Words that Counsel Rebellion

Eight years of teaching in the classroom, presenting face-to-face lectures and holding one-on-one student/teacher conferences didn't require me to choose my words half as carefully as now when I teach solely online.

As one whose classroom is located not within any four literal walls but in the unconfined realm of cyberspace, it's ironic that I now must more carefully counsel my students in how to revise their essays. In any grade dispute, a classroom teacher might get into a he-said/she-said debate and be protected because of lack of evidence; yet, in my line of work, there is evidence enough to slay a small forest of trees.

On the other side of the screen, without my facial expressions to guide them and without my presence to pepper with immediate questions, students (and their parents paying the college tuition) will pick apart each critical word that flows from my fingers...and they'll be able to read and reread those words blackened in Times New Roman, maybe forever.

Teaching others, counseling others in truth--it's a dangerous business.

The prophet Jeremiah may have lived in a time before Twitter, email, and Face book etched "truth" in tiny pixels of light, but the consequences of bad counsel were severe...perhaps even more so than today.

Way back in Moses' time, God had warned that a false prophet must be "put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the LORD your God" (Deut 13:5, my italics).

Jeremiah uses those same Hebrew words, "counseled rebellion" in reference to two so-called prophets of his day.

The first time he uses this phrase is after the prophet Hananiah speaks a peace and prosperity gospel to Jeremiah "in the house of the LORD in the presence of the priests and all the people, saying, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, 'I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two years I am going to bring back to this place all the vessels of the LORD'S house, which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took away from this place and carried to Babylon. I am also going to bring back to this place Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and all the exiles of Judah who went to Babylon,' declares the LORD, 'for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon'" (Jer 28:1-4).

Jeremiah welcomes the good news, but cautions Hananiah and those being counseled by him that most prosperity prophets of old were false.

Maybe Hananiah didn't like the implication that he was a liar and felt the need to reinforce his words with an on-the-spot visual aid because in the next verse, he walks up to Jeremiah and breaks the literal yoke of wood from around his neck, then repeats the same prophecy, just in different words.

Later, Jeremiah receives a word from the Lord and reveals Hananiah for the false prophet he is: "Therefore thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I am about to remove you [Hananiah] from the face of the earth. This year you are going to die, because you have counseled rebellion against the LORD" (Jer. 28:16, my italics).

His crime? Counseling rebellion against God. His punishment? Death.

In the next chapter, Jeremiah deals with yet another false prophet, this one living in Babylon with the exiles. He writes a letter to the exiles, "saying, 'Thus says the LORD concerning Shemaiah the Nehelamite, 'Because Shemaiah has prophesied to you, although I did not send him, and he has made you trust in a lie,' therefore thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, I am about to punish Shemaiah the Nehelamite and his descendants; he will not have anyone living among this people, and he will not see the good that I am about to do to My people," declares the LORD, "because he has preached rebellion against the LORD’" (Jer. 29:31-32, my italics).

Translated here as "preached," it's the same Hebrew word translated "counseled" in the other two places. And again--the punishment is death.

Strong's defines counseled as “to speak” or “to promise” while rebellion translates as “a departing, withdrawing; hence… departure from Jehovah”*

Using these definitions, the prophets' counsel was a spoken promise to the people. And by making them believe a lie, they were inciting the people to depart from God, His truth, and His plan for them during their 70 years of punishment/exile in Babylon.

To counsel rebellion against God is serious business and it's not something just done thousands of years ago. Warnings against false prophets and warnings for teachers to be careful permeate the New Testament (2 Peter 2:1-3).

According to the Hebrew definition, anyone who teaches the Word of God is "counseling." And what most people don't realize is teachers, pastors, conference speakers, and deacons aren't the only ones who fit into the role of "teacher."

Perhaps the extent of your teaching God's Word is in the role of witnessing to a colleague, friend, or your own child. Yet, even in those small instances, you are still teaching, counseling in God's Word.

Therein lies the danger of teaching "rebellion," something so easy to do.

Perhaps rebellion comes in the form of teaching a half gospel or promoting certain sins as OK because they're not the "big ones" anyway. Perhaps rebellion comes in the form of calling a "sin" a "lifestyle" because it's politically incorrect to do otherwise. Perhaps rebellion comes through a personal belief you teach your children even though it explicitly contradicts the Word of God.

