Americans spend about $300 Billion on entertainment each year. We obviously love to be entertained. In a culture like this, how can the church ever expect to compete for people’s attention? The answer is simple: We can’t. But happily, we don’t have to compete. The church is not here to entertain people, but to teach sound doctrine. No one can compete with us in that. It’s not easy to find it anyplace else.
The city of Lystra gave Paul both a high point and a low point in his ministry. On the low end, he was stoned by an irate mob, dragged out of town and left for dead. On the high end, it was there that he met Timothy, his “true son in the faith,” a faithful friend and assistant in his work. These are Paul’s intructions to the young man.
If wee’re going to live in order to please God we’ve got to take our cues from Him – from the Bible – and not from the culture around us.
Playing Balderdash with Jesus
Our family likes to play the game Balderdash. The idea is that you are given a word or a movie title or a name and you have to make up a definition for the word, or say what the movie is about, or tell who the person is. The world plays Balderdash with Jesus. People make things up about Him, but these fictional versions of Jesus are unworthy of our worship. If Jesus is really God incarnate, then our failure to acknowledge that might have eternal consequences. Today’s passage intends to clear this up.
Central Reflections 