me to take a closer look at what Paul said about baptism in Romans 6, and how that passage might answer the questions I had about baptism. Was it just a work that really didn’t matter one way or the other? Or was there something more to it?

Now before I get too far into this section, I do want to offer a disclaimer: I understand there are different views of baptism in the church, and I respect and accept those differences. My purpose here is strictly to tell my story and how my understanding of this particular subject influenced my faith, my story, and my understanding of the message of Romans.

As I mentioned earlier, I had a number of different influences when it came to working out what I believed about baptism. Of course, I knew I had to ultimately look to Scripture. I had used my concordance to look up passages like Matthew 28:19–20, where Matthew indicates that baptism is part of the process of making disciples, and 1 Peter 3:18–22, where the flood waters that wiped out sinful humanity are compared to the death of Christ, which assured the victory over sin and our salvation for sinful humanity. Peter goes on to say that the flood analogy “symbolizes baptism that now saves you also.” I was beginning to notice a pattern, but I was just scratching the surface.

The more I read and reread Romans 6, the more I realized that baptism was more than just a “work of the flesh” as my fundamentalist friends believed. Romans 6 flows naturally from the discussion of the efficacy of Jesus’s death and resurrection in Chapter 5. “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

By this point, I knew what I had to do, but I wasn’t sure I could talk to my Presbyterian minister about it, and I had already decided I would go to Capital City Christian Church when I got to college. So that night I walked into the Agape House, I had only one question I really needed an answer to for my faith: should I get baptized by immersion?

As I talked to the teachers there about it, that solidified my resolve to get immersed, and I didn’t want to wait any longer: that night, some of the people in the Bible study that I had just met that night went with me to the church to see me get immersed. I can honestly say that was one of the best decisions I could have made for my Christian walk. I have never looked back from that moment when it comes to my faith.

Just as communion is the event where we remind ourselves of the sacrifice of our Savior and come into contact with Christ’s body and blood in mystery of God’s economy, baptism reminds us of the same thing: buried with Christ in the waters of baptism and raised to newness of life. Again, in the mystery of God’s economy, baptism puts in contact with the death and resurrection of Christ. It is definitely a game changer!

The rest of the middle section of Romans through chapter 11 speaks in more detail about the results of Christ’s death, especially recognizing that we have the ability through the Spirit to make better decisions for ourselves and that we have no condemnation in Christ Jesus. The benediction at the end of Chapter 11 closes out this section by acknowledging “the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” It would seem to be a simple leap to suggest that Paul’s discussion of baptism is part of that mystery the benediction alludes to. It’s something we accept by faith, but not without good reason.

Living Sacrifices

The irony of the Christian life is that we must die to have that life. Paul tells the Ephesians that in Christ we die to sin but are made alive in Him. In Christ, we put off the old self, renew our attitude, and “put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” In Christ, we’re called out of the darkness of unbelief and become light in the Lord, and we can live as children of light! In Philippians, Paul says to consider all our worldly gain loss to gain Christ and his righteousness, which comes to us through the “obedience of the faithfulness” of Christ (Philippians 3:9).

This is what Paul means when he says in Romans 12:1–2: “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God” and to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Notice that the promises I just mentioned are not for life after the grave. These promises are for our life in the here and now! God wants us to live in the fullness of his blessings, to know not only that we have a new life here on earth, but that, as Ephesians says, we are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms; that we can know here on Earth the hope to which he’s called us, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power when we enter into that obedience of faithfulness.

Conclusion

And here’s the clincher about the obedience of faithfulness: Paul confirms beyond any shadow of doubt that that is his theme in his letter to the Romans when closes out the letter with this benediction: “Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience of faithfulness—to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen!”

Paul was an excellent writer: He told us what he was going to say, he said it, and he told us he said it. That sounds vaguely familiar to what my Junior High English teacher told me about writing a persuasive paper. God has called all of us to walk in this “obedience of faithfulness,” for it is only through Jesus—the way, the truth, and the life— that we can come to God the Father. If you’re there already, you know what I’m talking about. If you’re not there yet, I or any of your church leaders would be happy to talk to you about following Christ and walking in his ways.

Benediction

33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!

34 “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?”

35 “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?”

36 For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.

Romans

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August 22, 2021

#ToxicMasculinity: Walking Like an Egyptian Pharaoh–2021 Update

Filed under: Greek — Scott Stocking @ 3:40 pm
Tags: Politics, Prophecy, Social action

Author’s Note: I don’t typically like to mix politics in with my religion blog, but things have deteriorated so much in this country in the last two years that it’s become nearly impossible to separate our religious beliefs from our social praxis that supports and represents those beliefs. As such, I’ll be copublishing this update on my Sustainable America blog as well.

Back in February 2019, I wrote about the hot topic du jour, Toxic Masculinity. As I said at the time, I thought the Left and the so-called Progressives (they’re really regressive) had worse examples of toxic males than anything they were complaining about on the right, including then President Trump. This included especially Virginia’s governor Ralph Northam for his suggestion that a woman may have the right to euthanize her child both before and after birth; and the now defrocked (for another sort of toxic masculinity) New York governor Cuomo for suggesting abortion should be legal up until the time of birth.

But since Joe Biden was inaugurated by an election fraught with irregularities nationwide, he has to take the cake for toxic masculinity. Now I know there are serious questions about whether he’s even psychologically capable of leading the country, let alone caring for his own personal needs, but since he’s the president and he’s trying to portray himself as competent, he’s open to the same criticisms as every other president. Personally, I think he’s just a puppet, and some other toxically masculine and toxically feminine men and women are pulling his strings, but the following criticisms would apply equally to them as they would to the president.

This last week, since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, has amplified Biden’s (and his handlers’) toxicity. In the first place, almost all major media outlets, Left and Right, have been pointing out his inconsistent statements, outright lies, inability to understand (supposedly) conditions on the ground in Afghanistan, and his general ignorationalizations (a term I’ve coined to mean actions that fail to account for obvious facts that cannot and should not be overlooked). Most notedly, his response to George Stephanopoulos’s question about the Afghani’s who fell from C17 as it ascended out of Kabul last week displays the utter lack of compassion he has for the situation: “That was 4 or 5 days ago.” In other words, “Why does that matter?” Absolutely disgusting and contemptible. If Trump had said something like that, toxically feminine Speaker Pelosi (am I insulting women to call her feminine?) would have had him drawn and quartered within the hour; no impeachment trial necessary.

