Discovering What's Next

There were three days left in my Bible study, and I had no idea what my 22-year-old daughter in Christ and I would study now.  I had scrolled down a screen full of possibilities but hadn't really settled on anything.  Frustrated, I simply clicked the X and wandered down our gravel drive to pick up the evening mail.

I don't know about you, but I'm the type of woman who needs accountability when it comes to studying God's Word.  Plop 66 books in my lap, and I can read them, but those randomly-read words rarely lead me to life-altering action on my knees before the Lord.  And honestly?  I'm more apt to read less than more...or some days, not at all.  Give me, instead, a book designed to guide my study of those same words along with a good Bible Dictionary and commentary or two, and my spirit consistently grows like a well-watered sunflower in a hot Louisiana summer.

I find I can commit more easily to devoutly studying part of God's Word for six, eight, ten weeks at a time.  Then, after that period of time, I recommit to doing the same thing over again with another study of another part of Scripture.  Breaking up my study into pockets of time like this keeps me in the Word year-round because I'm constantly having to recommit myself to starting anew when the assigned "weeks" of my present study are up.

At the end of June, though, I had no idea what to study next.  Imagine my jaw-dropping surprise when I slit open a padded envelope and an entire Bible study complete with book, workbook and DVDs dropped on my kitchen's gathering table.

More importantly?  The study was about Lazarus, the Bible character I had been compelled to study on my own just the week before as I pondered how Jesus' love doesn't always look like love in my own life.  I've never had a Bible study thrown at me in such a literal way or at such a needed juncture, but by God's divine providence, I began a 10-week study of Joanna Weaver's newest book Lazarus Awakening: Finding Your Place in the Heart of God. 

Weaver is best known to me for her book Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World.  Here, though, she looks at the story of Lazarus' death and resurrection as recorded in John 11 & 12.  While the first two chapters were difficult for me to sink my teeth into, by Chapter 3, the study came alive for me, and the accompanying DVD showed me a woman who was not a ravishing beauty with great speaking ability, but a woman who is ordinary--like me--and whose love for Jesus radiates off her face as she speaks.

In the study, Weaver shows how like Lazarus, we are all sick with the deadly illness of sin and in need of a resurrection, but to achieve that, God desires a relationship with us.  To accomplish that relationship, often, God will withdraw everything from our lives that detracts from Him so that we will pursue the one best thing--Him--versus the many good things.

Weaver continues with this theme by discussing how humanity perceives love as the quick meeting of our needs, but trouble can be a blessing.  She uses one of my new-favorite quotes from Charles Haddon Spurgeon to illustrate the point:

If you want to ruin your son, never let him know hardship.  When he is a child carry him in your arms, when he becomes a youth still dandle him, and when he becomes a man still dry-nurse him, and you will succeed in producing an arrant fool.  If you want to prevent his being made useful in the world, guard him from every kind of toil.  Do not suffer him to struggle...supply all his wishes, avert all disappointments, prevent all troubles, and you will surely tutor him to be a reprobate and to break your heart.  But put him where he must work, expose him to difficulties, purposely throw him into peril, and in this way you shall make him a man, and when he comes to do a man's work and to bear man's trial, he shall be fit for either.  My Master does not daintily cradle His children when they ought to run alone;...but He lets them tumble down to the cutting of their knees, because then they will walk more carefully by-and-by, and learn to stand upright by the strength which faith confers upon them. (p. 58-59).

God restrains Himself from meeting all our wants in order to produce what Weaver refers to as "enduring love" for the Lord in our hearts.  And yet, to grow in our love and relationship with God, we must stop dwelling in our own tombs, caught between the world of the flesh and the world of the spirit.

The best chapters in Weaver's study delve into "tomb living" or how once Jesus resurrects us to new live and the stone is rolled away, we still choose to live in defeat, fear, and wrapped in our graveclothes that trip us up and drag down our ministry and the ministry of others.

In one passage, Weaver calls us well-seasoned Christians to help set free those around us by helping them on their road of sanctification, of becoming like Christ. She argues we Christians often keep new Christians firmly bound in their grave clothes by how we treat them: "We bind people through our attitudes toward them.  We bind them when we hold onto their faults instead of lifting up and encouraging their attempts to change.  We bind people when we don't forgive them.  We bind them when we gossip to others about their faults.  Whenever we treat people out of our smallness instead of the Lord's abundance; we keep them bound" (p. 126).

Ouch.

