first sunday of advent: hope

Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent: the Sunday of Hope. Here is the devotional we read that morning. There will be one for each Sunday before Christmas.

THE FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT – HOPE

Advent is the four Sunday period immediately before Christmas. The advent wreath contains the four candles of Advent – Hope, Love, Joy and Peace – and the Christ candle which will be lit Christmas Eve.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of Hope.

The Old Testament prophet Micah said: But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.

One thing that characterizes the world in general today is lack of hope. You can see it in everything around you. Lack of morale, lack of morals, lack of compassion – all signs of a people who have lost their hope in life.

Colossians calls Jesus Christ in you, the hope of glory. He is our hope. He gives us hope when we are lost, when we feel like failures, when it seems that everything around us is falling apart.

In Jesus we have hope. He gives us hope for our lives here: a purpose and a reason for our existence. And he gives us a hope for the future: a life with him in glory.

The psalmist writes: guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long. It is that hope that keeps us strong in him and in his grace. That hope comes from the knowledge that no matter what else happens, nothing can separate us from the love of God. That hope comes from the blessed assurance that Jesus is mine. That hope comes from the fact that God will be with us no matter what else happens. As the writer in Hebrews said, Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.

Today we light the first candle of Advent, one of the purple candles, the candle of Hope. By lighting this candle, we celebrate the hope that lies in us, the hope that we wait for, the hope we profess, the hope that is Christ in us.

Pray with me. We thank you Father, for the hope you have given us. We know that we do not have to be like the world, hopeless and adrift in life. We can have hope in you and in your grace. Thank you, Father, and we praise you. In Jesus name, amen.

daily java

Daily Java: Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good. His love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of heaven. His love endures forever. (Psalm 136:1,26)

Christmas is here. This is the season in which we look at the visible love of God: Jesus himself.

God’s love was such that he sent to us an instrument of reconciliation in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The perfection of Jesus brings us into the presence of God.

That is the problem with being God and with being sinful human beings. God is perfect and can have no part with sin. No sin can touch him nor come into his presence. So how in the world can we?

As sinful beings, we cannot approach God. He is so holy and we are not. For us to try to come to him would mean destruction for us. It would be like plugging our toasters into the high voltage lines. There is no mediating influence between us and his power.

So Jesus came. He was of God, born by the power of the Holy Spirit with Mary, an ordinary flawed human being. Even though he was human, as we are, yet he was still divine as was his Father, God. And he lived a life that was free of sin. 1 Peter 2:22, in quoting a Messianic prophecy from Isaiah 53, said, He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.

Although he was as human as the next man, he did not sin. So of all the people who ever lived, he alone had the ability to approach the presence of God. After all, he was not tainted with the presence of sin.

He was, in effect, a divine transformer. Just like the transformers on the light poles that bring the power of the high voltage lines down to where we can use them, so Jesus brings the power of God down to where we can touch God.

He touches God because he was perfect. He touches us because he was human. Through him, we can touch God.

That is the point of the Christmas season: the introduction into the world of the means whereby we can touch God.

God’s love endures forever.

daily java

Daily Java: Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.(Colossians 3:16).

Our worship is an outpouring of our hearts to God. It is a natural expression of gratitude and joy. With it we teach and encourage each other.

Singing together was meant to be more than just singing together. it was meant to be a morale booster for a church, for a teaching instrument, or an encouragement.

The emphasis was never intended to be on the how but the what and the why. We worry so much about singing the right way that we lose the whole point of the doing.

We argue over style or from or how we sing or whether or not we use instruments (a small percentage of the church, true, but tone I grew up in) and in so doing destroy all of the good in the singing.

It is a real shame when a church divides itself over how to sing and never considers that the main emphasis is to sing.

And singing together is one of the best things you can do.

daily java

Daily Java: Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe. (Hebrews 12:28).

We live in an uncertain world. You never know what company is going to be there tomorrow.

In the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, it is interesting to see how many companies that the writers used for the year 2001 that were no longer there when 2001 actually came. Pan Am and Southwestern Bell were two that come to mind immediately. Nobody in 1969 when the movie was made could have possibly guessed that the mega-giant Pan Am would go out of business or that Southwestern Bell would be broken up into the mini-Bells.

A lot of things we saw as big and powerful thirty or even less years ago are gone now. Attitudes have completely changed, things that were acceptable no longer are, things that were unthinkable are now commonplace. Jobs that were lifelong and solid now are lost in a global shuffle. People with real talent cannot even find a job.

Because of that, we get to worrying. We have gone beyond what Alvin Toffler called Future Shock in his book of the same name and are into fear. Future shock was a symptom of older people who had seen society change so much it left them reeling. We are no longer reeling, just untrusting of anything.

It is easy to put that lack of trust on God. But we can know this. We do not serve a God who may or may not be there, and we are not in a kingdom that might to default, that is unsteady or uncertain. We serve El Shaddai, God Almighty and are part of the Kingdom of Heaven and even of his family.

We can know that he will always be there, always keep his promises, always love us. We are in the only unchangeable situation it he universe.

When God set up the kingdom, he set it up on the fact that Jesus was the son of God. That was the rock that Jesus talked about in Matthew 16:18 – on this rock I will build my church. His life and his ministry were the only sure things.

Now worship styles may change, translations of the Bible will change, ministries, ideas, everything we do will change. And there is nothing wrong with all that changing. None of that is real nor part of the gospel. It is all our part and changes with every culture.

Jesus on the other hand, is real and unchangeable. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow (Hebrews 13:8). He will never change. His message will never change. His love and his grace will never change.

Matthew 24:35 says Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. God will never change.

And we praise his name.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

daily java

Daily Java: So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.  (Colossians 2:6-7)

It is Thanksgiving. A lot of memories around this day, as is the case with most Americans.

I remember in school the emphasis on the origin of the day. Pilgrims had gone through a rough winter and had a good harvest so they invited the Indians to come and have dinner with them. The picture was that of a long table with a few Pilgrims, white people in tall black hats and bonnets on one side and a few Indians with feathers and breech clouts on the other, all of them eating turkey and corn and stuff.

The reality was very different, of course. The Pilgrims, thinking they had come to a new land of plenty almost starved that first winter. I have read that they just didn’t realize the severity of a New England winter and lost almost 2/3 of their colony to exposure and starvation. They came, after all, from England where it is a Seattle style climate: never really hot or really cold.

The Indians evidently helped them through it and they had some kind of common meal to show appreciation.

We did that scene on each Thanksgiving as a play. One year, I remember I played the governor of the group, I forget his name. The Indians wore construction paper feathers and the Pilgrims wore construction paper hats and bonnets. It was always a bit strange – the whole concept of the first Thanksgiving – but it was always fun.

And it helped to cement the idea of Thanksgiving being not just food but the realization of others helping us survive and being grateful to God for what we had.

Of course, there were the myriad Thanksgivings that I had growing up, always with relatives somewhere with tables groaning with food. The Thanksgiving I spent away from my family in Germany in the army, the Thanksgiving I spent away from my wife and children while I was being a fool. Simple Thanksgivings with just my family and raucous Thanksgivings with everybody else.  

In this passage, the apostle Paul says that if Jesus is running through us and moving through us, we are not only strengthened but made aware of gratitude.

Because of the removal of religion from the schools, our children do not have that same idea of gratitude. The popular convention now is the white people coming to America and oppressing the Indians and Thanksgiving gets overshadowed by foolish political concerns.

It is the same way in the upcoming Christmas season. This whole generation does not know the great Christmas carols that we learned in school and sang each year.

Much of our culture is being lost because of our lack of gratitude and common sense.

Thanksgiving has to be a great part of our makeup as Christians or we are not really Christians. Even Jesus was thankful to God in many of his comments and prayers. He knew what his source was. He knew it was only through the power of God that we have anything at all.

I thank you Lord, for all you have given me. My family, my wife, my life in your service, for making me a minister of your gospel, for giving me two good children, for my and my wife’s parents who raised us up in your knowledge and your word, for all of those things that I take so much for granted. I thank you. I thank you for your grace and your love and for your forgiveness and acceptance. I thank you, Lord. Amen.

daily java

Daily Java: Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. (James 1:17)

Could God, the holy Father and the One who is love, create evil?

