Author: Tim Ehrhardt

I'm just a common ordinary pastor, chaplain, father, grandfather, and dog owner who loves the smell of a genuine leather Bible and the aroma of its message. I'm on a quest to track down the best Bibles, how to best read and use them, and to discover the encouragement inside.

Daniel 9:1-14

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
          There is no evidence in Scripture that the prophet Daniel was anything but godly.  He was a wise man with a high level of integrity and spiritual acumen.  Yet, when he prayed he identified himself fully with his people and their sins.  Daniel was not one to exult in his own private faith while railing against the sins of others.  Instead, when sin abounded he practiced lament.  When Judah landed in exile Daniel did not complain about getting a bum rap from God because he himself was not like the others.  Daniel did not try and claim the moral high ground and distance himself from his fellow Jews.  Notice how Daniel’s prayer of confession is a very “we” thing:
“We have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules.  We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name….  To us, O LORD, belongs open shame, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you….  All Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice.”
             At the beginning of this season of Lent, let us as God’s people realize our mortality, our dependence upon God, our sinfulness, and our desperation for the Lord.  Let us lay aside all pretensions to godliness and confess our sins together.  Grace can only really be received by being profoundly in touch with our private and corporate complicity in the sins and abuses of the world.
             Gracious God, hear our prayer.  We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed in those things we have done and the things we have left undone.  Yet, your mercy is eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, One God, forever and ever.  Amen.

Fasting

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
The season of Lent begins with Ash Wednesday and treks the next forty days to the climax of Easter Sunday.  Associated with this time are spiritual disciplines such as fasting.  True fasting does not abstain from food just to get noticed by God, but has as its purpose a generous spirit and a giving heart.  Both abstinence and generosity are necessary in the practice of fasting (Isaiah 58). 
 
            Fasting is such a neglected spiritual practice today that we need to make sense of the reason to do without food for a set amount of time.  Fasting ought to put us in touch with our vulnerability and should remind us of our mortality and our frailties. Through fasting we remember that if we are not fed we will die.  Standing before God hungry, we realize we are dependent and desperate before him.  We discern through fasting that we are actually poor, called to be rich in a way that the world does not understand. We are empty, called to be filled with the fullness of God. We are physically hungry, called to taste all the goodness that can be ours in Christ as we get in touch with a hunger for God.
 
            But fasting does not end with only abstinence from food.  In other words, fasting is not just a private individual thing, but is meant to open our eyes and our hearts to the truly needy among us and in the world.  We are to be open to both the spiritual needs of people, and their very real material needs.  In addressing the spiritual needs of people, St. Jerome said in the 4thcentury concerning fasting that “When you see people freezing outside in the frigidity of unbelief, without the warmth of faith, impoverished and homeless, lead them home to the church and clothe them with the work of incorruption, so that, wrapped in the mantle of Christ, they will not remain in the grave.”
 
            True fasting, however, addresses not just the spiritual but the quite real daily physical needs of people for the basic necessities of life.  Fasting abstains from food in order to provide.  For example, fasting and prayer can go together so that we stop eating in order to take that time to pray; giving up a meal can be done in order to put the food that would have been eaten into the pantry for the needy; fasting from lunch at our jobs can be done not just to get more work done but so that we might share both our food and our friendship with those in need.
 
            There are intimate connections between worship, fasting, justice, and reconciliation.  We cannot separate these out as if they do not relate to one another.  All of this is really designed for us to get back in touch with the real meaning of repentance, which is what the season of Lent is all about.  To repair a broken relationship with God or with another person; to grieve over the state of a certain situation; to devote oneself to service are just some ways that fasting leads to repentance which leads to new life.
 
            It is a good idea to use this season to deal honestly with our own complicity in the sins of our world, our nation, our church, and our families.  The worship that God desires is inescapably corporate as well as compellingly personal.  To ensure that all people around us flourish as human beings is not merely an obligation but is necessary to our collective fulfillment as God’s people.
 
            The result of true fasting is repentance from sin that has the fruit of renewal and restoration because fasting connects us to God so that we seek to repair and rebuild what has been torn down. 
 
            We fast during Lent in order to practice repentance, attach ourselves to God, and become more generous toward others.  For most of the history of the church Christians were expected to observe regular fasts on Wednesdays and Fridays every week year round.  When the season of Lent came the church was united in their commitment to use the forty days as a time of introspection, confession, and fasting in order to prepare for the miracle of forgiveness on Good Friday and its life-giving power on Easter.  It was understood to be a time to respond to sin, to be purged of bad desires, to yearn for forgiveness, and to develop godly habits of living. 
 
            When the Reformation came, no one feared the danger of empty ritual more than the Reformers, especially Luther.  Yet, they were still all agreed that fasting ought to be an outward Christian discipline practiced at regular intervals.  As for me, I think the least I could do is fast two meals a week – one on Wednesday and one on Friday, to not only be in solidarity with the faithful that have gone before us, but in order to let the season of Lent do what it was intended to do.
 

 

            I would encourage us all to consider implementing some sort of regular fast through Lent, if for no other reason, to fulfill the spirit and intent of biblical fasting.  Let us, through fasting, connect deeply with Christ in these next forty days of purposeful Christian living.

