An Open Letter To My Daughter

The other night you asked your mom how we know that God exists. You wondered if maybe someone made up all the stories. How can you at six ask such questions? You are growing up much too quickly!

Probably the most fascinating story of them all is the one about the peasant family that gave birth to a baby boy in a dusty cave. Yet we are told this was the birth of God...at least as a human. What do you make of this one? It seems like it could have been made up but there are some details about the story we can be certain happened. This Jesus was born. How could that have been made up? There were shepherds and Magi and priests and plenty of others who saw the baby. He was born in a stable and that couldn't have been concocted out of air because there was an inn keeper who knew about it. The birth registry of the Romans would have documented his birth and anyone wanting to prove he never was could easily have looked that up. Of course the question about Joseph being the father is a bit of an oddity in the story but there is no reason to make that part of the account up. It would look too bad for the family of God to have the child not have the father who should have been his father his. How do you explain that to normal religious people anyway that you want to be your friends except that it is what happened. Make up the story that God was the baby's real father and you become a nutcase in a small town with enough gossip already in it to fill a stable. Either Joseph was the father (which obviously was not the case) or someone else was (which would have been the most reasonable conclusion except they never say it--because to their complete humiliation there wasn't another father). The story is a bizarre myth (which nothing about it except the virgin birth sounds like one)or it is what it is. God born the only way He could be born. To a mother normal like you and me but with God as His real Father.

The angels in the sky seem a bit weird too and that is understandable that you think it sounds like something from The Lion King. But again, it was real, filthy, dirt poor shepherds who saw it all and the story was never refuted...and could easily have been proven because the shepherds were there. No one questions a car wreck if seven people saw it. The fact that we haven't had many angel sightings lately doesn't prove they haven't occurred any more than a lack of George Washington sightings make the George Washington legend unbelievable too.

Now I realize that I haven't proven God exists but the other stories about Jesus are just as reasonable. The death of Jesus was witnessed by Romans, Jews, friends and enemies and no one refuted His death when the stories started circulating.

Oh, but the big story, the one of Jesus climbing out of His tomb after he died is certainly up for disbelief. But can we really question it just because we don't have dead grandfathers popping out of their coffins or dead aunts slipping back to us after they have been cremated. Just because I haven't seen such a thing can't always disprove it's something true. Again, I did not follow the Apollo rocket up to the moon and although it hadn't happened before, I am not one to doubt that shocking turn of events didn't happen. I believe the hundreds of NASA workers who tracked the thing and followed its progress through the skies. More than five hundred people saw Jesus alive after He died and they couldn't have all been a bunch of quackers with duck brains. There believability packed the Temple grounds of Jerusalem with normal souls like me and you who were too convinced to shy away from the most hated and purged "myth" to come along. No one made a movement of killing off Aphrodite lovers or Isis lovers. Those myths were just silly little tales. But the one of Jesus coming back to life was right there for all to see and prove right or wrong. And more than that, the myth cost you everything you had if you held to it too tightly...including little girls like you. You had to be certain you were right. Your world depended upon it.

The stories of God are a strange collection it is true my child but strange doesn't mean false. How do you explain a rag-tag band of one million slaves marching away from the greatest and most imposing army of its time if not by means of the sea splitting apart and the first borns of the slave owning nation all dying at once. The legend was too big for myth-hood. It was the most easily of all little stories to refute but the entire nation of Israel held to it not because it made them something special (psychotically special is what I really mean)but because every last grandfather of them and grandmother too (who are certainly more believable)said it happened. To top it off, the Egyptians all knew it happened and never made mincemeat (I know you have never heard of mincemeat--it is an ancient myth of still more ancient peoples than your own)of the crazy reports...because it happened just like Michael Jackson happened.

Myths that are really myths are just foolish but the myths that are true are only too good to believe. But then, I could say the same of you. Too good to be true!

Starting At First Corinthians Continued

The church is identified as “the purified ones” in Christ Jesus. The Greek word I translate, “purified ones:” is the famous “hagiazo”, the noun form being the term we know as “saints” Paul is noting that the church is all those who have been made saints, or to put it more precisely, purified and separated out from the rest of the world. This is not a work of the church, nor something any individuals within the church accomplish. It is an action outside the church, a doing that is incomprehensible in a purely natural sense. We look at physical, emotional and even spiritual qualities and try to mark the church by what we see but according to Paul, it has nothing to do with what we perceive. The Church is comprised of all those who are supernaturally purified in Christ Jesus.

The picture is of a container, being Christ Himself and those who are purified have been dropped in Him. Mysteriously, mystically, each one placed in Christ is made purified and set apart as God’s own…the collection of whom is the “Church”. The very meaning of the word church hints at this process. Ekklesia or church means “called out ones”. It is the assembly of the transformed; those who have been pulled out of their circumstances and placed within Jesus Christ in whom everything changes. Paul probably felt this sense of being taken out and dropped in more than anyone he knew. Enemy of Christians and persecutor of the Church, by the supernatural sky hook of the Holy Spirit, Paul was torn out of his old life and dropped without warning into a completely different world of Christian faith. Flying overseas has a bit of that same feel to it. One hour you are in a familiar airport within your own country, twelve hours later you are in Seoul Korea and no one talks like you and no one looks like you and everyone bows and likes kimchi. Paul was catapulted into a new world by Jesus and he could honestly say, “it wasn’t my fault”. The only difference between Paul’s transformation and the example given is that not only was Paul put into a new world, he was made into a new person, it is as if he was suddenly Korean without looking any different, and that is what makes the church the church.

Our identity as a church is not based on what we have done: it is completely determined by where we are placed. We are, as Paul puts it, “in Christ Jesus”. Now the question could easily be raised, “what part do we play in all of this”. Intuitively it feels like we are not just robotically programmed into following Jesus. The end of verse two explains the connection between God’s call to us and our interest in following Him. It literally reads, “with all the ones calling upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in all the places of them and us.” A true Christian is marked by this lovely quality. She is continually calling upon Jesus everywhere she goes. We cannot let the expression “name of our Lord Jesus Christ” confuse us in this. The name is simply the person, the cry to the Lord Himself. The Christian community is a dependent collection of misfits who are only really at home in the bond they have to Jesus. Take out the stuff of Christian activity…whether it be the prayer meetings or evangelistic events or the Bible classes and the core of Christian life is this dependence on Jesus that finds no other outlet but Him.
To Be Continued...

Dr. James Dobson's Thoughts

Dr. Dobson, the founder of Focus On The Family and a leader in Evangelical Circles provided the following thoughts on the McCain/Palin ticket. I promise I won't spend a lot of time writing on the election but Dr. Dobson is someone whose thoughts I value greatly...

