John 10:11 Who is the Good Shepherd?

Most Christians are familiar with the 23^rd Psalm.  Many can quote it by heart.

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.

‘Want’, of course, here is old English and means ‘to lack or be without’. 

Some might paraphrase this as, Because the Lord is my Shepherd, I have everything I need.

Astute Bible students notice that the word Lord here is capitalized.  Lord

That means that it refers to the personal name of God, sometimes given as Jehovah or Yahweh.  Its pronunciation has always been a bit of mystery.  Maybe because Jewish people were afraid of taking it in vain, as in the Ten Commandments, they made a point of never saying it.  I don’t know.

So why is all this important?

Because in the New Testament, Jesus says a few things about being a shepherd Himself.

John 10:11.  “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.

In the context, Jesus is talking about the religious leaders of His time, and He is contrasting how He takes care of the sheep, meaning, God’s people, compared to the religious leaders.

Yet, in other places in the book of John, Jesus makes a lot of amazing, absolute claims that would suggest that He had more in mind here.

In John 6:35, He is the Bread of Life.  In John 8:12, He is the Light of the world.  In John 11:25, He is the Resurrection and the Life.  In John 14:6, He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  In John 15:1,5, He is the Vine, the true Vine.  And here He is the Good Shepherd.

In each case, the word I is emphasized.  I, me, I am the Good Shepherd.  In Greek, the pronoun I is one word with the verb.  When you add it separately, you are emphasizing it.  It would be like saying, if you want a good shepherd, you have to come to Me.  The word Good is also emphasized.  It reads literally, I, me, I am the Shepherd, the good One.

So, yes, on the one hand, He is talking about the religious leaders there, but when you look at all the other I AM statements, it strongly suggests that Jesus intended to us to think of the 23^rd Psalm here as well.  If Jesus is the Shepherd, the good One, then what does that say about the Lord in Psalm 23?  Or, more, what does this say about Jesus?

We tend to think of Jesus only as the One who died for our sins and rose again.  But if He is Bread, Light, the Way, the Truth, the Life, the Resurrection, the Vine, and the Shepherd, the good one, then we need to think again and more about all that Jesus is.  Dying and rising again are past events.  We need to think more of how we relate to Him now.

Matthew 28-18-20 Another Look at the Great Commission

Matthew 28:18–20 (NASB95)  18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

After I decided to write this, I realized that some of the points I wanted to talk about are more suited to a seminary classroom than these kinds of articles.  That’s all to say that there is a lot more here than most people will realize.  But there’s still a lot left.

The Great Commission appears in a slightly different form in Mark.  Some people might wonder why.  My explanation is that when Jesus gave these great commissions, they were part of a longer conversation, and He probably said both of them as a part of it.

The wise approach here would be to study the two passages together and use the one to explain the other. 

For example, each commission has one main command.  In Mark it’s to preach the gospel, and Matthew says to make disciples.  Mark is looking for people to believe, Matthew for people who keep His commandments. 

But if you look earlier in Mark’s gospel, when Jesus first began preaching to the people, He said: Repent and believe in the gospel.”  Mark 1:15

So believing in the gospel is not just a mental assent, a short prayer; it’s a life commitment to follow Jesus.  You can’t believe in the gospel without it changing your life.  The good news of the gospel isn’t merely that we can now go to heaven, but that now God comes to reside in us so that we can now live a new life, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

In Matthew, the command is to make disciples.  And how do we do that?  We baptize them and teach them. 

Notice that baptism is at the beginning of this new life. 

Bible scholars differ over the meaning of baptism, how to do it, and who all should get it.  I understand that.  But there should be no confusion over the fact that baptism is to be at the beginning of this new life and not years down the road.  Maybe we scare too many people out of getting baptized, because we make such a public spectacle out of it with the person having to talk before the entire church.  Perhaps I should say that the idea of moving baptism down the road started early in church history, because a lot of people who had gotten baptized didn’t stick with it, but then I don’t think this is our call to make.

Then we are to teach them.  Teach them what?  It seems that Jesus wants a particular emphasis on the things that He taught them. 

We often suggest to new believers, or anyone, to read the Book of Proverbs every month, one chapter a day, or the Book of Psalms once a month, 5 psalms a day.  I just decided to read at least a chapter of the gospels every day.  I want to focus more on things that Jesus actually said and did.  I include the book of Acts with this, because Luke and Acts are two volumes of one book.

Jesus didn’t say, teach this new disciple the Bible.  He said, teach them what I have taught you, the disciples.

You would think churches would have ongoing classes on the gospels every week, seeing how important this is.

And notice that the new believer is called a disciple.  We had discussions in Bible school about whether a person could be a Christian and not be a disciple.  Yet in the book of Acts, the word ‘disciple’ is probably how Christians are referred to more than any other name.  When you realize that the Book of Acts is actually volume two of the Book of Luke, you need to do a Bible study of Luke to see how he uses the word ‘disciple.’   You will probably be surprised.

Bible teachers will often tell you that the apostles, the twelve disciples, lived under different rules than we do.  God wanted them to do miracles and have the power of the Holy Spirit more than believers after their time did.

Except that Jesus’ command in the Great Commission for new believers is to teach them to do everything that God had commanded the disciples.  So I find it hard to believe that God expected Christians down through the centuries to live their lives any differently than these twelve did.

Maybe our biggest problem is that both Great Commissions begin with the word ‘Go’, and we don’t know how to go when we are living among the very people we are to go to.  We don’t know how to engage our neighbors with the gospel.  The apostles seemed to be able to go to new places and immediately begin preaching, and we don’t know how we can do that. 

I’ll have to think about that.

John 1:14 UFOs and Space Aliens

Not everyone is going to see the point or value in talking about UFOs and aliens from other planets, but I hope you stick around.  UFOs have been in the news lately because of a report that came out of Israel.  But so far, it is just that, a report.

In John 1:14, it says that “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

God became man, so He could redeem man from sin, and man could now live with God.

Jesus died, was buried, and rose again, and now sits in the presence of God on our behalf.  Jesus is still Jesus in heaven, existing in a glorified body.  A glorified human body.

So what does this have to do with UFOs and space aliens?

Jesus became flesh to save human beings.  That’s it.  If there is anyone else out there on other planets, Jesus did not save them. 

