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The Minor Prophets #17 - Nahum
2024/03/25
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We don’t know a lot about Nahum. He describes himself as an Elkoshite but no one knows where Elkosh is to date him. The date of his prophecy can be placed between 700 to 600 BC. He mentions in the book two particular dates. One is the destruction of the Egyptian capital No-Amon (Thebes) in about 636 to 630 BC and he is speaking of the future destruction of Nineveh which occurs later, in 612 BC. So Nahum is prophesying somewhere after 650 BC and probably close to the time of the fall of Nineveh, when a coalition of Medes, Babylonians, and Scythians attacked and destroyed the Assyrian capital.
So Nahum comes on the scene not that long before Assyria’s fall. Jerusalem is still traumatized by the invasion of the Assyrians and, no doubt, praying for revenge. Nahum titles his prophecy, The Burden of Nineveh . And here is something very important to know when you read this. It was probably a work of music—performance art if you will—and would resemble a recitatif from Mendelssohn’s Elijah or Handel’s Messiah . The difference would be that the culture at that time seems to have had a ten-note scale instead of the eight-note one we have today. So it would have sounded very strange to our ears. It may also have been a chant. Prophets commonly required a minstrel to play on a lyre as they preached or sang this recitatif . Turn with me to the Book of Nahum and we’ll listen to the prophet sing.
The Prophet's Complaint
2024/03/22
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I’m sure you’ve heard the old axiom: Once bitten, twice shy. Or maybe you heard it another way: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I think that old saw may lie behind my skepticism of prophets. More than once, I have declared that I have never encountered anyone whom I considered a genuine prophet, in the biblical sense. I have no patience with pretenders to the prophet’s office, either, though I have encountered a few of these.
One thing that made a major contribution to my skepticism was a book that appeared in 1967. The title was Famine 1975: America’s Decision, Who Will Survive? by William and Paul Paddock. The book had all the statistics, and was shocking in its conclusions and recommendations.
What happened? Well, population growth slowed, and food production exploded in the years following. Development in disease resistant crops had been underway even as the Paddocks wrote their book. What is it about disasters that brings so many would-be prophets out of the woodwork? It was something Jesus said, that—misunderstood—fuels this sort of thing. We’ll find it in Matthew, chapter 24.
The Minor Prophets #16 - Micah
2024/03/21
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Reading the biblical prophets—with understanding—is no easy task, at best. But when you try to do it without knowledge of the history behind it becomes hopeless. For one thing, there are parts of prophesies that have to do with the distant future—and then an even more distant . Other parts deal with the prophet’s own day. How can you tell which is which? Well, the place to start is the past. If you’re going to understand what’s going to happen, you have to first go back and see what has happened before .
There’s still another mistake you can make as you read the prophets. You can attempt a literal interpretation of the future. The prophets don’t do that. They use figurative language, poetic structure. and imagery. And their prophecies are not laid out in a linear form where you always know where you are and where you’re going. In a sense, you have to feel the prophets. You have to take them as a whole—as a work of art. You have to let them speak to us. Each of us brings something of ourselves to our reading of the Bible. And the Spirit that inspired the prophets can open your heart and mind to grasp what is there as easily as mine. But you need to relax a little bit and take a little time. You have to be willing to think about what you’re reading and to allow it to, kind of, flow over you as you feel or experience what the prophet is saying.
Micah is a classic example of that. Just as you have him settled into historical context—you know right where he is, who the kings were and what’s going on—suddenly you find yourself in a totally different place and time. As Micah was writing, Assyria was rising as a power in the world. Israel is prosperous and powerful, but corrupt and will, in time, fall to the Assyrians. But then something strange happens in this prophecy. We find it in the fifth chapter.
The Minor Prophets #15 - Micah
2024/03/20
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The words of the prophet Micah could just as easily be said and written today. Micah wrote in chapter 2:
Lately my people have risen up like an enemy. You strip off the rich robe from those who pass by without a care, like men returning from battle. You drive the women of my people from their pleasant homes. You take away my blessing from their children forever. Get up, go away! For this is not your resting place, because it is defiled, it is ruined, beyond all remedy.
Micah 2:8–10 NIV
I mean you would think he was watching our television and reading our newspapers. Today, these things are being done by the government—primarily through the courts.
You take away my blessing from my children forever. We have the estate tax which takes money away from a person who has worked all his life, saved, and builds up a good estate. They actually tax some of it away and his children don’t have all the benefits of their father’s labor and sacrifice. In living mental memory we’ve seen men returning from battle who have lost everything and they’re not protected or cared for. Now what on earth accounts for this in a society? How did we get from there to here?
The Minor Prophets #14 - Micah
2024/03/19
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It’s a small wonder that people have a hard time understanding biblical prophets. The truth is, unless you know something about the situation on the ground when they wrote, you’re just left with to come up with your own interpretation. But when you take the trouble to paint in the background, a lot of things become clearer. It’s very easy, though, to become confused when you’re reading the historical books of the Bible.
One wonders, for example, how many casual readers understand the difference between the House of Israel and the House of Judah. The truly great stories of the Bible all come from the period when Israel was united under one king—first Saul, then David, then Solomon. But after the death of Solomon the kingdom was divided with the House of Israel in the north (their capital in Samaria) and the House of Judah in the south (their capital in Jerusalem) continued for many years after this—about 240 years, I think, for Israel in the north, and nearly 400 years for Judah in the south.
Salted into this time period are the writings of a small group of prophets—very important prophets. These were men who went down and spoke in the public square. Now, thankfully they also wrote down what God told them. And it rings down through the ages like a warning for every generation of man. The third of these Minor Prophets to put pen to paper, after Amos and Hosea, seems to have been Micah, who lived in Jerusalem and was active for perhaps 50 years.
The Minor Prophets #13 - Hosea
2024/03/18
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History really does repeat itself. The reason is simple and obvious: We keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over again—and it produces the same results over and over again. The cycle of history that we are today repeating is a cycle represented in the Bible by the House of Israel. And it is precisely why, when you read the Bible and come to a prophet like Hosea, he sounds like he’s been reading our newspapers and watching our television.
