Morning Everyone,
I don’t know if it’s summer that’s doing it or what but my schedule is all out of wack. I’ve been going to bed way too late and therefore getting up later in the mornings. I’m learning to ignore the alarm clock. The result is less writing time. Today I’m easily an hour behind putting fingers to keys. I think I must be in some kind of rebellion mode or something because I’m not exercising either – very little stretching, no walking (for exercise), and just a general nonchalant attitude about everything in general.
I think a part of it is frustration with change or rather the lack of it. Sure, I’ve been changing the outward stuff, my diet, my exercise and writing habits but what’s the big deal when the inside isn’t changing? Why bother feeling good on the outside when there are things that are off limits to change?
I am sick and tired of working on the inside all the time. I don’t want to be so broken, why should I be broken now after all these years? Why should I even care about it when nobody else seems to? Most people don’t even bother trying to change they just plug along pushing things down and never talking about them or dealing with them. That’s certainly easier.
Perhaps the Platters said it best:
Oh yes, I'm the great pretender Pretending I'm doing well
My need is such I pretend too much I'm lonely but no one can tell
Oh yes, I'm the great pretender Adrift in a world of my own
I play the game but to my real shame You've left me to dream all alone
Too real is this feeling of make-believe
Too real when I feel what my heart can't conceal
Oh yes, I'm the great pretender
Just laughing and gay like a clown
I seem to be what I'm not you see
I'm wearing my heart like a crown
My problem is I’m tired of pretending. I’ve been tired of it for a long time. I’m tired of pretending that the church is powerful. I’m so sick to death of its impotent words. I’m sick of the promises of hope for the binding of the broken hearted without the binding taking place.
I guess I’m seeing the depth of the fall too clearly these days. I’ve come to realize that we are going to have to all wear name tags in the next life because we won’t be recognizable by the way we act. To be honest I don’t know what will be left of me once my dysfunction is taken away.
I spent the first thirty years of my life pretending that everything was ok when it wasn’t. After twenty years of striving to uncover and unveil the truth some days it feels like it’s all been a waste of time. But I know in my heart it hasn’t been. Even as I write this, I am beginning to recognize that there has been a subtle change in direction that has taken me off course the last few months. I’ve turned my desire to get better into a desire to help others get better and that is where the frustration comes from. I can’t make anyone else better. I can’t save anybody. I can’t even save myself but I can do what I need to do to humble myself before my God and trust that he will take care of me.
I can’t fix my wife or my kids or my parents or my cousins or my dog or my cat. I can’t fix anybody. And that’s what I’ve started trying to do lately. It’s an old habit that seemed to come natural for me as a kid: sacrificing my life to make other people’s lives better. I know that sounds really altruistic and everything but the truth is – it is nothing more than slow suicide. That was what drove me to recovery in the first place.
You see there is a huge difference between wanting to minister to others and wanting to be their savior or their God for that matter. The first is a good thing. The second is a recipe for disaster. I am the master of disaster when it comes having a savior complex.
So now it’s back to square one for me: Remembering what I need to do to take care of myself. I must do that because if I don’t I will destroy the lives of everyone I love in the name of saving them and lose myself in the process. Their salvation, not just in a spiritual sense but in every other kind of way, isn’t my problem. It’s God’s problem.
I’m amazed at just how well the scripture reveals my heart to me. When it calls me to love my neighbor as I love myself it continually calls me back to the thing which I do the worst and that is loving myself, keeping the commandments toward myself. If I don’t do those things I can’t love my neighbor or my wife or my kids or my parents or my God. The great pretender can’t face the truth. The great pretender can’t stop trying to be God to everybody else. The great pretender refuses to walk in love while all the while spouting pontifications about love.
Perhaps it is the Staple Singers I need to be listening to instead of the Platters and learn to respect myself cause “If you don’t respect yourself ain’t nobody gonna give a good cahoot. Respect yourself.
Learning to love myself so I don’t hate my neighbor and my God,
Brad
cosmoyada.com
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
tightrope
I’m sitting here listening to Dan Fogelberg’s live set: Greetings from the West for the first time. It’s just one more example of how big an idiot I was in my younger days. I loved Dan Fogelberg’s music when I was a kid. I made it through 4 albums before he became famous. When he became popular I gave up listening because I didn’t want to listen to a sellout. I have yet to have listened to all of his albums but so far except for his posthumous album I haven’t heard anything that isn’t superb.
I missed out on a lot of good music because I was too good to listen to it. Dumb ideas, faulty ideas are easy to get caught up in and extremely difficult to stop believing in. snobbery is one of those ideas. I will spend the rest of my life getting over the lie of cool, hip, in: whatever you want to call it.
It’s cool right now to want to strip the gospel down to its bare essentials. That’s nothing new. It was stripped down early in the last century as well. The results were not the beauty of the bare form of the gospel but a gutting of the gospel until it became just another idea among impotent ideas.
The problem with stripping is that it takes away the context, the foundation upon which the gospel stands. You see the entire word of God is the context of the gospel. That’s why I hate the fact that it is so popular to print New Testaments by themselves; the gospel has already been stripped before a person opens the cover. The old testament is the context of the new; any other context makes the new testament a lie.
We have been pursuing the gospel out of context since at least the birth of dispensationalism in the late 1800’s and the seeds of that were probably sown many years before. I’ve been reading F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom this afternoon and in between the tears I’ve been shedding while reading the introduction and the first chapter I’ve come across some gems that apply in the context of the church. Here’s one: “There are few signs yet that we have the intellectual courage to admit to ourselves that we may have been wrong.”
I would insert “spiritual courage.” Instead of looking at the consequence of our ideas in the church we have simply shoved the “truth” of the gospel out of context even harder down the next gullible generation’s throat. They had no choice but to swallow because any alternatives have been presented with such vehemence and hatred that they assumed that they couldn’t be the good news.
Here we are then stuck between the horns of a dilemma. Maybe it should be stuck between the whores of a dilemma because that is really what a gutted gospel is. On one hand we’ve gutted the truth from the gospel leaving only a semblance of real love and a compassion for everyone and no hope except friendship with an imaginary Jesus. On the other hand we’ve gutted the Spirit from the gospel leaving only limited truthful words without power while being full of pride and arrogance that can’t abide those that don’t agree.
To quote Jesus’ half-brother: My brothers (and sisters) these things ought not to be this way.
I should probably just quit there and walk away, but of course I won’t. See, I’ve played both sides of the fence in this game. I gutted the truth with modern ideas. It was all of grace, grace that didn’t give a damn about what you did; it was always there to forgive which sounds great but it was also a grace that made you feel guilty about everything you had, everything you didn’t do, and horrible thing that happened to other people. I was free to do anything as long as I asked for forgiveness but the things I couldn’t do got heavier and heavier with each passing day. I was free from the law but not from the opinions of men. God’s word no longer mattered but the words of men took its place. Contrary to popular opinion that only increased my bondage. I loved Jesus with all my heart and soul but it wasn’t the sweet little baby Jesus, or the bearded Jesus it was the Jesus made in my own image or rather the image of the age.
Eventually, that Jesus nearly cost me my life. I found the truth, the absolute truth of the whole word of God but I found with each passing year that I was just getting angrier and angrier. I had all these good ideas, these truths but no power to implement them. I also found that there was no room for thought once I got there. The reformation had come. We were reformed in the past tense. The answers had all been found so you had better not ask any questions or you will feel the flames of the inquisition.
The result of these swings of the pendulum have forced me to attempt to walk the high wire between the two places. It is a balancing act and I am only just a beginner. I must keep one foot on absolute truth or life has no real meaning. I must walk with a heart for the poor and down trodden and thus learn to do truth in the real world, there must be power in the words I speak or it is not the gospel. The good news transforms people to look like Jesus – Jesus who had compassion on the broken. And Jesus who will throw hell and death and all its occupants into the lake of fire after the judgment.
Go ahead and play word games if you want to. Go ahead and be smarter than God and throw out the parts of scripture you don’t like or that your god would never speak. Everything is permitted. Do what you want to do. But don’t be surprised in twenty or thirty years when you see the outcome of your ideas come crashing down around you and those you love; because not all things are profitable. Man does not live by bread alone but by EVERY word that comes from the mouth of God.
The words of Stevie Ray Vaughn come to mind:
Lookin' back in front of me in the mirror's a grin,
Through eyes of love I see I'm really lookin' at a friend
We've all had our problems that's the way life is,
My heart goes out to others who are there to make amends
We've been walkin' the tightrope tryin' to make it right
Walkin' the tightrope every day and every night
Walkin' the tightrope bring it all around
Walkin' the tightrope from the lost to found
Grace and Peace my friends from the tight rope of life,
Brad
Cosmoyada.com
I missed out on a lot of good music because I was too good to listen to it. Dumb ideas, faulty ideas are easy to get caught up in and extremely difficult to stop believing in. snobbery is one of those ideas. I will spend the rest of my life getting over the lie of cool, hip, in: whatever you want to call it.
It’s cool right now to want to strip the gospel down to its bare essentials. That’s nothing new. It was stripped down early in the last century as well. The results were not the beauty of the bare form of the gospel but a gutting of the gospel until it became just another idea among impotent ideas.
The problem with stripping is that it takes away the context, the foundation upon which the gospel stands. You see the entire word of God is the context of the gospel. That’s why I hate the fact that it is so popular to print New Testaments by themselves; the gospel has already been stripped before a person opens the cover. The old testament is the context of the new; any other context makes the new testament a lie.
We have been pursuing the gospel out of context since at least the birth of dispensationalism in the late 1800’s and the seeds of that were probably sown many years before. I’ve been reading F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom this afternoon and in between the tears I’ve been shedding while reading the introduction and the first chapter I’ve come across some gems that apply in the context of the church. Here’s one: “There are few signs yet that we have the intellectual courage to admit to ourselves that we may have been wrong.”
I would insert “spiritual courage.” Instead of looking at the consequence of our ideas in the church we have simply shoved the “truth” of the gospel out of context even harder down the next gullible generation’s throat. They had no choice but to swallow because any alternatives have been presented with such vehemence and hatred that they assumed that they couldn’t be the good news.
Here we are then stuck between the horns of a dilemma. Maybe it should be stuck between the whores of a dilemma because that is really what a gutted gospel is. On one hand we’ve gutted the truth from the gospel leaving only a semblance of real love and a compassion for everyone and no hope except friendship with an imaginary Jesus. On the other hand we’ve gutted the Spirit from the gospel leaving only limited truthful words without power while being full of pride and arrogance that can’t abide those that don’t agree.
To quote Jesus’ half-brother: My brothers (and sisters) these things ought not to be this way.
I should probably just quit there and walk away, but of course I won’t. See, I’ve played both sides of the fence in this game. I gutted the truth with modern ideas. It was all of grace, grace that didn’t give a damn about what you did; it was always there to forgive which sounds great but it was also a grace that made you feel guilty about everything you had, everything you didn’t do, and horrible thing that happened to other people. I was free to do anything as long as I asked for forgiveness but the things I couldn’t do got heavier and heavier with each passing day. I was free from the law but not from the opinions of men. God’s word no longer mattered but the words of men took its place. Contrary to popular opinion that only increased my bondage. I loved Jesus with all my heart and soul but it wasn’t the sweet little baby Jesus, or the bearded Jesus it was the Jesus made in my own image or rather the image of the age.
