Bethel

Genesis 35: 1 NIV

Then God said to Jacob, “Go up to Bethel and settle there...

Where Are You Going?

We recently went camping with my brother’s family and my sister and her daughter up near Yosemite.  While there, the key to our car broke apart.  The metal part came out of the plastic fob that holds the chip which activates and deactivates the alarm system.  I could make the key work by using pliers to turn the metal section of the key while holding the fob near the key but I ran the risk of snapping off the part of the key I was using to grip it.  We went to a hardware store to have a duplicate made but it didn’t work.  My brother used his phone to try and find out how to get a replacement key and contacted the Toyota dealer closest to our campground. He was told that a new key would cost nearly $400. That was a stunning price and so he kept trying to find someone who had could help us get another key.  The suggestion was made that we go to a locksmith and see if someone could replace it for us but we did not know where to go or who to ask.  Finally it was time to leave and I was able to use the pliers to turn the key and we made our way back to “civilization”.  It was a four hour trip and I did not stop on the way for fear I could not restart the car.  As I drove, I kept pondering the dilemma.  Should I just go to a Toyota dealer near our house and pay the $400 or try to find a locksmith and see what could be done.  Mary Jo, once we got phone service, went on line to try and find a locksmith near our home but did not get a call back from one and the other said he was not equipped to fix the key.  He did though suggest a locksmith in the town next to our city and when we called there we were told he thought he could fix it.  When we got to the shop, the locksmith was able to replace the car key for just $35.  As we made our way home, I thought just how foolish I would have been to have gone straight to the Toyota dealership rather than following my brother’s advice and try to locate a locksmith.

There is a great risk you take when it comes to your life with God.  You can without grasping what has happened, lose track of Him.  It is a subtle shift, one that barely registers in you but it happens and without warning you find yourself away from God and on your own.  You probably won’t realize it, which makes it difficult to undue.  We were at a campground with hundreds of campers there but only about ten of them came to a worship service offered on Sunday morning.  If the collection of campers at the campground fit the national average, somewhere around two hundred or more identified themselves as Christians but saw no need to attend the worship service they easily could have attended.  Of course there were probably a wide range of excuses many had for not participating but the majority most likely just did not see a need to obey the Bible and worship with God’s people on Sunday and they were oblivious to what effect that would have on them.  The Christian community is at a critical crossroad and you might be too.  How far will you go with your life in Christ?  Is it important enough to you to make it your top priority or will you like so many other American Christians drift away from God and be comfortable casually going along on your own?

The Bible has a fascinating case study that must be considered if we care about this life with God.  Jacob, the son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham, famously finagled out of his brother his birthright as the oldest son for a pot of soup and then tricked his father into giving to him the blessing intended for that same brother Esau.  Esau grew distraught over his change in fortune.   Esau said, "Isn't he rightly named Jacob? He has deceived me these two times: He took my birthright, and now he's taken my blessing!" Then he asked, "Haven't you reserved any blessing for me?"  Isaac answered Esau, "I have made him lord over you and have made all his relatives his servants, and I have sustained him with grain and new wine. So what can I possibly do for you, my son?"  Esau said to his father, "Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me too, my father!" Then Esau wept aloud. (Genesis 27: 36-38 NIV)  Esau became so infuriated by how Jacob had stolen from him the blessing his father had for him that he plotted Jacob’s murder.  When Jacob caught wind of Esau’s fury, he fled for his life to the home of his mother’s brother, some four hundred miles away.  Over twenty years Jacob stayed there, marrying a pair of sisters and gained their maids as concubines.  Altogether Jacob had thirteen children, a daughter and twelve sons.  Finally, Jacob was so fed up with his conniving and scheming father-in-law Laban that he was willing to risk his life and face the wrath of his brother rather than spend one more day living under Laban’s “rule”.

