Morning one and all,
I am such a fool sometimes, and I mean that in the biblical sense, I am such an unbeliever. I have learned oh so well to view the world as only physical that I forget that the world is spiritual and that we are not the only beings in existence. I forget as I get wrapped up in the day to day stuff of life that I am not all that matters, that humans are not all that matter, that we are not ONLY matter. I forget those things and when trouble comes I want to deal with it in physical terms. I want to get it out of my system so that life can be normal. But as Bruce Cockburn sang: the trouble with Normal is it always gets worse.
It’s easy to forget that normal is not the goal. Death is normal. Sin is normal. Disease is normal. The fall is normal. If we are in Christ Jesus then we shouldn’t be settling for the status quo. We’ve started watching a DVD put out by the Acton Institute on Wednesday nights titled: The Call of the Entrepreneur. I think it has begun to stir us to new ways of thinking: Non-normal ways of thinking in our day and age. We live in an age that wants to be taken care of; an age that has learned to consume and not produce. These things are normal in a fallen world.
There is a stirring in my heart to begin to be a producer. It is the original call of man – to take dominion over the earth, to be fruitful and multiply. Those things all imply producing or transforming what is into something else, something of more and greater value. They require creating wealth.
I’ve been going back to the parable of the Talents a lot lately because it is a clear picture of what our purpose should be in life – it’s not about getting saved and then riding the train to heaven – it is about taking what you have been given by the father, however meager that may seem to you, and increasing it by the grace of God. There is a stirring in my heart to see increase – not just in material things. I want to see that which God has placed in me result in an increase in work for others, a decrease in debt for others, an increase in stability for my community, and increased opportunity, an increase in dreams pursued and fulfilled not just mine but many others. That is what is meant by taking dominion.
Such thinking is anathema in many churches, in many slums across the world. We prefer a poverty mentality. We prefer to be slaves than to be free men. In the last few years I have found myself increasingly wanting to be free, to live. I have begun to see through the façade of culture just enough to remind myself that the smell of death surrounds us, and that is normal for a dead world. I’ve been a fool as I said earlier because I have let my self be duped into believing that everybody around me was alive. But that is not true most of the things and people that I encounter every single day are dead. They are without hope. They are without life. They hate life because true life is the keeping of the commandments. I still struggle with hating life especially when trouble knocks on my door.
I have begun to understand that for the most part the church is a ghetto. It is full of people who want to live normal lives with a T-shirt that says Jesus saves. But in the trenches they want to look like the dead, act like the dead, be famous like the dead, shop like the dead, eat like the dead. Etc. they want to be the un grateful dead. The truth is that the Christian Ghetto wants to be dead until they go to heaven where they think they will be transformed into living beings. They want to live in righteousness – someday but even then they want that righteousness to be normalized. Works with out faith, faith without works they're both dead.
My heart is calling me to be abnormal. Or for you Young Frankenstein fans, Abbey Normal. Yakatata Yakatata. I want to become a freak of nature and become un-natural. I guess to use the words of Rick James I want to be a Super Freak. I want to be godly in everything I do and say. I want to be a producer and not a consumer. I want to truly live instead of cozying up to death all the time. I want to but I can’t do it on my own.
It takes the grace of God to make us abnormal. May God have mercy on the living dead.
Grace and Peace,
Brad
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Renegade
Merry Christmas Everyone,
I've really been enjoying Bob Dylan's Christmas in the Heart this year. I think the reason I like it so much is that his voice is so bad that it makes me focus on the words. I can't just gloss over them. Like Hark the Hearald angels sing Glory to the new born KING. We sing all these songs but do we know what they say? And if we know what they say to we know what they mean?
When the scripture calls Jesus KING OF KINGS do we have a clue how that should shape our lives?
I was thinking about the concept of spirit and truth the other day and it’s still haunting me this morning. John in his gospel quotes Jesus as saying:
"But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."
Actually the thing that concerns me is our concept of worship which influences our concept of what spirit and truth are. I am amazed that in translating words in the New Testament we seek to find the truest meaning of the Greek word and so we go to great lengths to find the meaning of the word used in context in Greek literature and so we end up defining words outside the context of the scripture. In effect what we are doing is Gnosticizing the word of God in pursuit of the truth.
We miss the point in our linguistic pursuits when we don’t remember that the meaning of many of the words of the new testament came pre-defined from the old testament. The common language (greek) was used to express the meaning of an uncommon language (Hebrew). We have lost that.
And I would say we have lost it nowhere more clearly than with our concept of worship. The Greek word means to reverence or to kiss the ring of an authority and again the idea given to the word is one of reverence. Somewhere along the line we have twisted reverence to mean; have emotional feelings in favor of someone. Nothing could be further from the truth.
You revere a King by obeying him. You can say you love him all the time but if you commit treason against him you will die. You can Kiss his ring with all the emotion you can muster but if you don’t obey him you don’t reverence him. It is the obedience aspect of worship that we have lost.
In Psalm 95: 6 we read: Come let us worship and bow down let us kneel before the Lord our God our maker. What that passage says is come let us bow down and bow down let us bow down before the Lord our God. The Psalmist uses three words for bow down. I would say that this means to completely submit ourselves, not just physically but with every aspect of our being. Our hearts must bow down in submission to the will of our maker. That is worship.
When Jesus says those that worship (bow down) to God must do so in Spirit and in Truth it is a call for complete surrender. We have a lot of people in our churches who bow down in truth. They love truth. They want to pack as much truth into their heads as they can. They can spout off meaningless facts about the scripture and parse verbs and show how the words rhymed in the original languages but they have a spirit of haughtiness. They don’t bow their lives before the one who made them. They refuse to kneel in spirit.
On the other hand there are those that think that in the Spirit means in the emotion and so they will craft their worship songs to illicit a tear at just the right moment. You can see it on any of the homecoming videos. The song will do whatever it takes to make someone in the crowd wipe a tear. And that tear is associated with the Spirit. But tears don’t mean that a person’s spirit is kneeling. It means their emotions have been triggered. The same is true for those mosh pit worshippers at the other end of the age spectrum.
It is time that we leave the Gnosticism, the false religion of unbelief behind us and bow down before the law word of the great king in submission to him and his word bowing down, bowing down, bowing down before the Lord (KING and giver of the law) our God, our Maker.
You see real worship wars are not about style or form. When it comes right down to it you have to get pretty nit picky to find a worship style proclaimed in scripture. The real concern should be our lack of worship (bowing down in submission to the law of the king) while we kiss his ring with our shouts and tears and musical shenanigans.
Form rules supreme in the land but in the end traitors will still be put to death.
Perhaps we should start singing the song Renegade by Styx in our bow down services from now on:
Oh mama I’m in fear for my life from the long arm of the law. Hang man is coming down from the gallows and I don’t have very long.
If we believe the word of God is true then perhaps that would bring us to repentance. If we don’t believe the word of God is true then why are we wasting our time because all we are is Dust in the Wind and contrary to popular opinion I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.
Grace and Peace with perseverence,
Brad
I've really been enjoying Bob Dylan's Christmas in the Heart this year. I think the reason I like it so much is that his voice is so bad that it makes me focus on the words. I can't just gloss over them. Like Hark the Hearald angels sing Glory to the new born KING. We sing all these songs but do we know what they say? And if we know what they say to we know what they mean?
When the scripture calls Jesus KING OF KINGS do we have a clue how that should shape our lives?
I was thinking about the concept of spirit and truth the other day and it’s still haunting me this morning. John in his gospel quotes Jesus as saying:
"But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."
Actually the thing that concerns me is our concept of worship which influences our concept of what spirit and truth are. I am amazed that in translating words in the New Testament we seek to find the truest meaning of the Greek word and so we go to great lengths to find the meaning of the word used in context in Greek literature and so we end up defining words outside the context of the scripture. In effect what we are doing is Gnosticizing the word of God in pursuit of the truth.
We miss the point in our linguistic pursuits when we don’t remember that the meaning of many of the words of the new testament came pre-defined from the old testament. The common language (greek) was used to express the meaning of an uncommon language (Hebrew). We have lost that.
And I would say we have lost it nowhere more clearly than with our concept of worship. The Greek word means to reverence or to kiss the ring of an authority and again the idea given to the word is one of reverence. Somewhere along the line we have twisted reverence to mean; have emotional feelings in favor of someone. Nothing could be further from the truth.
You revere a King by obeying him. You can say you love him all the time but if you commit treason against him you will die. You can Kiss his ring with all the emotion you can muster but if you don’t obey him you don’t reverence him. It is the obedience aspect of worship that we have lost.
In Psalm 95: 6 we read: Come let us worship and bow down let us kneel before the Lord our God our maker. What that passage says is come let us bow down and bow down let us bow down before the Lord our God. The Psalmist uses three words for bow down. I would say that this means to completely submit ourselves, not just physically but with every aspect of our being. Our hearts must bow down in submission to the will of our maker. That is worship.
When Jesus says those that worship (bow down) to God must do so in Spirit and in Truth it is a call for complete surrender. We have a lot of people in our churches who bow down in truth. They love truth. They want to pack as much truth into their heads as they can. They can spout off meaningless facts about the scripture and parse verbs and show how the words rhymed in the original languages but they have a spirit of haughtiness. They don’t bow their lives before the one who made them. They refuse to kneel in spirit.
On the other hand there are those that think that in the Spirit means in the emotion and so they will craft their worship songs to illicit a tear at just the right moment. You can see it on any of the homecoming videos. The song will do whatever it takes to make someone in the crowd wipe a tear. And that tear is associated with the Spirit. But tears don’t mean that a person’s spirit is kneeling. It means their emotions have been triggered. The same is true for those mosh pit worshippers at the other end of the age spectrum.
It is time that we leave the Gnosticism, the false religion of unbelief behind us and bow down before the law word of the great king in submission to him and his word bowing down, bowing down, bowing down before the Lord (KING and giver of the law) our God, our Maker.
You see real worship wars are not about style or form. When it comes right down to it you have to get pretty nit picky to find a worship style proclaimed in scripture. The real concern should be our lack of worship (bowing down in submission to the law of the king) while we kiss his ring with our shouts and tears and musical shenanigans.
Form rules supreme in the land but in the end traitors will still be put to death.
Perhaps we should start singing the song Renegade by Styx in our bow down services from now on:
Oh mama I’m in fear for my life from the long arm of the law. Hang man is coming down from the gallows and I don’t have very long.
If we believe the word of God is true then perhaps that would bring us to repentance. If we don’t believe the word of God is true then why are we wasting our time because all we are is Dust in the Wind and contrary to popular opinion I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.
Grace and Peace with perseverence,
Brad
Friday, December 17, 2010
Bipartisanship sucks
I hate the word Bipartisan. I hate it because what it means is that nothing has changed. Taxes stay low and spending stays high. People in Washington must not have much oxygen because their brains aren’t working at all. I would be in jail right now if I presented such a bipartisan budget proposal to the IRS or to my banker: Ok, here’s the deal; I’m not going to pay my bills. In fact I’m going to borrow more money to help other people who are down on their luck and I’m going to continue to borrow more money just so I can keep paying for my daily living expenses. So if you will just keep the loan checks coming and forget about me paying you anything I owe then every thing will be alright.
Which generation is going to have to start growing up and living in the real world? My children’s? My grand children’s? Farther out? It probably won’t be mine and so why bother worrying about it?
I realized back at the time of the Newt Gingrich era lies that nothing was going to change unless people’s hearts changed and this latest bill to be passed with a 'remarkable show of bipartisanship' simply drives home the point that NOBODY wants things to change. We are going to ride this horse until it dies. Too many people are getting rich off the system to change the way it functions.
Until God brings people to repentance for their own behaviors and begins to deal with individual's greed, and sloth, and selfishness then America has no hope. We may last another 100 years in our death throes but there will be no change except for the name plates on doors.
But that’s ok because nobody really wants to change anyway. We just want to be taken care of. I can’t find a job keep sending me money. Where does it say that you should be able to find a job? Maybe it’s your personal responsibility to find a way to make ends meet without somebody providing a paycheck for you.
I saw a guy selling the homeless newspaper on the corner the other day, talking on his cell phone. Does that bother anyone else?
I think things are going to be so much different when the next crash happens because we are for the most part a bunch of whiney babies that think we need someone to change our diapers and feed us every time we wimper. And we think that our God – the federal government is supposed to be doing that. On a few levels down we think our parents are supposed to be doing that. I can’t believe how many people in their twenties and thirties are still dependent upon their parents to help make ends meet. I can't believe how many parents let that happen.
We suck as human beings in this country. We cry for freedom but it is a freedom to suck the teat dry when the truth is we should have been weaned a long time ago. Each generation wants to suckle there a little longer than the one before. Nobody wants to grow into the freedom of responsibility. That is like the worst curse word in the entire language.
Don’t be fooled by the word bipartisan when you hear or read it these days. There is no such thing. There aren’t two parties there are only greedy SOBs that love power and the cash that it puts in their pockets.
Which generation is going to have to start growing up and living in the real world? My children’s? My grand children’s? Farther out? It probably won’t be mine and so why bother worrying about it?
I realized back at the time of the Newt Gingrich era lies that nothing was going to change unless people’s hearts changed and this latest bill to be passed with a 'remarkable show of bipartisanship' simply drives home the point that NOBODY wants things to change. We are going to ride this horse until it dies. Too many people are getting rich off the system to change the way it functions.
Until God brings people to repentance for their own behaviors and begins to deal with individual's greed, and sloth, and selfishness then America has no hope. We may last another 100 years in our death throes but there will be no change except for the name plates on doors.
But that’s ok because nobody really wants to change anyway. We just want to be taken care of. I can’t find a job keep sending me money. Where does it say that you should be able to find a job? Maybe it’s your personal responsibility to find a way to make ends meet without somebody providing a paycheck for you.
I saw a guy selling the homeless newspaper on the corner the other day, talking on his cell phone. Does that bother anyone else?
I think things are going to be so much different when the next crash happens because we are for the most part a bunch of whiney babies that think we need someone to change our diapers and feed us every time we wimper. And we think that our God – the federal government is supposed to be doing that. On a few levels down we think our parents are supposed to be doing that. I can’t believe how many people in their twenties and thirties are still dependent upon their parents to help make ends meet. I can't believe how many parents let that happen.
We suck as human beings in this country. We cry for freedom but it is a freedom to suck the teat dry when the truth is we should have been weaned a long time ago. Each generation wants to suckle there a little longer than the one before. Nobody wants to grow into the freedom of responsibility. That is like the worst curse word in the entire language.
Don’t be fooled by the word bipartisan when you hear or read it these days. There is no such thing. There aren’t two parties there are only greedy SOBs that love power and the cash that it puts in their pockets.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Christmas sermon 12-19-10
It was a rather tricky choice as to which Sunday to preach a Christmas sermon on this year since it is next Saturday. But I decided to make it today so that you would have a reference point to think about as the event actually takes place.
