daily java

Daily Java:

So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son. (John 1:14)

Did it really make a difference if Jesus was human or just looked it? God could have done what he did no matter what the from of his messenger. For that matter, couldn’t he just send an angel with a Bible and an outline of what we needed to do. What was the point of Jesus?

For a missionary to really be effective, he has to become part of the culture he is trying to reach. Otherwise, he is just an outsider that doesn’t understand his audience. He is never able to reach their hearts completely.

When a missionary becomes part of his target culture, he begins to understand what makes them tick, how they feel, what they like and dislike. And he learns to like and dislike it himself. If he doesn’t he can never understand his target group.

God wanted to understand us. He wanted to feel the things we feel. As powerful as he is, he had never been tired. Or sweaty. Or hungry. He had felt grief but never as we do. He had never experienced the loss of a friend, or the touch of a mother or the discipline of a father. He had never been human.

Jesus came to bridge that gap. He felt all these things yet also felt God. Through him, God was able vicariously to experience all of the problems of a human, all the frailties of humanity. And in so doing, could understand us, his target group.

Jesus as what God would be like if God were human. He reacted like God would react. He acted as God would act. He responded to people like God would. and he did this because he was God in human from.

He was real. He was human, yet from a divine father. He learned how to obey (Hebrews 5:8 said: Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered.). and all this without sin. Sin would have separated him from God like it did us, so he had to be both human and sinless.

But he did. And in so doing, opened the conduit between us and God so that once more we could touch God.

Faith in Love: The Book of Galatians. Galatians 4: Children of God

This is the lesson plan for tonight. Use it to his glory.

 

Faith in Love: The Book of Galatians
Galatians 4: Children of God

There is a right time for everything. Jesus came at the right time for his coming. He came as a human in order to minister to humans. And it was a perfect climate for the spread of his gospel to the entire world. The world had a common language, it had a common government, the Roman Empire had the Pax Romana (Roman Peace) which meant there were no real wars going on and everybody got along together under penalty of death, and travel was relatively easy and simple. Not only this, but people were looking for something. False messiahs had come up several times, not only in Israel but around the Roman Empire. The Jews were looking for the Messiah, and the pagans were becoming disenchanted with their multiple gods. It was a society ripe for the message of God to come into and spread. It was also a society that was ready to grow up spiritually.

All of society was waiting for Jesus. And all of society was in slavery. The coming of the gospel was a coming of two things. One was the fact that God’s creation was ready to move to the next level – the level of being his united children rather than a fragmented bunch of people doing all kinds of different things. Two was that the apostle Paul says that God sent Jesus to buy us back from slavery. The whole world was in bondage of one kind or another. The Jews were in slavery to the law and their own myriad interpretations of it. The Romans were in bondage to their immorality and lack of any real purpose to life. The rest of the world had no real goal to life to look toward. All the things that make Christianity unique were missing and people wanted them.

Paul tells the Galatians that when they try to earn their salvation and leave grace behind in favor of works, they are going back into that slavery. He says that God released them from something that they are trying to get back. He calls on them to quit turning from God’s grace and worries out loud that all he had worked for was going to be for nothing. He gave it all up for them and he wants them to follow his lead and give it up and go back to where they were in Jesus – free from those laws.

He says, remember me? I came to you sick and you loved me and took care of me. they had not turned from him but accepted his message of grace. How could it have turned like it did? Whatever had happened here in Galatia caused the church to begin to suspect Paul’s motives. He says that his motives had not changed. He was the same guy they had loved. He would have done anything for them and they for him. Why make him their enemy for telling them the truth. Those who had come to them and turned them around were not their friends even though they pretended to be. They just wanted to re-enslave them. and for the Galatians to really accept what they wanted, they had to tear up their relationship to Paul. Paul’s problem is that they are so far away he cannot just talk to them. All he can do is hope that this letter can bring them back. He doesn’t want to be mean. He wants things to be as they were.

Just as Abraham had two sons, they are trying to be sons of different mothers, too. Paul is like a mother to them, but so are the false teachers. But they are trying to do things by human will for human reasons. Paul is trying to bring them to God. Do they really want to be human children or divine children, children of human effort to impose what somebody wants on God or children of the promise and the Spirit God gave us?

Questions:

1. How would you go about tearing up a church? Is it easy?

2. Everybody comes to a point in their lives that they realize the need for Jesus. When did you?

3. What makes Christianity unique in terms of world religions? How do people see it otherwise? And why?

4. Abba, Father is the term that little children said in that culture, like a child saying Daddy. What does that mean to you that he would use such a familiar term? Does it mean anything to you? Do you think he meant it in a special way?

5. How is it that someone becomes an enemy for telling the truth?

6. Exactly how is it that you see the two sons of Abraham being different. Do you think it makes any real difference? What point is he making?

7. We are children of freedom. What does that mean to you?

daily java

Daily Java:

There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death. (Proverbs 14:12)

The things that you consider the right things are not always the right things. For instance, you come on a wreck and there is someone lying there who is lying on a rock. You move him to make him more comfortable but in the moving, you move his neck which is broken and he dies or is paralyzed because you did it.

Your children want certain food and you don’t see any reason to give it to them. You want them to be happy. But after a while they suffer malnutrition because they are not getting a balance.

Your child walks wrong, but he is walking in a way that his body naturally does. You take him to the orthopedic surgeon and he retrains the child to walk right.

Hormones are raging and you give in to your boyfriend and nine months later you have a child out of wedlock.

The things that seem right to you might not be right. Debbie Boone sang a song a few years back, “You Light Up My Life,” in which she said, “it can’t be wrong if it feels so right.”

But it can be wrong and feel as right as the day is long.

In Acts 26, the apostle Paul said that he had lived his life in good conscience to that day. Yet he had been a killer of Christians. How could he be a killer of Christians and yet live his life in good conscience? Because what feels right isn’t always.

Paul thought he was serving his God. The men who flew the planes into the World Trade Center thought they were serving their god. Lots of people think they are doing the right thing and then, when they find God, realize that they are absolutely wrong.

Just because we have been taught something for all our lives does not mean it is right. What is right is what God says.

That is why we ask him to show us. That is why we read our Bibles. That is why we study him, so that we can know what he wants and what is right.

When we find what is right, we re-school ourselves. We re-train, re-order our lives, re-form our way of thinking.

We begin to move in the ways God wants, even though it may feel odd at first. But Paul said, in 1 Corinthians 1, that the things of God feel foolish to us at first. But they are, as he also says, the wisdom of God.

The right way is God’s way.

death of a dream

Household gods give worthless advice, fortune-tellers predict only lies, and interpreters of dreams pronounce falsehoods that give no comfort. So my people are wandering like lost sheep; they are attacked because they have no shepherd. (Zechariah 10:2)

What do you do when a dream dies? Something that you always dreamed of doing and now it is in ashes on the floor of life. What do you do? Where do you pick up and start again? How do you do it?

It is Saturday night and I am without a church to pastor. All I have ever wanted to do was to be an effective minister of the gospel, to teach people of the grace and love of God, to feed people, both spiritually and physically.

And yet I am without a church to pastor.

It is not that I am doing nothing in the kingdom. I teach the Sunday evening service, I go to the jail on Thursday nights, I write an awful lot, both for myself and for the church. I write an article each week for the bulletin in addition to putting the bulletin together and making it look good. I make up a handout for the men at the county jail each week. I have written half of the things that were needed for the various booklets the pastor has done, along with necessary editing. I video the services. We have people over for supper and encouragement. I am an integral part of the church and accepted as one of the pastoral staff.

I am doing almost as much as I did at Lincoln in my last work, yet we get no remuneration for it. It is all gratis. I cannot find a job and am living off my wife’s disability, a humiliating thing for me. I do not mind the sacrifice of time and talent. I am serving my King.

But the dream is dying more and more each day. Each day I get older and less attractive to any church. I am becoming an old man and am going nowhere very quickly.

My wife is just waiting to see what happens with me. She loves me and has always supported me and just waits now. She is in pain and is almost overcome by fatigue from dealing with the pain so she sits all day, playing computer games and napping, occasionally reading and watching a move on the computer.

And we wait, watching the dream dying more and more.

We were not always like this. Once we had a life and a church. I have always had larger churches and when I went somewhere, the church always grew. That is, until I came into the Pentecostal movement. When I did that, my life stopped.

It seemed what God wanted and everything pointed to it, but when I did, everything stopped cold. Ultimately, I was as welcome in the Pentecostal movement as the plague.

And I am tired. What do I do? I do not know. What I do know is that my dream is just about dead.

I still have wishes and longings, but those are not dreams. Those are symptoms of dead dreams.

It was amazing at how many people authenticated the dreams I had when I came into this group. People would come out of the woodwork to tell me a “message from God.” I got so sick of messages. Anybody can say that. But for the most part, it seems that they were falsehoods as Zechariah said: things told to me and I listened because it was what I wanted to hear.

