Mark 5:26 Thoughts on a Healing

The first time I got cancer was 1996.  They told me to start chemo right away.  I said I wanted to pray about it first.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I found dozens of Scripture passages in my regular Bible reading that seemed to speak to my situation.  I ended up turning down the treatment.

This time I had a strong sense that I should be public about the whole thing.  Getting cancer is something that will impact most people, either directly in themselves or indirectly through their loved ones. 

Frankly I’m not thinking too much about all this.  I have too much else I’m doing in my regular life.  I’m rarely praying about it.  I do read the Bible a lot.  I have always done that. I follow a regular routine, so I’m not going out of my way looking for passages that might deal with anything that is going on here.

So far, I have written about two passages I believe God gave me regarding all this.  Several days ago, I read Mark 5.

There was a woman who had been sick for 12 years with an issue of blood.  I understand that as a menstrual cycle that never shut off.

Jesus was being mobbed by people, and this woman forced her way through the crowd to get to Jesus.

Her whole experience is instructive for people with serious health issues and who are looking to God for help.

Mark takes great care to note that this woman spent everything she had on medical care, much of her suffering was caused by it, and she ended up worse off than before she started.

Mark 5:26:  and [she] having suffered many things by many physicians, and having spent everything she had, and having benefitted nothing but rather got worse. [my translation]

We are constantly told that we must do all that we can before we should expect God to work.  Someone has said: act as if everything depends on you; pray as if everything depends on God.

I don’t think that the Bible is holding this woman’s experience up as an example here. 

Now over the last 4 years, I have spent a lot of time with doctors, nurses, and hospitals.  Way too much time.  But that’s another story for another time.  Wonderful, wonderful people.  And modern medicine is amazing. 

Often, too often though, modern medicine is about trade-offs.  This medicine or procedure will or can help you, but you may or will get these side effects.  And you decide which you would rather have.

They said I have an enlarged prostate.  My choice was a medicine with an undesirable side effect or a surgery that would eliminate the possibility of certain important (to me) prostate functions.  hmmm!  I prayed about it, and it’s now much improved without either.  [see the update at the end.]

The first time I had cancer, I had no medical treatment at all.  The second time I had cancer, I put off treatment for a long time, expecting that I wouldn’t need it.  I kept getting worse until I had to quit my job, and then eventually I started treatment.  The treatment (chemotherapy) had little effect for a long time.  Later though I went from stage 4 to 0 in a very short time, when the doctor was not hopeful at all. 

The first point here about the woman with the issue of blood is that I don’t think we should assume that medicine is either our first option or even our best option.  We need to be praying about these things every step of the way and not assume that we know the answer until we do.

A second point of instruction here is that she did not ask Jesus to heal her.  Jesus wasn’t even aware of her healing until after the fact.  Yes, I know that Jesus is God, but in His human body, there were certain limitations.  He did not know who had touched her.  When He asked who touched Him, this was not a rhetorical question to enhance a teaching moment.  He didn’t know.

The point is that we often think of healing as something we pray about and God may or may not answer that prayer.

We forget that our bodies are programmed to heal itself.  If you are injured or sick, the body will do what it can to restore you to normal without any thinking or effort on your part.

The woman saw Jesus as wanting to heal people and just filled with the power of God.  She only had but to receive it.

Then in verse 34, Jesus makes the astounding statement: “Daughter, your faith has saved you; go in peace and be well from your affliction.”  Mark 5:34

It was her faith that made the difference.

We always want to give God credit for any victories we have.  But just like we might say that God delivered Goliath into the hand of David, if David hadn’t gone out to meet Goliath in faith, it wouldn’t have happened.  If the woman hadn’t forced her way through the crowd to touch Jesus, it wouldn’t have happened.

She believed that if she would simply touch Jesus’ garment, she would be healed.  David was confident that Goliath would fall at his hand, though everyone around him wouldn’t dare attempt what he did.

When David saw the challenge that Goliath made to Israel, he ran to meet him.  When this woman heard about Jesus, she forced her way through the crowd to get what she needed.

When you are faced with a challenge like this, do you run toward it expecting a miracle, or are you fearful, unsure of what to expect from God?

 

Update:

I saw the oncologist Monday.  He said my bone scan is clean.  Does that mean the cancer hadn’t progressed that far, or that it has regressed from my bones?  We’ll never know.

He ordered another test.  A new kind of PET scan.  He saw some lymph nodes that he doesn’t know whether they are leftovers from the lymphoma or something that this prostate cancer triggered.  I will have that test in two weeks.  And then I’ll meet another doctor and then back to the oncologist. 

They said I had/have an enlarged prostate.  Whether it was/is from the cancer, he didn’t say.  Men often get them.

The prostate surrounds the urinary tract, so that when it gets enlarged, it restricts the flow of urine.  So your bladder doesn’t empty.  You feel like you still need to go after you finish, and you end up going a lot more than usual.  Often with sudden very strong urges.

