Category Archives: The Bible

Them Hypocrites

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What does Halloween have in common with hypocrisy?  Masks.  The word, hypocrite, comes from a Greek word for mask.  Halloween is better: you get candy and the masks are not as scary.

Sometimes hypocrites wear a mask with deliberate intent to deceive.  But much of the time, what looks like hypocrisy is simply someone trying to act more like a Christian.  Sadly, many churches have taught people to do that. Trouble is, people respond to hypocrisy about like they do to other dead things.  

Jesus had a better idea. Instead of trying to act like a Christian, come to Him in faith and come alive in your soul with His life.  Then, He takes care of the changes.  They flow from inside without masks.  

He said,

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.  (John 15:5)
Pay attention to that last part and put away your masks.  Make your home in Jesus and He will live in you.  But, hey, before you go, help yourself to some candy….

Fingerprints of Jesus

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One of Isaiah’s prophetic descriptions of Jesus, written 700 years in advance, seems to be overlooked by many who claim to be advancing His work.  Isaiah’s batting average with details from the future was astonishing; there is no reason to think he got this one wrong.  He describes the style with which Jesus would accomplish His work:

He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law.  (Isaiah 42:2-4)

The work of Jesus will be:

  • Quiet
  • Gentle
  • Relentless
  • Completely successful

Jesus clearly stated that not everyone claiming to be doing His work really was.  If you want to identify His work, look for those fingerprints. You won’t find them amidst the violent, flashy, noisy or manipulative.  His work advances steadily and quietly, one soul at a time, like candlelight passed from one to another.  And it has not stopped or even faltered in all these years.

What Moses Also Saw

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When you promise yourself you won’t repeat (whatever wrong thing you struggle with) and then blow it – yet again – how many times will God forgive you and give you another chance?  If you are sincere, it will seem unlimited.  But is there any hope for you?  Will you ever break free of that cycle of despair?  

There is.  God showed Moses how He would ultimately fix us.  He showed Moses that He would bless the His Chosen People abundantly in the Promised Land, so long as they remained faithful to Him.  He showed Moses how they would mess that up and be banished.  This would happen again and again.  But the cool thing is how God also showed Moses what He would do to fix that cycle of hope followed by failure.  For them.  And for you.

“The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.” ( Deuteronomy 30:6)

Circumcision is a perfect metaphor, if you think about the tough exterior that forms around our sinful hearts.  The first time we deliberately sin it bothers us.  The next time?  Not so much.  And God’s plan is to remove that callous and make us responsive to His ways. He will do it so we can live!  How will He do it?  God gave another glimpse to Ezekiel:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.  (Ezkiel 36:26-27)

When God causes His Spirit to be born into a calloused heart, He lives there softening and removing that tough, unresponsive exterior. This “reborn” heart becomes responsive to God. 

Jesus promised to give new life to anyone who trusts Him, through the birth of God’s Spirit in their hearts.  Their sins are forgiven, their souls are cleansed and they receive God’s Spirit.  Ultimately, the cycle of failure is broken.  They are set free.  

Mo and Zeke saw it coming.

What Moses Saw

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Moses could see it coming; he knew they couldn’t keep it.  He had just rescued his people from slavery in Egypt.  He’d been sent to deliver them to a land where God promised to bless them. But, before they even set foot in the land, Moses knew they would eventually mess it up, turn away from God and lose evrything they had. He warned them.  You can read it for yourself in the 29th chapter of Deuteronomy.   

Moses saw it coming and it happened, just as he said, 800  years later.  The Promised Land was overrun and destroyed.  The survivors were carted off to Babylon to live in exile.

But Moses also knew:

“…and when you and your children return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you.  (Deuteronomy 30:2-3)
As unlikely as that would seem, it also happened, exactly as he said it would.  I am convinced God allowed that to demonstrate the tangible benefits of turning back to love and obey God “with all their hearts.”  Jesus also proclaimed this to be the most important commandment.

