Joe Pursch

“And I was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only were hearing it said, “He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” And they glorified God because of me.” Galatians 1:22 – 24

It’s safe to say that the Apostle Paul was a man who became “mega-changed” through meeting Christ. And the story got around about the dramatic changes in his life. It was a big story because he had indeed experienced big change. He went from being a Christ Denier and a Church Destroyer to a Christ Preacher and a Church Planter. With such a hostile history toward God replaced by such a committed one, his story naturally preceded him wherever he went.

What about you and I as Christ Followers? Does our story precede us wherever we go among those who don’t yet know Christ? Do we have a reputation for being committed to Christ? Serious? Dedicated?

You might object that not all of us have had such a dramatic change in our lives as Paul did. In fact, it’s true that many of us have known Christ from an early age in life and pretty much “grown-up Christian”, with the beliefs and lifestyle that go with it. Well, it may be true that we all may not have a dramatic conversion, but we all should have a distinct dedication to Jesus. A dedication that lets our reputation go before us. I think that’s what people talked about regarding Paul. It wasn’t necessarily the dramatically wicked life he had before, but the passionate love for Christ he had after. It was his dedication that truly impressed them. And that’s something that we all have a chance for others to talk about regarding our lives. People ought to observe our lives as Christ Followers and see a unique dedication to trusting and obeying Jesus in many domains of our lives. It ought to show up in how we love our families, and how we handle the stresses and challenges of the workplace. It ought to be seen in the way that we raise our children and in the vision we have for them. And it ought to downright shine in the way that we calmly and humbly face hard times. It’s a story that we can write in the words of others as they watch us and wonder.

What kind of reputation is proceeding you today, Christ Follower?

For over 30 years I have been speaking to various audiences, both secular and faith-based, about the American atrocity known as Abortion on Demand. The beginnings of that journey unfolded in a university campus lecture hall in 1978, where I had just finished giving a speech on the ethical basis for the Pro-Life position. It was the first presentation I had ever given on the subject. As the leader of an on-campus ministry, I along with my leadership team had decided to offer a series of lectures on controversial subjects. Our goal was to elicit dialogue on campus about various issues, and to contrast the ethics of the Christian position with those of the secular stand. I had never researched the issue of abortion in my life up until that time; in fact, the only reason I brought the speech was because, in a literal drawing of the straws, the topic had fallen to me.

My speech had not been religious in content, nor had I referred to the Scriptures in any way. My defense of the unborn had been passionate but reasoned and respectful to both sides of the argument. Nevertheless, I’ll never forget the sight of the chairman of the Women’s Studies department charging down the aisle as I concluded my lecture, shoving startled people aside so that she could get to me and personally pour her rage upon me for the position I had taken. Her face reddened with an anger that was so out of control that spittle rolled down from her lips, she drove her finger with memorable force into my chest, locked my eyes with hers, and roared at me these words: “No matter what you say or what you do, that baby in that womb belongs to me! It will live or die based on my decision and no one else’s! I own that baby and all rights to its life until its very first breath!”

I was stunned by her words. The arrogance shocked me, the rage unnerved me, and the idea that a sense of out-of-control entitlement to the life of another was viewed by her to be unquestioned did not settle well with me. I don’t remember my words of response to her very clearly (I was only 22 years old), but I do remember that in that moment I made a decision: in the face of that kind of mindless rage and arrogant control over the lives of others, there needed to be at least one voice raised in the defense of the one truly helpless person in this woman’s equation: the unborn child. As I gazed at the angry women gathered around behind this campus leader, many of them adorned in T-shirts with images of coat hangers emblazoned on them, I further realized the implacable nature of their anger against the unborn, and my decision solidified: I would always seek the opportunity to speak out for the innocent against this kind of a mob mentality. Since that day, I have spoken in many venues to many different audiences about both the ethics and the Scriptural truths concerning the rights of the unborn.

I know that messages on this topic tend to turn over questions within people who are struck with an understanding that they have not managed this issue well at some point in their lives. Some are grappling for the first time with significant but long-suppressed emotions because they have been involved personally in an abortion decision. Others are working in professional positions (such as physicians or pharmacists) that press them into ethical decisions about unborn life, and they often need counsel.

I am often struck by the incomplete knowledge that even some of our best and most informed church members have on this issue. Though the ethical issues surrounding unborn life have now been front and center in our media culture for a generation, many of the key implications are yet ungrasped by people.