                                                                                                              

Jacob’s return to his homeland was no mere whimsy.  The Lord directed him back home.  In a dream, God ordered him to leave Haran and go back to where he met the Lord the first time.  “I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and where you made a vow to me. Now leave this land at once and go back to your native land.” (Genesis 31:13 NIV)  Jacob packed up his family and left but not without trepidation.  He was afraid of leaving his controlling father-in-law and Jacob was terrified his brother still wanted him dead.  Almost home, Jacob was told by his servants that just ahead of him Esau, his brother, was approaching with four hundred men.  In great fear and distress Jacob divided the people who were with him into two groups, and the flocks and herds and camels as well.  He thought, "If Esau comes and attacks one group, the group that is left may escape." (Genesis 32:7-8 NIV)  Panicked, Jacob prayed to God for help.  Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children.   But you have said, 'I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted. (Genesis 32: 11-12 NIV) 

How many of us have been in a similar situation, desperate for God’s help, we pray for Him to rescue us.  The Lord did save Jacob from his brother’s wrath.  In fact it went far better than he expected; Esau shockingly wanted to rebuild the brotherly bond he once shared with Jacob.  Rather than seeing God was in all this, Jacob turned down the opportunity to move close to Esau and his family and instead settled in Shechem.   The choice of where to set down roots seemed inconsequential to Jacob at the time.  He had “arrived safely” at Shechem Genesis 33: 18 tells us or as the Hebrew text reads, “in peace” or “shalom”.  In other words, Jacob felt pretty good about his move.  However Shechem was “hell” for his daughter and the devil’s playground for his sons.  Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, was raped there and two of her brothers in a fit of rage and lust, murdered all the men of the town and stole their livestock.  Crushed by the wickedness of Shechem and his own sons, Jacob found the Lord was still there with him.  Then God said to Jacob, "Go up to Bethel and settle there, and build an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Esau." (Genesis 35:1 NIV)

Before Jacob set off from Haran and moved his family south into Canaan, the Lord made it clear to Jacob who He was.  “I am the God of Bethel…”, not Shechem.  It was never Shechem God chose for Jacob to take his family, it was Bethel!  However, Jacob was not paying attention to the Lord and it cost Jacob’s family dearly.  Shechem was Jacob’s Sodom, his Egypt.  The happiness he had that his brother no longer wanted to kill him was like a spiritual drug for it numbed his fervor for God.  The lack of attention to the Lord’s guidance had proved disastrous.  He took his eyes off the giver of peace and put it on the pleasure of peace.  God is patient with our distracted minds but just like checking your cell phone when driving can cost you your life or the lives of others, the failure to keep your eyes on God can be devastating.  Nothing excites Satan more than when God’s people are distracted by all the stuff they are doing and they don’t have time to think about what the Lord is saying to them.  Before you know it, you give in to a little temptation here and disobey a scripture there and life begins to spin out of control.  You become so disoriented by Satan’s subtle prodding that the God of strength and wisdom will be a distant memory. You will find yourself thinking just like any pagan would and the fruit of the Spirit God so eloquently described in Galatians 5: 22 disappears.

Consider just how wrecked Jacob’s family was spiritually.  As soon as he heard from the Lord that he needed to move to Bethel and build an altar there for worshipping God, Jacob knew that his family had big changes to make.  So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, "Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes. (Genesis 35:2 NIV)  Notice how bad it was.  So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods they had and the rings in their ears, and Jacob buried them under the oak at Shechem. (Genesis 35:4 NIV)  Satan had worked its way into the fabric of his family but Jacob had the courage and conviction to root Satan out and start over.  What a tremendous joy it is to be so full of God that He bursts out of you wherever you go!  With their hearts right, Jacob and his household practically sparkled with holiness and spiritual power.  Then they set out, and the terror of God fell upon the towns all around them so that no one pursued them. (Genesis 35:5 NIV)

Like a rat making a nest in your house, the impulses of Satan work their way into you and refuse to leave on their own.  We do this, we say that and don’t give a thought to whether it is of God or not as if it doesn’t matter but it matters greatly.  There is a Shechem for every one of us and if we take our mind off the Lord, we will find ourselves there and think everything is alright but it isn’t.  God’s power will have left us and we no longer have Him working with us.  We will say and do things that are more of the devil than they are of Christ and like Samson, we won’t realize we are making a mess of what we have been given.  But then, in our Lord’s patience and mercy, He will make Himself known to us and we will have to decide if we will go to Bethel or not.  When we get rid of our own foreign gods and do away with the stuff that we love more than Christ, we will find that the power of Jesus crucified and resurrected fills us and the fear of the Lord falls on those who come across us.  As you build your life with Christ and set your mind on Him at a moment by moment basis, you will have a way of knowing just what to do and when to do it that will be supernatural and unexplainable to human reasoning.  Make Bethel your home and stay away from Shechem.

