For God So Liked the World

One of the first religious books I remember reading was CS Lewis' The Four Loves. Lewis describes four kinds of love based on four Greek words for love--Sturge, Eros, Phileos, and Agape.


Here they are in grossly oversimplified terms.

Sturge is a passing enjoyment, such as "I love baseball" or "I love chocolate."

Eros, is a sensual, consuming passion, obsession, or addiction.

Phleos is friendship love, the love in commonly shared relationship or experiences.

Then there is agape love. This divine love is only possible fully through Divine intervention. It is a sacrificial love, as Christ loved on the cross. It is not a love because of liking anything about a person, but liking in spite of everything unlikeable about a person. This love is the blessed, chaste love of a true saint.

When I read that book, I wanted to be a true saint. (I still do, though I have never achieved it.) This was the love I longed to have--a love that does not depend about liking anything about people, but only depends on the love God has for poor lost sinners such as ourselves.

Agape love is not so much an act of he heart as of the will. It is, as Finney put it, a "decision to seek the highest good of another." I can decide to love my enemy, and seek his highest good without having to like him. Agape love is sacrificial, giving ourselves to others.

That was my understanding in my days of youthful idealism.

Since I have grown older, though, I have come to realize that agape love, though it may be the highest, is not the only kind of love God wants us to have for others. Agape allows us to love people we do not like. But it does not settle the issue of whether or how we should also like them.

We need to be careful about "sloppy agape." That is a general and ideal love, but not personal and specific. It is not enough tolerate the lost, but to welcome them. We may claim we love a person in Jesus, while detesting everything about them. This kind of love is not love at all, but paternalism and condescension--a misuse of the doctrine of Christian charity.

A purely ideal concept of love lacks both passion and staying power. We may be able to love those we do not like, but we cannot keep it up for long. Sooner or later, no matter how pious we may act, our love needs to grow into real, honest affection or it will not last.

Think about broccoli for a moment. Many people hate broccoli. (Not me, I actually like it.) Those who hate broccoli may be determined to eat healthy, and they know broccoli is good for them, so they force it down their throats. But how long can they keep doing this without either developing a taste for it, or dropping it from their menus?

Or take marriage. A person may marry another as a result of prearranged marriage or out of a sense of duty. But unless that person develops a geniune liking for their spouse, that marriage will be unsatisfying for both. This is not to suggest that people should divorce if they do not feel love, but rather that we find something likeable about our spouses if we do not already have it. If ideal love does not turn into honest affection, then that marriage is doomed.

We can suppress our feelings, but it will wear us out in the end. No one can work at something they do not like to do forever without respite. We will not stay with people we honestly do not care for, without making them and us miserable. At some time, our feelings will conquer us.

This idea of liking as well as loving is absolutely essential for the spreading of the Gospel. For hundreds of years we have been preaching evangelism. Also for hundreds of years, the majority of Christians have simply ignored the call. They love the world, in a spiritual sense, and do not want to see others go to hell. But they do not like the world. Many Christians find the current age so abhorent that they want nothing to do with it. They move into fortresses of their own making, isolating themselves from "sinners" so they will not be contaminated by the things of the world, whether or not that world has anything to do with the gospel itself. We make excuses for hating the world around us, condemning aspects of music, dress and language that do not fit our cultural, non-spiritual norms. We do this to further emphasize our differences with the culture around us. We do this for the same reason teenagers of my generation wore their hair long or dressed in miniskirts--because we wanted to be different from our parents' generation. It's not that we didn't love our parents and grandparents. We just didn't like them, or anything about them. As we grew up, we learned better, when our children did the same to us.

John 3:16 begins "For God so loved the world." God does not just love the world, he honestly likes it. God may not like what the world does or what it believes, but God, like the parent of a rebellious teenager, sees something of Himself in them. He experiences genuine affection for us, as well as loving us in an esoteric sense.

Many Christians cannot grasp this. That is because many of us have an "all or nothing" mentality regarding our likes and dislikes. If we do not like a man's politics or religious opinions, we drop him in a bin in our mind that is labeled "Don't like." If we agree with a person, we drop him in the "like" bin. I don't believe God thinks this way. He recognizes the fact that there is very little difference between those we like and don't like. We have the same DNA. We were created in God's image. We are affected by the same sinful nature. There are actions, ideas, and attitudes which we should not like, that's true. But it up to God to decide who is or is not condemned in their sin. Even in the worst of us, there is something to like and admire.

Phileos love, that is friendship love, is built on commonalities. Our common interest, passions, and failures make us far more like each other than different.

We share similar interests. Among men, it may be more effective evangelism goes on at the lake or on the golf course than in the church. Christians who golf with non-Christians forge a friendship which provides a bridge for the Gospel to get to their hearts. Those places where we share neutral activities with others--the gym, the mall, or the marketplace, become those places where we come to like unbelievers, which leads to loving them. Some Christians are more afraid of unbelievers affecting them than they are excited about affecting unbelievers themselves. We share the same passions. Not long ago, I was asked to hold a funeral for a relative of someone in my church who had been a lesbian. The grief of her "significant other" was no less real than our grief for a spouse. Pain is pain no matter who has it. A sensitive, caring believer will recognize the pain in others, whether or not that pain is theologically justified. Jesus wept over Lazarus, even though He was about to raise him for the dead. He did not chide Mary and Martha for their lack of faith. Our own pains enable us to understand the pains of others.

We also share the same sins. We once lived in the same apartment building with an unmarried couple who were addicted to drugs. We got to know them and talked to them about their problem, even though we never used drugs. But I found that my own struggles with food were not that different in form from their struggles with drugs. It differed only in consequence and intensity.

