The Fullness of You...Smelling

Genesis 8:20-21

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.  The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

How Do You Smell?

Smell has the unique ability to serve as a trigger within the heart.  It registers deeply within us and locates memories long forgotten or buried and drags them to the conscious mind.  The sudden whiff of a pot roast, coffee, a gardenia or a type of perfume can take us back to when we were young.  Scent is important to our relationship with God.  Smell and the use of odors were key parts of how the Israelites were to worship the Lord.  From the use of prescribed concoctions of incense in the Temple to the burning of sheep and goats on the altars, the smell of sacrifices pleased God.  As noted above, God was happy to smell the burnt sacrifices Noah offered following the flood.  The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man… (Genesis 8: 21a NIV)  The Temple, which was the central location for worship in Israel, at least in the beginning, produced a flood of smells that overwhelmed the nostrils.  The odors of blood, cinnamon, cooking meat, salt and smoking fire pits nearly took one’s breath away.  When Solomon dedicated the Temple, the smoke from cooking sacrifices and burning incense was so thick you could barely see.  Imagine the overworking of salivary glands as one entered into the Temple grounds and the odor of barbecuing beef and mutton reached you.

We find in the Scripture that all the smells of the Temple were to establish in the hearts of God’s people something of critical importance to God.  In Psalm 141:2 we get a hint of what God was doing through all the sacrifices and incense burning.  May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice. (NIV)  The connection between all those smells and God’s people praying was intentionally created by the Lord.  In the book of Revelation the link between the two is spelled out for us.  Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. He had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.  He came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne.  And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. (Revelation 5:6-8 NIV) Then later in Revelation 8: 4 this is reiterated.  The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel's hand. (NIV)

If you went into the Temple, whether just the outer courts or deeper into its center, there were to be two senses that captivated you: sight with the simple beauty of the gold and woodwork and smell with the all the smoke and cooking.  The gold was to remind everyone of the majesty of God but the smells were to stir up within all who came to the Temple the call to prayer.  In speaking of the work God would soon do in bringing non-Jews into His Kingdom, Isaiah the prophet announced, “…these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer.  Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations." (Isaiah 56:7 NIV)  The smell of the burnt offerings coalesced with the prayers of the people producing a sweet perfume for God.  The house of incense and cooking meat was to be God’s house of prayer and not just for Jews but for all humanity who came to Him.  Jesus’ fury was directed toward those who destroyed that plan.  Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.  "It is written," he said to them, "'My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it a 'den of robbers.'" (Matthew 21:12-13 NIV)

What we discover as we turn to the New Testament again is that just as the odor of the incense and the cooking sacrifices represented the prayers of the people and were to be a continual call to prayer, so too we find out that the Temple itself was a representation of something greater than wood and stone.  One of the most misapplied verses in the entire Bible is Paul’s admonition in 2 Corinthians.  Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 NIV)  The Temple built in Jerusalem was a foreshadowing of what God would do with all people who came to Him in faith.  They were going to be “houses of prayer”.  Every last one of us are built by God to be a prayer center.  When prayers are not emanating from us like the smell of incense rising into the wind, then we wreck the sanctuary of our lives.  If Christ could beat out the money changers and vendors from the Temple for taking apart the prayer of the place, how much more so does our Lord demand that as the Temple of the Holy Spirit we are to be centers of prayer!

Consider just a couple of examples to make clear how important our praying is to God.  When the ancient king Abimelech mistakenly took Abraham’s wife Sarah into his harem because Abraham had told the king that Sarah was his sister, God’s wrath broke out against Abimelech and his subjects.  The Lord warned Abimelech in a dream that He was about to kill him for taking Sarah from Abraham.  But, God gave Abimelech a chance at life.  “Now return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live. But if you do not return her, you may be sure that you and all yours will die." (Genesis 20:7 NIV)  God would wait on deciding Abimelech’s fate until he heard from Abraham in prayer.  Consider the high place of prayer and its exalted status.  The prayer of one man would decide the fate of another.

We see a similar situation in Job.  Job’s friends who were critical of Job and accused him of terrible sinning also found themselves under the wrath of God.  "I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” (Job 42:7 NIV)   But the Lord was willing to be merciful, depending on how Job responded. “My servant Job will pray for you and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly.” (Job 42:8b NIV)  If Job prayed for his friends, the Lord would be merciful to them.  Ponder how great a responsibility that is!  One person’s praying determined how God would act.

We have in James 5: 16 the sort of odor we are to produce in this world.  Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.  Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.  Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. (James 5:16-18 NIV)  If you are not obsessed with praying for others, then you have no idea who you are in Christ and what He wants you to be.  As the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the Lord is a part of your personality and He operates in you and through you.  The more aware you are of God, the more He will pray through you and your prayers will become His prayers.  You are not a righteous person because of what you are on your own.  Your righteousness is the righteousness of Christ which comes to your through Christ crucified and resurrected.  Therefore, the effectiveness of your praying is not dependent upon you but upon God living in you and through you.  You make yourself a sweet odor to God and to all around you by offering prayers to God for every person God brings to your mind night and day.  The smell that God loves above all is the praying of His people and like Job and Abraham, you can change the course of history by praying. 

You Are Not Alone In This

The world is in desperate need of holy people.  It doesn't need any more sanctimonious prigs who make the world bristle at their rigid opinions.  Genuinely holy people who uphold righteousness in their personal affairs, who laugh joyously in trying times, who have confidence that God will see them through any painful circumstance, who hold the hands of the broken-hearted and forgive with genuine love and humility are the pivot upon which all radical movements of God turn.  When Elijah complained that he was the only faithful servant of God left, he did not realize how many others were walking along the same path he was.   You are not alone in your longing to have Christ built into every part of your day.  Others also want the Savior flowing out of them in contagious ways.  There is a growing desire to be truly good and the only way that is possible is if our Lord is living within us and His holiness is entering every nook and cranny of our hearts.  There are deep hidden places where we have resisted God and settled for a form of Christianity our Lord never intended when He saved us.  We have habits we have not let the Holy Spirit touch; memories we have kept in gilded cages so that the Savior cannot approach them.  Today, with your hands stretched to the heavens, surrender your life to God and give Him permission to invade every part of you and put His crucified life at work wherever He sees a need for redemption.  The atonement had one purpose, to make you so completely God's that it becomes nearly impossible to see where you end and the Lord begins.   Holiness is not what you do; it is who you are.  When you are made right with Christ, everything you do will become the fragrance of God in a world looking for evidence our Savior really does make a difference in those who join with Him!

