Lee Harmon's Blog, page 4
March 17, 2015
John 14:12, Greater Works than Jesus?
“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.
//Those who follow after Jesus will do greater works than Jesus? Is that really what this verse means? Doesn’t that sound a bit sacrilegious, or at least a bit presumptuous? Let me quote a couple more verses:
A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher. –Luke 6:40
So apparently whi...
March 12, 2015
Book review: The Allure of Gentleness
by Dallas Willard
This is one of those books that I can only half-agree with, yet earns five stars for its approach and message. More conservative readers will appreciate the book most. Willard considers the work of apologetics as extremely important. “Being mistaken about life, the things of God, and the human soul is a deadly serious matter.” About such things he and I will disagree, yet I still enjoyed the book immensely.
It is, like other effective apologetics books, a “feel-good defens...
March 10, 2015
Matthew 2:15, Called Out of Egypt
And [Jesus, Mary and Joseph were] there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.
//Jesus was apparently from Nazareth, but prophecy foretold that Israel’s savior would be born in Bethlehem. So our two New Testament birth stories contrive a way to put Jesus’s birth there. In Luke’s version of the virgin birth, Joseph travels to Bethlehem for a census, and there the child is born, after which the...
March 7, 2015
Matthew 22:10, The Bad and the Good
So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good. And the wedding hall was filled with guests.
//One day, said Jesus in parable, a king prepared a wedding feast for his son and sent out his servants to call those who were invited. But the invited guests weren’t in the mood. They had better things to do, it seems.
So the king was angry. Rather than waste his time with these rich and pretentious busy people, he sent his servants into the st...
March 5, 2015
Mark 2:14, Who Followed Whom?
And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the receipt of custom, and said unto him, Follow me. And he arose and followed him.
//Levi, elsewhere called Matthew, held a contemptible office. He was a tax collector, sitting in the tax office. He was working for the Roman government, taking money from honest working men and giving it to the Empire. His own personal income came from whatever excess he decided to charge, and many in his profession grew rich because of their less...
March 4, 2015
Book review: Wanted
by Chris Hoke
★★★★★
Dark and yet hope-filled, this book carries you along on the journey of a young pastor through gangs, prisons, and illegal immigrants. These are desperate people. But these are the people–like the huckster tax collector Matthew in the Bible–that Jesus made a point of befriending.
It’s an emotional and frightening journey. Chris at first felt uncomfortable with the title of Pastor, but that’s what his outcast acquaintances insisted on calling him. Pastor means “shepherd” … in...
March 2, 2015
Book Excerpt: John’s Gospel: The Way It Happened
“‘Without wine there is no joy,’” Matthew quoted a rabbinic saying. He still stared over the wall. “Your tale speaks truly, if it is meant as a parable of today’s age. Remember what Isaiah prophesied? ‘The new wine dries up and the vine withers; all the merrymakers groan.’ And do you know why, John? You know why, Ruth?” When neither spoke, Matthew answered his own question. “‘The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting cov...
February 27, 2015
Mark 12:41-44, The Widow’s Farthing
And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much. And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing. And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all...
February 26, 2015
Book Excerpt: The River of Life
In the Bible, the Spirit is associated with creation. In Genesis 1:2, the wind/spirit/breath-of-God blows across the deep. Thus the wind provides an excellent picture of the Spirit, roaming the earth. Breath is merely wind inside us. To be “born of the Spirit” means to be created anew, embracing the meaning of life intended by God. It is God breathing new life into a person. In both Hebrew and Greek, there is only one word for both “wind” and “spirit.” The tendency of the churches of today to...
February 25, 2015
Genesis 22:11-12, Did God Tell Abraham To Sacrifice Isaac? Part III of III
And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him.
//Continued from yesterday: Suppose, in the story of Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac, that the two names for God–Yahweh and Elohim–refer to different beings, rather than to the same god. Suppose that Yahweh is the god who called Abraham out of Ur, while Elohim refers to the gods he once worshipped.
Yester...