We believers are comfortable with the fact that we are sinners. We just don't like to admit we have sinned, or have anything in common with those we consider to be really bad sinners. Our sins are small, but their sins are big. We regard ourselves as sinners in a general, esoteric sense, but do not like to admit to any particular sin. Yet it is our admission of our fallenness and failures which helps the unbeliever believe that God means it when he says "I forgive." It is our failure, not our successes that give us the ability to befriend the lost. We were lost, and now are found. We still sin, but we still find grace.

God doesn't just love the world. He likes it. He enjoys the enjoyable things about it, even though he hates the things that are broken. If we follow in His footsteps, then we ought to do the same.

barack

The next name in our hall of fame of faith is Barak. Again, Barak seems to be an odd choice. It’s not that Barak isn’t a mighty warrior, but Barak is not the most important person in this story. That honor goes to a woman named Deborah.


Let’s look at the story.



Judge 4: 1 After Ehud died, the Israelites once again did evil in the eyes of the LORD. 2 So the LORD sold them into the hands of Jabin, a king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth Haggoyim. 3 Because he had nine hundred iron chariots and had cruelly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years, they cried to the LORD for help.

Judges is a book that tells the same story over and over again. God’s people would forsake Him. Then God would allow them to be persecuted and punished by some other country. Then God would raise up some judge who would lead them and save them. This leader would rise up against Israel’s enemies. Then that leader would leave the scene, and the cycle would begin again.

Barak was a mighty warrior. But Barak was not a judge. Deborah was the judge. So why is Barak mentioned in the hall of fame of faith and not Deborah? It cannot that she was a woman, since Rahab has already been mentioned. So why Barak?s

There is an answer to this. But before we get into that, let’s look at the situation.

Jabin was no ordinary enemy. Jabin had ambition beyond just raiding his neighbors. Jabin wanted to retake the northern part of Canaan for his own, and drive the Hebrews out.. To do this, Jabin got some powerful allies. The first one was Sisera, the war chief. Sisera was not from Canaan. The most likely nationality for Sisera was Hittite or Hurrian, since it mentions that Sisera had nine hundred iron chariots. The only country that had iron chariots at this time were the Hittites. Other countries had weapons of bronze. Iron sliced bronze like butter. Sisera commanded nine hundred of these machines. They were an Eleventh Century BC. Weapon of mass destruction.

Ancient writings still echoe the fear people had towards Sisera. The Midrash--an ancient collection of Jewish writings outside the Bible--say that Sisera’s voice was so loud and powerful that it could shake walls and slay wild animals. He was a frightening and formidable foe.

4 Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading Israel at that time. 5 She held court under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites came to her to have their disputes decided

On the other side was the prophetess Deborah—a holy woman against an unbeatable army. Deborah did not have any real authority except moral authority. Her judgeship probably did not even extend to all welve tribes, but just two or three.

Sisera had nine hundred iron chariots, but Deborah had the living God of Israel.

Here’s what Deborah did.

6 She sent for Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali and said to him, "The LORD, the God of Israel, commands you: 'Go, take with you ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun and lead the way to Mount Tabor. 7 I will lure Sisera, the commander of Jabin's army, with his chariots and his troops to the Kishon River and give him into your hands.'"

Barak was a strong man—the best that Israel had to offer. But even Barak did not want to stand up against Sisera.

Barak was a humble man—not in the sense that humility is misused today, but in its original sense. Humility is not self doubt, nor is it pretending to be less that we really are. Humility is an honest assessment of our abilities, when compared to the absolute strength of God.

When we pretend we can’t do what we can, that is not humility. Humility is when we do what we can, with the understanding that we cannot do everything. It is knowing our place in the universe, that we do not rule it. There is always something bigger than we are.

Barak knew he was strong, but he knew he could not defeat Sisera alone

8 Barak said to her, "If you go with me, I will go; but if you don't go with me, I won't go."

9 "Very well," Deborah said, "I will go with you. But because of the way you are going about this, the honor will not be yours, for the LORD will hand Sisera over to a woman."

Barak would not go unless Deborah went with him. He knew that he needed God on his side, and Deborah was his connection with God.

This is why Barak made it into the hall of fame of faith, and not Deborah. Of course the prophetess had faith. She was constantly in communion with God. But here was a strong man, a soldier, who understood that God was bigger than he was. He was willing to take a risk and go up against the greatest enemy of his time, provided he knew that God was going with him.

Pride is the enemy of faith. Pride is the presumptuous belief that we can handle things without God’s help.

We don’t like to admit we need help. We refuse to look at road maps because we do not want to admit we are lost. We insist on taking care of ourselves when we are too weak to do it. We don’t want anyone messing with our business. The think of this as virtuous self-reliance, but really it is is pride—one of the seven deadly sins. It is called that because our pride can kill us.

Pride destroys us in three ways. First it destroys us because it keeps us from facing the truth about our predicament. We don’t want to admit we have a problem. We avoid going to the doctor in the mistaken believe that we don’t know about it, it won’t hurt us. We don’t want anyone pointing out our faults.

Second, it kills us by making us unwilling to seek help. Pride isolates us from others. No man is strong enough to face the dangers of the world without God’s help and the help of other people.

Third, pride destroys us because it causes us to jealously insist on getting credit. In a prideful person’s heart, it is more important who gets the credit than that the job is done.

Deborah announced to Barak that he will not get the credit for destroying Sisera. Actually a little woman named Jael will be the one to kill Sisera, not the mighty warrior Barak. It is not Barak who is listed among the judges, it is Deborah. God wants to make sure that He, not Barak, gets the credit.

After Deborah agrees to go, then Barak lays his plan, using the skills he has.