He prescribed medicine for that.  The medicine is effective, but it messes with the function of the prostate.  No, thank you.

Now when I pee, I have been commanding the urine flow to flow freely and the bladder to empty.  In Jesus’ Name.  And they do.  I was getting up to pee up to six times a night.  Last night it was once.  I was peeing usually sitting down and just waiting until it was done.  Now I’m peeing standing up, and it seems pretty much back to normal.  Is the prostate still enlarged?  I don’t know.

Is this too much information?  The older men here will be thanking me.

II Chronicles 32:1 Not right now

One question that Christians often have when it comes to healing is how long should they expect to wait between the time they know they need healing and the healing itself.  We are used to reading accounts of healing in the New Testament where they are all instantaneous, and we think it should always be that way.  We see no reason why God should delay in healing us.

Yesterday morning at 5 A.M., I got up to pee.  It’s common for men as they get older to do that more often, and more noticeably, when they’re sleeping. 

The urinary tract runs right through the prostate.  The prostate often enlarges for various reasons, so it restricts the flow of urine, so you often don’t feel like you’ve emptied your bladder.

Now I am told I have an enlarged prostate and a cancerous one.  I don’t know if the cancer caused the enlargement.

But between the time I got up and the time I went to back to bed, I was thinking about my prostate, and the cancer, and the fact that this whole thing is still going on, and Hezekiah comes to mind.  And like I’ve said and will say so often, I listen to things that come to mind in the middle of the night.

Now Hezekiah is Old Testament, and Christians often don’t give the Old Testament the attention it deserves, because that’s the Old Covenant, and we are in the New Covenant.  But Paul says (1 Corinthians 10:11 NASB95): ¹¹ Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.

The word ‘example’ τυπικῶς [tupikos, or typikos] is related to the English word ‘types.’  We often speak of types of Christ, things in the Old Testament that are pictures of Christ.  And things in the Old Testament picture things in the New Testament, so don’t be afraid to study them.  Sometimes things change, but often they are the same.

In II Chronicles, there are three long chapters telling us what a great king Hezekiah was.  There were a lot of bad kings before him, including his father Ahaz.

But as soon as Hezekiah becomes king, he begins to work to bring the nation back to God (II Chronicles 29:3 (NASB95) In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the LORD and repaired them.)

And after 3 chapters describing his faithful acts, his country is invaded by Assyria, which had been making its way throughout the neighboring nations, destroying and conquering them.   What is interesting is that the Bible connects the two.  When Assyria invades the land, it explicitly connects this with Hezekiah’s strong devotion to God.  (2 Chronicles 32:1 NASB95 After these acts of faithfulness Sennacherib king of Assyria came and invaded Judah and besieged the fortified cities, and thought to break into them for himself.)

God would soon deliver them.  Miraculously.  Spectacularly.  But first, Assyria is allowed to wreak some havoc and try to intimidate and frighten the people of God by reminding them that no other nation had been able to withstand their might, so why should they think that they will be any different?

Disease, and particularly cancer, strike fear into people everywhere, and even Christians.  And why should Christians think that they will be any different? 

So like I said, all this came to mind between the time I got up and the time I went back to bed.  I’m lying there in bed, thinking about all this, so I got up and wrote most of this lesson. 

The whole situation is told in great detail 3 times in the Bible: II Kings 18,19; II Chronicles 29-32; and Isaiah 36-38.

Hmmm!  Do you think God wants to get our attention here?

The king of Assyria sends an emissary to Hezekiah, actually to the people hearing from the city walls: 2 Chronicles 32:13–17 (NASB95)

13 ‘Do you not know what I and my fathers have done to all the peoples of the lands? Were the gods of the nations of the lands able at all to deliver their land from my hand? 14 ‘Who was there among all the gods of those nations which my fathers utterly destroyed who could deliver his people out of my hand, that your God should be able to deliver you from my hand? 15 ‘Now therefore, do not let Hezekiah deceive you or mislead you like this, and do not believe him, for no god of any nation or kingdom was able to deliver his people from my hand or from the hand of my fathers. How much less will your God deliver you from my hand?’ ” 16 His servants spoke further against the LORD God and against His servant Hezekiah. 17 He also wrote letters to insult the LORD God of Israel, and to speak against Him, saying, “As the gods of the nations of the lands have not delivered their people from my hand, so the God of Hezekiah will not deliver His people from my hand.”

There are at least two important things in this passage that Christians need to understand and embrace.

The first is that God didn’t deliver Hezekiah immediately.  It was going to be a spectacular miracle, but He waited.  And that’s OK.  Maybe He waited so they could this all on record for people to read for thousands of years to come.

It seems like it, because God wanted everybody to be clear about what was going on here.  All these other nations had their own gods, but they couldn’t deliver their people from the hands of the Assyrians.  The Assyrians concluded that Hezekiah’s God was no different.