To me, bringing forth the ethical issues in the Scripture regarding the unborn is really not a controversial action, but rather an obvious obligation of any pastor. I can think of no better way to bring the Scriptures into the real-life struggles of my people than by “tying exposition to issues”. I encourage any pastor who has wondered about the benefit and impact of this kind of teaching to do what I was led to do 30 years ago: explore the possibility of opening the Scriptures to your congregation about the implications of ethics and life.

Follow the cross-bound ministry of Christ through the series we presented at Valley Fourth Church this past Easter 2020.

“You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time? Luke 12:56 (ESV)

Today is the age of the spiritual skeptic, the rise of the questioner of all things Christian. More than ever before, atheists and stubborn agnostics seem to clutter our conversation and intimidate our faith as believers. There are all kinds of people from scientific backgrounds and philosophical bents who challenge Christianity, especially biblical Christianity, as being woefully lacking in proofs for its intellectual validity. Many people today seem to be leaving Christian faith under this kind of pressure.

But how did the Lord Jesus respond to people pressing him for more proofs about his identity and the reality of the faith that he preached? Well, after a period of time, Jesus drew a line in the dirt between he and his accusers. There came a point in his preaching life, after people had listened to him for some time, in which he said that they had more than enough evidence to support a decision to trust him as God in human flesh.

In this particular text, Jesus confronts the doubters in the crowd listening to him by calling them out as people that held God himself to a double standard: they would accept minimal evidence as sufficient to make daily decisions about their lives, but they would reject maximal evidence about who Christ was and keep demanding more and more. There was certainly a contradiction in the way they were approaching matters of faith as opposed to matters of daily life.

Jesus calls them hypocrites. They were indeed holding God to a double standard, a standard a lot higher than they held in their own private lives. They would make sweeping conclusions about things as complex as the weather based on the color of the sky or the direction of the wind, but they would not make ultimate decisions about who Jesus was, even in the face of all that he had done over the previous three years to prove his identity as the God man. Jesus tells them that they were unwisely rejecting all the evidence that he provided for them, and losing their spiritual opportunity.

What  had Jesus done in terms of revealing himself to that generation of Israelites? Quite simply, he had fulfilled the prophecy of the Old Testament that in the latter days, a Messiah would appear who would be a prophet in the style of Moses. Moses revealed truth from God that had never been received by man, and he also presided over a series of miracles in the Exodus from Egypt that had never been witnessed by man. In like manner, Jesus Christ brought the full revelation of God to earth both in his personal preaching and in who he was. In fact, the book of Hebrews reminds us that God spoke fully to mankind through his Son. So when Jesus arrived, the greatest revelation of all time from God’s throne room arrived with him. Along with his preaching and his person came his miracle working. Jesus, exceeding Moses but like him, presided over the greatest explosion of miracle power that history had ever witnessed. Month after month, morning after morning, people from all walks of life were healed and set free, thousands were fed on hillsides out of thin air, seas were stilled, demons were dispatched, and the laws of nature were set aside to prove the presence of God in human flesh. It was a remarkable season of time. It was “their time”, in the sense that it was a season of miraculous power and revelation of truth given to this special generation of Israelites so that they could indeed turn and embrace Jesus as Messiah.

And yet they chose to walk away from it all. Jesus here warns them that they were losing the opportunity to decide to trust him; the great power of their special moment, their unique season of revelation was fading. He warned them not to let it go.

https://vimeo.com/275682141

My English Text Notes on John 1:1-18, Written in Preparation for Preaching my Series Entitled Christmas Everlasting :

The first 18 verses of this first chapter are all about Revelation. Communication. Illumination. Even the title given to Jesus, Word, expresses the theme. It also expresses the role that Jesus filled in his appearing: he expressed, communicated, illuminated the person of God, the invisible.

Another theme is beholding. The idea of light shining, is prevalent throughout, as is the idea of the witness, that compels belief or rejection. Another key word is light. There is also the theme of rejecting and receiving.

In verse 14, the great theme is specified and tightened with the idea that this Word, this expression of God… became flesh. He not only became flesh, but he dwelt among us, implying a long period of time. It also implies relationship, fellowship, involvement, immersion, community, sameness. The astounding idea that the eternal visitor would come from the glories of heaven and dwell among people like us in a world like ours is evident in the text. He, the Glorious One, left glory to come to this world and to dwell among us in our humiliation, and the text says that we as a result have seen his glory. John’s mind was going back to the Transfiguration moment, what he may have more fully realized that he was in the presence of

God veiled all along. John made no equivocation about the fact that the glory that he saw on the mountaintop that day had to be the glory of the only Son of God given to him from the only Father. It was a visible glory in that account, but somehow John says it was also a glory that was full of grace and truth. I’m not sure what this all means.