When it comes to sermons like this I prefer to let the scriptures speak for themselves but given the dirth of truthful biblical thinking in our land I will interject thoughts from time to time to point you in the direction of the bibilical approach to what the word is saying. This year I am going to begin with the book of Luke chapter 1 verse 1.
Luke writes: Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
I want to stop there because these sentences put a stake in the heart of the postmodern philosophy our day and age. They do so by telling us something about truth. When Luke says that the things that he is going to write came from eyewitness testimony he is saying that truth is not simply a matter of interpretation. Truth is not simply your truth. You are not the determiner of truth there are things that are true for everybody whether they believe them or not. And that truth can be passed on and be a shared experience of reality. This biblical concept undermines both the modernist and post modernist points of view that say that truth is relative or the truth is simply a personal choice. The scriptures tell us that reality is real because God made everything that is and that we all share the same reality. Yes we may have different perceptions of reality but that is something totally different than saying that we are the determiners of reality. No one but God has complete perspective of all views of the truth. This is God’s world made by his word and we can trust that reality is real because the trustworthy God of all creation says that it is real. So much for philosophy class. Let’s move on to the text.
5 In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. 6 Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. 7 But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old. 8 Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, 9 he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. 10 And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside. 11 Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. 13 But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. 14 He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, 15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. 16 He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” 18 Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.” 19 The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. 20 And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”
I want to put this in a historical context. There hadn’t been a prophet in the land for 400 years. Who knows how long it had been since an angel appeared to someone. You know Zechariah has got to be freaking out. We learn something else from this passage. If the scriptures are a true presentation of reality then we are not the only creatures in existence. There are other beings that are non- human in the world. We are not alone. We can also understand that there are miracles out there – things that are unexpected to us. But just because they are unexpected doesn’t mean that they weren’t planned before the foundation of the world. We are fools if we think that because unexpected happen to us that they are unexpected to God. Nothing happens that he has not planned. That is the essence of providence. It goes back to that idea of perspective. Things seem like chance and accident to us because we have limited perspective. Sometimes it is hard for us to see how God can work all things for his glory. It’s hard to understand some things that happen or for that matter even like them. But because this is God’s world and not ours we must learn to take all things that come into our lives as coming from the hand of God and then work hard to figure out why and still keep walking on the path of life. In other words we learn to ask what is a biblical, truthful response to this event that has happened to me? That is the essences of biblical faith applied.
In this passage we see a wonderful picture of faith applied in the real world. When I really think about what it means to be beyond the age of child birth, Zechariah calls he and Elizabeth old, it blows me away at the faith that he had. The ramifications of being told you were going to have a child at 80 even if you wanted one really badly had to be a shock. Not to mention that other than age this pregnancy was going to come about in a normal fashion. Quite a step of faith. They were both beyond being able to produce a child and God says you’re going to have a child. Now of course some of us here have access to Cialis but they didn’t back then. For them faith applied to the real world meant making love. So it is completely understandable that Zechariah has a certain amount of disbelief.
Here is note of comfort: if God wants to do a miracle your lack of faith isn’t going to stop him. God forced Zachariah into belief by giving him another miracle – he took away his ability to speak until the birth day. And that miracle gave him the gift of faith. It’s easy for us to forget that faith is a gift. It is not an intellectual exercise. Walking on the path of life has very little to do with your brains and everything to do with God giving you the faith to believe and walk.
All of this is taking place in the midst of his duties in the temple and it’s making him stay in the temple longer than usual. Out in the courtyard the people were waiting for Zechariah and wondering why he stayed so long in the temple. 22 When he came out, he could not speak to them. They realized he had seen a vision in the temple, for he kept making signs to them but remained unable to speak. 23 When his time of service was completed, he returned home.
Again the context: no cell phones, email, or even regular snail mail. He has to think about this for an extended period before he gets a chance to tell his wife and actually demonstrate that the word of God is true. He gets to explain all of this to his wife without being able to speak. Sure he could write but there’s something about vocal intonation that purveys our meaning just as much as the words we use. There are plenty of opportunities for unbelief here but Zechariah works through them all by the grace of God and does what is required of him.
24 After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. 25 “The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.” Here is a woman whose heart’s desire was to have a child. It had been for a long, long time. She had been the subject of ridicule from her peers. The first thing that pops into my head when I think of that was one of those Foghorn Leghorn cartoons where the scrawny old hen who has never laid an egg and who is ridiculed by all the other hens suddenly lays an egg and has a chick. And of course that chick is a brainiac different from all the other chickens. That is very much like Elizabeth. She longs to have a child and then when she is given that precious gift he ends up living in the wilderness eating locusts and wild honey. I’d bet that on a bad day she probably said something like: Oh vie why couldn’t I have had a doctor or a lawyer? But she knew she was blessed and so most of the time I’m sure she rejoiced that God had given her a son no matter how he turned out.
Continuing on in the text: In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” 29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” 34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.” 38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
I want to stop here because this is a foundation stone upon which our faith is built. There are many who point out that the word for virgin can also simply mean young woman and so it doesn’t necessitate that Mary was a virgin. And that is true. But it is not the use of the word virgin alone that causes us to believe in the virgin birth. It is the biblical understanding of sin and of covenant breaking. If the biblical view of the word is true then all children born by natural means since the fall are dead in their trespasses and sin. If Jesus were born by natural means then he would be no different than you or I. He would be dead in Adam’s sin because he was in Adam. But Jesus was not a physical descendent of Adam. He was the first born of a new creation. He was the second Adam of a new humanity – a covenant keeping humanity. That is why if the word of God is true there is only one way to the father- through Jesus Christ our Lord.
If the bible isn’t the word of God then don’t waste your time being good, certainly stop being religious. Do whatever you want to do: Because there is no need to be saved if there is no fall. There is no such thing as sin therefore everything is permissible and there are no consequences if the bible isn’t the word of God. The virgin birth is that important. It is not an option it is a necessity from a biblical point of view.
When Gabriel says: For no word from God will ever fail. That sets the stage for the conflict of the ages. That is why we hold on to the bible so tightly. We understand that it has been passed down through the ages because it is the word of God and it will not, cannot fail. God is big enough to pass down his word throughout the ages and keep intact what is important. That is why there are so many out there that want to down grade the bible from the word of God to just the word of men. If that can be done then we are free to do whatever we want to do whenever we want to. It breaks my heart that it is the church that is leading the way in destroying the foundation of the word of God.
I will finish by simply reading the rest of the story of both John and Joshua.
39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40 where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! 43 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” 46 And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48 for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, 49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name. 50 His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. 51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. 52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. 53 He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. 54 He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful 55 to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.” 56 Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then returned home.
57 When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son. 58 Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they shared her joy. 59 On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, 60 but his mother spoke up and said, “No! He is to be called John.” 61 They said to her, “There is no one among your relatives who has that name.” 62 Then they made signs to his father, to find out what he would like to name the child. 63 He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone’s astonishment he wrote, “His name is John.” 64 Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue set free, and he began to speak, praising God. 65 All the neighbors were filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things. 66 Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, “What then is this child going to be?” For the Lord’s hand was with him. 67 His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied: 68 “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them. 9 He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David 70 (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), 71 salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us— 72 to show mercy to our ancestors and to remember his holy covenant, 73 the oath he swore to our father Abraham: 74 to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear 75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. 76 And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, 77 to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, 8 because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven 79 to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.” 80 And the child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel.
18Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. 19And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly.
20But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. 21"She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins." 22Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23"BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL," which translated means, "GOD WITH US." 24And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife, 25but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus.
So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” 15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.
It is my prayer that you would all treasure up all these things and ponder them in your hearts. I pray that you would allow grace to permeate your hearts and let the good news be the good news in every area of your life. If still struggle with whether or not this is the word of God ask God to give you the gift of faith for it is not an intellectual process. It is a spiritual process.
Let’s pray. Father, Be our God and let us be your people. In Jesus name I pray amen.
Here the word of the Lord from Isaiah 61:
1The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, Because the LORD has anointed me To bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,To proclaim liberty to captives And freedom to prisoners; 2To proclaim the favorable year of the LORD And the day of vengeance of our God; To comfort all who mourn, 3To grant those who mourn in Zion, Giving them a garland instead of ashes, The oil of gladness instead of mourning, The mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting So they will be called oaks of righteousness, The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified. 4Then they will rebuild the ancient ruins, They will raise up the former devastations; And they will repair the ruined cities, The desolations of many generations. 5Strangers will stand and pasture your flocks, And foreigners will be your farmers and your vinedressers. 6But you will be called the priests of the LORD; You will be spoken of as ministers of our God You will eat the wealth of nations, And in their riches you will boast. 7Instead of your shame you will have a double portion, And instead of humiliation they will shout for joy over their portion Therefore they will possess a double portion in their land, Everlasting joy will be theirs.
Go in peace.
When it comes to sermons like this I prefer to let the scriptures speak for themselves but given the dirth of truthful biblical thinking in our land I will interject thoughts from time to time to point you in the direction of the bibilical approach to what the word is saying. This year I am going to begin with the book of Luke chapter 1 verse 1.
Luke writes: Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
I want to stop there because these sentences put a stake in the heart of the postmodern philosophy our day and age. They do so by telling us something about truth. When Luke says that the things that he is going to write came from eyewitness testimony he is saying that truth is not simply a matter of interpretation. Truth is not simply your truth. You are not the determiner of truth there are things that are true for everybody whether they believe them or not. And that truth can be passed on and be a shared experience of reality. This biblical concept undermines both the modernist and post modernist points of view that say that truth is relative or the truth is simply a personal choice. The scriptures tell us that reality is real because God made everything that is and that we all share the same reality. Yes we may have different perceptions of reality but that is something totally different than saying that we are the determiners of reality. No one but God has complete perspective of all views of the truth. This is God’s world made by his word and we can trust that reality is real because the trustworthy God of all creation says that it is real. So much for philosophy class. Let’s move on to the text.
5 In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. 6 Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. 7 But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old. 8 Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, 9 he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. 10 And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside. 11 Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. 13 But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. 14 He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, 15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. 16 He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” 18 Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.” 19 The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. 20 And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”
I want to put this in a historical context. There hadn’t been a prophet in the land for 400 years. Who knows how long it had been since an angel appeared to someone. You know Zechariah has got to be freaking out. We learn something else from this passage. If the scriptures are a true presentation of reality then we are not the only creatures in existence. There are other beings that are non- human in the world. We are not alone. We can also understand that there are miracles out there – things that are unexpected to us. But just because they are unexpected doesn’t mean that they weren’t planned before the foundation of the world. We are fools if we think that because unexpected happen to us that they are unexpected to God. Nothing happens that he has not planned. That is the essence of providence. It goes back to that idea of perspective. Things seem like chance and accident to us because we have limited perspective. Sometimes it is hard for us to see how God can work all things for his glory. It’s hard to understand some things that happen or for that matter even like them. But because this is God’s world and not ours we must learn to take all things that come into our lives as coming from the hand of God and then work hard to figure out why and still keep walking on the path of life. In other words we learn to ask what is a biblical, truthful response to this event that has happened to me? That is the essences of biblical faith applied.
In this passage we see a wonderful picture of faith applied in the real world. When I really think about what it means to be beyond the age of child birth, Zechariah calls he and Elizabeth old, it blows me away at the faith that he had. The ramifications of being told you were going to have a child at 80 even if you wanted one really badly had to be a shock. Not to mention that other than age this pregnancy was going to come about in a normal fashion. Quite a step of faith. They were both beyond being able to produce a child and God says you’re going to have a child. Now of course some of us here have access to Cialis but they didn’t back then. For them faith applied to the real world meant making love. So it is completely understandable that Zechariah has a certain amount of disbelief.
Here is note of comfort: if God wants to do a miracle your lack of faith isn’t going to stop him. God forced Zachariah into belief by giving him another miracle – he took away his ability to speak until the birth day. And that miracle gave him the gift of faith. It’s easy for us to forget that faith is a gift. It is not an intellectual exercise. Walking on the path of life has very little to do with your brains and everything to do with God giving you the faith to believe and walk.
All of this is taking place in the midst of his duties in the temple and it’s making him stay in the temple longer than usual. Out in the courtyard the people were waiting for Zechariah and wondering why he stayed so long in the temple. 22 When he came out, he could not speak to them. They realized he had seen a vision in the temple, for he kept making signs to them but remained unable to speak. 23 When his time of service was completed, he returned home.
Again the context: no cell phones, email, or even regular snail mail. He has to think about this for an extended period before he gets a chance to tell his wife and actually demonstrate that the word of God is true. He gets to explain all of this to his wife without being able to speak. Sure he could write but there’s something about vocal intonation that purveys our meaning just as much as the words we use. There are plenty of opportunities for unbelief here but Zechariah works through them all by the grace of God and does what is required of him.
24 After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. 25 “The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.” Here is a woman whose heart’s desire was to have a child. It had been for a long, long time. She had been the subject of ridicule from her peers. The first thing that pops into my head when I think of that was one of those Foghorn Leghorn cartoons where the scrawny old hen who has never laid an egg and who is ridiculed by all the other hens suddenly lays an egg and has a chick. And of course that chick is a brainiac different from all the other chickens. That is very much like Elizabeth. She longs to have a child and then when she is given that precious gift he ends up living in the wilderness eating locusts and wild honey. I’d bet that on a bad day she probably said something like: Oh vie why couldn’t I have had a doctor or a lawyer? But she knew she was blessed and so most of the time I’m sure she rejoiced that God had given her a son no matter how he turned out.
Continuing on in the text: In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” 29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” 34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.” 38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
I want to stop here because this is a foundation stone upon which our faith is built. There are many who point out that the word for virgin can also simply mean young woman and so it doesn’t necessitate that Mary was a virgin. And that is true. But it is not the use of the word virgin alone that causes us to believe in the virgin birth. It is the biblical understanding of sin and of covenant breaking. If the biblical view of the word is true then all children born by natural means since the fall are dead in their trespasses and sin. If Jesus were born by natural means then he would be no different than you or I. He would be dead in Adam’s sin because he was in Adam. But Jesus was not a physical descendent of Adam. He was the first born of a new creation. He was the second Adam of a new humanity – a covenant keeping humanity. That is why if the word of God is true there is only one way to the father- through Jesus Christ our Lord.
If the bible isn’t the word of God then don’t waste your time being good, certainly stop being religious. Do whatever you want to do: Because there is no need to be saved if there is no fall. There is no such thing as sin therefore everything is permissible and there are no consequences if the bible isn’t the word of God. The virgin birth is that important. It is not an option it is a necessity from a biblical point of view.
When Gabriel says: For no word from God will ever fail. That sets the stage for the conflict of the ages. That is why we hold on to the bible so tightly. We understand that it has been passed down through the ages because it is the word of God and it will not, cannot fail. God is big enough to pass down his word throughout the ages and keep intact what is important. That is why there are so many out there that want to down grade the bible from the word of God to just the word of men. If that can be done then we are free to do whatever we want to do whenever we want to. It breaks my heart that it is the church that is leading the way in destroying the foundation of the word of God.