Knowing that I am a teacher of God's word is frightening enough. The thought that one day God could say I was a false prophet because I counseled others to depart from God's truth in favor of an easier to swallow lie--that is beyond words.

*Definition from Strong's Concordance. htttp://www.blueletterbible.com.

And So Creation Groans...

The death toll was 48 yesterday morning when I went outside to work in the yard. By this morning when I went to worship, it was thousands. Now in the quiet of evening, it's more than 10,000...but officials expect that number to spiral upwards as the word "missing" is replaced with "dead." One article stated, "In one town alone, only 15,000 out of 75,000 were able to evacuate; the rest remain missing."

"Missing" is a safe, inkling-of-hope word that covers the horror of death covering Japan's shores this weekend. It's not just an entire family that's gone, not even an entire building--we're talking an entire city that had only 15 minutes' notice the end was near.

50,000 people (or more), just swept out to sea...gone. I don't know how to grasp the magnitude of that. My mind simply cannot wrap around that huge a loss.

But my mind can grasp the meaning behind this disaster. I don't even have to ask, "Oh Lord, why? I know.

Creation is groaning.

In Disney's movie Pocahontas, the lyrics in one song read, "You think you own whatever land you land on / The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim / But I know every rock and tree and creature / Has a life, has a spirit, has a name."

That's not how we Christians tend to think of the earth because we try so hard to distance ourselves from other cults that worship creation, itself, instead of the Creator.

Mankind does have an effect on creation. But more than that, we need to recognize that God's creation is a living entity with feelings, emotions, and a purpose.

Several key Scriptures indicate some of the roles creation plays in God's kingdom.

1. Creation cries out when mankind is not giving glory to God.

In Luke, the pharisees encourage Jesus to make his crowd of followers tone it down a bit and stop yelling things like, "BLESSED IS THE KING WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD; Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!" Jesus replies, "'I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out!'" (Lk. 19:38, 40).

These words were prophetic, for several days later when Christ hung on the cross, when most all his disciples had run to hide...when no one was speaking words to glorify His name, creation stepped up and did just that.

The sun cried out the only way it could--by refusing to shine: "Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour"(Matt. 27:45).

Then, the tectonic plates of the earth cried out by shifting in a great earthquake while the rocks literally cried out by breaking apart: "the earth shook and the rocks were split. The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised" (Matt. 27:51-52).

2. Creation groans for the return of Christ.

We tend to forget that in Genesis 3 when mankind sinned, Adam and Eve weren't the only ones punished. Creation was also cursed as a result. God said, "Cursed is the ground because of you" (Gen. 3:17).

In other words, just as we are enslaved by sin, creation, too, has been enslaved by the consequences of sin and death...and it longs to be set free, liberated from its bondage to death and decay.

Paul writes, "For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now" (Rom. 18-22).

3. Creation mourns over sin.

Hosea writes that "There is swearing, deception, murder, stealing and adultery. They employ violence, so that bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns" (Hos. 4:2-3)

God even sent a prophet to speak to the land as it mourned, sharing with it a vision of fruitfulness and vindication for its mistreatment. He told Ezekiel, "Therefore prophesy concerning the land of Israel and say to the mountains and to the hills, to the ravines and to the valleys, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, 'Behold, I have spoken in My jealousy and in My wrath because you have endured the insults of the nations...you, O mountains of Israel, you will put forth your branches and bear your fruit for My people Israel; for they will soon come. For, behold, I am for you, and I will turn to you, and you will be cultivated and sown" (Ez. 36:6-9).

If God knows the names of the stars, why not the names of every tree? every rock? every grain of sand?

When the earth shakes, creation is speaking...in glory of Christ our King, in frustration at its bondage to decay, in anticipation of Christ's return, in sadness over mankind's sin.


Photo from The Earth from Above. "Mountainous countryside near Maelifellssandur, Myrdalsjökull Region, Iceland. Once the young lava fields of Iceland cool down, life begins anew little by little. Ice, wind and water flatten and carve out shapes to begin with, then, during the summer, bacteria, lichen and fungi prepare the soil for plants, in particular mosses which adapt to an environment which remains difficult. These plants colonise the most favourable sites and terrain little by little, forming a new ecosystem" (© Yann Arthus-Bertrand).