Let’s add to this the other toxically masculine so-called leaders surrounding Biden. Pentagon spox John Kirby couldn’t muster up the cajones to call the Taliban the enemy, and he said the Pentagon had no idea how many Americans were now behind enemy lines. No wonder they don’t have a plan to collect our patriots. General Mark Milley thought it was more important in the last 7 months to bad mouth our military heroes for being “white supremacists” and “insurrectionists” for holding conservative views than it was to have a solid plan to exit Afghanistan safely. Looks like he had no clue that the real insurrectionists were just waiting for American troops to leave so they could recapture the country for their barbaric beliefs. And retired general and DOD secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken appear to have been completely inept at not only coordinating communications, but at pushing back on Biden’s disastrous choices to apparently ignore all of the evidence they had to indicate such a disaster was just around the corner. Really, what difference would it have made if the Taliban had taken over later than sooner? All the work of our brave soldiers who gave Afghanis a taste for freedom would have gone to naught either way.

Add to all of these foreign policy failures the absolute debacle of the border crisis, squandering our energy independence (and low gas prices), and perpetuating ridiculous social policies contrary to common sense, and we have the perfect picture of what the dereliction and dissolution of duty does to a country led by toxic males who, as C.S. Lewis described them, have no chests.

And so I say to my brothers and sisters in the faith: it is time for all believers everywhere to lift up holy hands and pray not just for the security and survival of America, but for Afghanis and the whole world. America has been a guarantor of freedom for over 200 years; the toxic males (and females) of the Biden administration have all but sacrificed that noble and vaunted position by their own ignorationality and given other political aggressors a green light to carry out their hegemonies. If Moses can speak to Pharaoh for the freedom of the Israelites; if Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the rest of the prophets can speak against the nations for ignoring God; if Jesus can confront the religious oppressors of his day; if Paul can proclaim the Gospel to upper echelons of Roman political leadership; then surely we who are alive today can speak truth to power and ACT to secure freedom for the captives (see Isaiah 61, the passage on which Jesus based his ministry, a ministry that we as the body of Christ should continually carry out). We need another miracle like Moses at the Red Sea or the fall of Sennacherib in Hezekiah’s reign to topple the terrorists. To appropriate Saint Bede’s line: “When America falls, the world shall fall.”

My opinions are my own.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

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July 2, 2021

μαλακός (malakos) “soft”; “weak”; “effeminate”: A Look at Classical and Biblical Greek Usage

[If you like this post, you may also like “Rachel Weeping”: The Objectification of Gender and Children.]

One of the main goals of a word study in an ancient language is to understand how the writer used the word in the original context and, where possible, to discern contextual clues that provide the historical and cultural background of the recorded events, descriptions, and deliberations. We cannot change what the historico-cultural background of the time was, nor should we presume to impose modern concepts and ideas on an ancient text or its author, although further study may reveal a more thorough understanding of the historico-cultural background and cause us to look anew at certain texts.

With this in mind, I set out to understand more fully the implications and ideations surrounding the use of μαλακός (malakos) in the ancient Greek texts, and more specifically how that understanding would have carried over into biblical texts of the day in its few uses in Matthew 11:8 (par. Luke 7:25) and 1 Corinthians 6:9–10. The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) does not have a separate entry for μαλακός, so the average student of the Bible whose Greek knowledge is limited to Koine is left wanting if they want more information about the broader historico-cultural use of the word.

My purpose here is not so much to comment on the 21^st century state of affairs surrounding the concepts behind the word, although I freely admit that is the reason why I undertook this study in the first place. Rather, in the spirit of TDNT, I want to give a more dispassionate, unbiased look at the use of the word in the historical context so the student of the Bible has a fuller understanding of the word and can therewith draw their own conclusions. As with all of my writings on biblical texts, my goal is that we have a fuller understanding of the Word of God and God’s love for us so we can better and more fully love our neighbor as God loves us.

My methodology for this study is simple: I looked at standard Greek annotated Lexicons such as Liddell & Scott (LS) and the online Perseus resource (the Greek texts and any corresponding English translations of the text where available) in addition to standard biblical reference works (UBS 3^rd & 4^th editions) that indexed the use of the word to its various contexts, then examined the surrounding context to understand the writer’s tone and intention surrounding the use of the word. Where the word was used in contrast, comparison, or in parallel (synthetic or antithetic) with other words or ideas, I examined those as well to better understand the contrast or comparison.

I want to keep this brief so the busy pastor or researcher can get a broad overview of the word’s use in the ancient world. As such, I have chosen representative examples from the entries in LS and other resources to illustrate usage rather than an exhaustive treatment of lexical entries. Most of these resources are publicly available online or in your local college library, so nothing should stand in the way of those who want to dig even deeper. I have organized the article on the basis of the word’s semantic domains rather than by source so the reader can more readily access the section relevant to their interests.

Soft (in the sense of physical touch)

One of the more benign meanings of the word is “soft,” especially when referring to animals or nature. Xenophon (Hiero the Despot 1.5) speaks generally about experiencing the extremes of sensation: cold vs. hot; light vs. heavy; pleasure vs. pain. In the list, he contrasts “soft” with “hard” (σκληρὰ sklēra). In his writing about Horsemanship (1.9a), he makes the same word contrast regarding the condition of a horse’s jaw. Xenophon also uses the word to describe the soft coats of the hunting hounds and the hare, the need for a soft collar for the hunting hound to prevent chafing (Hunting 4.6, 5.10, 6.1), and the softer “double back” on dappled horses (Horsemanship 1.11c).

Xenophon also uses μαλακός to describe the turf on which a horse should be trained (Horsemanship 8.6) and soft turf that makes it easier to track the quarry (Hunting 10.5). Homer (Iliad 9:615–619) uses the word to describe a soft couch on which to lie and in the Odyssey to describe soft fleece (3:38). Herodotus (Histories 9.122.3) also uses the term twice in a zeugma with respect to land somewhat metaphorically in his phrase “Soft lands breed soft men”; the second use of the word in that zeugma is covered in the next domain of meaning below.