Then Elijah said to them, "I am the only one of the Lord's prophets left, but Baal has four hundred and fifty prophets. 1 Kings 18:22 NIV

The Fullness of You... Tasting God

Psalm 34:8 NIV

Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.

How Does God Taste To You?

There are five different forms of taste.  The first is the ability to taste sweets and is associated with identifying simple carbohydrates.  The second is a recently discovered taste sense called Umami and is connected to savory foods produced by amino acids and small peptides.  Tomatoes, soy sauce, meat broths and fermented products are recognized by this taste type.  The salty taste receptors pick up on sodium and other ions.  Taste buds connected with sour notice acids and bitter taste receptors cue us in on potential toxins such as those in plant alkaloids.  How important do you think the ability to taste is?  Is its greatest benefit the pleasure it brings or its ability to help protect you from foods and drinks you should not be taking into your body?  Taste even helps you digest your food properly as it prepares the body to receive what you put into it. There is research that indicates that those who lose the ability to taste are less likely to eat and more likely to suffer from malnutrition.  Medications that have the side effect of taking away some of your ability to taste may also limit your recovery by diminishing the desire you have to fuel the body.  Have you ever thought of “taste” as important when it comes to your relationship to God?  It is and we will take a look at this today.

Perhaps the most famous verse found in the Bible on taste is Psalm 34: 8.  Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. (NIV)  It is odd to think of tasting the goodness of the Lord.  What does that mean?  Quoting this verse, the Apostle Peter notes the great value of living a holy and good life.  Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.  Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. (1 Peter 2:1-2 NIV)  If you accept these two verses as indications that taste is somehow related to our experience of God, then perhaps you could spend a bit of time considering how that is so.

There are at least three different ways taste impacts us.  The first is that it allows us to evaluate what we take into ourselves before we do so.  There are questions we may have with regard to God.  Is He good enough?  Can I count on Him?  Do I matter to Him?  How will He change my life if I invite Him to be a part of it?  The Hebrew people had questions like this when Moses came to them with a stunning proposition.  He told them that God had met him in the desert and the Lord was going to take the entire nation of Israel out of its Egyptian captivity.  At first the leaders were happy to hear of this; especially when Moses performed miracles that the Lord enabled.  And when they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped. (Exodus 4:31 NIV)  Encouraged by the response of the Israelites Moses and his brother Aaron immediately left to meet with the king.  Afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, "This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: 'Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the desert.'" (Exodus 5:1 NIV) Unfortunately, the King of Egypt was not too receptive to Moses’s presentation and did not care what Moses’s God had to say.  He made it worse on the Israelites after Moses made his request or demand.   That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people:  "You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw.  But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don't reduce the quota. They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, 'Let us go and sacrifice to our God.'  Make the work harder for the men so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies." (Exodus 5:6-9 NIV)

The Israelites weren’t anti-God after their lives were made more miserable; they just were not ready to trust Him to get them out of Egypt.  They had a taste of God and He left a bitter taste in their mouths.  After the Lord sent the ten plagues however, He tasted much sweeter and they found Him worth following.  What do we do though if we cannot see anything supernatural in our lives yet?  How does God taste when we are struggling with depression or difficult circumstances?  Sometimes we take too small of a sample and don’t give God enough time to reveal His kindness and mercy.  A second taste of God could make things much clearer for us.

Taste can also tell you what your body needs.  Pregnant women are known for having strange cravings and many believe that the taste for certain foods is a way the body tells them of their nutritional needs.  Athletes have reported the same discovery.  When you taste of the Lord you might discover that what you thought was important to you isn’t or might even be harmful.  In speaking of the Israelites and their reaction to being in the desert, the Psalmist had this to say about them after they had been freed of their slavery and their enemies destroyed.  He (the Lord) saved them from the hand of the foe; from the hand of the enemy he redeemed them. The waters covered their adversaries; not one of them survived. Then they believed his promises and sang his praise.  But they soon forgot what he had done and did not wait for his counsel.  In the desert they gave in to their craving; in the wasteland they put God to the test. (Psalm 106:10-14 NIV)

How many in the church mistake their cravings for their needs?  It is the great trap of Satan to confuse our minds and create within us disappointment with God because He won’t give in to our cravings when they don’t meet our needs.  Our Lord’s work with us is defined and unyielding.  He is making us fit for heaven.  If you are God’s and you belong to Him through our Lord’s work on the Cross, then He will not budge on this.  God will give you enough people who don’t like you, who treat you badly, to work in you love for enemies.  He will give you enough hardship and difficulty until you are grateful for the smallest blessing and satisfied with the most insignificant of gifts.  Trials will come from God that will challenge your faith so that you learn to trust Him uncompromisingly.  The Holy Spirit will take your childish lust for entertainment and bore you to tears with what once garnered your rapt attention.  Just look at your circumstances carefully and you will quickly discover what God thinks you need to be prepared for heaven.  As long as our joy is based on what we have rather than being connected to Christ in trust and love, our Lord will eliminate our sources of happiness that don’t lead us to Him or that make us selfish or self-absorbed.

If that sounds discouraging to you, then consider one more benefit of taste.  Taste can create an insatiable desire for more.  How many of us have kept eating because of the taste of our food rather than our need for it!  This may lead to unhealthy weight gain but spiritually this is a gift we must treasure.  The Psalmist describes this aspect of taste perfectly.  As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? (Psalm 42:1-2 NIV)  How often do we find Christians in this state?  It comes only through the supernatural working of God!  There are moments when our interest in Christ becomes like an explosion of light.  We are mesmerized by Him; captivated by Him.  There is an example of this that illustrates the progression of desire for God.  In Acts 5 is the account of the arrest of the Apostles by the Jewish authorities for preaching Christ at the Temple.  When commanded by the Sanhedrin to stop teaching publically about Christ, Peter spoke for all of the Apostles, responding, "We must obey God rather than men!” (Acts 5:29 NIV)  In simple obedience the Apostles refused to back down to the threats of the Sanhedrin.  But then they were flogged which was a horrific beating, a brutally sadistic beating and afterward we are told the Apostles rejoiced.  They were genuinely happy.  How could this have been?  During that space in time, their soul panted for God and nothing could keep them from that rapt attention to Him.