Eventually, that Jesus nearly cost me my life. I found the truth, the absolute truth of the whole word of God but I found with each passing year that I was just getting angrier and angrier. I had all these good ideas, these truths but no power to implement them. I also found that there was no room for thought once I got there. The reformation had come. We were reformed in the past tense. The answers had all been found so you had better not ask any questions or you will feel the flames of the inquisition.
The result of these swings of the pendulum have forced me to attempt to walk the high wire between the two places. It is a balancing act and I am only just a beginner. I must keep one foot on absolute truth or life has no real meaning. I must walk with a heart for the poor and down trodden and thus learn to do truth in the real world, there must be power in the words I speak or it is not the gospel. The good news transforms people to look like Jesus – Jesus who had compassion on the broken. And Jesus who will throw hell and death and all its occupants into the lake of fire after the judgment.
Go ahead and play word games if you want to. Go ahead and be smarter than God and throw out the parts of scripture you don’t like or that your god would never speak. Everything is permitted. Do what you want to do. But don’t be surprised in twenty or thirty years when you see the outcome of your ideas come crashing down around you and those you love; because not all things are profitable. Man does not live by bread alone but by EVERY word that comes from the mouth of God.
The words of Stevie Ray Vaughn come to mind:
Lookin' back in front of me in the mirror's a grin,
Through eyes of love I see I'm really lookin' at a friend
We've all had our problems that's the way life is,
My heart goes out to others who are there to make amends
We've been walkin' the tightrope tryin' to make it right
Walkin' the tightrope every day and every night
Walkin' the tightrope bring it all around
Walkin' the tightrope from the lost to found
Grace and Peace my friends from the tight rope of life,
Brad
Cosmoyada.com
Saturday, June 18, 2011
hanger #7
I am going to leave the book of Genesis this week and focus upon another book that probably fits in to the same time frame that we have been in and that is the book of Job. Job probably existed sometime in the years of the Patriarchs after the tower of babel and sometime before Joseph went to Egypt but it is rather unclear. So I thought this would be as good of place as any to stick him in.
Starting with verse one of chapter 1 we read: There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job; and that man was blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil. 2 Seven sons and three daughters were born to him. 3 His possessions also were 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and very many servants; and that man was the greatest of all the men of the east. 4 His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day, and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. 5 When the days of feasting had completed their cycle, Job would send and consecrate them, rising up early in the morning and offering burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, “Perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did continually.
Here is a man much like Noah in his generation: blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil. Is he any different than all the others before him? In one sense no; he was born a descendant of Adam. He was born in sin. So what this passage tells us is that Job also found grace in the eyes of the Lord. The scripture clearly tells us that there is no man righteous no not one. But God tells us that Job was blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil. Job was in Christ Jesus by faith in the God who promised redemption. I want you to understand that if you are in Christ Jesus the very same thing can be said about you. Listen to what God says about you: You are blameless. You are upright. You fear God. You turn away from evil. Don’t listen to those lies you tell yourself; listen to what God says about you.
The scripture also tells us that Job was a rich man and that he had been paying attention to the covenant commands because he has 10 kids. He is being fruitful and multiplying not just with children but in every area of life. From the passage it seems that the brothers and sisters would celebrate their birthdays by getting together and having a feast. Job was concerned for the spiritual wellbeing of his children and so each year after their birthdays had passed he would offer sacrifices to God on behalf of his children saying: Perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.
But then comes the rest of the story. In verse six we read: Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. 7 The LORD said to Satan, “From where do you come?” Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.” 8 The LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.” 9 Then Satan answered the LORD, “Does Job fear God for nothing? 10 Have You not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. 11 But put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will surely curse You to Your face.” 12 Then the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power, only do not put forth your hand on him.” So Satan departed from the presence of the LORD.
This passage is the second time in scripture that the phrase the sons of God is used in scripture. The other time is in Genesis chapter 6 when the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful. I don’t think that scripture is talking about angelic beings in either of these passages. Rather the phrase can just as easily be translated the sons of the judges.
In this passage I believe it refers to the rulers of the age. They are all gathered together in one place to stand before the Lord. God is still coming into their presence just like he did with Cain and just like he did at the tower of Babel. At the same time Satan, the king of the earth comes with them also. He has been roaming and walking over his Kingdom.
It seems like God can’t help but rub it in Satan’s face a little bit saying: “Hey, King of the Earth have you noticed that there’s a guy in your kingdom that’s in rebellion against you and is a part of my kingdom? Did you notice that he has humbled himself before me and I have made him righteous by the one that is going to crush your head with his heal one of these days?
I realize that is a paraphrase but we really need to look at this passage in the context of the whole testament of God. God is doing nothing more than reminding Satan of the promised curses and of the promised blessings of walking on the path of life.
Satan gets a little p.o.’d about God’s comments and says “Hey, the only reason he’s being good is because you protect him, his family and everything he has. You made him rich. Everything he touches is blessed. If you weren’t keeping your covenant promises to him he’d give up following you in a heartbeat. If you’d take away all that he has then he’ll curse you to your face. So God said to Satan: Alright then everything he has is in your power just don’t touch his body. Satan left the presence of God probably with a smile on his face.
I want you to see something here. Satan has to ask permission to bring trouble into your life. You are God’s if you have humbled yourself before him. You are in covenant with him and Satan has to ask permission mess with your life. Trouble comes because God knows what you need in order to be all that you are meant to be. That being said, it doesn’t make it any easier to go through knowing that God has allowed it to happen for your good but it is nice to know.
Anyway, Satan doesn’t waste anytime destroying Job’s life. Verse 13 says: Now on the day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, 14 a messenger came to Job and said, “The oxen were plowing and the donkeys feeding beside them, 15 and the hells angels attacked and took them. They stabbed the servants to death, and I alone have escaped to tell you.” 16 While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “A meteorite fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them, and I alone have escaped to tell you.” 17 While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “Al queda formed three bands and made a raid on the camels and took them and killed the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you.” 18 While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “Your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, 19 and behold, a tornado came from across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people and they died, and I alone have escaped to tell you.”
That hits home doesn’t it? In one day Job lost almost everything that he held dear. All the good things that God had given him are gone. A lifetime of taking dominion for God; gone in the blink of an eye: His children dead all on the same day.
Job’s response? He mourned and he humbled himself before God. The scripture says: Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head –that was the form of mourning in those days. And then he fell to the ground. Now contrary to popular opinion the passage doesn’t really say he worshiped. It says he fell to the ground and he bowed down. It says he was so overwhelmed with grief that he fell to the ground and while he was there he humbled himself before God. He was already on the ground so the bowing down had to be more than just kneeling before God. He humbled his heart before his maker in the mist of more devastation than you or I have probably ever known, though some in Joplin Missouri or Tuscaloosa might be able to relate.
And in the midst of that devastation he cries out: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked I shall return there. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.” 22 Through all this Job did not sin nor did he blame God.
Oh that I were half the man Job was. I blame God for a hangnail. But here Job thoroughly understands the Sovereignty of God in the giving and taking away of life and yet he does not blame God for any of it. Oh that I would trust my God that much. Oh that I would humble myself before my God like Job when hard times come.
Eventually, maybe I do but not without giving him a lot of grief first, not without a lot of kicking and screaming on the way there. I am all too familiar with my lack of being humble and not being bowed down before my God.
Of course we all know it doesn’t end there with Job. When you think things can’t get any worse here comes Satan again. There is another gathering of the sons of the judges and King Satan shows up as usual. I want you to understand something from this passage God calls a meeting and Satan shows up. He may be king of the earth at this point but he is still under God. He does what God allows him to do nothing more nothing less. When God says jump Satan says how high.
So God says to Satan: “Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man fearing God and turning away from evil. And he still holds fast his integrity, although you incited Me against him to ruin him without cause.” Satan answered the LORD and said, “Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. 5 However, put forth Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh; he will curse You to Your face.” 6 So the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your power, only spare his life.”
7 Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and smote Job with skin cancer from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. 8 And he took a potsherd to scrape himself while he was sitting among the ashes. I changed it from boils to something we are all more familiar with because I don’t want you to be able to just skim over it.
Notice that God says that he was incited against Job to ruin him. Satan cannot do anything unless God gives him permission. Nothing comes into your life that God hasn’t allowed for a purpose. When I think of some of the things that have come into my life, horrible things that shouldn’t happen to anyone I have to put them into the perspective of the whole word of God: When scripture says that all things work to the good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose it is including the horrible things.
I am reminded of the words of Joseph which we will get to one of these days: You meant it for bad but God meant it for God. Satan meant those horrible things that happened to me as a child to be my destruction but God meant them for my good, he meant them to soften my heart for the broken. If I had not been broken I would not have compassion on the broken. I would say, just like the Eagles sang: Get over it. Quit whining. However, God is more gracious and promises that all things work to the good. All things.
Notice also that it doesn’t say that you will have all things figured out and know why stuff happens to you. The secret things belong to God. Our call is to trust that if we are in Christ Jesus all things will work toward the good. We must also remember Job as a picture of what covenant keeping can look like. Just because you are walking on the path of life doesn’t mean that your life will always be a piece of cake. Yes job had a pretty cushy life He was one of the richest and most powerful men in the east. We was in right relation with God and then bam he loses everything for no reason whatsoever. This passage should be the first thing that pops into our head when hard times fall upon someone who loves the Lord. Too often our first response is: What sin did he commit to cause this? Sometimes bad times come just to test us.
Now we come to the famous words of Job’s wife. 9 Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!” 10 But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
I don’t think that Mrs. Job was being mean to her husband. I think she was probably broken hearted over him and all that had happened. Really, how much worse could it get? She just lost all of her children in a single, all of her possesions and standing in the community. Her husband has lost his health. If this is what righteousness gives you then maybe the best thing for you to do is die. Jump off the path of life. Turn your back on God.
Here Job responds with words that need to be heard and understood in our day and age: Should we accept good from God and not adversity? Should we take the good times and then get mad when the bad times come? All that comes into our lives comes from God. Now the book of Job tells us that it doesn’t always come directly from the hand of God. God uses secondary causes to bring about his plan but if he hasn’t planned it then it doesn’t come to pass. If he has planned it then it will come to pass.
This is his world and he does what he wants. Just because you can’t understand it doesn’t mean that it won’t work for your good. Is God a liar because you say so? I don’t think so. It wasn’t true when Adam and Eve said it was true and it won’t be true when you say it. God promises that all things work to the good. We need to learn to receive all things good and bad and trust that God knows what he is doing. Not an easy thing to learn I know but helpful when the hard times of life fall down on you.
Questions?
Let’s pray. Oh Father, please be merciful to us. Help us to be aware that all things come from your hand for our good. Do what it takes to humble us before you. In Jesus name I pray, amen.