God made good, he made holy, he made pure, he made joy. But he also made us able to choose to do them or not. When we do not, we come into the flip side of those good things.

That is the problem of evil. There is always a counterpart to everything. God created good and the flip side is bad. He could take away bad, but in doing so he would have to take away good.

There is no good without bad. Evil was created by the misuse of his creation. He created the capacity for bad when he made us able to choose.

I like choosing, but there is always a bad side to everything. Love of food brings gluttony, love of a woman brings lust, etc. You take the good and deny the bad.

It is kind of like the computer. I like computers and the internet. Yet there is an underbelly that is incredibly evil. It takes the form of graphic lust and pornography.

But to throw the computer away because the bad is there is to deny the good. To claim that God made the evil in life is like saying that when you have a computer, you look at porn.

God made us with the ability to make a choice. We can choose good or not. We can choose holiness or not.

The responsibility is ours. He will help us in the choice, but it is up to us to make it.

Blaming him is foolish and counterproductive. He loved us enough to give us the ability to choose.

I choose him and his grace.

daily java

Daily Java: Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins. (James 4:17)

It is called the sin of omission, not doing what you should have done.

Jesus told a parable, the one we call the Parable of the Good Samaritan. A guy was beaten by robbers and left to die on the road. Two religious leaders came by and walked on the other side of the road so that they could ignore him. a Samaritan, a member of a group of people who were disliked by the Jews, stopped and helped him. The religious leaders were guilty of the sin of omission.

There is someone on the sidewalk who needs medical help and you pass them by. Someone needs food and you pass them off. Someone needs the gospel and you do nothing.

It isn’t that you actively do wrong. It is that you do nothing.

James, the writer of the above passage, says that not doing right is as bad as doing wrong.

It doesn’t matter that you have not done anything wrong, what matters is that you have done nothing.

Maybe it is as small as something like encouragement. You never told your children that they were something special. You never told your wife you loved her.

“Do you love me? How come you never say so?” “I told you I loved you when we got married. If things change I’ll tell you then.”

Someone walks out in front of a speeding car they didn’t see. You see it and do nothing to stop them. “I didn’t push them out there,” you say. That is true, but by your silence, you have sinned.

Any time you should do something good and do not do it, no matter how small, you have done wrong. There is no neutral ground in the kingdom of God. Switzerland and Sweden mentalities have no place in God’s kingdom.

Jesus said, in Matthew 12:30, Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. You are either for him wholeheartedly or you are against wholeheartedly. God is either in your heart or he isn’t.

There was the old political party in the 19th century called the Mugwumps. They were characterized by a picture of a person sitting on a fence, with his mug on one side and his wump on the other. In other words, someone who would not take a stand either way.

There are no Mugwumps in the kingdom. You either do what is good and glorify God or you do not and sin.

That sounds kind of harsh, but it is truth.

As someone once said, I would rather wear out than rust out.

Doing good is not an option. It is a mandate.

daily java

Daily Java: Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such "wisdom" does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness. (James 3:13-18)

People used to say, pretty is as pretty does. And that is true now as it was then.

But that also goes with wisdom. Wise is as wise does. The writer of Proverbs said, The beginning of wisdom is: get wisdom. In other words, if you want people to think you are wise, act wise. Sooner or later, they will think so and you will become that way just because you act that way.

That sounds weird until you get to thinking it is the same things your parents told you growing up. If you want to be treated like an adult, then act like an adult. When you start acting like an adult, they would say in their best parent voices, then we will treat you like one.

Of course, it wasn’t always true. But it is still good advice.

Act wise. Think about things before  you say them. Don’t say things that are foolish. Keep quiet more than not. Silence is a great fooler. The old adage said, close your mouth and people might think you a fool. Open your mouth and remove all doubt. Sometimes, silence is the wisest thing you can accomplish. Have an argument with your wife and you will find that out.

But if someone tries to pass off something as wisdom, check it out. The wisdom from God is pure. It doesn’t have the taint of the world in it. It brings peace, it considers others, it submits when submission is called for, it is merciful and accomplishes good things, it doesn’t play favorites and is real, it is sincere, from the heart. If it brings about anything but these things, it is not from God. Run away from it.

It is a sad thing to see foolishness celebrated in our world today. People who are obviously lacking in even the basic living skills exalted as role models. When we look to Hollywood for our opinions, we will not find wisdom. This is a group of people who cannot stay married, who celebrate public immorality, who stand as the opposite of godliness. They have nothing but contempt for what is holy.

Run from this.

Real wisdom is seen and not just told. Be wise. Show that wisdom in your life.

thanksgiving

Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:5-7)

Thanksgiving is this week. It is a holiday that is received with such mixed feelings by the world.

On the one hand, they love the getting together and having dinner with their family and friends is great. There is all of the traditional Thanksgiving stuff to eat and it is almost always a good time.

I can remember Thanksgivings from when I was a little boy. It was always exciting and there was always a ton of food (a definite plus to a little boy) complete with pies and cakes and cookies. Not only that, but it opened the Christmas season. After Thanksgiving came all of the holidays with more food and presents and stuff, then Christmas eve and Christmas morning with more presents and food.

By the time we were through with it all, we were 10 pounds heavier and we had had a good time.

I got to see relatives that I hadn’t seen in a long time (sometimes that was good, sometimes not) but in general, Thanksgiving was fun.

On the other hand, the world doesn’t know quite what to do with the Thanksgiving part of the Thanksgiving season. In an increasingly secular society, who do they give thanks to?

One of the most grating things in our modern world is the term “Turkey Day.” It reduces the whole thing to food and eating and such. When you have Turkey Day, you don’t have to worry about thanking anyone except the people who made the food.

But like Christmas without Jesus, Thanksgiving without Thanksgiving is worthless. It is just another season like Halloween or Valentine’s Day for the commercial world to make money.

They key is to remember the thanksgiving. Remember what you have and where it came from. Certainly not yourself. In my own life, I know for a fact that all of my blessings are God-given. I am certainly not good enough to have a wife like I have or other things in my life.

As the psalmist says, Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, his mercies endure forever.

This Thanksgiving, I am going to thank him for all he has done and for all he will do. praise be to his name.

daily java

Daily Java: Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. (Psalm 95:1-2)

Sometimes there is just the need to sing, to shout out our joy. You see it in kids all the time. Watching the kids in the daycare, all of a sudden one of them will begin to sing and jump around for no reason whatever, just happy.

When we come into the presence of the Lord, we are coming into the presence of one who loves us and has done so much for us.

When we do that, there is a combination of things that go on in our hearts. On the one hand, we are in the presence of God, the Almighty, El Shaddai, maker of heavens and earth. I mean, we are in the presence of One who is so far above us that it is unimaginable.

On the other hand, we are in the presence of one who loves us, who cares for us and has our best interests at heart. It makes for an almost confusion.

The song, I Can Only Imagine, summed it up.

Surrounded by Your glory, what will my heart feel
Will I dance for you Jesus or in honor of you be still
Will I stand in your presence or to my knees will I fall
Will I sing hallelujah, will I be able to speak at all
I can only imagine

We stand before him now on this earth and, as I said, on the one hand we are in awe of him, on the other, he is our Friend. What do we do?

We do what our kids do when they are with us and they are happy, comfortable in our presence. They sing and skip around and stuff. If they love us, they are simply happy to be around us.

We sing, we shout, we dance, we do all the stuff that makes him happy and lets him know that we love him and are his people, his children.

When I am with Ella, I always let her know I love her and appreciate her. Even though she is not able to do all the things she used to be able to do, I still love her. And any husband that doesn’t remind his wife that he loves and appreciates her will lose her.

The same with us. We do not lose God easily, but if we ignore him, sooner or later he will go away. And that would be tragic.

Sing to and praise the Lord. The Lord is good and worthy to be praised. That is why we come to him and sing his praises. He is our God and we will ever serve him.

daily java

Daily Java: Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. (John 17:17).