These days I sense a general attitude of despair and pessimism in the USA, a sense we have stumbled off in the wrong direction from which there seems to be no possible course correction.  Maybe Moses was on to something.

Who’s to Blame?

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If you get caught speeding and get a ticket, do you blame your dad?  Do you say, “He shouldn’t have let me drive that fast.”  Probably not, unless you are the neurotic sort.  And yet, you hear people commonly say, “If God is good, why does He allow such wickedness in the world?”  

They blame God for our wickedness, believing in a kind of god that does not exist.  Their idea of a good god is one who automatically makes it impossible for people to disobey his instructions.  Then when people do bad things, they blame God.  A dad who operated like that would never be considered to be good.  God, the real God, does not force obedience.  He lovingly instructs and allows us to choose.  Forced obedience is for robots, not humans.  In order to correctly assess who is to blame for the problems in this world, we have to believe in the God Who really exists.  

And how are we to know what He is like?  He is like Jesus.

And Jesus cried out and said, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.   (John 12:44-46)
Jesus did not force His followers to obey; He invited them to do so.  He promised them, if they did, they would discover that “the truth will make you free.”  Same thing with the real God.  

Instead of blaming God for our problems, why not try living by His instructions?

Tow or Jump?

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When your car battery has died, which do you prefer, a tow or a jump-start?  A tow doesn’t fix anything; it just moves you to a new place.  A jump-start, on the other hand, brings your car back to life.  Most people treat God like a tow truck operator, calling on HIm when they are stuck, hoping He will get them to where they want to go.  But what He has in mind is a jump.  Not a temporary jump-start but a permanent new, living flow of energy to keep you powered up and moving forever.

Back in Bible times, jump-starts were not common, but most folks had experienced what happens to a desert after a good soaking rain.  Miraculously, the glaring, hot sand is transformed into a lush bed of flowers.  That’s why God told Isaiah to say it like this:

3 For I will pour water on the thirsty land,
and streams on the dry ground;
I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring,
and my blessing on your descendants.
4 They will spring up like grass in a meadow,
like poplar trees by flowing streams. (Isaiah 44:3-4)

We humans were designed to have the Spirit of God living within our souls.  Without that Spirit we are as dead as cell phones with no signal.  God’s jump-start connects us to His Spirit, a gift that comes to all who put their trust in Jesus.  It’s not a temporary tow.  It’s eternal life.

Post Foxhole Stupidity

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“O Lord, if You get me out of this, I promise, from now on, I’ll…… ”   Ever pray one of those?  The king of Israel did and God came through in an astonishing way.  One day he was on his death bed.  Then, miraculously, his life was extended.  It was such an amazing answer to prayer, when the word got out, some high officials from Babylon came visiting, wondering,  “What’s he got that we don’t?”  This was exactly how God had intended to attract others to faith in Him, as they noticed the blessings He bestowed on His people who followed His instructions.

But King Hezekiah didn’t follow through.  When the Babylonians showed up, he didn’t take them down to the temple and explain about his prayer.  In fact he did the exact opposite:

1 At that time Marduk-Baladan son of Baladan king of Babylon sent Hezekiah letters and a gift, because he had heard of his illness and recovery. 2 Hezekiah received the envoys gladly and showed them what was in his storehouses—the silver, the gold, the spices, the fine olive oil—his entire armory and everything found among his treasures. There was nothing in his palace or in all his kingdom that Hezekiah did not show them. (Isaiah 39:1-2)

God bailed him out, answered his foxhole prayer.  The neighbors came around and asked, “How did you get healed?”  Hezekiah’s answer amounted to bragging about how important a man he was, backing up his boasts by showing them how rich he was.  But he learned a pretty tough lesson in the process.  By failing to give credit to God, where it was due, and by bragging about all his riches, Hezekiah doomed his future.