Starting with verse one of chapter 1 we read: There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job; and that man was blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil. 2 Seven sons and three daughters were born to him. 3 His possessions also were 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and very many servants; and that man was the greatest of all the men of the east. 4 His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day, and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. 5 When the days of feasting had completed their cycle, Job would send and consecrate them, rising up early in the morning and offering burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, “Perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did continually.
Here is a man much like Noah in his generation: blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil. Is he any different than all the others before him? In one sense no; he was born a descendant of Adam. He was born in sin. So what this passage tells us is that Job also found grace in the eyes of the Lord. The scripture clearly tells us that there is no man righteous no not one. But God tells us that Job was blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil. Job was in Christ Jesus by faith in the God who promised redemption. I want you to understand that if you are in Christ Jesus the very same thing can be said about you. Listen to what God says about you: You are blameless. You are upright. You fear God. You turn away from evil. Don’t listen to those lies you tell yourself; listen to what God says about you.
The scripture also tells us that Job was a rich man and that he had been paying attention to the covenant commands because he has 10 kids. He is being fruitful and multiplying not just with children but in every area of life. From the passage it seems that the brothers and sisters would celebrate their birthdays by getting together and having a feast. Job was concerned for the spiritual wellbeing of his children and so each year after their birthdays had passed he would offer sacrifices to God on behalf of his children saying: Perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.
But then comes the rest of the story. In verse six we read: Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. 7 The LORD said to Satan, “From where do you come?” Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.” 8 The LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.” 9 Then Satan answered the LORD, “Does Job fear God for nothing? 10 Have You not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. 11 But put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will surely curse You to Your face.” 12 Then the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power, only do not put forth your hand on him.” So Satan departed from the presence of the LORD.
This passage is the second time in scripture that the phrase the sons of God is used in scripture. The other time is in Genesis chapter 6 when the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful. I don’t think that scripture is talking about angelic beings in either of these passages. Rather the phrase can just as easily be translated the sons of the judges.
In this passage I believe it refers to the rulers of the age. They are all gathered together in one place to stand before the Lord. God is still coming into their presence just like he did with Cain and just like he did at the tower of Babel. At the same time Satan, the king of the earth comes with them also. He has been roaming and walking over his Kingdom.
It seems like God can’t help but rub it in Satan’s face a little bit saying: “Hey, King of the Earth have you noticed that there’s a guy in your kingdom that’s in rebellion against you and is a part of my kingdom? Did you notice that he has humbled himself before me and I have made him righteous by the one that is going to crush your head with his heal one of these days?
I realize that is a paraphrase but we really need to look at this passage in the context of the whole testament of God. God is doing nothing more than reminding Satan of the promised curses and of the promised blessings of walking on the path of life.
Satan gets a little p.o.’d about God’s comments and says “Hey, the only reason he’s being good is because you protect him, his family and everything he has. You made him rich. Everything he touches is blessed. If you weren’t keeping your covenant promises to him he’d give up following you in a heartbeat. If you’d take away all that he has then he’ll curse you to your face. So God said to Satan: Alright then everything he has is in your power just don’t touch his body. Satan left the presence of God probably with a smile on his face.
I want you to see something here. Satan has to ask permission to bring trouble into your life. You are God’s if you have humbled yourself before him. You are in covenant with him and Satan has to ask permission mess with your life. Trouble comes because God knows what you need in order to be all that you are meant to be. That being said, it doesn’t make it any easier to go through knowing that God has allowed it to happen for your good but it is nice to know.
Anyway, Satan doesn’t waste anytime destroying Job’s life. Verse 13 says: Now on the day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, 14 a messenger came to Job and said, “The oxen were plowing and the donkeys feeding beside them, 15 and the hells angels attacked and took them. They stabbed the servants to death, and I alone have escaped to tell you.” 16 While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “A meteorite fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them, and I alone have escaped to tell you.” 17 While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “Al queda formed three bands and made a raid on the camels and took them and killed the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you.” 18 While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “Your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, 19 and behold, a tornado came from across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people and they died, and I alone have escaped to tell you.”
That hits home doesn’t it? In one day Job lost almost everything that he held dear. All the good things that God had given him are gone. A lifetime of taking dominion for God; gone in the blink of an eye: His children dead all on the same day.
Job’s response? He mourned and he humbled himself before God. The scripture says: Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head –that was the form of mourning in those days. And then he fell to the ground. Now contrary to popular opinion the passage doesn’t really say he worshiped. It says he fell to the ground and he bowed down. It says he was so overwhelmed with grief that he fell to the ground and while he was there he humbled himself before God. He was already on the ground so the bowing down had to be more than just kneeling before God. He humbled his heart before his maker in the mist of more devastation than you or I have probably ever known, though some in Joplin Missouri or Tuscaloosa might be able to relate.
And in the midst of that devastation he cries out: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked I shall return there. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.” 22 Through all this Job did not sin nor did he blame God.
Oh that I were half the man Job was. I blame God for a hangnail. But here Job thoroughly understands the Sovereignty of God in the giving and taking away of life and yet he does not blame God for any of it. Oh that I would trust my God that much. Oh that I would humble myself before my God like Job when hard times come.
Eventually, maybe I do but not without giving him a lot of grief first, not without a lot of kicking and screaming on the way there. I am all too familiar with my lack of being humble and not being bowed down before my God.
Of course we all know it doesn’t end there with Job. When you think things can’t get any worse here comes Satan again. There is another gathering of the sons of the judges and King Satan shows up as usual. I want you to understand something from this passage God calls a meeting and Satan shows up. He may be king of the earth at this point but he is still under God. He does what God allows him to do nothing more nothing less. When God says jump Satan says how high.
So God says to Satan: “Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man fearing God and turning away from evil. And he still holds fast his integrity, although you incited Me against him to ruin him without cause.” Satan answered the LORD and said, “Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. 5 However, put forth Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh; he will curse You to Your face.” 6 So the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your power, only spare his life.”
7 Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and smote Job with skin cancer from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. 8 And he took a potsherd to scrape himself while he was sitting among the ashes. I changed it from boils to something we are all more familiar with because I don’t want you to be able to just skim over it.
Notice that God says that he was incited against Job to ruin him. Satan cannot do anything unless God gives him permission. Nothing comes into your life that God hasn’t allowed for a purpose. When I think of some of the things that have come into my life, horrible things that shouldn’t happen to anyone I have to put them into the perspective of the whole word of God: When scripture says that all things work to the good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose it is including the horrible things.
I am reminded of the words of Joseph which we will get to one of these days: You meant it for bad but God meant it for God. Satan meant those horrible things that happened to me as a child to be my destruction but God meant them for my good, he meant them to soften my heart for the broken. If I had not been broken I would not have compassion on the broken. I would say, just like the Eagles sang: Get over it. Quit whining. However, God is more gracious and promises that all things work to the good. All things.
Notice also that it doesn’t say that you will have all things figured out and know why stuff happens to you. The secret things belong to God. Our call is to trust that if we are in Christ Jesus all things will work toward the good. We must also remember Job as a picture of what covenant keeping can look like. Just because you are walking on the path of life doesn’t mean that your life will always be a piece of cake. Yes job had a pretty cushy life He was one of the richest and most powerful men in the east. We was in right relation with God and then bam he loses everything for no reason whatsoever. This passage should be the first thing that pops into our head when hard times fall upon someone who loves the Lord. Too often our first response is: What sin did he commit to cause this? Sometimes bad times come just to test us.
Now we come to the famous words of Job’s wife. 9 Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!” 10 But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
I don’t think that Mrs. Job was being mean to her husband. I think she was probably broken hearted over him and all that had happened. Really, how much worse could it get? She just lost all of her children in a single, all of her possesions and standing in the community. Her husband has lost his health. If this is what righteousness gives you then maybe the best thing for you to do is die. Jump off the path of life. Turn your back on God.
Here Job responds with words that need to be heard and understood in our day and age: Should we accept good from God and not adversity? Should we take the good times and then get mad when the bad times come? All that comes into our lives comes from God. Now the book of Job tells us that it doesn’t always come directly from the hand of God. God uses secondary causes to bring about his plan but if he hasn’t planned it then it doesn’t come to pass. If he has planned it then it will come to pass.
This is his world and he does what he wants. Just because you can’t understand it doesn’t mean that it won’t work for your good. Is God a liar because you say so? I don’t think so. It wasn’t true when Adam and Eve said it was true and it won’t be true when you say it. God promises that all things work to the good. We need to learn to receive all things good and bad and trust that God knows what he is doing. Not an easy thing to learn I know but helpful when the hard times of life fall down on you.
Questions?
Let’s pray. Oh Father, please be merciful to us. Help us to be aware that all things come from your hand for our good. Do what it takes to humble us before you. In Jesus name I pray, amen.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
I think it's going to rain today
Hey Everybody,
First Thursday email from the new email address. I'm slowly recovering from last week’s email theft, though Ifind some new transaction every day that requires me changing accountinformation. I haven’t been attacked financially yet and that is a positive sign.I am carrying around a vague paranoia that materializes every time I’m on a webpage that doesn’t work exactly right. Am I being monitored? Are they monitoringmy key strokes? Is it paranoia when it is easily doable?
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about just how slowly people changeor if they even change at all. It happens so slowly that I’m not even sure ifit happens. Of course people change physically you can see that clearly, thoughit too happens rather slowly, but I’ve been thinking about how people changefrom the path of death to the path of life; that movement is as slow as aglacier. I wonder sometimes what it will take to get people to give up death.Most people I know don’t give it up. It gets taken from them as they kick andscream and leave claw marks in the dirt as they are dragged into life.
John wrote so long ago that men loved darkness more thanthey loved light. Nowhere is that more evident than in the church. MostChristians think God is a liar when it comes right down to it. They know thatthe way they are doing things is much better than God’s way. Death just feelsbetter than life and so we keep doing whatever it is we love and doing our bestto ignore the rest. Sure we get the bigstuff right. We hold the correct theology. We have said the right words. But asthe old saying goes: the devil is in the details.
What does it mean to go to your grave refusing to give updeath? What does it mean to destroy people’s lives by helping them to death?What does it mean to destroy your own life so you can be happy for just a fewminutes of every day? What does it mean to say “God I will not change becauseyour ways are too mean, too hard, too fill in the blank.” What does it mean tosay depart from me you who practice lawlessness?
What does it mean to be so focused on the now that youdestroy the future? It means a lot of pain and suffering in the future. Iexperience that pain every single day. Almost all of the major frustrations inmy life today, flow out of either myself or others trying to save me orthemselves from pain in the short term decades ago. I was focused on the ‘now’and didn’t think the future would even get here. This abuse feels better thanloneliness. This addiction feels better than being responsible. This beingtaken care of feels better than taking care of myself. It has taken a heavytoll on my present.
At the same time in recent years trying to think long termhas gotten me in a lot of hot water. Nobody wants to think 100 years into thefuture any more. They don’t want the world to exist that far into the future orthey don’t care what happens then. Kindof like the economist Keynes who when asked “What are the long term effects ofyour economic ideas?” replied, “In the long term we’ll all be dead.”