We are told that aliens from outer space are intelligent beings, far more advanced than we are.  Yet we are the ones that Jesus came to save.  We are created in God’s image. 

In Revelation 7, a picture is shown of a great gathering in heaven, that no one is able to count, people from every nation, tribe, people, and tongue.  But all from this planet.

In Genesis 1, God created the stars.  Why?  “Let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth.”  Genesis 1:14,15

It is from the movement of the sun and the stars that we have any way to telling time or counting years.  They are also used for navigation on the seas or for travel across land.  We are not as dependent on this as we used to.  But who doesn’t know how to find true north when he needs to?

This may seem like a lot of work for God just to provide directions or to tell time.  God could, I suppose, just have put signs all around or given everyone wrist watches.

Our ever-increasing knowledge of the universe should increase similarly our ever-increasing awe of God, and for those of us who serve this God an ever-increasing appreciation of what it means to be human and the object of God’s redemption through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Human beings are the center of God’s creation. 

Those people who do not want to acknowledge God in their lives look at these same things and see human’s insignificance.  In a universe so vast, we are but specks of dust, grains of sand in a vast desert.  With billions of stars, surely they say, there must be millions of planets, and surely there must be life throughout all of space.

Other scientists see our planet so unique, if life depended on environment, it’s a wonder life exists at all.

As I said, UFOs have been in the news lately because of a report that came out of Israel. 

There was supposed to have been a sighting over Dallas recently.  You see lights in the night sky, but as the moniker says: they are UNIDENTIFIED flying objects.

In the book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel saw angelic beings, and he talks about wheels.  “As for their rims they were lofty and awesome, and the rims of all four of them were full of eyes round about.”  Ezekiel 1:18  Remember the drawings of UFOs as round saucers with windows all around?  Maybe they were actually eyes.

I suppose some people will say that Ezekiel saw UFOs, and others might say that the people who saw UFOs saw angelic beings.

For those people who believe the Bible is God’s word to humankind, they may see the answer as settled.  Those who think there is more to be seen here must insist that more is seen here before rendering judgment.

 

James 5:13-18 Another Look at Prayer and Healing

Healing in the Bible is a big subject.  I wrote a book on it; it took 356 pages and 64 chapters.  It’s also controversial.  That doesn’t mean that you avoid the subject.  It means that you need to work harder on it, so you are sure that you have the right answer.  Who knows?  Maybe someday it will save your life.  I think it saved mine.  Probably at least three times. 

I discussed this passage in my book, but reading this passage in James again, it looks like I could write another chapter.  It’s an important passage and worth a closer look.

James 5:13–18 (The translation is mine.  There are some places where translations can be different.  If you have a question about one, let me know and I will explain why I did what I did.)

13 Is anyone suffering among you?  Let him pray.

The word suffering here is a general word.  It can cover anything from a really bad day to a major illness.

Is anyone cheerful?  Let him sing praises.

The words ‘sing praises’ is the verb form of the noun for psalms, which was the Hebrew hymnbook.  Some might argue that it may simply mean ‘sing’ or even play an instrument, though not everyone can do that.  But it would seem strange that James would encourage people to just sing anything. 

14 Is anyone sick among you?

The word literally means to be weak and means that in probably most times it occurs in the Bible, including the Greek Old Testament.  Like Samson becoming weak like other men.

But it is also the word used most commonly for being sick. 

He’s going to tell you in a second to call for the elders of the church if this applies to you, and the Lord will raise you up.  So this is a lot more than just being or feeling weak.  You wouldn’t call for the elders of the church if you just felt weak.

Some Bible scholars argue that this is not a physical sickness but an emotional one.  They seem to want to avoid the miracle of physical healing, but from what I’ve seen of people with emotional problems, they are harder to fix than physical ones, so that would be a greater miracle if they were restored. 

Then let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord;

I know elders do this when they are asked.  I just don’t think they are asked very often.  Maybe most people haven’t been taught to do this, or they don’t expect it to make any difference.   I don’t know.  It’s a question worth asking.

15 and the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up,

The expression is literally ‘the prayer of faith,’ not the prayer offered in faith, and people may argue what that means, but James already explained it in chapter one.

James 1:6–8   6 But let him ask in faith doubting nothing,

James had mentioned just prior to this about asking God for wisdom.  He said God is very willing to give it, but you can’t doubt that He will, otherwise . . . .

for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord, 8 being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

otherwise, he shouldn’t suppose that he will get anything from God. 

Christians seem afraid that they are presuming on God when they expect to get the thing they prayed for.  Well, God expects you to believe that you will get wisdom if you ask for it.  And it seems the same for healing.  I know some people will say that they tried it, and it didn’t work, or they know somebody else who tried it and it didn’t work.  I’ll talk about that a little later.

and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him.

There seems to be a connection of some sort with people having done things they shouldn’t have or not doing things they should have and not dealing with that.  It seems that unresolved sins can play a role in a person’s sickness and recovery, though not necessarily.

16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another that you may be healed.

This passage can probably be understood in two ways: confessing your sins to one another and praying for each other can have a healing effect on you, or that healing is what they pray for.  I would say that James is saying that they should pray for healing, because the very next verse tells us how powerful prayer can be.

Again, some will argue that the healing here is emotional, not physical, but, again, I think that would be a far greater miracle than a physical one.  But he wants Christians to be open to other believers about their shortcomings and failures, and they should pray for each other for their healing, whatever kind it is.  James wouldn’t have told them to pray for it, if he didn’t expect it to happen.

And then James tells us how powerful prayer can be.

16 The effective prayer of a righteous man is very powerful.  17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. 18 And he prayed again, and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its fruit.

Elijah’s ‘prayer’ is found in I Kings 17:1.   Now Elijah the Tishbite . . . said to Ahab, “As the LORD God of Israel lives before whom I stand, surely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.”

Elijah didn’t ask God to stop the rain.  He just declared it.  I know, people will say that he prayed before this, and he was just telling King Ahab what God told him.  I really think that if that is how it happened, then it would have said so. 

But even so.  The point is that Elijah was a man just like us, and if he could pray that it wouldn’t rain for 3 ½ years, we could and should pray for another believer to be healed. 

I see no other conclusion.

A few remarks before we finish:

1)      Things often don’t happen as fast as we would like or expect.  I had cancer twice.  The first time I never got treated, so I can’t tell you how fast anything changed.  The second time I got to stage 4 before it went to 0.  The doctor was a little concerned, but I never thought that I was going to die from this.