The word is used three times in the NT in parallel passages (Mt 11:8 [2x]; Lk 7:25) to describe the “fine clothes” worn by those in palaces. There is one use of the word in this domain in Proverbs 26:22, although used metaphorically: “The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels, they go down to the inner parts of the body.” This seems akin to Xenophon’s usage (although perhaps a bit more abstract) in Hiero the Despot 1.23: “Don’t you look on these condiments, then, as mere fads of a jaded and pampered appetite?” Note that the phrase in the Greek here for “jaded and pampered” is μαλακῆς καὶ ἀσθενούσης, the latter word often translated “sick” or “weak.” This is an important pairing for two reasons. In Xenophon’s Horsemanship 1.3, the superlative of the adjective is contrasted with ἰσχυροτάτῳ (“strongest”) in describing two parts of the horse’s foot (hoof and flesh). Second, the substantive cognate of μαλακός, μαλακία, also means “sickness,” “weakness,” or “pain,” especially in several OT passages (e.g., Ex 23:25; Dt 7:15, 28:61; 2 Chr 16:12; Is 53:3) and three times in Matthew’s gospel (4:23; 9:35; 10:1), all of which have some overlap with the next domain discussed.

Soft (as a character attribute or abstraction), often translated “weak”

The most extreme example of “soft” as a character attribute in my mind is Homer’s description of defeated (and deceased) Hektor in Iliad 22.373 as the victors continue to defile his body with spear jabs: “It is easier to handle [lit. “softer to touch”] Hektor now than when he was flinging fire on to our ships.” In Laws 666b-c, Plato describes the “convivial gatherings [that] invoke Dionysus” where the men over 40 may drink wine without moderation such that “through forgetfulness of care, the temper of our souls may lose its hardness [σκληρὰ sklēra] and become softer and more ductile” (my literal translation). R.G. Bury’s English translation (much less literal and perhaps more poetic than my own) of the same passage describes the wine “as a medicine potent against the crabbedness of old age, that thereby we men may renew our youth.”

Archidamus “had gained credit for weakness” (or as Jowett’s translation has it, “was also thought not to have been energetic enough”) when attacking the Athenians at Oenoe, seemingly procrastinating the attack and perhaps thinking he could spare any damage to the surrounding land that full-on aggression might bring (Thucydides, Histories [The Peloponnesian War] 2.18).

In Herodotus Histories 3.51.2, Periander desires “to show no weakness,” and later in the same book (3.105.2) Herodotus says “the mares never tire, for they remember the young that have left.” (It is interesting to note that the latter reference could be an unintended word or semantic play, as the word for “mares” [θῆλυς] could also be translated “weak” in some contexts.) In 6.11.2, Herodotus recounts that Dionysius addressed his slave army, contrasting the potential for hardship in a battle that could win them their freedom or a “weak and disorderly” response which would lead to continued slavery and perhaps even humiliating death. Recall also the zeugma mentioned above found in 9.122.3: “Soft lands breed soft men.”

One final reference to Herodotus Histories (7.153.4) will tie us into the other NT usage of the word. Herodotus describes a man named Telines, who “is reported by the dwellers in Sicily to have had a soft and effeminate [θηλυδρίης τε καὶ μαλακώτερος] disposition.” This is Godley’s translation. The words are used in parallel with a double conjunction, so it’s not clear at first glance if the Greek word order is switched in the English translation. Regardless, the words are used in parallel, so (as shown in the previous paragraph), it makes little difference in the translation, and Telines’s character is certainly not portrayed in a positive light by Herodotus. [NOTE: See excursus below on Telines’ story in Herodotus.] The use of μαλακός in this domain is primarily a negative trait when ascribed to a human person. It is important to keep this in mind as we look at NT usage of the word (and its parallel) when applied to people in lists of, to put it softly, unflattering persons.

I believe it is, in part at least, this use here in classical Greek that informs Paul’s use of the word in 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 (NIV), and the context in Paul’s letters bear this out: “Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men [οὔτε μαλακοὶ οὔτε ἀρσενοκοῖται] nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” The King James Version (KJV) is a little more literal with the translation of the target phrase: “nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind.” Lowe & Nida, in their Greek-English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains, distinguish the two words by saying the former is “the passive male partner in homosexual intercourse,” and the latter is “the male partner in homosexual intercourse” or in this context, the “active” partner. (Could Herodotus have implied a similar distinction with his dual description of Telines?)

The latter word in the Corinthian text (ἀρσενοκοίτης) is a masculine compound meaning “lying with men” in Liddell & Scott’s abridged lexicon. This word is also used in 1 Timothy 1:10 in a similar list: “for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine.”

Conclusion

Short of an Orwellian feat of doublethink, then, it is nearly impossible to give any positive twist on the use of the words for persons practicing homosexuality in the NT. Some try to argue μαλακός means “morally soft” apart from any sexual connotations in the 1 Corinthians passage, but the context in Paul’s letters does not really allow for a generic description like that. I’m not trying to be cruel or bigoted here; I’m just stating the obvious facts as revealed in the historical usage of the words. However, I would remind my Christian siblings that Jesus’s attitude toward those on whom Jewish society generally looked down on (e.g., tax collectors) was not one of hatred, judgment, or spite, but of love and acceptance with a view toward repentance. My encouragement to my readers is to have the same attitude of Jesus toward those practicing homosexuality.

My opinions are my own.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

Excursus on Herodotus Histories 153: the Story of Telines

Added February 17, 2026.

Telines descended from a family from the Isle of Telos (thus the name?) and apparently worshipped the goddesses of the underworld, Demeter and Persphone (aka Kore). Telines had “won” the priesthood of these goddesses for himself and his descendants by rescuing some exiles from Mactorium and returned them to Gela “with no force of men but only the holy instruments of the goddesses worship to aid him.”* Herodotus does not relate how this happened; one might speculate he convinced the Mactorians to worship the goddesses, or perhaps he used the artifacts to indicate some terrible fate awaiting the Mactorians if they continued to hold the exiles. Regardless, the full context of Herodotus’s assessment of Telines not only confirms the meanings of the Greek words attributed to him that I cite (they are the translator’s words, actually) but also may lend some insight into the use of the words in 1 Corinthians 6:9–10.

“Now it makes me marvel that Telines should have achieved such a feat, for I have always supposed that such feats cannot be performed by any man but only by such as have a stout heart and manly strength. Telines, however, is reported by the dwellers in Sicily to have had a soft and effeminate disposition.”*

The contrast between Herodotus’s expectation of Telines’s character and the Sicilian report of such further emphasizes the negative attribution of the two words. But was the Sicilian “report” an accurate reflection of Telines’s character, or had they been perpetuating a false narrative about Telines because they just didn’t like him and wanted to ostracize him? Again, that’s all we have of the history in the four “verses” of the story. The connection with 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 might be obvious to the reader at this point. Herodotus seems to suggest that Telines has “redeemed” himself from the Sicilian reputation (whether he deserved it or not) by performing an act of religious heroism in rescuing the exiles. Paul says the μαλακοὶ and ἀρσενοκοῖται have also been redeemed by converting to Christianity and becoming Christ-followers. In the biblical context, those who were redeemed were also cleansed of their sin and recipients of new life and a new lifestyle.