In moments that are so private and unpretentious we may not believe they have occurred, God comes to us in the midst of some ordinary, mundane and even boring time when we have perhaps decided Christianity is as dull as a pile of gravel.  The Lord will catch you up in His arms and you will be enveloped by the goodness of God and His love for you.  He will flood your mind and you will be brought to a state of joy that Satan is unable to mimic.  You cannot and will never plan these moments with God.  All you can do is keep your heart so ready and so pure that when He comes upon you, nothing will hinder the supernatural pleasure you will have being with Him.  Taste and see that the Lord is good…

Will-ingly

You have the opportunity to be crucified with Christ but no one can force you into this.    It requires an act of the will and the will is never taken from you by force.  Just as the spirit is unsinkable and eternal so is the will.  The will can be broken and it can be corrupted but it will never be stripped from you.  Satan can touch your will but only as it continues to be yours.  You can surrender your will but that is solely your determination.  One can be born again yet fiercely cling to the will and not let go of it.  The Holy Scripture is God's plumb line for evaluating the identity of the possessor of the will.  If I keep my will, then the Bible will be a stern taskmaster that confronts me at every turn.  I will fight over who I should forgive, how often I will let my cheek be struck by good and bad people stew over what I give away and the degree to which I will pray about everything with the consequence of fretting about nothing.  If I am crucified with Christ, then my will is in His possession and His to defend and honor.   It makes no difference to the one whose will is God's if he lives in poverty or riches, is recognized for his accomplishments or not, has made something of his life or lost the opportunity that was at hand.  The will that has been turned over to Christ cannot fret over tomorrow because it has no power over him.  What does tomorrow matter to the one who given over the will to the one controlling tomorrow.  The last bastion of idolatry is the will.  Jesus was able to steadfastly go to Jerusalem where a cross awaited Him because He settled the matter of the will…"not my will but your will be done."  All internal strife, depression and bitterness can be crucified at the point the will becomes the possession of Christ's and is not taken back from Him.

For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.    John 6:38 NIV

The Fullness of You Hearing God

Isaiah 28:23 NIV

Listen and hear my voice; pay attention and hear what I say.

Why Don’t You Hear From God?

Perhaps you have had an experience like me.  I was in Russia and had gone into a

department store.  I was just exploring because I wasn’t sure what they had and I was always on the hunt for inexpensive souvenirs to bring home.  Causally I went down one aisle after another mindlessly glancing about.  I noticed there were about six store employees and I was only one of two customers in the store.  Suddenly it dawned on me that every single employee was watching what I was doing.  They were not just watching me, they were staring at me and some were following me as I left one aisle and went to another.  I began to smile inside myself.  Did they really think I was going to shoplift?  I said something to one of the clerks. joking about my intentions, but she only stared at me like I was an American spy trying to infiltrate their secret weapon system.  I did not understand Russian and the clerks did not know any English.  A great barrier stood between us of culture and language.  How could I get through to them that I was not going to take any of their toys or kitchen supplies…that I would pay for what I wanted?  I was baffled.

What if we have a similar relationship with God?  What if there are many times through the day when God is talking to us but we either aren’t paying attention or unable to grasp what He has said?  Would our lives improve if we did hear from God; did comprehend what He was communicating to us?  Is there a possibility that there is a vast number of ways God is trying to get through to us but we are missing it?  Some of us have had the experience of trying to understand what someone speaking another language was saying and being flummoxed in our efforts.  Hand signals and motioning just hasn’t worked.  Could that be happening between us and God?

I had a recent experience that caught my attention.  I went to a local church facility that is known for opening its doors for people to pray during the day and evening Tuesday-Friday.  Most of the time in the sanctuary they have live streaming worship from a sister congregation in Kansas City that has prayer and worship taking place 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  Other times they have someone in their own sanctuary playing the keyboards and singing.  Every once in a while a person from their congregation reads Scripture out loud for a full hour.  What the Bible passages will be aren’t posted in advance and it varies from reader to reader what will be read without a particular order it seems.  I never know what will be happening when I arrive because I don’t know the schedule.  I came a little early before the building was opened and read my regularly scheduled Bible reading for the day.  I was in the Proverbs and read chapters 19-20 before entering the sanctuary.  When I got in I saw that someone was reading the Bible and I soon realized he was reading from Proverbs.  Not only that, he was in Proverbs 21, the very next chapter after what I had just finished reading in the car.  How could that be?  How could such a coincidence have occurred?  As I sat and listened and prayed, I wondered if God was trying to communicate with me, and if so, what was He saying.

In Isaiah 28, God makes it clear that He intends for us to hear what He has to say.  Listen and hear my voice; pay attention and hear what I say. (NIV)  Through the prophet Isaiah, God makes this promise to us, The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. (Isaiah 58:11 NIV)  Perhaps the boldest statement in Scripture of our Lord’s determination to speak to us and show us the way as we go about our business is also found in the book of Isaiah.  Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it." (Isaiah 30:21 NIV)  But how is this possible?  What is the way God does this?  The Holy Spirit, who our Lord puts in us, somehow gets through to us, if we are available to Him, what He wants us to hear.  But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.  (John 16:13 NIV)  If we want to hear God speak to us, He will through the Holy Spirit.

There is evidence in God’s word that we can shut down communication between ourselves and God.  King Saul is a classic example of this.  After Saul on two occasions openly disobeyed God, the Lord stopped communicating with him.  Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. (1 Samuel 16:14 NIV)  For a time this did not bother Saul as he found ways of coping without God guiding him but when a monstrous Philistine army came to attack him and his army, the craving for God to lead him reached a crescendo.  When Saul saw the Philistine army, he was afraid; terror filled his heart.  He inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets. (1 Samuel 28:5-6 NIV)  Although he himself had forced all witches and mediums to go into hiding because of his pogrom against them, Saul in his desperation, tried to find a witch to raise the prophet Samuel from the dead hoping that God might speak through Samuel.  Saul then said to his attendants, "Find me a woman who is a medium, so I may go and inquire of her." (1 Samuel 28:7 NIV)  Saul is not alone in his desperation to hear what God might say to him.  But sadly, there can be reasons for why we miss out on God speaking to us.

The most obvious is disobedience.  If you don’t do what the Lord tells you to do, God may wait for you to change your mind.  There cannot be two masters in one life.  Either the Lord is or we are.  If we are, then God will give us room to find out what that is like.  In Saul’s case, the Lord let Satan attack him so that he could feel just how weak and defenseless he was without God.  A warning from God’s word must be taken seriously.  "But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me.  So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.” (Psalm 81:11-12 NIV)  If we want to take control of our lives, then God will let us but He will back away and and give us the opportunity to see what it is like living without Him.  We may not even know God has done this for a while because it can be comfortable without having the Lord directing us.  But then a crisis hits and like Saul we look for God to guide us.  It is then that His silence can be terrible.