Maybe it's time for some of us to lay down our expectations of where someone should be on his journey as a Christian and should, instead, walk alongside them, helping them become all they can be in Christ.

Whether you are a new Christian or a more well-seasoned one, Lazarus Awakening will speak hope and wisdom into your heart.  It's not often a book receives my wholehearted recommendation, but this is a "keeper" on my bookshelf, one that has both convicted me and comforted me through a rough season of change in my household and difficulty in my church life.

Wrestling With the Familiar

Five months into life as a newlywed, I left a lonely husband at the airport terminal so that I could attend a professional conference in Austin, Texas.  My trip only lasted a few short days, but during that time, my husband got the hair brained idea that he should wash all his clothes in order to make my job easier when I returned. 

Unfortunately, the poor man had zero experience with separating lights from darks, and so, he never imagined the dangers of adding bright red socks into a full load of white laundry.  Worse, once the damage was done, he didn't know stuffing those clothes (including the two wet, red socks) into a hot dryer was the next worst thing he could do.

As you may imagine, I returned home to find all the white underwear tie-dyed a mottled pastel pink, their hue heat set.  Permanently.

In the end, he sheepishly wore those pink Hanes until they wore out.  Little did I know that with children in my future, this would merely be the first of many experiences with inadvertently dying fabric.

An infamous verse in Isaiah speaks of our sin as dyeing our souls: "'Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool"

I know.  This is a verse well known to most Christians. But immediately before this part, the first words of this verse read, "'Come now, and let us reason together,' Says the LORD" (v. 18).  With those words, God is stating that He wants us not to mindlessly do as we are told.  Instead, His desire is that we wrestle with His words so that we comprehend and obey based on an understanding and true desire of the soul to obey, not because of mere tradition or religiosity.

These words mean God wishes us to wrestle with the common words we may have had before us our entire lives.  With the familiar, we are to pause.  To reread.  To study what we believe ourselves to already know.  To approach Scripture with the intent to learn what more God has for us to know in the common everyday language we have already committed to both and mind and heart.

In the above verse, it initially looks like God is repeating himself, giving two different words for red--scarlet and crimson.  Yet, since we know God does not waste words, either the two words hold different meanings or He is using emphasis for a reason.

"Scarlet" dye was created from "the insect 'coccus ilicis', the dried body of the female yielding colouring matter from which is made the dye used for cloth to colour it scarlet or crimson"*

According to Matthew Henry, this word scarlet denotes  "a deep dye, a double dye, first in the wool of original corruption, and afterwards in the many threads of actual transgression; though we have often dipped into sin, by many backslidings; yet pardoning mercy will take out the stain."

The concept of our sin being "double dyed" seems to be reflected in God's double use of words for "red," emphasizing just how permanently we are stained by sin in His eyes such that nothing we can do could ever release us from that stain.  

What I find most interesting, though, comes from Henry Morris' Biblical Basis for Modern Science.  Morris explains further the tern scarlet as it is created by the coccus ilicis insect:

"When the female of the scarlet worm species was ready to give birth to her young, she would attach her body to the trunk of a tree, fixing herself so firmly and permanently that she would never leave again. The eggs deposited beneath her body were thus protected until the larvae were hatched and able to enter their own life cycle. As the mother died, the crimson fluid stained her body and the surrounding wood. From the dead bodies of such female scarlet worms, the commercial scarlet dyes of antiquity were extracted. What a picture this gives of Christ, dying on the tree, shedding his precious blood that he might 'bring many sons unto glory' (Hbr 2:10)! He died for us, that we might live through him! Psa 22:6 describes such a worm and gives us this picture of Christ. (cf. Isa 1:18)" (Morris 73).

Knowing how two red socks transformed one load of laundry, I have long looked at this verse differently.  Yet, now that I have wrestled to understand how "double dyed" I am by my sin and how scarlet dyes were created in Bible times, I am even more in awe of how impossible it is for me to be "white as snow" without Jesus' sacrifice.

It makes me wonder what more God will teach me the next time I encounter this same Scripture.



*Blue Letter Bible Lexicon

What's Floating Invisible in the Air Around Us?

My mother spent much of my high school years baking homemade bread.  Somewhere along the way, she got a Ziploc bag full of "starter," and after that, our house was an aromatic wonderland....as long as we remembered to feed the starter.

What looked like little more than a glob of flour and water loosely mixed together could rise into a pock-filled mound after being plied with sugar and water. Back then, I didn't understand how it worked.  I just appreciated the end result.  Who knew my world could be rocked just by learning about how that sourdough starter really worked.