So Deborah went with Barak to Kedesh, 10 where he summoned Zebulun and Naphtali. Ten thousand men followed him, and Deborah also went with him. . . .

12 When they told Sisera that Barak son of Abinoam had gone up to Mount Tabor, 13 Sisera gathered together his nine hundred iron chariots and all the men with him, from Harosheth Haggoyim to the Kishon River.

Barak chosesthe location of the battle—Mount Tabor. This is a brilliant plan. Mt Tabor is a mountain that juts up out of the flat terrain of the Jezreel valley. Like Stone Mountain in Georgia, Mount Tabor is a horst, a slab or rock that is pushed up out of the ground by techtonic movements. It is a cone of solid rock, which is so high that today it requires a four-wheel drive vehicle to reach the top. It has thickly wooded, rocky sides on all sides. Furthermore, it is on the border of three different Israelite tribes. In order for Sisera to take it, he must fight three different battles at once with three different tribes. This make a prolonged siege out of the question.

Sisera cannot use his chariots. They will not go up the mountain. If the tries to drie them put the mountain, it is simple for the Israelites to rain down rocks and arrows on their heads. All they can do is abandon their chariots and attack on foot.

When Sisera’s troops abandon their chariots, then Deborah and Barak command theirs.

14 Then Deborah said to Barak, "Go! This is the day the LORD has given Sisera into your hands. Has not the LORD gone ahead of you?" So Barak went down Mount Tabor, followed by ten thousand men. 15 At Barak's advance, the LORD routed Sisera and all his chariots and army by the sword, and Sisera abandoned his chariot and fled on foot. 16 But Barak pursued the chariots and army as far as Harosheth Haggoyim. All the troops of Sisera fell by the sword; not a man was left.

Barak is a hero of faith, because he understood the meaning of humility. He was a great warrior, not because he thought he was strong, but because he understood that there were limits to his strength. There was no limits to God’s strength, though. difference between faith and presumption. Presumption is thinking we know what God will do next, and acting upon it. Faith is learning to wait for God to show us the way, before we run out in our own direction.

There is a story later in the Bible of a king who acted on presumption. His name was Josiah. Josiah heard the Egyptians were passing through their territory to fight a battle with the Assyrians, far to the north. The Judeans had no love for the Assyrians, but they did not like a foreign army passing through their land. All Josiah’s spiritual advisors told him to let it go, and not attack the Egyptians. Josiah would not listen. He stubbornly held on to the belief the he knew what God wanted. As a result, he was killed, his army was slaughtered, and Judah was sacked by the Egyptians.

We must act, but only when God leads.

Our dog is in obedience school. Recently we learned how to keep a dog from pulling on the leash. The dog pulls on the leash because the dog thinks she knows where you are going, nad she is in a hurry to ge there. When we more in random directions first, then the dog learns not to assume she knows what the master wants, but to wait until the master commands.

We are like that. We go along thinking we know what God wants. But suddenly, God takes us in a random direction. We must follow closely behind Him, or we will get lost.

Are you following the Lord today, or are you thinking the Lord is following you? Are you doing what the Lord commands, or presuming upon your own knowledge. Proverbs 3:5-6 says “Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not upon your own understanding. IN all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path. Let He be your guide. Listen to what God says, and you can win over any enemy. Follow your own understanding, and sooner or later you will fall. Only through the mercy of Jesus Christ can we be saved, and find a way out of the problems we face.

Gideon

What does a man or woman of faith look like? Faith has nothing to do with appearance. Any ordinary man or woman can do fantastic things if he trusts in God, even for a little bit.


Of all the people mentioned in the hall of fame or faith, Gideon is probably the most flawed. Even so, Gideon became for a period of time, one of the judges of Israel, and a man. Gideon is to us both a positive and negative example. We learn as much from his failures as from his success.

We read about Gideon in Judges 6 and 7.

1 The angel of the LORD came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites.

Gideon was from the tribe of Manasseh and the family of Abiezer--not a very distinguished family. His father Joash was not very distinguished, either. Gideon was for his part an undistinguished son.

When we first meet Gideon, he doing something that probably seems odd. He is threshing wheat in a wine press. Threshing was the process of separating the kernels of grain from the wheat stalks. The thresher wraps a sheet around the wheat and pounds it on a rock until the grains separate from the stalks. Then he throws what remains in the air. The wind carries the husks away, leaving only the grain. This is usually done outside where there is a good wind.

A wine press is a circular stone vat. It would not be the best place to thresh wheat, since there would be little wind, and you would probably get grape juice all over your wheat.

So why is Gideon threshing in a wine press? He does not want anyone to see him, lest someone steal his grain. Specifically he is afraid of a people called the Midianites.

At one time, the Midianites were the friends of the Israelites. Now they were their worst enemies. They were desert nomads, who came upon the tribes of Israel like locusts, stealing their crops and goods, and disappearing into the desert again. In Gideon's time, they have become very strong, and deeply feared. No one could stop them, they pillaged wherever they chose.

Then Gideon hears a voice 12 When the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon , he said, "The LORD is with you, mighty warrior."

Wait a minute. This has to be a mistake. If Gideon were a mighty warrior, he wouldn't be threshing wheat in a wine press. He'd be daring the Midianites to appear. There is no way that anyone would mistake Gideon for a mighty warrior. Yet God sees a mighty warrior in him.

Faith in God doesn't make any practical difference in our lives if we have no faith in ourselves. God may see in us a mighty warrior, but if we do not believe it about ourselves, then we will act like a wimp. The faith to do great things is tied to our faith in ourselves.