I will finish by simply reading the rest of the story of both John and Joshua.
39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40 where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! 43 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” 46 And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48 for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, 49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name. 50 His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. 51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. 52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. 53 He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. 54 He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful 55 to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.” 56 Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then returned home.
57 When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son. 58 Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they shared her joy. 59 On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, 60 but his mother spoke up and said, “No! He is to be called John.” 61 They said to her, “There is no one among your relatives who has that name.” 62 Then they made signs to his father, to find out what he would like to name the child. 63 He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone’s astonishment he wrote, “His name is John.” 64 Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue set free, and he began to speak, praising God. 65 All the neighbors were filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things. 66 Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, “What then is this child going to be?” For the Lord’s hand was with him. 67 His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied: 68 “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them. 9 He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David 70 (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), 71 salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us— 72 to show mercy to our ancestors and to remember his holy covenant, 73 the oath he swore to our father Abraham: 74 to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear 75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. 76 And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, 77 to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, 8 because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven 79 to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.” 80 And the child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel.
18Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. 19And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly.
20But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. 21"She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins." 22Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23"BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL," which translated means, "GOD WITH US." 24And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife, 25but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus.
So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” 15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.
It is my prayer that you would all treasure up all these things and ponder them in your hearts. I pray that you would allow grace to permeate your hearts and let the good news be the good news in every area of your life. If still struggle with whether or not this is the word of God ask God to give you the gift of faith for it is not an intellectual process. It is a spiritual process.
Let’s pray. Father, Be our God and let us be your people. In Jesus name I pray amen.
Here the word of the Lord from Isaiah 61:
1The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, Because the LORD has anointed me To bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,To proclaim liberty to captives And freedom to prisoners; 2To proclaim the favorable year of the LORD And the day of vengeance of our God; To comfort all who mourn, 3To grant those who mourn in Zion, Giving them a garland instead of ashes, The oil of gladness instead of mourning, The mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting So they will be called oaks of righteousness, The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified. 4Then they will rebuild the ancient ruins, They will raise up the former devastations; And they will repair the ruined cities, The desolations of many generations. 5Strangers will stand and pasture your flocks, And foreigners will be your farmers and your vinedressers. 6But you will be called the priests of the LORD; You will be spoken of as ministers of our God You will eat the wealth of nations, And in their riches you will boast. 7Instead of your shame you will have a double portion, And instead of humiliation they will shout for joy over their portion Therefore they will possess a double portion in their land, Everlasting joy will be theirs.
Go in peace.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Dreamer
Greetings everyone,
Winter decided to come a week early around here dumping snow and ice on us Sunday night closing schools and making the already busy week even more hectic for me. Round two is expected to come at rush hour on the way home today – ice falling from the sky. Most people I know aren’t real fond of the unexpected. I think that’s why so many people get so gung ho over the sovereignty of God; they can just say it was God’s will, regardless- as if that puts a coating of o-tay on everything.
I think even in enveloping ourselves in that type of mentality we are trying to keep some semblance of control for ourselves. In some theological caniption fit we are trying to play God by saying He’s sovereign. It also tends to lessen our responsibility. But truth is none of those things are said in scripture.
I have no problem with God being sovereign. If the world is going to have any meaning God must be sovereign. What I would say is that the thing that we try to pass off as sovereign isn’t sovereign enough. We want him to only be sovereign over religion but scripture seems to indicate that he is sovereign over every area of life.
Now while our sovereign or even our non sovereign God is too small I think that we also exalt ourselves to highly in comparison. In some sense we have blurred the lines of what it means to be in Christ and we think that we just might have a bit of the sovereign God in us. We just might BE a tiny bit of God. It’s easy to do because we are always blurring the lines between God the son and the son of God.
We are in fact losing ground that the council of Chalcedon gained for us in 451 AD. You can read their decision for yourself at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Chalcedon
The gist of it is that God the son and the son of God are to be acknowledged inone body but two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten God, the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets from the beginning [have declared] concerning Him, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.
In everyday language what that says is that man and God are never to be confused and they weren’t confused in Christ. He was both things at the same time without any co-mingling at all. Jesus the man was like us in all ways and so that means that he never used the power of God the Son while he was on earth – NEVER. If he had then he would NOT be like us in every aspect but sin. Jesus the man was dependent upon God the father sending the Holy Spirit to work through him in all that he did. It is the sacrifice of Jesus the man that saves us. God did not die- God cannot die. Death is the result of sin. God cannot sin. It is opposed to his very nature which is perfection.
I say all of this because sometimes things need to be clarified. We lose sight of the fact that we are creatures and not God. I’ve been seeing billboards around Nashville that deny the very words of Jesus when he says that no man knows the hour or the day when he will return. These signs very blatantly say WE CAN KNOW and then proceed to proclaim that Jesus is coming back on May 21, 2011.
I really get sick of human beings sometimes. We can be so arrogant. We do that every time we try to reinterpret or even rewrite the scriptures in our own image. That is not a conservative or liberal problem both sides equally try to reshape the scriptures after their own image: Because of course we are the image of god right? We are gods walking the earth. We may never be so bold as to say that but that’s how we live. We seek after ourselves. We bow down to our will even when we read and interpret the scriptures because when it comes down to it we are all that matters. It is our intellectual understanding of the word of God that saves us not the power of God. It is we who save ourselves. It is we who are sovereign.
Bull.
I think this is why Jesus over and over again pointed out that it was our actions and not our words that mattered in the long term. You can say the sinner’s prayer and remain a sinner. You can say I will go and then not go. Worship means nothing apart from obedience. In fact, worship apart from obedience is sin. Worship in the modern sense is not bowing down (which is worship in the ancient sense) –obedience is the only bowing down that matters.
Now no where in this rant am I suggesting that we are saved by works. I certainly do not think that highly of humans. It is not possible for you or me or anybody that is a descendent of the first Adam to be saved by anything they do. Salvation is by grace and grace leads to obedience. Grace that doesn’t lead to obedience isn’t grace.
Rebellion against God is the essence of human works after the fall. Submission to God and his law is the nature of grace. By that I don’t mean an outward obedience. That is basically the same as saying I will go but not going. Grace changes your heart. Grace changes who you are on the inside. Cleaning the outside of the cup doesn’t take care of the vomit on the inside of the cup. Grace cleanses you from all rebellion against God.
Grace makes you like Jesus the man who humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Can we seriously think that we can do anything less?
Perhaps you are thinking of me with the words of Supertramp as you read this: Dreamer, your nothing but a dreamer. Can you put your hands in your head oh no.
And maybe I am a dreamer. I know I can’t do the obedience thing on my own. On my own I don’t want to be obedient in the least bit. But God, the true sovereign God can put his hand inside my head and my heart and give me the power of the Holy Spirit so that I can walk in obedience. It is grace that, even when I say no I will not, go pulls my lazy butt up out of the chair and makes me go.
It is true that there’s not a lot I can do.
But it is just as true that with God all things are possible – even getting my rebellious butt up and moving down the path of life.
I would encourage you to be a dreamer. Dream something really big: Dream obedience in every thought, word and deed. Learn to truly worship. Learn to abide in heaven (where obedience is 24/7) while walking through hell (where disobedience is 24/7).
Grace and obedience to you all,
Brad
Winter decided to come a week early around here dumping snow and ice on us Sunday night closing schools and making the already busy week even more hectic for me. Round two is expected to come at rush hour on the way home today – ice falling from the sky. Most people I know aren’t real fond of the unexpected. I think that’s why so many people get so gung ho over the sovereignty of God; they can just say it was God’s will, regardless- as if that puts a coating of o-tay on everything.
I think even in enveloping ourselves in that type of mentality we are trying to keep some semblance of control for ourselves. In some theological caniption fit we are trying to play God by saying He’s sovereign. It also tends to lessen our responsibility. But truth is none of those things are said in scripture.
I have no problem with God being sovereign. If the world is going to have any meaning God must be sovereign. What I would say is that the thing that we try to pass off as sovereign isn’t sovereign enough. We want him to only be sovereign over religion but scripture seems to indicate that he is sovereign over every area of life.
Now while our sovereign or even our non sovereign God is too small I think that we also exalt ourselves to highly in comparison. In some sense we have blurred the lines of what it means to be in Christ and we think that we just might have a bit of the sovereign God in us. We just might BE a tiny bit of God. It’s easy to do because we are always blurring the lines between God the son and the son of God.
We are in fact losing ground that the council of Chalcedon gained for us in 451 AD. You can read their decision for yourself at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Chalcedon
The gist of it is that God the son and the son of God are to be acknowledged inone body but two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten God, the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets from the beginning [have declared] concerning Him, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.
In everyday language what that says is that man and God are never to be confused and they weren’t confused in Christ. He was both things at the same time without any co-mingling at all. Jesus the man was like us in all ways and so that means that he never used the power of God the Son while he was on earth – NEVER. If he had then he would NOT be like us in every aspect but sin. Jesus the man was dependent upon God the father sending the Holy Spirit to work through him in all that he did. It is the sacrifice of Jesus the man that saves us. God did not die- God cannot die. Death is the result of sin. God cannot sin. It is opposed to his very nature which is perfection.
I say all of this because sometimes things need to be clarified. We lose sight of the fact that we are creatures and not God. I’ve been seeing billboards around Nashville that deny the very words of Jesus when he says that no man knows the hour or the day when he will return. These signs very blatantly say WE CAN KNOW and then proceed to proclaim that Jesus is coming back on May 21, 2011.
I really get sick of human beings sometimes. We can be so arrogant. We do that every time we try to reinterpret or even rewrite the scriptures in our own image. That is not a conservative or liberal problem both sides equally try to reshape the scriptures after their own image: Because of course we are the image of god right? We are gods walking the earth. We may never be so bold as to say that but that’s how we live. We seek after ourselves. We bow down to our will even when we read and interpret the scriptures because when it comes down to it we are all that matters. It is our intellectual understanding of the word of God that saves us not the power of God. It is we who save ourselves. It is we who are sovereign.
Bull.
I think this is why Jesus over and over again pointed out that it was our actions and not our words that mattered in the long term. You can say the sinner’s prayer and remain a sinner. You can say I will go and then not go. Worship means nothing apart from obedience. In fact, worship apart from obedience is sin. Worship in the modern sense is not bowing down (which is worship in the ancient sense) –obedience is the only bowing down that matters.
Now no where in this rant am I suggesting that we are saved by works. I certainly do not think that highly of humans. It is not possible for you or me or anybody that is a descendent of the first Adam to be saved by anything they do. Salvation is by grace and grace leads to obedience. Grace that doesn’t lead to obedience isn’t grace.
Rebellion against God is the essence of human works after the fall. Submission to God and his law is the nature of grace. By that I don’t mean an outward obedience. That is basically the same as saying I will go but not going. Grace changes your heart. Grace changes who you are on the inside. Cleaning the outside of the cup doesn’t take care of the vomit on the inside of the cup. Grace cleanses you from all rebellion against God.
Grace makes you like Jesus the man who humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Can we seriously think that we can do anything less?
Perhaps you are thinking of me with the words of Supertramp as you read this: Dreamer, your nothing but a dreamer. Can you put your hands in your head oh no.
And maybe I am a dreamer. I know I can’t do the obedience thing on my own. On my own I don’t want to be obedient in the least bit. But God, the true sovereign God can put his hand inside my head and my heart and give me the power of the Holy Spirit so that I can walk in obedience. It is grace that, even when I say no I will not, go pulls my lazy butt up out of the chair and makes me go.
It is true that there’s not a lot I can do.
But it is just as true that with God all things are possible – even getting my rebellious butt up and moving down the path of life.
I would encourage you to be a dreamer. Dream something really big: Dream obedience in every thought, word and deed. Learn to truly worship. Learn to abide in heaven (where obedience is 24/7) while walking through hell (where disobedience is 24/7).
Grace and obedience to you all,
Brad
Friday, December 10, 2010
foundation 19
We are going to start with chapter 8 of Ezra this week. Now it is one of those chapters of lists of names and I really don’t know what to do with those sometimes. So I will let you read them at your leisure if you want to. The rest of the chapter is about protecting the wealth of the temple until it can be placed safely in the temple. Remember that the Babylonians had given the Israelites all of the utensils and the wealth that had been there to take back with them. It seems to me that Ezra had been staying back in Babylon with the wealth of the temple waiting for the time when the temple was ready to receive it.
I find that interesting. In some ways that is a picture of us as believers. We have been given the wealth of salvation – we have the righteousness of Christ, we have all authority in heaven and earth and yet the spirit waits to let us utilize all that God has given us until we are ready to hold it. Does that make sense? I have in the course of my life time seen people (and have been of the people) who have seen the good gifts that God has given us in his word and then tried to go out and use them without being ready. Sometimes you have to grow into your armor before you can use it. Sometimes you’re too weak to pick up the sword of the spirit in battle and use it effectively. That is why growing up is so important. God has called us to grow up and be adults in the kingdom. He is waiting for us to grow up before he gives us the wealth Christ won for us.
Anyway back in the passage, I want to focus in on a couple of verses. When Ezra and the boys were ready to bring the wealth and put it in the temple, instead of just getting in the car and heading out, Ezra called for a fast. Why? Look at verse 21 about midway through: that we might humble ourselves before our God to seek from Him a safe journey for us, our little ones, and all our possessions. 22For I was ashamed to request from the king troops and horsemen to protect us from the enemy on the way, because we had said to the king, "The hand of our God is favorably disposed to all those who seek Him, but His power and His anger are against all those who forsake Him." 23So we fasted and sought our God concerning this matter, and He listened to our entreaty.
Remember last week I talked about receiving wealth from the wicked. In this passage we see that Ezra doesn’t want to ask the unbelievers for protection because he has already told them that God will protect them with His strong hand. And so Ezra calls those in the group to fast and humble themselves before God. That would include not just the physical act of fasting but confessing sin, asking for forgiveness. You see these things are essential to walking on the path of righteousness. They are essential to walking in covenant blessing. Being humble before God in every area of life is the key to having a positive covenant relationship with the father. I’m sorry that we as a people haven’t been taught that. We don’t see the correlation between our salvation and walking in righteousness but it is there and it is required by God and by Jesus- If you love me keep my commandments. Do these things and live.
Back in the passage, they humble themselves before God, divide up the load between the men and then proceed on their journey. Now listen to what Ezra says to all that are with him: "You are holy to the LORD, and the utensils are holy; and the silver and the gold are a freewill offering to the LORD God of your fathers. 29"Watch and keep them until you weigh them before the leading priests, the Levites and the heads of the fathers' households of Israel at Jerusalem, in the chambers of the house of the LORD." 30So the priests and the Levites accepted the weighed out silver and gold and the utensils, to bring them to Jerusalem to the house of our God.
How does that apply to us? If you are in Christ Jesus you ARE holy to the Lord. You have been given a valuable treasure to carry with you. You have the Holy Spirit inside you. You have the word of God implanted in your heart. Those things are not to be trivialized. You are called before the foundation of the world to do good works that have been prepared especially for you. That is a glorious thing. And that is just the tip of the iceberg of all of the wealth that God has given us.