Bacteria. fermentation. lactic-acid-producing yeast. When taken to the pages of Scripture, this knowledge reveals even more about our need for a Savior.

Earlier this year, this blog hosted a series on the Jewish Feasts in our quest to learn more about this Jesus we serve.  One celebration we looked at was the seven day Feast of Unleavened Bread, which begins the day after Passover.

As part of their preparation for this celebration, the Jewish people obeyed the command in Deuteronomy 16:3-4, which required the entire community to clean their homes of any products containing leaven: "Let no yeast be found in your possession in all your land for seven days." 

Such an action symbolized God's people separating themselves from sin, literally "removing" sin from their homes and, by extension, from their hearts.

In the New Testament, Paul furthers this metaphor wherein leaven/yeast is a symbol of sin.  He writes, "Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1 Cor. 5:6-8).

In other words, a person's sin in one aspect of his life affects all of his life, makes his entire body unclean before the Lord, makes all his offerings and acts of service unclean before the Lord.  In fact, if sin is left unchecked, it contaminates others, leads others into sin.  Sin is contagious. 

Since the Jewish people understood this symbolic connection between sin and leaven, they wanted to be certain they had removed any and all leaven (and sin) from their lives as part of Passover.  That means any packaged foods in the house containing yeast, baking powder, baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate had to be removed.  Imagine going through all your cabinets, refrigerator, and freezer, and reading all the labels to determine if a leavening agent were in the pre-packaged food.  It's a bit like Spring Cleaning, and we all know how long that can take if done properly.

By the time you sat down for the Passover meal, you may have spent hours, even days, on this task, may have meticulously placed your hand on every food product in the house to ensure there was no leaven remaining within your walls.  In a metaphorical sense, you had "worked" hard to symbolically remove all sin from your life.

Yet, there was a problem with this process.  If it were this easy to work and remove sin from our lives, then why would there be a need for Passover?  Why the need for a sacrificial lamb to be slain for our sin?  Why the need for a Savior?

The truth is that even with all the work, the attention to detail in removing leaven from the home, there is no way we could remove all the leaven out of our houses just as there is no way we can work hard enough to remove all the sin from our lives.

No matter how hard I work to remove it, there will always be leaven in my home.

How?

Although science wasn't advanced enough in Jesus' day to explain it, we now understand that there is wild yeast that floats in the air around us.  Mix a batch of flour and water, leave it exposed to the air for a week or so, and you'll experience firsthand the joys of wild yeast (and some yummy sourdough bread, too!).

This understanding of wild yeast in the very air we breathe further explains why the need for Jesus' sacrifice on the cross.  The image of the wild yeast still in our houses shows that even after all our good works, even after every attempt to rid our lives of sin, there is still sin in our lives.  We still need a Savior to make ourselves acceptable to God.

I don't think I'll ever eat a slice of sourdough without thinking of myself as still being sinful even when I think myself at my most righteous.

Never Too Late for a U-Turn

How often have you heard the phrase "it's too late for him" or "she'll never change."

Human beings in general have a bad habit of giving up on others around them.  We grow impatient, weary at the lack of progress, and express dismay or despair over friends and family walking a toxic, destructive path.  Even within the church, the general consensus is that the bulk of mankind has already passed the point of no return and is heading downhill to certain destruction.

We sigh.  We shake our heads.  Sure, we want to have hope, especially with that person keeps a permanent residence in our hearts.  Still, the mustard seed of faith doesn't match up to the words on our lips--totally devoid of hope, no chance left, not worth my time, why bother.

Or perhaps that person is even closer.  Perhaps you are the one who believes you've gone too far and God could never have a place in His kingdom for someone like you.

God's Word begs to differ.

In a Bible that covers thousands of years, God minces words.  Still, sometimes, he repeats the same concepts over and over (and over) so hard headed humans like us get the point.

One such repetition is of the word "turn."

The prophet Ezekiel uses the word "turn" twenty three times.  The prophet Jeremiah uses the same word, "turn," twenty seven times.  That means not even looking into the other sixty-four books of the Bible, the word "turn" appears in just these two books a whopping total of fifty times.

Its placement on these particular pages is vitally important to anyone who thinks he is beyond God's grace.  Jeremiah and Ezekiel were writing to such a people as this, those who had endured (and were still enduring) God's seventy-year judgment for their disobedience to God's commands.