The reason I think we are living near a turning point is we still have leaders who believe in God and are directed, at least in some part, by their faith in that God. But we have a generation coming that has had its faith shredded in the educational system and there is a powerful, coordinated effort coming from a determined minority in this country to eradicate any reference or deference to God in public life. Teachers and preachers who read and expound the Bible are on the agenda of this determined minority, and the day is coming when the Bible will no longer be taught on the public airwaves. Call that a prediction, not a prophecy. It’s for that reason that I’m determined to read and teach the Minor Prophets on the air while I can
Hosea was a prophet in the House of Israel at the time of their greatest power and prosperity. It was the peak of their power and prosperity. And you know how it is at peaks–you go up a mountain on one side and when you get to the top there is nowhere to go but down. For Israel, all that lay ahead of them was decline. And so, once again the prophet, speaking in the name of God, draws on Israel’s history.
Life and Light
2024/03/16
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There was a time when I thought the anti-abortion people were just a little too cute in calling themselves “pro-life”. I don’t think that any longer. I’ve come to the conclusion that it was precisely the right term to use. At least it’s the right term for Christians to use because the real issue is much bigger than abortion (if that’s possible).
To some degree the issue is clouded by the terminology. For example, “choice” is not the opposite of “life”, as in “pro-choice” versus “pro-life”. The opposite of life…is death. There’s a passage where God tell Moses to pass on the Israel a statement about this. You’ll find it in Deuteronomy 30.
This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live[.]
Deuteronomy 30:19 NIV
I think that it’s important that the words “and your children” were included here because it’s always the children who suffer first. So this choice of life has first to do with children.
Okay, now we come to the question. Why is a child, one week before birth, less worthy of the State’s protection, than another child one week after birth. The only difference between them is that the one is not breathing on his own yet. Why aren't parents free to choose to dispose of inconvenient kids? What business does the State have in forcing parents to care for kids?
The Minor Prophets #12 - Hosea
2024/03/14
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At times, when you read the prophets, there’s an almost melancholy sense—a sadness, a blues, as it were—because you realize that God didn’t want things to go the way they were going. The Book of Hosea is particularly poignant because, in order that we would understand this, God had his prophet go marry an adulterous woman and have children with her. He had him take her back after she went and committed adultery again . He did all this to underline for us the reality of what he experienced with Israel.
It’s not quite correct to say that God was married to Israel literally. But he was in covenant with her and the comparison with the marriage covenant is so apt because they are both blood covenants . So writing in Hosea God comes to a place where he says, When I found Israel, it was like finding grapes in the desert; when I saw your ancestors, it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig tree. It was precious; it was just wonderful when I found her. I didn’t expect to find her where I found her. I didn’t expect to see those grapes in the desert where there is no water. Look what I have found, God said. Then they came to Baal and joined themselves to that shameful idol and became as vile as the things they loved.
It is hard, sitting where we are, to really grasp what that meant and how it affected God. In my own case, my wife and I have been married for 54 years and I never experienced anything like this. I think it’s possible that some of you probably have—where the one you love more than anyone else in the world has been unfaithful to you and has enjoined themselves to somebody or something else and has become as vile with the thing they have became involved with. That may have been a lover, alcohol, or drugs—the pain is real. But we’re too far removed from what was going on in Palestine, Egypt, and other places at this time in terms of Baal-worship. I don’t know why the men of the Bible were not inspired to be more explicit in their description. Perhaps it was, as in Paul’s words, a shame to even speak of what these people did in secret. Maybe it’s because the Bible is a family book. But I need to leave you at least a few bread crumbs to follow so you can draw your own conclusions.
The Minor Prophets #11 - Hosea
2024/03/13
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The whole idea behind sin offerings in the Bible is for a man to acknowledge his sin and to recognize that there is a price to be paid for it. Now, God didn’t make a very big deal out of it—all it took was a little goat. That the little fellow had to die because you sinned would have an effect on a normal person, I should think. For the most part, when we do something wrong nothing happens—at least that’s what we think. In a society that’s in covenant with God, the sin offering (which was entirely voluntary) served as a regular reminder of the cost of sin. Sin has a price tag. Men need to remember their covenant with God and acknowledge that they have damaged their relationship and to make amends. It’s a simple concept and one that nearly everybody understands.
Hosea, speaking for God, says this:
I wrote for them the many things of my law, but they regarded them as something foreign. Though they offer sacrifices as gifts to me, and though they eat the meat, the Lord is not pleased with them. Now he will remember their wickedness and punish their sins: They will return to Egypt. Israel has forgotten their Maker and built palaces; Judah has fortified many towns. But I will send fire on their cities that will consume their fortresses.
Hosea 8:12–14 NIV
So what I learn from this, going through the motions of religious service is not good enough. You have to walk in covenant with God being attentive to the way you are supposed to live a life. It’s not good enough to ask, what would Jesus do? We should ask what did Jesus say, I should do? And then we have to live it. Now let me put this clearly, if you go to church every Sunday morning and you carry out all your religious duties—meanwhile you are sleeping with your neighbor’s wife—you are in the same place as the people Hosea was preaching to.
The Minor Prophets #10 - Hosea
2024/03/12
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It’s painful watching history repeat itself. It’s even more painful to realize you can’t do much to head it off. But there’s nothing new under the sun, and the prophets of old must have felt much the same way. And it was harder for them because God immersed them in what was happening and he used them as object lessons. Poor Hosea had to marry a hooker and have children by her. You know, how on earth a people come to such a sorry pass? Well, it takes time and a long series of bad decisions.
For the Israel of Hosea, the first bad decision had been made by their king, Jeroboam I, who turned them away from their God by decentralizing worship, changed the liturgical calendar, and setting up priests of his own choosing rather than God’s priests. (He made priests of the lowest of the people.)
It took over 200 years for the effects of this to finally come home to roost. But in the meantime Israel prospered, and the more they prospered they more they systematically forgot who gave it all to them. They had become confused about who God is, especially in Hosea’s day. He addresses this conflict, beginning in chapter 7.
The Minor Prophets #9 - Hosea
2024/03/11
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I remember a time when I thought all those references in the Bible—and the prophecies in particular—to adultery and harlotry were talking about spiritual adultery . The idea was that Israel was married to God, she went off after other gods, and thus it was spiritual adultery. It came as a bit of a shock to me when I started researching the issue and found there was a lot more flesh involved, as well as spirit. It is still jarring when you read the Bible and encounter words like whoredom, prostitution, and harlotry, And I think the scripture actually tone down the reality more than a little. After all, God knew the Book was going to be read by family, and even by children, so there are some places you just wouldn’t go.
It’s like Paul said in Ephesians 5: Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.