2)      John Wimber, a famous pastor with a noted healing ministry, wrote that he taught on healing for 6 months in his church, and nothing happened.  Then it started and never stopped. 

3)      Many of us have known people who have died or who have had chronic conditions that we thought should have been healed.  And we don’t know why.  All I can say is that there are a lot of things that we don’t know and never will.  And you will never know another person well enough to know why something happened in their life or not.  Our responsibility is to study the Bible, pray as much as possible, and live your life open before God and doing the things you believe the Bible tells you.

 

 

 

A Hermeneutical Problem

I know that by putting a fancy word in the title some people may not bother to read this, thinking that there is nothing there for them.

I decided to leave it in there, because life is like that.  Growth requires that we stretch ourselves and learn new things.  And those who don’t want to grow will miss out on things, though they often won’t know that they did, because they didn’t see what they might be missing.

I used the fancy word, because you will encounter Bible teachers who will use fancy words in their teaching, and the fancy words might intimidate you into thinking that they knew what they were talking about.

I say this kindly, but this is a very important hermeneutical problem, and you will hear different things, and you need to answer it for yourself. 

The term ‘hermeneutics’ has to do with how to interpret something, in this case, how to interpret the Bible. 

In this case, they will use another fancy word here, genre (john-er, with a softer j-sound).  Basically, what they’re saying is that different types of writing require different ways of interpreting them.  If a poem says that “the cow jumped over the moon,” we should recognize that this is poetry and is not meant to be taken literally.  So, no, a cow did not in fact jump over the moon.

So too in the Bible, we have songs, proverbs, poetry, and apocalyptic literature, and we should not take them literally.

You can make the case that the moon shall not be turned to blood, literally, but then there is the expression: ‘one of you shall chase a thousand, and two of you ten thousand.’  This expression is found three times in the Bible in various forms: Leviticus 26:7,8; Deuteronomy 32:30, Joshua 23:10.

Obviously, we can’t take that literally.  Right?  “One of you shall chase a thousand?”  Really?

Except that it did happen, literally, at least twice in the Bible.

In I Samuel 14, Jonathan went off to face the entire Philistine army by himself, and God gave him the victory.  And Gideon faced an army of over 100,000 soldiers with a force of 300.  Gideon had more soldiers at the beginning, but God told him to send most of them home.  God didn’t want any natural explanations for the outcome of the battle.

People are so smart today that they believe there are natural explanations for everything. 

And you, when you read the Bible, will encounter verses that may sound too good to be true.  And you have to decide if the Bible means what it says or just exaggerated for effect. 

Remember.  For a miracle to be a miracle, the situation has to be hopeless, with no way out.  And God will ask you: Is anything too hard for God?  (Jeremiah 32:27)

The challenge of life and the Christian life is to keep our focus on a God who is invisible and who speaks in a still soft voice, while we are bombarded constantly with noise, music, video, and talking heads. 

So we read the Bible to hear God’s word to us, and it may be in the form of what we call poetry.  And it may say something that sounds too good to be true.  And you have to decide if that’s what God meant or not.  I’m just saying: don’t assume that it is not, just because it’s poetry.  You might just miss out on your very own miracle.

 

Luke 15:20 His father ran and embraced him

In Luke 15, Jesus was criticized because He was welcoming some people whom the religious leaders despised.  They were tax collectors and sinners.  This is not to say that tax collectors weren’t considered to be sinners.  They were just noted, because they had a special place of disgust among the Jewish people, even non-religious ones.

And that wasn’t the first time.  Earlier in Luke (Luke 5:29-32), Jesus was in a similar situation, eating with tax collectors and sinners.  A little later they called him a friend of tax-collectors and sinners. (Luke 7:34)

Who were the sinners? 

I would say that they were those who were known not to be not particularly religious.  At least outwardly.  In Luke 7, a woman was described as a sinner, whom I’m guessing was probably a prostitute.  She came into a dinner where Jesus was and proceeded to anoint His feet with perfume.  In those days, they reclined on couches to eat rather than sitting at a table, so their feet were sticking out around the table.

In Luke 5:8, Peter had an encounter with Jesus and told Him: “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!”  The Greek word ‘sinner’ here is actually an adjective used as a noun, so when you read it in Greek, you see the connection here with the other uses of ‘sinner’ in Luke in a way you don’t see in English. 

But no need to worry, Peter, because just a little later, Jesus said: Luke 5:32 “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

But Luke 15 is the passage that concerns us here.

In the response to the criticism that Jesus received because He welcomed sinners and ate with them, He told three parables to make a point.  One point. 

In the first parable, He tells of a shepherd who has a hundred sheep and one gets lost.  He will leave the rest and go look for that one.

In the second, a woman lost a large coin.  People didn’t have checking accounts or credit cards in those days, and no government inflation from massive government borrowing and spending.  So they kept their money under their mattress.  She looks for it until she finds it and tells all her neighbors about it.

But in the third parable, the thing that was lost was a person, a man’s son.  And when the son finally returns home, it turns out the father had been constantly looking and waiting for him.  He couldn’t go to His son and make him come home.  After all, he was the one who left the father.

And when the father saw his son coming in the distance, he ran to meet him, fell on his neck and kissed him.  Then he called for a huge feast and celebration. 

YOU are that son, and God is the father who longs to hold you and kiss you.  Now it’s true, that in most relationships, it often takes a bit of a crisis to bring out the full extent of our feelings.  The father had another son who didn’t feel the love, though all that the father had belonged to him as well.

Feelings are elusive things.  We may not always feel that God loves us in that way or even that much.  I often tell people that that’s one reason why God built the experience of having children into our lives.  When we are the father, or mother, we know the love we have for our children, and hopefully we can understand a bit then of how much God loves us.

 

 

 

Psalm 108:12 Oh give us help against the adversary, for deliverance by man is in vain.

When you read a quote from the Bible, it often helps to know who wrote it or said it. 

In this case, it was David.  We know David as the shepherd boy who killed Goliath and later as the King over Israel.

What is less known about David was that for a time he was the commander of the army under King Saul, and he personally fought in many of the nation’s battles even after becoming king.

Why is that relevant?