In the midst of the judgment, though, God used these two men to also prophesy a hope of restoration for the remaining remnant.  The key to such a restoration?  The word turn.

Jeremiah prophesied from 627 to 574 BC, before and during the three waves of exiles sent to Babylon.  Ezekiel's prophesies overlap Jeremiah's, his from 593 to 559 BC, before the last wave of exiles was sent from Jerusalem after the final destruction of the temple.

Living in exile, the remaining Israelites thought God's judgment of them meant all was lost.  Some said, "'Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we are rotting away in them; how then can we survive?'" (Ez. 33:10).  Others said, "'Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished.  We are completely cut off'" (Ez. 37:11).

God's chosen people felt defeated, without hope, worthless.....beyond redemption.

Yet God tells Ezekiel, "Say to them, 'As I live!' declares the Lord God, 'I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live.  Turn back, turn back from your evil ways!  Why then will you die, O house of Israel?'" (Ez. 33:11).

The word "turn" correlates with repentance, which is more than mere sorrow over sin.  It also denotes turning one's back on that sin and doing it no more.  In other words, there was still hope for even those people who were feeling the sting of God's judgment.  All they needed to do was repent of their sin, their wicked practices, their unrighteousness and turn back to God.

As God later said, "'For, behold, I am for you, and I will turn to you, and you will be cultivated and sown..." (Ez. 36:9, my italics).

This God who sent His own precious people into exile, who allowed thousands to be slaughtered by the sword of the Assyrians and the Babylonians, who poured out his full bowl of judgment and wrath upon an entire nation that defiled His holy name...this is the same God who sent prophets to speak to the remnant still living in captivity.  This is the same God who says, "I want you to live!"  The same God who says even today, "I am for you."

As long as there is a person has breath in his/her body, there is still hope.  Even if we or those we know are currently experiencing the lash of God's judgment, even if that same person feels abandoned by God...we must know the truth of Scripture that any judgment is for the purpose of purification, for causing us to turn from our sin and back to Him.

We serve a God who is for us, a God who longs for us to turn from evil and embrace Him with our everything.  Praise be to His name.

Word Play: To Love versus To Despise

In a few short weeks, American households will overflow with hearts, flowers, stuffed animals, jewelry, and cards with words meant to make us feel loved.

But if you can look past the materialism, the continued existence of this holiday implies that people need a reminder to show and express love to others.  The reason?  

Love doesn’t come naturally.

And a totally selfless love like Jesus showed us on the cross?  Well, that is an impossible love on our own.  As Christians, even with the Holy Spirit residing within us, we struggle against our flesh to love other humans as Christ first loved us--with selfless abandon.

And if we have trouble selflessly loving the talking, walking bodies around us, you can bet it’s even more difficult to love God with our everything when we can’t even picture His actual face or hear His audible voice.

As such, it is difficult to fully obey the command to: “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind” (Luke 10:27).

Loving is difficult.  But despising the Lord?  That’s easier than you might think.

A few years ago, I wrote on King David and his adulterous affair with Bathsheba. David was a man whom God labelled “a man after My own heart” (Acts 13:22). He was a man who walked with God in such an intimate relationship that the book of Psalms lays bare a level of love for God that I envy.

Yet, in the midst of loving God, David loved his flesh more. He saw, took, and impregnated Bathsheba in an act of adultery. And when his sin was about to be discovered, he sent her husband, Uriah, to the front lines, sealing that man’s death before taking Bathsheba as his wife.

How he thought he’d get away with it is beyond me. And in the depths of his heart, I think he probably didn’t. But outwardly, David was proceeding through life as if nothing had happened, as if he weren’t guilty of adultery and murder. So, God sent the prophet Nathan to confront David.

Nathan didn’t pull any punches either: “Why have you despised the word of the LORD by doing evil in His sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife” (2 Sam. 12:9-10, my Italics).

Here, God used "despised" twice to describe David's sin, a word that means “to hold in contempt…to hold in disdain, to disrespect”*

God used this same word earlier in Scripture when talking about those who sin “intentionally” or “defiantly.” He said, “the person who does anything defiantly, whether he is native or an alien, that one is blaspheming the LORD; and that person shall be cut off from among his people. Because he has despised the word of the LORD and has broken His commandment, that person shall be completely cut off; his guilt will be on him" (Num. 15:30-31, my Italics).

To willfully, intentionally sin when knowing it goes against God’s commands—that’s what it means to “despise” God.