We don’t want to think long term in our day and age. We don’t what to go to the trouble to makesure we have extra oil and wicks for our lamps. I wonder if it’s too late to goget some now? Ah, It’s not going to be dark that long. We don’t want to planour cities, or our driving machines, or our houses to last for our greatgrandchildren. That would cost us too much now. We don’t want to lay up aninheritance for our grandchildren because we’ve got to spend all our money onshort term survival. We don’t care about the future because we won’t be here.We just want to consume until it’s all gone. We have forgotten how to producebecause Jesus is coming back in October. So why bother? Just like the people ofNoah’s time we don’t believe in rain because we’ve never seen it.
Ah the droll Randy Newman fits nicely here:
Broken windows and empty hallways
A pale dead moon in the sky streaked with gray
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it's going to rain today
Scarecrows dressed in the latest styles
With frozen smiles to chase love away
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it's going to rain today
Reading the signs of the times,
Brad
WWW.cosmoyada.com
(New video on Youtube check it out)
First Thursday email from the new email address. I'm slowly recovering from last week’s email theft, though Ifind some new transaction every day that requires me changing accountinformation. I haven’t been attacked financially yet and that is a positive sign.I am carrying around a vague paranoia that materializes every time I’m on a webpage that doesn’t work exactly right. Am I being monitored? Are they monitoringmy key strokes? Is it paranoia when it is easily doable?
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about just how slowly people changeor if they even change at all. It happens so slowly that I’m not even sure ifit happens. Of course people change physically you can see that clearly, thoughit too happens rather slowly, but I’ve been thinking about how people changefrom the path of death to the path of life; that movement is as slow as aglacier. I wonder sometimes what it will take to get people to give up death.Most people I know don’t give it up. It gets taken from them as they kick andscream and leave claw marks in the dirt as they are dragged into life.
John wrote so long ago that men loved darkness more thanthey loved light. Nowhere is that more evident than in the church. MostChristians think God is a liar when it comes right down to it. They know thatthe way they are doing things is much better than God’s way. Death just feelsbetter than life and so we keep doing whatever it is we love and doing our bestto ignore the rest. Sure we get the bigstuff right. We hold the correct theology. We have said the right words. But asthe old saying goes: the devil is in the details.
What does it mean to go to your grave refusing to give updeath? What does it mean to destroy people’s lives by helping them to death?What does it mean to destroy your own life so you can be happy for just a fewminutes of every day? What does it mean to say “God I will not change becauseyour ways are too mean, too hard, too fill in the blank.” What does it mean tosay depart from me you who practice lawlessness?
What does it mean to be so focused on the now that youdestroy the future? It means a lot of pain and suffering in the future. Iexperience that pain every single day. Almost all of the major frustrations inmy life today, flow out of either myself or others trying to save me orthemselves from pain in the short term decades ago. I was focused on the ‘now’and didn’t think the future would even get here. This abuse feels better thanloneliness. This addiction feels better than being responsible. This beingtaken care of feels better than taking care of myself. It has taken a heavytoll on my present.
At the same time in recent years trying to think long termhas gotten me in a lot of hot water. Nobody wants to think 100 years into thefuture any more. They don’t want the world to exist that far into the future orthey don’t care what happens then. Kindof like the economist Keynes who when asked “What are the long term effects ofyour economic ideas?” replied, “In the long term we’ll all be dead.”
We don’t want to think long term in our day and age. We don’t what to go to the trouble to makesure we have extra oil and wicks for our lamps. I wonder if it’s too late to goget some now? Ah, It’s not going to be dark that long. We don’t want to planour cities, or our driving machines, or our houses to last for our greatgrandchildren. That would cost us too much now. We don’t want to lay up aninheritance for our grandchildren because we’ve got to spend all our money onshort term survival. We don’t care about the future because we won’t be here.We just want to consume until it’s all gone. We have forgotten how to producebecause Jesus is coming back in October. So why bother? Just like the people ofNoah’s time we don’t believe in rain because we’ve never seen it.
Ah the droll Randy Newman fits nicely here:
Broken windows and empty hallways
A pale dead moon in the sky streaked with gray
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it's going to rain today
Scarecrows dressed in the latest styles
With frozen smiles to chase love away
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it's going to rain today
Reading the signs of the times,
Brad
WWW.cosmoyada.com
(New video on Youtube check it out)
Sunday, June 12, 2011
hanger #5
We are continuing on in Genesis today. What we have seen so far in the unfolding of the world is that rebellion against love runs deep. We have also seen the long suffering and patience of God. We have seen the sadness of God because of man’s rebellion. For 1500 years God gave us the opportunity to repent- especially the last 120 years- everyone was fully aware of the call to repentance but all but one refused to humble themselves before God. So God flooded the world in order to save the world.
Yet in spite of all the opportunities the wicked rebellion of mankind continues on after the flood. In verse 18 of chapter 10: Now the sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem and Ham and Japheth; and Ham was the father of Canaan. 19These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated. 20Then Noah began farming and planted a vineyard.
I want you to understand that years go by in between these two verses. It takes time to plant a vineyard and have it produce grapes. It takes time to make wine out of those grapes. We aren’t told why but out of the fruit of his labors Noah commits sin by getting drunk. Verse 21 tells us that He drank of the wine and became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent. 22Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. 23But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it upon both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were turned away, so that they did not see their father's nakedness. 24When Noah awoke from his wine, he knew what his youngest son had done to him. 25So he said, "Cursed be Canaan; A servant of servants He shall be to his brothers." 26He also said, "Blessed be the LORD, The God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant. 27"May God enlarge Japheth, And let him dwell in the tents of Shem; And let Canaan be his servant."
I would imagine many of us would say what’s the big deal? We obviously haven’t been given a lot of information here. But we must learn to trust that everything that is in this book hangs on the foundation of love. Whatever Ham did Noah seemed to know what it was as soon has he woke up. I would tend to say that it was more than just taking a peek at dad drunk and naked in his tent. How would Noah know that by just waking up? But I can’t say for sure. Whatever it was, it was enough to require a prophetic curse to be spoken upon all his descendants.
In one sense this is very similar to Adam’s rebellion: one man sins and the rest of his descendants have to live in the consequences of his actions. This should be a warning to us all: we can mess up life for all the generations that follow us with just one step off the path of life. Actions have consequences; your actions matter to more people than just you. They can affect all those that come after you. We will eventually get to the end consequences of this action when the descendants of Shem conquer the descendants of Ham in the land promised to Abraham by God.
When Jesus said ‘on these two things hang all the law and prophets’ these things were included as hanging on love. This crazy event flows out of the love of God and the love of our neighbor. Ham’s action revealed his lack of love for God and for his father, his neighbor. It revealed his heart. And the result was the wages of rebellion. The response of love to hatred is immediate and at the same time patient and long suffering.
I want you to understand some things in all of this. Whatever Ham did there was no civil justice to be done. Life went on. Ham was cursed and more than likely that didn’t seem like that big of a deal to Ham at the time, maybe for the rest of his life. The prophecy didn’t mean that no one from Ham’s family would ever humble themselves and get on the path of life. On the contrary we are told that Rahaab would become a part of the tribe of Shem by faith. Anyone who wants to can step onto the path of life. That sad part is not too many want to do that.
The next chapter tells us that all of the brothers had kids, and grandkids. Their families turned into cities, and then nations. They either walked on the path of life or they walked in death. Life goes on. The blessings of God are poured out on the cursed and the not cursed. Seeds are sown and love causes them to grow. King Satan sits on the throne and begins to rebuild his kingdom after the flood and darkness continues to grow on the face of the earth.
So far we have not been told of anyone but Noah finding grace in the eyes of the Lord. The consequences of ideas, especially the idea of rebellion against love are unfolding in the lives of everyone on the planet. The one righteous man dies 350 years after the flood. And sometime after that world unites as one against Love and tries to overthrow it.
In Chapter 11 we read: 1Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. 2It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3They said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. 4They said, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth."
What we see in this passage is that there was a time on this planet when communication was easy – even after the rebellion. I don’t know about you but for me communication is one of the hardest things that I have to do and I don’t do it well. Sure I can get up here and foam at the mouth for 30 minutes every Sunday but that is one way communication. I don’t know if you hear what I’m saying or not. If you don’t then it’s not communication at all. I’m horrible at one on one communication for a myriad of reasons. So I find it somewhat comforting to know that lack of communication is a part of the curse for rebelling against love. I long for the day when we will be able to fully communicate without difficulty. I’m sure I will be amazed.
I find an interesting parallel to our own times here in this passage. Here the people of the world, the entire world it seems, join together in one accord and try to exalt themselves to the position of God. They not only use the same language they have the same mind and the same desires. They are united in rebellion against love. Their goal is to make themselves a name. We have a really poor understanding of the meaning of the concept of naming something in our culture. I think it was somebody in the movie Pulp Fiction that said: Names don’t mean anything in America. That’s exactly right they’re just words to us.
But they were not just words in scripture, names had meaning but also to have the name above all names was to have authority and power over all the other names. The population of the world is not trying to gain fame here they are trying to exalt themselves to the place of authority. They are trying to be king of kings and Lord of Lords. They were continuing to advance the rebellion against love.
What we continually see over and over again is that death reigns supreme in mankind’s heart unless they humble themselves before grace. That being said, I would also add that these people loved one another (not in the godly love your neighbor as yourself kind of way but as unbelievers have affection for one another), they were friends, they were united in working together, they were getting along. It is the world that the majority of people in our own time are looking for. You hear it often: Why can’t we just get along? Here, at this point in time, the world was one. They were able to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. There were no dissenters. The world and everyone in it was united by one goal to take all power and control for themselves. This is why it is a good thing that we don’t all get along in our day and age because from the perspective of scripture if we do we will unite in rebellion against God.
Verse 5 tells us that: The LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6The LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. 7"Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech." 8So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. 9Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.
To put an end to this new rebellion against love God doesn’t pour out wrath upon the people he simply gave them the gift of tongues without the gift of interpretation. What he does is take away the grace of being able to communicate. He removes a bit of the gift of common grace that he had been giving the rebellious up to this point. They don’t want him in their lives and so he gives them want they want – less of him and his grace. The result is that they are scattered over the face of the whole earth – each according to their language. Now instead of 1 group of rebellious people striving against God we now have hundreds of different groups striving against God and because of the inability to communicate they begin striving against one another.
I mentioned a parallel to our own times and I think this is it: In the history of our nation what we see is that God gave us the grace to communicate around a single language – English and form a united culture. Because of our faithfulness to him in the early years he allowed the communication barrier to be broken down. English began to be spoken by more and more people. The original goal was to spread the good news. But eventually we turned our backs on God and he began to once again remove the grace of communication from our land. It is getting to the place where the ability to communicate is becoming harder and harder even within the same language.
God has given us what we desire – a meaningless world of chance and the end result is the destruction of communication. We say the same words but every person’s words have a different meaning. We are seeing the consequences of the ideas of evolutionary thought starting to blossom and produce fruit. God is giving our culture what it believes in.