I want you to be aware of just how valuable the word of God applied to the real world is: it will change the destinies of people and of nations. I’m not talking about the word of God in your head; or the word of God in your quiet times. Those things may be well and good but if the word of God only stays in your head and doesn’t make it out to the rest of your body and the rest of your life then it is worthless. It’s the same as burying a talent in the back yard. Unless you apply the word of God in the real world of your life you will never see the fruits of it. The word of God is not a magic potion or a set of magic words that you can say and make every thing ok regardless of what you do. The word of God is given to us to apply to every area of life. The word of God is about your work. It is about your marriage. It is about your family. It is about your relationships. It is about your recreation time. It is about your automobiles and your houses and all the mountains of stuff that each and everyone of us have. It is about your sports teams, your business deals, your investment opportunities, your card games and everything else you can think of.
You don’t just accept Jesus then baptize all of your life with religious words and make it ok. This wealth that you carry around with you has to be applied to everything you do. You have to learn to live on the path of life with everything you do. You have to learn to think biblically about everything you do. That doesn’t mean that you have to use religious words everywhere you go. What that means is that you work unto the Lord and you work for his glory. And when you are at work you work. I’m speaking to myself as much as anyone here. And when you are working you are being HOLY and the work that you are doing is HOLY and all that means is that it is set apart to the Lord. You are working for him and for his glory. You are creating wealth for God and the expansion of his kingdom. Your work is his work and the work that you do is one of the good things that he has planned for you to do with your life.
Oh I wish I would have known that when I was14 or 15 but nobody I knew knew that. I didn’t hear any of this at church. We were too busy wanting to leave the planet. Back then holiness was quiting your day job to be in ministry. Holiness was anything but working in the mundane things of life. Well, unfortunately that is not what scripture says at all. Holiness according to scripture is doing everything, even the mundane things of life with the goal of walking on the path of life. Holiness is setting aside your will and humbling yourself in order that you may stay on the path of life.
Trust me, you can pursue the ministry and the things that we consider spiritual in our day and age and not be on the path of life. Part of our problem is that we have so narrowed down what ministry and being spiritual is that we don’t have a clue what the bible says is spiritual. The bible calls us to simply apply the word of God to our hearts and lives in the midst of the real world in the everyday activities of life. That is what biblical spirituality is: nothing more, nothing less.
It is when we walk the journey of life on the path of life, in accordance to the word of God and with humble hearts that we can trust that as it says in 31: that the hand of our God was over us, and He delivered us from the hand of the enemy and the ambushes by the way.
So by the end of chapter 8 the temple has been rebuilt and it is full of all the gifts that are supposed to be there. The church is up and running, at least a minimal level. The body of Christ is beginning to grow toward maturity. That’s a good thing. If you remember from last week I talked about the sign of maturity or of humbleness before the Lord is that in the midst of the heat of life God causes the dross of our hearts to be brought to the surface to be dealt with.
Well, chapters 9 and 10 deal with that very thing. Now it is in a context that might make us uncomfortable but these things were written for our examples and sometimes to apply the examples you have to look deeper than the surface. I’m going to try to do that in what is coming up. Let’s start by reading chapter 9. 1Now when these things had been completed, the princes approached me, saying, "The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands, according to their abominations, those of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians and the Amorites. 2"For they have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race has intermingled with the peoples of the lands; indeed, the hands of the princes and the rulers have been foremost in this unfaithfulness."
Now the first instinct for me when reading this passage is to say that it is about marrying different nationalities but we must remember that all of scripture is written as a guide for us and it all must be examined before declaring this is what is meant by this passage. And so with this issue of marriage I want you to remember if you can the lineage of Jesus and who was in it. There was a Canaanite and a Moabite who were both godly people: Rahab and Ruth. We must also remember that even the people coming out of Egypt during the exodus weren’t racially pure there were many Egyptians that chose to follow as well. This is not a passage about physical marriage. It is about being spiritually united with non-biblical ideas and ways of living or if you want to get religious: ways of worship.
What we have in this mix is Christians being so co mingled with unbelievers that they can’t see the path of life. I think this is a perfect example of the culture we live in. We have so comingled ideas from everywhere that we really don’t have a clue what the scripture says about anything. We run our churches like a business. We try to get people to focus their lives around a building like it was a country club or something. We mix the word of God with various other philosophies and ideologies and we still call it Christianity.
I would say that the main point of this passage is that when the church gets on its feet and is moving toward maturity one of the first things that begins to happen is that we begin to learn to think christianly. We begin to give up the mixed marriages where we try to serve the God of scripture in ways that are at the heart opposed to his very existence and his very nature. It’s like trying to follow after God by following the devil.
Now it is never that overt. It is much more subtle than that but the results are much the same. It’s interesting that in the heat of battle this stuff never came up. They have been working together side by side for over 10 years and now some of the leaders bring it up. That goes back to the dross thing. You see you come to Christ just as you are. While you were yet a sinner Christ died for you but you’re hard pressed to find a passage that says that once you came to Christ God encouraged you to stay in your sin. It’s not there.
Here is a church. They are just getting on their feet and as they begin to walk: sin begins to become evident.
Look at Ezra’s response: When I heard about this matter, I tore my garment and my robe, and pulled some of the hair from my head and my beard, and sat down appalled. 4Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel on account of the unfaithfulness of the exiles gathered to me, and I sat appalled until the evening offering.
Let’s stop there. Notice that he doesn’t scream and yell at anyone. He doesn’t point fingers. He basically humbles himself before God even more. I realize that these things are alien to our culture: tearing your clothes, pulling out your hair, and then sitting down. I don’t understand the whys of it. But I understand the heart behind it. I am beginning to understand just how disastrous it is for the body of Christ to leave the path of life. I am starting to figure out that sin, even just a little bit of it, is devastating to our mission.
Now we have lived so long with sin being our closest friend that we have a difficult time in our generation seeing clearly the devastation that has been wrought upon us because of sin both in our own lives and in our culture but it is horribly great. It is worth ripping your clothes and plucking out your beard; because it is that sad.
So Ezra humbles himself in the presence of God and the rest of the church for the rest of the day after he hears. Then in verse 5 we read: But at the evening offering I arose from my humiliation, even with my garment and my robe torn, and I fell on my knees and stretched out my hands to the LORD my God; 6and I said, "O my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift up my face to You, my God, for our iniquities have risen above our heads and our guilt has grown even to the heavens. 7"Since the days of our fathers to this day we have been in great guilt, and on account of our iniquities we, our kings and our priests have been given into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity and to plunder and to open shame, as it is this day. 8"But now for a brief moment grace has been shown from the LORD our God, to leave us an escaped remnant and to give us a peg in His holy place, that our God may enlighten our eyes and grant us a little reviving in our bondage. 9"For we are slaves; yet in our bondage our God has not forsaken us, but has extended loving kindness to us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to give us reviving to raise up the house of our God, to restore its ruins and to give us a wall in Judah and Jerusalem. 10"Now, our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken Your commandments, 11which You have commanded by Your servants the prophets, saying, 'The land which you are entering to possess is an unclean land with the uncleanness of the peoples of the lands, with their abominations which have filled it from end to end and with their impurity. 12'So now do not give your daughters to their sons nor take their daughters to your sons, and never seek their peace or their prosperity, that you may be strong and eat the good things of the land and leave it as an inheritance to your sons forever.' 13"After all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and our great guilt, since You our God have requited us less than our iniquities deserve, and have given us an escaped remnant as this, 14shall we again break Your commandments and intermarry with the peoples who commit these abominations? Would You not be angry with us to the point of destruction, until there is no remnant nor any who escape? 15"O LORD God of Israel, You are righteous, for we have been left an escaped remnant, as it is this day; behold, we are before You in our guilt, for no one can stand before You because of this."
Oh that God would give each and every one of us hearts like this that yearn to be righteous and are broken hearted over our sin when it is revealed to us. I’m afraid we have written this kind of stuff off as Old Testament mumbo jumbo. We don’t need to act like that because now we have Jesus. That is a sad but true fact. We have so dumbed down the faith that has been handed down to us, so minimized everything that nothing is important anymore. Being grieved by sin, having the desire to be pure in our thinking by not mixing non biblical ways of thinking and living; these things are alien to us. They have been for a long time: Since the early church fathers mixed the scriptures with Greek philosophy. And even all the way back through the Old Testament.
I want to interject something here: Do not think for a moment that in order to find the best religion you have to go back in time, maybe to the time of the Apostles? I want you to understand that the apostles didn’t have it down any better than we do. We may actually have more insight on a lot of things than they did. They were for the most part struggling to discern the difference between the good news and the religion they had grown up with. It was a horrible struggle fraught with difficulties and wrong turns.
There were no good old days that we should look back on. The Good days lie ahead of us. In the time of Noah there was one righteous person who found favor with God. We are growing toward the kingdom of God filling the whole earth. Just because the New Testament isn’t has open and honest about the lives of the apostles and believers at that time doesn’t mean that they were any better than the people who came before them. The Old Testament pictures of how people act are truthful pictures of the way the earth is and will be until the kingdom of God fills every square inch. Just because we are used to seeing spotless facades of people who pose for the cameras and make everything look nice doesn’t mean that is how the world is.
When I was home for the birth of my grandson awhile back I was looking at old pictures and I happened upon a set of pictures of one of the worst days of, if not the worst day of my life. Now unless you were me or my ex-wife you would never know that to be true. There were smiles and hugs and parents and kids all having a great time. But underneath the façade I had had a stake driven through my heart that day.
Don’t let wish for the façade. Don’t long for everything to be picture perfect so much that you try your best to escape reality. God has called us to open and honest and real about the condition of the world we live in. We need to pull our heads out of the sand and live in the real world with a faith that is reality based. Until we do that we will remain a laughing stock and the wealth of the temple will never be allowed to be released to us.
Our calling as believers is not to pretend that everything is ok but to humbly submit our real selves before God and be willing to be who God made us to be even if we don’t like how that looks to the rest of the world. The rest of the world is not your judge. God the father is your judge. You will be held accountable for how you handle the truth of your life in light of scripture. If you bury your life in the illusion of perfection then you will miss the glorious opportunity to be transformed into all that you are meant to be. You see when the scripture says that liars will not enter the kingdom of God this is just a bit of what it is talking about.
The call is for us to humble ourselves before God in every area of our lives. It is to be open and honest with God about our condition, not for his sake, he already knows what your like on the inside. We confess for our own sakes that the wealth of the righteousness of Christ can begin to transform us not just on the outside but at the very core of who we are so that we may be saved to the uttermost.
May God pour out his grace upon each one of us that we may be changed to be like him – holy as he is holy.
Let’s pray.
Oh Father have mercy upon us. Change our hearts. Change our minds. Change our bodies so that we may be like Christ in every area of life. In Jesus name we ask these things. Amen.
Here the word of the Lord from Philippians chapter 1:
2Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, 5in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now. 6For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. 7For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me. 8For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, 10so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; 11having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
I find that interesting. In some ways that is a picture of us as believers. We have been given the wealth of salvation – we have the righteousness of Christ, we have all authority in heaven and earth and yet the spirit waits to let us utilize all that God has given us until we are ready to hold it. Does that make sense? I have in the course of my life time seen people (and have been of the people) who have seen the good gifts that God has given us in his word and then tried to go out and use them without being ready. Sometimes you have to grow into your armor before you can use it. Sometimes you’re too weak to pick up the sword of the spirit in battle and use it effectively. That is why growing up is so important. God has called us to grow up and be adults in the kingdom. He is waiting for us to grow up before he gives us the wealth Christ won for us.
Anyway back in the passage, I want to focus in on a couple of verses. When Ezra and the boys were ready to bring the wealth and put it in the temple, instead of just getting in the car and heading out, Ezra called for a fast. Why? Look at verse 21 about midway through: that we might humble ourselves before our God to seek from Him a safe journey for us, our little ones, and all our possessions. 22For I was ashamed to request from the king troops and horsemen to protect us from the enemy on the way, because we had said to the king, "The hand of our God is favorably disposed to all those who seek Him, but His power and His anger are against all those who forsake Him." 23So we fasted and sought our God concerning this matter, and He listened to our entreaty.
Remember last week I talked about receiving wealth from the wicked. In this passage we see that Ezra doesn’t want to ask the unbelievers for protection because he has already told them that God will protect them with His strong hand. And so Ezra calls those in the group to fast and humble themselves before God. That would include not just the physical act of fasting but confessing sin, asking for forgiveness. You see these things are essential to walking on the path of righteousness. They are essential to walking in covenant blessing. Being humble before God in every area of life is the key to having a positive covenant relationship with the father. I’m sorry that we as a people haven’t been taught that. We don’t see the correlation between our salvation and walking in righteousness but it is there and it is required by God and by Jesus- If you love me keep my commandments. Do these things and live.
Back in the passage, they humble themselves before God, divide up the load between the men and then proceed on their journey. Now listen to what Ezra says to all that are with him: "You are holy to the LORD, and the utensils are holy; and the silver and the gold are a freewill offering to the LORD God of your fathers. 29"Watch and keep them until you weigh them before the leading priests, the Levites and the heads of the fathers' households of Israel at Jerusalem, in the chambers of the house of the LORD." 30So the priests and the Levites accepted the weighed out silver and gold and the utensils, to bring them to Jerusalem to the house of our God.
How does that apply to us? If you are in Christ Jesus you ARE holy to the Lord. You have been given a valuable treasure to carry with you. You have the Holy Spirit inside you. You have the word of God implanted in your heart. Those things are not to be trivialized. You are called before the foundation of the world to do good works that have been prepared especially for you. That is a glorious thing. And that is just the tip of the iceberg of all of the wealth that God has given us.
I want you to be aware of just how valuable the word of God applied to the real world is: it will change the destinies of people and of nations. I’m not talking about the word of God in your head; or the word of God in your quiet times. Those things may be well and good but if the word of God only stays in your head and doesn’t make it out to the rest of your body and the rest of your life then it is worthless. It’s the same as burying a talent in the back yard. Unless you apply the word of God in the real world of your life you will never see the fruits of it. The word of God is not a magic potion or a set of magic words that you can say and make every thing ok regardless of what you do. The word of God is given to us to apply to every area of life. The word of God is about your work. It is about your marriage. It is about your family. It is about your relationships. It is about your recreation time. It is about your automobiles and your houses and all the mountains of stuff that each and everyone of us have. It is about your sports teams, your business deals, your investment opportunities, your card games and everything else you can think of.
You don’t just accept Jesus then baptize all of your life with religious words and make it ok. This wealth that you carry around with you has to be applied to everything you do. You have to learn to live on the path of life with everything you do. You have to learn to think biblically about everything you do. That doesn’t mean that you have to use religious words everywhere you go. What that means is that you work unto the Lord and you work for his glory. And when you are at work you work. I’m speaking to myself as much as anyone here. And when you are working you are being HOLY and the work that you are doing is HOLY and all that means is that it is set apart to the Lord. You are working for him and for his glory. You are creating wealth for God and the expansion of his kingdom. Your work is his work and the work that you do is one of the good things that he has planned for you to do with your life.