On the one hand, a mighty and valiant warrior can easily think that he has succeeded, because he is a mighty and valiant warrior.  Though anyone who has been in war knows the often randomness of the killing. 

War was a common part of life in those days, and nations were reliant on their armies for protection. 

David, having experienced and led wars for much of his life, says differently. It was not the size or the might of an army that was important.  It was God’s help that makes the difference. 

Eight times in the life of David it records that David inquired of the Lord before taking action.  (I Samuel 23:2,4,6,9-12,30:8, II Samuel 5:19,23)  I think it would be a mistake to think that those were the only times.  Something that showed itself to be of such immense importance on 8 occasions would be important all the time.

People who know God often need to be reminded to judge the likelihood of success to be more dependent on God than on what humans can do, whatever they are doing.

 

 

 

I Samuel 14 The Greatest Bible Story You Never Heard About

Every kid in Sunday School learns very early the story about David and Goliath, where one man faced a giant that nobody in his nation’s army was willing to face.

Yet a few chapters earlier in that same book of the Bible, one man dared to face an entire army.

The enemy was the same as that David faced, the Philistines, Israel’s neighbor to the west.  Like the Gaza strip today.  That’s where they lived.

The Israelite army was discouraged.  Heck, most of them were in hiding.

One man, Jonathan, the son of the king, tells his armor bearer, Let’s go engage the Philistines in battle.  “The Lord is not restrained to save by many or by few.” (I Samuel 14:6)

He knew that very rarely does God ever work on behalf of His people without His people doing something.  It could be anything.  What they do might not have an effect on the outcome at all. 

David faced one man, albeit a giant.  Jonathan faced a whole army.  The Philistines were up over the ridge, and he had no idea what he would find up there.  But he went.

He knew if God was going to help them, it didn’t really matter if he had ten men or ten thousand.  Or one man.  One person and God could do anything. 

Our problem is that we’re not sure God wants to do the thing we have in mind. 

Jonathan did put out a fleece, as we call it.  He said that they would show themselves to the Philistines.  If they said, come on up, that would be a sign that God was in it.  They did, and Jonathan went up, not knowing what he would face, but believing that God would give them the victory.

You have to ask if there was anything in the history of Israel that would suggest to Jonathan that God would do such a thing.

And there was.  Twice in their history God spoke to them about one person chasing a thousand (Deuteronomy 32:30, Joshua 23:10). 

Oh, and yes, God did give them the victory.  God caused the Philistine army to basically lose heart.  In addition to sending a small earthquake.  And then the news of all this reached the Israelite army in hiding, and they came out and joined the battle.

Who would have thought?  One person believed God for a miracle and acted on it. 

I Chronicles 28:9 Where is your Heart?

 The idea of God is both scary and reassuring.

 It’s scary in the sense that He knows every thought of our heart.

It’s reassuring, because He knows every thought of our heart.

The same fire that can burn your house down can cook your food and warm your house in winter.

In I Chronicles 28, King David is approaching death, and he is addressing the nation and his son Solomon, who will replace him on the throne. 

In verse 9, David tells him:  As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your fathers and serve Him with a whole heart and a willing mind; for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every intent of the thoughts.  If you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever.

All too often Christians can feel like their relationship with God changes constantly, depending on what we are doing, have done, or will do.  I know I carried for years the sense that I had failed God through choices I had made.  My salvation wasn’t jeopardized, but if God is disappointed with me, then that had to have had an effect on things.  Right?

But David’s words to Solomon say something different.

God knows every intent of our thoughts.  The question is whether we are seeking God in our lives or forsaking Him.  That may sound extreme, but the direction of your life is either going toward God or away from God.  We may think we are doing neither, just staying even, but in the myriad of choices that we make every day, our lives are never staying still.

David says that if you seek Him, He will let you find Him.  Seeking God or forsaking Him are not like leaves blowing in the wind, going all over the place.  Either we want God or we don’t. 

Because God knows you so well, He is never surprised by things you do.  So even in those times when you feel like you are doing really well, He is quite aware of what’s coming ahead, like when Jesus told Peter ahead of time that Peter would deny Him. 

Jesus knew the intent of the thoughts of his heart, and that was just a bump in the road.  When we realize that God knows all the intents of our thoughts, we realize it’s not the particular actions that need concern us but the direction of our heart.  It’s not the times we fall that matter so much, but the direction of our steps.

Ephesians 4:13 True Unity and Diversity

They say that no two snowflakes are alike.  And there are around 900 thousand different kinds of insects in the world.

I am not a geneticist, but I think it’s safe to say that no two human beings have been identical in the history of humankind.  I read that even identical twins are not identical.

The world calls this diversity.  I prefer to think of it as uniqueness.  Every human being is unique.

Humans like to bunch humans together by things they have in common, like race, ethnicity, gender (I mean, sex), religion, sexual orientation, language, age, education, favorite sports, favorite books.

And that’s okay, because we all want things that unite us, things that bond us to others like us.  It helps to make conversation and even friendships. 

Humans today often put an emphasis on what they call diversity, because it seems so ‘enlightened’ and compassionate.  We look on outward signs of differences, but I think God sees those differences as arbitrary, minor, and distracting, a few out of a myriad of differences. 

Humans also like to classify things, which helps us to see some kind of order and structure, so we can feel like we have a hold on things to some extent.  God creates an infinite number of unique things as an expression of His infinite nature.   

But what does this have to do with true unity and diversity?

Diversity means differences, and we are all different, and to each one of us the manifestation of the Holy Spirit has been given for the common good.  (I Corinthians 14:7)  The Apostle Paul then lists 9 different kinds of manifestations of the Spirit, but then later in the chapter he names 6 more, and I doubt if these are all the possible ones.  With every person being unique, I suspect that different people with the same gifts will make different contributions, like different preachers preaching a sermon on the same passage of Scripture create unique sermons with unique benefits.

Now each person is a member of the Body of Christ, and as a member he/she has a function that is needed for the well-bring of the Body.

When you read about how Paul sees church gatherings, it is clear that they are small ones, like we would call a small group.  Each person is to bring something to the group.  (I Corinthians 14:26)  Each one contributes something unique to them.  Paul only names a few gifts, or manifestations, here, but each person being unique I think we can expect unique ministries here, one person offering what no one else can in quite the same way.