There was a time when we were a melting pot; people of all different nations and languages would come here and assimilate into one people. We were a picture of what the body of Christ is supposed to look like all the parts of the body working together to grow up the body into maturity: But not anymore.
Now we are a picture of the parts of the body warring against itself so that they can be equally dominate. The body is cutting itself up in different little groups each with its own agenda. Sound familiar? It should because that is what the church has been doing for longer than the nation has. We have been chewing each other up and spitting out the remains, dividing ourselves into smaller and smaller groups refining our doctrines in the name of purity while all the while carving up the body of Christ into more and more dysfunctional pieces.
There can be no hope for the nation if the church doesn’t repent. This division that exists, this pride and arrogance in the name of Christ is anything but love. Like the Pharisees we have pursued the word of God without embracing the God of love and now our nation stands on the brink of destruction. We often times resign ourselves to the fact that while the body may not be growing here, more and more people are turning to Christ in other countries. But if they are turning to the same watered down gospel, the easy belivism, and bickering over truth that we do; is that really a good thing? If all they are looking for is a way to escape this life and get on to the next then they will be of no help at all in advancing the kingdom of God.
Our calling is to advance the kingdom of God in every area of life. We are called to exemplify love in every area of life not out there somewhere but right here in our midst, right here in our families and communities. I don’t need any more ideas of things to do or ways to do it. I have plenty of ideas. I need the power to do. The power to do that which I hate the most: communicate. I need God to pour out his grace upon me so that I can speak to my children and they can hear what I am saying. I need God to pour out his grace upon my ears so that my children can speak to me and I can hear what they are saying. I need the babel removed from my life. I don’t know what it will take to make that happen but I need it.
And yet that is only the start. I need the same thing here. I need for you to be able to hear what I am saying. We need to be able to hear what each other is saying. I’m not sure that we have that yet. I am more inclined to believe that we are all hearing what we want to hear and doing what we want to do. It is my prayer, my hope, my desire that God would give us the grace to be able to move ahead, to change, to get on the same page, to pursue that which God has laid on our hearts with a single goal which should not be to increase our own kingdom and exalt our own name but to increase the kingdom of the one true God and exalt his name above all others. All we have to do is look around at the culture in which we live and see what not to do. May God give us the grace to do the right thing in a broken and abnormal world.
Let’s pray. Oh Father open our eyes, change our hearts, advance your kingdom in our lives. Exalt the name of Jesus above all else. Amen.
Yet in spite of all the opportunities the wicked rebellion of mankind continues on after the flood. In verse 18 of chapter 10: Now the sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem and Ham and Japheth; and Ham was the father of Canaan. 19These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated. 20Then Noah began farming and planted a vineyard.
I want you to understand that years go by in between these two verses. It takes time to plant a vineyard and have it produce grapes. It takes time to make wine out of those grapes. We aren’t told why but out of the fruit of his labors Noah commits sin by getting drunk. Verse 21 tells us that He drank of the wine and became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent. 22Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. 23But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it upon both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were turned away, so that they did not see their father's nakedness. 24When Noah awoke from his wine, he knew what his youngest son had done to him. 25So he said, "Cursed be Canaan; A servant of servants He shall be to his brothers." 26He also said, "Blessed be the LORD, The God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant. 27"May God enlarge Japheth, And let him dwell in the tents of Shem; And let Canaan be his servant."
I would imagine many of us would say what’s the big deal? We obviously haven’t been given a lot of information here. But we must learn to trust that everything that is in this book hangs on the foundation of love. Whatever Ham did Noah seemed to know what it was as soon has he woke up. I would tend to say that it was more than just taking a peek at dad drunk and naked in his tent. How would Noah know that by just waking up? But I can’t say for sure. Whatever it was, it was enough to require a prophetic curse to be spoken upon all his descendants.
In one sense this is very similar to Adam’s rebellion: one man sins and the rest of his descendants have to live in the consequences of his actions. This should be a warning to us all: we can mess up life for all the generations that follow us with just one step off the path of life. Actions have consequences; your actions matter to more people than just you. They can affect all those that come after you. We will eventually get to the end consequences of this action when the descendants of Shem conquer the descendants of Ham in the land promised to Abraham by God.
When Jesus said ‘on these two things hang all the law and prophets’ these things were included as hanging on love. This crazy event flows out of the love of God and the love of our neighbor. Ham’s action revealed his lack of love for God and for his father, his neighbor. It revealed his heart. And the result was the wages of rebellion. The response of love to hatred is immediate and at the same time patient and long suffering.
I want you to understand some things in all of this. Whatever Ham did there was no civil justice to be done. Life went on. Ham was cursed and more than likely that didn’t seem like that big of a deal to Ham at the time, maybe for the rest of his life. The prophecy didn’t mean that no one from Ham’s family would ever humble themselves and get on the path of life. On the contrary we are told that Rahaab would become a part of the tribe of Shem by faith. Anyone who wants to can step onto the path of life. That sad part is not too many want to do that.
The next chapter tells us that all of the brothers had kids, and grandkids. Their families turned into cities, and then nations. They either walked on the path of life or they walked in death. Life goes on. The blessings of God are poured out on the cursed and the not cursed. Seeds are sown and love causes them to grow. King Satan sits on the throne and begins to rebuild his kingdom after the flood and darkness continues to grow on the face of the earth.
So far we have not been told of anyone but Noah finding grace in the eyes of the Lord. The consequences of ideas, especially the idea of rebellion against love are unfolding in the lives of everyone on the planet. The one righteous man dies 350 years after the flood. And sometime after that world unites as one against Love and tries to overthrow it.
In Chapter 11 we read: 1Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. 2It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3They said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. 4They said, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth."
What we see in this passage is that there was a time on this planet when communication was easy – even after the rebellion. I don’t know about you but for me communication is one of the hardest things that I have to do and I don’t do it well. Sure I can get up here and foam at the mouth for 30 minutes every Sunday but that is one way communication. I don’t know if you hear what I’m saying or not. If you don’t then it’s not communication at all. I’m horrible at one on one communication for a myriad of reasons. So I find it somewhat comforting to know that lack of communication is a part of the curse for rebelling against love. I long for the day when we will be able to fully communicate without difficulty. I’m sure I will be amazed.
I find an interesting parallel to our own times here in this passage. Here the people of the world, the entire world it seems, join together in one accord and try to exalt themselves to the position of God. They not only use the same language they have the same mind and the same desires. They are united in rebellion against love. Their goal is to make themselves a name. We have a really poor understanding of the meaning of the concept of naming something in our culture. I think it was somebody in the movie Pulp Fiction that said: Names don’t mean anything in America. That’s exactly right they’re just words to us.
But they were not just words in scripture, names had meaning but also to have the name above all names was to have authority and power over all the other names. The population of the world is not trying to gain fame here they are trying to exalt themselves to the place of authority. They are trying to be king of kings and Lord of Lords. They were continuing to advance the rebellion against love.
What we continually see over and over again is that death reigns supreme in mankind’s heart unless they humble themselves before grace. That being said, I would also add that these people loved one another (not in the godly love your neighbor as yourself kind of way but as unbelievers have affection for one another), they were friends, they were united in working together, they were getting along. It is the world that the majority of people in our own time are looking for. You hear it often: Why can’t we just get along? Here, at this point in time, the world was one. They were able to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. There were no dissenters. The world and everyone in it was united by one goal to take all power and control for themselves. This is why it is a good thing that we don’t all get along in our day and age because from the perspective of scripture if we do we will unite in rebellion against God.
Verse 5 tells us that: The LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6The LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. 7"Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech." 8So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. 9Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.
To put an end to this new rebellion against love God doesn’t pour out wrath upon the people he simply gave them the gift of tongues without the gift of interpretation. What he does is take away the grace of being able to communicate. He removes a bit of the gift of common grace that he had been giving the rebellious up to this point. They don’t want him in their lives and so he gives them want they want – less of him and his grace. The result is that they are scattered over the face of the whole earth – each according to their language. Now instead of 1 group of rebellious people striving against God we now have hundreds of different groups striving against God and because of the inability to communicate they begin striving against one another.
I mentioned a parallel to our own times and I think this is it: In the history of our nation what we see is that God gave us the grace to communicate around a single language – English and form a united culture. Because of our faithfulness to him in the early years he allowed the communication barrier to be broken down. English began to be spoken by more and more people. The original goal was to spread the good news. But eventually we turned our backs on God and he began to once again remove the grace of communication from our land. It is getting to the place where the ability to communicate is becoming harder and harder even within the same language.
God has given us what we desire – a meaningless world of chance and the end result is the destruction of communication. We say the same words but every person’s words have a different meaning. We are seeing the consequences of the ideas of evolutionary thought starting to blossom and produce fruit. God is giving our culture what it believes in.
There was a time when we were a melting pot; people of all different nations and languages would come here and assimilate into one people. We were a picture of what the body of Christ is supposed to look like all the parts of the body working together to grow up the body into maturity: But not anymore.
Now we are a picture of the parts of the body warring against itself so that they can be equally dominate. The body is cutting itself up in different little groups each with its own agenda. Sound familiar? It should because that is what the church has been doing for longer than the nation has. We have been chewing each other up and spitting out the remains, dividing ourselves into smaller and smaller groups refining our doctrines in the name of purity while all the while carving up the body of Christ into more and more dysfunctional pieces.
There can be no hope for the nation if the church doesn’t repent. This division that exists, this pride and arrogance in the name of Christ is anything but love. Like the Pharisees we have pursued the word of God without embracing the God of love and now our nation stands on the brink of destruction. We often times resign ourselves to the fact that while the body may not be growing here, more and more people are turning to Christ in other countries. But if they are turning to the same watered down gospel, the easy belivism, and bickering over truth that we do; is that really a good thing? If all they are looking for is a way to escape this life and get on to the next then they will be of no help at all in advancing the kingdom of God.
Our calling is to advance the kingdom of God in every area of life. We are called to exemplify love in every area of life not out there somewhere but right here in our midst, right here in our families and communities. I don’t need any more ideas of things to do or ways to do it. I have plenty of ideas. I need the power to do. The power to do that which I hate the most: communicate. I need God to pour out his grace upon me so that I can speak to my children and they can hear what I am saying. I need God to pour out his grace upon my ears so that my children can speak to me and I can hear what they are saying. I need the babel removed from my life. I don’t know what it will take to make that happen but I need it.
And yet that is only the start. I need the same thing here. I need for you to be able to hear what I am saying. We need to be able to hear what each other is saying. I’m not sure that we have that yet. I am more inclined to believe that we are all hearing what we want to hear and doing what we want to do. It is my prayer, my hope, my desire that God would give us the grace to be able to move ahead, to change, to get on the same page, to pursue that which God has laid on our hearts with a single goal which should not be to increase our own kingdom and exalt our own name but to increase the kingdom of the one true God and exalt his name above all others. All we have to do is look around at the culture in which we live and see what not to do. May God give us the grace to do the right thing in a broken and abnormal world.