Earlier this year Dr. Jim Dobson, President of Focus on the Family made news when he announced on “The Dennis Prager Show” that he “cannot and will not vote for Senator John McCain.” Today, on The Dennis Prager Show, the conservative leader changed course and announced his enthusiastic support on the heels of the announcement by Senator McCain of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate.
Dennis Prager: I have a guest here who’s extremely significant in American life, whether you call it American political, certainly American religious life, one of the best known Christians in America— Dr. James Dobson who is president and founder of Focus on the Family…. The last time you were on was a very serious conversation about your feeling at the time that you just couldn’t vote for John McCain, and where do you stand now?
Dr. James Dobson: Well, Dennis, I shared with a colleague just a few minutes ago exactly what you said about the period of time when Ronald Reagan had broken onto the scene and I was in Washington D.C. the day he was inaugurated. That was one of the most exciting days of my life, because everything that we had hoped for and been working for had come to pass. I feel very much that way today. Maybe that’s an overstatement. Maybe time won’t validate it, but this is a very exciting and encouraging day for conservatives and pro-family activists. I am just very, very pleased.
Prager: In light of that, may I infer that when you enter the voting booth—and I am putting you on the spot. I fully acknowledge, and you’re certainly free to say it’s a secret ballot you don’t want to say, but you’re too public to really get away with that, so what’s the story right now?
Dobson: Well, you know I did a radio program about a month ago with Dr. Albert Mohler, and we talked about what was at stake in this election and our concerns about the policies that Barack Obama would implement. The more I hear the more I learn, the more concerned I am, and so on that program Dr. Mohler and I talked about the fact that John McCain is not the perfect candidate. He’s certainly would not be my choice and, for over a year, I did not feel that I could vote for him. But I said in that radio program that “I can’t say it now”—which was then, because I didn’t know who his vice presidential choice would be, and he if would come up with Lieberman or Tom Ridge or somebody like that, we’d be back in a hole again. But I said for the first time “I might, I might.” And some people call that a flip-flop. If they do, so be it. Campaigns are long. You get information. You find out what the choices are. So I’ve been moving in John McCain’s direction. I don’t know if anybody cares, but for me…
Prager: Plenty, plenty of people care and that’s why I am having you on. I care, many people care and you have a lot of followers. You have earned the right to that respect. So are you prepared to say, “Folks, look, given this pick and all I have learned about what would happen with a Democratic victory we have no choice, but to enthusiastically work for the McCain-Palin ticket?”
Dobson: You know, I have only endorsed one presidential candidate in my life and that was George Bush in the second term after I had watched him for four years. I did not do that in his first term. So I’m very reluctant to do that. You marry a politician you can be a widow pretty quickly.
Prager: That’s right.
Dobson: But I can tell you that if I had to go into the studio, I mean the voting booth today, I would pull that lever.
Dobson: And that’s a long way’s from where I told you a year ago.
Prager: No kidding. No kidding. I am honored that you used this show to make that statement.
Dobson: You know, Dennis, the things that concern me about John McCain are still there. I made those comments not just based on emotions, but based on his record and some of the things that took place—embryonic stem cell research, and other things, the campaign finance, and other things. Those are still there. So, there’s still concerns. But I tell you, when I look at the choices that are ahead and what the implications are for this country, and now especially with this selection, with just an outstanding V.P. candidate as a running mate, I tell you what I am relieved and very excited.
Prager: Well, if you’re very excited given your previous reservations then I have to believe, and certainly based on the handful of calls I’ve been able to take the first hour before my “Happiness Hour,” I took the calls and people were so excited, palpably excited. Jim Dobson, and I got to tell you… if your base is energized then that is the biggest nightmare that the left has.
Dobson: I was just with about 300, maybe 400 people in a large auditorium, and they put Sarah Palin’s speech on the screen and we sat there and watched. I’m telling you it was electric. These were conservatives, you know. They were mostly Christian, but not all of them were. I mean to tell you, it set that crowd on fire. If that’s any indication, I think we are going to see some things.
Prager: We sure are. Well, you made my day. I just want you to know that.

Starting At 1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians 1:1-3 NIV
Paul, called apostle of Christ Jesus, through the will of God and Sosthones the brother To the church of God, to the one being in Corinth, to the purified ones in Christ Jesus, to the ones called holy with all the ones calling upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in all the places of them and us. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.


Corinth despite what is popularly asserted was a rather normal Roman Hellenistic city. It had been a thriving cosmopolitan complex until its destruction in 146 B.C. But in 46 B.C. it was restored under the leadership of Julius Caesar and made a Roman colony. Like other colonies, it was settled by Roman veterans who established its allegiance to Roman principles, values and customs. As a port city and a strategic commercial thoroughfare, it quickly rose in prominence and became a wealthy center of commerce and culture. People from all over the world settled there and it was a strategic location for a church to be founded. As the Gospel spread through the city, it naturally was taken abroad by new converts who were engaged in international commerce. Many think of Corinth as a center of immense corruption but in Paul’s time it probably was not much different from any other Roman city. It was however a place where there were throngs of poor and a concentrated minority of the immensely rich. No form of corruption was kept from the wealthy and that is where its reputation for perversion rested.

Most scholars contend that the book of 1 Corinthians was written by Paul from Ephesus in Asia Minor somewhere between 55 and 57 AD. His introduction at first glance would sound a bit self-promoting, a bit like someone referring to himself in the first person plural or calling himself “Mr. President”. Yet with his words, “Paul, called apostle of Christ Jesus” is establishing his identity as nothing more than one sent out by Jesus. He is not a shop keeper, not a baseball player, not a father or husband or rock and roll singer. He is a “sent out” (the meaning of apostle) because Jesus has sent him out. Identity is quite simple. It is what God designs us to be. The most fragile and disconcerting part of life is the step away from this one part. I have a point and it is completely tied to God.

Paul wasn’t an apostle because he always had a fascination with that sort of thing. He certainly never listed it as a young student on any vocational interest surveys. This apostleship was thrust upon him…not like a dog owner puts a vest on her little poochie but as a part of a complete transformation of identity. Paul was not an apostle as such, not even an apostle of Jesus Christ. He was a “called” Apostle of Christ Jesus and that completely altered the way his core operated. He could not drop his work in Ephesus because Paul was a called apostle. He could not stop loving the crazy Corinthians because he was a called apostle. As long as you are an apostle you can do whatever you feel like doing, even if you are an apostle of Christ Jesus Himself because it is just a work you do. A called apostle though cannot. He is transformed into this identity…much as a parakeet who is miraculously transformed into a seal no longer avoids swimming and stops wanting to fly. A called apostle has a new view of all he does and why he does it. He is who he is because he is first and finally called.

To Be Continued

Vote, Vote, VoteI

I'm quite certain I know who will win this election and pretty sure I know who would make the better president. But I don't care to think too much about it nor study a great deal the claims and counter claims, charges and counter charges, promises and counter promises. Not one president we have ever had has measured a stick to a forest the work of Christ. Jesus brought the Roman empire to its knees by his blood and by the blood of the mass of martyrs who lived for Him. No political system has had the impact on the world Christian faith has had. No economic policy, no global warming endeavor, no tax break will launch a world-wide change of heart. But a few who walk with Jesus cannot be stopped in their efforts to turn their parts of the world around. Politics is a powerful diversion but diversion none the less from the one thing. The Bereans may not have had Newsweek to keep them up to speed but they had the scriptures and of all people...they were nobler than the rest.