Now these are also open groups, unlike many small groups in churches today.  Paul speaks of unbelievers being present (I Corinthians 14:24), and many gifts certainly help in reaching people for Christ.

Churches today like big gatherings, and that’s OK.  Some preachers and teachers are better than others, and they will draw people to hear them.  And if you want worship music in your gathering, larger is often better. 

So if we are all unique and diverse, how do we unite?

We unite around our common goal of building the Body of Christ:

Ephesians 4:11–13 (NASB95)  11 And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; 13 until we all attain to the UNITY of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

And, of course, adding members to the Body of Christ is probably even more important than our building up each other in the faith.

We are all diverse in our uniqueness, which means that we should find ways to take advantage of those differences, and we are united when we live with the goal of building up each other, as the Body of Christ, and adding new people to it.

Deuteronomy 12:9 God our Resting Place

 

Every so often, you will encounter something in the Bible that changes everything.

Let’s start with Deuteronomy 12:9.

We all know the story how God delivered Israel out of Egypt and brought them to a Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Sometimes this land is called an inheritance.  In Deuteronomy 12:9, it is called that and something else.

Deuteronomy 12:9 (NASB95)  9 for you have not as yet come to the resting place and the inheritance which the LORD your God is giving you.

The expression ‘resting place’ can also be translated as ‘rest.’

So though this land required the Israelites to conquer it first, it is their place of rest, their rest.

In Psalm 95, this land is again referred to as ‘rest,’ or ‘resting place.’

Psalm 95:7–11 (NASB95)  7 For He is our God, And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you would hear His voice, 8 Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, As in the day of Massah in the wilderness, 9 “When your fathers tested Me, They tried Me, though they had seen My work. 10 “For forty years I loathed that generation, And said they are a people who err in their heart, And they do not know My ways. 11 “Therefore I swore in My anger, Truly they shall not enter into My rest.”

So far we have been talking about Israel and their Promised Land, but the book of Hebrews quotes this passage from the psalms 3 times and mentions ‘rest’ 8 tunes in explaining to us how our lives in God and in Christ are a rest.  (Hebrews 3:11,18;4:1,3,5,10,11)

Now you can’t rest, until your mind is at ease.  So the writer of Hebrews ends this section on rest with these words: Hebrews 4:14–16 (NASB95)

14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God,  . . . 16  let us draw near with boldness to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. 

Some translations read ‘confidence’ where I have ‘boldness’ here.  The word is παρρησία (par-ray-see'-ah), which means: a use of speech that conceals nothing and passes over nothing, outspokenness, frankness, plainness; a state of boldness and confidence, courage, confidence, boldness, fearlessness, esp. in the presence of persons of high rank.  We are to draw near to God being totally open with everything we say, not afraid of any consequences.

Romans calls this being at peace with God and having been brought into a state of grace, or favor, with God in which we now stand.  (Romans 5:1,2)

It’s not often that we hear of our relationship with God as being rest, or a resting place.  Like a haven where you can turn off the world and be at peace.  Too many of us are constantly wrestling with God, having questions and worries about too many things.  God wants us to leave all that outside too.  Like going home where you can totally relax and be yourself.  We should feel that same way when we pray or just spend time conscious of God.

We have peace with God, now we need to experience it.

 

Luke 4:2 Forty days, being tempted by the devil

We don’t talk much about the devil any more.  Maybe it’s because we have become so sophisticated, at least in our own minds, that everything that goes wrong in our minds and our emotions can all be attributed to physical and psychological causes.

We have gone from everything is the devil or evil spirits to nothing is.

This is one reason why the Bible is so important.  There are just some things you’re not going to be able to figure out on your own about life.  Science can only deal with things that can be seen or measured. 

At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the devil came to Jesus and tempted Him in basically three areas.

The first was in the area of physical needs, or you could even call it emotional need.  Jesus was hungry.  Very hungry.  Our bodies can have all kinds of cravings: sex, the need for recognition, companionship, hey, food and drink too, drugs, the need to feel good inside.

But Jesus said that man does not live by bread alone.  He is quoting from Deuteronomy 8:3, which goes on to say: “Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.”

The Hebrew text has a different word order to emphasize different things. “Not by bread alone will live man (humans), but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord will live the man.

If we live our lives by what we perceive to be our needs, we can miss God’s best and play into the hands of the devil, who wants us to focus on ourselves and not God’s leading in our lives.

The second area is in the area of pubic recognition.  This need not be public acclaim and notoriety.  We need not be famous, but we all want to be somebody.  We don’t want to be ignored, unappreciated, especially when so many others who we know are no better than we are get recognized and promoted.  We want our lives to matter, but if nobody knows or sees us, it can be hard sometimes.

But Jesus said to the devil, and He might as well have said it to us: The Lord your God worship, and Him only you shall serve.  (Which is from Deuteronomy 6:13)

In other words, focus on God and let the rest take care of itself.  Israel had a problem, a common problem, that when they had success, they were tempted to think that they did it all on their own, that that too wasn’t a gift from God.  When we desire and seek to gain public recognition, fame, or just trying to gain attention in some way, again, we fall into the devil’s plans to keep us self-focused and not God-focused.

The third area has to do with someone who presumes on God.  Proverbs 3:5,6 says we are to trust in God with all our hearts and not, I repeat, not to lean on our own understanding.  In all, I repeat, all our ways acknowledge Him, and He himself will direct our paths.

Life isn’t all about choosing between good and bad, such that anything that is not bad is good.  When you seek God’s guidance in everything, you will find new possibilities opening up that you didn’t imagine before, that you wouldn’t have even known about if God didn’t lead you there.

So we can get involved in good things, but we miss God’s leading and God’s best.

This may sound like I’m making life more complicated.  No, it’s actually making life a lot easier.  God is far more willing to guide us in the small things than we think and to bring us that satisfaction that we need deep down.  He just wants to make sure that we are grounded in Him and not in ourselves.

I Samuel 1:5 “but the Lord had closed her womb.”

 Why would God close somebody’s womb so that they can’t have children?  Does this happen a lot?

Twice in this passage of Scripture, it says this.  The very next verse repeats it.

Hannah was troubled by the fact that she couldn’t have kids.  She was even ridiculed for it. 

This caused her to pray to God about it such that she vowed to dedicate her firstborn son to God all the days of his life.

And that son was Samuel, who was a prophet of God who lead Israel, the last judge of Israel before it had a king.