When I was in seminary, I had a teacher that loved to quote this verse. But I have come to realize that his interpretation of it was wrong.

He said, Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. Of course, that was 1974 and he used the old King James Version, as did we all. Well, some used the American Standard Version from 1901, but I never liked it. I liked the New American Standard Version, but is was so new, the school was suspicious of it. It was a very conservative Church of Christ seminary and they didn’t like anything new.

But back to the verse. His interpretation was that the word which sanctifies us was the Bible, the word of God. He could quote great huge blocks of it. In his mind there had to be the most extensive chain reference system, it was unimaginable the amount of Bible he knew.

As far as he was concerned, it was the Bible that sanctifies us. The Bible is the word of God.

And it is, but that is not what John was talking about. John was talking about Jesus.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. (John 1:1,14)

In his whole book, John talks about the Word of God and how he come to live with us. And that Word of God, Jesus, makes us holy by his sacrifice and by his continued presence in our lives.

The Bible by itself can do nothing. It cannot sanctify or help us unless we have the Word – Jesus – in us to guide us, and unless we have his Holy Spirit within us to enable us to understand that written word.

I watched 3:10 to Yuma yesterday, the newer one with Russell Crowe. The main character was a bad guy, a murdering thief without any real conscience. Yet he could quote a lot of Bible. He even had crosses on his pistols. But he was the furthest from a Christian there could be.

His knowledge of the written word of God was worthless because it did nothing within him. he might as well have memorized great blocks of Shakespeare for all the good it did him. in fact, his quotations were almost shocking coming out of the mouth of such a bad man.

He knew the written word and it did nothing for him. That is because he did not know the Word. He did not know Jesus.

I am not sure that Jesus recognized all this himself. He was, after all, human. He knew he had a mission and that he had come to bring God to earth. But he did know God. That is one thing for sure. As the apostle Paul said in Colossians 2:9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form. He had the power, and he gives it to us.

Our holiness, our sanctification does not come through anything we can do. when it comes down to it, we are failed creatures, unworthy of anything but punishment. It is the Word of God – Jesus himself – who sanctifies us. It isn’t the Bible that he is talking about. Without Jesus behind it, it is worthless. It is Jesus.

He alone is our holiness.

if I had it to do again, would I be a pastor

"Now, son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a barber's razor to shave your head and your beard. Then take a set of scales and divide up the hair. When the days of your siege come to an end, burn a third of the hair with fire inside the city. Take a third and strike it with the sword all around the city. And scatter a third to the wind. For I will pursue them with drawn sword. But take a few strands of hair and tuck them away in the folds of your garment. Again, take a few of these and throw them into the fire and burn them up. A fire will spread from there to the whole house of Israel." (Ezekiel 5:1-4)


If I had it to do again, would I be a pastor? The answer, I will have to admit is yes.

The church has not always been good to me, but at the same time, I have been called and commissioned by the Almighty God, Maker of heavens and earth, and how in the world could I possibly turn that down.

It occurred to me that Ezekiel, while he may have loved his people, really got tired of them and may very well not liked them.

Ezekiel is standing around when God commanders him to be his prophet. It never says in the Bible but I wonder how much the desire of the person to be God’s prophet really played into the mix. Isaiah was jumping up and down to go do what God said, but he didn’t have many good results. Hosea wasn’t exactly thrilled with God’s choice of a worn out prostitute for his wife, but did it. Jeremiah and Moses both were extremely reluctant and ended up with a lot of results. Jonah refused and got punished then reluctantly went. Without wanting it, he was supremely successful and was mad because of it. Desire had little to do with being chosen by God.

God has Ezekiel do a lot of stuff for him so that Israel would see and know it was the will of the Lord. And they did, even though they didn’t like Ezekiel or his message.

Okay Ezekiel, lay on one side for a long time and then on the other. It is uncomfortable, Lord. Too bad. Do it anyway. Okay, Ezekiel, take a sword, alright, you can use a sharp one, and shave your head and beard. Do some stuff with the hair so everyone can see it. You know, Lord, you can’t get a sword very sharp. I will probably cut myself. Too bad, do it anyway.

So he did. Israel watched (or at least their official appointed representatives did) and ignored his warnings and were destroyed. So everything he did was for basically nothing, except to show us that God was trying to get his people to come back.

Was his life wasted? Well, he is considered one of the major prophets, so that means that he was important in God’s line of people.

But the point is that sometimes the choice of God is not necessarily happy to the chosen. It is always good, and one’s life is never wasted in service to God, but at the same time. It would be nice if his people would actually listen and not try to shoot the messenger because they did not like the message.

The people in Hebrews 11 always amazed me.

32 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. 35 Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. 36 Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were put to death by stoning;[e] they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.
39 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, 40 since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

But what deprivation.

The people to whom the prophets went negated their work and their positions and places, yet they remained faithful. As will I.

daily java

Daily Java: Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our "God is a consuming fire." (Hebrews 12:28-29)

God is not a good idea, nor a great friend, nor a religious ideal. God the Father is a consuming fire. Unless we are burned up in him, we can do nothing for him that is of any consequence.

That is our problem when we have trouble living for him and doing what he wants. We are trying to split the middle, stay with the world and work with him at the same time.

Organized religion is a good thing. It is important and occupies a strong and central part of our lives. We have a special place for it and make a lot of time for it.

However, organized religion, no matter how well-meaning, is worthless. Unless we move on from religion and a central place in our lives to the consuming fire that God must be, we will never have any kind of relationship with him.

Before we can really know God, we must be burned up in him. That is true religion, true faith, true service. He is our everything, not our most important thing.
 As long as he is chief in our lives, he will never be able to be our God. He will share our lives with no one.

In the Old Testament, at several points, the Israelites tried to make God one of the gods. They would even let him be chief god, the most important one. His response, you will have no other gods besides me.

He told them again and again that he was a jealous God who would have no companion gods. It would be him or not at all. If it was him, he would bless them. If not at all, they would be condemned.

Until we let God burn us up, we will never have the relationship we want with him. And we will never have the relationship he wants with us.

what happened to job was unfair

From out of a storm, the LORD said to Job:
Why do you talk so much when you know so little?
Now get ready to face me! Can you answer the questions I ask?
How did I lay the foundation for the earth?
Were you there? (Job 38:1-4)

The words of God to Job were not fair and they bother me. Job had some serious concerns and God knew it. He was a good guy who did everything God wanted of him and more. Then the devil comes along and says, I’ll bet he would cave in a minute if he wasn’t so blessed. God says, watch.

The devil threw everything he had at him short of death. It got so bad that Job’s poor wife told him to just curse God so he could die and be through with the misery. We forget our misery affects others also. After all, his kids all died and his wife was left with a shattered home and a sick husband. All through no fault of his own.

All it amounted to was a bet between God and the devil. When Job complained, God said, in essence, who are you to complain?

That is probably one of the most unfair comments in the Bible. Job’s life was in ruins and God tells him to shut up.

There are things in this world that do not make sense. A Christian singer once had a song that said, “If you can’t see his hand, trust his heart.” Sometimes we cannot see his hand. And sometimes we may not see it all the way to our death.

But Job found out that God was still there through all the problems. When it was all over, God once again blessed Job. Once again he had a family and the things that God had blessed him with before, only doubled.

But did this make Job happy? At the end of it all, he said Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes. (42:3-6).

It says that the later part of his life was even more blessed than the former. But, of course, his children were still dead, and I would imagine he was scarred from the boils, even though they were healed. But it says he died, an old man and full of years.

Does that mean we get everything back when God allows the devil to hurt us? I would like to think so, but so far, in my own life, it has not happened. We have gone through a crucible ourselves and so far, our fortunes have not reversed. I am waiting, but I will not hold my breath.

James, in James 5:11, says As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.

He is even used later as an godly example of perseverance. God even tells Ezekiel in Ezekiel 14:14 that Jerusalem is so bad that even if these three men—Noah, Daniel and Job—were in it, they could save only themselves by their righteousness, declares the Sovereign LORD. He was still an example of greatness.

You know that Job was not an example of patience as so many say. He was terribly impatient, demanding that God answer him. He was, however, an example of perseverance. He lasted even in bad times.