This may sound like some new age or positive thinking kind of philosophy, but it is thoroughly based in a Biblical understanding of our nature. It is based upon the sovereignty of God. If God says we are mighty warriors, who are we to doubt His word? If God created us, and if He has promised to give us the strength to endure, then we should also believe that God has in fact given us sufficient gifts to do it, or will give it. To say we are not good enough to do what God says it so call God a liar. We cannot have faith in God without also believing in ourselves.

Immediately, Gideon starts giving God excuses.

First, he says, "God doesn’t care about us.".

13 "But sir," Gideon replied, "if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, 'Did not the LORD bring us up out of Egypt?' But now the LORD has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian."

Gideon's reaction has been broken in spirit. When thrown into catastrophe our first reaction is to say "God doesn't care about us." Gideon's family had lost most of their crops. The winepress is empty of grapes, because the Midianites took them all. They left some bread, but the took all the joy of the wine with them. What is left is meager and grim.

It is easy to give in to doubt, but it is also the worst thing we can do. Without God, there is no security, not meaning, and no hope. It is also incorrect. God really does still care.

14 The LORD turned to him and said, "Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand. Am I not sending you?"

God in effect said to him. "You say I have abandoned you. I gave you the greatest thing in the world for fixing your problems. I gave you you." Gideon had forgotten that even though he had lost much, he had much, and what he had was sufficient emerge victorious in the crisis.

Gideon was discouraged. Courage is the confidence that we can endure and withstand whatever comes our way. Gideon could only see the obstacles. He had abandoned his goal.

Second, Gideon said "I'm too weak."

15 "But Lord," Gideon asked, "how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family."

16 The LORD answered, "I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together."

Self doubt equals God doubt. We do not success because we do not believe we can.

Gideon's excuse was that he came from the weakest tribe in Manasseh, and that he was the least in his family. So what? God was still with him.

It's the mathematics of heaven. If finite power is added to God's infinite power, and that is not enough, then is God’s power really infinite. If we are weak and God is strong, then won’t God’s strength completely cover our weaknesses, with infinite power? God says the one thing that can calm us. "I will be with you."

Gideon's third excuse is "But God, how do I know it's really you?"

17 Gideon replied, "If now I have found favor in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you talking to me. 18 Please do not go away until I come back and bring my offering and set it before you."

.And the LORD said, "I will wait until you return."

Is this is really an angel? Gideon demands proof before he proceeds.

This argument with God is probably Gideon's most rational. It is , however, the mt dangerous and most devastating. We are paralyzed by doubt not just from doubting God’s existence, but from doubting that a specific word from God is really meant for us. If God sent us a letter, we would probably think the mail carrier put in the wrong mailbox!

But God has prepared a surprise for Gideon.

19 Gideon went in, prepared a young goat, and from an ephah of flour he made bread without yeast. Putting the meat in a basket and its broth in a pot, he brought them out and offered them to him under the oak.

20 The angel of God said to him, "Take the meat and the unleavened bread, place them on this rock, and pour out the broth." And Gideon did so. 21 With the tip of the staff that was in his hand, the angel of the LORD touched the meat and the unleavened bread. Fire flared from the rock, consuming the meat and the bread. And the angel of the LORD disappeared.

Gideon sets up an altar, but he does not burn the meat. The angel touches the rock it is on, and fire comes out.

Think of how many times in the Bible God reveals himself in fire.

• To Moses, God appears in fire from the bush.

• To Israel, He appears in fire from a cloud.

• To Elijah, God appears in fire from the sky.

• To Gideon God appears in fire from a rock.

• In Acts, God appears in fire from the heads of the apostles and prophets.

• On the road to Emmaus, the two disciples who met Jesus said they knew him because their hearts burned within them.

God reveals Himself to us still in fire. He puts the fire of the Spirit in our hearts.

Fourth, Gideon fears God more than he loves Him.

22 When Gideon realized that it was the angel of the LORD, he exclaimed, "Ah, Sovereign LORD! I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face!" 23 But the LORD said to him, "Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die."

Verse 22 sounds like a statement of faith, but look closer. He is afraid to be with God. He is sure that God will kill him.

Many who fear God and are too afraid to approach Him. This is not faith. It is just another kind of self-doubt. If we allow our fear of unworthiness to keep us from approaching God, then we can never effectively serve Him.

When I was a boy, I used to see The Wizard of Oz on television every year. I loved the movie up until the part where they meet the Wizard, and that great floating head appears. It scared me so badly that I would leave the room.

But by the end of the movie, though we see that the Wizard is not scary at all. He is a kind and generous man. The big head just there to frighten away those who did not belong there. The real Wizard welcomed them into his presence.

Many people have much the same reaction to God. God really is great, majestic, and fearsome. But do not think that He is inapproachable. He's also good. If God were truly inapproachable, no one would want to be in his presence. We would serve him in fear, like slaves. But God cares about us, and wants us to love Him back. Being God fearing is not enough. We must also have a relationship with Him. That is impossible if we are too afraid.

Those who are His people, His servants, have nothing to fear from Him. They are the ones who are specially blessed out of the whole world. They are His children.

24 So Gideon built an altar to the LORD there and called it The LORD is Peace. To this day it stands in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.

When he lost all his excuses, he got peace.

I wish I could say that Gideon remained faithful all his life, but he did not. He vacillated all his life between faith and doubt. That is the beauty and the glory of God. In order to receive, God's peace, we don't have to have faith yesterday. We don't even have to have faith tomorrow. We just have to believe today. God can uses even struggling and doubtful Christians.

Don't be fooled by the Devil's lies, or blinded by our own self doubt. God is still capable of using you, if you will only believe Him for today.