Oh I wish I would have known that when I was14 or 15 but nobody I knew knew that. I didn’t hear any of this at church. We were too busy wanting to leave the planet. Back then holiness was quiting your day job to be in ministry. Holiness was anything but working in the mundane things of life. Well, unfortunately that is not what scripture says at all. Holiness according to scripture is doing everything, even the mundane things of life with the goal of walking on the path of life. Holiness is setting aside your will and humbling yourself in order that you may stay on the path of life.
Trust me, you can pursue the ministry and the things that we consider spiritual in our day and age and not be on the path of life. Part of our problem is that we have so narrowed down what ministry and being spiritual is that we don’t have a clue what the bible says is spiritual. The bible calls us to simply apply the word of God to our hearts and lives in the midst of the real world in the everyday activities of life. That is what biblical spirituality is: nothing more, nothing less.
It is when we walk the journey of life on the path of life, in accordance to the word of God and with humble hearts that we can trust that as it says in 31: that the hand of our God was over us, and He delivered us from the hand of the enemy and the ambushes by the way.
So by the end of chapter 8 the temple has been rebuilt and it is full of all the gifts that are supposed to be there. The church is up and running, at least a minimal level. The body of Christ is beginning to grow toward maturity. That’s a good thing. If you remember from last week I talked about the sign of maturity or of humbleness before the Lord is that in the midst of the heat of life God causes the dross of our hearts to be brought to the surface to be dealt with.
Well, chapters 9 and 10 deal with that very thing. Now it is in a context that might make us uncomfortable but these things were written for our examples and sometimes to apply the examples you have to look deeper than the surface. I’m going to try to do that in what is coming up. Let’s start by reading chapter 9. 1Now when these things had been completed, the princes approached me, saying, "The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands, according to their abominations, those of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians and the Amorites. 2"For they have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race has intermingled with the peoples of the lands; indeed, the hands of the princes and the rulers have been foremost in this unfaithfulness."
Now the first instinct for me when reading this passage is to say that it is about marrying different nationalities but we must remember that all of scripture is written as a guide for us and it all must be examined before declaring this is what is meant by this passage. And so with this issue of marriage I want you to remember if you can the lineage of Jesus and who was in it. There was a Canaanite and a Moabite who were both godly people: Rahab and Ruth. We must also remember that even the people coming out of Egypt during the exodus weren’t racially pure there were many Egyptians that chose to follow as well. This is not a passage about physical marriage. It is about being spiritually united with non-biblical ideas and ways of living or if you want to get religious: ways of worship.
What we have in this mix is Christians being so co mingled with unbelievers that they can’t see the path of life. I think this is a perfect example of the culture we live in. We have so comingled ideas from everywhere that we really don’t have a clue what the scripture says about anything. We run our churches like a business. We try to get people to focus their lives around a building like it was a country club or something. We mix the word of God with various other philosophies and ideologies and we still call it Christianity.
I would say that the main point of this passage is that when the church gets on its feet and is moving toward maturity one of the first things that begins to happen is that we begin to learn to think christianly. We begin to give up the mixed marriages where we try to serve the God of scripture in ways that are at the heart opposed to his very existence and his very nature. It’s like trying to follow after God by following the devil.
Now it is never that overt. It is much more subtle than that but the results are much the same. It’s interesting that in the heat of battle this stuff never came up. They have been working together side by side for over 10 years and now some of the leaders bring it up. That goes back to the dross thing. You see you come to Christ just as you are. While you were yet a sinner Christ died for you but you’re hard pressed to find a passage that says that once you came to Christ God encouraged you to stay in your sin. It’s not there.
Here is a church. They are just getting on their feet and as they begin to walk: sin begins to become evident.
Look at Ezra’s response: When I heard about this matter, I tore my garment and my robe, and pulled some of the hair from my head and my beard, and sat down appalled. 4Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel on account of the unfaithfulness of the exiles gathered to me, and I sat appalled until the evening offering.
Let’s stop there. Notice that he doesn’t scream and yell at anyone. He doesn’t point fingers. He basically humbles himself before God even more. I realize that these things are alien to our culture: tearing your clothes, pulling out your hair, and then sitting down. I don’t understand the whys of it. But I understand the heart behind it. I am beginning to understand just how disastrous it is for the body of Christ to leave the path of life. I am starting to figure out that sin, even just a little bit of it, is devastating to our mission.
Now we have lived so long with sin being our closest friend that we have a difficult time in our generation seeing clearly the devastation that has been wrought upon us because of sin both in our own lives and in our culture but it is horribly great. It is worth ripping your clothes and plucking out your beard; because it is that sad.
So Ezra humbles himself in the presence of God and the rest of the church for the rest of the day after he hears. Then in verse 5 we read: But at the evening offering I arose from my humiliation, even with my garment and my robe torn, and I fell on my knees and stretched out my hands to the LORD my God; 6and I said, "O my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift up my face to You, my God, for our iniquities have risen above our heads and our guilt has grown even to the heavens. 7"Since the days of our fathers to this day we have been in great guilt, and on account of our iniquities we, our kings and our priests have been given into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity and to plunder and to open shame, as it is this day. 8"But now for a brief moment grace has been shown from the LORD our God, to leave us an escaped remnant and to give us a peg in His holy place, that our God may enlighten our eyes and grant us a little reviving in our bondage. 9"For we are slaves; yet in our bondage our God has not forsaken us, but has extended loving kindness to us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to give us reviving to raise up the house of our God, to restore its ruins and to give us a wall in Judah and Jerusalem. 10"Now, our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken Your commandments, 11which You have commanded by Your servants the prophets, saying, 'The land which you are entering to possess is an unclean land with the uncleanness of the peoples of the lands, with their abominations which have filled it from end to end and with their impurity. 12'So now do not give your daughters to their sons nor take their daughters to your sons, and never seek their peace or their prosperity, that you may be strong and eat the good things of the land and leave it as an inheritance to your sons forever.' 13"After all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and our great guilt, since You our God have requited us less than our iniquities deserve, and have given us an escaped remnant as this, 14shall we again break Your commandments and intermarry with the peoples who commit these abominations? Would You not be angry with us to the point of destruction, until there is no remnant nor any who escape? 15"O LORD God of Israel, You are righteous, for we have been left an escaped remnant, as it is this day; behold, we are before You in our guilt, for no one can stand before You because of this."
Oh that God would give each and every one of us hearts like this that yearn to be righteous and are broken hearted over our sin when it is revealed to us. I’m afraid we have written this kind of stuff off as Old Testament mumbo jumbo. We don’t need to act like that because now we have Jesus. That is a sad but true fact. We have so dumbed down the faith that has been handed down to us, so minimized everything that nothing is important anymore. Being grieved by sin, having the desire to be pure in our thinking by not mixing non biblical ways of thinking and living; these things are alien to us. They have been for a long time: Since the early church fathers mixed the scriptures with Greek philosophy. And even all the way back through the Old Testament.
I want to interject something here: Do not think for a moment that in order to find the best religion you have to go back in time, maybe to the time of the Apostles? I want you to understand that the apostles didn’t have it down any better than we do. We may actually have more insight on a lot of things than they did. They were for the most part struggling to discern the difference between the good news and the religion they had grown up with. It was a horrible struggle fraught with difficulties and wrong turns.
There were no good old days that we should look back on. The Good days lie ahead of us. In the time of Noah there was one righteous person who found favor with God. We are growing toward the kingdom of God filling the whole earth. Just because the New Testament isn’t has open and honest about the lives of the apostles and believers at that time doesn’t mean that they were any better than the people who came before them. The Old Testament pictures of how people act are truthful pictures of the way the earth is and will be until the kingdom of God fills every square inch. Just because we are used to seeing spotless facades of people who pose for the cameras and make everything look nice doesn’t mean that is how the world is.
When I was home for the birth of my grandson awhile back I was looking at old pictures and I happened upon a set of pictures of one of the worst days of, if not the worst day of my life. Now unless you were me or my ex-wife you would never know that to be true. There were smiles and hugs and parents and kids all having a great time. But underneath the façade I had had a stake driven through my heart that day.
Don’t let wish for the façade. Don’t long for everything to be picture perfect so much that you try your best to escape reality. God has called us to open and honest and real about the condition of the world we live in. We need to pull our heads out of the sand and live in the real world with a faith that is reality based. Until we do that we will remain a laughing stock and the wealth of the temple will never be allowed to be released to us.
Our calling as believers is not to pretend that everything is ok but to humbly submit our real selves before God and be willing to be who God made us to be even if we don’t like how that looks to the rest of the world. The rest of the world is not your judge. God the father is your judge. You will be held accountable for how you handle the truth of your life in light of scripture. If you bury your life in the illusion of perfection then you will miss the glorious opportunity to be transformed into all that you are meant to be. You see when the scripture says that liars will not enter the kingdom of God this is just a bit of what it is talking about.
The call is for us to humble ourselves before God in every area of our lives. It is to be open and honest with God about our condition, not for his sake, he already knows what your like on the inside. We confess for our own sakes that the wealth of the righteousness of Christ can begin to transform us not just on the outside but at the very core of who we are so that we may be saved to the uttermost.
May God pour out his grace upon each one of us that we may be changed to be like him – holy as he is holy.
Let’s pray.
Oh Father have mercy upon us. Change our hearts. Change our minds. Change our bodies so that we may be like Christ in every area of life. In Jesus name we ask these things. Amen.
Here the word of the Lord from Philippians chapter 1:
2Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, 5in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now. 6For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. 7For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me. 8For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, 10so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; 11having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
The Walking Dead
Hey Everybody,
I know I've emailed already this week but sometimes I just have to get things out of my head and onto the computer screen.
As I told you all a couple of weeks ago I’ve been reading the Walking Dead comic series lately. With the addition of its transformation into a TV series on some channel that I do not get, its mass appeal is overwhelmingly evident. The more I read the more I understand that it is a outgrowth of the relativity of all things that we have been teaching our children for the last 50 years. The books read like a lesson in values clarification.
In volume three there was hope that the rule of law was going to be implemented but circumstances clarified the situation and now the law man has become lawless as the situation of life dictates how we should really live. Sexual immorality is now a given. It has been throughout the story but now it has been justified because of the times that we live in. “We might not have long to live so go ahead and sleep with anyone.” Whatever gets you through the night is alright. There was a line that caught my eye (I am reading not listening) when the so called religious man said something like; “in this times we have to sin to do good” or some such nonsense.
Murder, sexual promiscuity, lying, hatred, acknowledgment that a god exists but that he is too impotent to do anything these are the things that trample over my sense of being as I read the books. Why do I keep reading them? Because they are well written. Because they grab your attention. Because they make you think about what you would do in hard times –hard times that probably are going to come (not zombies but perhaps something worse – hordes of the living killing anything in their path.)
How are we going to chose to live when all semblance of order is taken away? Since most people both Christian and non have no sense of the true nature of law then I would have to say that these books are probably rather accurate in how things, at least initially, would probably turn out. It would be the existentialists dream come true. No rules just right. Murder if you need to murder for the good of the group. Sleep with who ever you want to because life is too short for consequences.
As I think about these things I wonder how deep my commitment to the law of God really is. And in saying that I am asking an even deeper question: How deep is my commitment to the God of law? How would I live in a world gone mad? Well, how am I doing it now? How easily distracted am I from staying on the path of life? How quickly will I do wrong in order to further my idea of right? These are the questions that we ignore every day because sans the zombies this is the world we live in.
It is a world that makes each of us ask how am I going to take care of me while at the same time ignoring the deeper underlying question of do I trust God enough to let him take care of me even when it seems like he can’t or won’t?
Will I obey the command to not murder when someone is trying to take away everything I need to survive? Am I willing to murder in order to get what I need to survive? These are the questions that are not being asked because they don’t fit in with the nature of reality as we see it.
But the world is not the way we see it. The world is not a series of meaningless, random events. The world is not about the survival of the fittest. The world is not about the strong surviving by crushing the weak. Morals are not an addendum that a comfortable society puts into place to stay comfortable.
They are life or at least the path that the living must stay on in order to stay alive. It is on my list of things to do to write a work at least as compelling as Walking Dead that shows the reality of immorality in God’s world. I don’t know how yet and I am imagining that the sales would probably go through the roof (10 copies sold and 100 given away like usual) but somebody has to shine a light in the midst of a dark world and a dark church that hates the path of life and loves the road to destruction.
At times I feel overwhelmed by the darkness. How can me walking in righteousness stand a chance against the deep darkness of church and state? How has it done so throughout the ages? When, shortly after the beginning, Cain killed Abel, why not just give up and forget having kids altogether? It’s a dog eat dog world who would want to raise a kid in that kind of a mess? And yet Seth was born and because of that some 4000 years later the king of kings and lord of Lords is enthroned on high ruling and reigning with righteous law until every knee bows in submission and all his enemies are destroyed and made his footstool.
Righteousness (which contrary to popular ignorance is nothing more than obedience to the law of God) will conquer all opposition, light will vanquish the darkness, the good guy wins in the end because of goodness not because of might.
In the words of Stevie Wonder: Heaven help us all.
Grace and Peace that lead to righteousness,
Brad
I know I've emailed already this week but sometimes I just have to get things out of my head and onto the computer screen.
As I told you all a couple of weeks ago I’ve been reading the Walking Dead comic series lately. With the addition of its transformation into a TV series on some channel that I do not get, its mass appeal is overwhelmingly evident. The more I read the more I understand that it is a outgrowth of the relativity of all things that we have been teaching our children for the last 50 years. The books read like a lesson in values clarification.
In volume three there was hope that the rule of law was going to be implemented but circumstances clarified the situation and now the law man has become lawless as the situation of life dictates how we should really live. Sexual immorality is now a given. It has been throughout the story but now it has been justified because of the times that we live in. “We might not have long to live so go ahead and sleep with anyone.” Whatever gets you through the night is alright. There was a line that caught my eye (I am reading not listening) when the so called religious man said something like; “in this times we have to sin to do good” or some such nonsense.
Murder, sexual promiscuity, lying, hatred, acknowledgment that a god exists but that he is too impotent to do anything these are the things that trample over my sense of being as I read the books. Why do I keep reading them? Because they are well written. Because they grab your attention. Because they make you think about what you would do in hard times –hard times that probably are going to come (not zombies but perhaps something worse – hordes of the living killing anything in their path.)
How are we going to chose to live when all semblance of order is taken away? Since most people both Christian and non have no sense of the true nature of law then I would have to say that these books are probably rather accurate in how things, at least initially, would probably turn out. It would be the existentialists dream come true. No rules just right. Murder if you need to murder for the good of the group. Sleep with who ever you want to because life is too short for consequences.
