This evening I had the privilege of seeing "Extraordinary Measures." No, I'm not going to tell you the plot line.

I will tell you that it is the story of a father's tenacious love and a visionary scientist's efforts against the odds to do something great.

The movie both caused me to examine what sometimes a "blessing" means (see the book of Job) and how God sometimes human beings to achieve a "miracle."

I highly recommend that you rent or buy the movie when it comes out on dvd (if you don't get to a movie theater first). If you do want to read all about it, then search the web for the "movie Extraordinary Measures" and/or "Robert Stonehill Pompe." (By the way, that's not a mispelling--"Pompe" is the name of a disease).

[The following article appeared in the Charles City Press early in 2009.]

SUFFERING

In the Star Wars movie the C-3PO character tends to say, “It is our lot in life to suffer.” Many who are reading this can relate to those words. Suffering has been a part of the human condition through time. The name of Job has become a byword for suffering.

How encouraging it is to me to know that my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ knows well what it means to suffer. The Bible tells us that He was a man of sorrows who was acquainted with grief. And, in the Apostles’ Creed (the approximately A.D. 150 distillation of what the apostles taught) we read that Jesus “suffered under Pontius Pilate.”

Anyone who saw the movie “The Passion of the Christ” will remember how graphically Jesus’ suffering was portrayed—the ridicule He received from the Roman soldiers and others; the forcing of a painful crown of thorns on His head; and the vicious lashing He received.

R. C. Sproul writes the following about suffering in his book on the Apostles’ Creed entitled Basic Training: Plain Talk on Key Truths of the Faith—“The confession of the suffering of Christ is at the core of classical Christianity…. It is the suffering of Christ that emerged as the scandal to both the Greek and the Jew of antiquity; yet the suffering of Christ was intrinsic to His messianic vocation. In Jesus’ own self-consciousness, He expressed a certain compulsion for the task. He said the Son of Man ‘must’ suffer many things…. He assumed the role of the Suffering Servant of Israel who acquainted Himself with grief and entered fully into the human predicament.”

So, you can be grateful that Jesus completely identifies with you through His suffering. No matter what you are going through, you can know that Jesus has walked the road of suffering and He wants to walk with you on yours.

[Continuing the "Apostles' Creed series as it appeared in the Charles City Press]

Every parent (and grandparent, if the truth be told!) knows for a fact that his or her child (or grandchild) is the most amazing, most bright, most gifted, funniest child that has ever been. We show pictures. We tell stories. We all rightfully brag about the precious child that God has given us.

Each child is unique. There is no doubt about that. But, as we continue this series on the Apostles’ Creed, it needs to be said that Jesus the Christ was the most unique individual who ever lived.

There are many reasons for this claim. One of them is the miracle that all orthodox (those who believe in the historic Christian faith) believers affirm: the virgin birth. When we say the Apostles’ Creed we proclaim, “I believe… in Jesus Christ… who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.”

Jesus, as the unique Son of God, was conceived to be fully God and fully God by the Holy Spirit and was born by Mary who had not had relations with Joseph (see Matthew 1:25) her betrothed (engagement in those days was much closer to marriage than it is now).

In Luke 1:35 we read, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Highest hover over you; therefore, the child you bring to birth will be called Holy, Son of God.” (The Message Bible).

I am not going to argue how this can be. If someone has a closed view of the universe, then no amount of arguing will convince them. But if we are open to God working supernaturally to accomplish His purposes then, indeed, “all things are possible with God!”

I also do not have the space to explain how many other Christian beliefs depend on this reality. You might not think this teaching has much of an impact on your daily walk with the Lord, but it does.

Here is how R. C. Sproul concludes his chapter on this portion of the Apostles’ Creed: “The main concern of the New Testament is not the birth of the baby, but the Incarnation [God being with us in human form] of God. With this point, the Christian faith stands or falls. In the birth narratives, we have the climactictic appearance in history of the long-awaited redeemer of Israel…. The Incarnation is the watershed not only of Western history which is measured in terms of B.C. and A.D., but of all history. Here is the point of the convergence of the Old Testament prophecies, the moment when light enters the world….” (Basic Training: Plain Talk on the Key Truths of the Faith, page 94).

[The following is a continuation of articles that have appeared in the Charles City Press. The series is based on the Apostles' Creed.]


A denominational official once asked me, “Isn’t ‘lord’ just an Anglo-Saxon word?” I was astounded that a leader of (back then) approximately 100 churches would denigrate the word that is part of the greatest and first Christian creed: Jesus is Lord.

Since that conversation I have thought through the implications of just what the Bible teaches about God, Jesus and being the Lord. In the Old Testament, God identifies Himself to Moses as Jehovah—“I AM Who I AM.” It also means the LORD God. Another Hebrew word for God as Lord is Adonai

When it comes to the time of Jesus, most people in the Holy Land spoke the common Greek language as well as Aramaic—a cousin to Hebrew. The word for Lord in the Greek is kurios. My Greek-English dictionary of the New Testament indicates that the word for Lord is “a designation of God” and is “used in reference to Jesus.”

This is very significant because the Jews of the time believed very strongly that there was only one God. “ ‘Here, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One.’” That is the Sh’ma of Deuteronomy 6:4, which is at the heart of Jewish belief.

So it is very revealing when people call Jesus Lord. In John 20:28 the doubting- no-more Thomas says to the bodily resurrected Jesus, “ ‘My Lord and my God.’” If that were not the case, then Jesus would not have received the praise and worship that Thomas gives. But Jesus does receive this worship and thereby indicates that it is not blasphemy to call Jesus both Lord and God.

In the writings of Paul it is very clear that Jesus is Jehovah, He is the Lord God come to earth as a unique being Who is both fully God and fully man. In Romans 10:9, Paul proclaims the practical implications of Jesus being Lord of someone’s life: “if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

So, Lord is far more than an Anglo-Saxon word! In the first century and following, the disciples would not die for a lie. And in our day there are those who make the ultimate sacrifice of faith. In one Caribbean country not long ago, Christians being killed for their faith shouted at the top of their lungs, “Christos Rey! Jesus is King! Jesus is Lord!