Ouch. Our culture doesn’t want to use such harsh words like “despise.” We want to call our sin a “mistake,” a “lack of self control,” or a “lapse in judgment.”  But God doesn’t play the politically-correct-pass-the-buck game. His words are precise and accurate, even if they make us squirm in our seats.

Any time we intentionally go against God’s commands, we are choosing to despise God.

Can you grasp the severity of that?

In Malachi, God asks a question that easily applies to Christians today: “A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honor? And if I be a master, where is my fear? Saith the LORD of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name” (1:6).

In Christ, we are a kingdom of priests.  We are those who despise the name of the Lord with our lack of reverence and fear of God the Father.

We must be careful to not let our concept of sin be influenced by the world’s attempt to “rename” sins. It may sound more palatable and less personally convicting to minimize our sins—to call adultery an “indiscretion,” to call homosexuality an “alternative lifestyle,” to call lying “a partial truth,” or to call blasphemy a “slip of the tongue.”

But God calls it sin. God calls it despising Him.

What we call it doesn’t matter.

*The Complete Word Study Dictionary: Old Testament. AMG Publishers, 2003: 125.

Why Not Fifty Shades of Gray

My mother-in-law loves cats.  My father-in-law is a dog person.  

Like oil and water, the two simply don't mix.  They may appear to come together for a brief moment, but wait a few minutes, and they're back on their side of the beaker.

When Opa is working in one of the barns or taking his morning walk down the length of our quarter-mile driveway, his pack of five large dogs follows him away from the house, making room for Oma's seven cats to freely walk in the open without the fear of being chased (or worse).

Yet, as soon as the dogs return, the cats scatter, some high atop the red Dodge farm truck, some to the pump house, and others into the woods.  

Even though they've all lived on the same farm for years, they still can't co-exist together, at least not in such a great number.  It's always one or the other greeting me when I walk down, never both.

This is the image that came to mind when reading Ezekiel 8 this week, the chapter where God explains why His presence is leaving the temple in Jerusalem.

Even though "the glory of the God of Israel was there" still in the temple of Jerusalem, those left behind after the deportation and exile to Babylon hadn't learned their lesson.  Instead, they ignored God like never before, worshipping their own idols and defiling His holy sanctuary (v.4).

Ezekiel states, "Then He said to me, 'Son of man, raise your eyes now toward the north.' So I raised my eyes toward the north, and behold, to the north of the altar gate was this idol of jealousy at the entrance. And He said to me, 'Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations which the house of Israel are committing here, so that I would be far from My sanctuary?'" (v. 5-6). 

This idolatry, this sin was causing God to "be far from" His people.   

It wasn't a foreign power, not King Nebuchadnezzar and his mighty armies.  No.  Sin was expelling God from His holy sanctuary just as sure as sin expelled the people from the land of Israel.

Holiness simply cannot continually dwell in the presence of evil. 

In the rest of the chapter, God outlines the abominations of Israel.  There is an idol at the temple court's entrance, idols worshipped in secret, idols carved on the walls, women worshipping a false god, and even men turning their back on God's holy place to worship the sun in the temple's inner court.

This wasn't just one who had turned from God.  All had sinned.  All were worshipping other idols.

Yet, God saw what idols they had carved in their inner closets, those hidden behind secret panels that no one else could find.

God knew.  And God still knows today.

The sin that separated Him from His people back them still separates Him from you and me until we are covered by the blood of Christ.

His presence cannot reside where continual sin flourishes and thrives, unashamed, unchecked, unrepented.
 
Two chapters later, Ezekiel describes God slowly leaving the temple until "The glory of the LORD went up from the midst of the city and stood over the mountain which is east of the city" (Ez. 11:23).

That was it.  God's holy presence would no longer reside with sinful man until the time for Christ would be come.

Sin is that serious.  Even what we may rationalize away as "little white sins" are that divisive.

This side of the cross, Christ resides in the hearts and souls of men and women versus a physical temple.  Still, though, Paul repeatedly tells us in Romans that holiness and sin cannot dwell together.   We can either worship in spirit or in flesh, serve one master or another (Rom. 6).

If our lives are characterized by continuous sin and worship of anything that causes us to compromise God's holy standards, we need to really examine our hearts to see if we have ever truly repented and turned to serve Christ.  Yet, even if we are sealed by the Holy Spirit, continuous, unchecked sin in our lives can still divide us from the power of Christ within us.