So I don’t think it should be terrible surprising if we won’t find described in any kind of gruesome detail what people were doing that the prophet were talking about. I have been pretty forthright in telling you what sort of things that went on, and I don’t think I have even come close to the sort of things that were actually being done by the Israelites—and even worse stuff was being done by their neighbors. I can give you a clue how bad it really was in Israel when Hosea and Amos were working. You can tell how evil Israel had become by the punishment God visited upon them. Because God is just; I can say with confidence that those things that God did to them—the punishment and chastisement that descended on them—did not happen to them merely because they burnt incense to some other God. It was not because they walked into a pagan temple, lit a little fire, burnt a little incense, and smelled it in a pagan temple. No, that’s not why God did the things he did to them. That was just the opening salvo in their rebellion from God.
Disaster befell Israel and Judah then in two stages, the first was the Assyrian invasion that carried Israel captive beyond Babylon to the region we now call Iran. That invasion reached all the way to Jerusalem and destroyed many cities in Judah. But Jerusalem itself did not fall. It was another 140 years or so before Jerusalem would fall. Yet the warning of that is still contained in Hosea’s prophecy.
Prophets Old and New
2024/03/08
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There are times, reading the prophets in the Bible, that I feel like I am reading an op-ed piece on current events. The 83rd Psalm is uncanny when read in the light of today’s news. But maybe you didn’t realize that many of the Psalms are prophetic, especially when you understand what prophecy is. It is not a mere foretelling of future events. If that were all it was, I can’t see God bothering to tell us at all.
But if it has to do with the why of future events, then there is every reason for us to know. Because if we can change the why , we may avoid the tragedy. Also, this might also explain another peculiarity of biblical prophecy: it has a way of recurring . Every prophet speaks out of history, and to his own generation. But it is eerie how the events described are also directed to the last days of human history.
There can be several reasons why this is so. For one thing, human nature doesn’t change and we keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over again. Unable to learn our lessons we are doomed to repeat them. The other side of this coin is that, while human nature doesn’t change, neither does the divine nature. If we make the same mistakes our fathers have made, God will respond as he always has. I think this lies behind something God tell us in Isaiah 24.
The Minor Prophets #8 - Hosea
2024/03/07
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Unfortunately, the Biblical prophets don’t write their story like history. I say unfortunately , but that’s strictly from a 20th-century point of view. It’s probably because we aren’t really quite on the right wavelength. Instead, the prophets write like poetry—calling up verbal imaginary to add weight to what they’re saying. In fact, what it is they’re adding is an emotional content which, if they just told us what would happen and when, would not be there. They actually lend themselves remarkably well to the oratorio style of recitatif, aria—something like Mendelssohn’s Elijah or Handel’s Messiah .
In fact, before delivering a particular prophecy to the King of Judah, Elisha requested a minstrel. And it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came on him. Now think about that he’s sitting there and wants to prophesy, but he can’t prophesy until he gets a minstrel, an instrument, and a musician to play for him. Now, you need to keep this in mind when you’re reading the prophets because reading them like you would a history text just doesn’t work very well. They are deliberately symbolic.
Hosea’s story, which is really what we’re studying right now, would make a fine oratorio. And, as far as I know, no composer has ever done it. It has a very strong emotional element to it. Really try to remember this when your reading the prophets they are adding an emotional element to the prophecy. Now that you know how this works, you can take the words of some aria out of Mendelssohn, Messiah , or one of the chorale works and just read the words. They carry a certain amount of emotional content. But you put those words in the mouth of a great choir being well-led with an orchestra behind them and they carry an impact that transcends that by a long way. So it would be when you read these you need to understand the whole objective is to let us know there is emotion and there is feeling behind the words of the prophet. Consider for example the way Hosea chapter three begins…
The Minor Prophets #7 - Hosea
2024/03/06
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I have always said that whenever you see a prophet coming down the road it is almost certainly bad news. Because God doesn’t send us a prophet to tell us how well we are doing. You don’t need an at a boy , when you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing in the first place. But that’s not entirely fair to the prophets—they did have good news in the end. But the problem is it was a long way off and a long time coming. I think it would really be a downer if a prophet said, Forget it. God is through with your people. He has had enough. It’s over. And I think if God really felt that way he probably wouldn’t bother sending a prophet. He would just go and get himself another people—maybe even in another galaxy. The problem is, God had some promises hanging out there concerning Israel and someday he had to come through on them. He had to keep his word.
So all the prophets come with their warning and calls for repentance, and almost to a man they looked way off into the future to a better time. The problem is, the generation that heard the prophecy in the first place will be long dead before that comes to pass. Their only hope is to repent—right here, right now—and they can, for a while, avoid what God has said is coming to them. It’s like the Israelites that rebelled in the wilderness on their way out of Egypt. Almost all the adults would die off in the wilderness. Only their children would actually enter and inherit the land. This is because they rebelled, they were hard-nosed, and they would not believe God. They didn’t trust him and they wouldn’t do what he wanted them to do.
When it comes to the Minor Prophets, the picture is about the same. Poor Hosea. Prophets were often called, not merely to speak, but to act out the truth. In Hosea’s case, he had to take an adulterous wife. The woman apparently was adulterous before he married her and would turn out to be adulterous after he married her, as well. Why did he have to do that? Well, to underline what God had put up with his relationship with Israel and to illustrate that Israel was an adulterous people—that is, that they were covenant-breakers . But there were children born to Hosea and his wife, Gomer. And God was going to use these children to represent some very serious messages that Israel needed to hear.
The Minor Prophets #6 - Hosea
2024/03/05
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The Old Testament prophets pose a singular problem for the reader. This is because they are prophets , not seers like Nostradamus. They aren’t there to tell you when things are going to happen off in the future, and in what order, or what the signs are so you will know what they’re going to be. That’s not really what prophets are all about. They are there to tell you where you are going, what’s going to happen when you get there, and what you can do to change the outcome. I get the feeling when I read some lengthy discourses on prophecy that the writers think the prophets are fortune tellers. It never seems to occur to them to ask the question, Why would God bother to tell any of us what the future holds? It isn’t really necessarily a good thing to know what’s in the future.
So what is the purpose of sending a prophet? What is the purpose of sending a prophet to tell us, Your nation is going to the dogs? The answer is simplicity itself. God reveals the future to us so we can change it. You may have to sit and think about that for a while because it flies in the face of what you may think you know about God. God is not a time traveler who looks into the future, sees what is there, and comes back to tell us. He doesn’t need to. He can see where we’re going far clearer than we can. He can see the logical end that it’s going to take us to and He doesn’t have to travel in time to do it. It’s right there in our lives right now. And he used people to relay the warnings.