Why will God not hear me and tell me what I need to do? He said he was a better father than I am, but I know that I would never treat my children this way.

I sued to have a life. Now I have nothing but deep depression.

daily java

Daily Java:

Then the Israelites said to Gideon, “Be our ruler! You and your son and your grandson will be our rulers, for you have rescued us from Midian.” But Gideon replied, “I will not rule over you, nor will my son. The Lord will rule over you! However, I do have one request—that each of you give me an earring from the plunder you collected from your fallen enemies.” (The enemies, being Ishmaelites, all wore gold earrings.) “Gladly!” they replied. They spread out a cloak, and each one threw in a gold earring he had gathered from the plunder. The weight of the gold earrings was forty-three pounds, not including the royal ornaments and pendants, the purple clothing worn by the kings of Midian, or the chains around the necks of their camels. Gideon made a sacred ephod from the gold and put it in Ophrah, his hometown. But soon all the Israelites prostituted themselves by worshiping it, and it became a trap for Gideon and his family. (Judges 8:22-27)

I read not long ago about a very well known filmmaker who was a Christian and came to Hollywood to make good movies. He ended up making gross horror/slasher movies. He meant well when he came but the atmosphere in Hollywood is harsh to Christians so he turned. Now he is far from being a Christian.

The story of Gideon is a great one. he was commissioned by God to do something and asked two times for a sign. God gave it to him. He ended up with an army of only 300 to fight against a massively superior force and won. God was with him.

Then he got weird. Everybody liked him so they wanted him to be king. He said he wouldn’t because God was king, but they could give him gold if they wanted. They did and gave him 43 pounds. With it he made an ephod, or a representation of the high priest’s special ceremonial robe.

The golden statue of the robe was so beautiful that they began to worship it instead of God. And Gideon, the great man of God, went along with them.

A person comes to a place in life where success is his or hers and they say I will always serve God. But when it comes to the end of it all, they don’t. They turn from where they were – strong devoted followers of God ready to do anything he says – to people who find a great love for what is around them, for the world, for wealth, for acclaim.

This filmmaker – a good one – found that he couldn’t do anything big in nice movies. But Hollywood loves its horror movies, especially those with nudity and those that demean the name of God. And it isn’t that hard to pull someone over to that dark side. That is where the money, the acclaim, the power, the prestige – all the things that people die for – that is where it is.

No one is immune. Nobody can safely say “I will never do that.” Great people of God have fallen throughout the years. They didn’t set out to do that, but they just got caught up in the moment and before they knew it had sold their souls.

To see this, all you have to do is look at the young female singers popular today. So many of them came from a church background, learned to sing in church, had daddies that were pastors. But Hollywood, the entertainment industry, the devil himself, got hold of them and they fell hard. The picture of a former good girl who has degenerated into a slut quickly is the norm rather than the exception.

Maybe it always was. I don’t know. It is more apparent now because we allow it more and because the studios and record labels do not keep rein on their people like they used to.

We always talk about how the old movie stars didn’t rely on nudity and profanity and had good movies. But I really do not think that was because they were better. I think it was because they were more controlled. Society would not accept it of them. And stars were ruined for things that are common now.

That is one of the legacies of my generation, the loosening of control and public morality. There is nothing I can do about it, I suppose. But in my own life, I will not be controlled by that which is ungodly. I serve God and will until I die.

I want nothing to come between us.

daily java

Daily Java:

Stay away from fools, for you won’t find knowledge on their lips. (Proverbs 14:7-8)

Several years back I was watching an episode of the Monkees on MTV. This would have been sometime in the 1980’s. At the end of the episode, it came back to a picture of the four Monkees standing together. the announcer began to ask them what they thought about certain things. One of the things was the war in Vietnam. Since this was the late 1960’s, that was on all young men’s minds.

The Monkees began to talk and then to pontificate a bit. Some of the idea was that someone as phenomenally popular as the Monkees had to have greater thoughts than regular people.

They didn’t. they sounded like the vapid young early 20-somethings they were.

About that time, I began to notice other people saying other things in the same basic context. And it dawned on me that many of these people translated their success in singing or acting to special knowledge of other subjects. In other words, I am a good actor or singer so therefore people are going to turn to me for information on world events. It was as if their success in one area gave them special wisdom in others.

And it didn’t and doesn’t.

When we go to actors or singers or anyone in celebrity positions for our information on world events, we will have a lot of trouble. If you look at these people, they have trouble staying married, they are as immoral as anyone can be and still be alive, they are many times almost brainless. And the comments they make are goody.

Yet they become leaders in global warming, or animal rights, or family planning.

I still remember seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger for the first time on the old Mike Douglas show. There was a great looking man with what seemed to be a double digit IQ. I will have to admit that he got better as he got older. But the funny thing is, when they ask people like him, like the Monkees, like other actors or singers what they think and use it for a reference point, they are going to a poisoned well for drinking water.

Listen to these people talk for a while and that will become apparent. If they are allowed to just talk, they say all kinds of weird things. Some grow up, some do not. Some go on to be something better than what they were. Some just trade on their old fame the rest of their lives..

You want wisdom, go to someone who has wisdom. Don’t go to a man or woman who biggest talent in pretending to be someone else or making music.

One of the smartest comments I ever heard from a professional musician was made by Rich Mullins back in the 1990’s, just a couple of years before he died. We heard him in concert, and he made mention of how people came up to him to ask him big scriptural questions. His comment was that he was not a pastor or a teacher. He was a singer. Don’t go to him. Go to someone who knew.

It took a lot of humility and awareness to say such a thing. And for the most part, people in Hollywood do not have that awareness. They really think they know what they are talking about.

In the play Fiddler on the Roof, Rev Tevye, the main character, wants to be rich. If he were rich, he would sit at the city gates and talk all day. People would ask him questions and he would give wise and measured answers. And they would listen because, as the song he sings goes, “When you’re rich they think you really know.”

Being rich or popular or well-established at something else does not give you the wisdom to talk about things you do not know anything about. And going to fools for wisdom is always a losing proposition.

daily java

Daily Java:

I look up to the mountains—
    does my help come from there?
My help comes from the Lord,
    who made heaven and earth! (Psalm 121)

It is 2:58 in the morning and I just woke up for some reason.

I was dreaming odd dreams that were kind of combinations of past events in my life, places I had worked and jobs I had done. None of them were particularly great jobs, although they were enjoyable.

But when I awoke, I had a certain amount of peace. I haven’t had a lot of peace lately, thinking about too many things as is my wont to do. I tend to dwell on things in the past and think too hard on things now. When I do, I always box myself in, make myself unhappy.

But this time I didn’t. don’t know why, but I suppose I shouldn’t look a gift feeling in the mouth. Just shut up and accept it.

We over analyze, or at least I do. I look at the things that have happened in my life and wonder why they did, why God allowed them to do so, why they had to happen in the way they did. All that.

And it does no good whatsoever.

I suppose it comes from a certain life dissatisfaction that has permeated all of my thinking right now. I do not like how life is right now and want it changed. And I do not know how to change it.

I asked Ella the other day if our lives together had been good. She said, yes, sometimes. And she is right. There have been some times of heart-rending difficulty of some kind or another. Stuff that was happening to us that was bad. And then there were times that things happened that we were happy.

Looking back over it like that, especially late at night (or early at morning, depending on your perspective), gives it a flavor, a texture that is different than it is otherwise. That is the helpless time of night. It is the time you remember all your failures, but have no answers as to how to change them.

But I have to know that God is in control. I have to know that. If he were not, then life would be too bleak to imagine. If this is all there is, and I am adrift with no one ultimately who loves me, life is worthless. And I do not want to live.

But I know that no matter what else happens, he is my Rock, my Fortress, he is the Mountain of strength out of which comes my help. My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

I am not happy with how my life has turned out. Yet I also have to know that God is in control. There will be more in my life than just now. There will be better things come if I am just faithful and continue to worship him.

And I do worship him. How could I not? He is my King, he is my Lord, he is my Master. All that I am and have is his. All that I do and say and live is his. I want to do nothing that does not glorify him and I am sorry that I haven’t glorified him in all I do. I want to be better. I want to be a good and faithful servant. I want to enter into his rest at the end.

Ella will. She is so good. And I want to be with her. Even if we are not married in heaven, I want to be with her and love her through eternity, dance with her in the streets of gold, stand side by side, hand in hand.

I do not know what God will allow of us in heaven, but I sure would like to know her. And I think she wants to know me.

But until then, I look to him for my life, for everything I do, everything I say. I will go where he wants me to go and do what he wants me to do.

Praise his blessed and holy name.

daily java

This article was written for the jail ministry magazine, Real Freedom, at Cooper County Jail in Boonville, MO.

Daily Java:

If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. (1 John 1:8-9)

Nobody likes to be wrong. Everybody likes to be right. And sometimes you can make somebody really made if you tell him he is wrong.

