My Lego Sermon

I think a lot of Christians know the Bible like a bag of legos: they know a verse here and there, but they've never put the whole thing together so that it makes sense.

I thought of this sermon illustration a few years ago and I wanted to use it with our students. . .but I didn't know if any of them had every seen legos, much less played with them. I knew the only way I could make this work would be to buy a lego set and show them the difference. So I bought this box of legos in South Africa (you can see the corner of the box sticking up out of the green bag). Then I divided out the legos into two zip-loc bags so that each bag had exactly the same legos in it. And then, from the legos in one bag, I built something.

I used this illustration a couple of years ago and preached in chapel to the students from Romans 3. This past Sunday, I preached in a local church plant--they're still meeting in this tent, you see. At the beginning of the sermon, I held up both bags of legos and told them, "Both these bags contain exactly the same thing! Do they look the same to you?" People responded that they looked different. Somebody said, "There's a figure in that one." "What kind of a figure?" I asked. "It's a human being."

I explained that it's easy for us to concentrate on learning favorite verses from the Bible; few of us ever put those verses together to make sense of the whole thing. And it's true: think about it. We like to meditate on John 3:16; or we find our favorite proof texts and hammer home our take on doctrine. We seldom trace Paul's arguments from the beginning of Romans through to end to find out the point he's making. Or we don't even know that the unifying principle of the gospel of John is the description of 7 miracles that persuade us to "believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."

So I proceeded to read Romans 5:12-19 and tied it all together into one coherent argument. And then, when I was finished, I told them, "See, I have built you a man! These verses are no longer scattered about, but we've connected them to each other to make something familiar, something that makes sense."

Going out to the Bush

February 21, 2009

We’ve been here nearly a month now. Last weekend we drove out to the Kalahari desert and stayed at the Ultra-Stop in Kang. I’ve already posted pictures from that trip on my facebook page, but I didn’t give many details.

The reason for our trip was to visit the little group of believers there and to make arrangements for our students to stay out there for three weeks during the Missions Practicum in May. The students are excited, yet nervous, about going out to Kacgae and pitching tents in the compounds of various Bushman families. But I’m not nervous, am I?!? Hah! What do you think?

We were saddened and surprised to learn that T.T., the government nurse at Kacgae, is being transferred to Ghanzi. We knew she was due for a change, but it seemed God was keeping her in the clinic there because she helped to keep the little congregation going. We met the new nurse, Susan, and learned that she is also a Christian lady. T.T. is from the Apostolic Faith Mission in Zimbabwe and Susan is from the Pentecostal Assemblies of God of Zambia. Nurses from Botswana don’t usually take jobs out in these remote clinics. We thank God he sent another Christian to take T.T.’s place.

I also met my namesake on this trip: Keatlaretse’s little daughter Janet. I wonder who she’s named after?

Pray that we’ll be able to work out all the details for the Missions Practicum. We’ll be taking a group of about 12 students out to live in very harsh conditions, to learn about the Bushmen, and to seize every opportunity to teach from God’s Word.

We've Arrived!

30 January 2009

Praise God! We arrived back in Botswana nearly a week ago now, and the work wouldn’t wait! We’re living in temporary housing for a couple of weeks till we can change the flooring in our hallway and do a bit of painting and some other maintenance and updates that are easier to do when nobody’s living in the house.

It was kind of nice to leave the US late in the day: both our kids and both our grandkids were able to come to the airport with us at about 4:30 in the afternoon. Ian got absorbed in his Nintendo DS, but Iona was literally bouncing off the walls! We hugged and kissed a lot, but finally had to let them go so they could eat dinner and we could go through security to our gate.

One of the big projects last term was the registration of our school with the government of Botswana. We assumed that government registration was equivalent to what we call accreditation in the US, but we found out differently since we got here. When our colleague, Pat Mahar, picked us up from the airport last Saturday, he told Chuck there was a seminar on accreditation sponsored by the government and 2 people from Assembly Bible College were required to attend on Tuesday and Wednesday. So Chuck and Pastor Ntwaetsile attended, and they discovered that registration only makes us eligible to apply for accreditation; well, that and it gives us permission to keep the school open. Other schools have been shut down by the government, if their application for registration was not approved. ABC is the only theological school whose registration application was approved—the other 3 Bible Schools have been closed.

We thank the Lord for bringing us here (in 2005) in time to apply for registration and for helping with all the paperwork (reams and reams of paperwork!), so that Assembly Bible College is operating, still training pastors for local churches. God is good.

Love in Christ, Chuck and Janet

More of Romans 3

The main theme of Romans 3 is righteousness. We tend to think of righteousness as a description of a person’s behavior or character; if you read this chapter carefully, though, you will notice that Paul does not speak of righteousness as if it is behavior, but more as if it is a status. He says that a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known. Later he says that “we maintain that a man is justified [made righteous] by faith apart from observing the law;” in other words a person’s righteousness does not depend on what he does—not on his observance of the law.

I can remember Sunday School teachers defining “righteousness” as a right relationship with God. I like that idea; and the relationship with God that it best describes is a relationship of approval: your status is “righteous” when God approves of you. Mankind has always assumed that we had to earn God’s approval by keeping the law, but Paul explains that we can never earn God’s approval no matter how hard we try. Instead God bestows His approval graciously on anybody who trusts in the sacrifice of Jesus.

Romans 3 again

Another thing about Romans 3 is that it keeps emphasizing that we're all the same, especially equating the Gentiles and the Jews. Verse 9 says that Jews and Gentiles are all under sin; verse 22 says there is no difference, meaning there's no difference between Jews and Gentiles, that we all sin and fall short of God's glory and we're all justified by His grace. Paul does say, though, that the Jews have an advantage: they KNOW what God demands, because He told them; verse 1 says they've been entrusted with the very words of God. Having an advantage doesn't mean you win. . .it just means you get a head start.

Romans 3

I started memorizing Romans 3 a month or so ago, because I love its message so much. As far as I'm concerned, the essence of the gospel is explained so well in this one little chapter.

Basically, Paul starts out by saying that God didn't give us His Law so that we could perfect ourselves by keeping the law: He gave it so that we could see how far short of perfection we fall. That's what verse 20 means, ". . .rather, through the law we become conscious of sin." I think of it like this: what we were doing was wrong all along, but it was not formally wrong till there was a law against it. You know, they can't charge you with a crime if there's no law against it yet. There was a time when baby car seats were not the law--that meant you could carry your baby in your arms in the car and the police wouldn't stop you and write you a ticket. But it was still dangerous: if you'd crashed your car, the baby still would have been hurt or even killed. The pre-1970's world went along totally oblivious to the danger of babies riding in cars; but the law made us conscious of the danger by holding the threat of a ticket over our heads. The law made of conscious of the sin of carrying a baby loose in a car that's speeding down the highway.

Still becoming

We recently read a great book by a guy named J.A.C. Redford; it's called "Welcome All Wonders: A Composer's Journey." You know, people usually think of "finding themselves" during their youth--as a teenager, human beings take a journey that brings them to that place where they become sure of their identity.

But I feel like I'm still becoming who I am. I don't have to stop learning and changing simply because I'm. . .mature! I don't change my mind as easily as I used to, but I still read and listen and consider new information and change old habits.