As I think about these things I wonder how deep my commitment to the law of God really is. And in saying that I am asking an even deeper question: How deep is my commitment to the God of law? How would I live in a world gone mad? Well, how am I doing it now? How easily distracted am I from staying on the path of life? How quickly will I do wrong in order to further my idea of right? These are the questions that we ignore every day because sans the zombies this is the world we live in.
It is a world that makes each of us ask how am I going to take care of me while at the same time ignoring the deeper underlying question of do I trust God enough to let him take care of me even when it seems like he can’t or won’t?
Will I obey the command to not murder when someone is trying to take away everything I need to survive? Am I willing to murder in order to get what I need to survive? These are the questions that are not being asked because they don’t fit in with the nature of reality as we see it.
But the world is not the way we see it. The world is not a series of meaningless, random events. The world is not about the survival of the fittest. The world is not about the strong surviving by crushing the weak. Morals are not an addendum that a comfortable society puts into place to stay comfortable.
They are life or at least the path that the living must stay on in order to stay alive. It is on my list of things to do to write a work at least as compelling as Walking Dead that shows the reality of immorality in God’s world. I don’t know how yet and I am imagining that the sales would probably go through the roof (10 copies sold and 100 given away like usual) but somebody has to shine a light in the midst of a dark world and a dark church that hates the path of life and loves the road to destruction.
At times I feel overwhelmed by the darkness. How can me walking in righteousness stand a chance against the deep darkness of church and state? How has it done so throughout the ages? When, shortly after the beginning, Cain killed Abel, why not just give up and forget having kids altogether? It’s a dog eat dog world who would want to raise a kid in that kind of a mess? And yet Seth was born and because of that some 4000 years later the king of kings and lord of Lords is enthroned on high ruling and reigning with righteous law until every knee bows in submission and all his enemies are destroyed and made his footstool.
Righteousness (which contrary to popular ignorance is nothing more than obedience to the law of God) will conquer all opposition, light will vanquish the darkness, the good guy wins in the end because of goodness not because of might.
In the words of Stevie Wonder: Heaven help us all.
Grace and Peace that lead to righteousness,
Brad
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Slow Ride
A big 'boy howdy' to everyone,
I think it was Foghat who sang, Slow Ride, take it easy. I am finally resigning myself to the understanding that the work of God in growing a people for himself is truly a slow ride. And that reminds me of another song this one by Cat Stevens – Father and Son- Most of my life I have been like the son in that song saying:
How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again. It's always been the same, same old story. From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen. Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away. I know I have to go.
All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside, It's hard, but it's harder to ignore it. If they were right, I'd agree, but it's them They know not me. Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away. I know I have to go.
But these days the words of the father in that song are ringing more and more true:
It's not time to make a change, Just relax, take it easy. You're still young, that's your fault, There’s so much you have to know. Find a girl, settle down, If you want you can marry. Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy. I was once like you are now, and I know that it's not easy, To be calm when you've found something going on. But take your time, think a lot, Why, think of everything you've got. For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.
I know that there is a way I should go but I’m learning (slowly) that the speed of my activity doesn’t increase the speed of my arrival. Life seems to be a hurry up and wait game. Ideas take time to implement. Plans take time to develop. Soup gets better the longer it cooks.
While I am beginning to learn these things that doesn’t mean that I am always so good at applying them. Part of the reason for that is the demand for immediacy upon my life. People don’t want jobs stretching out for all eternity.
In all of this I am learning the need for balance: to be diligent in work and yet patient for the plan to unfold. I think it is important that we learn to understand that we have no control over the plan whatsoever. It is God’s plan to unfold not ours. Our task is to do the work at hand. What ever your hand finds to do: do it with all your might as unto the Lord. It is the task at hand that is our calling. We are called to the mundane so that we might end up in glory.
Now I have probably said all of this in a different way a hundred times before but I say it again because I need to hear it. I need to hear it in the midst of the plan crawling by like a snail while my life speeds by like a blur. The tasks at hand were created by God for me to do from before all eternity and if I am going to make it to the end of this race and cross the finish line then I have to take the step that is next in line.
I think that in our culture we have developed an urgency mentality that may very well destroy us. We find a problem and we think that it needs to be fixed now, no, yesterday. Be that global warming or population growth, or the deficit, or crime, or disease – the ors could just keep coming. Something always has to be done about a problem now. But the truth is just because we see with short term eyes doesn’t mean that the problem has developed short term or that it can be fixed short term. Just because we think there’s a problem doesn’t even mean that there is a problem. Part of our need for urgency stems out of the fact that we think the plan is ours. But it’s not.
Yes, the deficit is a horrible problem. I was talking to one of my grandsons the other day (two of the others haven’t even started talking yet – you’d think they could learn that in six months) and he is more than a little concerned about the deficit. And he should be concerned but at the same time we need to try to see it with a biblical lens on our eyes. What if the total collapse of our economy is the only thing that will bring us to repentance as a people? What if what we need to learn is to stop deficit spending at the personal level? What if the melting of the ice caps is a thing that is supposed to happen ever 10 thousand years to restore balance to the ecosphere and as a reult of our limited data we destroy the world as we know it with good intentions?
The place to make a change for me is in my next step. If I press on in walking the path of life with all of my heart focused on the step that I am taking now; If I stop deficit spending, if I stop whatever it that I like to do to destroy myself, I will find, over the course of time, that I am on a totally different path than I used to be. I was on the path of destruction, more often than not I prefer the path of destruction but my calling is to the path of life. Grace puts me on the path of life, and it keeps me on the path of life. It’s important to understand that getting on the path of life isn’t the end goal – staying on it is. My call is to humbly walk on the path of life even though I don’t want to. It’s not time to make a change. Well, that’s not true; it is time to leave the destruction of disobedience and walk in the path of obedience. If I will focus my attention on that then the scriptures promise good things.
Now if you multiply my walk with all of your walks – that may be 50 or 60 walks in the US and from what I can tell another 30 or so in Denmark, Finland, Poland and Asia (I am global you know) and we all make the choice to humbly walk the path of obedience that leads to life then we are making a change for the better; a change for blessing instead of cursing. (I know some of you don’t believe those things apply any more but truth is if they don’t apply who gets to determine if the New Testament still applies? It’s an all or nothing thing in my opinion.)
Change begins at the micro level. It begins with a cell. Cancer doesn’t begin with a huge tumor. It begins with the changing of a single cell and that cell multiplies. A healthy body begins the same way; with a single cell that multiplies.
All I am longing for is to be a cell of life instead of cancer. If you choose to do the same then by God’s grace we can all move together in the pursuit of life. U2 has a great song that says: I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. That is true. I haven’t found it yet. I still live in a world where death prevails. I’m looking for a world full of life. I am on the path of life and I want to see more and more life as I ease on down, ease on down the road (The Wiz). I want nothing more than the living dead world that we reside in to be turned fully and completely into a world of life.
All I can say is Come Lord Jesus and help me stay on the path of life today.
May the same apply to you as well.
Brad
I think it was Foghat who sang, Slow Ride, take it easy. I am finally resigning myself to the understanding that the work of God in growing a people for himself is truly a slow ride. And that reminds me of another song this one by Cat Stevens – Father and Son- Most of my life I have been like the son in that song saying:
How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again. It's always been the same, same old story. From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen. Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away. I know I have to go.
All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside, It's hard, but it's harder to ignore it. If they were right, I'd agree, but it's them They know not me. Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away. I know I have to go.
But these days the words of the father in that song are ringing more and more true:
It's not time to make a change, Just relax, take it easy. You're still young, that's your fault, There’s so much you have to know. Find a girl, settle down, If you want you can marry. Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy. I was once like you are now, and I know that it's not easy, To be calm when you've found something going on. But take your time, think a lot, Why, think of everything you've got. For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.
I know that there is a way I should go but I’m learning (slowly) that the speed of my activity doesn’t increase the speed of my arrival. Life seems to be a hurry up and wait game. Ideas take time to implement. Plans take time to develop. Soup gets better the longer it cooks.
While I am beginning to learn these things that doesn’t mean that I am always so good at applying them. Part of the reason for that is the demand for immediacy upon my life. People don’t want jobs stretching out for all eternity.
In all of this I am learning the need for balance: to be diligent in work and yet patient for the plan to unfold. I think it is important that we learn to understand that we have no control over the plan whatsoever. It is God’s plan to unfold not ours. Our task is to do the work at hand. What ever your hand finds to do: do it with all your might as unto the Lord. It is the task at hand that is our calling. We are called to the mundane so that we might end up in glory.
Now I have probably said all of this in a different way a hundred times before but I say it again because I need to hear it. I need to hear it in the midst of the plan crawling by like a snail while my life speeds by like a blur. The tasks at hand were created by God for me to do from before all eternity and if I am going to make it to the end of this race and cross the finish line then I have to take the step that is next in line.
I think that in our culture we have developed an urgency mentality that may very well destroy us. We find a problem and we think that it needs to be fixed now, no, yesterday. Be that global warming or population growth, or the deficit, or crime, or disease – the ors could just keep coming. Something always has to be done about a problem now. But the truth is just because we see with short term eyes doesn’t mean that the problem has developed short term or that it can be fixed short term. Just because we think there’s a problem doesn’t even mean that there is a problem. Part of our need for urgency stems out of the fact that we think the plan is ours. But it’s not.
Yes, the deficit is a horrible problem. I was talking to one of my grandsons the other day (two of the others haven’t even started talking yet – you’d think they could learn that in six months) and he is more than a little concerned about the deficit. And he should be concerned but at the same time we need to try to see it with a biblical lens on our eyes. What if the total collapse of our economy is the only thing that will bring us to repentance as a people? What if what we need to learn is to stop deficit spending at the personal level? What if the melting of the ice caps is a thing that is supposed to happen ever 10 thousand years to restore balance to the ecosphere and as a reult of our limited data we destroy the world as we know it with good intentions?
The place to make a change for me is in my next step. If I press on in walking the path of life with all of my heart focused on the step that I am taking now; If I stop deficit spending, if I stop whatever it that I like to do to destroy myself, I will find, over the course of time, that I am on a totally different path than I used to be. I was on the path of destruction, more often than not I prefer the path of destruction but my calling is to the path of life. Grace puts me on the path of life, and it keeps me on the path of life. It’s important to understand that getting on the path of life isn’t the end goal – staying on it is. My call is to humbly walk on the path of life even though I don’t want to. It’s not time to make a change. Well, that’s not true; it is time to leave the destruction of disobedience and walk in the path of obedience. If I will focus my attention on that then the scriptures promise good things.
Now if you multiply my walk with all of your walks – that may be 50 or 60 walks in the US and from what I can tell another 30 or so in Denmark, Finland, Poland and Asia (I am global you know) and we all make the choice to humbly walk the path of obedience that leads to life then we are making a change for the better; a change for blessing instead of cursing. (I know some of you don’t believe those things apply any more but truth is if they don’t apply who gets to determine if the New Testament still applies? It’s an all or nothing thing in my opinion.)
Change begins at the micro level. It begins with a cell. Cancer doesn’t begin with a huge tumor. It begins with the changing of a single cell and that cell multiplies. A healthy body begins the same way; with a single cell that multiplies.
All I am longing for is to be a cell of life instead of cancer. If you choose to do the same then by God’s grace we can all move together in the pursuit of life. U2 has a great song that says: I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. That is true. I haven’t found it yet. I still live in a world where death prevails. I’m looking for a world full of life. I am on the path of life and I want to see more and more life as I ease on down, ease on down the road (The Wiz). I want nothing more than the living dead world that we reside in to be turned fully and completely into a world of life.
All I can say is Come Lord Jesus and help me stay on the path of life today.
May the same apply to you as well.
Brad
Saturday, December 4, 2010
foundation 18
We are in the book of Ezra chapter 7. If you remember last week we read that the enemies of God were trying to stir up trouble for the people of God to keep them from rebuilding the temple or from our perspective, the body of Christ. And so to stir that trouble they sent a complaint letter to King Darius the ruler of Babylon. Well, the king received their letter did a little research of his own and he found a letter that his predecessor King Cyrus had written giving permission for the Jews to go back home and rebuild the temple. And so he sent a letter back to the trouble makers which we can read starting in verse 6: Now therefore, Tattenai, governor of the province beyond the River, Shethar-bozenai and your colleagues, the officials of the provinces beyond the River, keep away from there. 7"Leave this work on the house of God alone; let the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews rebuild this house of God on its site. 8"Moreover, I issue a decree concerning what you are to do for these elders of Judah in the rebuilding of this house of God: the full cost is to be paid to these people from the royal treasury out of the taxes of the provinces beyond the River, and that without delay. 9"Whatever is needed, both young bulls, rams, and lambs for a burnt offering to the God of heaven, and wheat, salt, wine and anointing oil, as the priests in Jerusalem request, it is to be given to them daily without fail, 10that they may offer acceptable sacrifices to the God of heaven and pray for the life of the king and his sons. 11"And I issued a decree that any man who violates this edict, a timber shall be drawn from his house and he shall be impaled on it and his house shall be made a refuse heap on account of this. 12"May the God who has caused His name to dwell there overthrow any king or people who attempts to change it, so as to destroy this house of God in Jerusalem. I, Darius, have issued this decree, let it be carried out with all diligence!"
This whole passage kind of turns on its ear the concept that we shouldn’t use non-believers money to do the work of God. You really don’t find that anywhere. What you do find is that the people of God don’t use money of anyone who will try to take credit for doing the work that God is supposed to do. God is the giver of wealth.
It’s also good to realize that the Jews did not ask for this money from the king. They didn’t sit around and try to figure out how they could get the money to do what they thought God was calling them to do. They simply felt that God had called them to go back home and begin to rebuild and so they asked for permission to do that very thing and in the midst of trying to walk on the path of life God gave them favor with the pagans around them and they volunteered to finance the whole process.
Once they are in the land and rebuilding the foundations of the body of Christ God doesn’t immediately make everything smooth sailing. I think that is where we get off track sometimes. We think if we do what’s right and God is really going to pour out covenant blessings on us then everything should be easy but we must continually look to our examples in the old testament to see how God works in the real world. The favor that they are now receiving from King Darius didn’t come without a lot of hassle. They have been at this rebuilding for close to ten years. They started out with the favor of King Cyrus who let them come back to the land and start the rebuilding. But then trouble makers arose when a new king came into power and the rebuilding was forced to stop. After some time God encouraged the people through the prophets to return to rebuilding anyway even though the government told them that they should stop. And that brings us to this place where the third king gives them favor once again. It has been at least a 10 year journey.
It’s important to understand that God was working on his people that entire time. God is working on us when things aren’t going our way.
Unfortuantely, the all about me religion that permeates our culture today thinks that it’s only when things are good that God is truly blessing us. I don’t know if you saw it this last week or not but there was a NFL player who dropped a pass last Sunday. Obviously this player is a member of the all about me church of Christ because later that day he Tweeted his anger at God by saying: I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO....