Unconscious Thought

Part 1

Jeremiah 17:10 NIV

"I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve."

What Do You Know About Yourself?

The past few weeks I have been aware of long and elaborate dreams that seem to last through the night.  In them are people I can’t ever remember seeing but they impact me in some dramatic way as my dream progresses.  The dreams aren’t frightening but sometimes they are troubling.  I have difficulty in many trying to find my way somewhere or I get confused about what I need to do.  The plotlines within my dreams are complex and the characters speak and act in surprising ways that don’t remind me of any of my recent experiences.  I could not write stories that are as creative and interesting as my dreams and so I wonder how they come about and what the source of them is.  Of course they could be sent to me by God or they may simply be the product of unconscious thinking that is working even while I am asleep.  One thing is certain.  There is much about me that I do not understand, especially what is found deep in my heart.

Perhaps you are like me and find yourself wondering what to make of the hidden parts of your mind.  It seems so complex and strange, like a cave filled with mysterious creatures, indecipherable writings and strange pictures on the walls.  Unpredictable forces are at work within you that push you about like a bully on the playground.  Do you just let them have their way with you, impacting what you feel about things and how you react to situations?  Can you do something about the internal forces that affect your life in hidden ways?  Should you be concerned about them or live as if your unconscious thoughts don’t matter?  What does the Bible have to say about the unconscious world?

Two terms in the Bible, when combined, are what describe the place of our “inner world”.  The first Hebrew term, lev, is generally translated heart and is what modern culture thinks of as the mind.  The second, Kilya is difficult to translate but in older English Bibles is called the “reins” or “kidneys”.  It is the inner place of the self; the deep part of us that includes our thinking, our unconscious world, our passion and our will.  Jeremiah 17: 10 puts both these terms together and reminds us that God has access to all the hidden places of the inner being.  "I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve." (Jeremiah 17:10 NIV)

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You don’t need proof that there are depths to you that you cannot explore with just the mental skills available to you.  You have dreams you can’t explain.  You experience emotions that do not have a recognizable source.  Memories suddenly pop to the surface without warning.  A smell or a taste of something brings back to mind an experience you have long forgotten.  The Bible says that God has made that deep, unseen world.  For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. (Psalm 139:13 NIV)  “Inmost being” is the translation of our Hebrew word, “Kilya” or kidneys, the place where your thoughts are found.  The very next verse proclaims that the way God put together your inmost being is wonderful.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. (Psalm 139:14 NIV)  What Freud and many in the psychoanalytic field saw as the enemy of happiness, the unconscious world found in each person, the Bible says is a great benefit or even a tremendous treasure.

We do though face a great problem when it comes to our unconscious thought life.  It is corrupted.  Jeremiah 17:9 says this about the heart.  The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?  (Jeremiah 17:9 NIV)  The effect of Sin at every area of our thinking, both conscious as well as unconscious, is devastating.  It impacts us at every turn in life from how we feel about things to the way we make our decisions.  Our heart is wrecked and we cannot trust it to effectively take us through life.  No one, not Freud or Jung or Watson or any of the “thinkers” in the study of psychology understand fully the chaos found in the heart.

There is an interesting term the Bible uses to describe God’s plan for us.  Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. (Psalm 51:6 NIV)  The word translated “truth” is the Hebrew word “emeth” and means firmness, reliability, faithfulness.  As the heart is now, you cannot count on it.  The thoughts that are generated by the heart are at best unreliable; at worst destructive.  You cannot count on what comes out of your heart and have confidence that what comes out of it will be good.  God’s plan for you is to make your heart trustworthy and the thoughts in it productive and beneficial to your being.  The only way that is possible is if God gets at the root of the problem, the Sin that corrupts the heart.