You know, this is one of the things that fascinates me about the prophets. They are real people with real feelings and they are all different—everyone of them is unique. And unless you sit down and read them with this in mind, you may lose this entirely. If you sit down to read them, watch for this. They are as real as you are. If you cut them, they bleed. If they are wounded in spirit, they weep. And they cared deeply about what they were doing. All too often, the prophets had to endure the pain of acting out their prophecy. They actually had to do things that were signs to the people. The things they were called upon to do were, more often than not, quite painful. Such is the case with our next prophet: Hosea.
The Minor Prophets #5 - Amos
2024/03/04
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I’ve been reading the Biblical prophets for a long time now. In all that time, the thing that strikes me the most about these prophets is how real they were. These aren’t just old Hebrew poets with an axe to grind. These men are who they say they are and they had a close encounter with God. The word of God had come to them and spoken. They’re not really volunteers, not in that sense of the word. They didn’t go off to school to study the prophets, although apparently there were schools of the prophets, at least these guys didn’t need to.
For one thing, when the prophet Amos was threatened by one of the low-life leaders of the religion in northern Israel, he said to the man, I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son. It’s not in my heritage, my dad didn’t send me out to do this, I’m not doing this because my dad did it. I was a sheep herder and a fruit picker and the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said to me, Go preach to my people Israel.
No need for study, no need for a prophetic lineage, no need for degrees, no need for certification. The message, as obscure as it may seem to us, reading it all these generations later (after all it was embedded in a foreign culture) was as clear as crystal to the people who heard it first. Which is precisely why Amaziah, the low-life priest, was so angry with Amos. But as hard as the prophetic message was (and it was hard) the prophet himself felt an obligation to pray for the people. In some cases these prophets were absolutely broken-hearted over the messages they had to deliver, because of the vision that they had seen of what was going to be coming down on these people. Israel was coming to the end of their rope. Amos knew it, he hated to see it, and it really bothered him.
Close to God
2024/03/01
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When a person knows that God is there—but he can't touch him, can't see him—there should be a longing for God. Unless, of course, God is not in his thoughts. Then, if God is not in his thoughts, a man can walk through life with no awareness of God—no sense of God's presence, no awareness of the closeness of God.
But when we are far away from God, whose fault is that? Has God left us, or have we just forgotten him? What you need to look for in yourself is not so much the presence of God, but the longing for God. When that returns, you will know you are not in the right place, and never will be until you are with him.
Think about Job, who said, I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. When I read that, I can't help thinking that I am where Job was . I have heard of God with the hearing of the ear, but my eye has not seen him. Don't get me wrong. I believe in God, but so did Job. I obey God, but so did Job. I pray to God, but so did Job. There is no act of righteousness that I have done that Job would not have done, and more. And that means that I am squarely where Job was. And that also means I very likely share his vulnerability. I want to tell you where this first began to dawn on me and what I think it means…
The Minor Prophets #4 - Amos
2024/02/29
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In the days of the Old Testament prophets, the gate of the city was like the county courthouse used to be. It was where the courts were but also where most business was conducted. It was the official gathering place for the town council—the elders in those days.
Even today, if you’re going to foreclose on a piece of property, you have to go down to the steps of the county courthouse and auction it off, right there, on the courthouse steps.
In Old Testament times it would have been the gate. In those days, that’s where the prophet went to pronounce his message, and that’s what you see as you read through the prophets and they talk about the gate . They’re talking about the courts, they’re talking about the public arena; they’re talking about the place where the public comes together. So when you read in the book of Amos, a statement like, they hate him that rebukes in the gate or they hate him that speaks uprightly , you begin to see what he is talking about. This is a time where you go down to the county courthouse, as it were, you put up your little box, and you get up on your soap box and preach. This is what Amos is about to do.
The Minor Prophets #3 - Amos
2024/02/28
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Therefore flight shall perish before the swift, and the strong will not strengthen his force, neither shall the mighty deliver himself: neither shall he stand who handles the bow; and he that is swift of foot shall not deliver himself: neither shall he that rides the horse deliver himself. And he that is courageous among the mighty shall flee away naked in that day, saith the Lord .
Amos 2:14
What a thing to consider, all these things have to do with the warfare of the time. Men who were swift of foot who could run down an enemy if they had to do so, who could dodge an enemy if they needed to do so. The men who could handle the bow, the most and best long distant weapon any army ever had back in those days. The man who was fast couldn’t get away. The horse was the armor of the day, the tanks of their day. The horses were for war, not for agriculture, and in those days the fighting men of Israel like ours were among the best in the world. They were courageous, they would stand and fight. There enemy came out against them in a single column and ended the day fleeing in seven directions. The Israel to which Amos was sent was about to get a role reversal, and it wasn’t because God would make it happen. This is really an important thing to understand.
You read the prophets and you almost feel like God is saying I’m going to come down on you. In reality what God is saying is, I’m going to give up on you, I’m going to let you go, I’m going to let you do this your own way and I’m going to stand back and watch. It isn’t because God made it happen, it was the natural end game on the board they were playing. How could that ever happen to a nation?
The Minor Prophets #2 - Amos
2024/02/27
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When men forget God their society heads for ruin. And so, at critical junctures, here comes a prophet to call us to our senses. That’s the good news—the prophet comes. The bad news is that people hardly ever listen to the prophets; they’re just like a voice crying in the wilderness. God rarely picks a Billy Graham to serve as a prophet. The reason I think is quite simple: it is the message that is the thing, not the messenger. Be careful not to despise the messenger. If God ever does decide to send us a message, it will likely come from someone we don’t respect.
Take the prophet Amos as an example. He was about as unlikely a prophet as you would ever find. He was a sheep herder and a fruit picker with no formal training as a preacher. He had no degree after his name and no obvious qualifications for the job. It was just that, one day, God decided it was time to say something; so he reached into his toolbox and selected the man he wanted for the job.
Amos began his prophecy with a fascinating theme. He used a Hebrew idiom: For three transgressions and for four , and then he began to outline what was coming and why it was coming. I don’t know if the numbers are symbolic in this case or just a way of saying, for an abundance of transgressions I’m going to visit these people. It’s a passing interest that both three and four and the sum of these—seven—is suggestive of a whole. I don’t know if that was God’s intent but it’s clear enough what He was saying, because transgressions were getting out of hand and some important things were going to happen.