That is what I am trying to do.

daily java

Daily Java:  Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me once more: “Go, take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.” So I went to the angel and asked him to give me the little scroll. He said to me, “Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but ‘in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.” I took the little scroll from the angel’s hand and ate it. It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour. (Revelation 10:8-10)

It is a stone fact that it is easier to read the word of God than it is to do it.

When you read, you feel noble, like you are doing what you should do. it makes you feel good and close to God to read his word, especially if you do it every day. It is a good feeling.

You memorize it so that it will be with you at other times when you cannot stop and read. You study the original languages so you have better understanding of all the nuances of the verses. You are a “right handler” of the word, because you really care.

Then it comes time to put it into practice. There comes the hard part. It is a fat lot easier to read than to do.

That is why Hebrews 4 says that the word is like a two-edged sword. In fact it says, For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:12-13)

When read it is beautiful. When followed and applied it hurts. The word goes down beyond the literary into the practical. It stops preaching and starts meddling. It speaks not just to actions, but to motives. And any time you start examining motives, you have trouble.

I was just reading this morning in Ezekiel 3. It says: And he said to me, “Son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll; then go and speak to the house of Israel.” 2 So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat. Then he said to me, “Son of man, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it.” So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth. (Ezekiel 3:1-2)

As God sends Ezekiel towards his ministry to a group of people who will not listen to him, he gives him what he needs: his word, or the knowledge of his presence. He says eat it. Like Jesus talking about his body and blood in John 6, we have to take it into us and make it part of us.

He eats it. It tasted great, but I would imagine that like John in Revelation, it landed hard. After all he was going to go to a group of people that just plain didn’t want to hear what was in the scroll.

That is just like the Bible when we read it. It reads pretty, but it hurts to apply. After all, we have to set ourselves aside when God talks.

I am convinced that so many love the old King James Version primarily because it just sounds so good. But the words and the language are so archaic that it doesn’t sound like something we can really understand, so we just enjoy the flow of words. It is all sweet and no bitter.

But the whole package has to be there. Unless we do it all, take the bitter with the sweet, we can have no part with him.

daily java

Daily Java: He said to me, “Son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you.” 2 As he spoke, the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet, and I heard him speaking to me.
3 He said: “Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me; they and their fathers have been in revolt against me to this very day. 4 The people to whom I am sending you are obstinate and stubborn. Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says.’ 5 And whether they listen or fail to listen—for they are a rebellious house—they will know that a prophet has been among them. 6 And you, son of man, do not be afraid of them or their words. Do not be afraid, though briers and thorns are all around you and you live among scorpions. Do not be afraid of what they say or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious house. 7 You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen, for they are rebellious. 8 But you, son of man, listen to what I say to you. Do not rebel like that rebellious house; open your mouth and eat what I give you.”
9 Then I looked, and I saw a hand stretched out to me. In it was a scroll, 10 which he unrolled before me. On both sides of it were written words of lament and mourning and woe.  (Ezekiel 32)

When God calls a prophet, or for that matter, anyone, he does not always do them what we would consider a favor.

That doesn’t mean that they will not be blessed by the call. Anyone favored by God is blessed no matter what happens to them in their lives.

But at the same time, the call is not always a time of joy. To Ezekiel God said that he was going to send him to a group of people who were known for not listening to his prophets. They were rebellious and in revolt at that time.

Ezekiel’s mandate was to preach the word of God to them anyway. And whether they listen or fail to listen—for they are a rebellious house—they will know that a prophet has been among them. Even if they refused to listen, they would know that God had sent someone to tell them what he wanted them to do. There could be no confusion in their minds.

Unfortunately, Israel was not going to look very good on Ezekiel’s resume. Because they were not going to listen.

Ezekiel was going to preach, though. And he did. And of course, they got mad at him and called him crazy and stuff. But at the same time, they were afraid of him. They could see the power of God upon Ezekiel. They knew he was from God, and they knew they were disobeying God when they disobeyed what Ezekiel told them.

It is interesting (or it would be if I could maintain an academic frame of mind) to see a church rebel against what they preacher says. Especially when they know he is telling the truth. They know that what he says is from God, yet they rebel against him. They go through preacher after preacher trying to find the one that will stroke them the way they want to be stroked.

After a while, the knowledge of their rebellion accumulates in the church’s character. They know that they are rebellious and other churches around know that they are rebellious. They become known as preacher-killers and ministers who go there either are not aware of what they are or else they know they need a job and know they will be there just a short time.

It hurts the church, and it hurts the preachers that come. The members know what they are doing, and it hurts them.

But the preacher, if he knows and follows his mandate from God, will tell them what God wants them to know, no matter what the outcome.

The job of preacher is a hard job. People get mad at you all around. But God has called you. You eat what he has given you and you do your job.

In the end, he says Well done, good and faithful servant! (Matthew 5:21). That is reward enough.

Although it would be nice if someone listened once in a while.

daily java

Daily Java: For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. (1 Peter 2:15-16).

It is the natural state of human behavior to want to pay someone back for something bad they did. Look at little children. They are human nature at its purest. Someone hits them, they hit back. It is normal. That is one of the byproducts of original sin, or human nature, or sin nature or whatever you want to call it.

But Jesus came to overcome the sin nature, to cause people to take the godly way.

When Jesus was in his trial, and when he was finally killed, one thing that stood out was the fact that he did not defend himself.

Now his accusers ranted and railed at him. It is a fact that when people are mad, they will say anything. And if you stand around long enough, you will find that to be absolutely true. I am reminded of a meeting in which some people had a grievance against me.

I stood, saying nothing (an action hard learned for me), as the leader of the insurrection spoke. He began listing a litany of complaints even down to the placement of a table in the back of the sanctuary and the fact that he had heard I was going to move the pulpit. He even complained that I stepped down off the pulpit area to preach.

I said nothing, not because he was right or any other reason. I have just found that answering in kind always hurts any situation. After he was finished, I said a couple of things and dismissed the meeting. He looked like an idiot and knew it. Even his kids could see it.

In Mark 13:3-5, Mark records Jesus at his trial. The chief priests accused him of many things. So again Pilate asked him, “Aren’t you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of.” But Jesus still made no reply, and Pilate was amazed.

Jesus knew it would do no good to answer so he just shut up. It amazed Pilate because he was used to people angrily defending themselves. Add to the fact that Jesus was obviously innocent and Pilate didn’t know what to do.

At his crucifixion, when he was vulnerable, they still continued. Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads  and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” … In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. (Matthew 27:39-40, 44).

John records Jesus saying a couple of things, but they were rather innocuous.

He knew that there was no answering people who had their blood up. When people decide to do something to you, they will do it, no matter what you say. And it is a truth that you cannot shout down someone who is in the wrong and knows it. Watch debates on TV news shows if you want to see that.

And people are their most vindictive when you are down. It was an interesting thing that even the Roman centurion in Luke 23:47 could see that. He even went so far as to say, “Surely this was a righteous man.” Other people see that.

You can do one of two things. You can lower yourself to their level, or  you can stay above it. Jesus chose to stay above it.

It is true that the best revenge is no revenge. When Jesus was killed, he said nothing. His opponents knew they were wrong. For the most part, nothing you can do can make a better witness than your life. People will see who you are and how you are. And if they refuse to see this, it will make no difference. God will know it.

BTW, that does not mean that I will not fight to defend my family. That is different and is part of my mandate to provide for  them. Touch them and you are toast.

daily java

Daily Java: He made the earth by his power;
he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding.
When he thunders, the waters in the heavens roar;
he makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth.
He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses.
Every man is senseless and without knowledge;
every goldsmith is shamed by his idols. Images are a fraud; they have no breath in them.
They are worthless, the objects of mockery; when their judgment comes, they will perish.
He who is the Portion of Jacob is not like these,  for he is the Maker of all things,
including the tribe of his inheritance— the Lord Almighty is his name. (Jeremiah 51:15-19)

I saw something the other day that I am seeing more and more. It has been around since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, but I suppose I have just begun noticing it. It was a comment about Jesus not liking someone because they did a particular thing. It was using Jesus as a political and social tool to get people to do what the person wanted.

