contradictory thoughts

Read Exodus 32 and I Corinthians 10

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down the mountain, they gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Make us gods who will go before us. As for this Moses…we do not know what has become of him. Exodus 32:1

I heard a preacher once say, “What you are when you are by yourself is who you are. What you think in your private meditations defines you.”

I read that Brother Lawrence, a monk from the 1600’s, decided as a spiritual discipline to purify his personal thoughts to the point of total holiness. But the harder he worked to push out all impure thoughts and keep his mind focused on God, the more aggressively lewdness and maliciousness came into his brain.

I am very thankful that much of who I am is defined by the “authority” of those around me. I am who I am because of my church, my family, my friends. But there are times when I find myself free of many of these external authorities.

When Moses was gone from the Israelites, his authority went with him. Aaron was suppose to have taken up Moses’ authority, but some of the people decided to push against it. With little effort, Moses’ authority in Aaron collapsed and the result was an astonishing display of riotous and licentious idolatry.

I went to a Christian college where half a dozen young men from my church background were students. Especially when I was a youth, our church was our life. Our total community was our church. So when we went off to college, it was a radical change for us. The authority of the church was the memory of it, or the habits from it. Some of the young men from our church were the best of the spiritual best at college. They led the Bible studies, encouraged their room-mates, continued with their devotional lives. But the others were amazing. How they were not kicked out of this Bible college, was beyond me, but their womanizing, alcohol, marijuana, and generally lawless exploits were known to everybody.

We have a friend who taught English to adults in mainland China. He said when he was in the classroom, he never had more attentive, respectful students. But the moment he stepped out the door, these adults would be throwing paper balls at each other and standing up on their chairs. When he returned to the classroom he would slowly turn the door knob to give the class time to return to order before he would reenter.

Two seemingly contradictory thoughts:

#1 When we are in a place where external authority is not exerting itself upon us, our thoughts and inclinations do not always move in the way pleasing to our Lord and Savior. At such times we cry out, “Oh wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death?” Romans 7:24 The Lord is very gracious. He knows we are but dust. He does deliver us. We recognize like the Apostle Paul, “Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.” What a relief! Unlike what the preacher told me, my private thoughts do not have to define me. It’s the Lord Jesus who defines me, for He loved me and gave Himself for me and "there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Rom 8:1

#2 When you are in a new place and thus the authority that had directed your life no longer has the same power over you; if your behavior becomes vile, you have no fear of the Lord within you and you need to get saved. You clearly do not believe in God or in His Beloved Son.

Question: Have I way overstated this dichotomy between people with bad behavior when others are not looking? Is person #1 so clearly a Believer and person #2 so clearly unregenerate?

ashamed

written by William Howell

read Matthew 27 and Hebrews 12

Looking unto Jesus, the author & finisher of our faith,

who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross,

despising the shame,

& has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Hebrews 12:2

When I was 16-yrs.-old I was encouraged to consider water baptism since I had become a believer in the Lord Jesus at 15.  I half-heartedly agreed, & Uncle Ben Tuininga made plans to baptize me in Cedar Island Lake during Teen Camp at Story Book Lodge. 

As we were making plans I asked him if we could do this early in the day when no one else was looking.  (I clearly did not understand the privilege & the meaning of water baptism!)  Uncle Ben smiled & said we would do the baptism when the whole teen camp was gathered together.  Reflecting back, I was a bit shy to be viewed by my peers as the focus of this event, & I might have been asked to say a few words which may have terrorized me at the time. 

In contrast to my fear is the great courage displayed by the Lord Jesus Christ in going to Calvary’s cross.  He was willing to be bloodied beyond recognition (Isaiah 52:14) & to be nailed naked to a cross & lifted up for all to see on a busy weekend in Jerusalem.  He endured the cross & despised the shame of the cross for me. 

He was nailed to the cross at 9 a.m. & remained there for 6 hours.  At 3 p.m. He committed His spirit into His Father’s hands, bowed His head & died.  He was in full view of all who passed by at the busiest time of the day.  He didn’t ask His Father if they could do this at a time when no one would be watching.  Instead, He yielded to His Father’s will which was that God’s Son have a very public death that would forever be the landmark of God’s love & salvation for sinners.