But sooner or later, everybody is wrong. The key is knowing it and admitting it.

You have done everything you could to do what you thought was right and now here you are in a jail cell wearing black and white stripes. Obviously, something has gone wrong with your life.

Jesus says that he had that which will repair your life, make it new and let you start over again. And not only can you start over again, you can start over again every day. You don’t just get a second chance – you get a continual second chance.

If we let him into our hearts, if we accept his grace, if we confess to him that we have sinned and call on his name, he will make us perfect. Sure, we will still be in jail, but we can know now that in the long run what we have done wrong will not count against us. At least not in his mind.

With him in our lives and in our hearts, we will be perfect, sinless. Again, we still have things we are dealing with, but when God looks at us, he doesn’t see the stupid idiot we can be. He sees one of his children. And he calls us to be better. But he also will help us be better. We don’t have to struggle by ourselves.

In fact, struggling by yourself will get you where you are right now. Giving your heart to God will get you into his presence.

Confessing that he is Lord and that you have sinned, asking him to come into your heart – this is what will save. And it is what will make you children of God by faith in Christ Jesus and children of his love.

daily java

Daily Java:

After that generation died, another generation grew up who did not acknowledge the Lord or remember the mighty things he had done for Israel. (Judges 2:10-3:31)

Someone once said “God has no grandchildren.” That statement has been attributed to Billy Graham. Whether he said it first or not, it is absolutely true. Just because you are a godly man or woman doesn’t mean your children are going to be worth anything.

The Israelites saw great and marvelous miracles directly from the hand of God. They knew his power. but then they got old and died and their kids grew up. The kids had heard of God’s power, but had never really seen it, not like their parents and grandparents. To them it was all second hand stories, “how were things when you were young, grandpa?”

When the Israelite kids grew up, they grew up with a second hand faith. And it did not impact them like it did their parents. So they started looking around, seeing what other options they had in life.

Canaan, the land in which they lived, was full of interesting stuff. And a lot of it was very attractive to the kids. So they began to buy into it. They began marrying outside the nation of Israel, they began to forget God completely. After all, the things he had done were, so they thought anyway, irrelevant to their lives. This was the modern world. After all, dad, this is the13th century BC. We are not living in the old days now.

And when they did, when they began going to alternative ways of life, they left God. The faith that their parents had, no matter how great, as not their faith. They really didn’t have a faith as such. They had a tradition. There is a fat lot of difference between a tradition and a faith.

Before long, they had totally left God. And when they did, they got in trouble and knew of no where else to turn. Someone came in and began to oppress them, rule over them/ they became someone’s slaves.

Then they remembered the stories. Were they true? Their parents thought so. So they called on God for help and he delivered them. Now their faith was real and persona. But they had kids and it started all over again.

It amazes me at the number of hedonistic young female singers whose daddies were pastors. They grew up in church, singing in the choir and singing specials. The church loved them and they loved the church. But then they got older and somehow, their lifestyle changed. They no longer had the relationship with their church they used to. And that was because they had never really gotten any kind of relationship with God. It had all been superficial.

When the relationship with God isn’t real, they fall away. There is no real underpinning, no foundation, no belief. Someone hears them sing and they go to a studio, others like them and before long, they are swallowed up in the entertainment industry. The were not children of God, but rather tried to be grandchildren.

Lots of people who were great in the Bible had sorry kids. The kids never got the relationship down. Eli the prophet had lousy kids, as did his protégé, Samuel. King David had bad children. Even God himself had one son who turned from him (Luke 3:38).

There is no way to live a godly life without a godly relationship. You cannot be saved on the coattails of a relative, no matter how great they were.

daily java

Daily Java:

For the Scriptures say, As surely as I live, says the LORD, every knee will bend to me, and every tongue will confess and give praise to God.  (Romans 14:11)

I went to a funeral today. The deceased, a young black man, died suddenly at the age of 41. He was considered to be the best athlete to ever come out of this town. He was engaged to a woman who was pregnant with his twins, he had four children by four other women and no telling how many others. He and his wife began to come to church a few years ago and his wife turned her life around, but, as someone said, he couldn’t control his zipper and they divorced.

He was an extremely athletically talented young man and he died alone while working construction in Texas. The church was full of people who loved him or had known him when he was here, but his was a classic case of a wasted life.

At the funeral, when the obituary and eulogies were read, they were all about 20+ years ago when he was great in sports. Nothing at all about now. He called his daughters every night to talk and they read a moving tribute to him. But it all, every bit, was how he was a long time ago and none of it was about how he was recently.

It was depressing. I read a scripture from Hebrews 12:8 about a great cloud of witnesses and one from Ephesians 6 about the armor of faith. I am not sure why the pastor wanted me to read those, and they didn’t fit, but I did. I suppose he just wanted to try to interject something positive into the service.

People were broken up about it. When he had lived here, he was well-liked. But what had he accomplished?

It set me thinking about my own life. What have I accomplished? What have I done.

There was a guy - a little wienie, really - who made a comment on my blog the other day that was ugly and meant to hurt me. And it did to an extent. I have to remember who it came from: a man who tried his best to split the church and who succeeded in driving off two preachers from the same church. He will answer for his sin.

But at the same time, what will happen at my funeral? My Facebook friends will leave a sad comment on my page and my high school Facebook page will have another. My blog will stop, and my wife will cry. I know she will miss me, as will my daughter. My son, probably too, but that is another story.

But what will people say about my life? That I loved the Lord, that I loved the church? That I tried to feed people, both spiritually and physically? That in many things I was a failure?

Will I leave anything worth leaving? Are there people walking around in the glory of God that are there because I showed them how to be there? Will there be more than just ripples when I die?

This is what I am thinking about as I go to bed tonight. I hate that.

daily java

Daily Java:

Nation will go to war against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in many parts of the world. But all this is only the first of the birth pains, with more to come. (Matthew 24:7-8)

Yesterday was the anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836 down in Houston, TX. After the Alamo was overwhelmed and all inside it killed, along with another humiliating defeat at Goliad, TX, General San Houston was getting desperate and the Texicans were getting mad.

He came up to the San Jacinto River and found General Santa Anna, the dictator of Mexico, and all his men having their afternoon siesta. Houston and his men attacked, even though Santa Anna had superior forces and the won. Santa Anna tried to get away by disguising himself as a peasant soldier but people recognized him. Sam Houston sent him back to Mexico in disgrace. Years later, oddly enough – and this is true – he invented chewing gum and sold the formula to William Wrigley who made a pile of money from it. This makes no difference, except that it is interesting.

The point? I am not sure. Except for maybe the fact that I am a Texas historian living in Missouri (a worthless combination) and it is my article. But yesterday the culmination of a war was celebrated. Texas received its independence and was a nation for nine years until it became a state in 1845.

How many more wars have been fought? How many more victories have been celebrated? How many more nations established and then subsumed into other nations? How many people have fought and died and then more people fight and die.

There was the American Revolution, the Civil War (Boonville had a battle in the Civil War over 150 years ago), then the Mexican-American War, WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan – and the hits just keep on coming.

But what remains constant? God is still here. He says that things will continue until he comes again. People worry about the end times, but Jesus just says stuff will happen and then more stuff will happen until finally one day he comes back.

But when? Is the warring a sign of his coming? No. Jesus himself didn’t know when he was coming back and we won’t either. In Mark 13:31-33, Jesus said: However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows. Even Jesus didn’t know.

I am sure that in the Texas of 1836 there were those who saw the end near. People saw it in all the other wars and were afraid. Every time a war came, people were sure it was the last one and God would be here soon.

But he hasn’t come. So we look toward his coming when he gets ready. And we live our lives in such a way that when he does come, we will be with him.

I think it should be amazing that I could somehow blend Texas history with the Second Coming. But life just seems to connect all over, doesn’t it? Even Texas history and the Second Coming.

Y’all come back, you hear?

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Daily Java:

Then, with the crowds listening, he turned to his disciples and said, “Beware of these teachers of religious law! For they like to parade around in flowing robes and love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces. And how they love the seats of honor in the synagogues and the head table at banquets. Yet they shamelessly cheat widows out of their property and then pretend to be pious by making long prayers in public. Because of this, they will be severely punished.” (Luke 20:45-47)

The religious leaders had just tried to trick Jesus. And, of course, it didn’t work. Jesus threw their arguments back in their faces and asked them an even harder question. Then he turned to the people around him and began talking about these men.

He didn’t say these things in a quiet voice. He didn’t take the crowds aside and whisper to them so he wouldn’t hurt the religious leaders’ feelings. He just said it out loud: these men are dishonest and fake.

It made the people about whom he was talking really mad. And ultimately they killed him.

But the thing is, he didn’t care that they got mad when he said bad things about them. The Son of God didn’t really care that he hurt their feelings or made them look foolish in front of everybody. It did not bother him, nor did he temper what he said. They responded by killing him.