Let’s pray. Oh Father open our eyes, change our hearts, advance your kingdom in our lives. Exalt the name of Jesus above all else. Amen.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Helpless, Helpless, Helpless
Hi Everyone,
Someone stole my email address on Tuesday. I found myself nearly overwhelmed by the loss. I mean maybe it’s a minor thing and yet it’s much like identity theft. I’m cut off from people and conversations. Much of my life takes place through something as simple as an email address. I find myself worried that other people are going to be harmed electronically by those who have hijacked my old email address.
That coupled with the pain of beginning to get in shape for the first time at the age of 50 and the urge to just walk away from it all has begun to gnaw at me again. Why bother? What good does it do to try? Nothing ever really comes from it except aggravation. Climb back into that hole you used to live in. Get high, get numb, get anything but here and now. Run Forrest, run.
There are days when it is hard to see the point of running the good race. There are days when it’s hard to see the point of being good. I’m with Paul on that one: if there is no resurrection then we are wasting our time. I realize that Paul was referring to fighting wild beasts in a coliseum somewhere while I’m whining about a stolen identity and the aches and pains of trying to take better care of myself through torture. But the end result is the same: if there is no resurrection then everything we do is a waste of time. As Paul said: “Let us eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow we die.” (if there is no resurrection). I grow fonder of Paul with almost every day.
It comes down to faith doesn’t it? Am I going to hope in an thing unseen? Yes, unseen. I have no way of proving whether I’m headed in the right direction or not. Nobody does. Every human on this planet lives by faith. Some hope in the unseen realm of accident and chance. Others hope in the unseen God of scripture (or some other God(s)). Most people don’t even take the time to think about it. They live their lives seeking out the best of both worlds and the consequences of neither. In other words they live as if there is order and meaning but only until they die because there’s nothing after that. Once again eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.
Nice work if you can get it I guess, at least in the short term. I’m unqualified for that position because I think too much. Because I know the need for order and the only place it can come from I’m stuck with no place to run any more. There is no place to go to get away from the truth. I’m not some amazing magician that can turn off my understanding of reality. Maybe you can I don’t know. Maybe you can pursue a world where there is no meta-narrative, no overarching view of the world, no unifying factor that ties everything together. I just know that is no longer an option for me.
I know whom I have believed in I just wish it wasn’t so damn hard to get to the end of the race. Maybe your life is a breeze. Maybe you can numb your pain with cash or religion or food, or drink. I don’t know. I just know that I can’t and that makes it rough.
I wrote all these things Wednesday afternoon and then at our Wednesday night study I was quickly put in my place through our study of Paul Miller’s book: The Praying Life. The chapter was called Helplessness (or some horrible word like that). It helped me put things back in perspective. If….if everything that comes into my life every minute of every day is for my good why do I kick against it so hard? Who do I trust? When push comes to shove and I’m in the midst of the trouble of the day who do I turn to? Usually me. Oh I pray: God why’d you do this to me? As if I deserved better or I was the only one suffering. As if God was a liar because he was sending bad things into my life and not just good.
I was never this much of a whiner when I was high probably because I didn’t have to face the pain; I simply avoided it. I was young, naïve, and oblivious who needed whining? But now I have opted to avoid avoidance and walk through the pain of life, and well, it’s a pain. And I still hold on to the delusion that life is supposed to be easy and so when it’s not, when I can’t make it through a day without trouble I get bent out of shape because I should be able to handle this. Everybody else can do it why can’t I?
I believe lies, refuse the truth and wonder why life isn’t going my way. The truth is nobody can make through life on their own. That’s why Jesus died on the cross because we couldn’t do it on our own. He did it so that we could do it through him. We are in Christ as much as we were in Adam. He is our righteousness. He is our faithfulness. He is all that we are supposed to be. He is all that we are.
We must remember that in Christ Jesus we are holy, blameless, and righteous. In Christ we are the apple of God’s eye. He loves us more than we love ourselves (thank God). He loves us enough to grow us up to full maturity. He loves us enough to make us like Christ not just on paper but in the real world. He loves us enough to hand craft the aggravation that we will encounter today. He loves us so much that he will remind us that we are (in the words of Neil Young via Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young)- helpless, helpless, helpless.
Why? Because unless we’re helpless we will never need to cry out to God for grace and mercy: we will be the proud and stiff necked people the bible tells us we are and we will find ourselves outside of Christ.
I’m a slow learner. I really have to be beaten to a blood pulp before I realize how far I’ve been straying from the humbleness that places us on the path of life.
So I endure a small loss rather ungracefully and catch a glimpse of grace in the process. God is good to us more often than not against our wills. He does what is necessary to keep us on the path of life.
I am grateful that if I make it across the finish line it will be in spite of all my efforts to derail the train.
Grace, peace and a new email address,
Brad
Cosmoyada.com
Someone stole my email address on Tuesday. I found myself nearly overwhelmed by the loss. I mean maybe it’s a minor thing and yet it’s much like identity theft. I’m cut off from people and conversations. Much of my life takes place through something as simple as an email address. I find myself worried that other people are going to be harmed electronically by those who have hijacked my old email address.
That coupled with the pain of beginning to get in shape for the first time at the age of 50 and the urge to just walk away from it all has begun to gnaw at me again. Why bother? What good does it do to try? Nothing ever really comes from it except aggravation. Climb back into that hole you used to live in. Get high, get numb, get anything but here and now. Run Forrest, run.
There are days when it is hard to see the point of running the good race. There are days when it’s hard to see the point of being good. I’m with Paul on that one: if there is no resurrection then we are wasting our time. I realize that Paul was referring to fighting wild beasts in a coliseum somewhere while I’m whining about a stolen identity and the aches and pains of trying to take better care of myself through torture. But the end result is the same: if there is no resurrection then everything we do is a waste of time. As Paul said: “Let us eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow we die.” (if there is no resurrection). I grow fonder of Paul with almost every day.
It comes down to faith doesn’t it? Am I going to hope in an thing unseen? Yes, unseen. I have no way of proving whether I’m headed in the right direction or not. Nobody does. Every human on this planet lives by faith. Some hope in the unseen realm of accident and chance. Others hope in the unseen God of scripture (or some other God(s)). Most people don’t even take the time to think about it. They live their lives seeking out the best of both worlds and the consequences of neither. In other words they live as if there is order and meaning but only until they die because there’s nothing after that. Once again eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.
Nice work if you can get it I guess, at least in the short term. I’m unqualified for that position because I think too much. Because I know the need for order and the only place it can come from I’m stuck with no place to run any more. There is no place to go to get away from the truth. I’m not some amazing magician that can turn off my understanding of reality. Maybe you can I don’t know. Maybe you can pursue a world where there is no meta-narrative, no overarching view of the world, no unifying factor that ties everything together. I just know that is no longer an option for me.
I know whom I have believed in I just wish it wasn’t so damn hard to get to the end of the race. Maybe your life is a breeze. Maybe you can numb your pain with cash or religion or food, or drink. I don’t know. I just know that I can’t and that makes it rough.
I wrote all these things Wednesday afternoon and then at our Wednesday night study I was quickly put in my place through our study of Paul Miller’s book: The Praying Life. The chapter was called Helplessness (or some horrible word like that). It helped me put things back in perspective. If….if everything that comes into my life every minute of every day is for my good why do I kick against it so hard? Who do I trust? When push comes to shove and I’m in the midst of the trouble of the day who do I turn to? Usually me. Oh I pray: God why’d you do this to me? As if I deserved better or I was the only one suffering. As if God was a liar because he was sending bad things into my life and not just good.
I was never this much of a whiner when I was high probably because I didn’t have to face the pain; I simply avoided it. I was young, naïve, and oblivious who needed whining? But now I have opted to avoid avoidance and walk through the pain of life, and well, it’s a pain. And I still hold on to the delusion that life is supposed to be easy and so when it’s not, when I can’t make it through a day without trouble I get bent out of shape because I should be able to handle this. Everybody else can do it why can’t I?
I believe lies, refuse the truth and wonder why life isn’t going my way. The truth is nobody can make through life on their own. That’s why Jesus died on the cross because we couldn’t do it on our own. He did it so that we could do it through him. We are in Christ as much as we were in Adam. He is our righteousness. He is our faithfulness. He is all that we are supposed to be. He is all that we are.
We must remember that in Christ Jesus we are holy, blameless, and righteous. In Christ we are the apple of God’s eye. He loves us more than we love ourselves (thank God). He loves us enough to grow us up to full maturity. He loves us enough to make us like Christ not just on paper but in the real world. He loves us enough to hand craft the aggravation that we will encounter today. He loves us so much that he will remind us that we are (in the words of Neil Young via Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young)- helpless, helpless, helpless.
Why? Because unless we’re helpless we will never need to cry out to God for grace and mercy: we will be the proud and stiff necked people the bible tells us we are and we will find ourselves outside of Christ.
I’m a slow learner. I really have to be beaten to a blood pulp before I realize how far I’ve been straying from the humbleness that places us on the path of life.
So I endure a small loss rather ungracefully and catch a glimpse of grace in the process. God is good to us more often than not against our wills. He does what is necessary to keep us on the path of life.
I am grateful that if I make it across the finish line it will be in spite of all my efforts to derail the train.
Grace, peace and a new email address,
Brad
Cosmoyada.com
Saturday, June 4, 2011
hanger #4
I want to continue on with the story of the hanger of love and how the law and prophets are beginning to be hung on it through Noah’s life. If you remember we left off in chapter 9 of Genesis. Starting with verse one, we read: So God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. In this verse we have a repetition of one of the original commands of Love. Notice that this is a command for both believers and unbelievers because scripture seems to indicate that only Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord and yet we see that the covenant is given to his whole family. We know for certain that his son Ham is a lover of death and he is given this command. I want to be clear: no one is exempt from the love mandate. Even though the original love relationship has been broken; the requirements are still in effect. Life and death are still determined by the obedience of love.
From that we can begin to understand that all humans are still responsible to love God and to walk in the commands of love. If a person does not come to repentance then the passage of time only increases the wages of not loving which is death. Turning your back on love doesn’t eliminate love as being the path of life. It only ensures that you will receive the wages of hating. The only hope is to humble yourself before God and in doing so trust, through faith (demonstrated by obedience to the word of love), in the promise of God for justice to be paid out so that mercy can be applied.
What we see in the verses that follow is that because of the fall there have been some changes in the commands of love. Ideas still have consequences. Rebellion against love brought about changes in nature. Nature is no longer normal. It has been damaged. We now live in an abnormal world. But like so many dysfunctional people we’ve been living this way so long we no longer know what functional is. That is why we need the book of love: It is the path that will lead us back to normalcy. Without it we have no hope of recovery because the inmates have taken over the asylum.
So back when the world was normal, before we mutinied, Adam was told to be a vegetarian. But Noah is told that it is alright to eat anything that is alive. Even though some animals are considered unclean (as we see when it says that Noah sacrificed clean animals and in the differentiation of clean and unclean animals to be loaded on the ark) they are not yet unclean enough to not be eaten.