5 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the Lord Almighty: 6 The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your predecessors have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the Lord.   (Isaiah 39:5)

God doesn’t mind foxhole prayers; He is happy to respond.  Just don’t forget Him when the dust settles…

Check His ID

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They were short-handed that night, so my boss ask me to check IDs at the club where I was running the sound. It was in that capacity that I refused to let a man in without an ID who later turned out to be the owner of the club. He got over it, but at first he was pretty upset.Two of the saddest verses in the New Testament say this:

He (Jesus) was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to

 that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

 (John 1:10-11)

Imagine Frank Lloyd Wright being turned away from a house that he had designed and built. I’m trying to imagine how much patience it took for Jesus to put up with being turned away by people who had no idea He had designed and built all of reality.  But it was those people who missed out.  Big time.  

“Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God…” (John 1:12)

The only thing that matters about this now is whether  you can identify Jesus and let Him in.

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.  (Revelation 3:20)

You See?

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Insanity, it is said, is doing the wrong thing again and again, expecting better results each time.  That is also what God calls blindness and deafness.  In effect, God told His people, Israel, “Here’s how life is supposed to be lived.  Do it this way and you will be amazed at how wonderful are the results.  But, make up your own way to live, and you will eventually be in agony, stumbling about in your blindness and deafness.”  Sadly, the people didn’t listen and they couldn’t see.  Time after time they rebelled, God rescued them, restored them and gave them the same message.  Each time the improvements were short lived as the people decided they knew better.

Through Isaiah, God appealed:

18 “Hear, you deaf;
look, you blind, and see!

20 You have seen many things, but you pay no attention;
your ears are open, but you do not listen.”   (Isaiah 42:18&20)

Remember that choice of words as you see how God described the Messiah Who would come to fix things:

6 “I, the Lord, have called you [i.e. Jesus the Messiah] in righteousness;
I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and will make you
to be a covenant for the people
and a light for the Gentiles,
7 to open eyes that are blind,
to free captives from prison
and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness. (Isaiah 42:6-7)

So Jesus, when asked by John the Baptist if He was the Messiah, sent back this word:

4 And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.  (Matthew 11:4-5)

Jesus wasn’t simply referring to the physically impaired. See the connection?  God hopes so.  He continued speaking to His people through Isaiah with this important question for all of us:

23 Which of you will listen to this
or pay close attention in time to come?  (Isaiah 42:23)

You see?

Forever

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Geoffrey Wilkinson, George Henderson and Mark Frankel.  Do you know thesse names or what they have in common?  Geoffrey was a world renowned chemist.  George, a priest and politician.  Mark was an actor who played “Leon the Pig Farmer.”  They all died 20 years ago today, September 26, 1996.  How did you do?  Me neither.  Twenty years after you die, maybe your family will remember who you were but the chances of much more of a lingering impact are slim.

Isaiah wrote:

6 A voice says, “Cry!”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
7 The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the Lord blows on it;
surely the people are grass. (Isaiah 40:6-7)

But he wrote those words 2700 years ago in a country about the size of Rhode Island that was on the verge of being conquered and exiled!  And you know his name and can almost certainly quote or paraphrase some of what he wrote.  Try it; fill in the blank:  “The people walking in darkness have _____________.”   Or, “For to us a child is born, to us a Son is given and the government will be on __________.”    See what I mean?  What are the odds?

Of course, the reason Isaiah’s work has been preserved and is widely known is because it is in the Bible.  That’s because, over the centuries, it has stood the test.  He accurately prophesied the rise and fall of kingdoms in the Middle East (try that today!) and the exile and eventual release of the Jewish people, well over 100 years before it happened.  Most significantly, he foretold the coming of Jesus with amazing accuracy and clarity.  The only explanation is that Isaiah was writing God’s words.

Including these next lines from the quote above:

8 The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of our God endures forever.”   (Isaiah 40:8)

Yes, it does.