The Minor Prophets #1 - Amos
2024/02/26
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I can’t help wondering why Christians don’t read the Old Testament more than they do. Of course, I guess I could raise the same question regarding the New Testament. Some Christians just don’t read their Bible enough, period. I realize well enough there are parts of the Bible that are hard to understand but we can’t neglect a task just because it’s hard. I’ve always taken the approach with the Bible that when I find something that’s difficult to understand, something obscure, or something that doesn’t read right, I consider it like a stake in the ground that says Dig Here . Oftentimes, those are the very places where you get a breakthrough in understanding the Bible, if you just take the time to dig a little deeper.
It’s the things that we have to work for that often turn out to be of the greatest value. There are parts of the Bible that are hardly ever studied in any detail. Take the Minor Prophets as an example. The reason they are so poorly understood may be that no one has taken the time to explain where they fit in the overall scheme of things and what it is they’re talking about.
Unfortunately, many people pick up the Bible and read prophecy to find out what’s going to happen. They think of prophets in terms of someone like Nostradamus, and that misses the point of the Biblical prophets completely. If you study the prophets to ask why things happen then you will be far closer to the prophet’s intent. The difference between prophecy and simple predictions of the future—as seers and fortune-tellers make—is that prophecies contain moral content .
Stay Safe
2024/02/23
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I recently saw a cover on US News and World Report with a picture of a prominent bureaucrat and the headline: Can This Man keep America Safe? I am going to answer this question for you in no uncertain terms. No! There is no man, no combination of Secretary, Vice-President, or President (and much less congress), that can keep America safe.
You don’t have to be religious to realize that to place that kind of responsibility on any man or any combination of men is to imply God-like qualities—qualities that no one possesses. But the idea of being safe or safer has embedded itself so deeply in our national consciousness, that it dominates even media thinking.
What is wrong with it is that it is unrealistic , and anyone who is paying attention knows that. Yet, safety is a powerful biblical idea—but not the safety that any human can provide. And I have two important things to say about it.
Living Together
2024/02/22
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There is something radically wrong with sex education as it currently exists in this country. It seems as though everyone has completely forgotten that sex is supposed to be an act of love. But perhaps the schools can’t teach love. They are teaching sex without morals because they have no absolute standard of morals. And as a result, they are teaching sex without love.
I don’t know who to blame for all this, but whoever it is has set us on a slippery slope to oblivion. I don’t know if the trend can be reversed or not. But if it isn’t, the destruction of the family will ultimately lead to the destruction of society. Our kids have been sold a bill of goods by Hollywood and the music industry, and the schools have done nothing to correct it. How can they? They can’t quote the Bible to students. They can’t tell them that there is a Creator who designed man and told him how to build a civil society that will last. They can’t tell the kids that there is an absolute standard of moral behavior. They can’t tell kids that there is such a thing as sin, and it will eventually lead you to the place where you will be running an ad to find a man to help you with your kids.
In a way, the problem is not that kids don’t want to marry and have kids and stay married until old age. When you ask them, they say that is exactly what they want. The problem is that they haven’t got a clue how to get from here to there. Part of the answer lies in good, solid religious teaching at home and at church. But you also have to overcome the stupidity that is being sold as an alternative lifestyle. Somebody is out there telling young girls that they can have their babies and do just fine as single mothers. It is a lie . They will not be just fine, and neither will their children. The truth is out there, all over the place, but kids have to be told—and told again and again.
I came across an old article in the City Journal that presented a truth to me with a clarity I had not been able to explain, even though I knew right from wrong on the issue. The article was titled “How We Mate”, by Barbara Whitehead. Ms. Whitehead was writing about the profound changes that have taken place in mating habits among Americans of all age groups. What struck me in the article was not an argument. It was just a fact. And it wasn’t even a counter-intuitive fact, so I had no trouble accepting it. She wrote about the number of single mothers who think they will do just fine raising their kids by themselves. But she noted that some single mothers have a rude awakening…
Controlling Pornography
2024/02/21
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Is there really such a thing as sexual addiction? Some professional counselors say there is, and some say there isn’t. I don’t know who is right on this issue, but I have a feeling that people are disagreeing on mere semantics. They are talking past one another, where there really is no substantive disagreement. I will leave the arguments on that to the professionals. But I have to admit that there is a real problem in our society with something that looks very much like an addiction to sex. Thanks to the internet, pornography is clean out of control.
Of all the kids you know between the ages of, say, 11 to 17, how many of them would you say would accidentally be exposed to pornography on the internet? The answer: 9 out of 10—accidentally . If I point out to you that there are 8,000 new cases of sexually-transmitted diseases among teenagers, every day, would you agree that we have a problem? No? What if I add the hard fact that 20% of ninth graders have slept with four or more partners. Then would you agree that we have a problem? It is true to say that pornography is out of control in our society—and in the world, for that matter.
But when we say that, we raise the specter of control . If we are to control it, who is the controller—the government? One of the things that is killing us is the way the courts are now interpreting the First Amendment. What is odd about it all is that for 200 years, we lived under the First Amendment and still managed to keep sex away from children. We kept it out of movies, radio, television, print—mostly. What do you suppose was the overriding social need that allowed us to interpret the First Amendment in such a way that we could control pornography? And why can’t we do it now? To answer that question, I have to change the subject for a moment.
Free Love
2024/02/20
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If you asked 100 people where the expression Free Love came from, I doubt you would find more than one person who knows. I surely didn't. I thought it originated back in the 1960s with the flower children. But I was wrong. The term originated in the 18 50s in a religious commune in Oneida, New York. Called the Oneida Community by some and the Oneida Experiment by others, it was an experiment with sexual freedom under religious auspices, and quoting scripture for its justification.
I'm not sure what sent me looking for this, but I found an article in Touchstone magazine by Frederica Mathewes-Green called The Oneida Experiment: What We Have Discovered About Not-So-Free Love Oneida was founded on the principle of Bible Communism. Founder John Humphrey Noyes insisted that, under his personally-devised philosophy, there were to be no selfish attachments, no hoarding of love. Initially, it sounds very strange. How can you hoard love? And how can love be a selfish attachment when it is the outgoing giving of oneself to another person?
According to Ms. Green, Noyes had put sexual freedom at the head of his agenda; he was the inventor of the term, free love. The Yale Divinity School student and sometime Congregationalist minister believed that complex marriage was God’s will, as indicated by the scripture, in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven [Mt 22:30]. Now, you may be way ahead of me on this, but it isn't clear to me how a complex marriage can be like angels who don't marry at all .