And this is the second thing.  The difference between the living and true God and the other gods is that the true God delivers His people from their enemies. 

I know a lot of people will object here and say that God often doesn’t deliver His people from either sickness or their enemies, and it wasn’t His will to do so. 

It would take a book to answer all the questions and answer all the objections, but we need to start with what the Bible teaches. 

We don’t know what happened with anyone else.  We only know what goes on inside of us. 

The whole point of this story is that God delivers His people, and you should expect Him to.

If you have not read the story of Hezekiah or at least not lately, I would encourage you to do so.  There is so much to learn there about how God works.

 

Personal update:

I went to my oncologist Monday. (9/27)

I had lymphoma from 2017 to 2019.  My prostate doctor gave me a name of a prostate specialist, who I will see in October.

My doctor ordered three tests to see if the cancer had spread: a blood test, a CT scan, and a bone scan.

He took the blood test Monday.  I will have the CT Thursday and the bone scan Friday.  I will see him again Monday. 

Psalm 34:19 All our tribulations

Last Friday, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer.  On the border between medium and high risk.

Normally I wouldn’t bring it up.  When I say normally, this is my third cancer diagnosis.  (1996,2017,2021)

The first time I had a really interesting year.  I wrote about it in a chapter for a book I wrote, The Importance of Healing.  I will attach a copy here to the emails I send out.

I expect this time will be just as interesting but different. 

Many of you at some time in your life will go through a really difficult time.  Hopefully, this video or article will be of help to you. 

And one of the first things you need to learn is to be able to hear from God.  I have learned to listen carefully at night or when I’m first waking up in the morning.  I haven’t used an alarm clock in maybe 30 years, even when I had to get up at 3:00 in the morning. 

This morning I had the strongest sense that I should do what I’m doing here.  Write and talk about this journey. 

The first time I got cancer, I was told to start chemotherapy right away.  I said no, I want to pray about it.  I had young kids.  I told them that you pray about all your problems, so I wanted to pray about this first.  Over the course of the next week or so, I found many, many Scripture passages that I felt spoke right to my situation.  I wasn’t looking for them.  They came in my normal course of Bible reading.

And today, one of the passages of Scripture I read was Psalm 34. 

I learned a long time ago that, when you study the Old Testament, if you can, read it in the Greek.  The Greek Old Testament was the Bible for most of the early Church.  That is the Bible they quote in the New Testament most of the time.

Three times in this psalm David talks about tribulations.  Christians often talk about tribulations.  The question is what God wants to do with them.

Psalm 34:6 ⁶ This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his tribulations.

Psalm 34:17 ¹⁷ The righteous cry, and the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their tribulations.

Psalm 34:19 ¹⁹ Many are the tribulations of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.

Look at verse 19 again.  MANY are the tribulations of the righteous.  The Hebrew word for tribulation can be translated as evil, misery, distress, injury, wrong, harm, mischief.  The Greek word in all three verses is the word commonly translated in the New Testament as tribulations.  The Greek word for tribulations stresses the idea of pressure. 

Christians can expect tribulations in this life.  And when you experience them, you need to read in the Bible what God says about them. 

Psalm 34:19 ¹⁹ Many are the tribulations of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.

Romans 5:3    we rejoice in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces endurance,   

Romans 8:35    Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?     

2Cor 1:4    who comforts us in all our tribulation, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any tribulation, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.      

2Cor 4:17    For this slight momentary tribulation is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,      

Psalm 32:7 You are my hiding place; You preserve me from trouble; You surround me with songs of deliverance.  Selah.
Psalm 34:6 This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.
17 The righteous cry, and the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.
19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.
Ps 37:39 But the salvation of the righteous [is] of the LORD: [he is] their strength in the time of trouble. 

Psalm 46:1 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Psalm 50:15 Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me.”
Psalm 54:4 Behold, God is my helper; The Lord is the sustainer of my soul.
5 He will recompense the evil to my foes; Destroy them in Your faithfulness.
6 Willingly I will sacrifice to You; I will give thanks to Your name, O Lord, for it is good.
7 For He has delivered me from all trouble, And my eye has looked with satisfaction upon my enemies.
Psalm 59:16 But as for me, I shall sing of Your strength; Yes, I shall joyfully sing of Your lovingkindness in the morning, For You have been my stronghold and a refuge in the day of my distress.
Psalm 60:11 O give us help from tribulation, for deliverance by man is in vain.
Psalm 81:7 “You called in trouble and I rescued you; I answered you in the hiding place of thunder; I proved you at the waters of Meribah.  Selah.
Psalm 86:7 In the day of my trouble I shall call upon You, For You will answer me.
Psalm 91:15 “He will call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him.
Psalm 108:12 Oh give us help from tribulation, For deliverance by man is in vain.
Psalm 118:5 From my distress I called upon the Lord; The Lord answered me and set me in a large place.
Psalm 138:7 Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will revive me; You will stretch forth Your hand against the wrath of my enemies, And Your right hand will save me.
Nahum 1:7 The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and He knows those who take refuge in Him.