We are reminded in Jeremiah 17: 10, that only God is the great psychologist because He is capable of seeing into the deepest and most broken parts of the heart and knowing what to do about it.  "I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind…”  The prayer of the Psalmist takes this ability of God into account.  Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. (Psalm 139:23 NIV)  Why is this important?   What does the psalmist really want?  We have no tools for figuring out the effect of our unconscious thinking upon what we do and how we react to things.  God though does and yet He will not simply take over your unconscious like some hypnotist if we don’t want Him there.  He waits for our praying to begin working in us at the unconscious level. 

Consider carefully God’s ability to do something about your unconscious mind.  Psalm 51: 6 insists, you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.  This is not just insight into how to fix a lawn mower.  You and I want much more than that in the inmost place, in the unconscious parts of the heart.  You want the supernatural thinking of God that combats the broken thinking of your unconscious mind.  "Where then does wisdom come from?  Where does understanding dwell? ... God understands the way to it and he alone knows where it dwells, (Job 28:20, 23 NIV)  With your permission, God will reshape and remake your unconscious mind so that His wisdom rises up out of it.

Consider the irony found in Isaiah 44. He (a carpenter) cut down cedars, or perhaps took a cypress or oak.  He let it grow among the trees of the forest, or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow.  It is man's fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread.  But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it.  Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill.  He also warms himself and says, "Ah! I am warm; I see the fire."  From the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships.  He prays to it and says, "Save me; you are my god." (Isaiah 44: 14-17 NIV)  Of course this points out the ridiculous nature of idol construction!  With part of the wood the carpenter carves an idol and from the rest of the very same wood he builds a fire and warms his cold feet.  Your unconscious built within your heart is much like this.  Part of it generates lustful feelings.  “I want this and I want it now!”  It can incite bitter anger as well as deep depression.  Another part of the unconscious produces inspiring thoughts, actions and plans.  You might treat these ideas as if they come from God but they may not be from Him.  They may simply be a product of a corrupted unconscious.    The unconscious is the power behind many of our opinions, actions and creative ideas and tragically, you can treat them as the ruling force of your life, a god.  Some of the most horrifying people of history were ruled by an unconscious they neither understood nor could control.  They thought though that everything they did was good and right.  We too can be fooled by a heart that is not seen or understood.  Our unconscious is both a danger to us and a support.  Next week we shall look at what can be done to have an unconscious that works for us and not against us.

I Get It Conclusion

The wisdom the world does not possess and cannot acquire is the “word of the Cross”. The “word of the Cross”, is most bluntly, moronic to the world. Foolishness as it is commonly translated. It is not that the world misunderstands what we have to say about the Cross because it misinterprets the facts. Rather like the Gorilla trying to comprehend the stock market, the world has no shot at figuring out the Cross. Paul calls it the power of God but only to the ones “continually being saved.” For the others, those in a constant state of destruction, it is idiocy.

There are two ways the word of the Cross is power of God for those continually saved. First, it makes stupid every argument held against it. Verse 20 uses a term that describes a transformation; the change from being intelligent to being ridiculously foolish or more literally, moronic. Suppose we were to mix common baking soda and vinegar. The resulting chemical reaction would produce carbon dioxide gas and water. When you place the word of the Cross on the wisdom of the world, and combine the two with faith, the wisdom of the world becomes stupid. It no longer makes sense. I once thought when I was a child that I could as I grew stronger fly on my own power. Of course it hasn’t worked out but the logic of my argument as a four year old made sense then. But now, through the transformation of mental maturity, I realize it was a child’s dream, we are not made to fly that way. I once thought, before the word of the Cross, that there wasn’t enough evidence for God. Now, by the transformation brought on me by the Cross, I cannot imagine life at all without God. The logic is not in my clearer thinking, it is in the supernatural work the Cross does within me. I “see” what I did not see before Jesus made my thinking clear about Him.

As an insider to my mind, I think I came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ is Lord and Master of my life but the truth is I didn’t. The work happened supernaturally. It came by the word of the Cross. Nothing about Jesus and the life He brings makes sense outside this change. We bust our heads against a wall trying to convince people it is logical to belong to Jesus. It cannot be made logical because it is impossible to grasp. The word of the Cross alone has the power not only to persuade but also to make sense of eternal life. The opposite also is true. What seems so logical, the life without Jesus is morphed by the word of the Cross into utter stupidity. The time away from Christ becomes by that Cross a mess of foolishness and vanity. We are not convinced to follow Jesus, we are made by the Cross into followers of Him.