After 3 p.m. souls in Jerusalem would begin heading home because the Sabbath was approaching, & they needed to assemble with their families to celebrate the first great holiday of the Jewish religious year—Passover.  Central to that celebration was the lamb that was slain.  However, on this unique Passover, the Lamb of God was offered up by God to take away the sin of the world.  Christ our Passover has suffered for us!  1 Corinthians 5:7

The Creator wasn’t ashamed to take on a creature’s body that He might die.  The Lion wasn’t ashamed to become a Lamb because that is what we needed.  The King of Life was singled out for a rebel slave’s death, & wasn’t ashamed to be obedient to death, even the death of the cross because He loved His Father & He wanted to save me whatever the cost.

 

Question: What good thing are we disinclined to do because we would be ashamed to be seen doing it?

Shabbot

Read Exodus 31 and Mark 12

“Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths” Exodus 31:13

Under penalty of death, the Israelites were commanded to keep the Lord’s Sabbaths.

Mitch Triestman, a preacher (and my daughter’s father-in-law) who was saved out of an Conservative Jewish background asked me if I knew which was the most important of the Jewish celebrations. Being a person who thinks he knows something, I smugly said, “Yom Kippur,” thinking he was expecting me to say the Passover. He told me to guess again.

Being a person who thinks he is humorous I said, “How about Christmas? That’s the holiday that generates the money.”

Mitch was not amused. “Shabbot, the Sabbath,” he told me. “Shabbot is the covenant sign God gave to Israel that they would be His people forever.”

We Christians are bewildered about what to do about the Sabbath. The Lord Jesus perfectly kept the Sabbath as He did all of the Law, but He specifically and deliberately did so in a way that was  offensive to those in Israel who were particularly keen on keeping the Law to its minutest detail. His Sabbath “breaking” was what evoked the response, “And the Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against Him on how to destroy Him.” Mark 12:13

The idea of the Sabbath is rest. We are told that even God, after He had made the world, “on the seventh day, He rested and was refreshed.” Exodus 30: 17 The Lord, the Almighty, the Omnipotent One who never sleeps or slumbers (Psalm 121:4) rested and was refreshed—amazing!

We have a Christian friend who as a young man got more done in a day then most people could get done in a month. He worked from early in the morning to late into the night. Often he was called out in the middle of the night. He said he averaged about 3 hours of sleep a night. “Better to burn out than to rust out,” he told me. Today he is not in very good shape. Not only is his body falling apart, he’s sullen and angry. 

We have a young friend today who, when she was in college, had been involved in every Christian activity.  Always she was put into a leadership position which made her especially busy. Since graduating, her Christian busyness has dropped dramatically. She said, “I’m so spiritually dry now.”

My initial thought was she needed find a way to get really busy again. But I wonder if maybe now is her time to rest.

Most Sunday evenings, I’m sort of depressed. Living at a Christian camp, we are busy people. I’m unclear about how the Sabbath relates to a Christian Believer but on Sundays I make an effort not to do whatever could be done later. Often I am by myself, and I let my mind take its own direction. “Does the Lord really love me?” I wonder. “Who do I think I am, anyway? Am I for real?”

Like Elijah, as I just sort of sit, the Lord lets me know that my life is not all about me. It’s about Him. He lets me know there are lots of others out there, like myself, busy and well occupied in His work. And He lets me know He still has work for me to do. (see I Kings 19).

On Monday morning I’m rested and refreshed. I’m ready to get back at it.

Question: The Sabbath was the Israelites great privilege. It was also their great obligation. As Christian Believers how do we obey the truths of the Sabbath?

the half shekel

Read Exodus 30 (again) and Matthew 17

Each shall give this: one half shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary. The rich shall not give more and the poor shall not give less. From Exodus 30: 13 &15

We are all born into the world with such differences. As we get older, those differences generally get greater.What an article of faith it was for our American founding fathers to write and then to sign in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”

From this faith in the equality of all has sprung two American political philosophies. Liberals believe all children should be equally enabled so as to achieve whatever might be their dream. Conservatives believe that all children are equally capable of achieving their dream, if only they are not held back. Thus a liberal would provide training wheels for every bike so every child might be able to ride, while the conservative would pull the training wheels from every bike, for it is the training wheels that prevent every child from learning to ride.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never observed this equality anywhere. As a kid, I really wanted to be a good baseball player. I had several very helpful adults try to teach me how to keep my eye on the ball and how to hold a bat. I know they sincerely believed that any kid with the right coaching and the right encouragement could hit a baseball. But the only thing I could hit, if I was lucky, were foul balls.