If Hannah’s womb had not been closed by God, she never would have prayed that prayer, and Samuel never would have been dedicated to God, and Samuel would not have become the judge of Israel. 

In other words, God knew who this child would be and called him before he was even conceived.  That means also that God couldn’t have just taken anybody for that position.  He needed Samuel, who hadn’t been conceived yet, but He also needed Samuel to be dedicated to God so he could fulfill that position.

Psalm 139:16 says: “Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.”

We see unborn babies as potential human beings.  We decide whether they should live or not depending on the circumstances or the desires of the parents.

God already sees this child as to what they will do in the world.  In Hannah’s case, He even cornered her to make the decision to dedicate this child to Him, because God wanted her child to be judge over Israel.  And, apparently, this is not like an arbitrary choice where He could have taken anyone.  It had to be Samuel.  Or, to put it another way, only Samuel could have done what he did, what God wanted to be done in that generation.

This reminds me of Jephthah, another one of the judges of Israel.  What is particularly interesting about him was that he was born of a harlot and rejected by his (half-)brothers and thrown out of the family.

Today, we might have considered him a good candidate for an abortion.  Son of a prostitute, what kind of life is he going to have?  But it was he and not his brothers who delivered Israel from her enemies. 

And then there was Jeremiah, whom God knew before Jeremiah was even formed in the womb, and whom God consecrated and appointed before he was born.  (Jeremiah 1:5)  And the apostle Paul whom God set apart from his mother’s womb for his ministry.  (Galatians 1:15)

This tells me that human life is sacred, but way beyond how we are accustomed to seeing it.  It’s like God knows you so intimately, heck, even before you are conceived, He sees the end from the beginning, and your whole future is clear before His eyes. 

We cannot judge the value of a human life when it is still in the womb.  Or rather I should say, the value of that human life extends far beyond we might ever think. 

Let me end with this:

I read the story of a woman who conceived a child in rape.

She realized that nothing was going to take the memory away, whether she had the child or not.  She also realized that this child had nothing to do with what happened to her.  This was just a new human being who had a right to live and grow up just like she had.

So she had the child.

Turns out that this child, her love for the child and the child’s love for her, saved her life.  Saved her from sadness, depression, and the pain of what she experienced.  This child brought joy to her that she never thought she could or would experience.

Hannah’s story also tells me about God, a God who knew me before I was born or even conceived.  A God who shapes the circumstances of my life in ways I never would have imagined.

 

 

 

Colossians 3:1 Raised with Christ

Christianity is different from all the other religions of the world.

I know when I say that that a lot of Christians will insist that Christianity is not a religion but a relationship.

But the word ‘religion’ can rightly be used to describe this whole system of belief about God.  All the teachings about God, life, human beings that make up Christianity is the Christian religion. 

But what makes Christianity unique among all the world religions is that very point, but even that point isn’t enough.

Christianity is not merely that we now have a relationship with God.

We are united with God in ways other religions can only dream about.

In ways we humans do not fully understand, we died with Christ (Colossians 2:20) and we were raised with Christ (Colossians 3:1).  All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ, and we are being made full in Christ. (Colossians 3:10)

We don’t know all that means, but our lives are no longer ordinary and insignificant.  We are in some unimaginable way partakers of the Living God, the creator of the world and life.  Our lives are now hid with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). 

So Paul says that we are to seek things above, where Christ is.  (Colossians 3:1)

But what does that look like?

First of all, don’t let your lives be run by your passions, especially covetousness.  Always wanting things, and more things, and things that belong to other people.  (Colossians 3:5-7)

Then, as people chosen and valued by God (Lit. loved by God), put on compassion, kindness, humility, patience, all things that have to do with how we relate to other people.  And then he caps it off by saying ‘love,’ like it’s the sum total of the whole thing (Colossians 3:12-15).

Why is this so important? 

Life is full of things.  People are not things.  If a person is a Christian, they too have died and were raised with Christ and are being made full in Him.  People who are not Christians are people for whom Christ died that they too might be made full in Him. 

So don’t let things or your passions run your life.  See the bigger picture.  Value the things that God values, which are not things at all, but fellow-creatures made in the image of God.

There’s a lot more here, but life is learned one step at a time.

 

 

 

 

Philippians 4:13 Reclaiming an old forgotten promise

 A long time ago, but still within my lifetime, there was one verse, a promise, that Christians would say all the time, and they meant it.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.  Philippians 4:13

And then they stopped. 

A few may still say it, but I think the older Christians smile knowingly and attribute it to youthful exuberance.

Maybe the fact that the word ‘Christ’ doesn’t appear in the earlier manuscripts had something to do with that.  All these modern Bible versions don’t have it anymore.   I quoted from the King James Bible, which was common when I was growing up, but now they’re hard to find.  Without the word ‘Christ,’ the verse doesn’t have the same ring to it.

I think, though, it probably had more to do with Bible teachers and pastors who limited the meaning to the previous verses, where Paul learned how to do this and learned how to do that, and so Paul was merely saying that, yep, God taught me how to do all these things.

But I think they are mistaken.  I see it as Paul saying, heck, I can that and anything else through the power that I have from God, or, through the One who strengthens me.  Or, through Christ who strengthens me.

It reminds me of another thing that happened a long time ago, but again still within my lifetime: the charismatic movement.  I would call that a revival, but people who know better simply regard it as emotional enthusiasm.  It was spreading across denominational lines, and not just Protestant ones.

But then the Bible teachers and pastors started telling everybody that it was a wrong interpretation, and everybody said, oh, okay.  And that quieted that down real quick.

And all this reminds me of something else that happened.  Way before my lifetime.

Joshua led the people of God into the Promised Land and achieved great victories in conquering the land.  But then Joshua died, and those of his generation, and those of the next generation didn’t follow in the footsteps of Joshua and the elders.  First they didn’t drive out their enemies, and then they couldn’t.

I’m suggesting that people started seeing that verse differently, because they weren’t seeing earth-shaking works of God, or even smaller things, and a wave of general disappointment and lower expectations spread over the people of God. 

So how do we get that back?  Not only these higher expectations of God but God actually doing greater things?

Like when David killed Goliath, basically it was one person starting something.  After David killed Goliath, other people saw that it could be done, and they did it too.  People need to see it happening somewhere else first to believe it can happen here.  And should happen.here.  It takes people who want more from God than just what they are seeing and who won’t settle for anything less. 