The Bible records many miracles of God that He worked on behalf of His people.  And the miracles came because His people had needs.  Not only needs, but needs that were impossible to meet.  That’s why they were called miracles.

 

So when you face troubles, that is not the time to complain.  It’s the time to look up to God to see Him deliver you.

Jeremiah 16:5 I have withdrawn my peace from this people

Sometimes the biggest lessons in the Bible are in places you didn’t expect and therefore they’re often missed.

In the book of Jeremiah, the nation of Judah is on the verge of being destroyed by the Babylonians.  Sometimes that can be hard for a Christian to swallow, God being so angry with His people that He judges them. 

But this was hundreds of years in the making.  Some Bible teachers note that this destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. seems to have cured the Jews of idolatry. 

We could talk more about that, but then, again, we would be missing the bigger point.  As is so often the case.

In our verse above, God tells Jeremiah not to mourn or lament for these people.  And that will grab our attention, and we will miss the point of the whole thing.

Jeremiah 16:5 For thus says the Lord, “Do not enter a house of mourning, or go to lament or to show grief for them; for I have withdrawn My peace from this people,” declares the Lord, “the lovingkindness and the compassion.  [translation mine]

The people of Judah defiantly resisted the laws and Word of God and insisted on worshipping the gods of the other nations.

So what happened to them?  Not the destruction but before that.

“I have withdrawn My peace from this people,” declares the Lord, “the lovingkindness and the compassion.”

First some notes on the text.  Peace in Hebrew is the word ‘shalom,’ which is not just the absence of strife and hostility, but the positive senses of tranquility, wholeness, completeness, and fulfillment.  The words ‘lovingkindness’ and ‘compassion’ here seem to be descriptive of that shalom, like those are the parts of it that God wanted to emphasis here.

In other words, the normal state of Israel before they went out and forsook God for false gods and false religion was a condition of shalom characterized by God’s lovingkindness and compassion on them.

Do you, as a believer, think of God shining down on you His lovingkindness and compassion?  The only picture I can imagine in my mind for this is a parent or a grandparent with their young children.  They don’t love their older children any less, but they are far more reserved in showing their lovingkindness and compassion.

I think this is critical here.  Children in humans take far longer than any other living thing to achieve adulthood.  Why is that?  I think a big reason is that God wants to firmly implant in us this adult-child experience.  To God, we are always His children-children.  We like to think of ourselves as adults, but I think God still thinks of us like we think of our YOUNG children. 

Are you able to think of God as being kind to you, loving you, and being compassionate to you? 

I really believe that this is a, if not the, reason why God not only created the family structure, but I also think that apart from rare situations, like Paul the apostle, God wants us all to have that experience, on both ends.

The first time around, we are the children and hopefully we learn what it is like to know lovingkindness and compassion from our parents.  But then we get to see it from the other side when we are the parents, and we feel that lovingkindness and compassion for our children.

I have been a Christian for a very long time, and learning to see God as having lovingkindness and compassion for me has been my biggest challenge.  I suspect that many other believers have that same challenge.

 

 

 

Deuteronomy 8:3 Man does not live by bread alone

Many of us remember this verse from when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness by Satan, and Jesus quoted verses from the Old Testament to respond to him.  (Matthew 4:1-11, Luke 4:13)

I’m not sure we have given enough thought, though, to what this response actually means.

Deuteronomy 8 is easily one of the most important chapters in the Old Testament, but I doubt most Christians are familiar with it.

It gives a basic overview of how God deals with His people.  There are some minor variations in the New Testament, but the pattern is pretty much the same. 

The Jews had just spent 40 years in the wilderness, because they failed to believe God when they first came to the Promised Land 40 years prior.  (actually 38 years)  Not every Jew failed to believe God, but I venture to say that we all fail today in the same way.  It doesn’t seem so drastic for us, because we did not have the experiences that Israel had.

Israel was delivered out of the land of Egypt and bondage through an amazing series of miracles.  We have not seen wonders like they did, and so it can be harder for many of us today to believe in God’s goodness and His willingness to work on our behalf.  We have to learn this the slow way.

And what is this slow way?

Deuteronomy 8:2,3 (NASB95)  ² “You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. ³ “He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.

The first step is a humbling process.  We don’t understand how life works.  We tend to think of it as we reap what we sow, which is true in a sense, but we fail to see what a small part we play in the whole thing.  Yes, we act, but most of those actions are responses to what life gives us.  So ultimately we are responsible for our responses, but we have no control over the things we are responding to. 

So this humbling process makes us realize how much of life is out of our control. 