It is akin to the idea of God blessing America. While America did a great thing by forming itself on godly principles, at the same time, God is the God of the world, not one country.

In the past, any conflict America was in was characterized as the forces of God (America) fighting the forces of evil (Germany, Iraq, whatever). God became a proprietary force. He is ours and he likes us better than he likes you.

While I believe God blesses those who do his will, at the same time he is owned by no one. If he were, he would not be God.

What we want is a God who is all-powerful and can do anything, but also who bends to our will. What we have is a God who is all-powerful and who does whatever he wants, regardless of what we say or want.

The problem is, you cannot have an all-powerful God who is also subject to your whims. He either is God or he isn’t.

We have a God who made the earth by his power. Through his strength, the universe was formed. A god you can from yourself, no matter how well-meaning you may be is a god that is powerless. To rely on such a creature shames you. It makes you look foolish. Anything you can make, no matter how big or strong or wide-reaching only has your power.

The ancient Greeks and Romans tried to make gods to do stuff. But their gods were just like them, only bigger. They got madder than ordinary mortals, they loved harder, the had bigger fits of jealous rage – but they were just extensions of people.

It is like the scene in The Jerk with Steve Martin where he gets a lot of money and builds a new house for his family. As the scene goes out, you realize that it is just exactly like their old house, which was a shack, only it is a double sized shack. The door is eight feet tall, the walls are longer, the windows are bigger, but it is a giant replica of their old house, the shack.

When we make a god, we do the same. It is just like us only bigger and meaner, more petty, more jealous, more silly. That is because we just cannot envision anything greater than us. Our god will do whatever we would do if we were God.

So our god would be worthless. We would have accomplished nothing. Such a god, one who is controlled and manipulated is not worth serving.

God by nature is greater than anything we can imagine. There is no way we can understand him. That isn’t to say we don’t try, but we know from the beginning that he is greater than anything we can imagine.

Or he wouldn’t be God.

being in the army

For almost 40 years, no one has ever mentioned anything in connection with my military service. It was just taken for granted. I think most former soldiers are like that. It was time to go and they did, not necessarily gladly but know their duty. In the past couple of years I have had positive comments on my military service more than in all the years before. It is a strange feeling, but good at the same time.

Like most young men of my day, I did not want to go. But I did. And accepted what came. I went to Germany. The next guy probably went to Vietnam. Luck of the draw literally. But I have always been glad I went. It paid for seminary and I have VA benefits now. And besides, I am glad I went. Guys who didn't know they have missed out on a shared experience of my generation.

It is one of those things that you are glad you did in retrospect. With my lack of self-esteem, I probably would have been apologizing right and left for not having gone into the service.

But I did. I did not do a great job as I was the inveterate rebel but at the same time, I went.

As bad as it could be at time, I hold good memories of the time  I was in uniform. For one thing I got the inestimable pleasure of marrying my beautiful wife, Ella. That alone was worth the time.

And I got to see Germany. I would probably not have had the chance otherwise to see something so different from America.

daily java

Daily Java: Join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer. (2 Timothy 2:3-4)

July of 1969. I was 19 years old. I took money out of pay phones for the Telephone company and had my own apartment and car. I had friends and a good looking girl friend (who I had the great blessing to marry later). Life was great. Late 60’s rock was on the radio, Houston was a fun place to live, I had all the money I needed to live and buy clothes and take my girl out to eat and stuff.’

My job was even entertaining. Since I took money out of pay phones, I went into every conceivable establishment, from bars to fancy hotels to grocery stores to church buildings. In the course of this I met every conceivable kind of person.

Texas City, where my parents lived and from where I had graduated high school, was on my route. It was only about 35 miles south of Houston on the freeway. When I went down there, usually once a week, I would always stop in for a minute or two to see them.

Middle of July, 1969. I pulled up in their driveway, got out of the step van that held the coins, and walked into the kitchen. My dad had gotten home from work and was sitting in a chair at the table. Mom was doing something at the sink. Both looked at me with a weird sort of smile. Dad handed me a letter. It was from the Department of Defense, and began with the dreaded words: Greetings.

I had been drafted. Since I wasn’t going to school or any other deferment things, I was prime cannon fodder. I was scared.

That night I told Ella. We went to a party that had already been planned at which she jumped around in almost manic glee. I thought, great. She doesn’t even care that I am going into the army and will probably die.

Later that evening she cried. She was just compensating at the party.

At some point, I visited a recruiter. I don’t remember why. He told me that if I did a 2 year enlistment (the “draft-buster”) I would have an RA on the front of my serial number instead of a US and I would go in a day earlier. Then he said the magic words. It may go easier on you.

I did and I went in a day earlier and I went to Germany. I have always wondered what would have happened if I had gone in when I was supposed to.

People, in the last two or three years, have begun to thank me for being a soldier. My usual response is, “yeah, I didn’t go to Canada.” But it is different. In the past, the fact that you were a soldier didn’t really matter. With our renewed emphasis on their sacrifices with the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, people are beginning to remember that becoming a soldier meant giving up time and maybe your life for your country.

If I had it to do again, I would do it again. Most guys my age who didn’t go into the army always have a hundred reasons why. None are bad, but there is the embarrassment of missing the great shared experience that every soldier knows: mess hall food.

I do wish I had done better as a soldier. I was just a little too rebellious and the drug culture almost claimed me as a victim. But I made it. And I am glad.

PFC John Cliver
RA464905150
Co C, 11th AD Signal Battalion
USAREUR
Discharged Honorably, August, 1975
National Defense Service Medal, Good Conduct Medal, Sharpshooter, M-14 And M-16

veterans' day

Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.”(Luke 3:14)

There does time go? The old expression, time flies when you’re having fun. The problem is, time flies. Period. And the older you get, the faster it flies.

Tomorrow is Veteran’s Day. I hope you thanked a veteran. This came to mind when I realized that it was 41 years ago that I had been drafted into the US Army.

I never wanted to be a soldier. And of course, in 1969, not a whole lot of people aspired to that. It was the height of the Vietnam war and everybody knew someone who was wounded or killed in SE Asia. So, a guy’s main drive was to avoid the draft.

There were ways to do so. In fact, there was a book put out on how to avoid the draft. One way was to run around the block several times on the morning of your draft physical. After you had gotten your breath back, you went in for your physical and, even though you were no longer breathing hard, you had high blood pressure. Jumping up and down on concrete barefooted for a while gave you flat feet. The list went on.

I had flat feet (and still do) but I had no doctor’s papers, so they passed me. And I went in.

I have always been glad I went. Guys who didn’t always have reasons, and sometimes good ones, but they missed out on a  shared experience.

I was talking to the director of one of the Foursquare Church programs that takes young people and gives them a year in a mission field between high school and college. I told him that the army did that for a lot of my generation. He said that it was doing that again, that many young people join the army to “find themselves”.

It gave a guy discipline, the ability to take orders from someone you consider a fool, the ability to do meaningless tasks. Some of this is good, some not, but it all brought discipline and the knowledge that sometimes you are not in control.

The Bible mentions soldiers several times and never condemns them or their mission. Luke 3 has John the Baptizer talking to them. He told them just do your job and don’t be harsh.

It is easy for soldiers to be harsh. It is easy for soldiers of God to be harsh. In our desire to preach the word, we sometimes lose tact and forget love. We are so eager to puncture sin that we end up skewering people.

When choosing between doctrine and people, Jesus always chose people. As a Commander-in-Chief, he set the agenda. Love others. Fight for what is right, but love more than ever.

Don’t know what that has to do with Veterans’ Day, but it was on my mind.

half-hearted

A curse on him who is lax in doing the LORD’s work!
A curse on him who keeps his sword from bloodshed!  (Jeremiah 48:10)

There is a mandate that is given the Christian: Go into all the world and teach the gospel. The Christian’s response is to teach and to baptize and to continue to teach.

Nothing is worse than someone who takes on himself a job then does it half-heartedly. I personally would rather someone refuse than to do something halfway.