I come from a really good Christian home. So does my wife. My kids all grew up at a Bible camp. And every night we read the Bible together and thought and talked about it together. Our three older kids are now married to godly spouses. So why did we get things so good?

I read about a man who loved the gospel and did wonderful work in bringing the Bible to millions of people throughout the world. But one day he was in a hotel in downtown Tokyo. He saw thousands upon thousands of people on the street below rushing about their business, and he cried out to God, “This is so unfair. Hardly one of these people has ever even had a chance to hear your beautiful good news of salvation.” At that moment, the Lord took away his voice and until the day he died, he was incapable of speaking above a whisper.

As Believers, we must believe the truth of the Scriptures. When we read, “God so loved the world,” we believe He so loved every single person who has inhabited this world equally, unequivocally.

The Lord required every Israelite, regardless of their differences, to pay the 1/2 shekel tax.Each person had to pay exactly the same amount. The Lord would not have made this requirement if it were not possible for each one to pay it. 

When Jesus came to our planet, He was absolutely unequal from everyone else. He always perfectly and precisely did the will of His Father. Yet, like every other Jewish man, He paid the ½ shekel tax and thus He identified with all of us on planet earth.

Every man who ever lived (except the Lord Jesus) is in debt to God by sin, and thus equally obligated to Him.  We all owe. We all must respond. All in the same way. By believing and receiving His Son. John 1:12

Question: Are we able to trust the Lord to be equally fair in His dealings with each person, regardless of their earthly inequalities?

smells

Read Exodus 30, II Cor 3

You shall make an alter on which to burn incense. And you shall put it in front of the veil that is above the ark of the testimony, in front of the mercy seat where I shall meet with you. And Aaron shall burn fragrant incense on it every morning. From Exodus 30:1-7

For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance of life to life. II Cor 2:15&16

I sniff everything. It drives my wife nuts. Whenever I pull anything out of the refrigerator, the first thing I do is bring it up to my nose. “I just put that in there yesterday,” she tells me. When she comes near me, especially if she is all dressed up and looking her best, I sniff. “Are you sniffing me?” she asks. I am. I like the smell of my wife.

I especially love to ride my bicycle in the Spring. I love the waves of smells from the trees and the flowering bushes. From the sweet smell of lilacs and flowering crab apple trees, to the earthy smell of the fast growing aspen, to the “heavenly” smell of balsam—“life is good,” I think to myself.

We had an enthusiastic lady who, the first time she came to Story Book said, “When I came down the driveway I knew this place is a holy place. It smells like heaven.” She could be right, for though we are not told that heaven smells like balsam trees, it may. But she came at the start of the summer season when our balsam are at their most fragrant and our compost pile has not yet ripened to its all pervading rancidness. 

The incense that was burnt before the Mercy Seat was made up of a specific recipe of spices. God prohibited (with the threat of death) using that recipe for anything except to be burnt at that place.

A good smell is a very good thing. John and Dan wrote in Friday’s devotion about the pleasure of a filet mignon.  What a good smell emanates from a fine piece of meat. God tells Moses the burnt offerings He required were a “sweet smelling savor unto the Lord.” A good smell draws us near.

But a bad smell keeps us away. The main reason I smell what is in our refrigerator is because I do not want to eat anything that is rancid and will make me sick.

If approached in the prescribed way, the smell from the incense beckons us to come near. There is only one way, through our Lord Jesus. If approached casually, that same smell of incense was a warning to keep back, for it boded death.

As Paul writes, let each of us who are Believers be aware of our smell. We should smell of Christ. To those who trust in Him, we “smell” of their Savior, the one who loves them. For those who disregard Him, be forewarned, we “smell” of their Judge, the one who has condemned them. John 3:18

Question: What specific recipe of ingredients make the Believer’s incense smell like “the Christ of God?” 

regularity

Read Exodus 29 and Hebrews 10

Now this is what you shall offer on the alter: two lambs a year old, day by day regularly. One lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight. Exodus 29:38 &39.

I definitely recommend marriage. Besides its other benefits, marriage put regularity in my life. Every morning from 6:30 am to 7 Roxanne and I read the Scriptures together. And every evening around 9 pm she says to me, “I suppose you want to walk.” It’s the same 1 ½ mile route we always take. Then at 10:10 I head to bed. Five minutes later I hear her brushing her teeth and I know she will be joining me.

Curiously, when we go on vacation, after the first day, we become regular. We go to the same coffee shop each morning. There we decide on the day’s activities, which we begin and conclude at about the same time each day until we head for our hotel room.