What we can learn from this is that the full consequences of our actions can take a long time to unfold. 1500 years after the fall the damage is still unfolding. In another 500 to 1000 years some animals will be inedible according to the rule of love and the path of life. But at this point they are not – anything that is alive can be eaten.
As we read on we notice that other things have changed as well. Verse two tells us that "The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given. Fear is the difference in our relationship with animals. Until the flood animals were not afraid of humans. Noah just went out and got the animals and put them on the ark. He might have been able to just ask them to come and they came. But after they left the ark God gave them fear. Given the tendency of mankind to love death they certainly have plenty of reason to fear.
In verse three we read: Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant. So we see the command to eat plants is still in effect but something has changed between the fall and the flood. I believe that one of the things that happened may have been a climate change that caused plants to not be as prolific as they once were. I certainly have no problem with being a vegetarian but without the blessings of farming technology that we have today it would be impossible in our day and age because food grows very slowly.
Before the flood several hundred million people were vegetarians without any advanced technology. That changed in a matter of 40 days. I believe Love gave us permission to eat meat so that we could survive in the post flood world.
Though we are allowed to eat any meat we want at this point Love tells us that if we want to walk on the path of life that we should not eat blood. Verse 4 says: Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. This commandment carries on into our day and age being reaffirmed by the apostles in Acts chapter 15 verse 20 where we are told to abstain from blood. This brick on the path of life has been so incorporated into our lives in our culture that we don’t even think about it. We hang our meat after it is slaughtered. We drain the blood. Oh that the rest of the bricks in the path of life were so easy to walk on without thinking. Thank God someday they will be.
In verse 5 we read: Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man's brother I will require the life of man. 6"Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man. Here is one of the most hated requirements of love. God is saying here that if you truly love then if an animal kills a person the animal must die. If a man murders a man the murderer, even if it is his brother, must die. Here is the commandment not to murder and the command for the atonement of that murder through the death of the one who caused blood to be shed.
In our day and age this is one of the places where the rubber hits the road. This is where people begin to scoff at love’s ways being love. They would say: That can’t be love. That’s just mean. We have to decide: is God really love? Are all of God’s way’s love? That’s important because if God is love and all of the law and the prophets hang on loving God and mankind and something is hanging there that isn’t love then God is a liar or this thing we call his word isn’t his word.
A lot of people in the church have said one or the other. My God would never say that. Or they would say those words not the word of God. God doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Of course they’re more subtle than that they say things like:: the bible really isn’t all the word of God or the things in that book are just primitive man’s interpretation of what God was revealing. We’re too sophisticated to be primitives like that. My God would never do such a thing. That’s barbaric.” But all of those things are code words for: Love doesn’t know what love is.
The passage, however, tells us that if we are going to walk in the path of life, if we are going to love our creator, love the victim of the crime AND love the perpetrator of the crime then civil justice needs to be done. This is love not because we like it but because it is what love reveals about himself and his ways.
Don’t think for a minute that doing love is easy. If it was easy we’d do it. Dying is easy; just look around at the world we live in and you can see just how easy dying is. We live in a world where death is natural, death is the norm. Our call as believers is to be above the norm. We are called to do the hard task of living and turning the rest of the world from death to life whether they want to live or not.
Love continues on saying mean and nasty things in verse 7: As for you, be fruitful and multiply; populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it. If you half pay attention to what’s going on in the world around us you will know that for many people this is the reason the world is in the mess it is in. Obey this act of love and you will be despised by the lovers of death. To them populating the earth is our biggest sin against the planet. So to atone for our sin of loving we must murder our children before they are even born. We must stop taking dominion over the planet and let the world be restored to an untamed wilderness. We should destroy the human race because we are destroying the planet.
Here is another choice we have to make: Who is really telling the truth? Who is really loving people and the planet? God says populate the earth. God says take dominion over the planet. The seasons will not end as long as the earth exists. Life will go on. The lovers of death say you are killing the planet so kill yourselves. Who should we believe? That is the question of our age. I think right now love is losing that battle even though he will eventually win the war.
God continues to speak to Noah and his sons in verse 9: Now behold, I Myself do establish My covenant with you, and with your descendants after you; 10and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you; of all that comes out of the ark, even every beast of the earth.
Stop there. God is concerned about all of his creation. He didn’t just make a new relationship of love with us he also covenanted with the rest of creation. Every living creature is in a covenant relationship with God. It’s not the same covenant that we have because the rest of creation has not rebelled and is not sin like we are but it was and is cursed because of us. I would just about guarantee you that their covenant is something like this: I will restore you to your former glory.
In the book of Romans chapter 8 we read: 19For with anxious longing creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. 20For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.
I believe we have let humanist science tell us lies. What’s new right? I believe that the animals, the plants, even the rocks and trees commune with God in their own way. They are God’s creation and they are not in rebellion against him. They cry out: “How long, O God, dear sweet Love? How long are we going to have to suffer for the humans’ rebellion? Please restore us.” I think we are going to be totally and ashamedly amazed at the damage we have done to this planet not because of pollution or over population but because we rejected the path of life and turned our backs on love. May God hasten the day when the world is no longer abnormal.
God establishes this covenant, this love relationship with all of creation and says “all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth." Notice it doesn’t say that there won’t be floods or that people and animals won’t be killed by floods but rather the whole earth will never be destroyed by single all-encompassing flood ever again.
Love continues on saying: This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations; 13I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud, 15and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." 17And God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth."
Love has established the path of life and love for all the creatures on the planet. Every time that you see a rainbow don’t think about how light refracts into various colors when it shines through water: Think of the fact that Love promised to provide the justice necessary for us to receive mercy and grace. Love has promised redemption, adoption, and restoration to any who will humble themselves and walk on the path of life. The choice is yours life or death, love or hate. Love has clearly laid out the path of life; walk on it and hear well done good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master.
What have we learned about love from this section of the love manual? Love means filling the earth and populating it. All humans are expected to walk in love even though they have rejected love as their father and put themselves under Satan and pant after death. Life and death are still determined by obedience to the ways of love. You are free to do what you want to do BUT there will be consequences: death for leaving the path of love; life for staying on it. The unhumble will only increase their wages of death because all they do is in rebellion against God. The world is abnormal because the human race has left the path of life and rejected Love therefore God gave us what we wanted by letting us pant after death. The consequences of rebellion against love have damaged the planet. Animals now fear humans. Plants and vegetables are not as abundant as they used to be so now God has permitted the eating of every kind of meat. Some meat at the time of Noah was unclean but still edible. Love tells us that if we want to love life then we should not eat blood. Love tells us that any animal that kills a human must be put to death if WE want to stay on the path of love and life. Love tells us that any human who murders another human must be put to death if we want to stay on the path of love. Love tells us that if we are to love both the victim and the perpetrator then civil justice must be done according to the ways of love. Love has not just entered into a relationship with humans; all of creation is in a covenant with love.
Any questions?
Let’s pray. Oh father, be our God. Change our hearts cause us to hunger and thirst after you and your ways, teach us to truly love you. In Jesus’ power and authority I ask these things. Amen.
From that we can begin to understand that all humans are still responsible to love God and to walk in the commands of love. If a person does not come to repentance then the passage of time only increases the wages of not loving which is death. Turning your back on love doesn’t eliminate love as being the path of life. It only ensures that you will receive the wages of hating. The only hope is to humble yourself before God and in doing so trust, through faith (demonstrated by obedience to the word of love), in the promise of God for justice to be paid out so that mercy can be applied.
What we see in the verses that follow is that because of the fall there have been some changes in the commands of love. Ideas still have consequences. Rebellion against love brought about changes in nature. Nature is no longer normal. It has been damaged. We now live in an abnormal world. But like so many dysfunctional people we’ve been living this way so long we no longer know what functional is. That is why we need the book of love: It is the path that will lead us back to normalcy. Without it we have no hope of recovery because the inmates have taken over the asylum.
So back when the world was normal, before we mutinied, Adam was told to be a vegetarian. But Noah is told that it is alright to eat anything that is alive. Even though some animals are considered unclean (as we see when it says that Noah sacrificed clean animals and in the differentiation of clean and unclean animals to be loaded on the ark) they are not yet unclean enough to not be eaten.
What we can learn from this is that the full consequences of our actions can take a long time to unfold. 1500 years after the fall the damage is still unfolding. In another 500 to 1000 years some animals will be inedible according to the rule of love and the path of life. But at this point they are not – anything that is alive can be eaten.
As we read on we notice that other things have changed as well. Verse two tells us that "The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given. Fear is the difference in our relationship with animals. Until the flood animals were not afraid of humans. Noah just went out and got the animals and put them on the ark. He might have been able to just ask them to come and they came. But after they left the ark God gave them fear. Given the tendency of mankind to love death they certainly have plenty of reason to fear.
In verse three we read: Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant. So we see the command to eat plants is still in effect but something has changed between the fall and the flood. I believe that one of the things that happened may have been a climate change that caused plants to not be as prolific as they once were. I certainly have no problem with being a vegetarian but without the blessings of farming technology that we have today it would be impossible in our day and age because food grows very slowly.
Before the flood several hundred million people were vegetarians without any advanced technology. That changed in a matter of 40 days. I believe Love gave us permission to eat meat so that we could survive in the post flood world.
Though we are allowed to eat any meat we want at this point Love tells us that if we want to walk on the path of life that we should not eat blood. Verse 4 says: Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. This commandment carries on into our day and age being reaffirmed by the apostles in Acts chapter 15 verse 20 where we are told to abstain from blood. This brick on the path of life has been so incorporated into our lives in our culture that we don’t even think about it. We hang our meat after it is slaughtered. We drain the blood. Oh that the rest of the bricks in the path of life were so easy to walk on without thinking. Thank God someday they will be.
In verse 5 we read: Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man's brother I will require the life of man. 6"Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man. Here is one of the most hated requirements of love. God is saying here that if you truly love then if an animal kills a person the animal must die. If a man murders a man the murderer, even if it is his brother, must die. Here is the commandment not to murder and the command for the atonement of that murder through the death of the one who caused blood to be shed.
In our day and age this is one of the places where the rubber hits the road. This is where people begin to scoff at love’s ways being love. They would say: That can’t be love. That’s just mean. We have to decide: is God really love? Are all of God’s way’s love? That’s important because if God is love and all of the law and the prophets hang on loving God and mankind and something is hanging there that isn’t love then God is a liar or this thing we call his word isn’t his word.
A lot of people in the church have said one or the other. My God would never say that. Or they would say those words not the word of God. God doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Of course they’re more subtle than that they say things like:: the bible really isn’t all the word of God or the things in that book are just primitive man’s interpretation of what God was revealing. We’re too sophisticated to be primitives like that. My God would never do such a thing. That’s barbaric.” But all of those things are code words for: Love doesn’t know what love is.
The passage, however, tells us that if we are going to walk in the path of life, if we are going to love our creator, love the victim of the crime AND love the perpetrator of the crime then civil justice needs to be done. This is love not because we like it but because it is what love reveals about himself and his ways.