"...for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the scriptures every day..."Acts 17: 11b

Does it Matter What We Believe?

A recent report by the Barna group indicated that there is a significant difference in the way Evangelical Christians act and the rest of Americans. They discovered that 74% of Evangelical Christians do not use profanity, 88% don't view pornography, 95% don't gossip, 97% are not engaging in inappropriate sex and 99% do not lie or engage in drunkenness. On the other hand 60% of atheists and agnostics use profanity, 50% view pornography, 34% gossip and 33% are engaged in drunkenness. Those from other faiths are twice as likely as evangelical Christians to use profanity, view pornagraphy and lie. If you are interested in the full article from the Barna Group, click on the link given below. It really does matter what you believe!




John 17:20-23
I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
John 17: 20-23

Friend

Isn't it amazing God calls us His friend? There are few things I have found in life as wonderful as the friends who make their lives my home! As I get ready to leave the office, I wonder if I have put down the hoe enough times...I certainly am good at picking it up!






When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit. Robert Frost


Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well. 3 John 2

I Am Sorry

Most recognize the words, "I am sorry" as the mark of John the Baptist's ministry. "Repent" But what is mostly forgotten is that "I am sorry" was at the core of Jesus' own preaching. In fact many of His sermons were just "Repent for the Kingdom of God is before you." I realize that many do not acknowledge, "I am sorry" as a legitimate theological step to living for Jesus but it is the most mystical and revelatory of them all. For without the "I am sorry", there is no acknowledgement of personal sin, no realization that I am genuinely wrong. I can never be in God's presence without an assurance of "I am sorry" pressed within me. What more can be said of Isaiah's confession, "Woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips..." if not it is a full-blown "I am sorry." The other day I was reminded again of just how twisted Satan can make our personal theology. I heard an "I am sorry" but there was a caveat attached. "I am sorry you were so..." followed by an "I am sorry they didn't act..." connected to the most unmistakable "You sorry..." The name God is wonderful unless Satan slips next to it a verb of denouncement. We are most Christian when we have an "I am sorry" flowing off our lips but if we connect it to someone else, we fall as far from Jesus as is possible in this life. "I am sorry" is the beginning of all praise and the true start to real fellowship. We cannot live within God if we do not have a few "I am sorry"s spontaneously jumping out of our hearts. We just have to leave everyone else out of our "I am sorry" if we want to get it right.

Uz Too! Concluded

Unfortunately the writer keeps going. He should know better. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated-the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. (Hebrews 11:35-38 NIV) The bad theology gets worse. The conclusion of the passage states that all of these…the ones who opened the mouths of lions as well as those who were lion food were commended for their faith.

What can be said about Paul’s litany of disasters described in 2 Corinthians 11? If God thought it so crucial we have a great life, why did he let Paul get flogged five times, shipwrecked three times and three times be beaten with rods. Not only that he had to constantly justify himself to the churches he started, always needing to prove his apostleship! Sure Job ended up with more cattle and sheep than he had before his disasters but that does not take away the fact that he was tormented…with God’s acceptance. If prosperity rules, then why do the majority of believers world-wide have such a tough time of it? My friend in Russia pastors a church of less than ten; makes do with just enough income to keep him and his wife from starving and is constantly working out new ways to share the gospel with little success. Does God think less of him than my friend in Southern California who is on staff at a mega church that brims with excitement? The truth is that God is not all that enamored with success and feels no compulsion whatsoever to make every one of His best friends successful or even “above average”.

Third, fairness is not a part of the Christian equation. Every parent with more than one child has heard the complaint, “it’s not fair” at least a thousand times. Believers who think God acts “fairly” must find Job almost incomprehensible. God is not “fair” and never pretends to be. Prayers based on trying to get God to play fair are missing the main part of prayer. God is working all things together for our good but He is not making things fair. It certainly isn’t fair that a little gymnast who strained her entire life to reach the Olympics falls off the balance beam and loses her chance at a medal. It isn’t fair to her parents who sacrificed their life savings to get her the coaching she needed to do well. It isn’t fair for the teacher who worked long hours without pay to help this little girl become a star. It wasn’t fair that Job’s children died. It wasn’t fair Jeremiah was put in prison for preaching what God told him.

The sawed in half prophets and the conquerors of Palestine listed in Hebrews 1 are woven together with a single strand. Faith! Faith is what ties the loose ends of our lives together…the “fair” parts and the “unfair”. The climax of Job is not the restoration of Job’s prosperity, it is the faith his friends exhibited when they sacrificed the bulls and rams upon God’s word..not upon any promise everything would work out. As Job in faith prayed for the three, everything came together for all of them. We enter heaven through faith, we move mountains by faith, the dead are raised through faith and we make sense of our lives through faith. As long as Job tried to get things fair, he was a mess, a chaotic wreck. When however he accepted in faith God’s giant greatness overriding his circumstances, Job came together, his life came together and his religion came together.

Faith, when it is born, is conceived in the unfair. The misinterpretation of Jesus’ comment on the eye of a needle has confused many about the Kingdom of God. Jesus, if He was saying anything, it was that it is impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Now if He was merely stating that we can’t get into heaven through what we have, then He would not have stopped with the rich. He would have told us that the poor also can’t get in and the middle class can’t get in. What Jesus specifically stated was that it was not possible for the rich to enter the kingdom. Why? It is because prosperity is the enemy of faith. In richness, I have no use for faith. Riches are tangible, viewable, countable, holdable. Faith is none of that. Faith is trust in God who is not seen, belief in God who cannot be pushed, hope in God who is not fair. As long as life was squared off and safe and understandable, Job could only have the weakest and most barely sufficient part of faith. When Job was made certain through his suffering that nothing in life was ever to be fair, then to follow God, He had to take it in faith.

When God makes us poor whether it be one way or another, it is to strip us of our hope at fairness and push us to trust Him. Salvation does not come to us because it is fair. It comes because God is kind. I asked my kids if they would rather have me be fair or have me love them. The Cross is God giving us the final word. He is not fair. But He is good. While we were still SINNERS, Christ died for us. You can only take this in faith…just as you take your broken leg in faith, your dropped savings in faith and your lost career in faith, and even your good health. God may not be fair. He never tries to get you to accept that. But He does love you. Jesus spent a lifetime helping us see that.