It's time to look at our souls as oil or water, black or white, not fifty shades of gray.


Image: Cool science experiment found here. 

Before We Point Another Finger...

The government, the Democrats, the Republicans, Wall Street, Roe vs. Wade, our public school system, Feminism, divorce, materialism--

If I were to ask you what's wrong with our planet, would it be hard to point your finger at one or more of these as the root of all moral decline?

Or maybe it's something else you see when you turn on the 10:00 news, read a newspaper, or better yet, just take a walk through your neighborhood.

Most of us need not even open our eyes to find something, someone who would meet the qualifications of an abomination in Scripture. We Christians?  We're really good at finger pointing.

Still, you and I might shamefully yank our hands back to our sides if we truly understand how God's judgment works.

God's condemnation of sin?  His judgment?

It starts with His own people.

Scripture records the prophet Ezekiel's vision of God's coming destruction of evil.  Since Ezekiel and thousands of Israelites were living in exile in pagan Babylon at the time, one might expect God to be pointing His finger at King Nebuchadnezzar and that whole bunch of murderous idol worshipers who were mistreating God's chosen people, defiling His holy temple, and mocking His holy name.

Yet, that's not what happens.

Instead, after having a "man clothed in linen" "put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations which are being committed in [Jerusalem's] midst," He tells His executioners, "Utterly slay old men, young men, maidens, little children, and women, but do not touch any man on whom is the mark; and you shall start from My sanctuary.' So they started with the elders who were before the temple" (Ez. 9:4, 6).

Here, God's judgment starts in His holy city of Jerusalem. At His temple. With His chosen people.

God restates this concept in the New Testament when the apostle Peter says, "For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God" (1 Pet. 4:17).

Judgment of sin starts at the house of God.

Judgment of sin starts with the people of God.

What's even more condemning of a Christians's finger-pointing attitude is John's inaugural vision in the book of Revelation, a book that is often used on street corners to tout God's coming judgment of this whole sinful world. 

But before God describes all the woes coming upon the earth? Before He gives us a vision of the the final judgment and of unsaved being dragged down into an eternal pit of fire?

Like Ezekiel, he starts with God's people, the temple of God represented by the church: "I saw seven golden lampstands; and in the middle of the lampstands I saw one like a son of man" (Rev. 1:12-13).  Just so we don't miss the lampstand reference, John clearly states the "the seven lampstands are the seven churches" (Rev. 1:20).

What follows is two chapters chock full of both praise and condemnation of God's church for not being the pure, holy, passionate light to the world that God has called it to be.

Do you see the pattern?

All these passages show that God doesn't first point His holy finger at your unsaved neighbor, at the masses living a flagrantly sinful life.  Instead, He is pointing His finger at Christians like you and me in an attempt to purify us of all sin so that we can glorify Him as a light in the surrounding darkness.
 
Judgment begins at the house of the Lord, with the people of God.

So, before we wave that index finger too boldly, we must first look to God's word to see what finger He may be pointing at each of us. 



Image: Sculpture in Brisbane, Australia

The Ties that Bind: A Heritage of Fire

My father has always been the one interested in our family's heritage.  More than once in my childhood, I would walk past the dining room to find half the table littered with multi-branched charts taped together, tea-stained pictures of some distant stoic-faced relative, and stacks of photocopies.  Some were of pages in library books, detailed letters from one relative to another, or accounting ledgers.

Most all the interesting pieces were filled with cramped, painfully-consistent cursive handwriting, almost illegible and just like my Great Grandma Maggie's. 

All of it was my heritage.

Biologically, I can trace my lineage across the oceans to a time before America's formation as a country.

But what about my lineage as a Christian?  That's much harder.

Granted, my own salvation is a direct result of my parent's training me up in the Lord as is their salvation.  From there, though, moving backwards is a bit more difficult, especially since faith isn't always passed down biologically.  Often, one's faith is a direct result of someone of a different bloodline sharing the gospel.

While I can't fill in the gaps in-between, I do believe Scripture provides Gentile Christians like myself with the starting point, the "Adam and Eve," if you will, of the indwelling Holy Spirit, the consuming fire that burns within each Christian.

Consider both the tabernacle and temple in the Old Testament.

When God first deigned to dwell below with His people in the desert, He gave Moses plans to build the tabernacle.  Then, when this temporary dwelling place was completed, He filled the tabernacle with His presence in two ways: by cloud and fire: "Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle...the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and there was fire in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel" (Ex. 40:34, 38).

