daily java

Daily Java:

Then the Lord said to me, “Even if Moses and Samuel stood before me pleading for these people, I wouldn’t help them. Away with them! Get them out of my sight! (Jeremiah 15:4)

I had a van once that was basically a good van. But it kept breaking in small ways. Nothing really huge, but just kept breaking. I had spent money to fix it and all, but I was getting tired of it. Since I do not like to change cars, I was trying to make it work. If it had continued, I would still have it.

But finally, one thing too many broke and it was again sitting by the side of the road. I had a friend who was extremely good at keeping cars going and kept a sorry old pickup he had running with duct tape and spinner wire. He really needed something else. So I gave him the van.

He took it home and found out that there was a bolt that had come misplaced somehow in the underassembly somewhere. He put it on and it worked fine.

He told me that it was a small thing and that it ran fine now. He felt bad taking it when it was such a small thing. I said no. I was sick of it. It had been a hassle and I had worked on it and worked on it until I was through with it.

Jeremiah the prophet pleads for Israel before God. But God says no. I am sick of them. I have given them my love and shown them my power and fed and clothed them, protected them and they have never really loved me. They spurn me at every opportunity like an unfaithful wife who cannot get enough of other men.

He says to Jeremiah, even if Moses and Samuel came to ask me, Moses and Samuel, two of the best men who ever lived, men who had an extremely close relationship with God – even they could not convince God to help them now.

They had gone into idolatry so far that Manasseh, one of the kings in the recent past, had even introduced infant sacrifice to the idol Dagon. To God this was absolutely repulsive. He was through.

Oh, he would bring them back as a smaller group, under the control of other empires. But they would never be like they were. In 900 BC, under the leadership of King David, they were the largest empire in the world. now they were a remnant in captivity.

Sooner or later, they would turn from worshipping him and begin worshipping his law and he would finally cut them loose and set up a new Israel, spiritual Israel )Romans 9-11). In this new system, he would gather all of the people of earth who really wanted to be part of his family and make them his children.

No longer could someone brag that they were physically born into his kingdom. Now all of the people who wanted to be with God could do so. It was a voluntary family, made up of volunteers, of people who wanted to be there. Anybody who wanted to come into that family could do so.

The God who was rejected  took all the people rejected by the world and made them his new family.

Sooner or later, enough was enough, even for God.

day five of my week long fast

Isaiah 53:1-6 NLT

        Who has believed our message
           and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
        He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
           and like a root out of dry ground.
        He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
           nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
        He was despised and rejected by men,
           a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
        Like one from whom men hide their faces
           he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
        Surely he took up our infirmities
           and carried our sorrows,
        yet we considered him stricken by God,
           smitten by him, and afflicted.
        But he was pierced for our transgressions,
           he was crushed for our iniquities;
        the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
           and by his wounds we are healed.
        We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
           each of us has turned to his own way;
        and the LORD has laid on him
           the iniquity of us all.

It is day five of my week long fast. We are moving towards the end of Jesus’ earthly life and the beginning of his kingdom.

This day is called Maundy Thursday. Sometimes it is also called Holy Thursday. Maundy comes from an old English word that comes from the Latin, mandatum or commandment. It was named after the comment Jesus gave in John 13 at the Last Supper. The new commandment superceded all the old commandments.

That new commandment is love.

Maundy Thursday is also a day in which foot-washing is traditionally done. Again following Jesus’ example.

But it is the last normal day of Jesus’ life. If you can call Jesus’ life normal.

But it is a full day. He celebrates the last Passover that will be sanctioned by God. There will be more held, but now the Passover and what it signified is gone. In a few days, Jesus will be our Passover.

In 1 Corinthians 5:7, the apostle Paul says: Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us.

Today he also sees a friend betray him. That is such an exquisite pain. It is heart-rending to see one that you trusted and loved turn on you for no real reason. It has happened to me and I suppose will happen again. One that ate at your table and accepted your love and hospitality can stab you in the back. And it hurts almost like that.

Jesus not only sees Judas betray him, but sees all his apostles, people he loved and trusted, turn on him.

About the only difference between them was that Judas got some money for it, while Peter and the others sold him out for a place at a communal fire.

Except for amount of return, there isn’t really any difference. Peter tried to fight first, at least, while Judas went out with a whimper.

But Jesus knew that would happen. And he loved them anyway. He kept the commandment.

1 John 3:16 says: We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters.

There was real love: to sacrifice yourself for people who run away from you.

Father God, I ask you for strength to love people anyway. I ask you to give me my fire back and renew my passion. I praise you. Amen.

more on the book of hebrews: a hard passage

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace. (Hebrews 6:4-6)

Back in the late ‘80’s, I was preaching for a church in south Texas and I decided to do a study on the Sermon on the Mount over the course of a year or less. I was going to look at each section and talk about it.

Things went fine until I came to Matthew 7:6: Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.

I had gone through chapters 5 and 6 pretty well, even at some of the hard parts, but this verse stumped me.

First of all, what exactly did it mean, why was it in here in a place that was generally positive and what could I do about it.

My answer? I decided to go into a study of Ephesians. Why? Because I didn’t understand the verse.

However, common sense won out. It is a dumb idea to leave something just because you are too lazy to try to understand it. I studied and thought and it came to me. All it means is summed up in two phrases:
     Don’t argue theology with a drunk and
     Don’t officiate at the opening of a brothel with a prayer.

The point is that some verses are hard, but there is an answer (most of the time) there for you to find if you will but depend on the Lord and study.

Hebrews 6:1-6 is one of those difficult passages. On the surface, it seems that if one leaves God, one cannot come back. In fact the early church interpreted it that way. Those who succumbed to persecution were often not allowed back into the church because they had “fallen away.” The church figured that God didn’t want them.

Of course, that is not what the writer was talking about. He says that it is hard to bring people back to what they have left. If you do, they have to accept again the things they have rejected. That is hard.

It is like falling out of love with your wife and then trying to fall back in love again. The very things that irritated you about her are still there. You have to deal with them and find the things that caused you to love her in the first place.

In those magazine ads they send you, they talk about why you should buy the magazine in a letter and brochures and other tree-wasteful stuff. Then there is one little envelope that says, “If you have decided not buy this product, please read this.” It will have some little extra bonus that they will give you if you will buy what they have for sale.

God has no extra envelope to give us. We take him or we don’t. And if we reject him, it is truly difficult for someone to bring us back. We have to accept again the grace and love that we rejected before as if it were new.

The good thing about it, however, is that it is God offering this, not a magazine subscription agency in Cincinnati. He can quicken out hearts and cause us to love him. After all, it was Jesus who said, No man comes to the Father unless the Father draw him (John 6:44). When it really comes down to it, all we decide to do is let God pull us.

We can decide to reject the pull and we can fight against the pull as Saul of Tarsus did. But God is sneaky and underhanded. He does not play fair and will find ways to get us. It is ultimately our decision whether or not to let him, but it is his grace and love that saves.