They didn’t kill Jesus because they didn’t like the way he dressed or what he did. They killed him because he insisted on doing the will of God differently than what he wanted and he didn’t care who knew it.

If Jesus had come and asked their opinion, gotten their stamp of approval, everything would have been fine. They would have given him good counsel, they would have shown him the best way to go about it, the best things to say, the best place to buy his special robes, all that. They would have liked him if he had come with their approval.

But instead he came with the stamp of God’s approval on him, not theirs. He came in the power of the Spirit, not in the power of the church.

And the religious leaders couldn’t stand that. They couldn’t stand being bypassed, especially by
someone they considered of inferior intelligence and education.

What does that say to us today? It says that those around us are not going to like what we do because they didn’t like what Jesus did. And we are followers of Jesus. If they didn’t like him, they are not going to like us.

It also says that we need to say what we need to say and tell people what we need to tell them. if we don’t, we and they will die.

Jesus didn’t care what anyone thought. He did what he needed to do. And he knew that God was on his side.

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Daily Java:

Your children will commit themselves to you, O Jerusalem, just as a young man commits himself to his bride. Then God will rejoice over you as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride. (Isaiah 62:5)

I go to the Cooper County Jail here in Boonville, MO, once a week to talk to the inmates. Our discussions are wide-ranging, but I always try to steer them back to God, to the Bible or to the living of life in a good way.

So many of these young men have had no model for what is good in their lives. Many of them were left alone to grow up and ended up using the examples of people who were not good to model their lives. I see part of my function there to show them the benefits of a godly life.

A few years ago I was talking to a young man who was behind bars. He commented that as soon as he got out and got his life together, he was probably going to go back to church. My response was that he had been in control of his life for a long time and obviously had not done a good job of it. After several years of being in control, here he was in jail, standing there in his underwear.

I, on the hand, I told him, had allowed God to control my life and I went home every night to a comfortable house, ate good food and went to sleep with my wife in a good bed.

My question was: which method of control really worked? His or mine? He had no answer.

Last night, one of the guys was talking about having been married at 31 and divorced at 35 and never marrying again. I said that I had married at 21 and had never divorced. We had been married for 41 years. The guys were almost astonished that anyone could be married for that long.

As we began to talk about our pasts, I said that it didn’t seem that long. One asked if the time flew, did it seem like just a short time ago. I said yes, it did.

45 years ago, I was in high school. I still remember it. I still remember the play South Pacific we did in our senior year and how much fun it was. I had the comic lead, Luther Billis, and had a blast.

I remember my first kiss. It was from Liz. I remember being with friends and doing things. I remember graduating and getting a job at a grocery store – Sav-U. It was a warehouse store before warehouse stores were really appreciated, so it wasn’t in business long.

I remember working for Galveston County and working on the seawall, getting a sunburn. I worked some job, I don’t remember much about it, that I had to use a small jack hammer. I worked other places until I got a job with Bell Telephone as a coin collector.

I remember going in places and taking coins from the pay phones. Everybody had a pay phone so I got to go into every conceivable kind of business from grocery stores to strip clubs to bars to office buildings. It was a fun job.

I remember meeting the girl who would become my wife for the first time at the bowling alley in Pasadena, TX. It was after a big Church of Christ youth rally in Houston and I almost didn’t make it, but I was put into the middle of several girls by a woman at the door. I married the girl a year and a half later.

I remember holding her hand for the first time, kissing her for the first time.

I remember the day I got my draft notice in 1969. I came in the door of my parents’ house and they were sitting there with weird looks on their faces and my mother gave me the Letter that began: “Greetings.”

I remember having to go tell my girlfriend that I had been drafted. We went to a party that night at church and she seemed so happy and smiley. I thought, she doesn’t even care. After we left and were by ourselves, she broke down crying. It turned out she was trying to be normal with her friends.

I remember going into the army, going to Germany and coming out two years later. I remember getting married in 1971 and taking Ella back to Germany with me.

This all happened about twelve, fifteen years ago. Or so it seems. It was all almost a half-century ago.

How in the world could my life have gone by so fast?

Yeah, guys, it seemed like just yesterday. And the time flew.

I am not sure I am ready to be this age. Not that I can do anything about it.

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Daily Java:

So they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their garments over it for him to ride on. As he rode along, the crowds spread out their garments on the road ahead of him. When he reached the place where the road started down the Mount of Olives, all of his followers began to shout and sing as they walked along, praising God for all the wonderful miracles they had seen. “Blessings on the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in highest heaven!” But some of the Pharisees among the crowd said, “Teacher, rebuke your followers for saying things like that!” He replied, “If they kept quiet, the stones along the road would burst into cheers!” (Luke 19:35-40)

Jesus was about to ride into Jerusalem for the last time. He’ll come back in when he is being tried and killed, but for now, he is just coming like Zechariah the prophet in the Old Testament said he would, riding a donkey’s colt.

Rejoice, O people of Zion!
    Shout in triumph, O people of Jerusalem!
Look, your king is coming to you.
    He is righteous and victorious,
yet he is humble, riding on a donkey—
    riding on a donkey’s colt. (Zechariah 9:8-10)

It is hard to imagine. And it was for them too. They had always seen their king coming in on a white  horse or something like that. Jesus’ entrance was so humble.

Yet his entrance was also so full of promise. The crowds liked this man. They enjoyed hearing him speak, they saw his miracles, they saw and heard his knowledge of God. And they decided almost spontaneously to honor him.

And they began to shout: “Blessings on the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in highest heaven!” Of course, this went over badly with the religious leadership. They didn’t like Jesus. Sure he spoke with authority. Sure, he performed great, inexplicable miracles. Sure, you could see the presence of God in his life.

But it was not the presence of God that they wanted. The presence of God that they wanted was the one that would include them in it, that would make them primary leaders. They didn’t mind Jesus coming as the Messiah – in fact they welcomed it. But their idea was that he was to include them, to honor them, to make them also great along with him.

And he didn’t. In fact, not only did he not honor them, he made fun of them. He mocked them. He all but told the commoners to ignore them. That was not acceptable to them.

So they began to look petty in their anger. “Make your people stop quoting scripture when we do not want them to quote scripture.” They could see good things done, and they could see that Jesus was from God. But because he was not doing it in the way they wanted, they were willing to tear the situation up.

They would stop the power of God before they would allow the power of God to be used without their permission.

But Jesus’ comment? “The praise has to be said. And if they didn’t say it, the very earth would cry out in praise to God.”

And then to compound the problem, Jesus reclaimed the temple for God. They had made it into a worship marketplace and Jesus had the audacity to inject God back into his temple. That was too much for them.

The next few verses say: the leading priests, the teachers of religious law, and the other leaders of the people began planning how to kill him. But they could think of nothing, because all the people hung on every word he said. They were finished with him, but came up with a problem: how do you accuse a man who has done nothing wrong.

A real conundrum. They would, of course, force themselves to figure something out. When those in opposition want something, they will always find it, even if it is looking for a perceived flaw in the divine Lamb of God.

It is the same today, unfortunately. Of course, Jesus warned us of that. If they didn’t like him, and he was perfect, how much trouble are we going to have being imperfect?

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Daily Java:

Unless the Lord builds a house,
    the work of the builders is wasted.
Unless the Lord protects a city,
    guarding it with sentries will do no good.
2 It is useless for you to work so hard
    from early morning until late at night,
anxiously working for food to eat;
    for God gives rest to his loved ones. (Psalm 127:1-2)

I know nothing about Byzantine Architecture. I like to look at it, but in fact I know little about architecture in general. But someone suggested that I write about it and it is a good idea.

At least I suppose it is a good idea. Sometimes you do really weird things to break yourself out of a rut. And thinking about Byzantine Architecture is what I am doing right now.

Byzantine architecture is strange, when it comes down to it. The soaring ceilings and all make you feel small. And I suppose that is what it was intended to do – make you feel small in the presence of the Lord.

The only thing is you don't have to feel small in the presence of the Lord. He is your God and he loves you. It is one thing to stand in awe and reverence of God and another to feel small in the presence of man-made architecture.

And to top it off, it was Jesus himself who said that God doesn't live in temples made with hands (John 4). He lives in the hearts and minds of men and women who love him and invite him into them.

I remember once going into a cathedral as a young man, a child. The woman who was taking us around told of how the poor people of the town gave all they had to build this fancy cathedral. They were dirt poor, but gave all. I asked her why people would give money they needed to build a church building. I came from a denomination that considered the church building just that: a building. It didn't make sense to me.

She said that when it was built, all of the people in the village could come there and know that, as poor as they were, they had this fancy church building that was all theirs.

I was right in my observation. They were wrong. God does not need a great, fancy cathedral. All he really needs is a willing heart and a loving mind. He needs faith in him and love for God and others. He needs commitment.

I love to look at the cathedrals and went through a couple in Europe in the army. I would go through more if possible, but there aren't that many here.