According to Noyes, The abolition of sexual exclusiveness is involved in the love-relation required between all believers by the express injunction of Christ and the apostles […] The restoration of true relations between the sexes is a matter second in importance only to the reconciliation of man to God. As I read more on John Humphrey Noyes, I knew I had to talk to you about it; but I was torn. what is the story really about? Is it about sex? About love? About utopianism? And then I came to a paragraph by Lawrence Foster in an article titled The Oneida Community Experience and Its Implications for the Present …
The Oneida Experiment - Frederica Mathewes-Green Women, Family, and Utopia: The Oneida Community Experience and Its Implications for the Present - Lawrence Foster
The Music of Divorce
2024/02/19
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For the first time in my life, I am beginning to understand why your kids like that stuff they call music . (I don’t understand why it isn’t music yet, but maybe that’s part of the story, as well.)
But now, more than ever, I realize what motivates songwriters and, far more importantly, what touches the hearts and lives of the people who listen to their music.
It doesn’t make any difference how angry and alienated a songwriter is. If no one buys their music, they will never be heard. People buy music because it speaks to them and echoes their lives, their fears, their hope, their anger. I don’t listen to rock because it doesn’t speak to me, my life, my fears, my hopes. But it is a mistake to dismiss rock or rap, because your kids are listening—and responding. Consider, for example, the following lyrics…
Covenant Marriage
2024/02/16
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For the first time in our history, married couples are in a minority. Married couples now only comprise 48% of the households of this country. Back when I was a junior in high school, going to the prom, and dating the girl who would become my wife—back in 1950—that figure was 78% . And as my wife and I approach our 49th anniversary, it is sobering to think that a marriage like ours belongs on the endangered species list. Lifetime, permanent marriage is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
And even marriage isn’t what it used to be. Since the advent of no-fault divorce in the 1970s (which sure seemed like a good idea at the time) divorce has increased four times over. For many people today, it’s not very different from cohabitation; it just has some legalities at the beginning and some legalities at the end. And increasingly, many couples are just forgoing their legalities and shacking up. We’re evolving as a society, but I’m not sure we’re going to like the brave new world we are creating. The effects of these changes on children are beginning to show up as they become adults, and no one knows how this is ultimately going to play out. It isn’t that we didn’t know the effect it was having at the time—that the information was available to us. The problem was that no one really wanted to know.
There are now some efforts being made to turn back the tide. Some states have introduced something called covenant marriage . The idea is to give couples the option of creating a much stronger marriage contract. It features things like pre-marital counseling, waiting periods, established grounds for divorce, and even a trial separation to see what it feels like. Another thing that covenant marriage is bringing to the fore is that marriage is a contract —and a very unique one, at that.
Love and Sex
2024/02/15
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Now, I have the greatest admiration for the teaching profession. It’s an honorable one. But there’s a lot of experimentation going on in schools led by educators who are long on idealism and short on common sense. The objects of this experimentation are your kids. And the law of unintended consequences has seen your sons and daughters expecting babies, infected with disease, or carted off to the abortion clinic.
The image of a couple of high-school girls in a science lab struggling to put a condom on a banana tells me that some wisdom is missing from the system. We should take more interest in what is going on in our schools, whether we are parents or not. These are good people teaching your children, but they need your help and involvement—giving the educational process a good dose of common sense.
Meanwhile, from a parent’s perspective, is there something that might be taught alongside sex education that could make a difference? I have two important ideas from a Biblical perspective—one for sons and one for daughters.
Love and Marriage
2024/02/14
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If you think marriage is tough, try divorce . At least that’s what a friend of mine told me after about a year of divorce. Divorce is a nasty business, and especially nasty for the children. Back in the ’70s some states started passing no-fault divorce laws in a well-intentioned effort to take the acrimony out of divorce.
Divorce rates rose steadily until, by 1990, about half of all marriages ended in divorce. The increase in divorces has leveled off, but only because the number of marriages has dropped off. People just don't bother with marriage; they shack up instead.
Marriage and relationships have become, for many people, a market relationship. People enter the relationship for the benefits, and when the benefits are no longer there, they end the relationship. If I use one long-distance company, and another one comes along and offers me a better deal, I switch. People are doing the same thing with husbands and lovers. Now guess who wins and who loses in this situation?
Why Marriage Matters
2024/02/13
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I was driving by a church one day just as a wedding was ending. The bride and groom had emerged and the crowd was throwing rice (or birdseed) at the happy pair. I momentarily found myself a little surprised that people were still getting married and then I laughed at myself. You have been watching far too much television , I said.
Then I saw an article in World magazine titled, Marriage Matters . Well, of course it does, I thought, but then I remembered. Not everyone thinks it does any more. The article was an interview with David Blankenhorn who, in his newest book, argues against same-sex marriage—and for leaving homosexuality out of the debate. The interviewer asked: You write that across cultures, marriage is above all a procreative institution. It is nothing less than the culturally constructed linchpin of all human family and kinship systems. What is some of the anthropological evidence for that?
The author had spent an entire year studying what all the great anthropologists had concluded about marriage. He wanted learn whether there were any common features of marriage across human societies and cultures. He responded:
What is always a core purpose of marriage, in every known human society? Here is the answer: Everywhere, marriage exists in large part to ensure that the woman and the man whose sexual union makes the child, stay together in a cooperative union to raise the child. […] This finding is widely shared—it is not really controversial—among the leading scholars of marriage in the modern period.
Expectations of Marriage
2024/02/12
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When on vacation, celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary, my wife and I happened to notice a magazine article entitled, Marriages That Last (Is Yours One?) . That was irresistible under the circumstances. Our marriage seemed to be one of those that had lasted, and would continue to last. Since we were now authorities on a marriage that had lasted, we thought it might be interesting to compare notes.
There were some surprises in the article. One of them was the cost of the average wedding in the US—$22,360. It took my breath away. That seems like a lot of money to pay for something that only has a 50-50 chance of making it. Would you pay $22,360 for a car that only had a 50% chance of lasting? Would you pay $22,360 for a car and then not change the oil? Because a lot people seem to think that a marriage requires no preventive maintenance. We figure our wedding cost something between $350–$500. Now, 50 years later, couples in the US spend $50 billion a year on weddings, and $25 billion of that is a bad investment.
Along with a lot of sobering statistics, the article had a couple of important insights. We are no longer content with a reliable partner. We want a spouse who will make us happy . And there is no one who can do that. You can have a partner who is as dependable as sunrise, who will be there for you come hell or high water. But if this partner can’t make you happy , you will leave him and take the children with you, right? Well, that is what people are doing every day. All this helped me understand why the divorce rate keeps on climbing. People are entering marriage expecting something that no partner can provide. Happiness is a will-of-the-wisp. It comes and goes with circumstances and has more to do with what is inside you than it does with what your partner does or doesn’t do. If you enter marriage with unrealistic expectations, you haven’t got a chance.