Extreme Environmentalists--What!? You Aren't One!?

If you haven't been bombarded yet with "Go Green" advertisements explaining how you can do your part to save planet earth for the next generation, you will be.

It's a little over a month and a half away--Earth Day 2011. As one who lives pretty close to the land on our family's hay farm, it's not an important day circled in red on my calendar. But, it's been on my mind lately, perhaps because my husband and I spent yesterday planting about 40 one-year-old saplings around our place--cherry bark oak, bald cypress, lob lolly pine, green ash, river birch, and black gum.

This year's Earth Day slogan is "A Billion Acts of Green". Whether you think man is destroying the ozone layer and the ice caps will melt until Mel Gibson's Waterworld is a reality or whether you believe what we're experiencing is just part of a greater environmental cycle--either way, the earth is your home, and for that reason, it is worth celebrating and protecting.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret, though. Environmentalists have it all wrong.

Saving the earth isn't going to happen by planting trees or recycling aluminum cans, carpooling or switching to fluorescent light bulbs.

You want to make an extreme difference in your land? Then, don't pollute it with your heart.

Yes, I'm serious--the state of a person's heart will make the biggest difference in the environment.

Imagine my jaw-dropping surprise when I was reading along in Scripture and realized the prophet Jeremiah was a 2600+ year old environmentalist!

Jeremiah writes:

"God says, 'If a husband divorces his wife
And she goes from him
And belongs to another man,
Will he still return to her?
Will not that land be completely polluted?
But you are a harlot with many lovers;
Yet you turn to Me,' declares the LORD.
'Lift up your eyes to the bare heights and see;
Where have you not been violated?
By the roads you have sat for them
Like an Arab in the desert,
And you have polluted a land
With your harlotry and with your wickedness" (Jer. 3:1-2, my italics).

Polluted. Hebrew word "Chaneph".
חָנֵף

Literally, the word means "to be profaned, be defiled, be polluted, be corrupt"*

In the two verses above, Jeremiah speaks of two ways one can pollute the land...and neither involves littering or greenhouse gasses.

In verse one, Jeremiah speaks of physical adultery. Then, in verse two, he speaks of spiritual adultery--playing the harlot with God by speaking His name in one breath and living out wickedness with the next.

David uses this same word for "polluted" in the Psalms: "They [Israel] even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons, And shed innocent blood, The blood of their sons and their daughters, Whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; And the land was polluted with the blood" (Ps. 106:38).

Here, the blood of children sacrificed to false idols pollutes the land.

Consider what Jeremiah and David are saying to us about how to care for our planet.

It's pretty simple.

When we commit spiritual or physical adultery, we pollute the land the Father gave us.

Want to make a difference in the earth? Sure, plant a tree, find small and large ways to reduce your carbon footprint.

But want to make an extreme difference in the state of this earth? Then, determine where your heart's affections lie. Ask God if you are worshiping the idol of money, sports, television, shopping, knowledge, busyness....

Guard your heart from spiritual adultery. And who knows how big a difference you can make.
*www.blueletterbible.org

Image: This well-known heart-shaped piece of land is this incredible mangrove in New Caledonia, captured by Yann Arthus Bertrand and featured on the front cover of his book, Earth From Above.

An Alternate Ending--Why Choose Death?

I grew up in in a time when "Choose Your Own Adventure" books were all the rage. These classic books allowed the reader to make key decisions at various points throughout the plot, all of which ultimately determined the outcome of the book.

Enter the submarine? Turn to page 21. Go back to the train station? Turn to page 40.

What kept children interested were the dozens of destinies that lay within one book's pages. The reader never knew when a seemingly "good" decision would lead to the story quickly ending in death and destruction only a few pages later.

As one who hates a miserable ending, I wasn't really a fan of the books. Instead, I was the one who would flip and skim until I found the last page of the happy, successful version of the story before backtracking through the choices to see what would lead me to that end.

Alternate endings may sound like the substance of fiction, but they're not really. One's choices do determine the end of the story. Granted, sometimes, it may seem like we're shooting in the dark at a target a mile away, but other times, God clearly reveals what choices will lead to a bad ending.