Frankly, I have no easy, quick answers. 

This has happened a number of times before in the Bible, and then it rarely lasted more than a generation.    

Every generation has to ask and answer the question for themselves.

I say it has to be true, otherwise much of the Bible doesn’t apply to us, and we don’t know ahead of time which parts do.

What do you say?

Proverbs 8:11 Making the Right Choices

Life is about choices. 

This becomes clearer the older I get.  Not that I’m getting old.

I am finding increasingly that there are more things I want to do than there is time to do them.

More books to read, movies to watch, people to stay in touch with, places to go, events to attend, activities to go to, even church ones.

Then I read a passage like this: Proverbs 8:11  For wisdom is better than jewels; and all desirable things cannot compare with her.

Well, how do I get wisdom?  How much time will that take?

It starts with an attitude.

The verse before that says:  Proverbs 8:10  Take my instruction and not silver, and knowledge rather than choicest gold.

The Hebrew word here for instruction is מוּסָר (myu-sar'), a very common word in Proverbs which deals with the whole idea of “discipline (of the moral nature), chastening, correction.”

Many of you will see this immediately as a something undesirable, like God is standing over you to judge you, condemn you, and constantly find fault with you. 

Think of it rather as a coach whose goal is your excellence. 

The base of any moral instruction, or training in wisdom, is the Bible.  That reveals the will of God in its broadest and greatest details.  As you increase your knowledge and understanding of that, that will give you a framework for that instruction.  Like the instruction manual that will tell you how to assemble all the various pieces (of your life) sitting in front of you.

But you still need that attitude.  That attitude that desires growth and understanding more than all the trinkets and flashy and things of this life.  And it will take time to learn the Bible.  Spend time every day.  Quality time.  Where you can think about you’re reading and after you’re done.

 

Exodus 14:15,16 Open and Closed Doors

Exodus 14:15  Then the LORD said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to Me? Tell the sons of Israel to go forward.

Christians often speak of open and closed doors when talking about God leading them in their lives. 

Would you consider the Red Sea in your path as a closed door?

I suspect looking for open and closed doors for guidance is too much like looking at the circumstances rather than at God, not unlike when Peter tried walking on water and only failed when he looked at the wind and the waves more than at Jesus.  Matthew 14:28-31

The story here is from the Israelite history after the people were brought out of slavery in Egypt en route to a Promised Land.

The Bible is very clear that God was clearly leading them every step of the way.  And more than once, the place they were led to was clearly lacking in something important.  In this case, that important lacking thing was a way of escape. 

My question is: when you come to a closed door, how do you know whether to look for another door or to open the one in front of you?  That may require a miracle, but God has been known to do those from time to time.  Not randomly but as a part of the growth process He has for His people. 

The first clue as to what to do next depends on how you got to where you are in the first place.  Are you conscious of God’s leading on your life? 

The Bible says that “all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.”  Romans 8:14   And, of course, that old familiar Proverbs 3:5,6, where it says that God will make your path straight, or clear, obvious.

So when you come to that closed door, He will continue to lead you if you are paying attention.  Don’t let that closed door tell you what to do until you talk it over with God.

 

 

Matthew 28:18-20 The Great Controversy

I call this the great controversy, but not because everybody is talking about it.  They aren’t.  Nobody is talking about it except a few denominations that nobody pays attention to.

I call it the controversy great, because it involves what we call the Great Commission.  And if we get this part wrong, then I would say that we are making what I would call a GREAT mistake.

And I call it a controversy, because probably most people would disagree with this article, but I suspect they hadn’t really thought about it before either.

The controversy involves baptism.

The great commission is found in various forms in the different gospels and Acts, but let me mention two and focus on one. 

Mark 16:15,16 says: And He [Jesus] said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.  He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has not believed shall be condemned.

We all know of course of verses like John 3:16, where baptism isn’t mentioned.  Yes, salvation is by faith and faith alone.  Nobody is disputing that. 

The point I do want to make is that I believe God puts an emphasis on baptism that we don’t, and whether or not we fully understand all the reasons why, we should put the same emphasis on it that He does.

The second passage is Matthew 28:18-20: And Jesus came up and spoke to them [the disciples], saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.  Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

The command is to make disciples of all the nations.  This is done by doing two things: first baptizing people and then teaching them to keep everything that Jesus had commanded the disciples. 

Baptism is the first step.  Not one way down the road. 

On the day of Pentecost, the first day that the apostles got to start their work, the crowd asked Peter what they needed to do to respond to his message.  He said to repent and be baptized.  Acts 2:38

In Acts chapter 8, Philip had gone to Samaria to preach the gospel, and when the people believed the message that Philip gave, they were all baptized.  Acts 8:12

Later in the same chapter, Philip was preaching the gospel to a man he met in the desert.  They passed some water, and the man asked to be baptized.  Acts 8:36

In Acts 16, a jailor believed on Jesus in the middle of the night, and Paul baptized him and his family then and there.  Acts 16:33

In Acts 19, Paul met a group of new believers who needed some direction, which Paul promptly gave and then he baptized them.   Acts 19:5

Yes, there are some times when baptism isn’t mentioned when the gospel was preached and people responded, but I think it’s more likely that it was regarded as not necessary to mention that rather than that their practice of baptizing was more haphazard.

There are two Bible passages that make more sense now when we see baptism as an introduction to the Christian life rather than a later event.

I Corinthians 12:12,13 says: 12  For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. 13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

Many Bible teachers say that this baptism by the Spirit into the body of Christ is the baptism of the Holy Spirit, mentioned in the gospels and Acts, but in those passages, Jesus is the one doing the baptizing, and the Spirit is what He is pouring out onto believers.  In Corinthians, the Spirit is the one doing the baptizing, and He is incorporating believers into the body of Christ. 

Someone might ask: but what if a person wasn’t baptized?  Are they then not a member of the Body of Christ?  I would say that if you are a Christian and haven’t been baptized, then I would think that you have some explaining to do, and not to me.

Another passage like this is Romans 6:1-4, which reads: 1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? 2  May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?  3  Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?  4  Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

Those who were baptized into Christ were baptized into His death.  Is Paul talking about something that automatically happens to believers when they accept Christ, or does a physical act actually affect spiritual realities?