The same goes for the Lord. In Matthew 12:30, Jesus said, Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. In other words, you either do something or you don’t. Inactivity is the same as not doing what is needed.

The great cry in our country today among the liberals is to leave your religion at home when you go to vote/school/work/etc. a real Christian can no more do this than he or she can leave their body at home, or their mind or the fact that they are male or female at home.

It is a neutrality that Jesus decried. He said, you have to do one or the other. You cannot do both. If you are not doing one, you are doing the other. If you are not serving him, you are serving the devil. If you are not active for him, you are not active at all.

The Bible says that there is no room for middle-of-the-groundness (if that be a word). You are either all or none. Your work in Jesus is all or none. If your spiritual sword is unblooded, you are cursed.

That sounds harsh, and of course, this is written from an Old Testament perspective and in Old Testament language, but it is no less true. Jesus in his passage put it a little more New Testament like language, but he still meant what he said.

He hates half-heartedness. Half-hearted worship, half-hearted singing, half-hearted devotion, half-hearted work. You can imagine what would happen if you just gave half-hearted love to your wife. It wouldn’t be long before she was gone. God will not stay around for someone who is half-hearted.

What he said was do it or don’t. You cannot play the middle.  If more Christians took this to heart, our country would not be dying as a culture.

daily java

Daily Java: “Moab has been at rest from youth, like wine left on its dregs,
not poured from one jar to another— she has not gone into exile.
So she tastes as she did, and her aroma is unchanged.
But days are coming," declares the LORD,
"when I will send men who pour from jars, and they will pour her out;
they will empty her jars and smash her jugs. (Jeremiah 48:11-12)

People put things off until they get bad. The yard isn’t mowed until finally, you have to hire someone with a heavy duty mower to come mow it. You gain enough weight that you feel you have to have surgery to get rid of it. The house gets in such disorder that you have to hire a professional house cleaner to fix it. The car has so many problems, you have to pay a mechanic a fat lot of money to fix it all.

It is in most people’s nature to procrastinate. And in some things it isn’t bad necessarily.

But when things are put off in your relationship with the Lord, there comes a day when it will be too late. God cannot and will not wait forever. Sooner or later the end will come.

The country Moab had done this. They had put off a relationship with God for a long time and finally it was getting tot he point that they were so corrupt and rebellious that God was not going to put up with it any longer.

He said that their wine – symbolic of their life – had been allowed to sit until the dregs had contaminated the whole jar. Evidently, if wine was not moved occasionally, it would turn bad. Theirs had turned bad.

God said that he was sending people whose job it was to pour out jars. People like our trash collectors who are used to lifting heavy objects and emptying them. For them, the lifting of a full trash can is nothing more than something they do a hundred times a day.

These men will come and pick up those full jars of contaminated wine and pour them on the ground. Then they will smash the contaminated jars so they will not ruin any more wine.

Harsh picture. But they had refused God until it was too late.

Every country in the history of mankind that was great at one time has fallen. Sure there are some that are a shadow of what they once were – England, France, Spain, little Portugal. Portugal once ruled the seas. But like all countries that become corrupt, they sooner or later fell.

They got to thinking of themselves as being great and fell. Their wine was poured out and their jars broken.

All countries come to an end. As much as we may not like it, so will America one day. I can already see the decay of our culture just in walking down the mall and listening to our young people talk. The coarseness of our movies and our music has taken its toll, and I fear our wine is becoming contaminated.

You cannot last long when your base becomes corrupt. It will not be long until someone who feels it their job to pour out jars will come and pour out our jars.

O God, save us.

daily java

Daily Java: “Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” (Isaiah 1:18)

There is a matter of sin between us and God. He  made us perfect, we screwed it up and now we are sinful. What do we do?

We give our sins to him. When it comes down to it, we really can’t do anything else with them. There they are festering, simmering and we are stuck with them. We can be sorry, we can regret, we can pretend that they are old friends – but they are standing between us and God.

Isaiah 59:2 says, But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. It isn’t that we do not want to see God or be with God, it is just that there is such a boundary between us, a no man’s land of sin. We can’t cross it. We keep on adding to the bunch each day. He can’t cross it. He is holy and can have nothing to do with sin.

So what do we do?

We allow him to change them. They are still there, but now they are different. He has removed them to another place: Jesus. Romans 3:25 says God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. Jesus took the sins and removed them.

When we give our sins to the Lord, he takes them and makes them non-existent. They are changed from scarlet to white. He removes them and makes us holy. When that happens, the matter is settled. The sins are as far from him

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:11-13)

We are his. And our sins no longer matter.

haven't been writing much lately

Haven't been writing much lately. I will be back tomorrow.

an old friend

Consider how far you have fallen! (Revelation 2:5)

I had a really good friend a few years back. We had a great time together, but we lost touch with each other after a while. I tried to find out what happened to him, even to asking a mutual acquaintance. The mutual acquaintance refused to tell me where he was or anything about him.

When I got on Facebook, it wasn’t long before I found out that I could find all of the friends I had ever had. So I went trolling for his name. I found it. I also found his ex-wife.

He had divorced her and taken a homosexual lifestyle. I could tell because of the TV shows and such that he liked. His Facebook page was also extolling the virtues of the newly passed health care bill. He was glad because it covered pre-existing health issues. The more he wrote, the more I realized that he probably had AIDS. He was glad because it would be treated.

I didn’t even comment on his page. There was nothing to say. I just went back to mine.

It hurt more than I ever thought anything could hurt. We have had friends turn against us and do things to us in the name of Jesus, but I suppose I had kept our friendship in a special place in my heart. To see him having ruined his life and divorced a wonderful woman, left his kids behind – all that, just hurt. I really thought he was stronger than that..

Facebook has its fun side. It also has its problems. It tends to destroy memories.

Some of my great memories are still tied up with this guy.

He lived with us for a while until he got his job situation underway. We hit it off immediately. He had moved from somewhere else and needed a place to stay. We even had a birthday a day part.

We were driving home from church to his house one Sunday night. I had a 1977 Olds Delta 88 with a 350 engine. He had a 1976 Monte Carlo with the same engine. As we were driving, for some reason we began to race. We were driving fast. We screamed up to his house. I was the first one out of my car so I counted myself as the winner.

We argued a bit, laughing, when we both looked at our cars. Beside us sat our wives. They were fuming with anger. We were in trouble.

We visited them in LA when we came back to from Spokane. We went to Disneyland together and watched the Disneyland fireworks from his balcony.

He just decided to turn from God.

I miss him.

daily java

Daily Java: See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. (Hebrews 3:12-13)

One of the reasons we meet together as a body of believers each week is for encouragement. In fact, God set up his church so that we would not just meet once a week for this, but be together a lot.

If you look in the book of Acts, the early church did stuff together daily. And because of this, they grew, both in numbers (wildly, in fact) and in fellowship. They grew to love each other and to depend on each other.

That is why God made the church. We could have each been Christians quietly in our homes alone or as families. But he knew we wouldn’t be able to survive with any degree of Christian maturity in that way. We had to band together to grow. We had to have others around us to push us, to challenge us, to help us, to comfort us, to rejoice with us.

It is a natural thing to band together. People have done it since Adam and Eve. We have banded together in cities, hunting groups, armies, bird-watching societies, Rotary Clubs, camper clubs – you name it, we have gotten together for it.

Yet, for some odd reason, people cannot apply that same inbred and innate feeling to the church. They will belong to 75 clubs and organizations, yet think that they can be a Christian by themselves. You can, but it is very hard. And the people that claim that they can are usually weak as Christians.

The strong Christians go to church, go to Bible study, go to meetings, go to potlucks. They know where their strength comes from. They know it comes from the Lord through the agency of his church. We help each other.

And part of that help comes in seeing each other beginning to drift and turn from God. In fact, when one quits associating with the church, chances are high that they have lost that spark of spirituality.

As a church, we need to help each other be strong and encourage each other, as Hebrews 10:25 says, to not forsake the assembling of yourselves together.
In the church is strength.

my wife is gone

So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. (Genesis 29:20)

My wife is off at a women’s conference hosted by the Foursquare Church in Wichita. She will be gone until Sunday afternoon. If is astonishing how much I miss her.