Those are the times we whisper in sadness, "It didn't have to be this way."

I'm still stuck in the last days of Israel, as Jerusalem lays under siege from Babylon and Judah's last King Zedekiah refuses to make one simple decision that could have saved not only the physical nation, itself, but also the lives of his people, his wives, his children.

Jerusalem was going to fall. God's holy people were headed for captivity in Babylon--that much of the story was certain. God's prophets has foretold as much. The "what" was definite. It was just the "when" and the "how" that were up for grabs.

The "when" was postponed more than once when a king submitted himself to God. For Zedekiah, the most recent example he should have remembered (from a little over a decade before) was King Josiah who had cleaned house in Israel, choosing to submit to God and follow His Word rather than submit to an immediate destiny of captivity.

It didn't have to end in captivity for Zedekiah, either. After King Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem, he set up Zedekiah as king. But, Zedekiah chose evil over holiness. The chronicler sums up his life in a few swift sentences, none more telling than this one: "But he stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the LORD God of Israel" (2 Chron. 36:13).

With the "when" of total annihilation drawing nearer because of Zedekiah's and the remaining people's refusal to turn back to God, Jeremiah warned Zedekiah: "Bring your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him and his people, and live! Why will you die, you and your people, by the sword, famine and pestilence, as the LORD has spoken to that nation which will not serve the king of Babylon?" (Jer. 27:12-13).

Here, Jeremiah pleaded with him to submit to the "what" and "when," to serve their captors. Zedekiah did neither, choosing instead to rebel against the yoke of Babylon, and in doing so, he altered the "how" Jerusalem would fall.

Zedekiah knew it was coming, and at the very end when he demanded an audience with the prophet Jeremiah, he asked for an honest blow-by-blow of what awaited, the "how" of Jerusalem's destruction.

Jeremiah didn't mince words: "Thus says the LORD God of hosts, the God of Israel, 'If you will indeed go out to the officers of the king of Babylon, then you will live, this city will not be burned with fire, and you and your household will survive. But if you will not...then this city will be given over to the hand of the Chaldeans; and they will burn it with fire, and you yourself will not escape from their hand...They will also bring out all your wives and your sons to the Chaldeans" (Jer. 38:17-18,23).

Zedekiah listened, but then said "I dread the Jews who have gone over to the Chaldeans" (Jer. 38:19). Pleading, Jeremiah reassured him, "They will not give you over. Please obey the LORD in what I am saying to you, that it may go well with you and you may live" (Jer. 38:20).

Consider the different "how" ending God was mercifully offering through the words "that you may live." As He would offer many years later through His son on the cross, here first, He offered Life instead of Death.

In the end, though, Zedekiah doesn't choose this alternate ending because of one thing--he feared man more than he feared God.

He chose to die when he could have chosen to live. And as a result, the Babylonians "slew their young men with the sword...and had no compassion on young man or virgin, old man or infirm" (2 Chron. 36:17). They "burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem, and burned all its fortified buildings with fire" (2 Chron. 36:19). And finally, "They slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, then put out the eyes of Zedekiah and bound him with bronze fetters and brought him to Babylon" (2 Kin. 25:7).

Death. Destruction. Emotional and physical pain.

It didn't have to end this way. There really was an alternative Zedekiah could have chosen, one that was spelled out for him in black and white more than once...but one he refused to believe because his trust was not in God.

We are all like Zedekiah more than we may think. Although our single soul's decision to place our faith in God alone won't alter the course of a nation's total destruction, in a way, it will...because one + one + one can change individual lives, can change the world for good or for evil.

And just like Zedekiah, for every man or woman in this world who confesses Jesus as Lord and devotes his life in submission to his heavenly King, there is an alternate ending available from the eternal destruction that has already been written in the heavenly history books.

Asking for Prayer...but Not Really

We hadn't really talked in a long time, but his first words spoke of needed prayer--for him, his wife, his children.

I try only to use the word "prayed" when telling others of my prayers for them, mainly because I'm afraid I will forget to pray if I change the verb tense to "will pray"...and I don't want my prayer life to be a forgotten lie.