And this humbling process is also a testing process.  To see what is in our hearts.  Like Job, do we serve God because of the blessings we receive or might receive, or do we serve God because it is right?  That is a basic question we all have to answer.  We are never going to be able to understand God, so that means we will never understand everything that God does or everything that happens in life.  So how do we react when things go differently than planned or hoped for? 

And this leads us to our verse, the key part: “man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.”

Bread, of course, stands for food, but it also stands for the material things of life. 

I think Exodus 15:22 shows a bit of what this all means.

In Exodus 14, the Jews had just been delivered out of the hands of the Egyptians.  They had seen God judge Egypt with ten mighty plagues of judgment.  They left the land of Egypt, but they were followed by the Egyptian army bent on killing them and forcing them to return to Egypt as slaves again.

God then opens the Red Sea for the Jews to cross and then closes it again on the Egyptians as they attempt to pursue them.  The Jews then celebrated with song and dance over this wild, crazy miracle of God.

They then begin their journey in the wilderness to their new land, the land God promised them. 

They go three days, and there is no water.  Then they find water, and they can’t drink it.

They are seeing their total lack of control over their lives.  And they are wondering how God relates to all this.  They saw His mighty deliverance on their behalf, but now they have another problem.  Not as big maybe as being slaughtered by an army and enslaved, but big in another way.  So what is God going to do?  You might think: He delivered us before, He will do it again.  Some might think: why is this even happening, if God loves us?  Some might think: are we supposed to expect God to do everything? 

They need water.  Just like we constantly need things.  And we constantly need God’s provision.  We are accustomed to thinking that we don’t need God all that much, because, well, we have food, we have a job, we have money, but we fail to see that God is as much responsible for what we have as He is for providing things for us when we don’t have them. 

This is what Jesus and Deuteronomy meant by “everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.”  It’s all in God’s hand.

You still have a job.  But only by the grace of God.  You have money in the bank.  Only by the grace of God.  Our lives don’t seem so fragile and tenuous here in the United States, but the lesson is the same.  We don’t just need God in those times when we have an apparent need, but we need God in all the times that we don’t have the apparent need, because what we have is from His hand in the first place.

Later in this same chapter, God is going to tell them: Beware.  (v.11)

Why?

Because they’re going to prosper, and they’re going to think that it was their brains and strength and skill and hard work that gave them that success.  Oh, that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t want you to use your brains, strength, skill, and hard work, but “it is [God] who is giving you power to make wealth.”  (Dt. 8:18)

There are people who give no thought to God, and they have achieved much in the eyes of the world.  They just don’t know what we know.  We can talk about them another time.  But God wants us to know how much our lives are dependent on God, every day, every minute.  That shouldn’t make us cautious but bold. 

Just remember the goal of all this humbling and testing: “that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do good for you in the end.”  (v. 16)  This word ‘end’ need not mean the end of the world, when we die, but just after the humbling and testing. 

God wants us to know His goodness in this life.  Not just by faith but by experience.  He just wants us to know the true nature and reason for the good things that we have and will have in life.

 

Numbers 6:24 The Lord Bless You

A few months ago, I shared a verse in the Bible that I believed has a little more significance than most of the others, if I may put it like that.

That verse is: O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His lovingkindness endures forever.  That verse is found maybe 30 times in the Bible with slight variations, and it is linked with some significant acts of God.  In 2 Chronicles 5:13, when the priests praised God with these words, “the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.”  And in 2 Chronicles 20:21, when the singers began saying: “Give thanks to the Lord,” the Lord delivered them from their enemies.

We are told to give thanks always (Ephesians 5:20), and I think it is wise to express that thanks in this way much of the time when we do that.

I have also taught about the Lord’s Prayer.  Words that many of us have memorized, that in our daily prayers, I believe it is wise for us to use those words in those prayers.

I would like to introduce another important phrase or verse.  It’s actually a blessing that God gave to Moses to give to Israel’s first high priest wherewith he would bless the people of Israel:

Numbers 6:22–27 ²² Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ²³ “Speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying, ‘Thus you shall bless the sons of Israel. You shall say to them: ²⁴ The Lord bless you, and keep you; ²⁵ The Lord make His face shine on you, and be gracious to you; ²⁶ The Lord lift up His countenance on you, and give you peace.’ ²⁷ “So they shall invoke [Lit. put] My name on the sons of Israel, and I will bless them.”

Some people will protest and say: wait.  That was given to Moses to give to Aaron the high priest to bless the people of Israel under the Old Covenant.

First of all, we are a kingdom of priests ourselves (I Peter 2:9, Revelation 1:6).  We used to be strangers of the covenants of promise, but now we have been brought near by the blood of Christ. God has made the two (Jew and Gentile) into one, creating the two into one new man, and now through Christ, we both have access to God in one Spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:12-21).

