The Further Up, Further In Podcast

Our 4th and final "Lesson from Exile" discusses two lessons on prayer, one taken from Nehemiah and the other from Jeremiah, as we wrap up this arc of episodes designed to illustrate the importance of applying the mind to study scripture that we might stand under its authority as we seek to live lives of fidelity. 

Our third "Lesson from Exile" takes a close look at Ezekiel 9 and lessons we can learn from it about the importance of grieving over sin, as we continue to model applying the life of the mind to the study of scripture in our ongoing pursuit of faithfulness. 

Our second "Lesson from Exile" looks primarily at the story of Esther as we continue to model applying the life of the mind to understand the scriptures and learn lessons of fidelity in what we believe concerning God and the duty God requires of man.

This episode examines the story of Nebuchadnezzar as told in Daniel 2-4 as the first of a episodes that seek to combine the three big themes we've discussed so far. As the four biblical texts we'll be examining in these episodes all come from the exilic and post-exilic period of the Old Testament, I call these reflections "Lessons from Exile."

In the previous episode we talked about worldviews generally, but in this episode we talk about Christianity as a worldview, and how it functions as a starting point, a system and a story, and then we conclude our discussion by talking again about the importance of our call to engage culture.

Having talked about faithfulness of belief, theology, and faithfulness of behavior, morality, we turn our attention to the realm of worldviews, faithfulness to engage culture. We'll talk about why engaging culture matters, and then talk a bit about what worldviews are, where they come from and how they function. 

This week we continue our discussion of faithfulness by talking about morality, which we can think of as faithfulness of behavior. We'll talk about the importance of motive to our behavior, examine two different types of biblical commandment and more.

As we resume our reflection on the third big theme of the podcast - pursue fidelity in all things, faithfulness is essential - we turn to the study of theology, which we could think of as faithfulness of belief. We look at what theology is, some of the reasons why the American church at times seems wary of it, and at two theological issues as examples to illustrate why it matters.

In this fourth and final episode in our advent arc, examining Matthew 1-2 and some of the nativity account from Luke, we look at the response of various people to the birth of Jesus, focusing here on Simeon, Anna and Herod, for how we respond to the child born to be King is all important.

In our third advent episode we continue our examination of Matthew 1-2 and of some of the nativity account in Luke by looking at the famous stories of the Shepherds and the Magi.

In our second advent episode, we reflect on the story in Matthew of the angel telling Joseph about the miracle of the virgin birth and of the importance of the child Mary will give birth to, along with the Luke passage that narrates Gabriel's visitation with Mary to do the same.

This is the first of our Advent episodes as we take a break for the month of December from our larger episode arc to reflect on Matthew 1-2 together (augmented by some passages from Luke as well). Today, we look at Matthew 1:1-17 and the genealogy of Jesus, which surprisingly, has quite a bit to tell us. 

This episode explores the connection between the law and love, and how the weightier matters of the law - justice, mercy and faithfulness - are also the primary forms of love. 

As we transition to the third big theme of the podcast - pursue fidelity in all things, faithfulness is essential - we look at a lesson I learned from Nicholas Wolterstorff, that God calls us to be faithful, not different. To be faithful will often require us to be different, but being different for the sake of being different has no intrinsic value. 

As we wrap up our episodes on our second main theme - stand under the Word of God, the Bible is foundational and authoritative - we reflect on some of the things we do and don't control in our pursuit of spiritual growth, and talk about the importance of reading the Bible as a way of putting ourselves in the way of grace.

This episode tackles the difficult question, when is a church, not a church? It looks at the three marks of the church and focuses on the central importance of the preaching of the Word, before examining how both modernist progressivism and postmodern progressivism have impacted some churches and denomnations to that they often do not preach the Bible.

If we are going to stand under the Word of God and be corrected and calibrated by it, then a big part of that will be understanding the role of the law. In this episode we'll overview the function of the law in the Bible and how it applies to our pursuit of a deeper walk with Christ.

As we dig into our second big theme - stand under the Word of God, the Bible is foundational and authoritative - we explore the idea of standing under the Word of God and discuss two key questions we can use when studying the scriptures to understand better what they principally teach.

This episode wraps up our two week discussion of reasons to take the Bible's claim to speak for God seriously by examining one of my favorite arguments for the Bible's validity, what we could call the unity & diversity argument.  c