It is times like this that I think about how much I love her. She is the center of my life and my true love. That always sounded trite when people said that before, but it is absolutely true.

And after almost 40 years of marriage, it becomes even stronger each day.

Without her the house is empty. I realize that it is the same house, but without her presence, the heart is gone.

When I was younger, I told Ella that I would probably bring a date to her funeral, that I did not want to live alone. We laughed about that. Or at least I did. I think she did too.

But as I get older, I am not sure I could marry again. I love her and we are phenomenally comfortable together, in a way that is only gained by a long time of association in love. We have grown together in many ways. Both of us left our life church at the same time and she has followed me everywhere I have gone. She has been my companion, my lover, my friend. She has been all that a wife should be, all that God intended wives to be.

When God made Eve, he made a companion for the man. As I have said so many times in wedding ceremonies, she was not made from his feet, to be under him. She was not made from his head to be over him. She was made from his side to be with him, to be beside him, to be his companion.

Add to that the romantic element of marriage and you have got something great.

Love to a husband and wife is more than sexual, it is more than just hanging around together. They are really one flesh.

Ella has always been one flesh with me. She has been my friend, my counselor, my student, my teacher, my critic, my admirer. And I have been with her too.

When we met, she was going to go to Christian college to find a missionary. Instead she found me, much to her parents chagrin. They did not feel I was worthy of her, and I agree with them. I wasn’t. she loved me anyway and made me, if I am anything at all, what I am.

I just wish I could give her more. I love her. And I miss her.

daily java

Daily Java: This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. (Romans 13:6).

We have just come from another bruising political season in which we voted for our representatives. It was an ugly one.

Looking through history, the election process has always been ugly. I was looking at some ads for presidential candidates in the 1800’s and the ones today do not have anything over them. Lincoln, a president we think of everyone as loving, was portrayed as a baboon in many of his opposition cartoons. Other presidents were equally vilified.

The problem is, though, that these are God’s earthly representatives. Whether or not we agree with the elected officials, or even whether or not we voted for them, they are God’s servants.

They are his servants, even though they may not know it, or do what he wants. Even servants can be rebellious. But we are rebellious when we do not give them respect.

You have to remember that this was written in the Roman Empire under the reign of Nero, one of the most corrupt and cruel emperors that ever came down the pike. But still, Paul wrote, in the Bible, the written word of God, that he was God’s servant and you pay taxes (in other words support) him, whether you like him or not.

There are many things that I do not like about how some of the offices are run and some of the people in them, but I have to have respect for the office itself. And, because of this verse, I have to have respect for the people in those offices. I will not speak against them.

Sure they do stuff I don’t like. They do not vote the way I want and sometimes lead the country that I love in the wrong direction, but they are God’s servants nonetheless.

Someone says, well, he is not my president. Or he certainly does not represent me, so I do not have to respect him. But that is not true.

As your president, whether or not you agree with him, or even like him, he is the president of the United States. Our government is set up in such a way that the majority rules in election of government officials. If more people vote for him than the other guy, he wins. And because of that constitutional point, he is the president.

All we can do is respect him as long as he is I office. And unless we do, we sin.

Of course, again, the way our country is set up, we do not have to keep someone we do not like. We can vote him out if we want. That is the way our government is set up. Again, that too is God’s servant.

But as long as these people, whatever we may think of them, are in office, they are worthy of our respect and our support.

That is the duty of a Christian.

spiritual cataract surgery

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. (Ephesians 1:18-19)

My eye was operated on this week. I had a really bad cataract and the doctor performed what to me seems to be a miracle. And what’s more, he does it 600 times a year or so. That is 2 or 3 a day with weekends off and vacations.

I was awake the whole time and watching. Since he taped my eyelid open, there was little choice. However, my eye was extremely dilated and there was a humongous light shining in my eye, so things were not very clear.

I did see him go into my eye though with a metal thing and pull some stuff out, and put a disk in. That I saw fairly clearly. The shape of the disk I remember well.

I had no anesthesia to put me to sleep, only topical anesthesia. So when I got through, I was my usual self.

Except for one thing. I can see out of that eye almost perfectly now. I have always been so near sighted that the eye was useless for anything other than fine print. It focused about 2 inches from my face. Beyond two inches, unless I had very thick lenses, I could not see.

But now I see 20/25 in that eye. I keep closing the other one and looking through it. It makes me amazed. And the light coming into that eye is so white. I have the beginnings of a cataract in the other eye, too and in comparison, everything has a off-white cast to it. Out of my right eye, it is a blue-white.

It is astonishing to me that a man can go to school long enough to learn how to stick a piece of metal into another man’s eye and fix it. It amazes me that the technology is even available.

I know. People have had cataract surgery for years, but this is my first and it is amazing.

I told him so, and the nurse said, don’t say too much. He’ll get the big head. I responded that I did not care. He did a great job and, after all, the word says the laborer is worthy of his hire.

If I could just do that as a pastor. Reach into people’s eyes and change them, make them see. God told Isaiah that when he preached to Israel that they would be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving. (Isaiah 6:9). What a shame, to go through life, purposefully blind.

Spiritual cataract surgery. That would be great.

dai;y java

Daily Java: Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:7)

Again, it is 4:30 in the morning. I woke up disagreeing with the sleep mask. It makes these little squirting noises where the air comes out from under it and I cannot set it right. After a while, I begin to fight it and there goes the night. It is just easier to get up.

4:30 is too early to get up. You can’t do anything at this hour. None of the websites are updated this early, we don’t have cable TV, I’m sure not hungry. What do you do?

Some of my best praying and studying are done at this time of the morning, but I do not enjoy it. I enjoy sleeping at this time of the morning, personally. (I wonder how you sleep impersonally?) It just isn’t fun.

This time of the morning you tend to think about stuff you don’t want to think about. Finances is top on the list. Relationships come in there also, as does the church and problems there. Since our van is broken right now, it tends to be part of the mix also. In general, you think about everything you don’t want to think about.

That is why the prayer matters so much. God really does care about what bothers you. He after all made you and wants that connection with you.

It is hard to imagine the God of the universe caring about whether or not you can sleep, but he does. It is not that he will put you back to sleep necessarily, but it is part of the sharing process we have with a friend.

Sometimes it is just the sharing of the problems that will help, casting your anxieties in his direction. It is not that he will do anything with them, but you have a place to get them off your chest. And you tell them to someone who loves you and cares.

Prayer is often made up into this great exalted talking and beseeching and stuff, when all it really should be is communication. You are just talking to someone. Of course, that someone happens to be God, but it is just talking.

And telling him what is hurting you is what he wants you to do.

My friend, I need you help with the things that are on my mind. I need you to deal with them and help me find a way to resolve them. Only you can solve these problems.

And then we tell him. We tell him of the people who have hurt us and the people we have hurt and wish we hadn’t. We tell him of the pain in our hands and the fact that the sleep mask doesn’t work. We tell him of the financial problems we are having and the physical problems and the spiritual problems and the job problems and the family problems. We tell him of the disappointments and the failures. We tell him of the successes. We just tell him.

Prayer is not in the position – kneeling right, closing your eyes, clasping your hands, bowing your head at the right angle. Those are peripherals and may or may not be relevant. I personally do not pray like that.

Prayer is from the heart: your heart responding to his heart, a child coming in to talk to his father. You are not a baby anymore and he is not some guy in a smoking jacket you get maybe 10 minutes a day with when the governess brings you in. He is your Father, your Friend, your Confidant, your Comforter, your Counselor. You tend to capitalize all those because he is also your God and your Creator, but it does not lessen his desire to know you and to hear your problems.

And the God of the universe, no matter how great he is – and he is great – wants to hear from you. What’s more, he is disappointed when he doesn’t, just like we are disappointed when our kids ignore us.

I don’t know. I feel just a little sleepy. Maybe I will go back to bed for a while.

Thank you, Lord, for caring about me. I’m alive and doing fine.