Potholes

It's been a while since I wrote in this blog, but for those of you who might be interested,  Let me tell you a little of what's going on. 
In January,  Joy and I bought a new car.  It was a 2009 Toyota Prius hybrid.  I have enjoyed driving it,  especially when I was driving past my friends at gas stations paying exhorbitant amounts for gas. 
I believe God let us to buy that car when we did.  Our original intention was to buy it in April of May, but since we bought it then,  we have evaded some of the gas headaches others have endured.  By April,  there is no telling how much higher the price of a hybrid might be.
Right now, though I am not driving it. i am driving a rental car.  Last Wednesday, on a major thoroughfare in Lancaster, SC,  I hit a pothole, which contained a large sized rock laying on the road.  The rock damaged a strut and the gas tank of my glorious new car.  It is at the shop while my insurance company and my mechanic decide upon the price of repair. I am convince that upstate South Carolina is the  ancient pothole spawning ground. 
In the meantime, I am in  a Jeep Patriot which is good ride, which downs gas like a drunken sailor downs whiskey.  I want my car back.
This whole incident reminds me of the paradoxical nature of faith. If I believe that God led ut to buy the car at the right time, then I must also believe that God let us ht the pothole.  As tenpting as it is to think that God gives us wise decisions but not potholes, the logic of it just does not hold up.  He gives both--the good and the bad. 
I will say this.  I have been at peace about the pothole incident. So tar, the insurance company has been outstanding in their treatment of my claim.  (I won't menton the company, but I will say it is one that is particularly fond of lizards and cave men)   It's been something of an adventure to driving a new car, and our tax refund came earlly enough to pay the deducable. That is also God's hand, I suppose. 
Sometimes, God helps us miss the potholes of life. Other times, He lets us hit them. But whichever way, He never leaves us.  One way or another, He's still in control.   

Rahab

Heb 11:30-31 By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the people had marched around them for seven days. By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.


Why is Rahab in faith’s hall of fame?

In Florida, some of our women were involved in a woman’s prison ministry. One woman, (we’ll call her Lucy) made a profession of faith. She had been a prostitute like Rahab. The life she described to me was not glamorous, not in the least. She had AIDS, and knew she would never see her child grow up.

Our church accepted her, even embraced her. But no one suggested that she was a shining example of faith.

The woman’s name was Rahab, and she appears in Joshua, 2:1-2 Then Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two spies from Shittim. "Go, look over the land," he said, "especially Jericho." So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there.

This story occurred just before the Israelites finally crossed over into the Promised Land. Joshua needed reconnaissance before they entered the land, so he sent spies to scout the town of Jericho. Jericho was the largest city in Canaan and was directly between them and the rest of the land. It had an enormous wall that protected it from g invasion.

The two spies decided that the safest place for them to hide was in a house of prostitution. Though this appeared morally objectionable, from a military standpoint it made sense. Israel’s enemies knew that they did not approve of prostitution, though it was acceptable among the Canaanites, so a house of prostitution would be the last place they would look. Besides, a house like that would be a good place to pick up information.

Rahab was common, though successful harlot. She had her own house in a prestigious part of town, next to the city wall. She had money, she had no respect, any more than she would today.

We certainly would not approve Rahab’s way of making a living. But we have to ask, why why would this woman be thought worse than other kinds of sinners? Should she be treated as an outcast while other women did the same thing in the pagan temples, and were treated as priestesses. The respected the women who gave themselves to men in the name of a pagan god were no better than she. In fact, in our eyes they would be worse, since the practiced both prostitution and idolatry.

God does not rate sinners. He treats all sinners the same. If a sinner, no matter how wicked repents, then they can find forgiveness from Jesus. It did not matter what Rahab had done in the past, she could be forgiven.

Last week we talked about two kinds of faith-saving faith and living faith. Moses exemplifies that living faith. But Rahab exemplifies saving faith—which is the belief that even the worst of sinner can find forgiveness through the mercy of God.

There is good in all people, and there is evil there as well. Everyone who ever lived is the sa,e mixture of God’s breath and Adam’s mud. The person we don’t want to pass on the street may be closer in God’s eyes than a deacon in church or a pastor, if we knew their heart. We cannot judge others according to our standards. In Rahab’s case, a pagan woman in a horrid profession is treated with more honor than a thousand saints. .

How can God do this? Because it is not what we do, but what God does that saves. Faith makes the difference. It is not whether fail or whether we succeed, but whether we have faith to believe God can shine His mercy on both the just and the unjust. The only thing that saved her among all other people in her city was that she believed God.

Rahab had heard stories of the approaching Israelites. The king and the leaders of the land feared the Israelites numbers and military might. Rahab knew better than that. She knew it was not the military might of Israel that made them invincible, but Israel’s God. Here is what she said about them.

Josh 2:9-11 "I know that the LORD has given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. We have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed. When we heard of it, our hearts melted and everyone's courage failed because of you, for the LORD your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.

Here is a common prostitute speaking to the spies in her house of prostitution. Yet she mentions three times the true name of God, which even the priests fear to mention. She realizes that the success of the Israelites had nothing to do with the numbers or skill in battle, but was because of the power of their God.

Do we really look to God’s power or to our own? Can we follow Rahab’s example?

We have something in common with the ancient citizens of Jericho. God’s wrath may well be coming on us very soon. We cannot look at the world today without seeing a cataclysm ahead. The Old and New Testament speak of the day of wrath. When that day comes, there will be little difference in what we we did before. The only difference will be who we will trust to get us through. If we trust in our own strength or cleverness, we are doomed to fail. But if we put our trust in the forgiveness and mercy of Jesus, who was sent to rescue us from death, then we will escape the day of wrath.

Imagine you were in a store in Japan in the great earthquake and tsunami. . Some of the survivors make it to the roof, and wait for rescue. All kinds of people wait—church deacons, gamblers, schoolteachers, prostitutes, gay people, straight people—all kinds.