Terrorism At Lake Elizabeth

I have this nasty habit of walking clockwise around Lake Elizabeth. Almost everyone else walks counter-clockwise and it puts me in the most frightening position of having to actually look at people as they go past me. The scary part of this is that many stoically refuse to notice me. Perhaps it is my low levels of self-esteem that drive this sick compulsion I have to say hi to people as they walk by. I have actually had to look straight at people and with my loud preacher voice nearly yell out, "good morning" before they would notice me. Some smile and greet me warmly while others cut their eyes at me in a slicing flash of acknowledgement and in cracking tones, do their best to beat out of themselves a good morning to their own chagrin. When I was in Moscow, I tried to do the same thing, smiling broadly at the elderly "Babushkas" and firing out a hearty "kagdula" to them as we met on the street. Most just looked away in disgust but every once in a while I would receive a cheery smile...perhaps out of pity for my poor Russian. The other day I passed along to one of my fellow walkers an invitation to our church. Now he won't even look at me when I give him my "good morning".

What makes us so difficult to reach even with friendly intentions? Why is there so much sourness in our world? I wonder if Jesus was ever shocked by how mean spirited so many were who gawked at Him as He preached the Kingdom of God. Jesus was the Jerusalem terrorist who brought horror to those who just wanted to keep to themselves. The shocking part of Jesus was that He forced God upon the world. For the first time ever, an entire nation had to look at God and gaze upon His smile. How horrible it must have felt for so many to actually have to watch Christ heal the blind, raise the dead and make the lame walk! Some people...all too many, do their best to avoid the freindly gaze of Jesus because I guess they just don't want to smile.

There certainly is too much grumpiness out there, too much cynicism and too much bitter angst over what is going wrong. But there is one thing right we must never miss. The smile of Jesus can warm the coldest heart and even tired babushkas walking around Lake Elizabeth need a hint of it.

Uz Too! Part 2

When Job settles into the horror of his situation, he does what all of us try to do given rough circumstances. He tried to make some sense of it. The question is out there for him. “What is happening?” But like so many of us, Job doesn’t really think he will ever get a chance to ask it. I know for many the turning point in Job is God’s response to him out of the whirlwind. But I don’t think it is. The fulcrum of Job is his call for a “hearing” with God. Even if I summoned him and he responded, I do not believe he would give me a hearing. (Job 9:16 NIV) He doesn’t think it will happen but that is what he wants. Not success, not power, not health; all those things he has lost interest in as priorities. What Job wants is answers. “What are you doing God?” “What is happening?”

What is happening of course is that Satan was trying to shake Job free of his devotion to YHWH. But that does not explain God’s part in this. Was God watching with eager anticipation to see if Job would give up his faith in the same sort of way we watch the Olympics to see who wins or was God doing something else with Job that was not quite so small as Him showing off Job’s resilience as one might show off the skills of a prized racehorse? It certainly sounds ridiculous and certainly is ridiculous to think God at any point is waiting with eager anticipation to see how things turn in any part of the Universe and it is just as absurd to think God is vain and must show off His stuff to make Himself feel good.

If it is true that every person would like a hearing with God and is wondering often enough, “What is going on”, then it seems that Job as the ultimate transcript of human despair and God longing should give us something to help us know what we should do with our feelings toward God. Of course the book ends with very little to say about why God let Job suffer so much and it gives us little to hope that any of us should ever expect an explanation in this lifetime for what we go through. Job’s friends thought it was the “what goes around comes around” karma God they had but if there is anything that clearly comes out of the book it is that God does not operate that way in any sense. Karma does not govern any part of the universe and Job’s friends, for positing it as the reason for Job’s suffering were fiercely rebuked by God and made to offer animal sacrifices and beg for Job’s prayers to avoid an undisclosed punishment for their “folly”.

There are three clear conclusions we can make from Job that help us understand God’s dealings with us. First, as mentioned above, life is not a wrap around. What comes around goes around is a ludicrous view of life. If that were the case, then we all would be burned up in a ball of fire by now for our sins stink to heaven. God does not treat us as we deserve. I understand that the Proverbs point out the value of right living and that God does punish sin but as we see in Job, there is not and has never been a one to one correspondence of action by us and reaction by God. Bad people prosper and good people fail and good people prosper and bad people fail and that is the way it is. God never apologizes for this to Job, Job’s friends or anyone else. Karma, instant or otherwise is a myth.

Second, God is not overly concerned about our prosperity. Prosperity has never been the ideal Christian life although we seem to be enamored with it. Just a casual reading of Hebrews 11 makes that quite clear. Oh we love the teaching of verses 32-35. And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Now that sounds like good theology doesn’t it? Joel Osteen must love this passage.

To Be Continued...

A Different Preaching Direction

For the next several months I will be taking a break from my normal preaching schedule and preaching through the book of 1 Corinthians out of the Greek text. It clearly is a great book to teach and loaded with important information for anyone wanting to have a passionate faith.

Uz Too! Part 1

Then the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." "Does Job fear God for nothing?" Satan replied. "Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face." Job 1:8-11 NIV



The biggest question in religion has nothing to do with the existence of God. Children wonder if He is myth but not adults. There is too much evidence for a creator to give serious thought to tired arguments for a God free universe. Evolution proves nothing of the atheist contention that life spontaneously generates or even more importantly that matter exists without an atom builder. God is accepted everywhere as being present…to contend otherwise is to beat your head against a thorn prickled stone wall. What we do ask a thousand times a day in ten thousand different languages is what ancient Job also asked. “What is happening?’

Everyone loves to hear the success story but even Michael Phelps has crashed into the swimming pool wall, lost his keys and said something completely ludicrous when he was nervous. Yet the daily pound of difficulties is not what makes Job’s question so universal. If the troubles were expected, we would simply roll with them like the gold fish that looks up at the top of the bowl and sighs, “Fish food again!” But that is not how it is! Human beings expect something different, something better…especially of a God they know is there.

The difficulty the introduction to Job presents is that it would be easy, if that was all of Job you really took with you is the horrifically but understandable mistaken belief that somehow Satan got in to the mix and like he did with Eve, made a mess of God’s ideals. There really are only two ways to think of God if you aren’t careful, God is really good but sometimes blunders and lets Satan talk Him into making life blow up on us or God is not really good and needs us to help Him develop a warmer and kinder personality. Like the wife who tries to help her husband realize he needs to spend more time with his kids, we pray with the same sort of corrective motives.

The other day I was praying for God to help me fix my broken door. After much frustrated effort, it still would not stay closed and I angrily wondered why God hadn’t made it right. The entire pagan system of human sacrifice and pantheon of gods was an attempt to make God work, or at least find one who would sympathize with your plight. Islam is built on the same principle…Allah is harsh and unbending; better make sure you meet his demands or he will take away your lunch…paradise. Witchcraft and astrology both make much of wielding power over supernatural forces so that you can get a fair shake in life. Karma turns life into a giant equation that forces fairness into everything. Each false religion is a human attempt to get at the paradox everyone intuitively recognizes. God is and life at times seems senseless.

Continued Tomorrow

Congratulations!