The second way the word of the Cross is the power of God for the ones being saved is that it is what continuously makes you saved. We aren’t saved by something we think or do but rather by the word of the Cross itself. The change has nothing to do with carefully crafted arguments or intelligent considerations. Eternal life comes by the word of the Cross and it alone has the power to make you, as Paul puts it, “continually saved”. No one is “argued into the Kingdom of God and no one convinced of it through logic. There is by the word of the Cross a literal transformation that makes me into something I can never in my own power or through any other power morph out of being. I cannot become a non child of God once I am one because it is not me that does it: it is by the word of the Cross.

Verse 21 is fascinating. It tells us that through the “foolishness of the proclamation” a miracle occurs. The nonsensical, “moronic”, idiotic if you will proclamation brings about the faith transformation. Just saying the “Christ having been crucified” opens wide a door that is completely closed, a door to an eternal life transformation. It is a bit mysterious this process because believing is not given as a means of attaining eternal life, it is the characteristic of the ones having it. It is like saying that all Walkups have big noses. I am not a Walkup because I have a big nose but there is not a Walkup running around without a big nose. Believing or faithing is what every single Christian does. It is the foolishness of the proclamation of Christ having been crucified that takes the soul into continual salvation. It is the power of the change. Believing is what you look like when the Christ crucified proclamation works in you.

Now I understand that the call of the Gospel is to “believe”. We believe though not because we get it or we think it through. We do not turn into Christians on belief. Belief is the response of the soul to the penetration of the message of Christ crucified. The power of it works in me and then I believe. This, the Bible says is grace…a gift. Romans 10:17 is a strange and near shocking twist on popular theology. It states that, “faith comes from hearing the message”. Literally, it reads that faith comes out of the hearing. We do not hear the message because of our faith. The message of Christ crucified delivers the faith into us. It is the power generating faith.

The message itself is a stumbling block to some (the Jews) and moronic to others (the Gentiles). But that doesn’t keep the proclamation of the Gospel from tearing into people and making their old unbelief completely illogical to them. Because the message of Christ crucified is sufficient in itself to make changed lives, we do not have to be skilled messengers. It does not need help from good, satisfying logic. It simply needs to be announced and then it bores in on the one being saved. Here is a scientific chemistry experiment for the church. Go before the Lord and ask Him to point out to you one you can proclaim the Gospel. Take a deep breath and then do it. Pray for God get the words out. Christ died on the Cross to give you eternal life. He rose from the dead and He is the one and only savior of your soul. The pray and step back. The proclamation is not held back by the wisdom of the unbelieving. It is corralled by the silence of the Church. One voice is all the Gospel needs. Why not make it yours.



Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. Romans 10:17 NIV

Adam Meets...

Genesis 1: 27 NIV
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.


Perhaps the most interesting statement in the entire Old Testament is this one, that man was created in God’s image. What precisely does this mean? There are two sides to this issue. What is it about man that makes him in God’s image? On the other hand, what is it about God that makes man be in His image? The two sides are equally mysterious and equally important. Put another way, what is it we learn about God from man and what is it we learn about man from God? Exploration is one of the most fascinating of endeavors. Why are we so enamored with getting to Mars? For that matter, why did we care about getting to the moon and before that, why did we think there was anything of importance about the Galapagos Islands or the tip of Africa or Manhattan? Why do we want to look into the nucleus and the DNA molecule? We want to know and see and understand and at some level, be there. However, the two most distant shores are the ones we think we have explored ad nausea and yet both are more unknown to us than the farthest star.

The greatest of frontiers are set here in our central verse. Who is God and who is man? We have two sciences dedicated to the later; psychology and sociology and yet neither has been able to answer even the simplest questions about man. For example, why do we use a cell phone to send a text message and a computer to make a phone call? Why do we use a remote control after spending an hour working out? Why do we eat out when we are inside and eat up when the food goes down? We haven’t got answers to these questions. Nor do we understand ourselves. Why do we marry, build cities, make phone calls and work so hard? Who really is God? What is He like and what matters most to Him?