Beauty and the Power to Love
2024/02/09
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Sometimes important ideas can come from unexpected places. I came across an article in the journal First Things by an architect who had been provoked by a piece on church architecture by another architect. I have no idea what would have prompted me of all people to read an article on church architecture but, having picked it up and read the first paragraph, I couldn’t put it down. The author wrote very well. He pulled no punches and he hit on something that has been nagging at my mind for quite a long time. He got me in the first paragraph. He said:
It’s no secret that the state of religious architecture in America is bad—really bad. The American idea of inevitable progress runs into a brick wall when we compare the quality of our architectural output a century ago with the stuff we are building now.
Nothing high flown about his rhetoric. He just calls it bad—really bad—and he speaks of the stuff we’re building now. He set out to discuss the problem, and I’ll come back to his argument, but first think about this idea: Nearly every form of art, music, and beauty has become seriously degraded in the past 100 years. To me, his complaint about architecture was only one facet of a massive societal change that has been going on for a long time and, particularly, has accelerated in the past 50 years. There’s been a terrible fading of beauty. Something has happened; something has changed. Something has gone out of our lives and, frankly, I’m worried that we will never get it back. I think we have sacrificed love on the altar of modernism. Having lost the power to love, men have lost the power to create beauty, for beauty arises from love.
Referenced Works:
Sacred Spaces & Other Places - Catesby Leigh
Set on Fire
2024/02/07
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“If a man dies, shall he live again?” That’s the question, isn’t it? “Is this all there is?” People want to know.
We are going to live out our lives here in misery, pain, frustration, aggravation, and irritation, and after that comes oblivion forever. Sometimes one thinks that oblivion might even be merciful after all of this. “If a man dies, will he live again?” It was Job who asked this question, and Job had a really good reason to ask whether life was even worth living or not. Here’s a man who had been wealthy and successful—I mean, everything the man ever did in his life worked, and all of a sudden, everything in his life fell completely apart. All of his children were killed when a windstorm came by and destroyed the house they were all partying in that particular day.
A group of civilians came by and stole all of his livestock—every bit of it, leaving him with nothing. I don’t think they had insurance back in those days to pay for all that. One moment he was a wealthy man, and the next moment he had nothing. Not long after that, he began to notice the first signs of the appearance of boils on his body. Finally, he was covered with boils from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet, and there was absolutely no place he could get comfortable.
Now, if you’ve been sick—and it may have been long enough since you were sick that you don’t remember real well—but when you’re sick, life gets to be a real burden. You don’t think clearly, you can’t sleep well, and it’s difficult to concentrate when the fever goes up or when pain is in your body. You think, “Well, I can just shovel it off to one side, and I can keep my mind clear at least, and I can keep my mind focused on what’s important. What I’m doing.” No, you can’t.
As your pain begins to rack your body, and as fever begins to mount, your mind doesn’t work like it did when you were healthy and whole and feeling good, and everything was working. And this is why this man had no place to get comfortable—no place to really, you know, be able to get rid of the pain. The pain was with him all the time. And when he slept under these conditions, he could only sleep because of exhaustion. No peaceful sleep for Job in this period of time, and the only encouragement he could get out of his wife was, “Well, why don’t you just curse God and die?”
I am sure that death was an option that might have crossed his mind, even if his wife had not mentioned it to him, maybe even suggested it to him, that he end his own life because life had become such a terrible, terrible crushing burden. And so, I think it makes a lot of sense that a man in Job’s position would want to know, “What is there in this for me to go on? Is life worth living? Should I keep on trying with this?”
Self-Esteem or Self-Respect?
2024/02/06
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Did you know there is a National Association for Self-Esteem? I had no idea. They feature the leading thinkers in the area of self-esteem and human potential. I think the self-esteem movement has its supporters and detractors as nearly any movement will have. It will have some practitioners who are sound, some who are off the wall, and some who give the movement a bad name. I'm not sure at all what camp the National Association falls in, but their website was…well…interesting. What started me thinking about this was an article quoting psychology Professor Jean Twenge. It said Americans born after 1970—including the so-called Generation X and Millennial Generation—have become an army of little narcissists .
I'm no expert, but that analysis matches to a T what I see in young people these days. Of course, what I think I see is only what I see. Can this be backed up somewhere? Twenge goes on to say Among Americans who lived through the Great Depression and two world wars, between 1% and 2% experienced a major depressive episode in their lifetime. Suicide was more common among middle-aged people, not young people.
How things have changed? Today, the lifetime rate for major depression is between 15% and 20%, [that's 10 times greater] it's an increase too large to be explained by improved case reporting. Suicide is the third leading cause of death for people ages 15 to 24, while rates have dropped for the middle aged. Why should Generation Me feel so much anxiety and pain when it has grown up in relative peace and technological and economic expansion? Boy, now there is a question. When you consider the kind of world they have lived in compared to the kind of world their grandfather lived in, good grief, why should they feel anxiety and pain? Well, let's look at some possible answers.
Who Do We Blame?
2024/02/05
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I think we need a divorce tax—say, $2000 to be paid by the partner at fault in the divorce. The very idea of a no-fault divorce is absurd. If two people agree that neither is at fault, then they should both pay $2000. Think about it—if no one has done anything wrong, why are they getting a divorce?
Someone once said that if you want more of something, subsidize it. If you want less, tax it. Well, somewhere in our past we made divorce entirely too easy. And we made another mistake at the same time. We subsidized mothers for having babies out of wedlock. So we got more divorce, an explosion of little babies with no dads, and all the negative social consequences that entails.
Now, I hope you understand that I have said all this tongue in cheek. Because there is really not much the government can do about social problems except make them worse. Politicians can rage back and forth, but the problem in this country is not with government, it is with the people.
But, wait a minute, the people are the government, aren’t they? This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, isn’t it? It is, but in spite of everything, we like to think the government is someone else . The problem with marriage, divorce, single moms, illegitimate children, and a whole host of other social ills is not with government. It is a clear reflection of the moral failings of the people. And if you want to do something about that, Government is not the answer. The answer lies in the hearts of the people.
Stand Up for Christ
2024/02/02
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Remember prohibition? No, I don’t suppose you do. What did the nation learn from that? We learned that when people wanted to drink they would find a way—there would always be criminal elements to help them. The criminals would get rich and a lot of people killed fighting for turf. I am not suggesting that we legalize drugs. What I am suggesting is that it doesn't make much difference what the government does, one way or another. That the harder we fight drugs , the more people we will put in jail, period. And that is about it.