And BTW, I love you.

romans 10 study sheet

The following is our study sheet for class tonight. Use it if you would like to his glory.

 

Romans 10: You Gotta Have Faith

There has always been a strong and sometimes angry dissension between those who want to earn their salvation and those who know they cannot. The ones who want to earn their salvation realize that nothing is totally free. And that is true. Even grace, though free, has a terrible price attached. It requires your whole heart and your whole life.

But there is a difference between the fact that grace has a price and that grace is totally free. One side looks at it as grace is attached to and earned by things we do. The other side sees it as the fact that grace is removed from anything we can do. Both are right and both are wrong.

Grace is free and is gained only by faith in God. Because of that grace, we give our lives to God, to Jesus and his word, to the Spirit of God. But the things we do in service to him are not  what saves us. We are saved by his grace. We do what we do not in order to, but because of.

If we are in his grace and truly believe in him, we will do what is needed to be his children. The apostle Paul says that our righteousness is not based on what we can do. It is given to us when we become children of God. We do what we do because God gave that righteousness to us. If we could have gotten it any other way, the sacrifice of Jesus would have been useless.

Paul also writes about the process of coming to Jesus. To call on him, we have to believe. To believe, we have to hear. To hear, someone must tell us. Faith comes by hearing. However, not everyone who hears will believe. That is the sad lesson learned by the prophets.

QUESTIONS:
1. Again Paul says that his greatest wish was for his people to accept the grace of Jesus. He recognizes their dedication, but also that their dedication is not in the right direction. Is it possible to be totally sincere and wrong at the same time?

2. Romans 10:4 says that Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes? The Message translation says: The earlier revelation was intended simply to get us ready for the Messiah, who then puts everything right for those who trust him to do it. What do you think it means?

3. How does the person who does these things will live by them, quoted from Leviticus 18:5, fit in here?

4. Why do you think he talks about ascending into heaven or descending into the deep. What do those mean?  How can you ascend into heaven or descend into the deep?

5. V8 The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart. How does that relate to a Christian?

6. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Does that really mean everyone? What about those who do not really understand what they are doing? How much about Jesus do you have to know in order to be saved?

7. What if no one ever tells you about Jesus? Is that possible?

8. Why would people hear about the saving grace of Jesus and not do anything about it?

9. I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me. What does that mean?

10.V21 How sad to have someone turn you away when you love them. Do you turn him away?

pyramid scheme

chuckle.

daily java

Daily Java: Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.” “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.  Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mark 3:33-35)

I recently read an article in Biblical Archaeology Review about a man who was searching for the Jesus of History vs. Jesus of Tradition. I did not agree with many of his conclusions but one was really good.  He said:

“All the Gospels say that once John was arrested, Jesus moved into Galilee. Now that move is very important. He’s going back to Galilee, going back to his own roots, but he’s not going back to settle in Nazareth.
“There’s a famous story in Mark where Jesus is in a house with people gathered around him, and they say to him, “Your mother and brothers are outside waiting for you and calling for you [Mark 3:32].” Mark had made a very unexpected assertion that [his family] thought that Jesus was out of his mind [Mark 3:21–22]. But Jesus does not go out to meet them. Instead he makes this amazing statement, asking “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Those who do the will of my father, he says, are my brothers and sisters and mother [Mark 3:33–35]. In other words, he’s establishing a new kind of family that is based not on kinship, but on following his way of understanding what God’s will is. For me, those are some of the core moments in trying to reconstruct the way I see Jesus developing a new vision within the contemporary varieties of Judaism in Galilee.” (Sean Freyne in Biblical Archaeology Review, November 2010,)

I have seen this as portrayed as insensitive of Jesus in a movie lately. His mother wants to see him and he ignores her and even spurns her. But Jesus was doing something different here. He wasn’t being ugly. He was saying, “my family is greater than just physical”. He was saying that the family of God is not a physical family, but a spiritual family, transcending all earthly ties.

That is a powerful thing. If I am in the family of God, I am in an organism that is greater than any other in the world. It is greater than my own physical family, no matter how much I may love my wife and children. It is greater than any professional organization I belong to, no matter how far-reaching. It moves over the entire world, and for that matter, over time.

I am a member of a family that stretches back to the beginning of time and forwards to the end of time. I count as family members, people who have been dead for millennia and who have not yet been born, and may not be born for millennia. I am part of a family that crosses cultural, physical, national and socio-economic bounds more than any other.

I sit here in my den in Lincoln, NE, knowing that I am spiritually related to a woman in Africa who lives in a hut, with a child in Thailand who fishes with her family for a living, with a man in Europe who is in the government, a man in Australia who is a teacher. My spiritual family is astonishingly far-ranging.

I am a brother to my parents, who are children of God. I am a brother to my wife, who is a devoted follower of God. I am a brother to my grandparents, gone now for many years. I am a brother to my great grandchildren who decide to accept his grace.

The old song says, “I’m so glad I’m a part of the family of God.” And I am. It is great.

the plans God has

This is what the LORD says: "When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile." (Jeremiah 29:10-14)

I was thinking about my last post and how hard it is to accept the Lord’s will in your life.

That is a common failing of all people, especially Americans. We are sued to doing it ourselves, pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, “if it is worth having, it is worth working for.”

All of that is true in life, but it doesn’t really apply in our relationship with God. And that is hard for people to grasp.

Jesus said, in Matthew 10:39, Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.  To win in Christ, we have to lose. That goes against every idea we could ever have. To come out on top, we have to go to the bottom.

That is the problem with many churches. They are dead and know in their hearts that they are. Yet they keep trying to be like they were in the old days. They want things as they were.

The only way for them to grow is to admit their defeat and allow God to work a new thing in them. They have to allow God’s will in their lives and in their churches or they will sit forever wishing they were larger.

Only God can build a church. If we let him.

daily java

Daily Java: This is what the LORD says: "When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile." (Jeremiah 29:10-14)

The Israelites were being punished by God for years of rebellion and disobedience. He hoped that in this last big disciplining process, they could come back to him and become the people he wanted them to be.

His mandate to them? Give up to the invading forces. Do not put up a fight. Do not rebel against them. Do not fight them. Give up.

He told the Israelites that if they were to be pleasing to him, they would accept the punishment and the exile and would go into the land of Babylon, buy houses and land there, plant farms and wait. He promised them that their exile would be 70 years. Then they would come back to the land of Israel and once more be his nation.

But they didn’t want to. They had been, at one time, the largest empire in the world. Under David and Solomon, they walked large in the world. But they had to give that up. Like so many of us, it is hard to lay down your autonomy and accept someone else’s direction. They were to be Babylonians citizens, a nation in exile. And they were to do this because God told them to.

Instead of taking his direction, though, they tried to pretend everything was okay. “Prophets” even came up and gave wonderful prophecies. They said in essence that in two years, all of the temple furniture that had been stolen by the Babylonians would be brought back, the king, who was in exile, would come back, and nations would once again bow down to Israel.

Jeremiah was sent by God to tell them that it was God’s will that they give up. The other prophets came to tell them that Jeremiah was full of beans. But Jeremiah kept trying to tell them that the only way for them to win was for them to lose. He told them that the 70 years of captivity was part of God’s plan.

He said that God knew the plans he had. His plans were for their good, If they would just take them. If they didn’t, it wasn’t as though he didn’t want to help them. It was that they would not allow it.

For them to win, they had to lose. At the end of this period, he said that he would bring them back, gather them from all the places they were and make them once again a nation.

The Israelites refused God’s plan. There was a remnant that obeyed, as there always is, but for the most part the nation of Israel as a nation of God and a great empire stopped. Never again would they be anything big. Even today, they are just another nation, not a people of God, not great in the eyes of the world.

God said, if you will just listen to me, I will do great things for you.

In order for God to work in our lives, we have to give up to him. Jesus said, in Matthew 10:39, Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. To win in the eyes of God, you have to lose. To gain in the eyes of God you have to give up everything. That is the hardest thing for anybody to do in the world, to acknowledge your own powerlessness.

God’s plans are great. But in order for them to be worth anything, they have to be accepted. He does not accept our plans, we accept his. He is God, we are not.