Another hindrance to hearing from God is having a cluttered mind.  If we are thinking about everything but God, how can we be ready when He enters our thoughts?  We can’t because we are distracted.  Like the virgins who did not bring oil to the wedding feast and were kicked out of the building, we must not be lackadaisical about the opportunity to hear from God.  Paul talks about the cluttered mind in his letter to the Corinthians.  Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly — mere infants in Christ.  I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.  You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? (1 Corinthians 3:1-4 NIV) God’s Spirit speaks to us so quietly that only those whose minds are on God can hear.  Any bit of sinful thinking, any sort of greed or hatred or lust or doubt can quench His voice in us.  Paul the Apostle says that if we want to know God’s will for us, we must not ever conform to the ways of the world; whether it is in regard to entertainment, habitual behaviors, use of our money or how we react to the people God brings us.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.  (Romans 12:2 NIV)

There is one more hindrance to hearing God speak and that is the age old problem of a lack of faith.  In Hebrews we discover, And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6 NIV)  God will speak to us in the Bible in general ways if we do not have much faith in Him and the truth is that even this form of communication will sound like gibberish to those without faith in Christ.  But, if we want to understand what God is saying to us as we drive, when at work as we are with our children or while shopping, we must have faith He will guide us and direct us.  There is no work around when it comes to faith.  Either we believe God is talking to us in a still whisper or we don’t and if we don’t think we can hear from Him, we won’t hear from Him.

So how can we begin to hear from God as we go through our days?  We must practice gratitude.  Do not let a moment pass when you are not thankful for what you have and how God is working in your life.  Do whatever God tells you to do.  Act in faith.  Believe it was the Lord who directed you and trust Him to correct you if you were wrong.  Scripture is your protection.  God will never oppose the Bible with what He tells you.  Keep your mind on God at all times.  Make Ephesians 6: 18 the standard of how you live each day.  And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.  (Ephesians 6:18 NIV)  God will not bother talking with you if you are distracted.  If you are thinking about God and you are on the edge of your seat anticipating His guidance, you will find our Lord will reward your faith by leading you through whatever difficulty, perplexing situation or relationship issue you face.  Keep your mind on God and He will come near to you with His strength, peace and guidance.

Unharried

The average modern Christian lives chaotically.  She goes from one activity to another, accomplishing countless chores and feeling the weight of ten thousand demands without a shred of the peace and contentment Jesus possessed as He went about His Father's business.  Jesus did not separate what He did from what His Father was doing through Him.  The reason is that He refused to disengage Himself from the Father relationally or psychologically.  It was not theological fluff when Christ said that He and the Father were one.  Our Lord worked at this oneness and developed it so that it was habitual.  His times on the mountain established the oneness but so did His turning inward to the Father as He ate, talked with the disciples and the Pharisees, sat on the well in a Samaritan village and strolled along the edge of the lake.  He kept His mind aligned with the Father wherever He was and refused to let the lusts of the world disrupt that connection.  There are two temptations of Satan that knock us off our block.  We want what isn't ours and we don't want what God bestows.  The struggle in our head is a violent one.  Do we believe that our Lord loves us absolutely and that His will for us is perfect and good?  When we question those two axioms of scripture we lose our bearing with God and strike out on our own.  At that point we begin to operate as the Israelites in the time of the Judges, "everyone did as he saw fit."  If you want the peace that "passes understanding", then you must doggedly remain aligned with the same God who provides that peace.  Stay attached to the Lord at every level and at all costs.  Habitually thank the Lord for what you have and what you encounter at the moment, whether it seems good or bad to you.  The gratitude of the saint is her greatest defense against depression, anxiety and conflict.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.     Colossians 3:15 NIV

Heightened Faith

There are times when our faith becomes flat and unimaginative.  We lose our sense of childishness with God.  It is odd to consider just how wide the age gap is between ourselves and the Lord and how little we know about anything compared to Him.  The silliness of our complaints and the pretentiousness of our insights would be irritating to Him if He were not God in every way.  Nothing speaks more of the   grace of our Lord's love than His response to the preening pride humanity brings to the relationship.   Like a child who screams at his mom for not letting him play with the rattlesnake on the trail, we convince ourselves we know more than the creator of the universe.  Rather than happily playing in the front yard, we sulk in the back because we have chores to do.  Faith in God brings back the joy of our childhood.  With wide-eyed enthusiasm, every experience had a touch of heaven built in it.  We loved beetles and mud puddles and hikes to the "top of the mountain" and puzzles and helping take out the trash.  Every step outside is an adventure; every trip to the store a journey.  Faith opens for us a freshness to life; a laser sharp attention to all the joy that can be found in it.  If we know that God will put our children back together and open a way out of our financial distress and take us through the loss that has devastated us, we can relax and look for the good God is working out for us.  Faith for Abraham included all the dreams he had of playing with his son as he watched his eighty-five year old barren wife start dinner.  Faith gave David as he fled from Saul's army time to day dream about the party that would be thrown when he was crowned king.  Faith brought a grin to Moses' face as he contemplated the celebration that would occur when all of Israel crossed over into the Promised Land.  It is impossible to taste the sweetness of the plum in my hand when I am fretting about the meal for tomorrow.  Faith, not success or even healing is the gateway to joy.  An entire universe of happiness is available if you would believe God will take care of you and guide you through the rough waters that have made your boat ride more adventurous than you planned.

Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith.   You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord, is the Rock eternal.   Isaiah 26:2-4 NIV

The Fullness of You

Judges 20:27 NIV

And the Israelites inquired of the Lord.

Do You Hear From God?

We all communicate or try to communicate when we have relationships.  We use a wide range of methods; some are effective and others aren’t so successful.  We use touch to communicate our love or our anger, perfumes and colognes to attract attention so that we are noticed.  Clothing communicates as does the way we look at someone with our eyes.  We smile, frown, fold our arms, tap our fingers and grimace to get a point across.  Our expressions say something.  Sometimes we don’t even realize what our faces are saying to others.  A compliment, word of encouragement and criticism all are parts of communication.  Sometimes we communicate a point by being late or early, by pausing before answering or by blurting out a reply.  We are constantly communicating, sometimes even by keeping our door closed or staying in the car.  Communication is a universal part of our lives.