Not really that much of an article, but thanks, David.

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Daily Java:

Peter said, “We’ve left our homes to follow you.” “Yes,” Jesus replied, “and I assure you that everyone who has given up house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the Kingdom of God, will be repaid many times over in this life, and will have eternal life in the world to come.” (Luke 18:28-30)

This passage follows the narrative of a man who came up to Jesus and asked him what else he needs to do. He had been faithful to God since he was a child. Is there anything else? Jesus told him to sell everything he had and follow Jesus. The scripture says that they man was sad because he was rich. Jesus then said that it was very difficult for rich men to get into heaven. Their wealth stood in the way. All of the other wealthy people asked who would be able to come in then?

In an interesting aside to Jesus, Peter wants encouragement that he has done the right thing. He also wants to hear Jesus say he has. When you have given up everything you have to follow Jesus, you want to know you did the right thing.

Jesus’ answer was yes, you did well.

Jesus didn’t usually compliment his disciples on things that we have recorded. But you know that they had to worry about it on occasion. Here they are, giving up good businesses and lives to follow an itinerant preacher around, a man who is always in trouble with the authorities. You know they wanted encouragement.

And Jesus gave it to them.

I read an article today by a man who was, I suppose, a speaker on church transformation and church growth in the more liberal arena. It was about young people not coming to church and the various reasons. One comment really struck me.

There's a question I ask nearly every congregation I get asked to come speak to. Before we get into any other real substance about congregational transformation, I ask them: "If you could realize your vision for the community today, right now, but it meant closing the doors of your church forever, would you do it?"
If the answer is "no," then the mission has taken a back seat to something more nefarious. If the answer is "yes," and if they are truly committed to doing WHATEVER it takes with their personal and material resources to live out the Gospel, then we have something to work with.
I'm not saying every church has to – and will – shut down forever in order to meet their new mission field's needs. But if we're not even willing to consider the possibility, it's we who have a distorted value system; and those young adults wary of our motives are actually right in their skepticism about us. (Christian Piatt, "Huffington Post," April 16, 2012)

What is important to us? Is the presence of our church building and actual physical facility so important that we will do anything to hold on to it? Most churches are not growing, and if anything are declining. Even the one I attend, even though it is a good church with a good pastor, is only moderately growing. It has taken 35 years of one man’s ministry and 75 years total for the church to grow to the less than 200 there are today.

So what is the point? What if the church here could do better by disbanding and doing something else? And what would that something else be? What would it look like? What form would it take?

When we say that we think of selling the church and wandering the streets, giving out tracts or sandwiches or something. It is almost a picture of people in robes wandering about.

But is that necessarily what it means? The whole thing boils down to one question: what is most important to us? Is our physical church so important that we will do anything whatsoever to keep it going? What if it is dying and there is no real way to resuscitate it? What if the neighborhood has changed and our church is no longer culturally relevant.

There are a lot of lone outposts of 1950’s style religion sitting in neighborhoods that have changed so dramatically. The outposts will not change and a few are paying the bills to keep the doors open. And for what

Would we give up everything for the kingdom if preaching the kingdom demanded it? Would we restructure our whole way of looking at things if the success of the kingdom required it? Would we sell all of our physical property, get rid of all our stuff, as such, if it would help in the preaching of the kingdom?

Would we close the doors of our church buildings if by so doing we would open the doors of the kingdom to others?

In my own life I have done some of that. I am not sure it was necessarily a conscious decision on my part, but it has ended up in that direction. What can I do in a world setting with no church building, no facilities, no money, to bring people to Jesus in a fulfilling way? Would such a person, a group be viable to young people?

Are we as churches just too tied to our stuff?

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Daily Java:

One day some parents brought their little children to Jesus so he could touch and bless them. But when the disciples saw this, they scolded the parents for bothering him. Then Jesus called for the children and said to the disciples, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children. I tell you the truth, anyone who doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.” (Luke 18:15-17)

The parents brought their children to Jesus. They wanted him to bless them, or just to touch them, to heal them, to kiss them. There was something about him that kids liked. His lack of artificiality, his strength, his goodness – something. And he welcomed them. but the apostles saw them as hindrances, beneath his dignity to have little babies throw up on his robe. They tried to stop them from “bothering” Jesus. He had a fat lot more important things to do than sit around holding wet babies and dirty children.

But Jesus welcomed them. and, as usual, he turned them into an object lesson. Look at these kids, he said. They are what I want you to be like. “You grown men,” he said, “I want you to like these little kids.” And it probably baffled the apostles. You would think he wanted us to grow up, not regress into children. What Jesus wanted, however, was the attitude of a child.

There is an attitude in a little child that Jesus wanted in his disciples. It was an attitude of dependence and humility.

Little children know they are little children. They are under no illusions as to their independence. They know they need their parents. They know that they are not capable of doing a lot of things and need the help. They are aware of their need.

When we get to thinking that we are so great and can do anything, that is when we get in trouble.

In 2 Corinthians 3:4-5, the apostle Paul said: We are confident of all this because of our great trust in God through Christ. It is not that we think we are qualified to do anything on our own. Our qualification comes from God. About the time we think we have it all together, we lose it all. About the time we think we have the strength to do whatever we want to do in life, we lose that strength. When we finally think we have the key, we lose it.

The point is that if we try to live our lives ourselves, without the grace of God, we will lose our lives. We will lose completely. We only win if God is with us.

The child knows that. He won’t eat dinner unless you cook it. He won’t get to school or have a snack or clean sheets or a warm and comfortable home unless you give it to him. He is dependent on you. He does what he can and he has responsibilities. But ultimately, he is dependent on you, the parent.

It is a hard thing for an adult to grasp, that dependence. It is difficult to be dependent on someone else – even God – when you have been taught to be independent all your life. But that is what the grace of God is. It is the strength God gives those who are able to accept their own failure and his strength.

We tried it ourselves and look where it landed us. Now we give ourselves to God and we are once again strong.

Galatians 3: Out of Legalism and into Faith

This is the lesson I wrote for tonight in Sunday evening class. Should be an interesting one. Use it if you need or would like to.

If you want the whole series tell me and I will send it to you.

Faith in Love: The Book of Galatians

Galatians 3: Out of Legalism and into Faith

It is a tendency for people to make up rules. People see holes in what is there and they feel compelled to fill them. Some of that is a fear of doing something wrong or in not doing everything needed. Some of it is the desire to help others. Some is the desire to rule others.

The apostle Paul called this an evil spell. He said that people who tried to take away your freedom were taking away the message of the cross. The Spirit didn’t come from obedience to law. And that law would do nothing to help them in their Christian life. There is no way to become perfect in doing things yourself. The perfection can only come through the grace of Christ.

He even goes so far as to say that this dependence on works would destroy all their progress. We, as Christians, go back to Abraham as our father. It was he who believed in God and God counted him righteous. And Abraham couldn’t be justified by law because there was no law then. He was before law. When he was alive, each person came to God themselves, individually. And his children do the same. They put their faith in God.

Paul calls the desire to do works a curse. After a long list of all the things they were supposed to do in Moses’ farewell sermon, Moses says in Deuteronomy 27:26: Cursed is anyone who does not affirm and obey the terms of these instructions.’ And all the people will reply, ‘Amen.’ The keeping of the law, God said, Moses said, Paul said, the Bible says, is a curse. Jesus came to free us from that curse.

Paul uses a common illustration. An agreement cannot be revoked unless there is some kind of provision. The promise God gave to Abraham was absolute and was not to be canceled 430 years later when the law of Moses was given. Law was never made a part of that promise. Those who followed Paul around trying to change his message missed the point. The law of Moses was never meant to be permanent. The promise to Abraham was. There was no mediator or go-between to Abraham. There was to the Israelites (Moses) and there is to us (Jesus). But the promise to Abraham of his children receiving that promise of God’s presence through faith was absolute.

When Jesus came, he brought that promise again. We come to him through faith, not works. The old law was never intended to last. It was a schoolmaster that led us to Jesus. Jesus is the final point, so the law is no longer needed.

He ends up by saying that we are God’s children and are made so through our faith, not our works. When we have come to Jesus and allowed ourselves to be immersed in his grace, we have been saved. And when we are baptized into him, we receive that new clothing, the clothing of commitment. In this new situation there are no racial barriers, no socioeconomic barriers, no sexual barriers. We are his. And as such we are Abraham’s children and have his promise.

Questions:

1. Is the desire to do extra stuff for God bad? Is there nothing we need to do?

2. Does God like it when we do good stuff and encourage others to do the same?

3. Where does doing good stuff and encouraging others start being a demand on us to toe certain lines? What about what different denominations think? Are their requirements bad?