The fire from heaven was not merely a symbol.  It was the only fire permitted to light the lamp stand of God's presence within the Holy place as well as to light the altars of sacrifice wherein people could gain atonement for their sin.  Any other fire on the altars would be considered "strange fire" presented to the Lord, an act punishable by death (Lev. 10:1-2).  

When the priesthood of Aaron first offered burnt offerings to the Lord at the newly completed tabernacle, God sent the needed fire from heaven: "Then fire came out from before the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the portions of fat on the altar; and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces" (Lev. 9:24).  Once God lit the fire, making a way for man to find atonement, it was supposed to be permanent: "Fire shall be kept burning continually on the altar; it is not to go out"(Lev. 6:13).

Later, when King Solomon built a permanent dwelling for God, His presence came down in the same manner: "Now when Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the house.  The priests could not enter into the house of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled the Lord’s house" (2 Chron. 7:1-2).

But then, Israel fell into sin.  The fire on the altar was allowed to go out, the temple was ransacked, and God's people were carted away in the chains of slavery.  When the lamp of God's presence flickered its last, there was no longer any potential for atonement for one's sin.

That's when the Father sent His only Son, Jesus, to be God with Us, the ultimate sacrifice, once and for all.

When Christ left, He left His followers with God's comforting presence in the form of the Holy Spirit to light the temple lamp of as many who would come to Him.  This is why Jesus told His followers: "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house" (Matt. 5:14-15).  This is why Paul told Christians, "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?" (1 Cor. 6:19).  

When God's Presence came down to fill His earthly temples one last time with the Holy Spirit, it was, again, with fire: "And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:3-4).

Fire filled the temple of God for the third time in recorded Scripture, only this time, the temple was made of flesh and blood.  This time, the lamp lighted with God's presence was you and me.

Just imagine--when the Holy Spirit fell in tongues of fire on those first Christians, he was lighting the first lamps that would stay lit until today.

If you are a Christian, your heritage goes all the way back to that upper room when the Holy Spirit fell on the very first believers in Christ, lighting the lampstand of the new temples of flesh. 

It is an awesome thought.

It's also an awesome responsibility.

Just as the priesthood of Aaron wasn't supposed to let God's fire go out, we Christians today are also charged with keeping our lamps trimmed and mounted high on a stand for all the world to see God's Presence within our temple.

To God be the glory!

The Lawnmower Approach to Sin

Yesterday afternoon found me hobbling around the house, my big toe red, and throbbing.  By evening, I could barely walk without yelling at the children to watch out for mommy's foot!  On a whim, I brought the foot up to eye level.  Only then did I realize my symptoms weren't caused by an ingrown toenail but from a rose's thorn buried deep under flesh.

Digging it out would be painful.  But there wasn't another choice.  I couldn't treat the symptoms without treating the cause.  

Twenty minutes later, I unearthed a quarter-inch long sliver and began a day-long road to recovery.

Such an injury likely wouldn't have stayed in my mind had I not been recently working on my hopeless flower bed, trying to keep the hay field from reclaiming its property.  The bed's problem is similar to mine--what lies beneath the surface.

Try as I may, I've been failing to destroy the Alicia Bermuda runners that sprout up here and there among the pink roses and white verbena.  No matter how many times I mow them down or spray them with Round Up, they always come back. Husband tells me that if a single joint of a runner is left in the soil, it will take root and grow again.

The only remedy?   Dig it out.

Such is the advice Jesus gave in The Sermon on the Mount. When speaking of lusting after a woman in one's heart as being adultery,  He said, "If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell" (Matt. 5:29-30).

Dig it out.  Cut it off. 

Even an eye-less man can lust after a woman in his heart, so surely Jesus was not advocating maiming one's body.  Yet, He used such extreme language to demonstrate the seriousness of sin in our lives.

Even a nearly-invisible, quarter-inch long piece of sin is so destructive that if it were possible to chop off an arm or dig out an eye and remove sin in that manner, we would be better off doing so. 

Mutilation of the body, though, is not the way to dig out sin.

The only way is to take our sins before the Father, confess them, turn from them, and seek in the Holy Spirit's power to commit them no more. God alone has the power to help us dig out the roots of sin in our lives.

The problem is, especially with sins we deem "small" or insignificant, we want to take the lawnmower approach to them.  We want to mow over the top, eliminating any visible evidence of sin in our lives so that we look holy, righteous, blameless in the eyes of our fellow man. 