And, secondly, we live under a new covenant which doesn’t erase the old but builds on it:  Hebrews 8:10–12 (NASB95) ¹⁰ “for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and I will write them on their hearts. and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. ¹¹ “and they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen, and everyone his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all will know Me, from the least to the greatest of them. ¹² “for I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”

I know it says that God made this covenant with Israel, but that is the covenant under which we live.

This is a blessing by which we bless other people.  I would suggest we start with our own families.  It doesn’t say how often Aaron was to bless the people, but if the Lord’s Prayer was intended to be prayed at least once a day, I would say blessing other people with this blessing once a day wouldn’t be too much.

A few notes on the blessing itself:  Hebrew, like a lot of languages, has a singular and plural form of the word YOU.  In this blessing, the words YOU are all singular.  Aaron blesses all the people, but the blessings are individual.  The words ‘face’ and ‘countenance’ are the same words in Hebrew.  The word ‘peace’ is ‘shalom,’ which is not merely the absence of hostility, but wholeness, fullness, completeness, welfare, contentment, and tranquility. And the word ‘invoke’ in verse 27 is simply the word ‘put’.  We put the name of God on other people, and God will bless them.

Some will argue: are we telling God what to do? 

God told Moses to tell Aaron to bless the people, and God said He would bless them if he did. 

There is an expression in logic, a fallacy: post hoc ergo propter hoc.  (Lit. after this, because of this)

The point it that, because one event follows another, you can’t assume that the first caused the second.  If God says that He will bless people on whom we have put His Name, don’t quibble about whether you are telling God what to do.  If God chooses to bless people that you have blessed, just be thankful.  Think of it more as: your words of blessing on other people are not mere words.  They have power.  So use them.

Pray for other people.  Everyone you can.  And say it out loud.  Pray God’s blessing, and let God take care of the details.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Isaiah 55:12 the trees of the field will clap their hands

Isaiah 55:12  “For with joy you will go out, and in peace you will be led forth; The mountains and the hills will break forth before you a shout of joy, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.  [translations mine except where noted]

A lot of Christians don’t like reading the prophets of the Bible.  They find them depressing.  Constant judgment and condemnation.  There is certainly a lot of that in them, but there are also descriptions of what God wants to do in people’s lives that you might not find anywhere else.  In God’s appeal to people who reject Him, He often shows them what they are missing.

When we read passages of judgment, we tend to think of God’s displeasure toward people for failing Him, and it can be easy to think of ourselves as failing God as well.  But rather, this judgment is for people who should have known better and they then reject God.  God often then highlights what it is that they have turned their back on.  The interesting thing here is that Christians are often surprised by what it seems that they are missing.

Isaiah 55 begins with a general call to all people.  We see in the verses that follow that God’s heart is for all people and not just Israel. 

Isaiah 55:1,2  “Hey! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; And you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. ² “Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy?  Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance.

Are you thirsty?  God wants to quench it.  You want sustenance and satisfaction?  You can have it without cost. 

Some will stop right here and say, wait, aren’t we’re supposed to take up our cross, forsake all, and follow Jesus?

Same thing from a different perspective.  When the disciples left their nets to follow Jesus, it wasn’t something that they had to figure out on a calculator whether they could afford the cost or wanted to.  When you find the One who has the words of eternal life, how can you not leave everything else, so to speak, to follow Him?

Verses 6 and 7 are a little clearer on what this buying wine and milk without money looks like.

Isaiah 55:6,7 (NASB95)  Seek the Lord while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. ⁷ Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.

It’s all about seeking God, not your own way and your own thoughts, but God and His ways and thoughts.

Thoughts?  Forsaking your thoughts and thinking God’s thoughts?  God’s ways and thoughts are higher than ours like the heavens are higher than the earth.  Isaiah 55:8  How can we do that? 

God’s Word in our lives can accomplish all that God wants for us and in us.  Isaiah 55:10,11  “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; ¹¹ So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, but do what I desire, and succeed in what I sent it.

And then we come to our verse: Isaiah 55:12  “For with joy you will go out and in peace you will be led forth; The mountains and the hills will break forth before you a shout of joy, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.  [translation mine]

The word for joy here has the connotation of mirth.  It’s not this quiet sense of feeling good in your heart.  It’s this kind of joy that breaks out in laughter and even giddiness at times.  I don’t want to paint a Christian life that is based on or run by emotions, but I am seeing more and more that emotions are something not to be belittled or neglected.  I don’t think this is emphasized in the Bible because it is not the goal, it’s a byproduct.  When people make it their goal, they end up seeking the emotion and not God.  But Christians often have God but lack the expected emotions. 

Emotions can tell you a lot about the state of your Christian life.  I know there are often difficult times in life, but joy is an essential part of what it means to know God.  If there is little or no joy, we are missing something big.