Congratulations to the Lebers and the finalization of the adoption of their three kids! What a great answer to prayer and show of God's power in putting this family together!!!

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27

Finding Nemo

Yesterday Nemo committed suicide. He jumped right out of the fish bowl and landed on the floor under my desk. With no one to rescue him or give mouth to gill resuscitation, he died. Needless to say I was stunned by this senseless waste of life. He had everything he needed to make him happy. A bowl to swim in endless circles, fish food...three tablets every day. A bowl to swim in endless circles...fish food, three tablets every day. Did I mention he always had that fish bowl where he could swim in circles? He even had the opportunity to look at me for hours at a time while I worked. My son said he thinks Nemo killed himself because he had to listen to me practice my sermons. I am sure he was just kidding! I think Nemo thought he was a bird and was convinced he could fly. Maybe I am in denial and refuse to deal with the inner turmoil Nemo suffered. Needless to say, it is a bit depressing staring at my empty fishbowl knowing that I didn't do enough to make my Nemo happy. Perhaps I should have taken him on walks or turned his fishbowl light on and off more during the day to give him something else to think about. I am just glad he didn't die from global warming...that would have been really bad! I need to find something to do with myself to take my mind off finding Nemo...on the floor. Perhaps I'll go fishing...

A Gentle Mystery

At our cell group last night we discussed the mystery of John the Baptist and his relationship to Jesus. The Baptist makes a bit of an odd comment in John 1: 31 He comments as he points out to several of his disciples Jesus strolling nearby, "I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel." So what did he mean by this? Is he saying that he did not know Jesus before he started baptizing? The question spins on the meaning of "know". Of course we may sound like we are parsing out the definition of "is" but there is a quite important spiritual lesson to learn from this. The two most important Greek terms translated "know" in John are ginosko and oida. Ginosko and oida are nearly identical in their meaning but ginosko has more the sense of personal knowledge, the knowledge of intimacy. Oida has the sense of understanding, of "getting it". John was not saying that he had no idea who Jesus was. He was indicating what is quie important to recognize. He could not know Jesus, he could not get it about Him even if he watched Jesus every day unless the Spirit revealed to him who Jesus is. His own brothers apparently did not really know Jesus as indicated in John 7 because even then after so many miracles they did not believe in Him. You can be very close to God and the things of God and never know Him unless the Holy Spirit makes Him clear to you. That is why it is so painful for us to "grieve" the Holy Spirit. We cannot know Jeus without Him. Pray, "open my eyes Lord." There is so much to see that most of the world is missing. The biggest and maybe the only part to see is waiting for you. What do you know?

Time Out

Perhaps the most famous time-out in history was the one Job received. Everything going well and without warning he was stopped in his tracks. What makes Job so shocking is not the horrors Job faced but rather the seeming unfairness of it all. Many have suffered just as worse or more than Job but no one has been so "unfairly" treated. The turning point in Job is Job 9: 16 Even if I summoned him and he responded, I do not believe he would give me a hearing.

Have you ever wanted a hearing with God?

The Perfect Image

Is there a more perfect metaphor for Cell Group ministry and the total Christian life than Jason Lezak's come from behind victory over Alain Bernard, the world record holder in the 100 freestyle? Few sports are more painful than swimming sprints and almost no one ever comes from behind to win...that is why it is so magnificent when it happens. I know of very few cell group leaders who do not feel continually like they are behind Alain Bernard with no shot at victory. We pound away and yet the gold is always just too far beyond our reach. That is why I love so much the Apostle Paul's bellow from the heavenly stands. "So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up, or quit." Or, as Michael Phelps screamed, "Go!" My friend, the pool is all yours. It's your time to make a run at it!

Not A Hero Concluded

Noah on the other hand is known for three qualities. He was “adeek”—righteous, just. Second, he was “tomime” He was complete, whole, sound, integrated. In other words, inside and out, Noah did what was right. Third, Noah “walked with God”. It is the exact same expression used to describe Enoch…also in Seth’s line who did not die but just disappeared from the world at for the time was a very young age (a mere 365 years old). Literally it reads that he walked himself fervently with God. The gist of it is that Noah pushed an intimacy with God, worked at it, made it important.

Noah’s credibility on the world scene was negligible. He had none of the acclaim of the Nephilim, was culturally irrelevant and for a hundred years looked like a fool. Noah was the antihero, the Napoleon Dynamite of his age. Our time is one of jostling for power, posing for mirrors, clamoring for attention and Noah was the antithesis of this. In an era when no one had ever seen rain, let alone believed in its existence, Noah clung to a faith in God that was nonsensical yet he built his life not on thoughts of world-wide floods but on a craving for God. A good reputation did nothing for him. A hundred years building an ark takes out of you the pangs for acceptance and acclaim. Give one man enough time pursuing God and he is at peace with the most astounding of circumstances.

I am not sure what I would have thought of Noah if I knew him back in his day. I probably would have considered him just plain odd. But I know what I think of him now. He is all I want to be. Skip over to the ark for just a moment. It too was nothing to look at. It was just a giant box. No beautiful engineering lines, no slick cabins or lovely dance floor. It was just a big wooden box 547 feet long, 91 feet wide and 47 feet high with planked off compartments inside to separate out the creatures. Noah’s sole task in life, above all else was to get himself and his family in the ark. Regardless of what else may go well or badly for him; that was it. Hide yourself in the ark. We sometimes complicate life far too much with our goals and plans and responsibilities when it is the one thing that must happen.

If we can take a small liberty with scripture and make a comparison that seems apt, it is that Christ is our ark. If we do nothing but hide in Jesus, regardless of how everything else may turn, we have lived. But if we do not hide ourselves in Him, it does not matter what we do with ourselves, it is all in vain. What else did the Apostle Paul mean when he reminds us that because of our faith in Jesus Christ, we are dead to everything that was before? For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:3-4 NIV) An interesting detail of the ark is that you could not be partway in it and live. You were either all the way in or completely out. There was no hanging on to the side for long.

We are completely hidden within Christ and saved or we are outside Him and totally lost. Every part of us is that way, every act of ours is that way and every thought of ours is that way. Hidden in Christ and saved or outside Him and perished. Imagine Noah, as so many are with God, straddling the opening and just happy to be around the ark. Many believers have the same form of faith. Just enough of Jesus to be near Him; just enough devotion to keep Him in view and no more they insist. How much of the ark did Noah need to preserve his family? How much Christ will preserve yours?

Last week my blog tracking stopped. In other words, I could not see how many were reading my blog and for all I knew no one was looking at it. All I was left with was a desire to write in God and a hope He wanted to be with me as I did it. The assumption that the value of my life is based on what someone else, anyone else thinks of me is absurd. Leo Tolstoy once famously wrote, “Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather than the path I follow and which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side!” There is one thing you need to do each day and every hour that is more important than anything else you attempt. Figure out a way to hide yourself in Jesus. We surely may look like stumblebums at times and how we do it may make us the anti-hero, but we have no other way to live.