But the problem is we never take the sin seriously enough to dig out the roots.  As a result, one week, one month, one year later, that root breaks through the surface again.

Paul admonishes Christians to "Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.  Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.  You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.  But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips" (Col. 3:5-8).

Put it to death.

Dig it out.

Putting aside sin isn't easy.  It's painful to dig out something so deeply embedded in the flesh.  But as Christ sought to show us, the eternal consequences are much more severe should we choose to let it remain in our lives.

When God Leads You to a Bitter Place

The concept that for God's child, there is no aimless wandering even when she can't see the path is both comforting and disconcerting at the same time.  It's comforting in the sense that even if I feel lost, am blinded by the storm, and have no sense of my bearings, I can feel at peace knowing God knows exactly where I am and where He is guiding me towards.

Yet, this theology is also disconcerting in those moments when I am not leading myself astray through sin but when I am wholeheartedly seeking to walk the straight and narrow only to see everything fall apart.  It is then that I stop and lift my head in confusion.  

"God, did you lead me here?  Really!?  Here!?"

Last week in this space, we contemplated how God led the Israelites in a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night in order to show that His presence, always leading, guiding and protecting His children.  Such Scriptures serve as a reminder to us modern-day Christians that even when we feel as if we're wandering with no clear direction, God is leading us with His presence.

And yet, that path, though clear, may be anything but smooth.

Such was the case with the Israelites, fresh on the road to freedom away from Egypt and long before they incited God to slap a forty-year-curse on the whole lot of them.

In the beginning, it was obvious they were on a God-ordained path.  If any doubted, all he had to do was look back three days in the rear-view mirror to see a picture of the Red Sea miraculously sweeping to the left and right so the whole lot of them could cross over on the dry riverbed before God slammed that corridor shut, drowning Pharaoh and his army.  

If that memory wasn't enough to convince their steps were Holy-led, day or night, all they had to do was look up and see Him in cloud or fire.

And yet, that God-paved path was anything but smooth.

Three days into their exodus from Egypt, the Israelites were without water, which in a dry and barren wilderness was a sure recipe for death.  And so, God rolled out the red carpet directly to a place called Marah where there was water, but "When they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter; therefore it was named Marah" (Ex. 15:23).

I can imagine them dreaming of water at night.  Maybe in the haze of heat shimmering on sand, someone had imagined he saw the shimmer of water ahead and cried wolf several times before so that everyone no longer trusted his eyes.  Then, that mirage kept growing larger and larger until someone realized this time, it really was water.

In that instant of God's promised protection turned reality, I imagine he praised the I AM aloud as he took off running right into the flood, almost giddy as the liquid splashed his feet and thighs, covering him with cool relief as he threw handfulls of water heavenward.

And then in the midst of that relief and joy, he actually tasted that water. It was undrinkable.  Was this some kind of cruel joke!?  What kind of God would lead His people to water they couldn't drink?

If they were wandering aimlessly, this would seem like pretty bad luck.  But this was God-directed.  God intentionally led the group to a place where the water was too bitter to drink. 

I am 100% certain this is not how the Israelites expected God to meet their need.  And yet, I'm equally certain this is exactly how God intended to meet their need.

There, at Marah, God instructed Moses: "the Lord showed him a tree; and he threw it into the waters, and the waters became sweet" (Ex. 15:25).  Moses cut down the tree and threw it into the water--instant healing.  In the next verse, God continues this healing theme, instructing the people that they are being tested to follow His commands so that "I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians; for I, the Lord, am your healer" (v. 26).

God had healed the waters' bitterness.  But this people were already deathly ill with a bitter malady only "the Lord...your healer" could cure--that deadly cancer of sin. 

God had listened to three days worth of the people's sinful hearts in their constant bitter grumbling, as bitter as the waters they spat from their mouths in complaint.  

They needed a healer, one who would offer Himself to be "cut off out of the land of the living For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due" (Is. 53:8).

Yes, they needed a Savior, a Messiah who would give His body to be cut down just like this tree so that He could soak up all the bitterness and judgment of sin's curse in their lives and heal their immortal souls.

When we are in the center of His will and find ourselves in a bitter place like Marah where we sink to our knees and wonder why God has led us here, the answer could be that He is refining us as silver or testing us.  It could also be that He is showing us once again our complete need for a Savior.

Either way, God's pot-hole-filled path has a purpose.  And in the midst of it all, He is right there with us, working it all together for our good.