This time, though, I said I "would pray", and afterwards, I couldn't get his request off my mind. For a solid week, I prayed. Any time during the day when their names and faces would come to mind, I asked the Lord to love, to protect, to guide. Even at night, I would awaken in darkness, sleep interrupted, to immediately think of their situation--and again, I would pray.

A few days later when we spoke, I gave what I thought were God's suggestions to the dilemma, and my heart sunk at his reply. It was clear that even before I began to pray for hope and a second chance, his heart had already made the decision against it.

The request for prayer was more an attempt to seek affirmation for his decision than for God to heal human hearts of brokenness. In my own heart, I felt hurt, angry, and used.

This past week, I finally ran across someone in Scripture who can relate!

Jeremiah.

This young man spent the majority of his life prophesying to the commoners, elite, priests, and kings, most of whom didn't want to listen. His life was threatened more than once. He was ostracized, banned from the temple as a troublemaker, thrown in a muddy well, almost starved to death, imprisoned....

After spending a few weeks studying only the end of his life, I'm feeling his exhaustion, his frustration, his sorrow...his loneliness. The end is coming. He knows it. Yet, no one will listen.

When Judah's very last king comes to the throne, it sounds like the same old story for poor Jeremiah: "But neither he [Zedekiah] nor his servants nor the people of the land listened to the words of the LORD which He spoke through Jeremiah the prophet" (Jer. 37:2).

And then Israel's very last king asks for prayer.

"Yet King Zedekiah sent Jehucal...to Jeremiah the prophet, saying, 'Please pray to the LORD our God on our behalf'" (Jer. 37:3).

Scripture doesn't say that he prayed for Zedekiah or for Israel. Then again, it doesn't say he didn't pray either, so that's one of those topics for scholars to debate.

What we do know, however, is that the prayer request really wasn't a request for God to change Zedekiah's heart...but for God to change His heart and mind.

A few verses later, Jeremiah is beaten, imprisoned, and left in the dungeon (all based on a not-so-friendly misunderstanding with some officials). "Many" days later when King Zedekiah sends for Jeremiah, he "secretly" asks, "'Is there a word from the LORD?'" (Jer. 37:17).

In other words, "Is there anything new that you can tell me besides that doom and gloom nonsense where Jerusalem is destroyed, Babylon wins, and I wind up dead? Come on, Jeremiah. I asked you to pray! God speaks directly to you! Don't you have some pull with Him? Can't you make God change His mind? Can't you tell me what I want to hear?"

I envision a bruised Jeremiah, maybe with broken or fractured bones, surely with the shadowed remains of a black eye or two. He's exhausted. He's emaciated by starvation. And then, the King has him dragged up from his cell and whispers, "'Is there a word from the LORD?'"

Jeremiah's response seems more than a little hysterical, showing how outdone he is with a king who asks for prayers...but who is only willing for God to change His own holy mind, not this fleshly hardened heart: "And Jeremiah said, 'There is!' Then he said, 'You will be given into the hand of the king of Babylon!'" (Jer. 37:17).

Imagine Jeremiah jumping up with a shout. Hear his urgency.

I'm not sure if Jeremiah prayed, but I expect he did.

I'm not sure if Jeremiah hoped against hope that his prayer would result in Zedekiah softening his heart to heed God's warning...but it's possible. Even in the last days, he kept repeating the same words of prophetic warning, showing me that Jeremiah's heart held out hope until the end.

There's a lesson here about praying--and it's not that everything you pray for is going to happen the way you want it to. It's not that people aren't going to take advantage of your willingness to pray for them, hoping that you'll change God's mind and not their own.

No, the lesson is that no matter what, we still must pray for others. When someone asks for prayer, even if we doubt their sincerity, we still must "pray without ceasing" (1 Thes. 5:17).

Who knows when an insincere prayer request will lead to a sincere change of heart in another. But even if that never happens, the change, then, may be in your own heart and in my own heart as we draw close to the Father and are faithful to pray.


Photo "Praying Mantis" from Flik'r.

It's Gone Missing...Again

Six little people are strewn across the living room rug. In the main hall sits a plastic feast of purple grapes, bumpy corn, and assorted cookies, all to be consumed by the plush birds seated around the plates. Beside the kitchen table lay a dozen or more unstacked books, one left open in mid-story.