A helicopter appears over our heads. Someone throws down a ladder. “Come up,” the pilot says. “Catch the rope.”

Will the helicopter pilot say “all you good people come up. You sinners stay down?” No, the offer of rescue would be to any and all who will take hold of the ladder. Those who trust will travel.

Jesus is God’s rescue operation. He came to earth to save sinners. Any who will trust Gun will be saved. Our previous lives do not matter. The only thing that matters is whether we are willing to hold on to Christ and His grace.

When Rahab saw these spies, she saw an opportunity to save herself and her family.

Josh 2:12-13 Now then, please swear to me by the LORD that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign that you will spare the lives of my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and that you will save us from death."

The spies agreed on two conditions—the same two conditions God makes today.

First there has to be a public confession

,Josh 2:17 The men said to her, "This oath you made us swear will not be binding on us 18 unless, when we enter the land, you have tied this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down

Rahab needs to have a sign that this is her house. This sign has to be public.

God wants to rescue us. But God insists that that rescue be open and visible. He does not rescue people in secret. We must be willing to confess Him publicly.

Jesus said Luke 12:8-9 "I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God. But he who disowns me before men will be disowned before the angels of God.”

To be saved has implications in every area of life. It is to become new person with new ideals and new interests. It is impossible to be a new person and keep it secret from everyone else. If we try, it will forever hinder us from being what God wants us to be, and prevent us from following Jesus where He leads. For that reason, we must make our decision for Him public.

Second, we must reconcile with others.

18-20 “and unless you have brought your father and mother, your brothers and all your family into your house. If anyone goes outside your house into the street, his blood will be on his own head; we will not be responsible. As for anyone who is in the house with you, his blood will be on our head if a hand is laid on him.

In our culture, single women do not live with their parents forever. But in Joshua’s day it was different. Single women lived with their families forever.

So why isn’t Rahab’s family already in her house? Her profession as a harlot kept her from either living with her parents, or having her parents live with her.

To save her family she had to make peace with them. It was probably not easy.

Jesus said in Matt 6:14-15 For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

We must reconcile with others to be reconciled to God.

Rahab did everything the spies told her. So she and all her family were saved. More than that she became only one of five women who were mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus.

Faith is not just for good people. It is for all people. All of us must lay hold of faith.

Today, our time is getting shorter. Whether or not Jesus comes in our time, we know that our lives on earth can end at any moment. It’s time to take hold of the rescue ladder of fath. Don’t worry about what you have done in the past, all that matters is that you have faith in Jesus today.

Mercy is not easy. It is not cheap. Mercy can be a desperate rescue effort. Mercy may require that we swallow a lot of pride and that we suffer a lot of pain. W must we willing to go after them not just sit back and let them come to us.

.The Footsteps of Moses

When I was a boy, my dream was to be a marine biologist. I wanted to explore the oceans, and the weird creatures living there. I have since found that it is not an uncommon dream. A lot of children have it. There is something about the hidden world of the sea that fascinates us. The thought of us, being land animals, being able to go to the very bottom of the ocean in our submarines and diving suits is exciting. In that world, the strange creatures we see are the native, and we are the aliens.
Christians are aliens in this world, too. Our real native land is fare above, in heaven with God.
Imagine you are a deep sea diver. You spend hours each day exploring the ocean. You interact with the creatures of the sea. Then one day, you become so comfortable with the sharks and the octopi that you forget you don’t belong there. You take off your mask, and you immediately find yourself in trouble. As much as you think of yourself as belonging in the ocean, you don’t. You cannot breathe what they breathe. You were born to the land.
Being aliens, we must stay disentangled with this world. We must keep our focus and remember that at the end of the day we are going to our true home, and our true world.
It requires faith to remember who we are as we stare out into this alien landscape. It is easy to think that this world is our world. By faith we keep our vision and our sanity.
In Hebrews 11:24-29, we read about Moses, who kept his vision and his faith, in spite of some great temptations to the contrary.

By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of pt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.
By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king's anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible.  
By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel.
By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.

In the Hall of Fame of faith, there’s wing devoted to Moses. Last week’s story about Moses’ parents was just the beginning of the tour. There’s a lot more to see. This week, we are going to see three separate acts of faith performed by Moses in his early life, and a surprise act of faith, performed by someone else.
These four separate acts are marked off with the simple words “by faith.”
First, Moses chose humility over status.
By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.
 We do not know how much Moses knew of his inheritance as a Hebrew. Moses did not have a Hebrew name, but an Egyptian one. The greatest Pharaohs had similar sounding names --Ramses, Thutmose. The first parts of these names refer to the God they worshipped. Take away that name, and you get Moses, This gave us an idea that Moses must have been raised thoroughly Egyptian and in the royal family.
We do don’t know how much he knew about his Hebrew heritage. He had some inkling, to be sure. He may have been instructed by his mother/nursemaid, but we do not know when or how he knew he was not Egyptian.
But we know he knew the Egyptian court. It was a great place for a boy to enjoy. There were pleasures and delicacies in abundance. If you were going to live in the ancient world, it is better to be in the court of a king than anywhere else.
As a boy, Moses must have enjoyed it. But as he grew into manhood, he would discover that it was not a good place to be. Take the example of the most famous pharaoh--King Tut. Forensic examination of King Tut's mummy revealed that he was only nineteen when he died, and that he was probably murdered. It may be good to be the king, but it is also dangerous. You can enjoy the privileges of being a kingdom if you didn’t mind murdering people, and possibly getting murdered yourself. The court was a beautiful place, but a cruel place as well.
Moses saw the best Egypt had to offer, and rejected it. He realized that it was lie. People were not happy. All the pleasures of the court were nothing compared to the wickedness of people in it.
Moses had a choice. Did he stay with adopted family and become a ruler, or did he choose his God-fearing relatives and become a slave? Moses chose God over power. He chose to be a humble servant, rather than being a cruel master.
What would you choose, if you had the chance—wealth and power, or truth and Godliness? In the end, Moses clearly made the right decision. .
Second, he chose loneliness over the wrong company