This is consistent, then, with the transition that Paul makes from the last half of Romans 1, where he describes the sexual debauchery of the Gentiles, but then begins chapter 2 suggesting that even those Gentiles can be redeemed, because God’s kindness could lead them to repentance.

I was touched by the full story once I understood it, and I do have to give some credit to Copilot AI for helping me understand that I didn’t have to look too far to get the complete extant story. I hope this encourages you as well. I read some of the context before and after this story in Herodotus, and I found myself drawn into it, as he had some other moral lessons as well that I may write about at some point.

*Herodotus. 1920. Herodotus, with an English Translation by A. D. Godley. Edited by A. D. Godley. Medford, MA: Harvard University Press.

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May 19, 2021

Work: The ‘Rest’ of the Story (Sermon)

Filed under: Acts,Creation,Ecclesiastes,Ephesians,Faith, Faithfulness,Genesis,Greek,Hebrews,Proverbs,Sabbath,Work — Scott Stocking @ 7:48 am
Tags: 2 Thess 3:6–13, Acts 20:33–35, Ecclesiastes 3:9–15, Ephesians 2:8–10, Ephesians 4:28, Genesis 1, Hebrews 4:6–11, Proverbs 26:13–16

Sermon preached at Wheeler Grove Rural Church May 16, 2021. All opinions are my own.

It seems work has been on everyone’s minds lately, one way or the other. Will I be able to go back to the office, if ever? Will it be safe if I do? If you’re in the hospitality industry, you wonder if things will ever be the same again? When will we get back to the prepandemic “normal”? Such questions have been on my mind as well.

For my own situation, my full-time employer, based in Minneapolis, has let us know they’re closing our Omaha office building and everyone who previously worked from that location will continue to work from home indefinitely. Now on the one hand, I can understand why they’re doing that: I work for a pharmacy benefits manager, so we make sure people get the medication they need to feel better. We’re essentially in the information industry, so we’re not coming together to build buildings or manufacture cars, home appliances, or clothing, industries where it’s helpful to have people around to perform and look after the processes. We can do our jobs from home; people in those industries typically can’t.

But on the other hand, I fear that working from home with no one else around you (except needy pets in many cases) may threaten what some of have come to call the “culture” of a company. We no longer have others around us physically who share the same goals and objectives from a work perspective. And we lose the connectedness we have on a social level, especially with those we interact with who share the same values or likes and dislikes that we have outside of the work environment.

How many people do you know who’ve made a close friend at work who’s added value to each other’s lives. Even in the Creation story, which we’ll look at in a moment, God says it’s not good for Adam to be alone, so he provides a “helper,” one who shares his human nature but from the perspective of the opposite sex; equals in many ways in personhood, but different in their gifts, callings, and innate abilities. Together, they shared one primary purpose in the beginning: tend to the garden.

When God created male and female, he also created “work.” As we dive into the message this morning, I do want to give you my main point up front so you can get a feel for where I’m going with the topic. Here it is: Work produces Order, and Order produces Rest. Again, Work produces Order, and Order produces Rest. Thus the title of my message: “Work: The ‘Rest’ of the Story.” See what I did there?

I also want to give a couple disclaimers as well: Many of the Scriptures we’re looking at this morning aren’t just about the work we do for a paycheck. At times, they have more to do with how we interact with our families and those around us, or more to do with our relationship with God and his kingdom, than they do with our employer. The second disclaimer is, if you’re retired, you have my permission to tune out if I’m talking about an employer. You’ve already given your time to “the man” and have earned your earthly rest from that.

Let’s roll up our sleeves and look at Genesis 1:1–2 and 2:1–3.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Then for six days, God begins speaking creation into existence.

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

Day 0: “In the beginning”—Chaos
Day 1: Light	Day 4: The lighted bodies
Day 2: Sky and water	Day 5: Air and water creatures
Day 3: Dry ground	Day 6: Land-dwelling creatures; Man
Day 7: “God rested from his work.”—Order

A couple things about the text first before taking a deeper dive into Genesis 1. Genesis 1 has some unique features as a written text. Several key words are found 7 or 10 times throughout the passage. This shows some intentionality in writing, even if the writer wasn’t aware of it, if you know what I mean. The phrase “formless and empty,” tohu vebohu in Hebrew (how poetic!), is found in a couple other places in the Old Testament, namely Isaiah and Jeremiah, where it refers to the utter destruction of the land coming on those nations that have forsaken God. [See https://sundaymorninggreekblog.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/work-the-rest-of-the-story-ecclesiastes-3/ for in-depth look at chart.]

Genesis conclusion

So you can see that in the very act of Creation, God created a theology of work. On this alone, I think I’ve made my main point that Work produces Order, and Order produces Rest. But that would be a very short sermon! I do think it’s important to take a look at how that theology of work plays out in Scripture. As such, I have a sampling of verses, especially from the Wisdom Literature of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, about the benefits of work and the consequences of neglecting our responsibility to work.

The Rest of the OT

Of all the books in the Bible, Ecclesiastes has the most practical wisdom and theology about life in general, and work in particular, than all the other Bible books combined. Solomon’s wisdom really shines through in Ecclesiastes, even as the cry of “Meaningless” echoes through the text. I think the key passage here is Ecclesiastes 3:9–15. Let’s hear that again:

9 What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him. 15 Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account.

[For “beautiful,” see Eccl 5:18, where the Hebrew word is translated “appropriate.”]

18 This is what I have observed to be good: that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them—for this is their lot.

Think of all the “toil” we do each and every day. How do we make things beautiful? How do we find satisfaction? What are the tasks that bring you satisfaction? Let me run a few by you.

Around the house or the farm:

• A freshly cut lawn.

• A freshly tilled field ready for planting.

• A sparkling bathroom after cleaning it (including getting that nasty whatever out of the drain).

• Big ripe tomatoes on the tomato plants.

• Making your bed first thing in the morning. (Navy Seal Admiral McRaven: Bed inspected every morning at training. Accomplishing the first task of the day leads to getting more tasks completed.)