I've already de-cluttered these three rooms today. I know I did. But it always seems that as soon as I put a toy in its place, it is almost immediately found and deemed worthy of playing with again. And the books underfoot? While their titles are rarely the same, there is rarely a room without one or more dropped after a quick "read."

With young children in the house, the cleaning is never done. It weighs on me sometimes.

I wonder if that's how King Josiah felt when spending six years cleaning all vestiges of idolatry out of Israel. Did he, too, grow weary at yet another altar to be torn down, another graven image to be burned, another set of false priests to be dealt with?

Last week, we compared six reforms of King Josiah's time to our own, and I promised a seventh this week--the story of Josiah that most grown-ups remember learning about as children.

The story is simple enough--the temple was a mess, so Josiah issued a command for it to be cleaned up and repaired. While cleaning, a priest named Hilkiah "found the book of the law of the LORD given by Moses" (2 Chron. 34:14). He had another man bring the book to Josiah and then read it to him: "When the king heard the words of the law, he tore his clothes" (2 Chron. 34:19).

On its face, the story seems absurd! The people of God losing the Word of God? How could they let such a thing happen? It hadn't even been 50 years since Josiah's God-fearing grandfather Hezekiah had been on the throne. And yet, in that short span of time, the Word of God was LOST...and not lost just anywhere in the nation of Israel but lost in the temple.

I can hear people say, "Well, that couldn't happen today! There are 1400 different translations of the Bible available. Anyone can pick one up in a hotel nightstand, Wal-mart, the dollar store! They're still even distributed in our schools by the Gideons."

No danger of the word being lost in our time.

But I beg to differ. Instead, I would assert that The Word of God is already lost in many of our churches today. It's already lost in our country.

The sheer number of translations has served to make a book so common that it is readily stuck in the night stand drawer to make room for the newest bestseller. Additionally, creating translations for ease of reading or to make Scripture seem more modern hasn't merely drawn more to its pages for daily council but has, at the same time, watered-down the Word.

For the church-goers? Why, the Bible has become a colored fashion accessory with everything from pink princess crowns adorning the covers for our preschool daughters to camouflaged-covers for our military men...many stamped with our name in gold.

And when those lambskin-covered Bibles are opened? Even then, in many churches across America, the word is still lost because too many pastors refuse to preach all of the word...and too few take the time to really read, examine, breathe the Word into their souls while outside the walls of the church.

I'm not the first, nor will I be the last, to send forth the call for the Word of God to be found again. In 1996, theologian David Wells wrote a pamphlet entitled "The Bleeding of the Evangelical Church." In it, he says these profound words:

We must recover the lost Word of God. The problem is not, of course, that the Bible itself has disappeared. There are, in fact enough Bibles in America to put one in every home. No, the problem is that we are not hearing the Word of God. It does not rest consequentially upon us. It does not cut. And it is surely one of the great ironies of our time that in the 1970's and 80's so much of our effort was put into defining inspiration and looking at what were the best words to express and protect it. And while all of that work was going on, unnoticed by us, the Church was quietly, unhitching itself from the truth of Scripture in practice. Biblical inspiration was affirmed but its consequences were not worked out for our preaching, our techniques for growing the Church, our techniques for healing our own fractured selves. These all happened largely without the use of Scripture. It is as if we think that while the Bible is inspired, it is nevertheless inadequate to the tasks of sustaining and nourishing the twentieth-century! The result of this divine myopia is that he has left us with something that is inadequate to the great challenges that we face today.

If we do not recover the sufficiency of the Word of God in our time, if we do not relearn what it means to be sustained by it, nourished by it, disciplined by it, and unless our preachers find the courage again to preach its truth, to allow their sermons to be defined by its truth, ...we will lose our capacity to be the people of God....We have to recover a vivid other worldliness by making ourselves once again captives to the truth of God regardless of the cultural consequences.

If the Word of God does not "cut," as Wells says---then it is lost.

In our individual lives and in our corporate worship services, we must again find the word. And once we have found it, we must do as Josiah did: "The king went up to the house of the LORD and all the men of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests, the Levites, and all the people, from the greatest to the least; and he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant which was found in the house of the LORD" (2 Chron. 34:30).