By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king's anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible.
Moses angered the Pharaoh. He could have worked his way in Pharaoh’s graces, but he chose not to. Instead, he left all his relatives, friends, and servants, and went alone into the Sinai desert.
The desert must be a profoundly lonely place for a man traveling alone without even his wife and children. But Moses endured and was rewarded.
The term they use in the Bible is persevered. We can live alone, but we cannot survive as Christians if we choose those who will undermine our faith. The greatest fear Moses had was not the snakes and scorpions of the desert, but the corrupting influence of a world which did not know God. Moses believed in the invisible God, who judges all men, and to whom he must answer in the end.
Third he chose to fear God more than worldly power.

By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel.

The writer of Hebrews recalls an event which happened at the end of Moses’ confrontation with Pharaoh. God brought plague after plague upon Egypt until Pharaoh agreed to let them go. The last plague was the word of all—the plague of the firstborn sons. God was going to send an angel to kill the firstborn of every household. God told Moses to mark the doorpost of his house, and all the other Hebrew houses with the blood of a lamb, to assure the angel of their faithfulness, as well as a means of atonement for their own sins. Moses did exactly as he was told.
Picture the contrast in what Moses is doing. Moses has appeared ten times before the mightiest ruler on earth. Ten times, he has shown himself to have no fear of him. He did not obey his commands. He did not respect his position. But God tells him to mark the door with blood, and he does it without hesitation.
He knew that Pharaoh was utterly ruthless. He could kill his entire family on a whim. Yet Moses is unconcerned. He does not even take unusual precautions against assassination. He stays in the open. But when the first-born faced the angel of death, Moses offered an atonement to God. He knew that people could not hurt him. But he also knew that God could. By faith he feared a sovereign he could not see more than one he did not.
Which do we fear more, Man or God? Most people fear people more than they fear God. But Moses had the faith to believe in the invisible God, which he had not seen, except as a voice form a burning bush. He did not doubt that God was going to do what He said he will so, so he protected himself and his family from the wrath of God.
Then the writer of Hebrews tells us of a fourth great act of faith from a surprising source.

By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.

Notice those words—by faith, the people. This is the last exhibit in the Moses wing, and the greatest. It was not only Moses who had faith. All the people who followed him had to have faith as well. A million and a half people at least went down into the Red Sea, walking between two walls of waters, and started for the Promised Land.
Moses was a mighty man of God, but he was just one man. If Moses had all the faith in the world, and no one shared it, it would be useless. If God gave us a Moses today, to lead our nation out of spiritual bondage to the light, it would do us no good, unless someone followed him.
God has given us great leaders—people like Luther, Calvin, Knox, Wesley, Asbury, Moody, and Billy Graham. These were men of God who followed humbly the directions of God. But you would have heard of none of these if it were not for the millions of people who were called to faith by them and responded.
A pastor cannot have faith for the church. The church must have faith for itself. A pastor cannot evangelize a community. The church must evangelize the community. If the people of God do not have the faith, courage, and desire to leave the comfortable ways of the past and to set out on a new adventure from God, then no leader, however effective will do them any good.
But what if we do follow? Then there will not be one Moses, but a thousand Moseses, a million, a hundred million. Whenever people choose to leave their pleasurable lives full of comfort and ease, and follow a risky course, then they follow the steps of Moses.
More than that, they follow the steps of Christ.

Miracles

I have a quirky fascination with pseudoscience--UFOs , bigfoot, ancient aliens, etc. I don't believe in any of it, but it's fun to see what passes for proof on tv these days.


I have friends that take all this very seriously, though. They really do believe that there are aliens in the sky, giant apes in the woods, and ghosts in the attic. These are intelligent people --sometimes even brilliant people--but they seem ready to take extraordinary claims at face value with less than ordinary evidence.

The biggest mystery about these tales is not the what, but the why. Carl Sagan once famously said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Though there may be unexplained evidence, there is no evidence of any of it that rises to the level of extraordinary. In spite of the lack of good evidence, why do we keep looking for ghosts and aliens?

I think is because we were created that way. God placed in us the knowledge that the world we see is not all there is. There are forces beyond out imagining, and that those forces affect our lives today. Even people who have rejected religion seem to want to believe in something beyond the ordinary. They would rather believe, like atheist Richard Dawkins, that intelligent design by God is impossible, but that it is entirely possible that aliens created life.

The modern fascination with the supernatural I believe is due to the decline of a belief in a supernatural God. Much modern religious thinking discounts the miraculous, and focuses on naturalistic religion.

In the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, Western culture adopted a mechanistic view of religion in which all things happen according to the laws of logic and physics. Deism is of course the extreme of this view, but that is only the far edge. Before we get to deism there are many scholastic approaches to Scripture which assert that nothing supernatural happens today.

This is unfortunate, because the supernatural is precisely what the world yearns for. That desire to touch the divine was built into us by our Creator. When we exclude the divinity from our world view, then the supernatural is all we have left. In the old days it let people to believe in ghosts and leprechauns. Today, it is bigfoot and aliens. Ether way, we are looking for something for knowledge beyond our understanding.

Our knowledge of the laws of nature is not absolute, but fluid. Newton gave way to Einstein. A mechanistic understanding of subatomic physics gave way to quantum mechanics and strange attractors. Technological advances have come so fast that what we think is of as magic or science fiction one day become commonplace the next.