Job 19:23-27

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
          There must be suffering before glory.  This is a truth that is difficult to swallow.  Jesus plainly taught his disciples that he must suffer and die before being raised from the dead and glorified.  We follow the same pattern:  suffering before glory.  There cannot be resurrection, new life, and glorious change without first dying to self, becoming a humble servant, and being last not first.
Job is one of the more familiar characters of the Bible.  He suffered like no person before him or since him.  Yet, his glory is like none other, as well.  In the middle of his agony, in the darkness of not understanding what was happening to him, and at the lowest point of his life there was the faintest but clearest glimmer of hope.  Job knew that his Redeemer lives.  Job had the confident expectation that his suffering meant something.  Job held out not a wishful thinking, but a settled hope that he would someday see God and that he would be redeemed from his torment.
As Christians, we may not understand everything about the Scriptures or theology.  Yet, we intuitively know in the shadowy recesses of our present sufferings that it will not always be this way.  We know that our Redeemer lives.  We know that there will be judgment.  We know whether our souls have genuine hope or whether they put up the pretense when asked, “How are you doing?”  “Fine” is the reply while we are dying inside. 
 
If the ancient response to suffering that Job expressed teaches us anything it is:  that we must be real about the raw emotional pain that is within us; and, that we must affirm the hope of redeeming deliverance and new life in order to remain patient and godly.
Suffering Savior, the One who took my place, thank you for dying on my behalf.  Help me through my present sufferings to see the hope of Easter.  Be gracious to me so that I might be gracious to others, even when I think so much of my own troubles.  Amen.

Christ’s Transfiguration

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
            The last Sunday before Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent has been traditionally observed for celebration of Christ’s glorious transfiguration.  In this transforming event we see a fuller glimpse of Jesus’ identity and his ultimate end of ascension and glorification.  It is possible that in focusing on this account of Christ’s metamorphosis that it all seems very strange, even confusing.  Maybe you just have no categories of thought to explain such an encounter (Mark 9:2-9).
 
            In a Peanuts cartoon Charlie Brown and Linus were lying on their backs looking at the sky.  Charlie Brown says, “Linus, do you see anything in the clouds?”  Linus said, “Yes, I do.  For instance, that one over there bears a striking resemblance to Michelangelo’s depiction of the Creation on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  And that one, there over the school, looks like a map of Scandinavia, see; there’s Denmark and Sweden.  And that one over there looks like a helix.  Do you ever see anything Charlie Brown?”  Charlie Brown replied, “Well, I was going to say a ducky and a horsey but I changed my mind.”
 
Perhaps your spiritual life seems more like Charlie Brown than Linus.  Compared to the experiences of others, you may not have had any defining moments of ecstasy, no shining Jesus right in front of you, or no spectacular vision of Christ.  Maybe your life seems rather mundane and ordinary in light of the many stories we have in the Gospels of Jesus doing the miraculous. 
 
Most of our lives are lived in the daily grind.  In the week in and week out monotony of life we need a bit of hope, maybe even a lot of hope.  In fact, we need an occasional mountain top experience because those are glimpses into the future of what it will be like someday when the kingdom of God comes in all its fullness.
 
The event of Christ’s transfiguration came after a hard frank discussion Jesus had with the disciples about his impending death.  Jesus clearly taught them that he must suffer, be rejected, and killed.  But in three days he would rise again.  The disciples did not want to hear that, and Peter even rebuked Jesus for saying it.
 
            In response, Jesus said this to them all:  “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it” (Mark 8:34-35).
 
Jesus identified himself as the Suffering Servant, as the One who must suffer and die.  However, he is also the One to be glorified.  For Jesus, there had to be suffering before glory.  And it is the same for us.  The Christian life is filled with the difficulty of walking through the valley of the shadow of death, but is also punctuated with mountain top experiences that give us hope to keep doing what Jesus did.  In other words, we must listen to Jesus and follow him.  The nature of our Christian walk is up and down; both the mountain and the valley are spiritual realities; both are important.
 
            Moses and Elijah were on the mountain with Jesus at his transfiguration.  In the Old Testament, Moses was the person used by God to deliver the Israelites out of their slavery in Egypt and brought them to the Promised Land.  Centuries later, when the Israelites had been in the land for quite a while, Elijah was the person used by God to bring about a great repentance from Baal and a mighty revival back to the exclusive worship of the Lord.  As good as those guys were back then, having them with Jesus on the mountain meant that it gets even better with Christ.  Jesus is the Messiah, the True Deliverer, who saves the people from their sins.  What is more, Jesus is the Ultimate Revivalist, bringing the true grace and love of God to people and calling them from legalistic religion back to the true worship of God.
 
            Deliverance and revival were what Jesus was all about in his ministry.  And he expects all who follow him to do the same.  In the ministry of every believer, there will be suffering because we must take up our crosses; and, there will also be glory, experiencing and seeing the deliverance of sin that comes from genuine revival.         
 
            A voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love.  Listen to him!”  If you have had a mountain top experience with Jesus, let that encounter with him give you the drive and the hope to keep carrying the bucket of suffering through the valley, without living in the past.  If you have never been on the mountain, today is the day to listen to Jesus and follow what he says. 
 

 

The answer to all that is vexing us is not to be found outside of Jesus Christ.  Let us go to him, listen to him, and obey what he says.  Let us know the Word of Christ, and bank on it.  Let us understand that our light and momentary sufferings will result in praise, honor, and glory when Jesus is revealed.  Let our churches be shaped by a vision of Jesus, exalted and glorified.