Exist

I am unabashedly beside myself with joy that we have a Savior who loves so much and pours out life. I think it is beyond comprehension that God cares a whit about us and takes even the least interest in what we are. The entire concern over whether or not God exists is such a fragmented and juvenile mental tottering that sometimes it bewilders me that anyone doubts God's existence. So much proof of Him has come my way over the years that atheism could never ever confound me. But I do at times wonder why He does what He does with me and what on earth His plans can be that are so important that I must be bent over by His "furious" wind. As I look upon the dreams God has for Calista and His miraculous bringing of her parents together, it astounds me how everything is put in place by God and His perfect will. None of us would be here if it were not for His miracle of bringing two people together in union...two people who never could have thought of each other if God had not inched them into one another's arms. Marriage will survive just as babies and baby making survive because God loves all three!

Not A Hero Part Two

Return to the two lines. The line of Cain is identified by two markers. One is the mention of vocations. Three in his lineage are remembered for their careers. Adah a son of Lamech was the father of all who live in tents and herd livestock. Jubal is the founder of harp and flute playing and Zillah, a third son of Lamech was skilled at forging iron and bronze tools. The second famous link to Cain’s lineage is murder. Both Cain and his descendent Lamech are registered man-killers. Now contrast that to Seth’s line which like Cain’s is described in a linear fashion…only one son per generation in the line is mentioned, the one through whom the family tree is established Cain’s stretches to Lamech, the murderer; Seth’s to Noah. In Seth’s tree two in the line are known for “walking with God’. No murderers mentioned in Seth’s lineage. No “walkers with God” are registered in Cain’s line. The distinction between the two is pretty clear. One line seems to be the sons of man, Adam as it is put literally—Adam the sinner. The other line is the sons of God—walkers with God.

The early history of mankind was marred it would seem by the blurring of the lines. Walkers with God (those of the spiritual lineage of Seth) left off their devotion to Yhwh and began to intermarry with the murderers (the spiritual lineage of Cain). Now we can be reasonably certain that there were far more in the world population than just those who fit into the family lines of Lamech and Noah. But it would seem apparent that there were two camps among all the peoples of the world—those who looked to God and those who didn’t. As generations developed over time, the followers of Seth became intrigued and infatuated by the beautiful women who were followers of Cain. It was a bit like what happened much later when many Israelite men were seduced by the Moabite women and led astray into sin. Sethians married Cainites and mankind was thrown into moral depravity.

Our age of relativism has fooled us into thinking that blurred lines are a good thing. The mixing of cultures, the combining of ethnicities are amalgamated into the acceptance of religion hazing. What is fascinating to consider is that every ethnic group was located in these two first people—Adam and Eve. No one with any shade of skin or shape of nose or size of lip or thickness of eyelid can be placed outside this one perimeter. We all are from Adam and Eve. Therefore mixed marriage is the essence of humanity as first formed. What is not accepted is the mixing of faith. The marriage of Sethians to Cainites did not result in a missionary race of God-seekers who won over the Cain line. Instead what resulted was a Cainite world with just a few Sethian survivors clinging to the last scraps of faith. By the time Noah came along, the entire world had been converted all right. But not to God.

Recently I received an email from a friend who told me that as long as she remained married to her husband, her devotion to God plummeted. His faithless lifestyle made her less and less like Christ. God in Malachi 2 insists that the whole purpose of marriage is to raise up Godly children. The lesson of Genesis 6 is that when the sons of God marry the daughters of Adam, those children do not make it. The occasional Noah may result but that is an aberration, not a normal outcome.

Not only were there two lines of people at this time, one expanding and the other diminishing, there were two ways of seeing them. The heroes of old were called Nephilim. They were, as the Hebrew puts it, “the strong ones, forever men of a name”. Known everywhere for their power, the Nephilim were universally admired. Just recently, the basketball Kobe Bryant was given a thunderous ovation by the 90,000 attending the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing. Why? Because he has basketball power. Our Nephilim are movie stars, political candidates, CEOs, and world class athletes. The Nephilim, we are told, came out of the union of sons of God with daughters of Adam and despite the flood survived to continue shaping the culture of the world.
To be completed Tomorrow.....

Not A Hero Part One

When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years." The Nephilim were on the earth in those days--and also afterward--when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth--men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air--for I am grieved that I have made them." But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

This is the account of Noah.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.
Genesis 6:1-9 NIV

One of the more interesting controversies that some might well argue has no bearing whatsoever on the interpretation and understanding of scripture has to do with the sons of God marrying the daughters of man. Who were these sons of God? Why was it so bad they married the daughters of Eve? Many argue that the sons of God were angels who developed an attraction for beautiful women. The children that resulted from these bizarre unions were the Nephilim. Of course there is no support for this anywhere in scripture and intuitively this whole possibility seems noxious. But regardless of our personal feelings about the possibility, Jesus Himself seems to dispel this myth. When asked the famous trick question about the resurrection, “If a woman was married to seven different husbands, whose would she be in heaven”, Jesus’ answer was curt. “There would not be any marriage in heaven”, He told the inquirer. We will be just like the angels who also don’t marry and are not given in marriage. (See Matthew 22: 30; Mark 12:25)

So, if the angels aren’t “equipped” for marriage, then who were the mysterious “sons of God”? If you follow the genealogies in Genesis 4 and 5 an interesting pattern appears. There are it seems, only two strands of mankind. The line of Cain and the line of Seth! Now we know that Adam and Eve certainly had daughters and sons other than Cain, Abel or Seth because Genesis 5 tells us that. Why were not those other boys mentioned in the genealogy and their family lines described?
Continued Tomorrow...

Handyman

Yesterday I used my day off to "fix things". First the continuously running toilet...then the broken wall switch...the garbage disposal...the electric lawnmower. What for most is such an easy mechanical task is for me the climbing of Mt. Everest. Every little handyman job I tackle has the making of a very long and disastrous day. I can never take lightly a fix-it job whether it be the changing of the ballast in the fluorescent light fixture or the replacement of a faucet. Each has its own dragon to conquer. First I worked on the toilet...prayed fervently. It stopped leaking. On to the wall switch. After two trips to Home Depot and some kindergarten level instructions from a store employee along with much more prayer...the light worked. On to the garbage disposal. Prayed with greater fervency than I can describe. Put it in...and it leaked. Discovered where the leak was, resealed the pipe...and it worked. Moved on to the front lawn and after more prayer and contemplation of what it would be like to use a push mower (the lawn looks afterword like the haircut you got from your dad)the mower started...and worked the entire time. Not sure I understand anything much about how "things" work but I do know about Jesus dependency. I thought afterword how it would have been if after praying none of the tasks went well. That has happened...and will happen again it would seem. My reading during my time alone with God came from Galatians 3 Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you? Don't these things happen among you just as they happened with Abraham? He believed God, and that act of belief was turned into a life that was right with God. The Christian life is more about faith than it is about getting anything done...But it is nice when something does get done. Both the faithful and unfaithful succeed and fail but only the faithful gain anything in the end...a life right with God.

