daily java

Daily Java:

However, he has given each one of us a special gift through the generosity of Christ. That is why the Scriptures say, “When he ascended to the heights, he led a crowd of captives and gave gifts to his people.” Notice that it says “he ascended.” This clearly means that Christ also descended to our lowly world. And the same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens, so that he might fill the entire universe with himself. Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ (Ephesians 4:11-13)

God gave us gifts. It is hard to imagine the God of the Universe giving us stuff, but he did. And the gifts he gave us are many. He talks about them at length in this book of Ephesians.

But then the apostle Paul says that God gave gifts to the church. He gave the gifts of leaders.

It really is hard to imagine the fact that the things pastors, teachers, evangelists and other leaders do is a gift from God to the church, but it is.

And he says he gave the gifts of leaders for one main purpose: to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church.

Leaders were given the gift of leadership, and then they themselves were given as gifts to the church. Pastors and teachers are gifts to the church.

I suppose it is striking to me because I see how churches treat their leaders. They do not treat them well. Instead of gifts, they are treated more like employees or hired hands, people expected to do the bidding of the church.

They are not. They are ultimately responsible to God and as such, do what he wants.

One of the major denominations has a clause in its bylaws that says:

The pastor is God’s gift to the church; the board is the church’s gift to the pastor.

In other words, God gives the pastor to the church to lead the church into great things. The board is the church’s response to the gift of the pastor to help him lead and to support him in what he does.

Unfortunately it is not that way. The board sees the pastor as an employee whose job it is to keep the church happy and to uphold their traditions. And in so doing, they negate that gift from God and throw it back into his face.

Harsh words, but true.

If the pastor is God’s gift, if teachers are God’s gift, if evangelists or apostles or prophets are gifts from God, they are holy. Yes, they are people, men and women just like everybody else. However, their function, their calling, their office is far different from anyone else.

In 1 Samuel 24:6, King Saul is chasing David, the newly crowned king to kill him. He figures if he can kill David, God will have no other choice but to let his family continue as rulers. David has a chance to kill Saul and his men urge him to take it. But he won’t. He said, “The Lord forbid that I should do this to my lord the king and attack the Lord’s anointed one, for the Lord himself has chosen him.”

Even though King Saul was corrupt and had gone bad, still David recognized that he had been a gift from God to Israel to be its king. And since he was from God, he was not to be harmed. Whatever his state, he was at one time touched by the holy hand of God.

It does not matter what you may think of your pastor. He is there because God wants him there. If you hurt him, or denigrate him or degrade him in any way, God will hold you accountable.

He cannot do what God told him to do if you do not let him. And if he cannot do what God told him to do because of you, you will be responsible for the harm done to the church. There are no two ways about it. Hurt the pastor and you have gone against the will of God.

Again, harsh words, but true.

odd and immoral characters in the bible who led israel

One day Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute. He went in to spend the night with her. The people of Gaza were told, “Samson is here!” So they surrounded the place and lay in wait for him all night at the city gate. They made no move during the night, saying, “At dawn we’ll kill him.” But Samson lay there only until the middle of the night. Then he got up and took hold of the doors of the city gate, together with the two posts, and tore them loose, bar and all. He lifted them to his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that faces Hebron. (Judges 16:1-3)

As a child in Bible class, I learned about this story. It was always interesting, especially to a young boy. Samson picks up the gates of the city and carries them to the top of the hill. We colored pictures of him doing this, and I would try to imagine myself doing the same.

It was interesting as I got older to realize that he was visiting a prostitute when this happened. When the citizens of Gaza found out he was there, they were going to kill him and laid wait to get him in the morning. Instead, he left in the middle of the night and took the gates of the city up the hill.

For what reason? I have no idea. Probably just an in your face gesture to the Gazaites, or whatever they were called.

But he was there with a prostitute. Now this was a man of God, and what is more, the book of Samson never ever one time mentions that this was a bad idea. It just mentions it. In fact, people throughout the Bible visited prostitutes sometimes while doing what God had sent them to do (the twelve spies and Rahab, for instance).

And what is more, why was Samson ever made a judge of Israel anyway? The guy was a rounder. There was little good or holy that he ever did in his life.

Why was he in the position he was? Romans 15:4 says that the things written before (that is, in the Old Testament) were written for our learning that we might have hope. What hope do I get from an immoral man being the judge of Israel?

One of the chapters before, Judges 13, had the angel of the Lord coming to Samson’s mother before he was born and telling her that Samson was to be a Nazirite, set apart to God from birth, and he will begin the deliverance of Israel from the hands of the Philistines.

Now he did that, I suppose. After he was captured, he brought down the temple with his massive strength and killed more in his death than he did in his life, Judges 16 says.

It is a conundrum. Why is such an immoral man mentioned as a deliverer of Israel yet nothing is said of his immoral lifestyle? I recognize that he came to an inglorious end, stripped of his power, blinded and made to grinding grain. It seems that God would have used this as an illustration of why Samson fell.

But, on the other hand, a lot of other men, who were great men of God, came to a rather inglorious end themselves. Jesus was chief among these. So his end doesn’t mean anything necessarily.

He did begin the deliverance of Israel from the Philistines, I suppose, but they were around long after Samson and caused a lot of hassle for Israel all the way through the kings. So he really didn’t accomplish all of what God set him to do.

Solomon was another example. God blessed him with wisdom and he turned around and did some of the stupidest things that could be done.

A lot of the men in the Bible were like this, set apart by God to do something great, yet never quite got around to it.

What does it mean? I do not know. I loved reading about him as a child, but I recognize that the things I read about him were extremely sanitized. No older woman Bible class teacher in the world is going to go into detail about Samson’s infidelities.

The Bible can surely be strange.