We are moving this site to the newly-launched www.davidskorupa.com
The new site will give us greater ability to host podcast material, and also gives us greater control of graphic design elements.
Please change your bookmarks to reflect this change, and we hope to see you soon at www.davidskorupa.com
I’m teaching two Life Change Small Groups this semester, and since they meet on different nights with different participants I decided to give myself a bit of a break and teach the same subject matter to both: lessons from the writings of John the Apostle.
The Apostle John as imagined by the painter El Greco in the 1600s.
During the days when John was writing his Gospel, the letters we know as I, II and III John and the Revelation, there were already false teachers about, making a name and profit for themselves by speaking about Jesus to crowds. One way these false teachers attempted to grow their audiences was to make changes to the story of Christ, hoping to make Jesus more embraceable and palatable for their listeners.
In John’s day, a lecturer named Cerinthus was teaching that “the Christ” had never actually been a man, but rather that a normal man named Jesus had the “spirit of the Christ” come upon him at his baptism. This same spirit, as Cerinthus’ false teaching goes, left the man Jesus just before the crucifixion. This heresy had a willing audience among those who could not accept that a human being could also be divine, or that anything divine would be able to suffer pain in this physical world. Cerinthus also taught that as a “reward” for his suffering the pain of the cross, this normal man Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day. Strangely enough to us today, people embraced this false teaching because many in that day thought that anything in this physical world was by that same nature corrupted. Anything of the spiritual world, they thought, was pure and incapable of being harmed in the physical sphere. The idea of one wholly man and wholly divine simultaneously offended their preconceived notions of how the universe functioned.
Docetism was another heretical concept in John’s day which taught the falsehood that the divine Jesus only seemed or “pretended” to suffer during his passion, in a “playing to the crowd’s expectations” sort of way.
When we read John’s writings, we should not be surprised that he tackles these types of false teachings head-on, stressing both Jesus’ divinity and His humanity repeatedly throughout his Gospel. Whereas two other Gospel writers had already provided Jesus’ human ancestral family tree in their accounts (Matthew 1:1-17, Luke 3:23-38) John cut straight to the point and immediately proclaimed Jesus’ divine “ancestry” by declaring “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1); and that “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth (John 1:14). Early in his Gospel, John shows us Jesus’ humanity, providing us examples that He became zealous for His Father’s house (John 2:17), and that He tired from long journeys as any other man would (John 4:6).
To those who embraced the lectures of Cerinthus and ideas of docetism, John’s Gospel was tremendously challenging. It was already well-known in Christian circles that John knew Jesus personally and was one of the trusted “inner circle” apostles along with Simon Peter and John’s own brother, James. This same John now assaulted these false teachings and made it unmistakably clear: Jesus is both human and divine. One cannot claim Jesus only suffered in His humanity; one must accept that He also suffered in His divine nature. One cannot say Jesus did not really feel temptation because of His divine nature; one must accept that because of His humanity He felt tempted, but was able to endure and overcome all temptation.
Today we still see people trying to manipulate definitions of the person of Jesus Christ for their own means and purposes. Attempting to appeal to human greed, many false teachers proclaim that Jesus is obligated to repair all financial difficulties if called upon in a certain way. Trying to find an audience with the sick and infirm, many false teachers guarantee the Lord’s power can be manipulated into performing miraculous feats of healing. Still others attempt to link the Lord’s will with affiliation to political parties, ignoring the fact that Christ had little or nothing to say about the very Roman Empire government which carried out His crucifixion. Attempting to justify a religion of their own design, some apply the name of Jesus to any power they acknowledge outside themselves, whether it be new age superstition or “enlightened self-actualization.”
John makes it clear that Jesus is not concerned with being redefined to be “more acceptable” to the people of this world, nor does He want His followers to be more like this world. “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:16).
When we read John’s writing and see his declarations of Jesus’ humanity and divinity, we are seeing the Apostle waging war with the all-too prevalent heresies of his day. May we likewise never back down from defending the truth about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, in this world which continually seeks to redefine Him for its own advantage, comfort and temporary ease of mind.
More precisely, we have the first podcast from the Memphis Outreach Night (MOUTN) group now online here.
Memphis Outreach Night
Ed Knight has been gracious to host the file on his restorememphis.com website, and he is the podcast’s master of ceremonies for this easy-going “episode 1″ file. The podcast was created after he combined several different files on his Mac.
The podcast recaps a short overview study on the story in John 2 about Christ and his disciples at the wedding feast in Cana that we examined at a MOUTN meeting in late January. If you’re interested in listening, I encourage you to have your Bible open to the story in John 2, or have the words on your computer screen by visiting biblegateway.com. There’s just something about having the Word in front of you when listening to a Bible study that adds to your understanding and retention.
Earlier tonight we recorded another short lesson, this time from John chapter 3. Hopefully, that will be made available as its own podcast sometime next week. (We know early efforts can often be a bit rough, but we plan to only get better with experience. As a friend of mine recently said, “Anything worth doing is worth doing well, but until you can do it well, it’s worth doing poorly.”)
Comments and/or questions related to the podcast are welcomed and encouraged.
Last week we had snow in the greater Memphis, TN area. Our county and city schools closed for the day, and my daytime office job followed their example. After driving my wife to her place of employment, I found myself with some time so I decided to mess around with the idea of podcasting.*
The idea must have had merits, because other members of the MOUTN outreach team decided to do the same thing that day – even though we hadn’t discussed it or planned it out that way.
When we met the following Thursday night, we listened to some of our efforts. Given that it was, for each of us, our first real venture into that type of thing, the results weren’t half bad. Encouraged, we recorded a good part of the Scripture study that evening. After some off-site merging of sound files, I am told we now have an actual up-and-running test/intro file over at the iTunes site with the word MOUTN used in the labeling.