We are not all masters at communication; sometimes we misread the message being given us and other times we don’t realize that we are saying something unintended.  There is in the Christian community and even outside of it a level of frustration when it comes to communicating with God.  Many would like to communicate with Him but it doesn’t seem possible.  Perhaps you have been disappointed with how communication has gone for you in your relationship with God.  You have tried but either you don’t feel like God gets through to you or you don’t get through to God.  Today, we are going to look at that vital part of life, communicating with God.

When we read the second and third chapters of the book of Genesis, we get a clear picture of the psychology of sin with regard to the relationship between God and His people.  Before Adam rebelled against God, communication between them was comfortable and relaxed.  God met with Adam, gave him the responsibility of naming all the livestock, beasts of the field and birds and waited to hear what names he gave them as the Lord herded the creatures past them.  He made Eve and together they all lived as friends.  When Adam rejected God’s command to not eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, communication between them was shattered.  Adam and Eve hid from God and even though they heard the Lord moving about in the Garden of Eden, they tried to keep from being seen.  It was God who broke the silence between them.  He called out to Adam and Eve, “Where are you?”

Sin clearly wrecked the lives of Adam and Eve.  Death became their end rather than life.  It also demolished the desire of the two to meet with God and hear from Him.  We cannot overstate this.  Sin shot clear through the desire of people to be in communication with God, warped their view of God and put them at odds with Him.  God came to Adam and Eve with the very same level of affection and love but Adam and Eve due to the damage to their personalities were not able to accept it.  Adam’s reaction to God tells us all we need to know about what Sin did to him.  “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”  (Genesis 3: 10 NIV) 

God stayed the same.  He continued to be available to Adam and Eve.  It was Adam and Eve who closed the door on God.  Bombard every human with ten thousand times ten thousand the amount of sin Adam and Eve had within them while they were still in the Garden and you can easily see how huge our problem is when it comes to communicating with God.  Our door is shut pretty tight.  We almost never make our minds available to God and it takes a miracle for us to hear from Him.  The problem is not with God.  It is with us.

There are only a few people in the Old Testament who seem to be really determined to hear from God.  One would be David in his early years.  The expression, “hunger is the best sauce” seems to apply to our discussion.  When David was desperate he immediately turned to God for guidance.  The Lord gave the people of Israel the Ephod to help them hear from Him.  It was the High Priest’s responsibility to use it on behalf of the people.  In the Ephod were the Urim and Thummim which were used to answer “yes-no” questions.  They looked like dice and were tossed to get answers from God.  In 1 Samuel 23: 9, David called the priest to him and asked to use the Ephod to find out if the people of the town where he and his men were camping would protect him if King Saul and his army came to get him.  He wanted God to speak to him about the danger he faced.  When the Lord through the Ephod told David that the people of Keilah would not protect him, David fled.

This happened again and again with David.  He faced a crisis and got the priest to use the Ephod to discover what God said he should do.  He asked God whether he should pursue an army of Amalekites who had taken his wives and the wives and children of the soldiers of his little brigade captive while they were away.  (1 Samuel 30: 7)  When he wanted to know if the people of Judah would embrace him as their new king after Saul died, he consulted God with the Ephod.  (2 Samuel 2: 1)  Facing a vast army of Philistines and being greatly outnumbered, David wanted to know from God if he should attack the invading army and so he had the Ephod brought to him to see what God said.  David believed God would tell him what to do if he asked.  When there were life and death sorts of decisions to make, David took time to find out what God said he ought to do.  It is fascinating that as David solidified his hold on the country as king and foreign powers stopped being a threat to him, we no longer see David seeking out the Lord for guidance.  He certainly didn’t look to God for direction when he thought about sleeping with the married Bathsheba and later when in his pride, he considered numbering all the fighting men of Israel, David did not consult with God then either.  Both times, the consequence of not letting God direct his path was deadly and impacted the nation for generations to come.

Although we see several times, kings of Judah wanting God to speak to them, they nearly always went through prophets rather than meeting individually with the Lord themselves.  Moses of course talked with God all the time but he is the exception rather than the rule before Christ came and completely changed our relationship with God.  There is in the New Testament a titanic shift in how God makes Himself available to us.  Before Christ went to the Cross to die for our sins, the Lord promised that all who put their faith in Him for their salvation would have the Holy Spirit as a part of them.  God would live in us and become part of who we are.  The Bible makes an assumption that we must either accept as true or reject outright.  It is that the Holy Spirit is a part of every believer not just as some external force but as God joined to the personality and thus available at all times to guide, empower and help.  The Apostle Paul states, “those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” (Romans 8:14 NIV)  Sons of God are led by the Spirit of God.  That is the assumption Paul makes.  If you are born again, the Holy Spirit leads you.  His “voice” is a natural part of your life.

John 10 presents a generally overlooked proposition.  It is so clear and decided that we must face squarely God’s statement.  Using the metaphor of sheep and their shepherd Jesus said, “The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep.  The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.  When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.” (John 10:2-4 NIV)  Jesus later adds, “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” (John 10:16 NIV)  He then declares, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27 NIV)

God states unequivocally that if you belong to God and are one of His, you will hear his voice because He will be speaking with you and you will know it is Him.  Why are so many Christians not experiencing this?  Why do they feel like they do not hear His voice?  We will take up that topic next week.  For now we must by faith accept this assertion by Jesus that we have God’s voice in our ear.  He speaks to us and we can and should recognize when it is Him speaking to us.  We have the most exciting and noble of all abilities; the capability of hearing God speak to us at any moment.  Those not born again are deaf to God.  They cannot understand Him speaking because it is just gibberish to them, like an American trying to make sense of Cantonese.  But the one who is one of God’s own, who is born-again is given the ability by God to hear Him speak and understand what He says.  