Ah the power of praise. I was raised on that crazy philosophy. All you have to do is praise God for everything all the time and your life will be hassle free. That sounds good in theory and you can even find scriptures that will seem to support that view but you must take them out of the context of the whole word of God to do so. I praise you 24/7 how could you do this to me. We do that in the context of our own lives all the time or at least I do it.
I did it just this week. When the rain came on Monday I found I still had a roof leak. Instead of being thankful that I hadn’t put the dry wall on the ceiling in that room yet I got mad. Oh god why did you let this happen? I’ve worked so hard to get this stuff fixed. God probably should have said something back like Obviously you haven’t worked hard enough because the roof is still leaking. But he didn’t. My leaky roof isn’t God’s fault. We rebelled against him and his ways remember? The fall was our fault. Covenant curses abide in the land because we are still trying to get our way.
When push comes to shove I’m no different than that football player but of course I never think what happens to me is a trivial as dropping a football. That’s just a game. Now I must admit that I am getting better with the passage of time. I didn’t stay mad at God long. I found joy in realizing that he let me find the leak before I finished the ceiling and I also found myself worriedly praying that the other leaks really had been fixed. It’s hard for me to be accepting of the fact that all things work to the good even the bad and stupid stuff that I bring upon myself.
Anyway, back in the passage God gives them favor with the new king even in the midst of tribulation and he forced those that wanted to stop the building altogether to finance the rest of the building process promising to kill anybody that refused to carry out his orders.
It makes me rather sad to think that we may have never seen that kind of favor from God in our lives. Part of that is because we have got everything backwards we think up ideas of stuff we can do and then we try to figure out how we can raise the money. Usually we do that because the truth is that money is our God and we believe that all we need is enough money and we can do anything. But what we have forgotten is that money can’t change people’s hearts. Money can’t grow the body of Christ. Money is nothing in the work of God. It is the work of God that is important. If God has laid it on your heart to do something for the kingdom then the most important thing that you can do is walk on the path of life to the best of your ability and humbly confess your sin when you stray from that path. And then press forward with the resources that you have. If you have no resources press on anyway. Don’t be afraid to go to those with authority over you and say this is what God has placed on my heart because God may use them to provide what you need.
Now as you press forward you have to remember to walk on the path of life. You have to remember to keep working 6 days a week, you have to remember to provide for your family, you have to remember the basics that we are all required to do. Resources are not just financial. Time is a resource. Attitude is a resource. Family is a resource. We must learn to use our resources wisely. Press on to your calling but don’t neglect your family in the process. Don’t forget to rest one day a week. Don’t start worshiping false gods along the way. Don’t worship work by working more than 6 days in a row and not resting. That is idolatry. Don’t worship rest and long for a time when you don’t have to work anymore. Work is a godly calling and when it is done in the right balance it is a holy thing. So is rest. Both of those things are meant to be a part of the path of life but only in the right proportion: 6 parts work to one part rest.
See if you are walking on the path of life then you are free to pursue any dream that God lays on your heart. And as you walk on the path of life you can expect God to provide the means necessary to bring those things to pass because He has put them on your heart. Now if he doesn’t bring that dream to pass it doesn’t mean that you don’t have enough faith. On the contrary, what it means is that God had something he wanted to teach you through failure. Look at the old testament saints and see how many times they learned from their mistakes and from adverse circumstances that they found themselves in.
Walking on the path of life is not meant to be a piece of cake. It is meant to bring you to full maturity. It’s mean to turn you into a grown up. This whole thought process that fills our culture that our glory days are when we are kids – when we are supposedly free from responsibility is just a load of bull. We have adults that are irresponsible because we taught our children that irresponsibility was the best place to be. That is so non Christian. We should be teaching our children how to be responsible, how to work, how to be diligent. I am a living example of the horrible ramifications of not being taught to be responsible as a child. I have had to make everything up as I went along. I had to go to the school of hard knocks late in life to get where I am today. I didn’t even start the process of growing up until I was close to 30. I was a fool and I pay for it everyday.
I am finally realizing that you have to be disciplined to teach discipline to anyone. When the scriptures say teach a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it, they assume that the one teaching understands the way that they should go. You can’t teach what you don’t know. Oh you can teach it; thousands of teachers do it everyday but you will never disciple if you are not a disciple. Does that make sense? You’ve got to BE what you are trying to instill in others because the saying ‘do what I say and not what I do’ is just a hypocrites way of trying to get off the hook. Our children become what we are because they learn by example not by words.
Again this is not a money issue. Educating children is not a financial enterprise or it shouldn’t be. It is a path of life issue. If you are walking on the path of life and your children see that they will learn to walk on the path of life – they walk where you walk. That being said there is still hope for those of us who didn’t have a clue about walking on the path of life when we were raising our kids. Our children still watch us even if they won’t admit to it. They know when we are starting to change. They know when we get off the path of destruction and onto the path of life. Discipleship is a lifelong process. Starting out bad doesn’t mean that you will end badly. It is the end of the race that determines the outcome.
I said all of that to stress that the most important thing that you can do is walk on the path of life. If you do that, if you walk in obedience to all the commands of God to the best of your humble ability then God will provide for you and he may very well do so by giving you the wealth of the wicked.
Now when the ones who were complaining about the Israelites rebuilding the temple received this letter they changed their tune immediately. They did what they were commanded to do and never complained one time. God used the authority structure of a wicked nation to advance his cause. He turned the heart of the man at the top and everybody underneath did what they were told out of fear for their own lives.
Look at verse 13: 13Then Tattenai, the governor of the province beyond the River, Shethar-bozenai and their colleagues carried out the decree with all diligence, just as King Darius had sent. The result was that the elders of the Jews were successful in building through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo and they finished building according to the command of the God of Israel and the decree of Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia. 15This temple was completed on the third day of the month Adar; it was the sixth year of the reign of King Darius.
What a glorious day that must have been. It wasn’t the end of their journey there was a lot left to do as we will see. But it is important to understand that building the temple, laying the foundation and building up the body of Christ is the first step to advancing the kingdom. If the body of Christ is in shambles then discipling the nations is impossible because God works in this world through humans. Psalm 115: 16 tells us that the heavens, even the heavens are the Lord’s; but he has given the earth to the son’s of Adam. The earth is our calling, our responsibility. We will be held accountable for how we do our task of taking dominion over it.
Here in this passage the church is rebuilt – don’t think that it is perfect or without sin. There is a huge difference between being mature and being without sin. Maturity in the age we live in is about being humble before God when we are confronted with our sin. Life is meant to bring the dross to the top. We should expect to continually be finding sin rise to the top in the course of our lives it is what we do with that sin when it raises it’s ugly head that determines whether we are mature or not. If we try to cover over that sin or push it back down out of sight then we are not mature. If we recognize it as sin and say god have mercy on me save me from myself then we are headed toward maturity. That is grace in action. Real grace doesn’t let you keep pushing your sin down it enables you to confront it and deal with it and stop doing it.
As the sons of Israel moved into maturity they celebrated what God had done in his church. They celebrated with Joy. And with joyful hearts they celebrated by taking communion. That’s what the Passover meal is communion before the Lamb of God was slain on the cross. They dedicated the temple to god with sacrifices. Lot’s and lots of sacrifices.
In one sense, it is the sacrifice of Christ that has dedicated us to God. Apart from the blood of Christ we would be facing the wrath of God but now that we are in Christ he opens his arms to take us to him. We are the people that he pours his love upon. He loves so much that he will do whatever it takes to grow us up.
Notice in verse 18 that after the temple was rebuilt they put leadership in place so that they could better walk in the things of God. They appointed the priests to their divisions and the Levites in their orders for the service of God in Jerusalem, as it is written in the book of Moses. They appointed priests and these leaders supported the rest of the people by enabling them to partake of Christ. That is the task of those who are called into the ministry: to equip the saints to grow up into all things in Christ Jesus. Part of my calling is to break the bread into pieces that you can chew and swallow. My job isn’t to make you chew or swallow my job is to make the food accessible. Your job is to put it into your mouth, chew it and swallow it. You need to be partaking of Christ.
Look at verse 21 The sons of Israel who returned from exile and all those who had separated themselves from the impurity of the nations of the land to join them, to seek the LORD God of Israel, ate the Passover. What this tells me is that not only the Jews from Babylon were a part of the church but also the Samaritans- those who were forced to stay in the land and who intermarried with all the different peoples. Those people that in Jesus’ day were hated by the religious Jews were accepted by God and partook of the Passover in the new temple. The gospel is not exclusive to anyone. Anyone who is willing to repent may come. Coming to Christ demands that you leave the path of destruction and walk on the path of life. Anybody that wants to do that may partake of the body and blood of Christ.
Notice the result of this mix multitude coming together to partake of Christ: they observed the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the LORD had caused them to rejoice, and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria toward them to encourage them in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel.
It is the joy of the Lord that is our strength. But that joy is not something that we can conjure up. It is a gift. As we learned to partake of Christ and to walk on the path of life, as we begin to build up one another in love and become more and more like Christ then God will CAUSE us to rejoice and as weird as it may sound he will give us favor with the wicked in order to encourage us to work on the body of Christ, the Son of the living God.
I long for that day. I want that day yesterday. And so I come to you today with the bread broken in pieces that you can consume and I beg you to humble yourselves before the living God. If you are angry at God for all those balls you think he made you drop please, please humble yourself before him today. Yield yourself to him so that we can walk on the path of life together. I’ll be honest I see that day coming. I see God stirring hearts. I see the day of rejoicing coming and I am excited about it. Hang on to Jesus. Let go of your own plans. Do his will and not yours and wait with anticipation for the promises of God to unfold.
Let’s pray. OH father please don’t let us stand in the way of you pouring out your glory on the earth. Humble us against our will if you have to. Make us like Jesus in every way. In Jesus’ name I ask these things amen.
Here the words of the Lord from Psalm 115:
O body of Christ, trust thou in the LORD: he is their help and their shield.
10O church of God, trust in the LORD: he is their help and their shield.
11You that fear the LORD, trust in the LORD: he is their help and their shield.
12The LORD hath been mindful of us: he will bless us; he will bless the house of Israel; he will bless the house of Aaron. 13He will bless them that fear the LORD, both small and great. 14The LORD shall increase you more and more, you and your children. 15Ye are blessed of the LORD which made heaven and earth. 16The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD's: but the earth hath he given to the children of men. 17The dead praise not the LORD, neither any that go down into silence. 18But we will bless the LORD from this time forth and for evermore. Praise the LORD.
Go in peace.
This whole passage kind of turns on its ear the concept that we shouldn’t use non-believers money to do the work of God. You really don’t find that anywhere. What you do find is that the people of God don’t use money of anyone who will try to take credit for doing the work that God is supposed to do. God is the giver of wealth.
It’s also good to realize that the Jews did not ask for this money from the king. They didn’t sit around and try to figure out how they could get the money to do what they thought God was calling them to do. They simply felt that God had called them to go back home and begin to rebuild and so they asked for permission to do that very thing and in the midst of trying to walk on the path of life God gave them favor with the pagans around them and they volunteered to finance the whole process.
Once they are in the land and rebuilding the foundations of the body of Christ God doesn’t immediately make everything smooth sailing. I think that is where we get off track sometimes. We think if we do what’s right and God is really going to pour out covenant blessings on us then everything should be easy but we must continually look to our examples in the old testament to see how God works in the real world. The favor that they are now receiving from King Darius didn’t come without a lot of hassle. They have been at this rebuilding for close to ten years. They started out with the favor of King Cyrus who let them come back to the land and start the rebuilding. But then trouble makers arose when a new king came into power and the rebuilding was forced to stop. After some time God encouraged the people through the prophets to return to rebuilding anyway even though the government told them that they should stop. And that brings us to this place where the third king gives them favor once again. It has been at least a 10 year journey.
It’s important to understand that God was working on his people that entire time. God is working on us when things aren’t going our way.
Unfortuantely, the all about me religion that permeates our culture today thinks that it’s only when things are good that God is truly blessing us. I don’t know if you saw it this last week or not but there was a NFL player who dropped a pass last Sunday. Obviously this player is a member of the all about me church of Christ because later that day he Tweeted his anger at God by saying: I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO....
Ah the power of praise. I was raised on that crazy philosophy. All you have to do is praise God for everything all the time and your life will be hassle free. That sounds good in theory and you can even find scriptures that will seem to support that view but you must take them out of the context of the whole word of God to do so. I praise you 24/7 how could you do this to me. We do that in the context of our own lives all the time or at least I do it.
I did it just this week. When the rain came on Monday I found I still had a roof leak. Instead of being thankful that I hadn’t put the dry wall on the ceiling in that room yet I got mad. Oh god why did you let this happen? I’ve worked so hard to get this stuff fixed. God probably should have said something back like Obviously you haven’t worked hard enough because the roof is still leaking. But he didn’t. My leaky roof isn’t God’s fault. We rebelled against him and his ways remember? The fall was our fault. Covenant curses abide in the land because we are still trying to get our way.
When push comes to shove I’m no different than that football player but of course I never think what happens to me is a trivial as dropping a football. That’s just a game. Now I must admit that I am getting better with the passage of time. I didn’t stay mad at God long. I found joy in realizing that he let me find the leak before I finished the ceiling and I also found myself worriedly praying that the other leaks really had been fixed. It’s hard for me to be accepting of the fact that all things work to the good even the bad and stupid stuff that I bring upon myself.
Anyway, back in the passage God gives them favor with the new king even in the midst of tribulation and he forced those that wanted to stop the building altogether to finance the rest of the building process promising to kill anybody that refused to carry out his orders.
It makes me rather sad to think that we may have never seen that kind of favor from God in our lives. Part of that is because we have got everything backwards we think up ideas of stuff we can do and then we try to figure out how we can raise the money. Usually we do that because the truth is that money is our God and we believe that all we need is enough money and we can do anything. But what we have forgotten is that money can’t change people’s hearts. Money can’t grow the body of Christ. Money is nothing in the work of God. It is the work of God that is important. If God has laid it on your heart to do something for the kingdom then the most important thing that you can do is walk on the path of life to the best of your ability and humbly confess your sin when you stray from that path. And then press forward with the resources that you have. If you have no resources press on anyway. Don’t be afraid to go to those with authority over you and say this is what God has placed on my heart because God may use them to provide what you need.
Now as you press forward you have to remember to walk on the path of life. You have to remember to keep working 6 days a week, you have to remember to provide for your family, you have to remember the basics that we are all required to do. Resources are not just financial. Time is a resource. Attitude is a resource. Family is a resource. We must learn to use our resources wisely. Press on to your calling but don’t neglect your family in the process. Don’t forget to rest one day a week. Don’t start worshiping false gods along the way. Don’t worship work by working more than 6 days in a row and not resting. That is idolatry. Don’t worship rest and long for a time when you don’t have to work anymore. Work is a godly calling and when it is done in the right balance it is a holy thing. So is rest. Both of those things are meant to be a part of the path of life but only in the right proportion: 6 parts work to one part rest.