I think if you were to ask Paul a question like this, he might first give you a strange look and then verbally chastise you like you had never heard before.  He would think you are mocking God and making light of His commands.  That question would probably never have come up to him, because they never would have imagined a Christian who wasn’t baptized.

I think a lot of Christians will read this and think, what’s the big deal?  What was the big deal about the Israelites walking around Jericho for seven days?  When we do things that God says only when we understand why completely, we will miss the will of God.  And that’s not how you want to live the Christian life.

 

 

I Chronicles 20:1 Are you haunted by your past?

 Are you haunted by your past?  Have you done things that were wrong, things that you are ashamed of, things that get in the way of your life with God?  They don’t have to be criminal or evil, but they stand up in your past and define who you are now, at least in your own mind. 

Maybe you feel unworthy before God.  Of course, we’re all unworthy of God’s grace.  We can believe that we will go to heaven when we die, but what you have done has put like a red flag on your life, and your future seems severely limited.  You don’t see how God can really bless you in your life.    

King David did something like that in his life.  Christians seem to put the highest weight on sexual sins, though those are the ones that are often done in the heat of emotions that we don’t know how to get rid of apart from the thing itself.

David had a sexual sin.  A spontaneous act done in the heat of emotion.

But what was really bad was what he did to cover it up.  He had the women’s husband set up to be killed.

God confronted David.  Not after his sexual sin with Bathsheba, but after he had her husband killed in battle and she had come to live with him.

Then we come to our verse: But David stayed in Jerusalem.  I Chronicles 20:1

Most Christians know that just as there are 4 gospels that tell of the life of Jesus, there are two sets of books that relate the history of the kings of Israel.

The story of what happened when David stayed in Jerusalem is told in 2 chapters in 2 Samuel, but here it is told in 5 words, 3 in Hebrew.

The fact that the writer of Chronicles even mentions that David stayed in Jerusalem shows that the writer was well aware of what happened then but chose not to mention it.  Both books of Chronicles are very long books, but the whole matter wasn’t important to him.  And he lets you know of that by mentioning that David stayed in Jerusalem.

If all this happened today, we would demand that David step down as king, at least.  That matter never even came up.

Psalm 51 was written by David with reference to this whole matter.  David confessed his sins, and he found forgiveness.  Because David’s sins were well known, God didn’t sweep everything under the rug, so to speak, as though nothing had happened.  David was fully restored to God, but he experienced turmoil in his kingdom that would suggest to people that God wasn’t merely overlooking David’s sins. 

But God did restore David’s relationship with Himself, and David could experience the joy in God that he had had before.  The life of David shows that there is life after sin, life after failure, life after intense feelings of guilt. 

Confess your sins to God, and the Bible says that God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  (I John 1:9)  If this is your problem, read psalm 51 until you find your joy in God again.   Psalm 32 is another psalm that was probably written at this time as well.  Read David’s responses and see them as your own. 

God was not surprised by what happened in your past.  Paul the Apostle considered himself the chief of sinners even long after he began doing mighty things in God’s Name.  (I Timothy 1:15)  He never forgot the things he had done against the Church in the past. 

It’s time to put this all to rest.  If David and Paul can be at peace with God in spite of their past, then we can too.

 

Numbers 13:27,28 All God’s Promised Lands Have Giants

Never say that God doesn’t have a sense of humor.  It may not be laugh-out-loud funny, but I’m sure the people involved in this story wondered, “What kind of a joke is this?”

The Jewish people were slaves in the land of Egypt.  God sent Moses to deliver them out of slavery to bring them to a new land flowing with milk and honey.  It took some convincing for Pharaoh to let them go, but it also convinced the Jews that this was the real deal and that they should follow Moses to this new land. 

It took about two years to travel a distance that could have taken a few weeks, but the time finally arrived.

They sent out spies to go into the land and report on it.  And they did.  And, yes, the land was certainly a land of milk and honey.  But it was already taken.  What were they thinking?  That there could be such a land that nobody knew about?  And not only that, these people were giants.  No, not all of them, but there were several races of giants at that time.  And their cities were all well-fortified.  The spies felt like grasshoppers in their sight.

Two out of the 12 spies disagreed.  They said that with God’s help, surely, they could overcome and conquer the land.  This story has made me suspicious of committees and taking votes ever since.

It took two years for them to reach the Promised Land, because God wanted them to learn His laws and statutes before they got there.  He also wanted them to see His care for them and to learn to be comfortable with Him.

So the people were now faced with a choice.  The land was every bit as good as promised, but taking it looked impossible.  I have to say this reminds me of those people who say we have to trust the scientists.  The scientists would have said here that they could not take the land.  It was physically and militarily impossible.  Science does not and cannot figure God into its calculations. 

And this is the most basic concept of the Christian life.  Faith.  Faith in God that He would do what He said He would do.  We believe that He will save us by believing in Christ, but we have no outside circumstances that might make that seem unrealistic or untrue.  But sometimes those unrealistic, impossible circumstances appear, and we have to decide what to do with them.

Peter could walk on water for a brief time until he looked more at the wind and the waves than at Jesus who told him to come.  Elisha’s servant was afraid when they were surrounded by an enemy army until his eyes were opened to the forces of God that were around them.

So what would you have done?  Ten spies said that they could not take the land.  Two said they could.  They had seen God take care of them for two years now, daily providing their food.  They saw all the fire and fury on Mount Sinai when God appeared to them to give them His laws.  They saw His pillar of fire and pillar of smoke that led them everywhere they went. 

But they were afraid and said that we can’t do this.  We were better off in Egypt.  We shouldn’t have left. 

And God said to them, You won’t enter this land, but your children will.  You will spend the rest of your lives wandering in this wilderness. 

I titled this lesson, All God’s Promised Lands Have Giants.  At some point in your Christian life, you will face circumstances that will look impossible.  And you will have to make a choice, and that choice will affect the rest of your life. 

In this case, there was no second chance.  But that was a nation and not an individual.  It’s harder to change a nation than a person.

I made choices years ago that I wasn’t sure I would ever get out from under.  I still don’t know. 

Many Christians are content to live ho-hum Christian lives.  They may never even see a situation like this or wouldn’t know if they did.  After all, David was the only one out of the entire Israelite army who dared to face Goliath.  I’m guessing the odds wouldn’t be much different today.