Just to think about

When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal, his days will be a hundred and twenty years."

Who were the sons of God?
What does, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever" mean?

The Nephilim were also on the earth in those days--and also afterward--when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.

Was God disappointed He made man?
Did God feel He made a mistake?

How do you think God feels now as He looks about?

So the Lord said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth--men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air--for I am grieved that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

Could what was said of Noah be said of you?

Whale Sightings

Took two days over the weekend and ate...and ate...no exercise, no water but I did eat. Gained 3 pounds

Yesterday
Walked an hour and prayed, beat the ground up for three laps around the track, drank 6 cups of water, had a double cheeseburger and Pibb, ate a pretty small dinner
Beelzebub (she now has been given her sixth different name since we got her...now Rachel calls her snowball) mauled my leg trying to reach my waist and then kept chasing the needle of the dial on the scale...took 6 tries before I got a reading I liked.
Lost 2 pounds
Bottom line: Even

Why Noah, Why Not Noah

What is it that went so wrong so quickly with Creation that God made the call to wipe out everything? There are two ways to look at the Flood account. Why did God destroy the world...animals and people? Why did God save a remnant? It is quite easy to just take the righteousness of Noah argument to explain completely God's decision to save His family but there seems to be something running much deeper in the psyche of Yhwh that makes the Noah family and (the Noah creatures?) saveworthy. If success is measured in all the variables I mentioned below, then we are hardpressed to define Noah in a success assessment. He wasn't at all cool like the Nephilim. But there is something more there that cannot be separated from the saving decision of God to hold on to Noah. Yes he was good and right but he wouldn't always be so and the generations that followed made a mess of what they were given. Most of Noah's descendants were nothing to make one proud. But Noah was grabbed and held by God and that is a fascinating consideration. Why? Some might say "why not" but only because they have not considered the pain God suffered over what came out of His Creation...Here is the key verse in all of this discussion. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Genesis 6: 8 NIV Why? What makes God want us when we have so little to offer Him? That I think is the key question that when answered unlocks the mystery of Job and his sufferings. If we get at the answer to why God kept Noah and his family, we can reconcile the troubles we face with the mercy of the Cross and the love God professes for us. Why Noah?

Success?

What does make you successful? The Christian cliches are easy to pull out and mumble mindlessly to those you think need to hear them and yet most of them have felt pretty shallow to me. "Give God your best." "Be faithful!" "Pray and read your Bible." What if you do all that and it still feels like an unsuccessful life? The Christian community certainly doesn't in reality assess life this way. Christian success is built on popularity, likability and doing better than others around you. Blogs are successful based not on how well they are written or designed but rather on how many actually go to them again and again. Even in the Christian community this is the case. Churches, ministries and artistic endeavors are all rated based on the very real success quotients of the world stretching all about us. How many like them, attend them or financially support them is the measure of achievement. We act like the Church doesn't see it this way yet it is so. But then what about the vast multitude who never taste success, never have their blogs read, never preach to crowds, never cut a CD, never gain more than a handful of compliments for their life work. Where do their lives rank? Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie are the John Lennon caricatures of Christian success or unsuccess lived out. But are they caricatures or the way we really do play out the Church tune? This week I am examining Noah and his wasted life. It has brought me to my knees in humble recognition of how far I have drifted from a right way of looking inward. What is a success paradigm I can live with and embrace with joy? Father McKenzie is not that far from my doorstep and I must know what to do about him. I already know what John Lennon thinks...

Don't Forget...


"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. Matthew 7:13-14

A Tale Of Two Minkahs Concluded

Continued From Yesterday's Blog

The internal response of Cain to God’s reaction to his minkah is most telling. Remember we are peering in on the infancy of mankind when sin has not worked its way through every fabric of life yet, when bloodthirsty men and adulterous women were not making sin seem such a small and commonplace thing. The psychology of man was still simple too. Horrible experiences had not yet marred his way of thinking and interacting so we see in this microcosm of being a very telling thing about how life really is. The way Cain responds to God’s feelings about his sacrifice honestly feels rather childish. Why did he become so furious just because YHWH thought much of Abel’s minkah but was not happy with Cain’s? The reaction of Cain isn’t the result of immaturity; it is the way things look when sin hasn’t saturated your life and you are careless in your devotion to God.

One of the most important strategies of science is to eliminate every single variable from an experiment so that all you have left is a clear result. You want to test for how beneficial drinking lots of water is on health, you compare two groups of people with similar physical characteristics and give them the same diet and same exercise regimen and have them live in the same sort of environment and you might be able to find out how helpful it is to drink lots of water…or not helpful. In our account is the same sort of study. What you have here is the elimination of every other source of discouragement, every other difficulty, every other problem with friends and family and you are left with just the pure outcome of giving a bit to God and no more. We are so accustomed to lackadaisical, lukewarm, tepid faith that we are desensitized to its real effect. We see in Genesis four that it makes us miserable human beings. It is easy to just slough off this example as merely reflective of Cain’s socio-pathic personality. He had bad genes. Did he though? So far all we have about mankind in the early parts of Genesis is the wormy, pathogenic work of sin on the human race. In Genesis four is sin played out in offerings to the Lord. God clearly wanted us to know by showing us Cain’s response how a degenerate view of sacrifice could erode the human personality.

Jesus warns against lukewarm faith in Revelation. He continually chided the disciples about their own commitment to Him. One of the more painful rebukes of Christ was His refusal to go out and meet with His mother and brothers when they demanded He see them. He completely disavowed Himself of them when He asked the rhetorical question, “"Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." Matthew 12:48-50 NIV What does it mean when Jesus says He spits out of His mouth lukewarm believers? Could it be that it looks more like we see in Cain than we care to consider?

Honestly, we are nothing more than what we find within. If lukewarm faith, lukewarm sacrifices, lukewarm morals tear up the world inside us, make our inner self polluted like we find in Cain, then wouldn’t it make sense to begin acting like Abel? What three things could we do today that would pull us out of this Cain world? Maybe we could make a commitment to read our Bible each day. That could be a firstfruits sacrifice. Maybe we could get up ten minutes earlier each day just so we could pray fervently. Maybe we could tithe…give ten percent of our income to this church each week. Maybe we could join a cell group and do it to please God and stop being only interest in your own preferences. Maybe you could donate some free time to clean up some of the projects needed to spruce up this property. Maybe you could go out of your way to invite at least two people to our church this week.

Abel was a normal person like you and me. But then so was Cain. We live like one or the other. Does it matter which one we look most like? It really is a matter of your minkah.