Right after our verse is the curious construction of verse 15, which appears to be in parentheses. I don’t know why this is. This verse seems to amplify the terminology of the Word, emphasizing his deity and the eternal distance that he covered getting to us. John the Baptist being quoted by John the Apostle demonstrates that even though Jesus was chronologically younger than he was by birthdate, in reality, Jesus was far older, in fact eternally older than John. This proves his deity because of his eternal reality.

John goes on in his narrative after verse 14 to talk about how from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. I don’t know who the “all “is referring to; does it refer to all those that would come to believe, as John had,and in this the hope that his readers would?

And what is this fullness that we received from? Is it the literal glory, the shining presence of God? I don’t think so, because we’ve not received that from Him (yet). It must be the fullness of who he is in us, in which he pours out grace upon grace as needs arise, as our knowledge grows, and as our sanctification increases. In fact the mark of the Christian is that he demonstrates the presence of the grace of God, and the fullness of the personality and the knowledge of Christ in his life.

John brings another distinction about the arrival of this word in verse 17: he speaks about a change in dispensations, and that the law was given through Moses but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. He seems to mark a different way of knowing God; the era of law under performance leading to failure and desperation to the era of grace powered by truth accomplished by the cross-work of Christ leading to a full and secure knowledge of God.

Verse 18 seems to finalize this long-running stanza from verse one about God revealing himself to the world through Christ. John seems to state that we were in an impossible state before the arrival of Jesus in the flesh, because no one has ever seen God. The only hope we would ever have of knowing God is if he took an action to help us know him, if he took the step of revelation, of a self-revelation, to us. This is exactly what he did through the arrival of his Son. God the Father sent God the Son from his own side to make who he is known enough to us that we might come to know him in salvation and eternity.

In Mark 8, Jesus demonstrates a discipleship principle that we often forget in our “content driven” Christian culture. The crowds have been with them for three long days, listening to His teaching for hours at a time, enraptured. At one point in the chapter, Jesus appears ready to close that season of teaching and send them home, and He comes to His disciples with a challenge: these people need to be fed before they go on the long journey home.

Of course, the challenge was based on their previous experience of the feeding of the 5000 sometime earlier. Jesus presents them with an opportunity to demonstrate what they had learned from that experience. He gives them a humanly unsurmountable problem, namely the feeding of thousands of people out of thin air, but He presents them with the opportunity to go back in their mind’s eye to what He had done the first time. The response Jesus was looking for was a statement from His disciples along these lines: “Lord, it is humanly impossible to feed all these people, but we’ve seen You do it once, and we are confident that You can do it again. Lord, please be the power to answer your own request… once again miraculously feed these people. We’re even ready to carry the loaves for You.”

That would’ve been the response of faith, from instructed hearts in the power of Christ. But the disciples answer him and this challenge in the same way they answered the first one: looking only at human options and seeing none, they said that it couldn’t be done.

I see two things here about how Jesus discipled people. The first is that He tested them in order to put into action the truth about Him that He had wanted them to learn from previous encounters. He purposely set the disciples into a testing place regarding the feeding of the people a second time. In the same way, we need to realize that we need to set our own disciples into a process where we test them over what they’ve learned. After all, we don’t want people to be victorious once; we want them to be victorious in a growing pattern in their lives. So did Jesus.

The second thing I see is that in the face of the failure of His disciples to demonstrate growth, Jesus did not criticize them. The text says that He simply took over, fed the 4000 in the same way he had fed the 5000, and then He simply entered into the ship and sailed to another region to continue his ministry. At least in Mark’s account, there is no record of a rebuke or any sign of exasperation from the Lord.  (The only people that the Gospel records tell us Jesus became exasperated with were the blind but relentless Pharisees and the faithless crowds themselves at certain points) I find this to be helpful in my own relationships with people as I seek to help them grow in Christ. Too often I am tempted to give people one chance to obey Jesus in a certain factor in their life, and then, if they don’t show obedience, I label them as immature and unreliable. I may also lessen my intensity of devotion to their growth because they haven’t demonstrated obedience or visible growth after a certain period of time that I myself have set. In short, I sometimes don’t demonstrate the patience of Jesus with the growth of the soul. I have much to learn as a pastor and disciple-maker from the methods of the Master. How about you?