The word for peace here is shalom, that Hebrew word which encompasses everything that is good: wholeness, peace, fulness, contentment, wellbeing.  Joy and peace.  Two markers.

The best part here is what happens with nature.  It’s like all nature is sharing your joy, God’s joy in His creation, especially in those humans who freely have come to love and enjoy the presence of God.  We think of nature as either inanimate objects or non-sentient things, but as part of God’s creation, God’s life and power envelops and energizes them.  This is no pantheistic sentiment, but just an extension of the awesomeness of our God.

I’ve been a Christian for a very long time.  Why did it take so long to learn about joy?

 

 

Luke 10:42 One Thing

Few things can be boiled down to one thing, but this is what Jesus seems to be doing here in this passage:

Luke 10:41,42 ⁴¹ But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled/distracted about many things; ⁴² but one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

Some English Bibles say that a few things are necessary, but really only one.  If you try to read all the reasons why one reading is better than the other, your head will start to hurt.  The reading I have above is the modern consensus of the best text.

Martha had welcomed Jesus into her home.  No mention is made of the disciples.  They don’t seem to be there.  Martha was bustling about, trying to be a good host, but her sister, Mary, just sat at Jesus’ feet and let Him teach her.

Martha started to get annoyed that she was doing all the work, and her sister just sat there with their guest.

So she decides to speak up.  Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work.  Tell her to help out a bit.

And this is where our verse comes in.

Jesus repeats Martha’s name when He addresses her.  Martha, Martha.  We do that when we very gently want to correct somebody.  Jesus didn’t actually say that Martha was wrong.  He wants to show her a better way, but He does refer to her work as worrying, (unduly) concerned, being distracted, troubled.

And what is this better way?

Literally, sitting at the feet of Jesus hearing His Word.

Now some people will understand this as Bible study.  Spending a lot of time reading and studying the Bible.  I don’t think that’s what He’s saying.

I use a lot of books as reference where their authors do Bible study for a living.  I learn a lot from them, but it’s the difference between a scientist and nutritionist describing my dinner in terms of chemicals that my body will process in various ways and actually eating the meal.

Bible study becomes Bible study; we’re working to understand the text better, but there is always that next step where we see what difference that makes in our lives.  Bible study can be done like an archaeologist who looks at ancient writings and tries to decipher them.  It’s very easy to get caught up in the meaning of words and how verses connect to each other that we fail to make the final step where the Word touches our hearts.

When Jesus gave the Great Commission to His disciples, and by extension to us, He told them/us to make disciples of all the nations by baptizing people and teaching them to observe whatsoever He has commanded us.  He didn’t tell them to teach them the Bible.  He specifically mentions His own words. 

Why?

When we read the Words of Jesus, He constantly tells us to do things.  When you just read the Bible, you can read chapters and chapters and never once be told to do anything.  Like here where He tells Martha/us to stop worrying about so much stuff and spend time with Him.  Today that would mean reading the gospels a lot but also being attentive to that still soft voice that He still uses to speak to us.

That’s the one necessary thing.

Yes, I will tell you over and over to learn the Bible.  When you know the Bible, you will see the parallels between your life and the Bible constantly, and it will give you direction on how to live your life. 

But then the Pharisees were Bible scholars as well and missed the whole point of it.

I think a special emphasis on the life and words of Jesus can keep that from happening.

 

 

Mark 4:38 Don’t You Care?

One of the reasons that the Bible is so important is that it often explains circumstances.

For example, in Mark 4, the disciples were in a boat that was in danger of sinking.  While a lot of people in a similar situation might say something like, Things happen, a Christian will want to know why it is happening.

The disciples saw this as a sign that maybe Jesus didn’t really care about them.  They saw Him do incredible miracles, but now they are sinking in a boat, and their first response is: Don’t You care?  We are about to die, and you’re not doing anything?

And Jesus then turns the discussion around and asks them some questions:  Why are you timid?  Don’t you have faith yet?

The obvious question here is what does the one have to do with the other.  What does whether Jesus cared about them have to do with faith?

How many times do you look at your life and think that things could have, should have been different?  How many of you now are in a situation that is less than desirable, and you’re thinking: why is God allowing this?  Why didn’t God do something about it?  Or, why is God doing this to me?

And I believe that Jesus’ answer to those questions would be the same answers as to the questions of the disciples. 

Why are you timid?  Don’t you have faith yet?

The disciples were in a life-or-death situation, and Jesus turned it into a question of faith.  The disciples were looking at circumstances that were unfavorable, and Jesus talks about faith.  The disciples were questioning God’s care for them, and Jesus talks about faith.

But what does that mean?

It means first of all that we should never interpret our life circumstances in a way that questions God’s care for us.  In fact, there is a passage that uses this same expression to affirm God’s care for us. 

1 Peter 5:5–7 (NASB95) ⁵  . . . God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. ⁶ Therefore be humbled under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, ⁷ casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.