In the kitchen:

• King’s Hawaiian rolls with honey butter.

• A perfectly grilled thick pork chop or steak.

• A scrumptious chocolate cake. (Are you hungry yet?)

In the workplace:

• Crisp new copies of a dynamite proposal.

• Seeing the finished product at the end of your assembly line.

• Finding extra money in the budget for upgraded computers.

• Landing that big account.

At school:

• A pristine science project.

• An A+ on your history research paper.

• Hitting a walk-off home run to win the game.

I think we all know how good it feels at the end of a day’s work, regardless of whether it was physically, mentally, or emotionally challenging, to finally get to the (made) bed and lay our heads down knowing we’ve accomplished something important, bringing order out of the disparate parts of our experience, a finished product out of the many different parts that compose it, or adding beauty where there was barrenness. And even if in all your work you didn’t get the outcome you wanted, you can still have the satisfaction of knowing you gave it your best shot, and that tomorrow will bring another opportunity.

Now up to this point, I’ve kept it pretty upbeat, but to understand the contrast, we need to acknowledge the elephant (or is it a sloth?) in the room: all those verses in Proverbs and elsewhere about not owning up to one’s responsibility to work. Staying in Ecclesiastes, we find this relevant passage in chapter 10 verse 18:

18 Through laziness, the rafters sag; because of idle hands, the house leaks.

Proverbs has several verses about laziness or a general malaise about working. Proverbs 26:13–16 focuses on the topic with a bit of sarcasm to boot:

13 A sluggard says, “There’s a lion in the road, a fierce lion roaming the streets!”

14 As a door turns on its hinges, so a sluggard turns on his bed.

15 A sluggard buries his hand in the dish; he is too lazy to bring it back to his mouth.

16 A sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven people who answer discreetly.

You have to wonder, with four verses like that in a row, if Solomon himself had had a bad day when he wrote this. It wouldn’t surprise me if Solomon had witnessed each of these during his day, and that last sarcastic remark was accompanied by Solomon throwing up his hands in resignation!

New Testament

In the book of Acts, we see some of these contrasts as well. For example, in Chapter 5, we see how Ananias and Sapphira got together to conspire a plot to cheat the church and get ahead. Most of us know what happened to them. By contrast in chapter 6, we see the apostles take up a thorny issue of distributing food to needy Greek widows. They appointed 7 men full of the Holy Spirit to address the matter. They worked hard to earn the new believers’ respect in this matter, and it paid off with more and more people being brought into the kingdom.

Paul himself, later in Acts, reminded the Ephesian elders about his hard work among in the nearly 18 months he spent ministering there. Acts 20:33–35 says:

33 I have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing. 34 You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. 35 In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”

The Thessalonians must have had a problem with not wanting to carry their weight. Paul has to warn them in both letters about laziness in the strongest terms. Paul says in 1 Thess 5:12–15:

12 Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you. 13 Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. 14 And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. 15 Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.

And in 2 Thess 3:6–13, he says something similar:

6 In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers and sisters, to keep away from every believer who is idle and disruptive and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. 7 For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, 8 nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. [skip vs. 9] 10 For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”

Our modern English translation needs two words and a conjunction to translate one Greek word about shirking your responsibility to work, whether it be at your job, at home, or for the kingdom. “Idle and disruptive.” This particular Greek word is only found in the letters to the Thessalonians, which emphasizes the point that something was wrong with the Thessalonians work ethic. In other contexts outside the Bible, the word has to do with being out of military formation or just general disorder and chaos. “Without form and empty.”

Paul continues from there in vv. 11–13, and emphasizes that word again, and transitions us back to a positive thought as we begin to wrap up the message:

11 We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies. 12 Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the food they eat. 13 And as for you, brothers and sisters, never tire of doing what is good. Hear it again: “Never tire of doing what is good.”

Ephesians 2:8–10 (author’s translation; contrast with “walk” in 2:2) says:

8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faithfulness—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to walk in good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

As if to emphasize the point, he says in Ephesians 4:28

28 Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.

Hebrews 4:6–11 (Sabbath rest)

6 Therefore since it still remains for some to enter that rest, and since those who formerly had the good news proclaimed to them did not go in because of their disobedience, 7 God again set a certain day, calling it “Today.” This he did when a long time later he spoke through David, as in the passage already quoted: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” 8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. 9 There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; 10 for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his. 11 Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.

Conclusion

I hope you’ve seen to day how Work produces Order, and Order produces Rest. In a world around us that seems to be trending toward disruption and disorder, it is good to know we have a God who is working hard to hold it together, and to know that there are saints among us who are working hard to support, promote, and uphold God’s kingdom. And now you know the ‘rest’ of the story.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

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What Makes God Weep?

Filed under: Christology,Faith, Faithfulness,Greek,John Gospel of,Life of Christ,Miracles,Resurrection,Thanatology (Death) — Scott Stocking @ 6:00 am
Tags: Compassion, Death, Gospel of John, I am the Resurrection, Jesus wept, John 11, Resurrection

Sermon preached by Scott Stocking, Wheeler Grove Rural Church, January 17, 2021. This was the first Sunday the church was open after COVID.

Introduction

This past year has certainly been a challenging one for the world. Many of us know people affected by COVID, whether testing positive without any more symptoms than a few sniffles, to those who unfortunately lost loved ones or their own lives to the disease. My wife works in a skilled nursing facility in Omaha as an occupational therapist, and had to put on her “protective armor” to work with residents who tested positive for the disease.

Jill and I also have two friends who went to death’s door with the disease, but have or are making what seems to be full recovery. One friend’s wife had actually gone to talk to the funeral home before he rebounded. Another friend, just in that last few weeks, had been on a ventilator. Those who go on a ventilator have a 10% chance of survival. He eventually got off the ventilator and beat the odds, and at last report, he was doing quite well in rehab, just having his trach removed and talking up a storm with his family members.

It’s been an eye-opening experience for me, as I’ve never had two friends in one year come this close to death, and it reminds me both of how fragile life can be, and also how precious life is. In Jesus’s day, life was considered cheap. The philosopher Aristotle said, in so many words, you were born to either be an elite-class ruler or part of the masses of the lower-class ruled. There really wasn’t much of what we call the “middle class” in that day and age, socially or economically.