Beyond the Intellect

Without faith in God, you will not make "heads or tails" of God or much of anything found in the Bible.   First we believe; then we understand.    Before our faith in Him becomes operational, we may be perfectly content with our opinions of both God and Scripture.    However as we begin to believe in Christ, our ideas get sorted through and most of them we sheepishly discard.  Nothing is more useless than waiting for God to show Himself to us before we will believe.   Faith unlocks the universe of God.  By faith, we see Him in our trip to the store.  We see Him during our illness.  We see Him at work and while we study.  Without faith, we have blinders but the moment we begin our believing, the Lord sneaks into view.  Moses' parents saw God as their son was lifted out of the basket by the Egyptian princess.  Abraham saw God as he began his journey away from Ur.  Paul saw God following His baptism.  If God tells us that faith in Him is required to access knowledge of Him, why would we take faith so lightly in our daily operations?  In Jesus' hometown, He showed only a bit of Himself and most did not even see that because their faith was impoverished.   And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith. (Matthew 13:58 NIV)   Too many in the Christian community have a wait and see attitude toward God when they ought to be crying out to Him like the apostles, "Increase our faith!" (Luke 17: 5 NIV)  Until our faith begins to leap out of our chests, we ought to have little to say about God, miracles or the Bible.   We are as ignorant in our understanding of them as little children trying to explain quantum mechanics if we lack faith.  Our intellect must align with developing faith if we are to know anything of substance in the realm where God lives and has His being.  Someone somewhere who claims theological authority decided this is not the age of miracles but it was not God who made that determination. There are only two camps...one comprised of those who live by faith and one for those who live by sight.  The faith camp keeps catching glimpses of God but the sight camp is as blind as a bat and oblivious to the supernatural handiwork of God.   What have you seen lately?  Have you been living by faith?

We live by faith, not by sight.  (2 Corinthians 5:7 NIV)

Faith and Comfort

Psalm 23:4 NIV

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

How Do You Find Comfort?

When I was in graduate school, I received a phone call from my father that my mom had died.  I sat down on my bed in stunned disbelief and stared off into space.  A friend of mine walked into my room and after I told him what had happened, he invited me to go to the gym and play basketball with him.  He didn’t put his arm around me and hug me, he didn’t tell me how sad he was for my loss, he just got me on the court and gave me a chance to express my feelings in a game of three on three.  The irony is that I blew out my knee playing that day and as I hobbled back to the dorm with him, I began to weep.  Mike sat there with me and helped me talk about the loss of my mom after he got me ice for my knee.  I never would have seen Mike as someone who could bring comfort to a grieving friend; he was far too cocky and flip to be of help for anyone needing to be helped through a crisis but when I needed a friend to stand by me as I wept, Mike was there for me.

Comfort comes to us in a variety of ways and sometimes from surprising sources.  If I were to ask you what brings you comfort, how would you reply?  Would you say an encouraging word does it for you, the embrace of a friend, a compliment, or a warm smile?  Perhaps it would be a steak fresh off the grill, banana nut bread, ice cream or a backrub!  For some it would be a warm bath, a workout at the gym, your dog jumping into your lap or just holding hands with someone you love.  Comfort cannot be logically explained all the time but we know when we have experienced it.  You may not always need to be comforted but when you do, it is one of the greatest gifts you will ever receive.

The Bible says much about the comfort God gives us.  Isaiah 66: 13a promises, As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you… (NIV)  2 Corinthians 1: 3 insists, Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort… (NIV)  My friend was laid up in a hospital bed for four days with a broken back waiting for his insurance company to approve the medical treatment he needed that would ease his pain and fix his back.  Where is the “God of all comfort” then?  Another friend recently was laid off from his job in Christian radio.  Can the “God of all comfort” really help him?  It is tough to believe God will provide you with comfort if you are struggling to believe God is not the one who brought you your troubles in the first place.

Our world has been wrecked by Sin.  It is broken and death touches every part of it.  Satan continues to bring pain and suffering and will persist in having the power to destroy lives while we live in this age before our resurrection.  Trouble and hardship will be with us until God brings an end to the world as it is and so we must accept life the way we find it.  Our Lord doesn’t promise us an end to our troubles; in fact He insists they will continue.  "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33 NIV)  There is however a most wonderful promise our Lord makes in this statement and that is what we shall give our focus today.  Christ has overcome the world.

There are two different ways of thinking about comfort.  The first has to do with what we might call “external comfort”.  The other is “internal comfort”.  External comfort is the taking away of whatever is causing distress.  You are unemployed and you get a job.  You are mad at someone who hurt your feelings and the person apologizes to you and makes up for what she did.  A medical examination indicates that you do not suffer from the terrible disease your doctor thought you might have.  Many times God brings us external comfort and this is often described in the Bible.  The blind man was given sight.  The ten lepers were healed.  The Assyrians didn’t attack Jerusalem because God sent a deadly plague that decimated the Assyrian army.  Saul was killed in battle and David is made king.  Perhaps you like Hezekiah have prayed for help with the cause of from your distress and God tells you He will take away your illness and it happens.  We all at one time or another have experienced external relief and we may or may not have given God credit for His help.

Yet we live in a wrecked world that continues to have disease, poverty, broken relationships and death.  Not all troubles will be taken away from us  .I was told that a pastor declared that the area where he lived was officially cancer free; that God had declared this to him.  But then when cancer killed one of his parents, he had to backtrack on his prophetic word.  Not every disease is healed, not every brother is raised from the dead and not every person gets a better job than the one he lost.  We must face facts as they are and discover for ourselves what our Lord means when He says that “as a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.”

There are in the Bible two levels of internal comfort.  The first would more accurately be called “relief”.  This is the feeling you have when it looks like everything will turn out ok. The second level is when our relief is joined to faith and we experience comfort in its supernatural state.  Carefully examine Psalm 119:76 to see this expressed practically.   May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promise to your servant. (NIV)  The comfort described in this Psalm is not due to any change in the circumstances of the Psalmist.  He hasn’t been healed.  He wasn’t offered a promotion.  He didn’t get a check in the mail.  He simply had a promise from God and that promise he believed could be trusted.  God had unfailing love for him and this he decided would be his comfort.  We see this again in the fiftieth verse of the same chapter.  My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life. (Psalm 119:50 NIV)  What we have is a strange sort of comfort, something decided before whatever God might do for the person.  It is the promise God provides that brings comfort, not the fulfillment of the promise.  Let us look at a couple of examples that illustrate this law of God’s comfort.