From the greatest to the least--all must hear "all the words of the book." It must cut us. It must be where we run when facing the great and small challenges of life.

And if the Word doesn't, then it is as useless as if it were literally lost in an ancient temple.

Photo: Between the Lines, by Ariana Boussard-Reifel: A book with every single word cut out.

Don't Just Shake Your Head and Sigh

I have become almost immune to the doom and gloom prophets of our day. One comes on TV, and I unconsciously roll my eyes, grimace, and click the remote to another channel.

I don't think I am the only one either.

Perhaps it's that hearts are being hardened. Or perhaps it's that so many of us have lived past several dates on the calendar when some now has-been said the world would end.

Remember Y2K destruction? So many claimed the end was near, computers were going to revert back to 1900, electrical grids would cease functioning, mass chaos would ensue. Instead, we went to sleep and woke up in a new millennium that looked awfully similar to the one we'd just left behind.

Time marches to its own beat, steadily forward as the years count higher; yet, where people are concerned, as a whole, their hearts and souls are not really progressing or regressing in action.

As I comb through the Old Testament, I see mirrored in Israel's history the history of my own country, one not really worse than the other. The only difference is I've read about Israel's destruction because of sin but haven't yet seen that fate come to pass in America.

Last week, Josiah cleaned house in Israel--six years worth of going throughout the entire land removing idols and desecrating places of idol worship so they could not be reused, all in an attempt to return the people's focus on the one true God.

When Josiah started his six-year job, the country was in pretty bad shape. But that didn't mean he just wrung his hands and shook his head over the awful state of his country.

1. The temple of God wasn't revered as a place of worship. So, he had the priests "bring out of the temple of the LORD all the vessels that were made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven" (2 Kin. 23:4).

2. There were non-sanctified priests fulfilling the job of priests. In response, he "did away with the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah and in the surrounding area of Jerusalem" (2 Kin. 23:5).

3. The people were choosing to worship at places other than they the God-ordained temple. One in particular was at Bethel, which had been an alternate place of worship dating back to the time immediately following King Solomon's reign. Scripture says of Josiah, "the altar that was at Bethel and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel sin, had made, even that altar and the high place he [Josiah] broke down" (2 Kin. 23:15).

4. The people were mired in consulting mediums and spiritists as well worship of dozens of idols--Baal, Ashtoreth, Chemosh, Milcom, Molech, the sun, moon, and constellations. Josiah "demolished" each man-created idol in turn (2 Kin. 23:4-5, 12-13).

5. Some of the people even practiced child sacrifice to the god Molech; yet, Josiah "defiled" those places of false worship so that "no many might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire for Molech" (2 Kin. 23:10).

6. Lastly, the people had been neglecting the feasts and Passover established by the Lord. Josiah commanded, "'Celebrate the Passover to the LORD your God as it is written in this book of the covenant.' Surely such a Passover had not been celebrated from the days of the judges..." (2 Kin. 23:21-22).

Next week, I'll discuss a seventh major reform Josiah enacted in his time, but for now, consider these six reforms when compared to the sins America is currently mired in.

1. Do we have an irreverent attitude concerning our church buildings?

2. What about false priests? Those with a hole in their gospel? Or those openly practicing sin, including the sin of homosexuality?

3. How about the attitude that "I can worship God anywhere, so I don't really need to attend a church worship service."

4. Do we revere psychics? Those who can contact the spirit realm? Astrologists? How many believe in horoscopes? Or maybe it's a different idol like our jobs, sports, education, or our children's success.

5. Abortion may not seem like child sacrifice to a god, but...

6. Our capitalistic country definitely hasn't forgotten to celebrate Easter and Christmas, but it has still forsaken those "feasts" through inappropriate celebrations, focusing on bunnies and gifts rather than on remembering Christ.

The state of our nation, the state of our world--yes, it's serious. But, I'll let you in on a little secret. I've read the last page of the story already. I know what's coming, and I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel.

How many of us would be a Josiah in our world? How many would it take to make a difference?

Photo: Adrift 2005 by Sonia King, glass, ceramic, pyrite, fossils, gold, seashell, smalti, marble, turquoise.