See if you are walking on the path of life then you are free to pursue any dream that God lays on your heart. And as you walk on the path of life you can expect God to provide the means necessary to bring those things to pass because He has put them on your heart. Now if he doesn’t bring that dream to pass it doesn’t mean that you don’t have enough faith. On the contrary, what it means is that God had something he wanted to teach you through failure. Look at the old testament saints and see how many times they learned from their mistakes and from adverse circumstances that they found themselves in.
Walking on the path of life is not meant to be a piece of cake. It is meant to bring you to full maturity. It’s mean to turn you into a grown up. This whole thought process that fills our culture that our glory days are when we are kids – when we are supposedly free from responsibility is just a load of bull. We have adults that are irresponsible because we taught our children that irresponsibility was the best place to be. That is so non Christian. We should be teaching our children how to be responsible, how to work, how to be diligent. I am a living example of the horrible ramifications of not being taught to be responsible as a child. I have had to make everything up as I went along. I had to go to the school of hard knocks late in life to get where I am today. I didn’t even start the process of growing up until I was close to 30. I was a fool and I pay for it everyday.
I am finally realizing that you have to be disciplined to teach discipline to anyone. When the scriptures say teach a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it, they assume that the one teaching understands the way that they should go. You can’t teach what you don’t know. Oh you can teach it; thousands of teachers do it everyday but you will never disciple if you are not a disciple. Does that make sense? You’ve got to BE what you are trying to instill in others because the saying ‘do what I say and not what I do’ is just a hypocrites way of trying to get off the hook. Our children become what we are because they learn by example not by words.
Again this is not a money issue. Educating children is not a financial enterprise or it shouldn’t be. It is a path of life issue. If you are walking on the path of life and your children see that they will learn to walk on the path of life – they walk where you walk. That being said there is still hope for those of us who didn’t have a clue about walking on the path of life when we were raising our kids. Our children still watch us even if they won’t admit to it. They know when we are starting to change. They know when we get off the path of destruction and onto the path of life. Discipleship is a lifelong process. Starting out bad doesn’t mean that you will end badly. It is the end of the race that determines the outcome.
I said all of that to stress that the most important thing that you can do is walk on the path of life. If you do that, if you walk in obedience to all the commands of God to the best of your humble ability then God will provide for you and he may very well do so by giving you the wealth of the wicked.
Now when the ones who were complaining about the Israelites rebuilding the temple received this letter they changed their tune immediately. They did what they were commanded to do and never complained one time. God used the authority structure of a wicked nation to advance his cause. He turned the heart of the man at the top and everybody underneath did what they were told out of fear for their own lives.
Look at verse 13: 13Then Tattenai, the governor of the province beyond the River, Shethar-bozenai and their colleagues carried out the decree with all diligence, just as King Darius had sent. The result was that the elders of the Jews were successful in building through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo and they finished building according to the command of the God of Israel and the decree of Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia. 15This temple was completed on the third day of the month Adar; it was the sixth year of the reign of King Darius.
What a glorious day that must have been. It wasn’t the end of their journey there was a lot left to do as we will see. But it is important to understand that building the temple, laying the foundation and building up the body of Christ is the first step to advancing the kingdom. If the body of Christ is in shambles then discipling the nations is impossible because God works in this world through humans. Psalm 115: 16 tells us that the heavens, even the heavens are the Lord’s; but he has given the earth to the son’s of Adam. The earth is our calling, our responsibility. We will be held accountable for how we do our task of taking dominion over it.
Here in this passage the church is rebuilt – don’t think that it is perfect or without sin. There is a huge difference between being mature and being without sin. Maturity in the age we live in is about being humble before God when we are confronted with our sin. Life is meant to bring the dross to the top. We should expect to continually be finding sin rise to the top in the course of our lives it is what we do with that sin when it raises it’s ugly head that determines whether we are mature or not. If we try to cover over that sin or push it back down out of sight then we are not mature. If we recognize it as sin and say god have mercy on me save me from myself then we are headed toward maturity. That is grace in action. Real grace doesn’t let you keep pushing your sin down it enables you to confront it and deal with it and stop doing it.
As the sons of Israel moved into maturity they celebrated what God had done in his church. They celebrated with Joy. And with joyful hearts they celebrated by taking communion. That’s what the Passover meal is communion before the Lamb of God was slain on the cross. They dedicated the temple to god with sacrifices. Lot’s and lots of sacrifices.
In one sense, it is the sacrifice of Christ that has dedicated us to God. Apart from the blood of Christ we would be facing the wrath of God but now that we are in Christ he opens his arms to take us to him. We are the people that he pours his love upon. He loves so much that he will do whatever it takes to grow us up.
Notice in verse 18 that after the temple was rebuilt they put leadership in place so that they could better walk in the things of God. They appointed the priests to their divisions and the Levites in their orders for the service of God in Jerusalem, as it is written in the book of Moses. They appointed priests and these leaders supported the rest of the people by enabling them to partake of Christ. That is the task of those who are called into the ministry: to equip the saints to grow up into all things in Christ Jesus. Part of my calling is to break the bread into pieces that you can chew and swallow. My job isn’t to make you chew or swallow my job is to make the food accessible. Your job is to put it into your mouth, chew it and swallow it. You need to be partaking of Christ.
Look at verse 21 The sons of Israel who returned from exile and all those who had separated themselves from the impurity of the nations of the land to join them, to seek the LORD God of Israel, ate the Passover. What this tells me is that not only the Jews from Babylon were a part of the church but also the Samaritans- those who were forced to stay in the land and who intermarried with all the different peoples. Those people that in Jesus’ day were hated by the religious Jews were accepted by God and partook of the Passover in the new temple. The gospel is not exclusive to anyone. Anyone who is willing to repent may come. Coming to Christ demands that you leave the path of destruction and walk on the path of life. Anybody that wants to do that may partake of the body and blood of Christ.
Notice the result of this mix multitude coming together to partake of Christ: they observed the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the LORD had caused them to rejoice, and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria toward them to encourage them in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel.
It is the joy of the Lord that is our strength. But that joy is not something that we can conjure up. It is a gift. As we learned to partake of Christ and to walk on the path of life, as we begin to build up one another in love and become more and more like Christ then God will CAUSE us to rejoice and as weird as it may sound he will give us favor with the wicked in order to encourage us to work on the body of Christ, the Son of the living God.
I long for that day. I want that day yesterday. And so I come to you today with the bread broken in pieces that you can consume and I beg you to humble yourselves before the living God. If you are angry at God for all those balls you think he made you drop please, please humble yourself before him today. Yield yourself to him so that we can walk on the path of life together. I’ll be honest I see that day coming. I see God stirring hearts. I see the day of rejoicing coming and I am excited about it. Hang on to Jesus. Let go of your own plans. Do his will and not yours and wait with anticipation for the promises of God to unfold.
Let’s pray. OH father please don’t let us stand in the way of you pouring out your glory on the earth. Humble us against our will if you have to. Make us like Jesus in every way. In Jesus’ name I ask these things amen.
Here the words of the Lord from Psalm 115:
O body of Christ, trust thou in the LORD: he is their help and their shield.
10O church of God, trust in the LORD: he is their help and their shield.
11You that fear the LORD, trust in the LORD: he is their help and their shield.
12The LORD hath been mindful of us: he will bless us; he will bless the house of Israel; he will bless the house of Aaron. 13He will bless them that fear the LORD, both small and great. 14The LORD shall increase you more and more, you and your children. 15Ye are blessed of the LORD which made heaven and earth. 16The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD's: but the earth hath he given to the children of men. 17The dead praise not the LORD, neither any that go down into silence. 18But we will bless the LORD from this time forth and for evermore. Praise the LORD.
Go in peace.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
By the seat of your pants
Hey Everyone,
I’ve been listening to “The Guitar Song” a new double album by Jamey Johnson. It is really good on many levels. The first song on the second disc is called: By the seat of your pants. The words, at least to me, are a reflection of how covenant life works:
He said ‘crickets catch more brim but worms ull get more bass And it really ain’t those brand new shoes that make you run so fast He said, ‘you better finish buddy, even if it’s last; Life has a way of teaching us these things’
He said, ‘sometimes hunting ain’t all about the kill Sometimes that woman of your dreams can be a little bit too real Sometimes you’ve gotta go to work no matter how you feel; Life has a way of teaching us these things’
He said,’this hurts me more than it hurts you but it’s the only way to find the truth You see life ain’t no rehearsal boy, you only get one chance; You’ll learn that by the seat of your pants.’
Whether Jamey Johnson knows it or not those things are simply a restatement of the words of Paul from 1 Corinthians (I think it’s in chapters 8 and 10 or 6 and 9 maybe it’s 6 and 10; I can’t remember) where he says: All things are permitted but not all things are profitable. Most of the translations have turned the truth into a lie by rendering that verse ‘all things are lawful but not all things are profitable’. That statement is a complete lie. All things are not lawful. Murder is never lawful, theft is never lawful, adultery is never lawful but because we want all things to be lawful there has been no outcry that so called bible scholars have massacred the word of God with good intentions and bad theology.
Perhaps we are more uncomfortable with the truthful concept that all things are permitted. It is a scary thought especially from the comfort of our sovereignty of God cocoons that protect us from doing anything except what God has planned. But scripture is clear: You can do anything you want to do BUT there will be consequences. Consequences are the way that God made the world, even before we mutinied. God gave us the freedom (from our perspective) to jump ship any time we wanted but he made it clear: You will die. There will be consequences. You’ve got enough rope to hang yourself if you want to. And so we put the noose over our heads.
The ability to learn to avoid bad consequences is an act of grace. It may not be saving grace; even mobsters try to avoid actions that lead to bad consequences. Saving grace is learning not just to avoid bad consequences; it is learning to walk where things produce good consequences or learning to walk where things are profitable from a covenantal perspective.
Learning to walk the path of life and run the race until you finish takes a lot of work. It is graceful work that comes as a result of the graceful application of the lawful work of Christ, but it is still work, the hard painful work of grace applied to brokenness. Grace makes consequences profitable. It makes all things work to the good (the word translated to the good can also mean: to the upright). What that tells me is that the work of grace works everything toward righteousness. Grace causes you to want to abide in the path of life more and more.
Now the truth of the matter is that many of us are just plain stubborn. Even if we are in Christ Jesus we go kicking and screaming toward righteousness as if it were death while spending most of our time getting cuddly with death as if it were the best thing since sliced bread. That is why God set up life with consequences.
You see when your cuddliness turns to enough heartache then maybe the pain of grace will open your eyes to changing your behavior. Maybe when you get sick and tired of bill collectors calling and threatening you, you will learn to go to work 6 days a week like you’re commanded instead of when you feel like it.
Maybe. The truth is grace calls everybody but few take heed. We get all theological with that verse and say many are called but few are chosen but the reality is it is just as scriptural to say many are called and those that want to change. You can make it repent if you prefer. The scripture is clear that anybody that wants to can be changed but when push comes to shove or the rubber hits the road very few, both in the church and out, want to change. If you want that in religious words you can once again substitute repent for change.
Why is it that we kick against the goads so badly when it comes to giving up the things that are destroying us? Why do we want Jesus to save us from the easy stuff but the minute grace becomes difficult we turn in to Amy Winehouse and say: they try to make me go to rehab but I say no, no, no.
What is it about the path of life that scares hell into us?
If you figure that out let me know will ya?
Grace and peace,
Brad
I’ve been listening to “The Guitar Song” a new double album by Jamey Johnson. It is really good on many levels. The first song on the second disc is called: By the seat of your pants. The words, at least to me, are a reflection of how covenant life works:
He said ‘crickets catch more brim but worms ull get more bass And it really ain’t those brand new shoes that make you run so fast He said, ‘you better finish buddy, even if it’s last; Life has a way of teaching us these things’
He said, ‘sometimes hunting ain’t all about the kill Sometimes that woman of your dreams can be a little bit too real Sometimes you’ve gotta go to work no matter how you feel; Life has a way of teaching us these things’
He said,’this hurts me more than it hurts you but it’s the only way to find the truth You see life ain’t no rehearsal boy, you only get one chance; You’ll learn that by the seat of your pants.’
Whether Jamey Johnson knows it or not those things are simply a restatement of the words of Paul from 1 Corinthians (I think it’s in chapters 8 and 10 or 6 and 9 maybe it’s 6 and 10; I can’t remember) where he says: All things are permitted but not all things are profitable. Most of the translations have turned the truth into a lie by rendering that verse ‘all things are lawful but not all things are profitable’. That statement is a complete lie. All things are not lawful. Murder is never lawful, theft is never lawful, adultery is never lawful but because we want all things to be lawful there has been no outcry that so called bible scholars have massacred the word of God with good intentions and bad theology.
Perhaps we are more uncomfortable with the truthful concept that all things are permitted. It is a scary thought especially from the comfort of our sovereignty of God cocoons that protect us from doing anything except what God has planned. But scripture is clear: You can do anything you want to do BUT there will be consequences. Consequences are the way that God made the world, even before we mutinied. God gave us the freedom (from our perspective) to jump ship any time we wanted but he made it clear: You will die. There will be consequences. You’ve got enough rope to hang yourself if you want to. And so we put the noose over our heads.
The ability to learn to avoid bad consequences is an act of grace. It may not be saving grace; even mobsters try to avoid actions that lead to bad consequences. Saving grace is learning not just to avoid bad consequences; it is learning to walk where things produce good consequences or learning to walk where things are profitable from a covenantal perspective.
Learning to walk the path of life and run the race until you finish takes a lot of work. It is graceful work that comes as a result of the graceful application of the lawful work of Christ, but it is still work, the hard painful work of grace applied to brokenness. Grace makes consequences profitable. It makes all things work to the good (the word translated to the good can also mean: to the upright). What that tells me is that the work of grace works everything toward righteousness. Grace causes you to want to abide in the path of life more and more.
Now the truth of the matter is that many of us are just plain stubborn. Even if we are in Christ Jesus we go kicking and screaming toward righteousness as if it were death while spending most of our time getting cuddly with death as if it were the best thing since sliced bread. That is why God set up life with consequences.
You see when your cuddliness turns to enough heartache then maybe the pain of grace will open your eyes to changing your behavior. Maybe when you get sick and tired of bill collectors calling and threatening you, you will learn to go to work 6 days a week like you’re commanded instead of when you feel like it.
Maybe. The truth is grace calls everybody but few take heed. We get all theological with that verse and say many are called but few are chosen but the reality is it is just as scriptural to say many are called and those that want to change. You can make it repent if you prefer. The scripture is clear that anybody that wants to can be changed but when push comes to shove or the rubber hits the road very few, both in the church and out, want to change. If you want that in religious words you can once again substitute repent for change.
Why is it that we kick against the goads so badly when it comes to giving up the things that are destroying us? Why do we want Jesus to save us from the easy stuff but the minute grace becomes difficult we turn in to Amy Winehouse and say: they try to make me go to rehab but I say no, no, no.
What is it about the path of life that scares hell into us?
If you figure that out let me know will ya?
Grace and peace,
Brad
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