English Bibles insist on translating the verb about humbling as a middle [humble yourselves] where it is clearly a passive [be humbled].  But that’s a question for another time. 

It’s the last part that is important here.  God cares about us, so we can cast all our anxiety [worry, care] on Him. 

God expects us to respond in these situations with faith, which in this situation would be a confidence that God will deliver us. 

I know that some Christians will say that that is too strong of a statement, that sometimes God chooses not to deliver us. 

That would take a lot of space here to discuss that, but if God indeed might choose not to deliver us, then I don’t think Jesus’ question was a valid one.  If God might be willing to let them die in the storm, would that then have been improper to ask if Jesus really cared for them?  I don’t think so, but some might disagree. 

But what was it that showed the lack of the disciple’s faith to Jesus?  Was it thinking that Jesus didn’t really care about them or that they thought they were about to die? 

But Jesus asked them why they were timid.  That had nothing to do with whether Jesus cared about them and everything to do with whether they believed their lives were in danger. 

So back to the original point.

When we look at life, our lives, and wonder whether God really loves us, why He allowed certain things to happen to us, He wants us to respond in faith.  But what does that look like?  Well, it’s certainly not timidity.  Where we are afraid of the outcome.

And this lesson is addressed to me as much as anyone.  My response is not timidity.  It’s usually sadness.  Same thing.  It’s a questioning of God’s goodness and His care. 

And Jesus’ response is the same.  Why are you sad?  Don’t you have faith yet?

Am I saying that all sadness is a lack of faith?  No, that would be too broad of a statement.  But if a person is sad, they need to ask the question whether that sadness is related to a disappointment with God because they question whether God cares for them.  And Jesus might ask them the same question He asked the disciples: don’t you have faith yet? 

Now notice how after Jesus asks the disciples if they had faith yet, the subject keeps coming up again.

In the next chapter, a woman is healed, and Jesus tells her that her faith had saved her.  Mark 5:34 She had had this condition for 12 years.  She had gone to doctors, spent all she had on them, and was still sick.  It doesn’t say whether she prayed and asked God to make her better, but I would assume she did.  Yet it persisted until she got faith to be made well.

In Mark 5:36, a man’s daughter had just died.  Jesus tells him to stop being afraid and just believe.  But Jesus was there.  So what difference would it make whether the father was afraid or believed?

But then in the very next chapter, Jesus was in his hometown.  It doesn’t say Nazareth.  Maybe it was Capernaum.  I didn’t research the issue.  But Jesus was UNABLE, UNABLE to even do one miracle there, except for healing a few sick people, and He marveled at their unbelief.  Mark 6:5  Seems that faith matters even when Jesus is present.

In Mark 6:37, they had thousands of people there, the hour was late.  The disciples suggested that maybe they should dismiss the crowd so they could go find something to eat, and Jesus tells them:   YOU give them to eat.  [The YOU is emphasized in the original text.]  Unless Jesus was just kidding them, that would have involved a miracle which He then did for them.

Later in that chapter, the disciples are crossing the lake in a boat again, and Jesus walks out to them on the water.  The weather was stormy, but it immediately becomes calm.  The disciples are totally beside themselves, but Mark then makes an unusual statement.  Mark 6:52  They didn’t understand about the loaves, but their heart was hardened.  One time before in Mark, somebody’s heart was hardened, and it was the Pharisees, and Jesus had just healed a man on the Sabbath.  Mark 3:5

And don’t forget about Pharaoh from the time of Moses, the most famous instance of a hardened heart.

This passage doesn’t explicitly mention faith here, but the loaves thing is mentioned again in chapter 8, and it’s all related.  So a hardened heart kept them from understanding, and a lack of understanding kept them from believing.

Mark 8:14-21  They had forgotten to take bread, and they thought Jesus was upset at them for that.  And Jesus reminds them of the two times where He had fed thousands of people from a few sandwiches, and He asked them:  Don’t you understand yet?

Just like they didn’t have faith yet, they didn’t understand yet.  Understanding would have given them faith.   Twice He had multiplied the loaves.  Why are they worrying that they forgot to bring food?

The disciples were afraid of dying, and Jesus asked them why they don’t have faith yet.

The disciples question whether Jesus cared for them, and He questions their faith.

A woman who had been sick for years, who went to every doctor around, found faith and was finally healed.

A father whose daughter had died was still told to just have faith.

Thousands of people needed to be fed, and Jesus tells the disciples to feed them, before doing it Himself.

The disciples forgot to bring food, and Jesus reminds them of what happened when thousands of people didn’t have food.

I think maybe we err when we think our faith demands that we know exactly how things will turn out, and that often discourages us when they don’t.  But faith should cause us to be strong and hopeful even when things look hopeless and even when we may have contributed to the problem.

Faith says that God is enough, God can turn any situation around, and He cares for me enough to do it.