In the passage we’re looking at today, we see Jesus’s countercultural attitude toward life, at least countercultural in his day and age. Jesus did not think life was cheap. He valued the individual, regardless of their rank in life, and even regardless of the type of life they led. We will also see perhaps the most intense display of Jesus’s humanity as well as glimpses into his divine nature.

What Makes God Weep?

As we come to the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead in John 11, we will see the full range of Jesus’s human and divine natures. Even though “all the fullness of the Deity dwells within him,” he is still fully human as well, so much so that the Gospel writers record Jesus using the title “Son of Man” for himself.

The story starts at the beginning of chapter 11 when Jesus learns that Lazarus, perhaps his best friend outside of the circle of the apostles, is sick. Jesus doesn’t seem concerned however, and like the good friend he is, he intentionally delays going to see Lazarus. Wait, wha? [Pause for effect, pretend to be confused and reread that sentence.] The apostles don’t under Jesus’s delay, but only because he knows “this sickness will not end in death,” but “is for God’s glory.” He eventually says cryptically a few verses later that “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep,” but the apostles don’t pick up on the subtle reference. Jesus must tell them plainly a few verses later that “Lazarus is dead.”

Now it should not surprise us that Type A Martha, the control freak of the two sisters, is the one to go out and meet Jesus at the gate. Since it took Jesus four days from the time he got the news (at least from a human source) to go the two miles from Jerusalem to Bethany, Martha had plenty of time to think about what she’d say. Martha is chomping at the bit to make sure Jesus knows that because he wasn’t there, it’s all his fault that Lazarus died. Pretty harsh, right? In fact, Martha is so focused on getting these first few words out, that we get no indication in the story that she’s in mourning. I think most of us know that feeling: we get our adrenaline going about something peripheral such that we forget how we’re supposed to feel or what we’re supposed to say about whatever the core issue is that is truly impacting us emotionally.

But either Martha knows she’s stuck her foot in her mouth after that first statement, or she really has been thinking about what her second statement would be: “But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” Does that statement represent genuine concern, or is it more like a backhanded control freak statement? “I’ve waited four days for you to get here, Jesus, so you owe me big time!”

But Martha does prove to have a heart of gold, a heart full of faith, and a desire for great theological conversation when she goes on to say, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” If there were other people within earshot of that statement, I’m sure it would have turned heads, especially if any of the crowd were Sadducees. This is exactly the reasoning Abraham used, according to the author of Hebrews, to not hesitate to obey God’s command to him to (almost-) sacrifice Isaac. As such, Martha is the personal recipient of one of Jesus’s seven “I am” statements in the Gospel of John: “I am the resurrection and the life.”

So to this point in the story, what do we see of Jesus’s divine and human natures? Someone brings him the message that Lazarus is dying, but Jesus is most likely already aware of this given what he says to his disciples about it. He doesn’t seem to be concerned about Lazarus dying, which, from a human perspective, might make him appear cold, matter-of-fact, and uncaring. If this were you or I, we’d want to make every effort to go see the friend on their deathbed. But his divine nature knows the end of the story. Jesus implicitly trusts in his heavenly Father that the end result will be for his glory.

So here we have Jesus, quite stoically handling the news of Lazarus’s death and just matter-of-factly stating that he is the resurrection and the life. That last claim, by itself and at face value, would have been absolutely astonishing to his listeners. Most 30-year-olds in Jesus’s day were typically closer to their death than their birth, and the cultures around the Jewish people had little regard for the sanctity of life, as my opening illustration revealed. So keep that and Jesus’s initial response in mind as we look at vv. 32–39 here. We pick up the story after Martha has gone to bring Mary back to see Jesus.

Read John 11:32–33a.

Notice that Mary’s first response to Jesus is identical to Martha’s, except that Mary is making no pretense about her sorrow. She’s bawling, and everyone with her is bawling. The text doesn’t say, but I’m pretty sure Martha is standing there trying to be the strong one: “I’m not going to cry in front of Jesus! I’m not going to cry in front of Jesus.” Truly there is great sorrow here, and this is one of the few times in the Gospels where we see Jesus come face to face with not just mourners, but mourners who are most likely among his closest friends outside his inner circle. In the next few verses, we get a profound insight into the depths of Jesus’s human nature. Back to vs. 33:

Read John 11:33-35

There it is: “Jesus wept.” The shortest verse in our English Bibles. Nine letters. Six consonants and three vowels in three syllables. Yet nothing is more poignant, nothing more revealing of the depth of human sorrow than weeping. And this isn’t some Hollywood zoom-in shot of Jesus’s face where he sheds one dramatic tear. Oh no! Jesus is in full-on weeping mode with his friends. And even though the story doesn’t say it, I think it’s safe to say that, to the extent Martha was trying to be the “strong one,” Martha’s floodgates open up here; she can’t hold it in any longer, and she begins to weep as well, perhaps precisely because Jesus wept. How profound it is when we see first hand that Savior of the world feels AND shows the same emotions that you and I feel at the death of a loved one. How profound to know that our God does NOT turn a blind eye to our sorrow and pain.

Now Jesus’s weeping is not a sudden outburst that isn’t expected in the story. John, in fact, is building up the tension in the story to that climax. Look back at the end of vs. 33: John says Jesus is “deeply moved” and “troubled.” In the original language of the Scripture, that word is perhaps the strongest expression of “negative” emotion one could have. In Matthew 9:30, Jesus “sternly warned” the blind man not to say who healed him. That would have been akin to Jesus saying something like, “Don’t you dare, in a million years, tell anyone who did this to you.” At Jesus’s anointing in Bethany, where the prostitute broke an alabaster jar over Jesus’s head and let the perfume run down him, we’re told that those present (except for Jesus) “rebuked her sharply,” probably even to the extent of cursing her or reminding her in no uncertain terms about her profession.

Some commentators here go as far as suggesting that Jesus may have “snorted” (their word, not mine) here. On the one hand, he could have been choking back the tears in light of all the weeping. On the other hand, and perhaps more importantly, Jesus may also be on the verge of cursing death itself here. The one who is the resurrection and the life, the one who knew he himself must suffer horribly and die on the cross, and who knew God would thus give him ultimately victory over death, must face the death of a friend nonetheless. He shows himself to be the great high priest, as he’s called in Hebrews 4:15, who is not “unable to empathize with our weaknesses,” who has been tempted as we are, and yet was without sin.