4. Why does the Holy Spirit come to us? Is it to strengthen or to cause us to do better things?

5. When our hearts are changed, we act differently. Is that works?

6. Do you think God is pleased when we do good things? Does it really matter?

7. What is the God’s law today? (cf Matthew 22:36-30; James 2:8)

8. How exactly are we children of Abraham, a guy who lived 4000 years ago.

Are segregated churches wrong? Should all churches be integrated?

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Daily Java:

And if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins. In that case, all who have died believing in Christ are lost! And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world. (1 Corinthians 15:16-19 NLT)

It is a fact that Jesus was raised from the dead. I know people who have made it their life’s work to deny it, sometimes even preachers, but it is no less real.

The resurrection is the central part of the Christian faith. I cannot for the life of me figure out why people deny it, but that is probably due to my Pollyanna nature. I always think the best of people even when they turn out to be jerks on a stick.

But it is no less true that Jesus is risen. And it is no less true that I serve a risen Savior. I mean what is the point of following a guy who didn’t raise from the dead? It would be like being an aficionado of Benjamin Franklin or C.S. Lewis. Both of them wrote some good stuff but neither of them are the Messiah.

If Jesus is not raised from the dead, he is no better than they. He was a good guy, sure, and said good stuff. But if he was not raised from the dead, he is worthless as a conduit to God. He can bring me no closer than John McArthur or Billy Graham, two men who are filled with the power of God. They are good men and great preachers but they are not divine.

If Jesus was not divine, what is the point? He is nothing more than a good man talking about stuff that is Godly.

CS Lewis said that we have a problem with Jesus. Jesus said he was the Messiah. John 13:18-20 said: I am not saying these things to all of you; I know the ones I have chosen. But this fulfills the Scripture that says, ‘The one who eats my food has turned against me.’ I tell you this beforehand, so that when it happens you will believe that I Am the Messiah. I tell you the truth, anyone who welcomes my messenger is welcoming me, and anyone who welcomes me is welcoming the Father who sent me.

What CS Lewis said was that we are faced with three possibilities. He called this problem the Trilemma. Either Jesus was the Lord, or he was a liar or he was a lunatic. If he said he was the I Am and he wasn’t, he was either crazy (like a man who said he was a poached egg, Lewis said) or a liar. If he was the Messiah then we have to accept it. If he was a liar or a lunatic, then we would be crazy to follow him.

He said he was risen and others who had seen him said the same thing. If we believe it, he is Lord. If not, why be a Christian in the first place? And in the second – well, really there is no second place. If he is not Lord, what is the point of being a Christian?

Why do you follow him? Is it because you believe? Or is it just because you always have and can’t figure out how to quit?

He is Lord. What else can he be? You either believe it or you don’t. Which one? You have to be the one to decide.

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Daily Java:

Hezekiah son of Ahaz began to rule over Judah in the third year of King Hoshea’s reign in Israel. He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem twenty-nine years. His mother was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah. He did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight, just as his ancestor David had done. He removed the pagan shrines, smashed the sacred pillars, and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke up the bronze serpent that Moses had made, because the people of Israel had been offering sacrifices to it. The bronze serpent was called Nehushtan. Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before or after his time. He remained faithful to the Lord in everything, and he carefully obeyed all the commands the Lord had given Moses. So the Lord was with him, and Hezekiah was successful in everything he did. He revolted against the king of Assyria and refused to pay him tribute. (1 Kings 18:1-7)

What if you were sick and about to die and God gave you ten more years?

He did this with Hezekiah, the last good king of Judah. Hezekiah was a good king who tried his best to do what God had wanted. He was one of a line of both good and bad kings. Some had tried to do what God wanted, some had not cared.

But almost all of them failed in doing the one thing God told them especially to do: get completely rid of all of the pagan altars. Only two kings did that and by the time the second one came along, it was too late for Israel. God had already decided to destroy them.

Hezekiah tried his best to serve God. He got rid of all of the pagan altars, all of the idol worship that so plagued Israel and he began again to give service and worship to God. He was, all in all, a good man and a good king.

But what made him so good was his absolute trust in the power of God.

The King of Israel, Uzziah, had brought Israel (the top ten tribes of the old nation Israel) to the brink of extinction. They had disobeyed God time and again and God was tired of them. on top of it all, Uzziah decided to thumb his nose at the emperor of Assyria, the world’s most dominant empire at the time.

Assyria invaded Israel and conquered them. Then he set his sights on their neighboring tribe Judah (the bottom two tribes of the old nation Israel). He sent a delegation to Hezekiah and told him in no uncertain terms that Hezekiah’s God had told him to invade Jerusalem just as he had invaded Israel. He was insulting and cruel in his comments.

Hezekiah took the letter to God, laid it on the altar and asked God what he was going to do about Sennacherib’s words of defiance against the living God (1 Kings 18). Sennacherib, the King of the Assyrians had even told him that his God, the Lord Almighty, was lying to him about delivering him.

But Hezekiah believed in the power of the Lord and, in many ways due to his belief, destroyed the Assyrian army.

But immediately afterwards, Hezekiah got sick. Isaiah the prophet even told him that the Lord said he would die. This filled him with sorrow and he turned his face to the wall and began to cry. He told God how faithful he had been and how hard he had worked for God.

Before Isaiah even got out of the house, the Lord told him to go back and tell Hezekiah he had ten more years. He even asked Hezekiah what kind of sign he wanted as proof. Hezekiah chose to have the shadow on the sundial to go back ten hours.

Hezekiah was a man of strong belief, of strong faith. He knew what God wanted of him and he did it. He made mistakes, of course. At one point, he took the ambassador of the new empire, Babylon, through the palace and showed him all the wealth he had. Isaiah told him that because he did that, one day all he had would be taken from his sons and they would become captives.

His thought: at least it will not happen in my lifetime (1 Kings 20:19).

But even though he was a flawed human being, as we all are, he was also an example of the faith that says God will take care of us no matter what, and that we can count on him.

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Daily Java: 
After Jesus had risen from the dead and ca me back to talk to his disciples, he was talking to Peter.  Peter was a good man who had done a stupid and cowardly thing: 

He had denied Jesus to a group of people.  Because of this he felt like Jesus would never love him again.

Jesus told him, however, that Peter was going to live a long life in service to Jesus.  The only thing was that at the end of his life, the great apostle Peter was going to become a prisoner because he was a Christian.

"Jesus  said,' I tell you the truth, when you were younger you  dressed yourself and  went where you wanted;  but when you are old you will  stretch out  your hands,  and someone else  will  dress  you and lead you where you do not want to go.'  Jesus said this to indicate the kind of  death by which  Peter would glorify God.

Then he said to him, 'Follow me!'  (John 21:18-19)

It was amazing how many people became prisoners for Jesus and were eventually executed.  Church history says Peter was crucified upside down.

Being a prisoner is not necessarily bad.  The apostle Paul, who wrote most of the Bible was a prisoner for a lot of his ministry.

The thing was, though, that he didn't do anything wrong.  But he used his prison experience to do great things.

Some of the best prison ministers today were inmates themselves and found Jesus in jail or prison.  Which shows that good can come from bad experiences. They obviously did something right.

You can be a good man or woman and be in jail.  The key is to give yourself to Jesus and let him change you.

After all, even in the middle of the night in one of the worst places you have ever been, he still loves you and will set you free.

Daniel – More Than A Lion Tamer

Daily Java: Daniel – More Than A Lion Tamer

There are times when it is difficult to do what is right, even dangerous. But no matter what the circumstance, it is always necessary to do the right thing.

Daniel was such a man, one who did the right thing no matter what the consequences were. Though four different major kings and three empires, Daniel stood at the king’s right hand. No matter what the outcome would be, he always stood for God and God always blessed him.

Daniel was brought to Babylon with the first wave of Israelite captives as one of the promising young men. He first displayed the power of God residing within him when he refused to eat the food given to him because of the fact that it was unclean by the laws of God. He promised that if his captors would allow him and his Hebrew companions to eat proper food, they would be better off than the others. And they were.

The King began to see in Daniel something that was valuable. When King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream, Daniel was the one to interpret it by the power of God. The interpretation became true and the king put Daniel in charge of many things in his kingdom.

The next king was not so good. At a party in which he and his friends were degrading the holy Israelite temple vessels by using them for dishes, a hand appeared writing on the wall. Again, Daniel was the one who could interpret it. He told the king that he would die and his kingdom would be forfeit. That night the king died.

With his next king, a king in a whole new empire, he got caught in political cross hairs by some who were jealous of his high standing. After an edict that all would worship a golden idol of the king, Daniel insisted on kneeling at his window in prayer as he had done every day of his life. Because of the disobedience, he was thrown into a lions’ den to be eaten alive.

Again, God delivered him and he was made even more important. His position at the king’s side was cemented.

Daniel knew where his power came from. And he knew his God. He knew that to turn from him, even if he would die, would do no good ultimately. He was willing to sacrifice himself and his life for the pursuit of God’s glory.