A few weeks ago we mentioned a Roman centurion who came to Jesus wanting help for his servant who was suffering paralysis.  When Jesus told the centurion that He would in fact heal the servant, the centurion believed Jesus, had faith in God’s promise.  He went away comforted; an internal change for him.  Later, when he got home, he discovered the servant was indeed well and he was relieved.  (See Matthew 8: 8ff)  A different outcome is described in Matthew 14.   There we have the famous account of Peter walking briefly on the water.  Jesus came to the disciples who were in their boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee during a horrific storm.  He was walking on the water and in faith Peter asked if he could join Jesus out on the waves.  For a moment Peter also walked on the water but then his faith faltered.  But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!"  Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?" (Matthew 14:30-31 NIV)  Jesus’ encouragement to come and join Him on the water brought Peter comfort.  The wind was still raging, the waves continued to threaten everyone.  But when Peter lost his faith, he also lost his comfort.  Peter was relieved when Christ calmed the sea but he missed out on the supernatural comfort that would have been there for him if he just kept believing Jesus would fully take care of him.

One more example of comfort vs. relief as seen in the miraculous healing of Naaman the leper is found in 2 Kings 5.  Naaman, an Aramean came to Israel looking for the prophet Elisha, hoping Elisha could heal his leprosy.  We cannot say how much faith he had in the prophet but we do know Naaman was not at all pleased with Elisha’s instructions.  The prophet told Naaman to go dip in the Jordan River seven times and he would be healed.  The Jordan was a muddy, cloudy river and Naaman could not see any good in going to it for healing and so he left Elisha in a great huff.  He was not at all comforted by God.  Some friends though convinced Naaman to just try it and so Naaman did and to his great joy, he was indeed healed by the Lord.  This was of course a tremendous relief to Naaman and he returned to Elisha to express his gratitude.  Now here we must look at the supernatural comfort that could have been experienced.  God wanted to comfort Naaman with his promise but Naaman wouldn’t believe the promise and so he remained in turmoil.  What a great thing it would have been for Naaman to ride to the Jordan River in supernatural comfort rather than turmoil.  He was healed and found relief but he did not experience comfort.  Comfort is when God’s peace is combined with our faith in God.

All too often we are like Naaman.  Rather than believe that God will provide for us, help us and carry us through whatever trial or hardship we face, we do not trust God and our minds are thrown into chaos by our difficulty.  We get mad at one another, lose sleep and scramble around looking frantically for a solution rather than believing that God will show us what to do and take care of us.   I want to provide a picture of God’s comfort working in a practical way.  Abraham was told to take his son Isaac to Mount Moriah and offer him there as a sacrifice to God.  The next morning Abraham got up, gathered the wood, a knife and a donkey along with the boy and together they started going up the hill.  There is no mention in the description of Abraham stewing with rage at God for making such a demand, no indication that he went up the mountain in great despair or abject fear of what was going to happen.  In a supernatural peace he climbed with his son and even when Isaac asked his father where was the lamb for the sacrifice, Abraham calmly replied, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together. (Genesis 22:8 NIV)

Imagine having enough comfort to take your son and walk with him up a great hill knowing that at the top of it you would be killing him.  Abraham was not the sort of person who naturally could do such a thing, only God could give him that sort of peaceful calmness.  When Abraham and Isaac got to the top of Mount Moriah, placed Isaac on top of the wood and pulled out his knife to kill the boy, the Lord showed Abraham a ram caught in the thicket and told him that it was the ram that was to be killed as a sacrifice and not his son.  Now let’s go to the secret of Abraham’s comfort.  Hebrews 11 tells us, By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned."  Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death. (Hebrews 11:17-19 NIV)

We have supernatural comfort the same way Abraham did. Abraham took his son up the mountain with a certain amount of calmness because he believed that after he killed the boy, God would raise him from the dead.  The Lord, he knew, would take care of both of them.  You gain comfort the same way.  When you decide that God will take care of you, the comfort of God begins to come over you like a warm wave of peace.  His comfort relaxes you, lifts your spirits, calms you, and takes away your worry and your anger as you trust in Him.   You begin to discover that the Lord is quieting your desperation and in the storm you are at peace.  Memorize this short statement and repeat it again and again for it is the promise of God to you.  “My God will meet all my needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”   If we make this our prayer of faith, God will comfort us in any and every situation.

Fret Master

Whenever we feel restless and perturbed, our natural tendency is to look outside

ourselves.  It is the crisis we are facing, the marriage that isn't well, the problems with the kids, the neighbor, the co-worker, the bills; the stuff all about us that has damaged our temperament.  God never gave the externals that sort of credit.  He always said it was a heart issue.  If the heart is right with God, the externals will work themselves out in due time.  Our Lord was never fussy, never upset with His circumstances.  He let the Father have His way with all He faced and did not worry about how things would turn.  Christ was so completely settled with the goodness of God that He could not lose Himself on what was happening all about Him.   Our Lord told us not to fret for good reason.  It is rebellion against God to worry.  Whoever rules the heart rules the soul and if the heart is a churning pot of frustration and fretfulness, then God has been pushed aside from where He is needed most.  Worry is the most demanding god of all, a raging whirlwind of do this and do that, stop this and start that.  Who can live with such a monster as the ruling warlord!  If Christ has conquered Sin in you, then the heart must admit Him as King and worry cast out of her.  You have to do this yourself though.  God is not going to do it for you.  With the little bit of faith you can muster, turn over that one great worry and let God have it.  Take a single worry at a time and give it to your Savior.  Name it clearly so you are certain you have handed it to Him and then give Christ time to work the fret out of your heart.  His rightful place is as King within you and if He is not Lord there, all the angels in heaven cannot help you with what troubles stand before you.  What good would it be for the Lord to heal the blind man if he never opens his eyes to see?  If worry is the master of your heart, even a perfect life without a trouble in the world is a train wreck for you.

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.   1 Peter 5:7 NIV

Earthy Lives What Are We?

Genesis 2:7 NIV

…the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

What Does Your Earthiness Say About Your Worth?

My senior year in high school, I took the highest level of math our school offered.  Everyone in the class was planning on attending a major university and were counting on a good grade to enhance their chances of being accepted or getting scholarships.  That is, everyone except me.  I am not sure why I was in the class; I had no intention of studying, I guess I just thought it would be a fun class to take.  The teacher was the strictest in the school.  Her name was Miss Sims and she was it seemed in her seventies although looking back she was probably younger than that.  Everyone called her behind her back Sargent Sims and she definitely fit that nick name. She had a practice of each class making one of the students go to the blackboard and in front of everyone work out a problem from the homework.  Having the last name Walkup was convenient for me although I knew the time would come when eventually my name would be called.  It was.  Of course I had not done the assignment and although I listened carefully to all that went on in the class, I had no idea how to work out the problem she gave me.  I slowly wrote the problem out on the blackboard, then began to just stare at it.  I may have thought that if I stalled long enough, Miss Sims would help me.  She did not.  She left me there to “hang in the wind”.  Finally Miss Sims called to me from her throne, “Mr. Walkup, you don’t know what you are doing, do you?”  I shook my head “no” and with all the stiffness her personality possessed, Miss Sims sent me back to my seat.  My friends looked over at me with pity in their eyes, embarrassed for me.  I just stared straight ahead, feeling like dirt.