In such a world, is it really so hard to admit the possibility that there is a God? Or to admit that that God can play by different rules than we know? We must go further and admit that if there is a God, then He must operate outside of nature and be by definition supernatural. I would go even farther and suggest that a real God must make himself known by real miracles, by revealing himself through breaks in the natural order.

Reduced to it's core, the message of the Bible is this--trust God. Do not lean upon your own understanding. In return for this trust, God rewards us with the revelation of His supernatural Presence, which is above time and space.

The problem with modern religion, it seems to me, is that in our effort to make religion palatable to unbelievers, we have removed from our churches the one thing that makes religion attractive to believers and unbelievers alike--miracles. We have adopted a view that supernatural manifestations of Hiis divine power and presece were for ancient times, but not for today. We may tell the stories of those times, we may even believe them, but we do not seriously expect God to repeat them today. But in ancient times, it was those miracles which drew people to Christ. In a world obsessed with the supernatural, why is it unreasonable to expect God's miracles to draw people to Him today?

We need to pray for miracles and expect them, and not just for our own benefit. The world needs to see them, too. We need to get ourselves out of the way and expect God to show Himself to our modern world the same way He did to the ancient one--by His sovereign manifestation of His power.

Some random thoughts on worship

A few random thought on Christian worship




A couple who went to our church in Florida started attending a different church, a larger, more contemporary church.

She said "We love the people in your church, but the people, the service, and the programs at the other church are so alive."

I said "Did you ever see a sponge."

"Yes," she said.

"How about a cheetah?"

"Yes," she answered with a puzzled expression.

"A cheetah is alive. Isn't it?"

"Yes"

"And a sponge is alive too, isn't it."

"Yes."

"Well, if God can make the cheetah and the sponge then he must like a variety of animals. Just because a cheetah moves fast, and a sponge does not move at all, does not mean that one is more alive than the other. God made us all to move at our own pace."

I was proud of that answer at the time. But in retrospect, it really was not very effective. People don't go to the zoo to see sponges. People want to see movement. People do not want to see an unmoving God, either. They want to see Him move--or at least feel Him and hear Him. People go to church to be reassured that God is present and alive.



Perhaps the reason so many of our churches are ineffective is that people come looking for a divine-human encounter, ministers come to get people to go do something.

They are here to worship, we are here to work. We are like the stage hands at a symphony, too busy arranging chairs and opening curtains to hear the music. We ministers have heard it all before, and our ears have grown too used to its hearing, so we no longer feel the Spirit as we preach.



The longer I am in the ministry, the more convinced I am that while the pastor displays Christ before the people, the people must also display Christ before the pastor. Pastors need to see Him revealed in the collective community just as much as everyone else. Public worship is a collective revelation of Christ. I don't know how we do that by onl letting the pastor speak and the choir sing. Occasionally, we see Christ revealed in congregational singing, but it's much harder to see it in the corporate mumble that constitutes most hymn singing. We sing as if we are ashamed to admit that we aren't sure about what we are singing. Corporate singing is so bad we must cover it up with loud organs or guitars and drums, depending upon our worship style. Where are the testimonies of what God has done? Where are the cries of a corporate desire for God? We have achieved an orderly, regular service by squeezing out of it all passion and spontaneity. Why can't the people testify to what Jesus has done for them? Why is it only the preacher and choir members who have a responsibility to exhibit the living presence of Christ?



If the reason Christ put us on earth was to build beautiful buildings, we have succeeded wonderfully. If the reason Christ put us on earth is to build a living tabernacle, then we have failed miserably. We are not in the building of preserving buildings and institutions, but in saving souls. Let realtors worry about buildings. Let's just be God's temple.



Theology is the yeast of the church. But who eats yeast. We have to put it in something and give it time to grow. The only time theology does us any good is when it is applied creatively and sincerely to the human condition over time in the warmth of the spirit.



Much of our worship makes me wish for the liveliness of a funeral. We cannot expect to move the living to God when our services resemble our mourning for the dead.



Why is the only principle we Reformed Christians discuss is the regulative one? Shouldn't there also be a creative one as well? Aren't we called to bring our whole being--our whole heart, gifts, talents, and imagination to Him? Is God more interested giving control and order, or in giving life? If we are created in God's image, and our creativity is part of that image, then are we really doing our best if we do the same thing in the same manner week after week, without even thinking about it? If we loved our wives with regulation and without imagination, it would be grounds for divorce.



Preachers and congregations have been at cross purposes almost from the first day we had preachers and congregations. The preacher want the congregation to be an army on the move. Congregations want the preacher to assure them that everything is all right already and they don't have to move. Preachers push people to action, congregations counter with inaction. They like it the way it is. More often than not in this tug of war, the congregation wins. In the end, the preacher usually gives in and gives up. That's why God finds us lukewarm.



Preachers do not move the congregations because they do not love them as they are. They love them for their potential, or they love them in a spiritual sense, but the do not see them as people who are just as they are worthy of God's love now. Preachers are like bad husbands who see their wives as people that they must improve before they the can give acceptance. Their constant drum of shoulds and coulds communicates guilt, not grace.



Why do we have to help God be majestic? We put a great deal of time and effort in the church trying to create an artificial sense of holiness with ritual, architecture, and music. We put preachers in high pulpits just to exalt the Word, but the people are not fooled. They know to exalt the preacher. God doesn't need all this. Our attempts to drum up a sense of the presence of God in worship are like ants trying to prop up an elephant. God is present. We need to get out of the way and let Him exalt Himself.



My greatest desire is to be in a congregation where no one has to say "the Lord is in His Holy Temple. Come, let us worship Him." because we will already experience His presence all around us.