Now I want to suggest something here that has probably never occurred to you: The main focus of John’s account of this story here is NOT that Jesus raises someone from the dead eventually. Jesus has already done several amazing miracles to this point, building up to the raising of Lazarus as the greatest of his miracles. Another miracle? I’m impressed of course, but not surprised. John has already hinted to us that that is going to happen in the story, with Jesus’s “I am” statement and Martha’s statement. Keep in mind that John, in his short epistles toward the end of the NT, is fighting against Gnosticism, a belief that nothing done in the body matters at all for eternal salvation. When John says, “Jesus wept,” he’s acknowledging that God considers human life precious and valuable; that the body does matter for our earthly existence. That’s why “Jesus wept” is at the center of this whole story. He intends this show of Jesus’s humanity as the highlight and climax of the story.

This is all pretty intense, right? So if we’ve hit the climax, where do we go from here? Well, there is “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey used to say. There is, as literature professors would put it, the “anticlimax.” Note a further expression of Jesus’s humanity in vs. 36: “See how he loved him.” That word for love there typically implies a brotherly or familial love. It’s not the self-sacrificing agape love, and it’s certainly not any kind of romantic love. It reveals the deep friendship that Jesus had (and will have again) with Lazarus.

Even some in the crowd in v. 37 echo Mary and Martha’s sentiment that Jesus could have kept him from dying. “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

Read John 11:38–40

Once again, we see that word for “deeply moved” that we saw in v. 33. Jesus has still got some fire in him at this point. So when he asks for the stone to be taken away, I think he’s not just making a polite request here. I think he spoke it like I read it, with that “I’ve-had-enough-of-this” indignation. “Let’s get this over with; he’s been dead long enough.” Of course Martha, the rational one, has regained her composure in the time it took to walk over to the tomb, and isn’t too thrilled about consequences of removing the stone. That just stokes Jesus’s fire all the more. “I’m going to raise your brother and you’re worried it might stink a little bit?” I’m pretty sure that the “glory of God” at that point was not going to have any stink associated with it.

Read John 11:41–44

Now when I set out to write this sermon, I had intended to do the three shortest verses in the NT and tie them together in a neat little package. But the more I got into, the more the Spirit led me down the road I followed today, focusing on “Jesus wept.” One of the three shortest verses is “Pray continually,” or more literally, “pray without ceasing.” Jesus offers his prayer here. He doesn’t need to do this, because he knows God is always listening to him. But as he’s said all along in this story, his goal is to make sure God is glorified. He wants to leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that what is about to happen is not some magic trick or sleight of hand. This is God-power all the way, the “incomparably great [resurrection] power for us who believe,” as Paul tells the Ephesians.

In v. 43, Jesus’s fire is still going. Again, it’s not a polite request or, “Hey, Lazarus, ollie ollie ots and free.” Jesus booms with a loud, commanding voice, loud enough to literally wake the dead, “Lazarus, come out!” I think it’s interesting that the NIV here says “The dead man came out.” Umm, looks like he’s not dead any more. The more literal translation here is “the one who has been dead came out.” Can I get an “Amen”?

The third short verse precedes “pray continually” in 1 Thessalonians 5: “Rejoice always.” In the last part of v. 44, Jesus loses all the tension he’s been feeling to this point. I’m sure he’s got a huge smile across his face at this point, as do all those who’ve seen Lazarus rise from the dead and walk out of the grave. Jesus’s happiness, smile, and dare I say laughter are all additional profound insights into Jesus’s human side. The savior who weeps with us in our time of sorrow rejoices with us in our time of joy.

Conclusion/Call to Action

John 11 is a powerful story about Jesus’s love for a friend and his disgust with death and the seeming cheapness of life in the world around him. But how does that impact us today? What are steps that we can take as believers to promote the value of the individual, especially in this time when we’ve had to be isolated from ones we love?

In the ancient world, at and before the time of Christ, there were two practices that absolutely cheapened life. One of them was known as exposure. At that time, if you gave birth to a child you didn’t want, or the child was conceived in, shall we say, ill repute, it was legal, and in certain situation expected of you, to expose that infant to the elements and let the Fates decide what would become of the child. As Christianity took hold, Christians began to rescue these innocents. As Christianity grew and the concept that all life mattered began to take hold culturally, Constantine eventually outlawed the practice all together in the Roman empire.

The second practice was, in certain Greek democracies where they did not have the concept of freedom of speech, the casting of the ostraca. Ostraca were simply pieces of clay pots on which the voters (usually only “citizens”) wrote the name of a person whom they thought was not worthy of participating in their society any longer. The person receiving the most votes was “ostracized,” or banished from the city-state democracy. As you might imagine, the ancients had their share of folks on all sides who spread lies and misinformation about political enemies in order to influence who got voted off the island, so to speak.

In this day and age when our country is so divided on so many issues, it’s important that we learn how to not only respect our differences, but understand why each of us believes what we believe. Jesus’s disciples were a diverse group, from a hated tax collector to the lowly fishermen. My prayer is that we see the value in each and every individual and in what they bring to the table for the good of our Lord and our country. Peace to you all, and thank you for letting me share with you today.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

My views are my own.

Comments (1)

August 24, 2019

The Lord’s Prayer: Deliver Us From the Evil One (Matthew 6:9–13)

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Ephesians,Evil,Faith, Faithfulness,forgiveness,Greek,Matthew Gospel of,Prayer,Providence,Spiritual Warfare — Scott Stocking @ 2:19 pm
Tags: deliver us from evil, Ephesians 6:13, Matthew 6:9–13, Philippians 3:20

Nothing is perhaps more common among the diverse branches of Christianity as the Lord’s Prayer. Aside from the occasional hesitation in the public setting about whether the church that’s reciting it says “trespasses” or “debts,” the basic form of the prayer is well established. Jesus implies in the text leading into Matthew 6:9–13 that it is a model prayer, not something intended to be formulaic or ritualistic (the surrounding context makes that crystal clear!), but rather a pattern for how we approach God the Father in prayer.

Many have proposed legitimate ways of outlining or summarizing the prayer, so my own comments are not intended to suggest those other ways are any less valid than what I am proposing here. We all have our own experiences and filters through which we come to the Father, and he really doesn’t care what, if any pattern we use. He just wants us to come and talk to him. But being a preacher, and an old-school one at that, I thought an alliterative outline would be good to organize my thoughts for my sermon on the passage this past Sunday.

Overview

Praise: Jesus gives praise to the Father in vv. 9–10 for who he is and what he is doing.

Provision: Jesus asks that God provides with the basic necessities of life, represented by bread.