A distinctive quality of the Israelites in the wilderness was their regularity. Every morning they woke up to manna that needed to be gathered. Every evening the quail would come in. Every seventh day they rested. At regularly scheduled intervals they celebrated feasts. Among the Levites, each person had their own job that they did every day.

Health experts tell us that our bodies do best with a regular schedule. If one eats, sleep, works, exercises the same time every day, our bodies know what to expect; and our level of stress and our tendency towards obesity are reduced considerably.

I started my regularity in college. Every night at exactly 9 pm I would go to the snack shop to buy a malt (with double malt). If I saw a friend there, I would also order French fries which I would dip in mustard. One evening my good friend George Farber was at the snack shop. We decided we would play ping pong every night. We would play until one person won two out of three games. Much to my chagrin, George figured out I had a weak backhand. Though I was definitely the better player (just ask me if you don’t believe me) George would persistently place the ball to land on the extreme left hand side of the table. One night while getting thoroughly trounced by George because of his “trick,” my ping pong paddle went flying out of my hand and headed straight to his head. George said, “that’s enough,” and we never played again. That hurt. It still hurts today. George remains my good friend. He’s one of our regular speakers at Story Book so I see him every summer. But we’ve never played ping pong together again.

I get the impression from Genesis 3:8, that every night as the sun was going down, God would come by the Garden of Eden and have a chat with Adam and Eve. But one night, because of their deliberate disobedience, when God came by, Adam and Eve hid themselves. Their wonderfully regular relationship with God was broken.

Back to Exodus: The 2 lambs that were slain every morning and every night remind me of the ongoing effects of the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world. This one slain Lamb insured that my regular, day by day relationship with my Lord would never be broken.

Question: What regular habits have you established to keep your relationship with the Lord fresh and new every day? Regularity is good for our bodies as well as our spirits.

the best is yet to come

written by John Messerly

Read Isaiah 25 and John 2

"On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine--the best of meats and the finest of wines." - Isaiah 25:6, NIV

"Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now." - John 2:10

I was reading in John the other day, and was struck by this passage. Jesus's first miracle involved turning water to wine at a wedding; and not just any wine, the finest wine. The wine was so good, in fact, that it puzzled the master of ceremonies, because saving such good wine until the end of the feast wasn't typical.

On the surface, this miracle showed Jesus's supernatural power over nature; his ability to change the chemical composition of one substance (water, made simply of hydrogen and oxygen) into a wholly different substance (wine, made of complex molecules that contain not only hydrogen and oxygen, but also carbon, sodium, calcium, iron, magnesium, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, manganese,... you get the point). But contained within the miracle was an object lesson: God wanted to point out that His Son, Jesus, had arrived and begun his earthly ministry. God had sent many prophets and messengers before Christ to lead, reprove, and exhort His people, but He had saved the best, the finest, His well-beloved Son, for last. Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, even John the Baptist - they were all vastly inferior wine compared to the full-bodied blend of God and man that the Father was serving up.

Many fail to realize that the beauty of Christianity is completely manifested in Christ. He is our all in all, He is our Savior, He is our life. There's an old song that says "take the world, but give me Jesus"; I wonder how many Christians would be able to take that a step further and say "Take heaven, but give me Jesus." All too frequently Christians perceive our salvation as fire insurance; God set up rules, we broke them, so He felt bad and sent Jesus so that we could have a way to escape fiery anguish and instead be rewarded with a city paved with gold. That's not the case; if it were, it would mean that everything is about us, that we are the center of time and the universe, and that everything is made for our pleasure.

Heaven, even if it does have literal golden streets, is nothing without Christ there. Heaven is not our inheritance - Ephesians 1 tells us that Christ Himself is our inheritance. We look forward to heaven not because it's going to be free from the ravages of sin we see in this world (thorns, mosquitoes, pain), nor because it is going to be better than even the best this world can offer; we look forward to heaven because Christ will be there. Going to heaven means being freed of the separation imposed by these sinful prisons we call bodies and being united with Christ, to worship and fellowship with Him forevermore.

Isaiah talks of the future kingdom, and describes the Lord Almighty setting forth a feast for His people, "a banquet of aged wine--the best of meats and the finest of wines." I know that when I get to heaven, I'm not going to be taken up with the food, even if God has somehow managed to improve on filet mignon. My focus will be hanging out with Christ, the finest Wine, and drinking Him in for all of eternity. I hope you can say the same.