Through him the Lord answered the questions of kings and gave messages to those in power. Through him also, the Lord revealed great pictures of the end of the world and the decline and fall of several national empires. Through him, the Lord showed power beyond that of a normal person.

Daniel knew that as long as he depended on God, and as long as he was faithful, God would be with him and protect him.

Daniel lived to an old age, respected by many, feared by many. But in every circumstance and occasion, all around him knew that here was a man who was with God. And that he would remain with his God no matter what may happen.

His most famous miracle was one in which God showed his power over the physical. As he sat in that lions’ den, he knew that God would protect him. And he also knew, as three of his friends said, even if God didn’t protect him, he still would remain faithful.

There was so much more to Daniel’s life than his visit to the lions’ den. But in that encounter, we see God’s power working in him. That same power can work in us.

daily java

Daily Java:

There has never been another prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. The Lord sent him to perform all the miraculous signs and wonders in the land of Egypt against Pharaoh, and all his servants, and his entire land. With mighty power, Moses performed terrifying acts in the sight of all Israel. (Deuteronomy 34:10-12)

Moses was an anomaly. The Bible says that no one as good as Moses has ever lived nor will ever live. Yet, Moses didn’t want to do what he was doing in the first place. His people were terrified of him, yet they tried at every turn to unseat him from his position of leadership. In many ways, he didn’t care for his people yet he interceded for them time and again when God would be angry enough to destroy them.

He started off in a position that would enable him to be a great leader. Or so he thought. He was in the King’s court in Egypt, the most powerful country in the world at the time. He could have done great things with the Israelites. But God didn’t want an Egyptian leading them. And even though he tried to identify with them, he was still an Egyptian because he had been raised by Pharaoh’s daughter.

He probably looked Egyptian, he sounded Egyptian, all these things. When he came before his people, the Israelites, as far as they could see, he was an Egyptian. And they had grown to hate Egyptians.

When he had to leave Egypt on a murder charge, he hid in Midian, a backward country a long ways from Egypt. Little by little he lost his Egyptian-ness and became a Palestinian. By the time God came to him and told him to go back to Egypt, he was sunburned, dressed roughly and bearded probably like the average Israelite. Gone were all the Egyptian affectations. Now he was like them.

But he was never like them. his relationship to God was one on one. Theirs was through Moses. They kept God at an arm’s distance. All through their life as a nation wandering, it was Moses who fed them, who gave them water, who relayed to them the words of God. It was Moses who was in charge.

And every time someone would challenge Moses’ leadership, even if it were his brother and sister, things ended up badly. People became leprous, fell into cracks in the earth, it seemed the entire universe tilted every time they challenged Moses.

When he told them he was going to die, they didn’t know what to do. So Moses gave them Joshua, Moses’ right hand man. He was the man who accompanied Moses everywhere he went, who assisted Moses, who helped him talk to God. It was he alone, besides Moses, who went up on Mount Sinai to receive the law. God told the rest that if they even touched the base of the mountain, they would die.

Joshua was a man with authority. And since they needed someone strong enough to tell them to shut up, Joshua was it. But as great as Joshua was, he wasn’t Moses.

When Moses died, the human race peaked. Never again would someone like him come along. Even Elijah, who God took up in a flaming chariot so he wouldn’t suffer death, was not spoken of like Moses.

There was a man of power.

career suicide

After this, Absalom bought a chariot and horses, and he hired fifty bodyguards to run ahead of him. He got up early every morning and went out to the gate of the city. When people brought a case to the king for judgment, Absalom would ask where in Israel they were from, and they would tell him their tribe. Then Absalom would say, “You’ve really got a strong case here! It’s too bad the king doesn’t have anyone to hear it. I wish I were the judge. Then everyone could bring their cases to me for judgment, and I would give them justice!” When people tried to bow before him, Absalom wouldn’t let them. Instead, he took them by the hand and kissed them. Absalom did this with everyone who came to the king for judgment, and so he stole the hearts of all the people of Israel. (2 Samuel 15:1-6)

An author I read a lot just wrote an ugly article, racially motivated and just plain ugly. The weblog he was a part of for a decade disavowed him for it. Their comment was that he was free to write whatever he wanted, just not for them anymore. He had always been an edgy guy, with views that were a little out of the mainstream, but he had never crossed such a line before.

And the line he crossed was done with such force and strength that it worked to completely and irrevocably sever his relationship with his primary employer.

What I cannot for the life of me figure out is why. Why would he all of a sudden write such an article knowing full well that it would kill his career with conservatives?

Absalom had done this. He was King David’s favorite son, but he had been in exile from the king for killing his own half-brother. His half-brother had raped Absalom’s sister so Absalom had good reason, but it hurt David.

He finally had come back, and now he decides he would be a better king than David and stands at the city gates telling everyone how good he would be.

Things finally come to a head and David is once again on the run with a force behind Absalom trying to unseat David. It ends tragically with Absalom’s death.

When this writer wrote this article, he had to know it would kill his career. Or at least, his career with conservatives. It would be like me writing an ugly article for the back page of the bulletin knowing that Pastor Mel doesn’t always read them first before publishing them. or like a preacher standing up and censuring his church or his denomination from the pulpit. Or like a husband telling his wife he thinks she is fat and ugly and he never has liked her.

Any one of those would destroy a relationship beyond reparation.

Someone within our congregation recently wrote a mass letter to our church telling them that he did not agree with the pastor on something and that he didn’t think it was right. He had been working behind the scenes for a while and was gaining no support, so he finally wrote this letter. I suppose he hoped it would wake people up to his line of thought.

What it did was get him removed from the church. There was nothing wrong with him believing the way he did, but when he went behind the leadership’s back to teach and promote it, he was wrong. When he wrote the letter – and he was a former pastor himself, he had to know – he placed himself in direct opposition to the biblical model of authority.

When this writer wrote this article, he had to know it would kill him with his supporters. Was it career suicide? What was it? A death wish? He couldn’t figure out what else to do so he went for broke?

Absalom had to know it would not work. But he was so full of himself and his own self-love that he started thinking that his was the only real way to go. The man in our church must have too when he wrote that letter. The man who wrote the article online must have too.

I never agreed much with that author, but I respected him as an alternative voice. I guess he was just too alternative to live with us.

daily java

Daily Java:

One Sabbath day as Jesus was teaching in a synagogue, he saw a woman who had been crippled by an evil spirit. She had been bent double for eighteen years and was unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Dear woman, you are healed of your sickness!” Then he touched her, and instantly she could stand straight. How she praised God! But the leader in charge of the synagogue was indignant that Jesus had healed her on the Sabbath day. “There are six days of the week for working,” he said to the crowd. “Come on those days to be healed, not on the Sabbath.” But the Lord replied, “You hypocrites! Each of you works on the Sabbath day! Don’t you untie your ox or your donkey from its stall on the Sabbath and lead it out for water? This dear woman, a daughter of Abraham, has been held in bondage by Satan for eighteen years. Isn’t it right that she be released, even on the Sabbath?” This shamed his enemies, but all the people rejoiced at the wonderful things he did. (Luke 13:10-17)

Some people would rather you not do anything good at all than to do good in the way they do not want it done.

A few days ago, I invited my neighbor to Easter services. He has been talking about going. He asked me if we worshiped Ishtar, the Canaanite fertility goddess. I answered no. He then asked if we had the Easter bunny and Easter eggs. I said we had an Easter egg hunt for the kids. He then proudly proclaimed No, he didn’t go to churches that used pagan imagery. So Easter morning, he sat at home and watched TV.

Another was a man at a church at which I preached a few years ago. He had been a member of another denomination that viewed itself as exclusive. He also hadn’t been to church there for a long time. When he started coming to the church where I met him, his old church got worried and visited him. They were more willing for him not to go to church at all then to go to a church they didn’t like.

A few years ago in some of the Muslim countries there were several natural calamities. Among the groups that rushed to aid them were Christian groups. Those in charge became mad that Christian groups were helping to feed and doctor their hungry and sick and demanded that they leave. They would rather their people die than to have a Christian organization help them.

The people in the passage above were more concerned with keeping their theology like they wanted it than they were with helping people. Jesus healed on the Sabbath. The Sabbath had been instituted by God in the Old Testament to make the people relax on one day and not let employers work them to death.

However, as things go, the Sabbath soon reached holy status and a whole body of literature was written by religious bureaucrats on what you could and couldn’t do on the Sabbath. Like in any government, as far as the religious bureaucrats were concerned, those traditions became as binding as any of God’s laws.

And you can add to that the fact that they were looking for something to charge Jesus with. They followed him around and listened to him and pored over his words with a fine tooth comb to see what they could find wrong with him. They thought they could find it here. Healing was technically work, so he had broken the Sabbath by working.

Jesus, of course, brought up the fact that people had to take care of their animals on the Sabbath day. The animals couldn’t be expected to stand around hungry and thirsty simply because God’s people were resting.

Jesus then pointed out that this woman had been released so that she could participate in the water of life by being healed. He also called them hypocrites in front of everybody.