Don’t think for a minute that doing love is easy. If it was easy we’d do it. Dying is easy; just look around at the world we live in and you can see just how easy dying is. We live in a world where death is natural, death is the norm. Our call as believers is to be above the norm. We are called to do the hard task of living and turning the rest of the world from death to life whether they want to live or not.
Love continues on saying mean and nasty things in verse 7: As for you, be fruitful and multiply; populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it. If you half pay attention to what’s going on in the world around us you will know that for many people this is the reason the world is in the mess it is in. Obey this act of love and you will be despised by the lovers of death. To them populating the earth is our biggest sin against the planet. So to atone for our sin of loving we must murder our children before they are even born. We must stop taking dominion over the planet and let the world be restored to an untamed wilderness. We should destroy the human race because we are destroying the planet.
Here is another choice we have to make: Who is really telling the truth? Who is really loving people and the planet? God says populate the earth. God says take dominion over the planet. The seasons will not end as long as the earth exists. Life will go on. The lovers of death say you are killing the planet so kill yourselves. Who should we believe? That is the question of our age. I think right now love is losing that battle even though he will eventually win the war.
God continues to speak to Noah and his sons in verse 9: Now behold, I Myself do establish My covenant with you, and with your descendants after you; 10and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you; of all that comes out of the ark, even every beast of the earth.
Stop there. God is concerned about all of his creation. He didn’t just make a new relationship of love with us he also covenanted with the rest of creation. Every living creature is in a covenant relationship with God. It’s not the same covenant that we have because the rest of creation has not rebelled and is not sin like we are but it was and is cursed because of us. I would just about guarantee you that their covenant is something like this: I will restore you to your former glory.
In the book of Romans chapter 8 we read: 19For with anxious longing creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. 20For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.
I believe we have let humanist science tell us lies. What’s new right? I believe that the animals, the plants, even the rocks and trees commune with God in their own way. They are God’s creation and they are not in rebellion against him. They cry out: “How long, O God, dear sweet Love? How long are we going to have to suffer for the humans’ rebellion? Please restore us.” I think we are going to be totally and ashamedly amazed at the damage we have done to this planet not because of pollution or over population but because we rejected the path of life and turned our backs on love. May God hasten the day when the world is no longer abnormal.
God establishes this covenant, this love relationship with all of creation and says “all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth." Notice it doesn’t say that there won’t be floods or that people and animals won’t be killed by floods but rather the whole earth will never be destroyed by single all-encompassing flood ever again.
Love continues on saying: This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations; 13I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud, 15and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." 17And God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth."
Love has established the path of life and love for all the creatures on the planet. Every time that you see a rainbow don’t think about how light refracts into various colors when it shines through water: Think of the fact that Love promised to provide the justice necessary for us to receive mercy and grace. Love has promised redemption, adoption, and restoration to any who will humble themselves and walk on the path of life. The choice is yours life or death, love or hate. Love has clearly laid out the path of life; walk on it and hear well done good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master.
What have we learned about love from this section of the love manual? Love means filling the earth and populating it. All humans are expected to walk in love even though they have rejected love as their father and put themselves under Satan and pant after death. Life and death are still determined by obedience to the ways of love. You are free to do what you want to do BUT there will be consequences: death for leaving the path of love; life for staying on it. The unhumble will only increase their wages of death because all they do is in rebellion against God. The world is abnormal because the human race has left the path of life and rejected Love therefore God gave us what we wanted by letting us pant after death. The consequences of rebellion against love have damaged the planet. Animals now fear humans. Plants and vegetables are not as abundant as they used to be so now God has permitted the eating of every kind of meat. Some meat at the time of Noah was unclean but still edible. Love tells us that if we want to love life then we should not eat blood. Love tells us that any animal that kills a human must be put to death if WE want to stay on the path of love and life. Love tells us that any human who murders another human must be put to death if we want to stay on the path of love. Love tells us that if we are to love both the victim and the perpetrator then civil justice must be done according to the ways of love. Love has not just entered into a relationship with humans; all of creation is in a covenant with love.
Any questions?
Let’s pray. Oh father, be our God. Change our hearts cause us to hunger and thirst after you and your ways, teach us to truly love you. In Jesus’ power and authority I ask these things. Amen.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Sleep to Dream
Hey Everyone,
I had one of those dreams last night that left me with a bad taste in my mouth when I woke up. In this dream it seemed as if a child had taken me and I guess some of my family hostage. I don’t remember if he had a bomb or what but there was some reason that we felt powerless to do anything. All I know is eventually we were able to sneak the receiver off the phone and dial 911. I woke up about 4 with that rather unsatisfying ending rolling over me and so I rolled over and went back at it.
Once back in dream land I finally got fed up that a kid was hold us hostage and so I tackled him and just sat on him until the whole thing was over. I had just had enough. There really wasn’t any resolution. I mean it ended with me sitting on him waiting for somebody to come and clean up the mess.
So at 4:30 when the alarm went off I was in a rather foul mood. I got up and dressed and headed out of the house for a walk. I grumbled out a prayer as I walked and it began to dawn on me that I was the child. There is this big baby inside me that doesn’t want to grow up and so he’s hold me hostage. If I grow up too much he threatens to blow the whole thing to smithereens.
I see it oh so clear as I have begun to do stretching via the command of my doctor. I hate stretching. I have hated stretching since I was a kid. Visions of the 96 lb skin and bones middle schooler in a white t-shirt and red gym shorts that looked like they were10 times to big because the legs that came out of them were like pencils. He hated being there. He hated pain: The pain that I feel today as I keep my back straight and move an inch toward my feet and feel every joint, tendon and muscle scream bloody murder.
He tells me it’s not worth it. He whispers, ‘Bodily exercise profiteth little.’ (Yes he uses the king james version). And once again he tries to take me hostage. A child is still trying to take me hostage. He would rather be dead than stretch and feel the pain. I would rather live and feel the pain so I stretch.
For most of my life he has won. I spent the first thirty years of my life running from pain of any kind. I spent the last 20 years finally facing the mental pain that comes with growing up. Now I’m trying to face physical pain without turning and running away. I’m hoping that I will see the same profit of health and peace of mind working through this pain as I did when I dealt with my mental anguish. I’m tired of being held captive by a middle schooler. I pray that I can grow up some more.
Life isn’t anything like I thought it would be. Growing up is a pain in the ass. The other day, I saw a “news” story from the website The Onion that said that the latest census report shows that there are less than 100 Grownups left in the Nation. (You can read it here: http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-down-to-last-hundred-grownups,20491/ )
It made me laugh and feel sad at the same time because it is true we are a nation of people held hostage by children with full grown bodies: just look at politics, just look at the church, just look inside.
It is really the war of our age. Well, I’m tired of being held hostage by a brat named me. I think a Fiona Apple song fits nicely here. (I should probably sing it to myself everyday).
I tell you how I feel, but you don’t care
I say tell me the truth, but you don’t dare
You say love is a hell you cannot bear
And I say gimme mine back and then go there for all I care.
I got my feet on the ground and I don’t sleep to dream
You got your head in the clouds and you’re not at all what you seem
This mind, this body and this voice cannot be stifled by your deviant ways
So don’t forget what I told you: don’t come around I’ve my own hell to raze
The choice is before us all: Do we grow up or do we just grow old? I’m opting for growing up because that is the call of God on all believers’ lives- press on to the higher calling, to the mature man not to mention I'm tired of being held hostage by that brat. I don’t want to cheat myself of the benefits of the path of life any more than I have already. I don’t want to miss hearing: well done good and faithful servant enter into the joy of your master on the other side of the finish line because of the threats of a middle schooler.
Feeling the tug of the hamstrings,
Yours truly,
Stretch Armstrong
Cosmoyada.com
I had one of those dreams last night that left me with a bad taste in my mouth when I woke up. In this dream it seemed as if a child had taken me and I guess some of my family hostage. I don’t remember if he had a bomb or what but there was some reason that we felt powerless to do anything. All I know is eventually we were able to sneak the receiver off the phone and dial 911. I woke up about 4 with that rather unsatisfying ending rolling over me and so I rolled over and went back at it.
Once back in dream land I finally got fed up that a kid was hold us hostage and so I tackled him and just sat on him until the whole thing was over. I had just had enough. There really wasn’t any resolution. I mean it ended with me sitting on him waiting for somebody to come and clean up the mess.
So at 4:30 when the alarm went off I was in a rather foul mood. I got up and dressed and headed out of the house for a walk. I grumbled out a prayer as I walked and it began to dawn on me that I was the child. There is this big baby inside me that doesn’t want to grow up and so he’s hold me hostage. If I grow up too much he threatens to blow the whole thing to smithereens.
I see it oh so clear as I have begun to do stretching via the command of my doctor. I hate stretching. I have hated stretching since I was a kid. Visions of the 96 lb skin and bones middle schooler in a white t-shirt and red gym shorts that looked like they were10 times to big because the legs that came out of them were like pencils. He hated being there. He hated pain: The pain that I feel today as I keep my back straight and move an inch toward my feet and feel every joint, tendon and muscle scream bloody murder.
He tells me it’s not worth it. He whispers, ‘Bodily exercise profiteth little.’ (Yes he uses the king james version). And once again he tries to take me hostage. A child is still trying to take me hostage. He would rather be dead than stretch and feel the pain. I would rather live and feel the pain so I stretch.
For most of my life he has won. I spent the first thirty years of my life running from pain of any kind. I spent the last 20 years finally facing the mental pain that comes with growing up. Now I’m trying to face physical pain without turning and running away. I’m hoping that I will see the same profit of health and peace of mind working through this pain as I did when I dealt with my mental anguish. I’m tired of being held captive by a middle schooler. I pray that I can grow up some more.
Life isn’t anything like I thought it would be. Growing up is a pain in the ass. The other day, I saw a “news” story from the website The Onion that said that the latest census report shows that there are less than 100 Grownups left in the Nation. (You can read it here: http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-down-to-last-hundred-grownups,20491/ )
It made me laugh and feel sad at the same time because it is true we are a nation of people held hostage by children with full grown bodies: just look at politics, just look at the church, just look inside.
It is really the war of our age. Well, I’m tired of being held hostage by a brat named me. I think a Fiona Apple song fits nicely here. (I should probably sing it to myself everyday).
I tell you how I feel, but you don’t care
I say tell me the truth, but you don’t dare
You say love is a hell you cannot bear
And I say gimme mine back and then go there for all I care.
I got my feet on the ground and I don’t sleep to dream
You got your head in the clouds and you’re not at all what you seem
This mind, this body and this voice cannot be stifled by your deviant ways
So don’t forget what I told you: don’t come around I’ve my own hell to raze
The choice is before us all: Do we grow up or do we just grow old? I’m opting for growing up because that is the call of God on all believers’ lives- press on to the higher calling, to the mature man not to mention I'm tired of being held hostage by that brat. I don’t want to cheat myself of the benefits of the path of life any more than I have already. I don’t want to miss hearing: well done good and faithful servant enter into the joy of your master on the other side of the finish line because of the threats of a middle schooler.
Feeling the tug of the hamstrings,
Yours truly,
Stretch Armstrong
Cosmoyada.com
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