As a Zune guy, I don’t spend much time at the iTunes site. But once I get the specific details I’ll share them with you at this website so you can run over and download the lesson(s) if you wish.
*”podcasting” is the word the kids today use to refer to an action very similar to the phrase “messing around with a tape recorder” used by people of my generation and older. The main difference is, seemingly like all things today, it involves using a computer and the internet.
Hey everyone,
Long time no post I know, but things have been very busy of late as my wife and I have teamed up with another couple at our church to launch Memphis Outreach Night (MOUTN) each Thursday at 7:00 p.m. CST.
New ministry work
MOUTN is a part of our church’s “Life Change Small Group” sessions, but with an important twist: we’re dedicated to spending 50% of our time on thinking up (and working on) creative new outreach work, and 50% on quality Bible study. This is very much a “starting from scratch” effort with an emphasis on building through bringing new people to our fellowship, so we invite you to join us in seeing what the Lord wants to do with this ministry. The format is very relaxed, entertaining and nontraditional.
We’d love to have you come and take part in our Bible study, which will be focused on the works of the Apostle John. Don’t worry if you missed last week’s session – each week you can walk in and be caught up in a matter of seconds. Coming to MOUTN on Thursdays at 7:00 does not mean you are joining a new church or leaving your present church, so come by and see what’s going on! (Directions and more here.)
To learn more about MOUTN, visit our website at http://moutn.wordpress.com
I posted another poll over at the True North Scripture Fellowship site earlier this morning, so if you have a few moments please go over there and make a few choices, much appreciated.
I’m still struggling with choosing a date and time for the first meeting. I have access to a fantastic meeting site, but it is only truly available for the project on Saturdays. Trying to start up a new study is difficult enough without asking people to make a dent in the only free day they have each week, so I’m reluctant to “light the fuse” on a Saturday date just yet.
Hopefully more before Christmas,
- David
I’ve been SWIPED!
My short essay on Samuel’s Levitical heritage (seen here on this site) has been copied and added to a British religious website called “Teachable Hearts.” Someone there, or a member of their group, copied my text word-for-word and made it into a downloadable Microsoft Word document (on this page) with no attribution to me or this site whatsoever. There seems to be no way to contact this UK site without going through a registration/forum board process.
I suppose this sort of thing is inevitable in our age of laxed attribution practices, brought on by the widespread culture of copy-and-paste birthed by the internet. There are some good things through all this: these Britons are not charging people to read the swiped information, and they are sharing it with an audience I would probably never reach otherwise. Since the more who have access to the content the better, in the Big Picture scheme I’ll file it under “spreading the word” and hope the next person who wishes to share the essay will have better feelings about citing sources.
In the end, I find it wonderful that I’ve made some small contribution to Biblical studies for some people overseas.
- Bro. David Skorupa
I know we’ve all had our fill of everything related to “voting” this month, but please take a moment and click your answer in a short poll on the Scriptures over at True North Scripture Fellowship at http://truenorthscripture.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/help-us-by-taking-a-short-poll/
Much appreciated, and please only vote once,
- Bro. David Skorupa
As part of the True North Scripture Fellowship work, I’m considering using resources available at the Memphis Public Library on a very steady basis. The problem is, I haven’t used my library card for the better part of twenty-five years.
Oh, I’ve used the library system since then – numerous times, multiple times more than the average citizen, in fact. I just never checked books out. Over the years I got into an easy habit of walking in, finding what I needed, taking copious notes or using a copying machine, and then leaving.
“Why not just check it out?” you may ask.
Well, I simply lost my library card somewhere along life’s way. I honestly have no idea where or when I lost it, but I know that it is indeed missing. In the back of my mind, I have this silly nightmare scenario where someone picked up my lost card and just went hog-wild checking out books without returning them, running up my civic tab to the stratosphere. My card is satisfying the cravings of a “overly literate identity thief” kind of thing. And so, in the best traditions of what you don’t know can’t hurt you, I never looked into the matter as my life grew increasingly busy over the years.
That changes today.
Early this morning I found the Memphis Public Library’s website and downloaded a Library Card Application. I will visit my neighborhood library branch today and clear the matter up once and for all. If my nightmare scenario proves true and I have tremendous fines, I’ll see if I qualify for one of those new government bailout programs or something, I suppose… but if you do not hear from me again, perhaps you’ll be kind enough to visit me in the library dungeon, which my childhood memories always suggested was downstairs behind the stern ladies at the book checkout counter.
The lesson is to avoid delaying when taking care of things, of course. No one takes care of everything in a timely fashion with the pace of modern life, so most people have one or two areas they’ve allowed to slide for awhile. Granted, you may not have a two-decade-old library card thing going on like I do, but hopefully this post has encouraged you to take care of that nagging little problem that seems to have permanently lodged itself into your “delay” box.
Putting things off is often a form of laziness or sloth, which can become a horrible area of personal weakness if left unchecked. When sloth or laziness becomes the normal way of going through life, it can even become dangerous. In fact, the Book of Proverbs tells us that “he who is slothful in his work is a brother to him who is a great destroyer.” (18:9 NKJV)
As we approach the holidays, wouldn’t it be nice to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas with that problem already solved, or at least on its way to being over? Take some time today to begin moving that issue into the “resolved” section of your life.
True North Scripture Fellowship’s home on the web (at least for the time being) is at
http://truenorthscripture.wordpress.com/ Please add it to your bookmarks or subscribed RSS feeds if you are interested in keeping up with what is happening through this new ministerial work.