A Tale Of Two Minkahs Continued

First let us consider why God didn’t approve of Cain and his minkah. Abel’s minkah is described as the first born of his flock. The first born in other parts of scripture is called the Lord’s. The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether man or animal (Exodus 13:2 NIV) It is the sign of God’s provision and provided hope for His ongoing care. The firstborn was what the rancher depended on to reassure him that his ewe or cow would keep his flock going. Even if no others were born by the mother, at least the one was there. To give that lamb or calf away was a show of faith that God would eventually replace the firstborn. Firstfruits followed the same principle. The first of the harvest was the most precious. It was what you could count on to feed your family. It was there. Who could say what might happen with the later part of the harvest? Plagues might wipe it out or locusts might shred it. The weather could turn hot and whither the crops. To give away your firstfruits was giving away your security. Yet it was the firstfruits God wanted. Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God. Ex 34:26 It took faith to bring the firstfruits to God and only a believer could muscle up the gumption to do it. "We also assume responsibility for bringing to the house of the LORD each year the firstfruits of our crops and of every fruit tree. Nehemiah 10:35 NIV

Not only did Abel bring the firstborn, he also presented the fat of His firstborn. The Fat was the choicest part, the richest of it. When Pharaoh promised Joseph that his family would be able to enjoy the best part of the land of Egypt, he referred to it as the “fat of the land”, the exact same Hebrew word used to describe what Abel brought God. (See Genesis 45: 18) Again, the same word is used to describe the finest olive oil and finest wine of the harvest that God would give Aaron and his descendants. It was the “fat” or the olive oil and the “fat” of the wine his family would get. Now we don’t think so much of fat anymore because of our concern with calories and cholesterol and clogged arteries but the “fat” was the best, the finest you had. The offering of Abel was the most glorious he could offer; it was the fat.

Now turn back to Cain and his minkah. He gave some fruit he had. It was not the fat of the fruit. It was not the firstfruits. It was just something he had lying around his house. Ponder this. The ground had not been stained very deeply by sin yet and the world still was a relative paradise and it must not have been too difficult to find some sort of wheat or grape or apple to offer up to God. The implication is that Cain’s offering required nothing much of faith, nothing much of deliberation, (trying hard to choose the very best he had), nothing much of pleasure in the giving. His minkah was the plainness of obligatory religion. There are times when my children do their chores with all the enthusiasm of a corpse. There is no sense of rightness to it, no sense of pleasure in doing your best, no sense of giving a gift back to those who love you most in the world. It is pure drudgery and when the work is yanked out of them, it feels like a fingernail dragged across a chalk board rather than any sort of minkah. And yes, I am that same way. My minkahs can be just as thoughtlessly offered, just as carelessly given, just as free of affection as seemingly possible for one who is lifeless dust without Jesus.

We now must return to the original question. What separated Cain from Abel? Certainly is was the quality of their minkahs. One minkah was full of faith and extravagant pleasure in giving to a beloved God. The other minkah was an afterthought, a hand me down, a toss away gift. Several years ago a rather wealthy woman gave my family a used pot as a gift. It hadn’t even been washed. Now from someone who was impoverished, it would have been a most lovely thing to receive but from someone well off, it had the feel of flippancy.

A Tale Of Two Minkahs Concludes Tomorrow

A Tale of Two Minkahs Part One

Gen 4:9 NIV
Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?


What separates good people from bad? Is it what they do, how they think, or their passions that mark one from another? Are some people totally bad…others totally good? Were Cain and Abel opposites or do we have too little information to accurately judge them? Several years ago I was discussing with a good Mormon friend his theology of the three levels of heaven and asked him who it was, if even non-Mormons like me get to go to the 1st level of heaven, goes to Hell. “Well, I guess someone like Hitler!” Now that was reassuring because I as far as I know don’t have Hitler in my family tree or anyone as bad as Hitler lurking there. As poorly behaved as my kids sometimes are, none of them seem to have Hitler tendencies in them. I don’t have genocide in my background either so that seems to make it pretty safe for me. Now here is a good question! If Cain never killed Abel, would we think differently of him? Would he still stand out as one of the all-time bad guys of history along with the Boston Strangler and Joseph Stalin?

One of the most erroneous interpretations of Genesis 4 is the criticism of Cain for bringing a grain offering rather than a blood sacrifice to God. The rationale behind this is the idea that a blood sacrifice was desired by God and the grain offering of Cain was a sign on his part that he did not acknowledge his need for atonement and without the blood failed to trust in a coming Messiah. Of course none of that is indicated in the passage. God makes no complaint of lacking blood: in a sense the offerings are identical. Both brought what in Hebrew is called a minkah. But what is a “minkah”?

Minkahs are found all through the Old Testament. In some places such as in Isaiah 66: 20 and Jeremiah 41: 5 and Nehemiah 10: 33, the minkah is a grain offering, many times (Numbers 16: 15) it can be either and in other scriptures it refers to a meat offering (1 Samuel 2: 17 and here). Since both Cain and Abel brought minkahs and minkahs that are grain offerings are perfectly acceptable (Leviticus 7) and even commanded in the Law (consider Leviticus 6: 20), what separated one man’s minkah from another’s?

If there is one point that can be made which none can refute here, it is that God loved Abel’s minkah but didn’t think much of Cain’s. The text reads literally that the Lord gazed with interest upon Abel’s minkah but in verse 5 he had no such affection for Cain’s. Literally the Lord did not look at all at what Cain gave Him. I have been at social gatherings where I was completely ignored and felt the shame of it. Nothing I have experienced though drove me to murder and that is the most pressing issue in this passage and by far the most interesting. What happened here that led to such a fall?

I Resolve

I Resolve to…

Laugh More And Complain Less

Drink More Water But Never Lose Sight Of Ice Cream

Listen To My Friends Know My Critics

Take A Day Off Each Week Regardless of How Much Work I Have Left

Sing Loudly

Every Day Invite Someone To Church

Lose My Temper…And Not Try To Find It

Wrestle With My Kids Rather Than My Failures

Kiss The Morning And Then My Wife

Find Time To Pray, Play And Obey

Stretch

Read The Bible Long Enough To Hide Within It

Take A Nap

Give A Nap

Create

Take Risks

Shoot

Live Like Strider, Die Like Arwen

Break My Perfume Bottles On The Right Set of Feet

Whale Sightings

Drank 10 Cups of Water
no soda
Walked and prayed for an hour
hotdog for lunch
GREAT, GREAT Food at Cell Group...far too much to describe or list
NO atempt to clog...a combination of jog and clomp which is my clumsy, plodding gate
Ice Cream...it was forced upon me

Got the scale out...Beelzebub just watched...maybe she felt sorry for me

Lost 2 pounds
Bottome Line: Down 2 1/2 pounds

O LORD, you are my God;
I will exalt you and praise your name,for in perfect faithfulness you have done marvelous things,
things planned long ago. Isaiah 25: 1 NIV

The Undisputed Benefit of Drinking Carrot Juice

I honestly did not drink that much...