Pardon: Jesus exhorts us to ask the Father’s forgiveness for our sins even as we (can and should) forgive those who sin against us.

Protection: Jesus asks God not only to keep us away from temptation, but also to deliver us from the evil one (or if you’re old school, from evil).

Praise

Verses 9–10 are structured as an inclusio, a literary technique that begins and ends a section with the same word or concept. It’s easy to see in English that the repeated word is “heaven.” The concept (“kingdom”) is repeated in the middle of the three praiseworthy items between the opening and closing lines of the inclusio. How can we be sure of this? In the opening line, “heaven” is actually plural: literally, “Our Father who is in the heavens.” In Matthew’s 32 exclusive uses of the phrase “kingdom of heaven,” “heaven” is always plural.

The fact that “heaven” is plural also calls to mind Ephesians, where five times Paul refers to the “heavenly realms” (a different Greek word formed from the root word for “heaven”) in reference to our proximity to Christ. In Ephesians, we see that we are with Christ in the heavenly realms. Jesus as much as acknowledges that in the closing line of the inclusio: “on earth as it is in heaven.” Actually, the word order in Greek for that phrase is transposed: “as in heaven [singular], so on earth.”

Another interesting tidbit about this section is that the three praise items are all written with third person imperative verbs. English doesn’t have a third person imperative, so we usually translate it something like “Let your name be holy; let your kingdom come; let your will be done.” Those three items are something we can’t command God to do; that totally comes from him, so the standard second person imperative in English wouldn’t do. We’re asking God to will and continue to will those things to be or become true.

Now before moving on to the other three points, I think the use of “heaven” as the key word in the inclusio is no accident. Not only does “kingdom of heaven” always use the plural form of “heaven,” but all references to the “Father…in heaven” also use the plural form. When “heaven” and “earth” are used together in the same phrase, “heaven” is often singular. I think we can look to Paul’s epistles to see how we’re to understand the reference to heaven. Philippians 3:20 says, “Our citizenship is in heaven.” Five times in Ephesians, Paul mentions our relationship to Christ “in the heavenly realms.” I’d never really heard this aspect of the Lord’s Prayer emphasized before, but I believe Jesus is emphasizing the dual citizenship of his followers. Just as we see God acting in heaven, we should work in concert to make it happen on earth. If God’s name is to be considered holy, we should be careful to live in such a way that those on earth can clearly see that. If God’s kingdom is to come, we should be working to make sure it is advancing here on earth. In fact, the final five lines of the prayer go back and forth between God’s work in heaven and his (and our) work on earth. Let’s look at those now.

Provision

“Give us today our daily bread” is a typical second person imperative that we might expect. It’s a simple request of God that he provide our daily, basic needs—not just food, but whatever we need to get through each and every day. It’s focused on our life here on earth, with God acting from heaven to move all the pieces in place for us. And because it’s “daily” bread, Jesus is saying that we should come to God each and every day, not just once in a while.

Asking for God to provide our daily bread does not absolve us from the responsibility to work. If we’re able and have the opportunity, we can and should work for a living. Paul says in Thessalonians that the one who doesn’t work shouldn’t eat. In times we face need, then, we can lean a bit more on this promise. Additionally, those of us here on earth, through compassionate and charitable efforts, can work to provide daily bread for those less fortunate and bring them to a place of self-sufficiency.

Pardon

In the next phrase, Jesus switches the focus to heaven: “Forgive us our debts.” This action again is a second person imperative, and the focus of the action takes place in heaven. Jesus declares us forgiven from the right hand of the Father. After all, it is his shed blood that purchased forgiveness, and his resurrection confirmed that he is both the Son of God and the one that has authority to forgive sins.

The next phrase is the only first person statement in the prayer, and as such, I think an important focus in the prayer. The scene moves back to earth: “As we also have forgiven our debtors.” Verses 14–15, immediately following the prayer, are an important contextual clue that this phrase is the focus of the Lord’s Prayer. If we forgive others here on earth, God forgives our sins; if we don’t forgive others, God won’t forgive our sins.

Protection

God providing our needs and forgiving our sins is essential for our physical and spiritual well-being. It is the best protection we have against the corruption of our souls and against falling into sin. But sometimes, the evil that comes at us may seem larger than life, and we need God’s extra protection to get through the really difficult times.

“Lead us not into temptation” brings the focus back to earth, and returns to the use of a second person verb, but this time, it’s subjunctive. In English terms, that means it rises to the level of an earnest plea: “Please, please, O God, do not lead us into temptation!” It’s one thing for us to ask God to help us in this way; it’s quite another if we intentionally put ourselves in a position to be tempted. The plea recognizes that sometimes, we can’t keep the birds from flying overhead, as Martin Luther put it, but that we can keep them from building a nest on our head. In the modern media and Internet culture, temptation is just a click away. We often need to rely on God’s strength and guidance to keep us out of situations where we might be compromised.

The final phrase, “Deliver us from the evil one,” (back to a second person imperative) returns the focus to heaven again, and brings to mind the passage in Ephesians 6 about the armor of God. Paul says in 6:12 that “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.” This is why the modern translations say “from the evil one” instead of the classic “from evil.” The Greek word for “evil” in the Lord’s Prayer has the definite article with it, and that implies that it’s not talking about a concept, but an actual evil person, someone who intends you harm. Jesus intends us to put a face on the concept. And that doesn’t necessarily always refer to Satan. It can be anyone here on earth or any of the forces Paul mentions above from the heavenly realms who intend us harm.

When Paul exhorts us in Ephesians 6:13 to “put on the full armor of God,” this is our God-given arsenal to “deliver us from the evil one.” What many people don’t realize about that phrase is that the armor of God doesn’t come from some divine arsenal that has an unlimited supply of breastplates, helmets, and shields. Every reference to a defensive piece of armor or the dual-purpose sword has its origin in the Old Testament, and they are all pieces that God himself wears. So “armor of God” means God’s own personal armor! In other words, we’ve got the best!

Conclusion

The Lord’s Prayer is a model prayer, but it is so much more as I’ve tried to show here. As a model, it serves as a daily defense against the things that would try to rob us of our spiritual health and joy in Christ. It encourages us to forgive as we have been forgiven so we can have healthy relationships with family and friends. It shows that we rely on God to give us just what we need each and every day. It is our way to stay connected to the Savior and know his love and protection each and every day.

My thoughts are my own,

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

Comments (2)

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