They were mad again and caught in their own argument. But everybody else thought it was great.

Any time religious bondage is released, it does two things. One is that those people who were bound are happy to be released. They have gotten freedom. And two, those people – the religious bureaucrats – who are doing the binding are mad. They have lost power.

It is almost always better to do something than to sit around doing nothing.

daily java

Daily Java:

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins. In that case, all who have died believing in Christ are lost! And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world. (1 Corinthians 15:16-19)

Today is Resurrection Sunday, the day that celebrates the very center of our faith: the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

As a child, I was in a denomination that didn’t believe in Easter. Oddly enough, we celebrated the pagan side: the Easter bunny came with eggs and stuff. But no celebrations of the faith side. We felt that every Sunday was sufficient for remembering the resurrection.

Looking back over it, I wonder why. I believed it, but, as I got older, it became a big “So what” kind of thing. So what? So we remember the resurrection on this Sunday. So what? Unlike Christmas, this is the time of year it happened. You can make that argument of not knowing when and all that if you want to for Christmas, but on Easter morning, Jesus was raised from the dead.

Today we remember that Resurrection.

I have always loved the movie Godspell, the story of Jesus in the book of Matthew in rock opera form. It has some great music and some good imagery. But it ends with the “apostles” carrying Jesus – who is spread-eagled out and dead around a corner. Then the crowd picks up. There is no resurrection.

I am amazed when I meet pastors who do not believe in the resurrection. And I have. Many liberal church pastors in mainstream churches do not. That is why so many churches finally close their doors. What is the use in coming to church if the main point is missing. All you have is a social club. And you can get those anywhere.

To believe in any power in Jesus, you have to believe in the resurrection. Otherwise you are worshiping a powerless God.

The absence of the resurrection in Christianity is crippling. Christianity cannot endure, it cannot be real with that resurrection. It is like food without flavor, marriage without love, a hobby without fun. What’s the point?

The resurrection says that we can be new, that we do not have to live like we did all the first part of our lives. We don’t have to live in fear, in discouragement, in failure, in rejection. The resurrection says that we can be new, we can be reborn, we can have a whole new eternal life at our fingertips. All we do is to accept Jesus and his grace.

In 2 Timothy 3:5. the apostle Paul said: They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. Stay away from people like that! They will ultimately kill your soul.

Remember it and keep it close to you. Without it, Christianity is worthless. Without it, Pastor Mel has no more to say that the Sham Wow guy.

But with it, we can conquer the world.

Seven Last Words of Christ: Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands!

Seven Last Words of Christ: Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands! (Luke 23:46)

Jesus was finished. He had taken care of everything he had to do. He had taught, he had mentored his apostles, he had even made sure his mother would be taken care of. And now he was through.

There was no reason for him to hang on any longer.

And he was tired, beyond all imagining. Tired, exhausted, weak, in pain and he was ready to go. There was nothing holding him here.

Waiting for him was rest. Waiting for him was peace. Waiting for him were the angels and home.

So, here, what seems to be the last thing Jesus said, he says I give myself to you. My life is your anyway and I give myself to you.

And he died. That part of Jesus that was human was finished. His life was complete. His mission, at least the first part, was done.

But – even though he was dead physically, he was still alive eternally, spiritually. And that was the point of the whole thing.

daily java

Daily Java:

The wise don’t make a show of their knowledge,
    but fools broadcast their foolishness. (Proverbs 12:21-23)

I was listening to a woman in our apartment complex the other day talking on her phone on the front porch. She was loud and obnoxious and was having a rather profane disagreement with the person to whom she was talking.

Someone said somewhere not long ago (how’s that for documentation) that in the old days it was nice out in public because fools kept their thoughts to themselves.

Nowadays, that is not the case. You can go anywhere, no matter how pleasant the situation would be otherwise and hear a fool blabbing their brains out loudly.

I do not like cell phones and at present don’t even have one. I am going to have to get one because Ella might need me (her disability makes her fall a lot) but I really do not want to. I have never really liked talking on the phone that much anyway and then to have to pay a lot of money to do it as seldom as I do irks me.

But the one thing about them I hate the most is fools blabbing in public. And it seems there is no way to make them realize that they are obnoxious. In fact, if you are looking at someone who is on the phone, chances are they will gripe at you for interrupting a private conversation. “Excuse me! I’m on the phone here!”

Yes you are, and thirty other people are on your side of the conversation.

It amazes me at the lack of brains in people in the world anyway, but that amazement has been compounded by the availability of cell phones. Nothing is private anymore. Nothing is personal. Nothing is quiet.

I remember when jamboxes got popular and someone would take their music to the beach or park or somewhere. Now earphones have become somewhat universal and cell phones are the ones you hate to hear.

Oh, well. A curmudgeon standing athwart progress shouting Shut-Up!

Seven Last Words of Christ: It is finished

Seven Last Words of Christ: It is finished (John 19:30).

Jesus was a young man, probably only about thirty-three years old. But he knew that he had but a short window of time in which to work.

The Bible says he was only thirty when he began his ministry, and he accomplished everything he needed to do in less than four years. Then he was through with the earthly part of his ministry.

Now he moved on to greater things.

When he hung on the cross, he recognized that he was through, that there was no more to be done. He had lived his life sinlessly, he had taught, he had mentored his apostles and many of his other disciples so that they could carry on his work. He had done everything he could do and everything he was supposed to do.

Ephesians says that all this had been planned from before the foundation of the world, that God had planned this long before the world was even created. He knew humanity would sin and fall from the perfection he gave them. He knew they would be trapped in sin with no way out. He knew that despair would set in and that everybody would know that there was nothing they could do.

And rather than let them sit there in their sins with a long list of things they had to do but were incapable of accomplishing, he would do something about it. He would give them release from their failure. He would redeem them from their sin.

He had gone through all the things in the last few days that he knew were coming. He had his fake trial and was condemned for nothing. He was hanging and dying.

There was nothing else to do now except to be through.

He wanted to be through. He was separated from God, he was in pain, he was alone on a level he had never been before in his whole existence. He was just through.

So as he drank the little bit of sour wine they gave him – a surprising act of mercy from a soldier – he said loudly, so that his voice would ring through the underworld as well as this world “It is finished.” I am through. I have done everything I came to do and I am tired and ready to be through.

It is finished.

Seven Last Words of Christ: I am thirsty.

Seven Last Words of Christ: I am thirsty.  (John 19:28).

The water of life is going physically dry.

As Jesus hung on the cross, that part of him that was human, his physical body was dying. He had lost a lot of blood, had really been too busy and preoccupied to eat and drink the past day. In fact, since the Last Supper, he probably hadn’t had anything. Then he was arrested, and his physical comforts were not foremost on the soldiers’ minds.

He was worn out, wrung out, bled out, sweated out. And his body called out, I am thirsty.

John 19:29 says A jar of sour wine was sitting there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put it on a hyssop branch, and held it up to his lips. One of the soldiers, in an odd act of mercy, gave him something to drink.

The sour wine, or vinegar as one translation calls it, was not an insult. It was ordinary cheap wine the soldiers drank. If the wine was good, it went to the richer people. If it was not as good, it went to poor people and soldiers. Having been a soldier, I know that they do not care a lot what they drink as long as it does its job.

The soldier put it on a sponge and on a branch and held it to Jesus’ lips.

The irony here is strong. In John 4, Jesus told a woman that he was the water of life, that in him was no thirst. And yet he is thirsty, thirsty beyond anything he could imagine.

In 1969, I was in Basic Training in the army in El Paso, TX, right in the middle of the desert. We did our marching in an area to the east of the White Sands Missile Range. It was mostly sand and scrub brush. And it was dry.

We went marching one day, walking through the sand in the extreme heat of the desert. We took salt tablets to keep us from dehydrating so our shirts were white stained where we had sweated around our pistol belt harnesses were.

After a particularly long walk – during which they would not let us drink, supposedly to teach us to do without if needed (but mainly to be mean, as I felt at the time) – we were resting. Then the drill sergeant told us we could have some water.

I took my canteen off my belt and uncapped it. Someone had decided that plastic was a good idea for the canteens and they were colored olive drab green like everything else.

I took a drink of the hot green plastic water and it was the most wonderful thing I had ever tasted in my life. At that moment, I would have drunk almost anything.

Jesus was to that point and he drank the sour wine the soldiers gave him. But verse 30 says it was the last thing he did.

With his last breath, the water of life was dried up, the beautiful life-giving flow stopped and Jesus died.

But like those springs in the desert that all you have to do is dig down a ways to find them again, the spring of water that was Jesus was not exhausted. Three days later, it bubbled up again and he was alive.

And now he gives us that chance to bubble up again, to be alive, to drink the water of life again.

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” Let anyone who hears this say, “Come.” Let anyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who desires drink freely from the water of life. (Revelation 22:17)

He is alive.