To compare someone to dirt is to imply he or she is worthless.  And if you are “dirty”, it means you are morally corrupted.  Have you ever felt like dirt?  Perhaps you were a failure in athletics or your grades weren’t good.  Maybe you loved someone that did not love you back.  Perhaps you got mad and were embarrassed afterward by some of the things you said.  Have you been fired?  You probably felt like dirt then.   You might have gotten drunk or high and afterward felt like dirt.  Maybe you took an entrance exam or a placement test and didn’t do as well as you hoped.  It could be that you don’t feel respected.  Has there been a time when you felt like dirt? 

As we started to discuss this last week, the Bible indicates that all of us should feel like dirt and for good reason.  We are.  The first of us was made out of the dust of the ground and everyone since is descended from that man of dirt.  The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7 NIV) Should we be embarrassed?  Does this make us automatically inadequate?  There is something critical to remember when we consider how we were created. The dirt is the fundamental building block of everything God put together for us.  The creatures are from the dirt, the plants are from the dirt and of course earth itself is from the dirt.  Unlike the angels, the demons and Satan, we are connected to everything of earth.  It is our glorious heritage to be linked to all that we see and touch and smell and taste and hear.  God could have created us completely separate from this universe, a distinct outsider but He did not.  He created us a part of it.  We will return to this but it cannot be overstated that God made earth our home by creating us a part of it.  We are perfectly fit to do what our Lord made us to do, rule over the earth and make it bend to our will.  God blessed them (Adam and Eve) and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." (Genesis 1:28 NIV)  Remember, Satan was cast down to the earth: we were made part of it.

Now we must address the matter of our humiliation. Being earthy is to our glory but sin brought our disgrace.  After the Lord made us from the earth, the Lord breathed spirit into us.  Immediately we became what the Bible calls a living soul or “nephesh”: spirit and earthiness together.  We were, unlike any other being, the glory of God and the glory of earth combined.  Nothing else in the universe or beyond the universe could make that claim…not the angels, not Satan and not even God was both.  We were glorious, glorious with God, glorious with perfect earth.  To understand our humiliation, we must rethink what happened for Moses when he went before God in His glory.  The very first time Moses came into the presence of God, something about his body, his earthy body changed.  When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face.  But whenever he entered the Lord's presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord. (Exodus 34:33-35 NIV)  

It must have been spectacular for Moses to experience his body transformed in some supernatural way by being with God.  But why did Moses put the veil over his face after he met with God and the people saw the radiant transformation caused by God’s glory?  The Apostle Paul tells us Moses was embarrassed by how the glory faded.  We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. (2 Corinthians 3:13 NIV)  How very human of him; when he realized that he could not retain, due to his sin the radiance being with God provided him, Moses covered his face so he would not be embarrassed by everyone knowing it.  We assume that Adam and Eve desperately tried to cover themselves because they were humiliated by their nakedness in regard to their genitalia.  The Bible never says that.   It simply says that they sewed fig leaves together to cover their nakedness and later after handing down the consequences of their Sin, the Lord made clothes for Adam and Eve because of their humiliation in being naked. The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. (Genesis 3:21 NIV)

There was in the bodies of Adam and Eve something of God that may have been as dazzling as the face of Moses or of Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration.  There he (Jesus) was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.(Matthew 17:2 NIV) The purity of body built by the hand of God is not known to us now but could it have been any less glorious than was Moses’ body when he met with God for just a short time?  When the glory of God left the bodies of Adam and Eve, they were appalled by how horrific their fall and all they could think of doing was covering their once glorious bodies.  Sin did not make Adam and Eve suddenly naked; sin made Adam and Eve unfathomably lifeless in their looks.  What is most horrific in regard to our bodies now is that we no longer even give a thought to our lost glory as God’s special creation; we pay far more attention to is the lust our bodies generate in one another.

Now we must in a much too cursory manner describe how God’s plan for putting humanity together as both earth and spirit worked out in the undoing of all the damage Satan’s rebellion against God brought to the universe of humanity.  When God became fully human, completely earthy, He did so for one purpose.  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV) Our Lord became sin, not just sins but Sin in its entirety.  This could not be done spiritually; it could only take place in the earthy realm of humanity.  In the body of Christ, that earthy body, the Sin of mankind was taken and then crucified.  It was not through angels or any supernatural force that God took apart Satan’s hold on the universe but through a human being, a human being made out of dirt, out of earth that our Lord ruined Satan.  Satan, and the demons that joined him, cannot be brought out of their rebellion; as just spiritual beings and that is all, they can only be sent into hell.  But people, earthy people can have their sin taken out of them which is what God was able to do when He was crucified.  Once Christ rose from the dead, Satan was completely wrecked because he no longer has death to keep humanity from God.  The body of creation can be remade, and the resurrection of Jesus confirmed it, and so the victory of God as man became also the victory of man as earthy soul, completely remade without sin and God will do this.  Not only that, God can come into our body and join us in it so that His spirit can empower our spirit to live out the perfect life of Christ in actual ways. 

Because of what Jesus Christ did in an earthy body which has its origin in dirt you can be a perfect overcomer of sin in actuality and not in some mythical, imaginary sense.  Unlike Adam who failed in perfection and holiness, you will not fail.  You will live out every word of God’s commandments, every word in the Sermon on the Mount and you will love perfectly God and all the people you have in your life.    The Great Society of perfect union with God and all His people will come to pass because our Lord became an earthy part of us and in the cataclysmic work of His crucifixion and resurrection we all are joined in what He did.  This work of God’s salvation starts now.  With Christ our Savior part of us, we can today work out what God has worked into us, holiness and real love.  Never say you can’t when God in you says you can.  Paul was not just blowing steam when he said to you, “I can do everything through Him (Christ) who gives me strength.”  (Philippians 4: 13 NIV)   Unlike the demons and all spiritual beings in rebellion against God, you can in your glorious earthiness be made new and live a perfectly holy and good life.  In Christ, you can do what is right and have all the joy of Christ working in you.