The problem is the giant hole in the heart and soul of the American people where God should be. Every substitute we try from sex to entertainment, to drugs, comes up short. We are empty and we will never be able to fill the void. For how many generations now have we been knuckling under to the people who want a total separation of religion and state? They call it a separation of church and state, but that is a constructive lie. It is separation between God and public life that they are after. More than that, from some quarters, the eradication of God from American life.
The government can go on putting people in prison for drug offenses and when they run out of prisons, build more. They can go on placing the children of these people in foster homes until there is no place left to put them. And will the government have won the war on drugs? No, they won’t. Because the war is a war for the human heart. And our government long ago abandoned the field in that battle.
Reflections on Friendship
2024/03/08
Set on Fire
2024/02/07
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“If a man dies, shall he live again?” That’s the question, isn’t it? “Is this all there is?” People want to know.
We are going to live out our lives here in misery, pain, frustration, aggravation, and irritation, and after that comes oblivion forever. Sometimes one thinks that oblivion might even be merciful after all of this. “If a man dies, will he live again?” It was Job who asked this question, and Job had a really good reason to ask whether life was even worth living or not. Here’s a man who had been wealthy and successful—I mean, everything the man ever did in his life worked, and all of a sudden, everything in his life fell completely apart. All of his children were killed when a windstorm came by and destroyed the house they were all partying in that particular day.
A group of civilians came by and stole all of his livestock—every bit of it, leaving him with nothing. I don’t think they had insurance back in those days to pay for all that. One moment he was a wealthy man, and the next moment he had nothing. Not long after that, he began to notice the first signs of the appearance of boils on his body. Finally, he was covered with boils from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet, and there was absolutely no place he could get comfortable.
Now, if you’ve been sick—and it may have been long enough since you were sick that you don’t remember real well—but when you’re sick, life gets to be a real burden. You don’t think clearly, you can’t sleep well, and it’s difficult to concentrate when the fever goes up or when pain is in your body. You think, “Well, I can just shovel it off to one side, and I can keep my mind clear at least, and I can keep my mind focused on what’s important. What I’m doing.” No, you can’t.
As your pain begins to rack your body, and as fever begins to mount, your mind doesn’t work like it did when you were healthy and whole and feeling good, and everything was working. And this is why this man had no place to get comfortable—no place to really, you know, be able to get rid of the pain. The pain was with him all the time. And when he slept under these conditions, he could only sleep because of exhaustion. No peaceful sleep for Job in this period of time, and the only encouragement he could get out of his wife was, “Well, why don’t you just curse God and die?”
I am sure that death was an option that might have crossed his mind, even if his wife had not mentioned it to him, maybe even suggested it to him, that he end his own life because life had become such a terrible, terrible crushing burden. And so, I think it makes a lot of sense that a man in Job’s position would want to know, “What is there in this for me to go on? Is life worth living? Should I keep on trying with this?”
A Hard Road Ahead
2024/01/29
Should a Christian Submit to the State?
2024/01/05
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In Romans, Paul speaks of our inexorable duty toward God, as well as duty toward the church. But he also develops a concept of duty towards civil government. The 13th chapter of Romans is fairly familiar to most of us, and today I’d like us to take a look at this particular concept. It is very important, and to really understand it—to really grasp what Paul is saying—we have to understand the historical background in which these words were written.
1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
2 Whosoever therefore resists the power, resists the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves judgment.
3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Will you then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and you shall have praise of the same:
4 For he is the minister of God to you for good. But if you do that which is evil, be afraid; for he bears not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that does evil.
5 Therefore you must be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience’s sake.
6 For, for this cause pay you tribute also: for they are God’s ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.
7 Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.
Romans 13:1–7 KJ2000
That is a fascinating scripture even taken in our modern context. What should this mean to us? What obligations goes this lay upon us today? What is our relationship to the civil government in our time? Even before asking these questions, however, I’d like to take us back to the time when Paul wrote this…
(This message is a direct continuation of Romans: The Heart of the Gospel .)
A Forecast for the Future
2023/12/31
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If you were looking for a resolution for the new year (or the new decade), you'd have to go a long way to do better than this:
Wash you, make yourself clean; put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do good; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord : though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land:
But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.
Isaiah 1:16–20 KJ2000
Romans: The Heart of the Gospel
2023/12/29
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My perspective has changed on the Book of Romans. It’s not that I didn’t understand it before, but there are a lot of different ways of looking at this book. There are a lot of historical concepts that one might not be aware of, leaving some things left unseen.
In the process of studying it, I began to ask myself a lot of questions about this book. One thing has become very clear to me: It is easily the most important of all the New Testament epistles. I am sometimes hesitant to say the most or the greatest or the best , as superlatives are sometimes a little hard to support. But in the case of the Book of Romans, it is easy to support—and for a deceptively simple reason…
The Naked Christ
2023/12/25
The Value of a Child
2023/12/22
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If you had been the midwife who helped Mary deliver the baby Jesus, and if you had been able to hold him in your arms for a few minutes, would you have thought he was precious? One of the most common expressions I ever hear when someone picks up a baby, sees a new baby, or bends over to touch a baby is, Oh, isn’t she precious? Isn’t he precious? You would have thought so, probably would have said so, and I have no doubt that is what happened that night.
Something occurred to me this year that had not really occurred to me in the same way before: In making himself completely vulnerable as an infant (I don’t know how you could be any more vulnerable than that), Jesus established the value of every child that comes into the world. For they are all precious—little boys and little girls—and are about the most precious thing that will ever enter your life as a mother or father.
Now, thanks to medical science, we can actually see them in the womb —moving, kicking, sucking their thumb. It is the most astonishing thing to see those things and realize what I am looking at. Mary, of course, could not see that; she could not have know it; but she certainly knew the reality of the baby that she had in the womb.
Know this (and it’s just as clear as anything could ever be on the pages of the Bible): From the time of conception, Jesus’ identity was established . Don’t we all know that? Is there a Christian on this planet who does not know that Jesus’ identity was established at conception? It’s impossible to think otherwise, and from the moment of conception he was precious. The same is true of the child that some women in this room may be carrying tonight and not even know it. It is already known. It is precious. That child is known to God and it is written in his book.
For the Love of God
2023/12/20
Born to Win Podcast - with Ronald L. Dart
https://www.borntowin.net
Born to Win's Daily Radio Broadcast and Weekly Sermon. A production of Christian Educational Ministries.
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